The outbreak has grown to 30 people and extended beyond Auckland for the first time.

WELLINGTON: New Zealand’s government on Friday extended a lockdown of its largest city Auckland for another 12 days as it tries to stamp out its first domestic coronavirus outbreak in more than three months.

The outbreak has grown to 30 people and extended beyond Auckland for the first time. Until the cluster was discovered Tuesday, New Zealand had gone 102 days without infections spreading in the community. The only known cases were travelers quarantined after arriving from abroad.Health authorities believe the virus must have been reintroduced from overseas, but genome testing hasn’t found a link with any of the quarantined travelers. That has prompted authorities to investigate whether shipping workers were a source, after several employees at a food storage Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said extending the Auckland lockdown, which began Wednesday, would give authorities time to get a handle on the viruscluster and isolate those infected

“Together, we have got rid of COVID before,” Ardern said in a highly anticipated address. “We have kept it out for 102 days, longer than any other country. We have been world-leading in our COVID response, with the result that many lives were saved and our economy was getting going faster than almost anywhere else. We can do all of that again.”

All of the new cases in the outbreak appear to be linked through family or work connections. The only known infections outside Auckland are two people in the central North Island town of Tokoroa who were visited by infected family members from Auckland. Officials said they thought the chances were low the virus would spread further in Tokoroa.

Several of those infected work at an Americold food storage facility in the Auckland suburb of Mt. Wellington. Officials are looking at the possibility that workers on a freight ship or at the port may have spread the infections, despite physical distancing requirements at those sites and orders preventing ship workers coming ashore.

Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said they were doing rigorous testing at Auckland’s port “as part of our investigation just to follow that chain of the Americold goods that might have come in through the port and been transported to that Mt. Wellington depot.”

Officials are also investigating the possibility the virus could have survived from abroad on chilled or frozen food boxes and then infected workers in New Zealand, a scenario they consider unlikely.

Bloomfield said they completed a record of more than 15,000 tests Thursday and they were getting a clearer picture of the outbreak’s contours.

“All of the cases so far, at this point, are connected. They are all part of one Auckland-based cluster,” said Health Minister Chris Hipkins. “And that is good news.”

The outbreak has cast doubt on whether New Zealand’s general election will go ahead as planned next month and has halted political campaigning Ardern said she would decide by Sunday on whether to delay the election, which she can by up to about two months under New Zealand law. Opinion polls indicate Ardern’s Labour Party is favored to win a second term.

Kim said his country now faces a dual challenge of fending off COVID-19 amid a worsening global pandemic and repairing damage from torrential rain.

SEOUL: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un lifted a lockdown in a major city near the border with South Korea where thousands had been quarantined for weeks over coronavirus worries, state media said Friday.

But Kim, during a key ruling party meeting on Thursday, also insisted the North will keep its borders shut and rejected any outside help as the country carries out an aggressive anti-virus campaign and rebuilds thousands of houses, roads and bridges damaged by heavy rain and floods in recent weeks.

Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency also said Kim replaced Kim Jae Ryong as premier following an evaluation of the Cabinet’s economic performance and appointed Kim Tok Hun as his successor.

Entering the last year of an ambitious five-year national development plan, Kim Jong Un in December declared a “frontal breakthrough” against international sanctions while urging his nation to stay resilient in a struggle for economic self-reliance.

But experts say the COVID-19 crisis likely thwarted some of Kim’s major economic goals by forcing the country into a lockdown that shut the border with China — the North’s major ally and economic lifeline — and potentially hampered his ability to mobilize people for labor.

During Thursday’s meeting, Kim said it was clear after three weeks of isolation measures and “scientific verification” that the virus situation in Kaesong was stable and expressed gratitude to residents for cooperating with the lockdown, KCNA reported.

Kim said his country now faces a dual challenge of fending off COVID-19 amid a worsening global pandemic and repairing damage from torrential rain that lashed the country in past weeks.

