Bedugul Coffee: Friday Morning Briefing: University of Washington forecasts nearly 300,000 U.S. COVID-19 deaths by Dec. 1

What you need to know about the coronavirus today

Grim forecast for U.S.
Nearly 300,000 Americans could be dead from COVID-19 by Dec. 1, University of Washington health experts forecast, although they said 70,000 lives could be saved if people were scrupulous about wearing masks. The latest predictions from the university’s widely cited Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation came as top White House infectious disease advisers warned that major U.S. cities could erupt as new coronavirus hot spots if officials there were not vigilant with counter-measures.

“We’re seeing a rollercoaster in the United States. It appears that people are wearing masks and socially distancing more frequently as infections increase, then after a while as infections drop, people let their guard down,” Dr Christopher Murray, director of the IHME, said in announcing the university’s revised forecast.

Track the spread of the virus with this state-by-state and county map.

India cases pass 2 million
India, the country hardest hit in Asia by the pandemic, reported a record daily jump in infections, taking its total number of cases over 2 million. It is the third nation to pass that milestone, after the United States and Brazil. With infections spreading further to smaller towns and rural areas, experts say the epidemic is likely to be months away from hitting its peak in India, putting more strain on an already overburdened healthcare system.

Facebook’s dilemma
Since the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus an international health emergency in January, Facebook has removed more than 7 million pieces of content with false claims about the virus that could pose an immediate health risk to people who believe them. The company said that in recent months it had banned such claims as “social distancing does not work” because they pose a risk of “imminent” harm. Facebook took down a video post on Wednesday by U.S. President Donald Trump in which he said that children are “almost immune” to COVID-19.

No ‘false hope’ from UK finance minister
Extending Britain’s furlough scheme would leave some workers trapped in false hope that they could return to their jobs after the coronavirus pandemic, British finance minister Rishi Sunak said. With redundancies mounting, opposition politicians and think tanks have said Sunak should extend the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme - due to expire at the end of October - until the economy is strong enough to support more at-risk workers. “It’s wrong to keep people trapped in a situation and pretend that there is always a job that they can go back to,” Sunak said.

Free testing for all in Hong Kong
Hong Kong will offer free voluntary coronavirus testing for residents, Chief Executive Carrie Lam said, as the city races to contain a resurgence of the virus over the past month. The plan, which will enable citywide testing for the first time, is likely to be implemented in two weeks at the earliest, Lam said. The announcement comes less than a week after China sent a team of health officials to Hong Kong to carry out widespread COVID-19 testing. It is the first time mainland health officials have assisted Hong Kong in its battle to control the virus.

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Beirut blast

Beirut’s blast destroyed Lebanon’s only large grain silo, with plans for another in the country’s second biggest port Tripoli shelved years ago due to a lack of funding, the U.N.’s FAO, Tripoli port director and a regional grain expert told Reuters. The destruction of the 120,000-tonne capacity structure and disabling of the port, the main entry point for food imports, means buyers will have to rely on smaller privately-owned storage facilities for their wheat purchases, exacerbating concerns about food supplies.

The chemicals that went up in flames in Beirut’s deadliest peace-time explosion arrived in the Lebanese capital seven years ago on a leaky Russian-leased cargo ship that, according to its captain, should never have stopped there.

Lebanon’s president said an investigation into the biggest blast in Beirut’s history would examine whether “external interference” had a role, as residents tried to rebuild their shattered lives and homes after the explosion.

Tech

President Trump has unveiled sweeping bans on U.S. transactions with the Chinese owners of WeChat and TikTok, escalating a high-stakes confrontation with Beijing over the future of the global tech industry. The executive orders announced Thursday and effective in 45 days come after the Trump administration this week flagged increased effort to purge “untrusted” Chinese apps from U.S. digital networks, calling Tencent’s WeChat and Bytedance’s TikTok “significant threats.”

Trump administration officials have urged the president to delist Chinese companies that trade on U.S. exchanges and fail to meet U.S. auditing requirements by January 2022, SEC and Treasury officials said.

COVID Science

Japan will buy 120 million doses of AstraZeneca’s experimental COVID-19 vaccine from early next year, its health minister said, adding that domestic pharmaceutical firms would help in supplying the drug. The agreement with the British drugmaker comes after Japan announced a deal last week to buy 120 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine candidate developed by Pfizer and BioNTech.

Switzerland has signed an agreement with Moderna to secure early access to the COVID-19 vaccine the U.S. biotech company is developing, the government said. Switzerland will get 4.5 million doses of the vaccine, enough to vaccinate 2.25 million people if as expected two doses are needed per patient.

Serum Institute of India said it would receive $150 million in funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the GAVI vaccines alliance to make 100 million COVID-19 vaccine doses for India and other emerging economies as early as 2021. The candidate vaccines, including those from AstraZeneca and Novavax, will be priced at $3 per dose and will be made available in 92 countries in GAVI’s COVAX Advance Market Commitment, the company said in a statement.