BitGou: Tuesday Morning Briefing: Thousands pay tribute to George Floyd as pressure mounts for police reform

U.S. Protests

Thousands of mourners braved sweltering Texas heat to view the casket of George Floyd, whose death after a police officer knelt on his neck ignited worldwide protests against racism and calls for reforms of U.S. law enforcement.

American flags fluttered along the route to the Fountain of Praise church in Houston, where Floyd grew up, as throngs of mourners wearing face coverings to prevent spread of the coronavirus formed a procession to pay final respects.

Virginia prosecutors said a man facing charges for driving his pickup truck into racial equality protesters is a local leader of the Ku Klux Klan. Harry H. Rogers, 36, was charged with assault and battery, malicious wounding and felony vandalism, the Henrico County police department said in statement.

Bail for the white former Minneapolis police officer charged with murdering African American George Floyd, whose death ignited two weeks of protests, was raised by $250,000 to $1.25 million at a hearing. Former officer Derek Chauvin, 44, has been charged with second- and third-degree murder and manslaughter in Floyd’s May 25 death in Minneapolis by kneeling on his neck for nearly nine minutes.

What you need to know about the coronavirus today

Could the virus have spread in August?

The coronavirus might have been spreading in China as early as August last year, according to Harvard Medical School research based on satellite images of hospital travel patterns and search engine data.

The research showed a steep increase in hospital car park occupancy at that time and a unique increase in searches for diarrhea. But a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman dismissed the findings. “I think it is ridiculous, incredibly ridiculous, to come up with this conclusion based on superficial observations such as traffic volume,” she said.

Not the time to take foot off pedal

More than 136,000 new coronavirus cases were reported worldwide on Sunday, the most in a single day so far, World Health Organization (WHO) Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told an online meeting. “More than six months into the pandemic, this is not the time for any country to take its foot off the pedal,” he said.

WHO’s top emergencies expert, Dr. Mike Ryan, said infections in central American countries including Guatemala were still on the rise, and that they were “complex” epidemics.

Treatment hopes

While some potential vaccines have emerged in the global race to find a way to stop the spread of COVID-19, many scientists and researchers believe antibody based therapies hold great promise for treating people already infected with the disease.

AstraZeneca said it expects to move two antibody therapies it has licensed from U.S. researchers into clinical studies in the next two months as the drugmaker ramps up efforts to help combat the health crisis.

A study published in medical journal Nature meanwhile showed Gilead Sciences’s antiviral drug, remdesivir, prevented lung disease in monkeys infected with the coronavirus. Remdesivir has been cleared for emergency use in severely-ill patients in the United States, India and South Korea.

South Korea’s Daewoong Pharmaceutical said its anti-parasitic drug niclosamide had eliminated the novel coronavirus from animals’ lungs during testing.

The drug completely cleared up the disease in ferrets’ lung tissues and inhibited inflammation. The company plans to start human clinical trials in July.

This round’s on us, says Malta

Residents of Malta will be given $112 vouchers by the government to spend in bars, hotels and restaurants in an effort to revitalize the tourist industry.

Tourism accounts for a quarter of the Mediterranean island’s GDP but it has been at a standstill since mid-March when flights were stopped during the coronavirus emergency.

Flights to a small number of countries will resume on July 1 but they exclude big tourism source markets Britain and Italy.

Breakingviews - Corona Capital: Smoking, Cloud computing, UK tech. Read concise views on the pandemic’s financial fallout from Breakingviews columnists across the globe.

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Life under lockdown

Global deaths from the novel coronavirus topped 400,000 on Sunday, as case numbers surge in Brazil and India, according to a Reuters tally. The United States is responsible for about one-quarter of all fatalities but deaths in South America are rapidly rising. The number of deaths linked to COVID-19 in just five months is now equal to the number of people who die annually from malaria, one of the world’s most deadly infectious diseases. Latin America has the second-largest outbreak with over 15% of cases.

Saudi Arabia could drastically limit numbers at the annual haj pilgrimage to prevent a further outbreak of coronavirus after cases in the country topped 100,000, sources familiar with the matter said on Monday. Some 2.5 million pilgrims visit the holiest sites of Islam in Mecca and Medina for the week-long haj, a once-in-a-lifetime duty for every able-bodied Muslim who can afford it.

British breeders of puppies have seen a huge surge in demand for dogs during the lockdown and now fear that many families will give them up once they realise the scale of the responsibility ahead. Millions of Britons have spent almost three months largely confined to their homes to counter the spread of COVID-19, a time when the Kennel Club group has seen a 180% rise on last year in inquiries from people wanting to buy dogs. Many breeders are worried that some Britons may be wanting to buy a puppy to keep the children entertained.

COVID Science

Symptoms can linger for weeks after mild coronavirus infection

COVID-19 patients not sick enough to be hospitalized are advised to isolate themselves for 14 days, but their symptoms often last much longer, doctors in Atlanta have found.

They kept track of 272 non-hospitalized coronavirus patients with follow-up phone calls every 12 to 48 hours for up to 50 days. Three weeks after initial symptoms emerged, 41% of patients still had cough, 24% had shortness of breath on exertion, 23% still had loss of smell or taste, 23% had sinus congestion, and 20% reported headache. Diarrhea was less common, but still affected some patients beyond three weeks.

Lockdowns may have averted millions of deaths

Wide-scale lockdowns, including business and school closures, to reduce COVID-19 transmission in Europe may have averted more than three million deaths on that continent, researchers said on Monday in the journal Nature. Using computer models to estimate the lockdown impact in 11 nations, British scientists said the draconian steps, introduced mostly in March, had "a substantial effect."

A separate study by U.S. scientists, published alongside the European one, estimated that lockdowns in China, South Korea, Italy, Iran, France and the United States prevented or delayed around 530 million COVID-19 cases. The authors of the second paper say that while lockdowns "impose large and visible costs on society," the data show "consistent evidence that the policy packages now deployed are achieving large, beneficial, and measurable health outcomes."

Business

U.S. failed to properly oversee Chinese telecom carriers: Senate panel

A U.S. Senate report says the U.S. government failed to properly oversee Chinese-owned telecommunications companies for nearly two decades. The report from the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations says the U.S. government “provided little-to-no oversight of Chinese state-owned telecommunications carriers operating in the United States for nearly twenty years.”

3 min read

Exclusive: Chanel, Revlon, L'Oreal pivoting away from talc in some products

Chanel, Revlon and L’Oreal, three of the biggest brands in cosmetics, are quietly moving away from using talc in some products as U.S. cancer lawsuits and consumer concerns mount. Luxury beauty company Chanel has removed talc from a loose face powder and dropped a talc body powder because of negative perceptions around the mineral, court documents reviewed by Reuters show.

6 min read