KCNA said 39,296 hectares (97,100 acres) of crops were ruined nationwide and 16,680 homes and 630 public buildings destroyed or flooded. It said many roads, bridges and railway sections were damaged and a dam of an unspecified power station gave way. There was no mention of any information related to injuries or deaths.

Kim expressed sympathy with people who were at temporary facilities after losing their houses to floods and called for swift recovery efforts so that none is “homeless” by the time the country celebrates the 75th anniversary of the ruling Workers’ Party’s founding on Oct. 10.

“The situation, in which the spread of the worldwide malignant virus has become worse, requires us not to allow any outside aid for the flood damage but shut the border tighter and carry out strict anti-epidemic work,” KCNA paraphrased Kim as saying.

Kim’s public rejection of international aid for flood recovery and his decision to release Kaesong from quarantine are negative indicators for inter-Korean cooperation as South Korea had hoped to restart diplomatic engagement by providing support in these areas, said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul.

Cho Hey-sil, spokesperson of Seoul’s Unification Ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs, said the South remains willing to provide humanitarian assistance to the North.

North Korea in past months has severed virtually all cooperation with the South amid a stalemate in larger nuclear negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang, which faltered over disagreements in exchanging sanctions relief and disarmament steps.

The North in June blew up an inter-Korean liaison office in Kaesong, following months of frustration over Seoul’s unwillingness to defy U.S.-led sanctions over its nuclear weapons program and restart joint economic projects that would help the North’s broken economy.

“The North Korean economy, while touting self-reliance, is increasingly dependent on China and will struggle to balance sanctions-busting efforts and COVID-19 prevention,” Easley said. “The job of North Korea’s new premier will be to show the country has recovered from recent flooding and has upgraded public health facilities” by the October party anniversary, he said.

In late July, Kim ordered a total lockdown of Kaesong and had the nation shift into a “maximum emergency system” after the North reported it found a person with COVID-19 symptoms.

The North’s state media said the suspected case was a North Korean who had earlier fled to the South before slipping back into Kaesong. But South Korean health authorities say the 24-year-old hadn’t tested positive in South Korea and never had contact with any known virus carrier.

North Korea later said the person’s test results were inconclusive and still maintains it is virus-free, a status widely doubted by outsiders. Some experts said the North was likely trying to shift the blame over a possible spread of the virus to South Korea.

In an email to The Associated Press last week, Dr. Edwin Salvador, the World Health Organization’s representative to North Korea, said the North has told the U.N. agency it quarantined 64 first contacts of the suspected Kaesong case and 3,571 secondary contacts in state-run facilities for 40 days.

Since the end of December, North Korea has quarantined and released 25,905 people, 382 of them foreigners, Salvador said.

This news story was published by ‘Khaleej Times’ and has been shared here without any changes and alterations. 

Ajman (UAE): A massive fire that broke out in a fruits and vegetables market in Ajman on Wednesday evening has been put out. 

According to an official of the Ajman Civil Defence, the blaze was brought under control in three hours. A cooling operation is still ongoing at the site.

Firefighters from civil defence stations in Dubai, Sharjah and Umm Al Quwain joined the Ajman force in battling the blaze.

The fire broke out in the emirate’s new industrial area. Several fire engines were seen rushing to the spot to put out the blaze.

The Ajman civil defence had earlier urged motorists to take alternative routes.

“Ajman firefighters cordoned off the site and used water and foam in extinguishing the blaze which spread to several shops at the market,” sources told Khaleej Times.

United Nations: The COVID-19 pandemic has created the largest disruption of education in history, affecting nearly 1.6 billion students in all countries and continents and an additional 23.8 million children and youth could drop out or not have access to school next year due to the pandemic’s economic impact alone, the UN Secretary General’s policy brief on education said.

Education is the key to personal development and the future of societies. It unlocks opportunities and narrows inequalities. It is the bedrock of informed, tolerant societies, and a primary driver of sustainable development. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to the largest disruption of education ever, Secretary General Antonio Guterres said in a video statement launching his policy brief on Education and COVID19′ on Tuesday.

