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Health

Instances could have peaked however deaths hit new document

Cases may have peaked but deaths hit new record

People receive their Covid-19 vaccines from medical workers at a vaccination centre set up in the classroom of a government school on May 04, 2021 in New Delhi, India.

Getty Images | Getty Images News | Getty Images

India reported its highest single-day increase in Covid-19 deaths as cases stayed below 300,000 for the third straight day.

On Wednesday, health ministry data showed at least 4,529 people succumbed to the disease over a 24-hour period as 267,334 new cases were registered.

India has reported more than 25 million cases and over 283,000 deaths so far. But experts suggest the figures undercount the actual toll as testing is limited in some places, particularly in rural areas currently experiencing a surge in cases. Many patients who have died at home — due to hospitals running out of beds — are also typically left out of the official tally.

The South Asian nation has been testing anywhere between 1.5 million to 2 million samples daily over the last seven days, according to government data. The test positivity rate has come down from 19.45% last Thursday to 13.31% on Wednesday as of 8 a.m. local time.

Some have suggested that the second wave may have already reached its peak after daily cases reached a record high of over 414,000 on May 7. But there is growing concern over the pandemic’s spread into rural India, where smaller towns and villages do not have adequate health-care infrastructure to handle a sharp rise in cases that left big metropolitan cities like New Delhi and Mumbai scrambling.

In its newest weekly epidemiological update on the pandemic, the World Health Organization said that all regions reported a decline in new cases apart from the Western Pacific Region last week, where the reported number was similar to the week before.

The South-East Asia region, which includes South Asian and Southeast Asian member states, saw a 12% decline in cases and a 7% increase in death toll last week compared with the previous week. Nepal, which is also facing a Covid crisis, saw an 8% rise in new cases and a 266% jump in the death toll to about 4.2 new fatalities per 100,000 people.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus last week urged member countries to continue donating vaccines to the Covax initiative so that it can increase vaccine supply to low-income countries, which are receiving only about 0.3% of global doses.

He pointed out that beyond India, countries like Nepal, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Egypt are also dealing with spikes in cases and hospitalizations.

“Trickle down vaccination is not an effective strategy for fighting a deadly respiratory virus,” he said.

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Health

U.S. Covid instances hit lowest stage since June 2020

Dr. Scott Gottlieb says lift them for outdoors

People crowd outdoor dining at a restaurant as coronavirus disease (COVID-19) restrictions are eased in Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S., April 4, 2021.

Emily Elconin | Reuters

Covid cases in the U.S. have dropped to their lowest level since June as the nation prepares for Memorial Day weekend, the unofficial start of the summer travel season.

The seven-day average of new infections is about 26,000 as of Sunday, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. That is the lowest number since June of last year.

The decline of cases is a hopeful sign, especially as many Americans plan to travel, spend days at the beach and gather with friends and family over the summer. It is the latest in a series of milestones that signal a reopening economy and a gradual return to a more typical way of life.

Cases of Covid have fallen as more people across the country get vaccinated. About 49% of the U.S. population has received at least one shot of a vaccine, and 39% of the population is fully vaccinated as of Saturday, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Of those age 18 and older, 61% are at least partially vaccinated, according to the CDC.

Retailers, including Target, Walmart and Macy’s said this week that consumers’ purchases reflect that people are becoming more mobile and social again. They said a growing number of customers have returned to stores to browse or bought merchandise they previously skipped over, from new outfits to from teeth whitener.

The CDC’s new public health recommendations also ushered in change earlier this month for Americans who had been wearing masks for months. The federal agency said people who are fully vaccinated do not need to cover their face in most indoor and outdoor settings. That prompted many retailers and some states, including New York, to drop mask requirements for those vaccinated and align with the new policy.

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Business

Irish Hospitals Are Newest to Be Hit by Ransomware Assaults

Irish Hospitals Are Latest to Be Hit by Ransomware Attacks

A cyber attack on the Irish health system has crippled the country’s healthcare system for a week, banning access to patient records, delaying Covid-19 tests and forcing medical appointments to be canceled.

Using ransomware, malware that encrypts a victim’s data until they pay a ransom, the people behind the attack have held the data hostage in Ireland’s publicly funded health system, the Health Service Executive. The attack forced the HSE to shut down its entire information technology system.

In a press conference on Thursday, Paul Reid, managing director of HSE, said the attack was “an upset stomach”.

