Archives for March 2021

Sao Paulo governor seeks tests of 1st Brazilian COVID-19 jab

SAO PAULO (AP) — The governor of Sao Paulo said on Friday he will seek federal approval for phase 1 and 2 trials of Brazil’s first homemade COVID-19 vaccine candidate.

Gov. João Doria said in a press conference his state’s Butantan Institute has concluded promising trials in animals in India and could deliver shots in July, pending quick approval from Brazil’s health regulator. He expects trials in Brazil to start next month, and Vietnam and Thailand will also participate as partners in a consortium.

Butantan’s director, Dimas Covas, said the trials will show whether the vaccine candidate would entail two shots or a single dose. The so-called Butanvac vaccine is based on influenza shots that the state-run institute already produces and will be much cheaper than recently-developed shots.

“We are talking about a second generation of COVID vaccines,” said Butantan’s director, Dimas Covas. “Now we know what a good vaccine against COVID is. This one incorporates some changes and will be more immunogenic. We will use smaller doses per person.”

Butantan produces more than 80 million influenza shots for Brazilians every year, and has capacity to ultimately ramp up to production of 100 million of the COVID-19 shots per year, Covas said. The Butanvac is one of the thousands in development around the world, but it is the first Brazilian to request trials.

Gov. Doria said Sao Paulo state government will pay for its development, which highlights the rift that has existed between him and President Jair Bolsonaro throughout the pandemic.

Bolsonaro has downplayed risks of the disease and for months cast doubt on the efficacy of the shot by Chinese biopharmaceutical company Sinovac, which was bought by Doria. Brazil’s health ministry finally bought it from the Butantan Institute when it had no immediately available option.

Gov. Doria said up to 40 million shots of the Butanvac jab could be available by year-end.

Brazil’s president has partially shifted course recently on vaccines because of political pressure in a country where more than 300,000 people have died from the virus.

“The Health Ministry is finding out about this vaccine at the same time you do,” Covas said.

If Brazil’s regulators agree to start trials with Butanvac, it will be the second homegrown COVID-19 vaccine candidate in Latin America. The Cuban government said on Sunday it is in the final phase of a clinical trial of its Soberana 2 shot. Last week, Cuba also approved a second candidate for clinical trials, named Abdala.

The Latest: Playoffs are all the rage at Match Play

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The Latest on the Dell Technologies Match Play (all times local):

4:55 p.m.

The Dell Technologies Match Play already has a No. 64 seed in the weekend for the first time. Now another record has fallen in a big way.

Eight groups are being decided by playoffs, with the possibility for a ninth. The previous record since group play began six years ago was five playoffs in 2017.

The extra holes include Jon Rahm, the No. 3 seed. He looked like a sure winner with a 1-up lead over Ryan Palmer on the 18th and a 7-foot birdie putt in front of him. Palmer made his 15-footer for birdie, Rahm missed and they were off to the first tee. Rahm put him away on the second extra hole.

Erik van Rooyen beat Daniel Berger on the second extra hole. Scottie Scheffler beat Xander Schauffele on the second hole.

Still to come was Patrick Cantlay and Brian Harman, while Bubba Watson and Joaquin Niemann were headed to the second extra hole.

Meanwhile, Matt Kuchar had a commanding lead on Kevin Kisner, and Jordan Spieth advanced by beating Corey Conners.

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4:30 p.m.

Kevin Na lectured Dustin Johnson and then sent him home from the Dell Technologies Match Play.

Na won the last two holes with birdies, from 20 feet on the 17th and with a wedge to 4 feet on the 18th hole. That gave him a 1-up victory over the No. 1 player in the world. Johnson won the Match Play in 2017. He has failed to get out of group play the last three times.

The match got testy on the 11th hole when Johnson’s 8-foot birdie putt lipped out. He picked it up from inches away and Na stopped him to say Johnson has to wait for the putt to be conceded. Na won the next hole to square the match and it was tight the rest of the way until Na’s big finish.