He said that in mid-July, schools were closed in more than 160 countries, affecting over 1 billion students and at least 40 million children worldwide have missed out on education in their critical pre-school year.

The policy brief said that the pandemic has exacerbated education disparities and learning losses due to prolonged school closures threaten to erase progress made in recent decades, not least for girls and young women.

Some 23.8 million additional children and youth (from pre-primary to tertiary) could drop out or not have access to school next year due to the pandemic’s economic impact alone, the brief said.

Guterres said as the world faces unsustainable levels of inequality, we need education the great equaliser more than ever. We must take bold steps now, to create inclusive, resilient, quality education systems fit for the future.

Guterres voiced concern that parents, especially women, have been forced to assume heavy care burdens in the home and despite the delivery of lessons by radio, television and online, and the best efforts of teachers and parents, many students remain out of reach.

Learners with disabilities, those in minority or disadvantaged communities, displaced and refugee students and those in remote areas are at highest risk of being left behind, he said.

The UN chief underlined that the world already faced a learning crisis before the pandemic as more than 250 million school-age children were out of school and only a quarter of secondary school children in developing countries were leaving school with basic skills.

Now we face a generational catastrophe that could waste untold human potential, undermine decades of progress, and exacerbate entrenched inequalities. The knock-on effects on child nutrition, child marriage and gender equality, among others, are deeply concerning, he said.

Launching the policy brief, he said it focuses on a new campaign with education partners and United Nations agencies called Save our Future’ and decisions that governments and partners take now will have lasting impact on hundreds of millions of young people, and on the development prospects of countries for decades to come.

The campaign will amplify the voices of children and young people and urge governments worldwide to recognise investment in education as critical to COVID-19 recovery.

The policy brief calls for action in four key areas of reopening schools, prioritising education in financing decisions, targeting the hardest to reach and future of education.

On reopening schools, the brief says that once local transmission of COVID-19 is under control, getting students back into schools and learning institutions as safely as possible must be a top priority.

The UN has issued guidance to help governments in this complex endeavour and Guterres said it will be essential to balance health risks against risks to children’s education and protection, and to factor in the impact on women’s labour force participation.

He also stressed that consultation with parents, carers, teachers and young people is fundamental.

On prioritising education in financing decisions, Guterres said that before the crisis hit, low and middle-income countries already faced an education funding gap of USD 1.5 trillion dollars a year and this gap has now grown further.

Education budgets need to be protected and increased. And it is critical that education is at the heart of international solidarity efforts, from debt management and stimulus packages to global humanitarian appeals and official development assistance, Guterres said.

The brief’s focus of targeting the hardest to reach emphasizes that education initiatives must seek to reach those at greatest risk of being left behind — people in emergencies and crises; minority groups of all kinds; displaced people and those with disabilities.

They should be sensitive to the specific challenges faced by girls, boys, women and men, and should urgently seek to bridge the digital divide, Guterres said.

The brief also highlights that the future of education is here and there is a generational opportunity to reimagine education.

We can take a leap towards forward-looking systems that deliver quality education for all as a springboard for the Sustainable Development Goals, Guterres said adding that to achieve this, there is a need to invest in digital literacy and infrastructure.

The brief notes that to cope better with future crises, governments should strengthen the resilience of education systems by placing a strong focus on equity and inclusion; and on reinforce capacities for risk management. Failure to do so poses major risks to international peace and stability, it said.

“There is no silver bullet at the moment and there might never be,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

Geneva Hope to have a number of effective vaccines, prevent people from infection: Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus

The World Health Organization warned Monday that there might never be a “silver bullet” for the new coronavirus, despite the rush to discover effective vaccines.

The WHO urged governments and citizens to focus on doing the known basics, such as testing, contact tracing, maintaining physical distance and wearing a mask in order to suppress the pandemic, which has upended normal life around the globe and triggered a devastating economic crisis.

“We all hope to have a number of effective vaccines that can help prevent people from infection,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual press conference.

“However, there’s no silver bullet at the moment — and there might never be.”

