Thursday Morning Briefing: Did the Beijing outbreak strain come from South Asia?

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July 2, 2020 Reuters News Now What you need to know about the coronavirus today Did the Beijing outbreak strain come from South Asia? A strain of COVID-19 that has infected more than 300 people in Beijing since early June could have originated in South or Southeast Asia, according to a study by Harvard University researchers. The virus found in the Beijing cases is an imported strain of COVID-19, according to the China Centre for Disease Control and Prevention. The Harvard study took three of the SARS-CoV-2 genome sequences collected in Beijing last month and compared them to 7,643 samples worldwide. The three genomes showed the greatest resemblance to cases in Europe from February to May, and to cases in South and Southeast Asia from May to June. Vaccine potential A COVID-19 vaccine developed by German biotech firm BioNTech and U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has shown potential and was found to be well tolerated in early-stage human trials, the companies said. The drug is one of 17 being tested on humans in a frantic global race to find a vaccine. The potential treatment is the fourth early-stage COVID-19 drug to show promise in human testing, along with projects involving Moderna, CanSino Biologics and Inovio Pharmaceuticals. No COVID-19 vaccine has yet been approved for commercial use. "Ominous signals" in India A large Indian city badly hit by the coronavirus has recorded a sharp rise in deaths not attributed to the outbreak, according to official data and burial records, highlighting how the pandemic has affected general healthcare. The increase in deaths in Ahmedabad, the most populous city in western Gujarat state, is due to patients with serious illnesses either not able to go to hospitals or being afraid to visit them because of the virus, doctors said. COVID-19 testing at Republican convention The U.S. Republican National Committee plans to make coronavirus testing available to everyone attending the party's convention in August and is discussing whether to make testing mandatory, according to two people familiar with the matter. The RNC is scrambling to put together plans to hold a largely in-person convention in Florida and North Carolina amid mounting concerns about the spread of the coronavirus that has killed more than 127,000 Americans. Check in but never leave Starved of the travel experience during the coronavirus lockdown? One Taiwan airport has the solution - a fake itinerary where you check in, go through passport control and security and even board the aircraft. You just never leave. From Breakingviews: Corona Capital - Byton, Primark, Ikea in Paris Read concise views on the pandemic’s financial fallout from Breakingviews columnists across the globe. Reuters reporters and editors around the world are investigating the response to the coronavirus pandemic. We need your help to tell these stories. Our news organization wants to capture the full scope of what’s happening and how we got here by drawing on a wide variety of sources. Here’s a look at our coverage. Are you a government employee or contractor involved in coronavirus testing or the wider public health response? Are you a doctor, nurse or health worker caring for patients? Have you worked on similar outbreaks in the past? Has the disease known as COVID-19 personally affected you or your family? Are you aware of new problems that are about to emerge, such as critical supply shortages? We need your tips, firsthand accounts, relevant documents or expert knowledge. Please contact us at coronavirus@reuters.com. We prefer tips from named sources, but if you’d rather remain anonymous, you can submit a confidential news tip. Here’s how. Emerging from lockdown Musk says Tesla is building 'RNA microfactories' for CureVac Tesla is building “RNA microfactories” for coronavirus vaccine developer CureVac in Germany, the electric carmaker’s chief executive officer, Elon Musk, tweeted on Wednesday. CureVac, an unlisted German company, has said it is developing transportable, automated mRNA production units that it calls printers. They will be designed to be shipped to remote locations, where they can churn out its vaccine candidate and other mRNA-based therapies depending on the recipe fed into the machine. The novel coronavirus delayed the arrival of seasonal immigrants who normally help harvest U.S. wheat, leaving farmers to depend on high school students, school bus drivers, laid-off oilfield workers and others to run machines that bring in the crop. As combines work their way north from the Southern Plains of Texas and Oklahoma, farmers and harvesting companies are having a hard time finding and keeping workers. Any delays in the harvest could send wheat prices higher and cause a scramble to secure supplies to make bread and pasta. 'Help!' cry British musicians, warning of crisis in live music industry. Paul McCartney, Ed Sheeran and The Rolling Stones were among some 1,500 musicians who called on Thursday for the British government to help the live music business survive the novel coronavirus outbreak. “The future for concerts and festivals and the hundreds of thousands of people who work in them looks bleak,” the musicians wrote in an open letter to British Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden. COVID Science U.S. coronavirus deaths likely higher than reported The number of Americans who died of COVID-19 from March through May was likely significantly higher than the official count, U.S. researchers say. The difference was likely due in part to state-level reporting discrepancies, they said. Overall, the National Center for Health Statistics tallied 781,000 deaths from any cause during the three months, or 122,300 more than the historical average. But the number officially attributed to COVID-19 was 95,235 - leaving 28% of the excess deaths unexplained, according to a report on Wednesday in JAMA Internal Medicine. Interactive graphics New normal - How far is safe enough? 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