Johnson only needed to halve the last hole to assure at least a sudden-death playoff. Instead, the winner was Bob MacIntyre with the shot of the tournament. He hit driver on the 18th hole that rolled to within 3 feet of the cup as Johnson was lining up his par putt in the group ahead.

MacIntyre’s eagle gave him a halve, and that was all he needed to win the group after Johnson’s loss.

2:40 p.m.

At least two groups will require a sudden-death playoff to determine a winner, but only after an hour break.

Abraham Ancer and Kevin Streelman will square off in Group 13. Ancer lost his first match of the week against Viktor Hovland. Streelman joined him at 2-1-0 by beating Bernd Wiesberger. Ancer beat Streelman earlier in the week, but head-to-head matches are not used as a tiebreaker.

Max Homa beat J.T. Poston, setting up a playoff in Group 4 against Billy Horschel. Both went 2-1-0. Horschel had no trouble beating PGA champion Collin Morikawa.

The players will have to wait until the last match begins before the sudden-death playoff can start on the first hole.

2 p.m.

Tommy Fleetwood has made it to the weekend of the Dell Technologies Match Play thanks to two great escapes on the same hole to beat Bryson DeChambeau.

Fleetwood was 1 up going to the 18th when he mysteriously opted to hit driver and went left into a drainage ditch in a hazard. DeChambeau drove just short of the green. Instead of taking a penalty drop, Fleetwood hacked out of the ditch well right of the green, some 80 feet away. From there, he had no angle to the flag. But he hit a perfect flop shot to 5 feet.

DeChambeau missed his 10-foot birdie putt. Fleetwood made his par. “An unlikely par,” he said with a smile.

Fleetwood reaches the weekend knockout stage for the second time. He will face Dylan Frittelli, who became the first No. 64 seed to advance since the Match Play switched to group play in 2015.

1:10 p.m.

Dylan Frittelli is the first player to win his group and advance to the weekend knockout stage in the Dell Technologies Match Play. Jason Kokrak needed to win his match against Tony Finau to have any chance in Group 12, but he fell 2 down with two holes to play and was mathematically eliminated.

Frittelli won the clinching match for Texas when the Longhorns won the NCAA title in 2012 at Riviera. The South African now makes his home in Austin and probably knows Austin Country Club as well as anyone in the field.

In other early matches, Tommy Fleetwood was 2 up on Bryson DeChambeau. Fleetwood needed only to win to advance from Group 5. DeChambeau had to win and Antoine Rozner had to lose his match. Rozner was 2 up with four to play.

UN-backed program laments vaccine supply woes, looks to US

GENEVA (AP) — A leader of the U.N.-backed program to ship COVID-19 vaccines to needy people in low- and middle-income countries expressed disappointment on Friday about supply delays from a key Indian manufacturer, but says he hopes the United States can begin sharing shots soon.

Dr. Seth Berkley, the CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, said doses for health care workers and other high-risk groups in such countries to be delivered through the COVAX program will be set back weeks.

He was elaborating on an announcement a day earlier from Gavi and its partners that as many as 90 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine made by the Serum Institute of India will be delayed through the end of April as India’s government grapples with a spike in infections.

“We are disappointed,” Berkley told The Associated Press. He said talks continued with India’s government and the SII “with the hope that we can get some of those doses freed up and be able to then move back into full-swing scale-up later, in perhaps May.”

“We had hoped to reach all health care workers and high-risk groups by the end of March,” Berkley said.

Production from a South Korean company that is also producing the AstraZeneca vaccine, SK Bioscience, is “moving a little slower than we originally expected” due largely “to the fact that the supply chain is new,” Berkley said.

COVAX has shipped some 31 million doses to roughly 60 countries in recent weeks and had previously announced plans to ship 237 million AstraZeneca doses by the end of May, part of plans to deploy some 2 billion COVID-19 vaccines worldwide this year.