“For now, stopping outbreaks comes down to the basics of public health and disease control.

“Do it all,” he urged.

The novel coronavirus has killed nearly 690,000 people and infected at least 18.1 million since the outbreak emerged in Wuhan in China last December, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP.

The WHO began pressing China in early May to invite in its experts to help investigate the animal origins of COVID-19.

The UN health agency sent an epidemiologist and an animal health specialist to Beijing on July 10 to lay the groundwork for a probe aimed at identifying how the virus entered the human species.

Their scoping mission is now complete, said Tedros.

“The WHO advance team that travelled to China has now concluded their mission to lay the groundwork for further joint efforts to identify the virus origins,” he said.

“WHO and Chinese experts have drafted the terms of reference for the studies and programme of work for an international team, led by WHO.

“The international team will include leading scientists and researchers from China and around the world.

“Epidemiological studies will begin in Wuhan to identify the potential source of infection of the early cases.

“Evidence and hypotheses generated through this work will lay the ground for further, longer-term studies.”

The pair have not yet returned to the WHO’s Geneva headquarters for a debriefing.

Scientists believe the killer virus jumped from animals to humans, possibly from a market in the city of Wuhan selling exotic animals for meat.

Chinese officials said early in the outbreak that the virus may have spread from a market in the city, which sold live and wild animals, but no further confirmation of that has been revealed.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported in June that a German shepherd in New York state was the first dog in the country to test positive for COVID-19, but did not identify the owners.

NEW YORK: A German shepherd in New York that had the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in a dog in the U.S. has died.

Robert and Allison Mahoney of Staten Island told National Geographic that their 7-year-old shepherd, Buddy, developed breathing problems in mid-April after Robert had been sick with the coronavirus for several weeks. A veterinarian tested Buddy in May and found him positive for the virus.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported in June that a German shepherd in New York state was the first dog in the country to test positive for COVID-19, but did not identify the owners.

Buddy’s health declined steadily after he developed breathing problems and thick nasal mucus in April. He was euthanized on July 11 after he started vomiting clotted blood, the Mahoneys told National Geographic.

It’s unknown if the coronavirus played a role in his death. Blood tests indicated Buddy likely had lymphoma, a cancer of the immune system, veterinarians told the family.

A spokesman for the New York City Department of Health said arrangements were made to take the dog’s body for a necropsy but when the instructions were shared with the veterinarian, the body had already been cremated.

A USDA database of confirmed cases of the coronavirus in animals in the United States includes 12 dogs, 10 cats, a tiger and a lion. The agency says there is currently no evidence that animals play a significant role in spreading the coronavirus but it appears the virus can spread from people to animals in some situations.

JEDDAH: About 1,000 pilgrims converge on the Mina Valley outside Makkah on Wednesday to begin their spiritual journey of a lifetime.

The Day of Tarwiyah (fetching water) marks the beginning of Hajj. There are no major rituals, so the pilgrims will spend their time praying and reflecting until sunrise on Thursday.

Mina, 7 km northeast of the Grand Mosque in Makkah and within its boundaries, would normally be the site of the world’s largest tent city, accommodating about 2.5 million pilgrims.

However, Hajj participation is restricted this year to curb the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, and the pilgrims are all Saudis or expatriates who live in the Kingdom.

Those selected to take part in this year’s Hajj were subject to temperature checks and placed in quarantine as they began arriving in Makkah, and health workers sanitized their luggage.

Health and safety staff with disinfectant cleaned the area around the Kaaba, the structure at the center of the Grand Mosque draped in gold-embroidered cloth toward which Muslims around the world pray.

Hajj authorities have cordoned the Kaaba this year, and pilgrims will not be allowed to touch it, to limit the chances of infection. They have also set up dedicated health centers, mobile clinics and ambulances to care for the pilgrims, who will be required to wear masks and observe social distancing.

All pilgrims were required to be tested for coronavirus before they arrived in Makkah, and they will be quarantined after the pilgrimage.

