Japan, EU Desperate For More COVID Jabs As Global Cases Top 100MM: Live Updates

Summary:

• EU & AstraZeneca fight
• Japan agrees to make AZ vaccines
• Biden bans “Chinese virus” phrase
• Sanofi to use its facilities to build BioNTech-Pfizer drug
• Indonesia sees deadliest day yet
• Israel to vaccinate all Olympic athletese by Msy
• India reports nearly 13K new infections
• Tokyo reports under 1K

* * *

As far as markets are concerned, the focus on Wednesday was on shares of GameStop and the epic short squeeze inspired by Wall Street Bets, the popular subreddit that for years has served as a venue for amateur traders, as well as a compendium of horror stories about traders losing massive sums on long-shot bets.

While the action in penny-stock land offered a badly needed distraction, the COVID-19 outbreak continues to rage across the world. In the US, the total number of cases has topped 25.4MM, the highest single-country total in the world. Meanwhile, worldwide, the number of confirmed cases has topped 100MM. Deaths, 425K (for the US) and 2.2MM (for the world).

New cases continued to fall across all 4 regions of the US, although deaths ticked higher following a brief dip.

Meanwhile, the US has become the first country to hit 25MM cases, as we mentioned above.

The number of patients hospitalized with COVID is falling almost everywhere across the country.

Following in the footsteps of the US, the UK has imposed a 10-day quarantine on arrivals from COVID hot spots, according to local media reports.

As the drama over AstraZeneca’s vaccine intensifies, vaccine news on Wednesday wasn’t all bad. We’re seeing some good news on the vaccine front as well. For example: Pharma giant Sanofi has agreed to produce millions of doses of the BioNTech and Pfizer coronavirus vaccine in an unusual collaboration to try and speed up the production of vaccines. The French drugmaker will allow Germany’s BioNTech access to all of its facilities in Frankfurt, which will start to deliver doses this summer, Sanofi said in a statement Wednesday. The deal will produce more than 125 million doses of the messenger RNA vaccine for the European Union.

“Sanofi’s move certainly suggests this is possible”” said Sam Fazeli, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence.

Desperate to build up vaccine stocks of its own, Japan is preparing to produce AstraZeneca COVID shots as it grows desperate to secure enough doses for the country’s population of 126MM as global supply shortages worse, Nikkei reports.

Joe Biden, meanwhile, has banned using the phrase “China Virus” as part of a memorandum condemning racism, xenophobia and intolerance against Asian Americans in the US, while praising the Asian and Pacific communities for their contribution to combating the COVID-19 pandemic.

Here’s some more COVID news from overnight and Wednesday morning:

• Indonesia logs its deadliest day of the pandemic so far, with 387 COVID-19 deaths in the past 24 hours, and reports 11,948 new cases. The country’s totals stand at 1,024,298 cases, including 11,948 deaths (Source: Nikkei).
• Israel intends to have all its athletes due to compete at the Tokyo Olympics vaccinated by May, it’s National Olympic Committee says amid a global debate over whether athletes should be given priority as shots become available (Source: Nikkei)..
• A vaccine developed by India’s Bharat Biotech and a government research institute is likely to be effective against the U.K. strain, according to a study of 26 participants shared by the company (Source: Nikkei).
• Tokyo reports 973 new infections, down from 1,026 a day earlier, with the number of patients in serious condition rising by 11 to 159 (Source: Nikkei).
• India reports 12,689 cases in the last 24 hours, up from the eight-month low of 9,102 recorded the previous day, bringing the country’s total to 10.69 million (Source: Nikkei).

* * * *

Finally, as the world tries to determine how long various vaccination programs will last, the Economist Group has determined that China and India will see their programs stretch until late 2022 due to the size of their populations and more than 85 poor countries will not have widespread access to vaccines before 2023.