Caroline Kohn, a spokeswoman for a group of hospitals in the east of the country, said the hospitals were forced to keep all of their records on paper. “We’re back to the 1970s,” she said.

Security researchers believe the attack on Ireland’s hospitals was the work of a Russian-speaking cyber criminal group called Wizard Spider. In a ransom note posted online, the criminals threatened to reveal the stolen health network data unless officials pay a ransom of $ 19,999,000.

Ireland’s Prime Minister, Micheál Martin said the government would not pay. “We are very sure that we will not pay a ransom,” he said at a press conference last week.

Mr. Reid said the effects would be felt for many weeks. “This is not a short sprint,” said Mr. Reid. “This will have a lasting effect.”

The attack is the latest in a spate of ransomware attacks targeting hospitals around the world in recent weeks.

In California, Scripps Health, which operates five hospitals and a number of San Diego clinics, is still trying to bring its systems back online two weeks after a ransomware attack crippled its data. In New Zealand, a ransomware attack crippled several hospitals across the country, forced clinicians to use pen and paper, and postponed non-selective surgeries.

Late last year, a ransomware attack on the University of Vermont Medical Center changed the lives of cancer patients whose chemotherapy treatments had to be delayed or restored from memory.

The attacks come on top of a similar ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline, the American pipeline operator that supplies nearly half of the gas, diesel and jet fuel to the east coast. This attack caused Colonial Pipeline to cease pipeline operations, causing panic buying at the pump as well as gas and jet fuel shortages along the east coast. Colonial Pipeline agreed to pay its extortionists, another gang of cybercriminals called DarkSide, nearly $ 5 million to decrypt their data.

The attack in Ireland has left residue in emergency rooms from Dublin to Galway and patients have been urged to stay away from hospitals unless they need urgent care.

Appointments for radiation treatments, MRIs, gynecological visits, endoscopies and other health services have been canceled in many Irish countries. Health officials said the attack also caused delays in Covid-19 test results, but a vaccine scheduling system is still working.

Irish health officials said Thursday that HSE was working to build a new network separate from the affected network. Hundreds of experts were recruited to rebuild 2,000 different systems. The effort should cost tens of millions of euros, said Reid.

The HSE announced on Thursday that it had been provided with a key that could be used to decrypt the data held as a ransom. However, it is unclear whether this would work.

Ransomware attacks against hospitals increased after two separate attempts – one by the Pentagon’s Cyber ​​Command and a separate litigation by Microsoft – to shut down a large botnet, a network of infected computers called Trickbot, which is the main channel for ransomware served.

In the weeks following these efforts, cyber criminals said they wanted to attack more than 400 hospitals. The threat prompted the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to warn healthcare operators to step up their protection against ransomware.

Ransomware groups continue to operate with relative immunity in Russia, where government officials rarely prosecute cyber criminals and refuse to extradite them. In response to last week’s Colonial Pipeline episode, President Biden said Russia has some responsibility for ransomware attacks as cyber criminals operate within its borders.

Adam Meyers, vice president of intelligence at CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm, said members of Wizard Spider, the group responsible for attacking Ireland’s health systems, speak Russian and researchers “have great confidence that they are Eastern European and likely Russian”.

Last month, a Florida school district data was held hostage by Wizard Spider. Broward County Public Schools, the sixth largest school district in the United States, was hacked by cyber criminals demanding $ 40 million in cryptocurrency. The criminals encrypted data and posted thousands of school information online after officials refused payment.

Last December, chip maker Advantech was also hit by Wizard Spider. The data was published on the so-called Dark Web after refusing to pay.

Some cyber insurance companies have taken on the cost of ransom payments and calculated that the ransom payments are still cheaper than the cost of rebuilding systems and data from scratch. Regulators have started pressuring insurance companies to pay ransom demands, arguing that they are only launching more ransom attacks and encouraging cyber criminals to make more lucrative demands.

AXA, the French insurance giant, said last week it would no longer cover ransom payments. Within days of its announcement, AXA was hit by a ransomware attack that paralyzed information technology operations in Thailand, Malaysia, Hong Kong and the Philippines.

“This is just business as usual,” said John Dickson, cybersecurity expert at Denim Group’s San Antonio, in an interview Thursday. “These attacks shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s paying attention.”

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Business

Authorities assist blunted the pandemic’s monetary fallout, however it nonetheless hit some arduous.

Government help blunted the pandemic’s financial fallout, but it still hit some hard.