But vaccine supply concerns have weighed in particularly on hard-hit countries like those in the European Union and in India in recent weeks, causing a surge in so-called vaccine nationalism in some places.

UNICEF, which has a key role in deploying the COVAX vaccines, says supply schedules to the 60 countries that have received doses are affected by the delays from the Indian company.

The U.S. is among some wealthy countries that have snatched up more doses than needed by its population, and is set to have enough vaccines for its entire population by the end of July.

The Biden administration has announced plans to share doses.

“The question really is, what’s the timing of that?” said Berkley, who is American. “Of course, we would be very interested, particularly given these slowdowns that we’re talking about today, to try to see doses of vaccines made available for the COVAX Facility.”

Berkley expressed hope that some doses obtained or ordered by the U.S., such as from AstraZeneca or Novavax, “will be made available to help with some of this short-term issue in terms of supply.”

He said vaccine makers themselves “can play a role in this” and talks with them were ongoing.

Separately Friday, the head of the World Health Organization pleaded with rich countries to donate at least 10 million coronavirus vaccines immediately, so the U.N. health agency can reach its goal of starting immunization in all countries within the first 100 days of 2021.

Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus of the WHO, which runs COVAX with Gavi and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, said supply problems mean some 20 countries are still awaiting their first doses of COVID-19 vaccines through the program.

“I’m asking countries with doses of vaccine that have WHO emergency use listing to donate as many doses as they can to help us,” Tedros said, while calling on manufacturers to scale up their production.

‘Treating us like robots’: Amazon workers seek union

BESSEMER, Ala. (AP) — Linda Burns was excited at first to land a job at the Amazon warehouse outside Birmingham, Alabama. The former nursing assistant had always enjoyed ordering from the company, Now, she would be working for them.

A cog in a fast-moving assembly line, her job involved picking up customers’ orders and sending them down the line to the packers. Now she is a staunch supporter of getting a union at the Bessemer facility. She said employees face relentless quotas and deserve more respect.

“They are treating us like robots rather than humans,” said Burns, 51, who said she is out of leave after developing tendonitis.

This week, Amazon workers and union advocates, including Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, made a last-minute push as voting comes to a close in the high-stakes union battle. If organizers are successful, it could lead to a chain reaction of other unionization pushes at Amazon facilities. If voted down, it would be another loss for organizers hoping to win a rare labor victory in the Deep South.

Amazon is fighting the union. The company argues the warehouse created thousands of jobs with an average pay of $15.30 per hour — more than twice the minimum wage in Alabama. Workers also get benefits including health care, vision and dental insurance without paying union dues, the company said.

Sanders spoke at a union rally in Birmingham on Friday, saying a labor victory against the tech and retail giant owned by the richest person in world — and in a historically anti-union state — would resonate across the country.

“What you are doing here is historical, historical, because all over this country people are sick and tired of being exploited, sick and tired of not having the dignity that they deserve. And your message to people all over this country is stand up and fight back,” Sanders said.

“This country belongs to all of us, not just a handful of billionaires,” the former Democratic presidential candidate said.

Ahead of Sanders’ visit, Amazon CEO Dave Clark tweeted that they “actually deliver” a progressive workplace with a $15 hourly minimum wage and good health benefits that Sanders said he supports.

“So, if you want to hear about $15 an hour and health care, Senator Sanders will be speaking downtown. But if you would like to make at least $15 an hour and have good health care, Amazon is hiring,” Clark tweeted.

Burns and Harvey Wilson, a 41-year-old who works as a “picker” at Amazon, both said they’re supporting the union because of poor working conditions at the warehouse. Employees face relentless quotas and the mammoth size of the facility makes it nearly impossible to get to the bathroom and back to your station during a workers’ break time, they said.

“How could you work for somebody who is trillion, billion whatever you want to call it, how can you work for them and they don’t want you to go to the bathroom?” Burns said.