American households had vastly different economic experiences in 2020 as pandemic lockdowns left workers unemployed and many less financially secure, a Federal Reserve report on household economic well-being released Monday showed.

“One clear pattern from the survey is that 2020 financial challenges were mixed and those who entered the year were often left with fewer resources,” according to the Fed’s annual report on the economic well-being of US households.

The differences came when Congress and the White House instituted a tremendous response to spending to keep families financially alive during a difficult time. The data suggests that these programs have helped – but they haven’t completely mitigated the harm to vulnerable households.

The Fed’s online survey, which tracks the experience of adults over the age of 18 in the United States, found that nearly a quarter of respondents said they were financially worse off than a year earlier – up from 14 percent in 2019. As Job Losses Took The Nation Roughly One In Seven Adults Reported To See A layoff at some point in 2020.

“People who kept their jobs during the pandemic generally had stable or improved finances in 2020,” the report said. “However, those who have suffered layoffs and prolonged unemployment have seen their financial situation deteriorate.”

Less than a quarter of those who lost their jobs had returned to their old positions by the end of the year, although more than 80 percent of laid-off workers indicated as of April 2020 that they would expect to get their jobs back, according to the Survey.

The economic costs of state and local lockdowns, while widespread, were nowhere near equal. Overall, the proportion of households that said they were “at least financially okay” remained constant, but the gap between those with a bachelor’s degree reporting financial comfort and those with less than a high school degree did expanded sharply over the past year, rising 44 percentage points in 2020, which happened when the pandemic closed shuttered service providers such as restaurants and shopping malls, costing jobs that required less formal education.

Disparities also played out in a racist manner. Black and Hispanic families are far less likely than white and Asian households to be able to cope financially, the survey found. Less than two-thirds of black and Hispanic adults said they were “at least okay,” compared with 80 percent of white adults and 84 percent of Asian adults.

A large proportion of households took advantage of the government relief in 2020. When Congress expanded eligibility and increased the generosity of benefits for those who have lost their jobs, the report found that 14 percent of adults said they had received unemployment income, up from 2 percent in Year 2019.

The report said that “many aspects of government stimulus measures” “appear to have mitigated the negative financial impact of the pandemic on many families”.

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Health

Irish well being service hit by ‘subtle’ ransomware assault

Irish health service hit by 'sophisticated' ransomware attack

An ambulance arrives at the A and E departments of the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital in Dublin on Monday January 18, 2021.

Artur Widak | NurPhoto via Getty Images

LONDON – Ireland’s health service shut down its computer systems on Friday after being hit by a “sophisticated” ransomware attack.

The Irish health service provider said there had been a “significant ransomware attack” on its IT systems without commenting on further details.

“As a precaution, we shut down all of our IT systems to protect them from this attack and to be able to (fully) assess the situation with our own security partners,” said the HSE in a tweet on Friday.

“We apologize for the inconvenience this may cause patients and the public and we will provide more information as it becomes available.”

Ireland’s vaccination program has not been affected and appointments are proceeding as planned, but the registration portal has gone offline. Doctors also can’t refer people for Covid-19 testing, so patients have been advised to use walk-in testing centers. HSE said its emergency services were functioning normally.

Rotunda Hospital in Dublin, a maternity hospital, said all outpatient visits for Friday have been canceled, with the exception of women who are 36 weeks pregnant or later. All gynecological clinics are canceled.

“It’s very sophisticated,” said Paul Reid, managing director of HSE, to RTE Radio 1. “It affects all of our national and local systems, which would be involved in all of our core services.”

“We noticed this during the night and obviously acted immediately. The top priority is obviously to contain this. But it’s what we would call a human-powered ransomware attack that they would try to target to get.” Access to data. “

Ransomware attacks

Ransomware is a type of malicious software that blocks access to a computer system. Hackers demand a ransom payment – usually cryptocurrency – in exchange for restoring access.

In 2017, the UK’s National Health Service was one of many organizations affected by malware called WannaCry.

Peter Carthew, director of the UK and Ireland public sector at security firm Proofpoint, said health organizations are “high quality targets for ransomware attacks”.

“You would be most motivated to pay to have systems restored quickly,” Carthew said via email.

“Given the nature of the industry, health workers are often severely time constrained, resulting in them clicking, downloading, and processing emails, while potentially falling victim to carefully crafted social engineering-based email attacks.” , he added.

The news follows a major cyberattack on the Colonial Pipeline in the United States that paralyzed gas supply systems in the southeastern states. Colonial resumed operations Wednesday afternoon but said the delivery schedule would not return to normal for several days. The company paid hackers a $ 5 million ransom.

The attack was believed to have been carried out by the DarkSide hacking group. DarkSide is a relatively new group, but cybersecurity analysts believe they are dangerous. The group claimed Wednesday it attacked three more companies, despite global outcry over their attack on Colonial.

HSE wasn’t the only organization to announce on Friday that it had been hit by a ransomware attack.

Toshiba Tec, a division of Japanese tech company Toshiba, said its European business fell victim to a ransomware attack on May 4th, according to Reuters. The company said the attack came from DarkSide.

– CNBC’s Sam Shead and Eamon Javers contributed to this report.

Categories
Business

Pipeline Hit by Ransomware Hopes to Restart by Finish of Week

Pipeline Shutdown Has Had Little Impact on Supplies So Far

An oil and gas pipeline system that had to be shut down on Friday after a ransomware attack is not expected to be “substantially” restored until the end of the week, the operator Colonial Pipeline announced on Monday.

“As this situation continues to flow and evolve, the colonial operations team is executing a plan that includes an incremental process that will make it easier to get back up and running gradually,” said a statement posted on its website. “This plan is based on a number of factors, security and compliance driving our operational decisions, and the goal of substantially restoring operational service by the end of the week.”

The company said it monitored its customers’ shipments and worked with shippers to move fuel.

The sudden shutdown of 5,500 miles of pipeline, which the company claims represents nearly half of the east coast’s fuel supply, was a worrying sign of weaknesses in the country’s energy infrastructure. The shutdown had raised concerns about fueling much of the pipeline across the country. As a result, gasoline futures prices had risen on Monday, and analysts said a longer shutdown could push them up even further – which could potentially impact the prices consumers pay for gasoline at the pump. Experts said several airports depend on the jet fuel pipeline, including those in Nashville, Baltimore-Washington, and Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham, NC, could have a tough time later in the week. Airports usually store enough jet fuel for three to five days of operation.

This is a developing story. Check for updates again.

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Business

When Covid Hit, China Was Able to Inform Its Model of the Story

When Covid Hit, China Was Ready to Tell Its Version of the Story

But Mr Rigoni, whose company is owned by former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, said he didn’t think China’s mix of media and state power was unique. “It is not the only country where major television and radio programs are controlled by the government or parliament,” he said.

And the Secretary General of the International Federation of Journalists, Anthony Bellanger, said in an email that his view on the report is: “While China is a growing force in information warfare, it is also important to respond to US pressure resist Russia and other governments around the world. “

However, there is no question which government is currently more involved in this campaign. A report by Sarah Cook last year for Freedom House, an American nonprofit advocating political freedom, found that Beijing “spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year getting its message across to audiences around the world.” .

The United States may have pioneered covert and overt influence during the Cold War, but the official channels of government have withered. The boastful CIA influence operations of the early Cold War, in which the agency secretly funded influential magazines like Encounter, gave way to American branches like Voice of America and Radio Liberty, which sought to expand American influence by broadcasting uncensored local news to authoritarian countries. After the Cold War, these became softer tools of American power.

More recently, President Donald J. Trump tried to turn these outlets into blunt propaganda tools and Democrats and their own journalists resisted. The lack of American consensus domestically about using its own media has resulted in the American government being unable to project much of anything. Instead, the cultural power of companies like Netflix and Disney – far more powerful and better funded than any government effort – has done the job.

And journalists around the world have voiced skepticism about the effectiveness of the propaganda from the often ham-handed Chinese government, a skepticism I no doubt shared when last week I recycled unread issues of China Daily that were sent to my home last week . The kind of propaganda that can work in China without a real journalistic response can barely compete in the intense open market for people’s attention.

“China is trying to get its content out in the Kenyan media, but it’s not that influential yet,” said Eric Oduor, secretary general of the Kenya Union of Journalists.

Categories
Politics

Biden capital positive factors tax hike would solely hit 0.3% of households, advisor says

Biden capital gains tax hike would only hit 0.3% of households, advisor says

Brian Deese, director of the National Economic Council, holds a press conference in the Brady Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, DC on April 26, 2021.

Brendan Smialowski | AFP | Getty Images

President Joe Biden’s chief economic adviser on Monday defended a plan to increase capital gains tax on the country’s richest households as neither too much of a burden nor as a barrier to business investment.