Wilson said he is unsure how the vote would go because a number of younger workers are fearful they could lose benefits.

“A lot of people are scared to vote because they are afraid they are going to lose their jobs,” Wilson said.

Employees are seeking to be represented by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. Ballots on the vote must be returned by Monday.

The vote in Alabama comes after efforts to start unions at Southern auto plants came up short.

Emmit Ashford, a part-time Amazon worker, said that even if the vote fails, he believes the workers in Bessemer have ignited something.

“No matter what happens with this vote, the bell has been rung and it won’t stop here. We will not stop fighting,” Ashford said at a rally ahead of the vote.

ThredUp’s shares pop in stock market debut

NEW YORK (AP) — Shares of ThredUp rose more than 40% in their stock market debut Friday, reflecting investor enthusiasm for the online seller of second-hand women’s and children’s clothing.

The stock market debut followed strong investor enthusiasm for Poshmark Inc., whose stock more than doubled to $101.50 valuing the company at $7.4 billion in its showing on Jan. 14. However, Poshmark’s shares have come down more than 60% since then.

Late Thursday, ThredUp’s initial public offering of 12 million shares was priced at $14 apiece, the high end of its estimated range of $12 to $14, according to a statement by the company. That raised about $168 million before underwriting fees. The shares, opened at $18.25 late Friday morning on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol “TDUP.” Shares closed at $20, giving the company a valuation of roughly $1.85 billion.

“I am thrilled with how the stock is being received, but it’s just one day and we have great years of opportunity in front of us,” said James Reinhart, the co-founder and CEO of ThredUp, during an interview with The Associated Press Friday.

Reinhart said that the proceeds from the initial public offering will be used to invest in software at its facilities, while expanding beyond the U.S. to possibly Europe.

ThredUp’s debut comes as the resale market has remained resilient even during the pandemic, benefiting from shoppers’ accelerated shift online and customers’ steadfast focus on second-hand goods as they become more conscious about the environment. The total resale market reached $28 billion in 2019 and should increase to $64 billion by 2024, according to research from GlobalData commissioned by ThredUp.

ThredUp, whiich is based in Oakland, California and was founded in 2009, calls itself a “managed” marketplace, for sellers, including managing pricing, merchandising, fulfillment, payments and customer service. With this model, it believes it attracts high-quality supply without directly spending money to acquire sellers.

ThredUp sellers can order a clean out kit, fill it and return it using the company’s prepaid label. ThredUp then takes it and gets it ready for resale. In comparison, Poshmark is a social marketplace where users buy and sell directly with each other and interact.

ThredUP and other third-party resale sites also face increasing competition from brands starting their own resale sites. Andy Ruben, CEO of Trove, which powers the resale business for such iconic names as Levi’s, Patagonia and Eileen Fisher, believes that every brand in the next five years will have its own resale business. He says that 60% of customers who buy used brands are new customers: a good percentage of those end up buying new items from that brand in the next 12 months.

“This is an incredible tool for every brand right now,” Ruben said. He noted that many brands are watching how Poshmark and ThredUp fare as public companies.

Still, experts believe third party sellers and brands’own resale sites can co-exist and thrive.

Since its founding, ThredUp, which features a diverse array of labels from Gucci to Gap, has processed more than 100 million unique secondhand items from 35,000 brands across 100 categories. Its facility has capacity to hold up to 5.5 million items and process up to 100,000 a day. As of Dec. 31, it had 1.2 million active buyers and 428,000 active sellers. The company also has partnerships with 21 retailers including Walmart.

The company’s revenue was $186.0 million in 2020, up 14% over 2019, according to its filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Its net loss widened to $47.9 million in 2020, from $38.2 million in 2019.

Reinhart declined to offer AP a specific timeline for when ThredUp will be profitable but he said the “market opportunities are huge.”

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Follow Anne D’Innocenzio: http://twitter.com/ADInnocenzio

Archives for March 2021

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