Brian Deese, director of the National Economic Council, said during a news conference that the president’s plan would increase capital gains tax for 0.3% of US households – those with annual incomes above $ 1 million.

It’s “not the top 1%, it’s not even the top half of 1%,” said White House Deese. “For the other 997 out of 1,000 households in the country … this is not a change that will be relevant. It will not change the tax treatment of capital gains at all.”

He explained that the proposed tax hike would target those households who normally do not receive most of their income from work-place wages.

“For typical Americans, most of their income comes from wages,” he said. “For people who earn less than $ 1 million a year, about 70% of their income comes from wages. For people who earn more than $ 1 million, the opposite is the case. About 30% of their income. ” [income] comes from wages. “

CNBC policy

Read more about CNBC’s political coverage:

Though Deese didn’t mention a specific interest rate, his appearance Monday during a White House briefing gave credence to reports that the government will seek to raise the capital gains rate to 39.6% for households earning more than $ 1 million .

Biden is expected to officially launch the proposal on Wednesday to fund spending on the upcoming American family plan, which is said to be priced at around $ 1 trillion.

Separated from the US infrastructure-based employment plan, this bill is believed to include measures designed to help US workers learn new skills, expand childcare subsidies, and make tuition fees free for everyone at Community College.

When responding to criticism that increasing the capital gains rate could dampen investment in the US business, Deese argued that there is no evidence to support this claim. Capital Gains Tax is especially important to Wall Street as it dictates how much a portion of a stock sale is collected by the federal government.

“In a variety of academic and empirical data, there is no evidence of a significant impact of capital gains rates on the level of long-term investment in the economy,” he said. “There are many reasons for this, including the fact that if you look at where a lot of venture capital and early-stage investments are coming from, they are actually coming from pension funds, wealth funds and corporations that are actually not tax sensitive.”

Deese also claimed that the revenue generated by a higher rate for the richest Americans could then be used for programs and subsidies that have been shown to increase economic performance over time.

“Investing in early childhood and our children, for example, yields huge dividends in terms of their own academic success, reduced health care costs, productivity and future growth,” the NEC director and former Obama official told reporters.

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World News

Chile’s coronavirus circumstances hit document ranges regardless of vaccine rollout

Chile's coronavirus cases hit record levels despite vaccine rollout

A health worker administers a dose of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine against Covid-19 to a man at Medalla Milagrosa Church in Valparaiso, Chile, on April 6, 2021.

JAVIER TORRES | AFP | Getty Images

LONDON – Chile’s vaccination campaign against the coronavirus has been one of the fastest and most extensive in the world, but a recent surge in infections has raised concern beyond its borders.

Almost 40% of the total population of the South American country have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, according to statistics from Our World in Data, reflecting one of the highest vaccination rates in the world.

Only Israel and the UK have vaccinated a greater proportion of their population with at least one dose.

Nonetheless, Chile has seen a sharp increase in coronavirus infections in recent weeks, despite the world-famous vaccine rollout and strict bans affecting a large part of its 19 million residents.

The regional director of the Pan American Health Organization has since emphasized that for most countries in the region, vaccines are insufficient to prevent rising infection rates.

The number of daily cases in Chile rose to a record high on April 9, rising to over 9,000 for the first time since the pandemic began and well above the high of nearly 7,000 last summer.

Health Minister Enrique Paris told reporters on Thursday that he hoped the increase in daily cases has now peaked.

“Once we hit that peak, we don’t expect a decrease, but rather a stabilization and then a return to a smaller number of positive patients,” he said, according to Reuters.

What went wrong?

Health experts say the country’s recent surge in cases is partly due to more virulent strains of the virus, easing public health measures, increased mobility, and defiance of simple precautions like physical distancing and wearing a mask.

The center-right government of Chile, led by President Sebastian Pinera, ordered the country’s borders to be closed from March to November 2020, albeit with a few exceptions, before it was decided at the end of last year to reopen them to international passengers.

Shops, restaurants and some resorts have also opened to help boost the country’s pandemic-hit economy.

Passengers in protective suits against the spread of the novel coronavirus disease are queuing at the counters of Arturo Merino Benitez International Airport in Santiago on April 1, 2021, after Chile announced that it would close its borders in April as COVID-19 rose sharply is cases.

MARTIN BERNETTI | AFP | Getty Images

While the country’s vaccination rollout was ahead of most, the spread of a more virulent strain of the virus – like the P.1 variant first spotted in travelers from Brazil – has resulted in a significant spike in cases.

Given the widespread use of CoronaVac, the coronavirus vaccine manufactured by Chinese company Sinovac, questions about the vaccine’s effectiveness have also been raised.

After the head of the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention stated earlier this month that China may need to replace its Covid vaccines or change the way they are administered to make them sufficiently effective.

“We will solve the problem that current vaccines do not have very high protection rates,” said George Gao, director general of China’s CDC, at a conference on April 11th. He has since told the state media that his comments have been misunderstood.

Late-stage data from China’s Covid vaccines remain unpublished, and the data available from the CoronaVac vaccine varies. Brazilian studies found the vaccine to be just over 50% effective and significantly less effective than Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Oxford-AstraZeneca, while Turkish researchers reported 83.5% effectiveness.

An ambulance leaves Carlos Van Buren Hospital in Valparaiso, Chile on April 6, 2021, overwhelmed by the large number of Covid-19 positive cases.

JAVIER TORRES | AFP | Getty Images

A study published earlier this month by the University of Chile reported that CoronaVac was 56.5% effective in the country two weeks after giving the second doses. It was also crucial, however, that a dose was only 3% effective.

“This would explain why Chile – with one of the most robust vaccine launches in the world, but 93% of the doses sourced from China – has seen a significant spike in cases and a much slower decline in hospital admissions and deaths compared to the early rollouts in.” Israel, UK and US, “said Ian Bremmer, President of Eurasia Group’s Risk Advisory Group, in a research note.

“Chile and the United Arab Emirates are both considering introducing a third dose (a second booster) of the Chinese vaccine accordingly. A change in communication will make the vaccine more hesitant for Chinese vaccines in general,” said Bremmer.

“Comprehensive Strategies”

“I cannot stress this enough – for most countries, vaccines are not going to stop this wave of the pandemic,” PAHO director Carissa Etienne said during a weekly press conference Wednesday. “There just isn’t enough of it to protect everyone in the most at-risk countries.”

Etienne urged policymakers in the region to implement “comprehensive strategies” to accelerate vaccine adoption and stop transmission through best public health measures.

On April 14, America reported more than 1.3 million Covid infections and nearly 36,000 deaths in the past week, according to the United Nations Health Department.

To date, America has recorded 58.8 million cases and more than 1.4 million deaths, making it the worst-hit region in the world.

“We are not acting like a region in the middle of a worsening outbreak,” said Etienne of PAHO, describing South America as the “epicenter” of the virus.

In addition to easing restrictions in some areas, Etienne said that new and highly communicable variants of the virus had accelerated cases sharply. Currently, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru and some areas of Bolivia are seeing a sharp increase in infections.

Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina and Chile are also seeing sustained increases in Covid cases, Etienne said.

Categories
Business

Jim Cramer sees upside in Boeing after inventory took hit on 737 Max concern

Jim Cramer sees upside in Boeing after stock took hit on 737 Max issue

CNBC’s Jim Cramer advised buying the slump in Boeing after shares traded lower for two consecutive sessions.

“Despite some short-term turbulence, Boeing is perfectly positioned as the grand reopening is in full swing,” said the host of “Mad Money” on Monday.

Dozens of 737 Max jets made by Boeing were temporarily grounded Friday to resolve an issue with the aircraft’s power grid. Boeing shares have fallen 2% since the announcement and closed below $ 250 a share on Monday.

However, Cramer said circumstances do not warrant dumping the stock as Boeing is at a tipping point.

“Boeing has too much to do for its shareholders to be scared by a bad headline,” he said. “I don’t see the decline in some negative sell-side research on corporate governance today as a problem either.”

Boeing’s 737 Max was put back into service late last year after being shut down worldwide after two fatal accidents that killed hundreds of people.

The demand for air travel is increasing as consumers become less concerned about contracting coronavirus. Meanwhile, airlines are ordering more planes that can be financed at low interest rates, Cramer said. For example, Southwest Airlines announced the purchase of 100 units of the smallest Max model last month.

“Aside from this minor issue, the 737 Max is really back. Look, this used to be Boeing’s most popular aircraft and it was recertified as airlines prepared to place orders again in anticipation of the big reopening,” he said .

“That’s why we own this for the charitable foundation, and so far our thesis is working as expected.”

Despite the sell-off over the past four weeks, Boeing shares are up more than 16% this year. The stock outperforms the S&P 500, which is up 10% since the start of the year.

Disclosure: Cramer’s charitable foundation owns shares in Boeing.

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