They were given amenity kits that include sterilized pebbles for the Jamarat stoning ritual, disinfectants, masks, a prayer rug and the ihram, the seamless white garment worn by pilgrims.

“There are no security-related concerns in this pilgrimage, but it is to protect pilgrims from the danger of the pandemic,” said Khalid bin Qarar Al-Harbi, Saudi Arabia’s director of public security.

On Thursday the pilgrims will travel to Arafat to listen to the sermon, the pinnacle of Hajj. They then go to Muzdalifah and stay overnight, before returning to Mina for the Jamarat ritual.

The campaign began with newspaper editorials and a social media blitz that included a video showing Johnson walking in slow-motion — in a white button-down shirt and blue slacks — accompanied by inspirational string music and his dog, Dilyn.

Boris Johnson tried to assure Brits on Monday that he wasn’t trying to force anything on them.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson suggested a link between his weight and his susceptibility to covid-19, as he launched a new government anti-obesity program on Monday that will see junk food advertising limited and restaurants and pubs required to post calories for food and drink.

The campaign began with newspaper editorials and a social media blitz that included a video showing Johnson walking in slow-motion — in a white button-down shirt and blue slacks — accompanied by inspirational string music and his dog, Dilyn.

“I was too fat,” Johnson says in the video, about his physique back in April when he was sick with covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, and rushed to a hospital to be saved by supplemental oxygen.

He says he’d struggled with his weight for ages. But since recovering from the coronavirus, he has begun to focus more on exercise, starting his days with “quite a gentle run.” He notes that he has lost more than 14 pounds. And he encourages Brits to join him in his effort.

Embracing the role of weight watcher in chief is a bold move for a 56-year-old leader who has boasted his favorite meal is a plate of English sausages, plural and a good Tignanello red from Tuscany.

It is also a somewhat unusual stance for Johnson, as a longtime critic of the so-called “nanny state.”

He tried to assure Brits on Monday that he wasn’t trying to force anything on them.

The point of the new anti-obesity campaign is “just trying to help people a little bit to bring their weight down – not in an excessively bossy or nannying way, I hope,” the prime minister said.

He added, “We want this one to be really sympathetic to people, to understand the difficulties that people face with their weight, the struggles that many, many people face to lose weight, and just to be helpful.”

The British newspapers, though, didn’t seem to buy any nuance in Johnson’s approach.

“Boris Johnson orders GPs to be brutally honest with patients about their weight,” the Sun headline read, about general practitioners. The Daily Mail went with: “Boris Johnson orders obese people to get on their bikes and lose weight.”

Some on social media appreciated Johnson’s effort – and promised to accompany him on his “weight journey.” Others were dismissive, even cruel, posting fat-shaming memes and videos of the prime minister huffing and puffing in his rumpled running outfits.

During Monday’s press briefing, political reporters tried to drill down on precisely how much the prime minister weighed. Johnson has, in effect, invited the Westminster press pack to forever keep close tabs on his waist size.

Government officials were evasive.

“I don’t have anything for you on that I’m afraid,” a 10 Downing Street spokesman said in response to a call from The Washington Post.

Johnson is sending the country to the scale at a stressful time, when Britons have been hunkering in place for months, jawing on comfort food. Britain has reopened its pubs – but not the gyms.

England is the second “fattest country” (their words, not ours) in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) — a 37-member club for mostly well-off democracies. The first is the United States – and, according to projections, the proportion of people overweight is growing.

The British government’s new strategy includes a ban on junk food advertisements on television before 9 p.m. — so children are not bombarded by ads for fatty snacks. Other promotions, such as “buy one get one free,” are banned, as is displaying candy bars in prominent positions in stores.

The government hopes this saves lives. Almost 8% of critically ill patients with covid-19 in intensive care units are morbidly obese. About 3% of the British population is morbidly obese.

“This deadly virus has given us a wake-up call about the need to tackle the stark inequalities in our nation’s health, and obesity is an urgent example of this,” said Heath Secretary Matt Hancock.

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Hancock said that if everyone who is overweight lost five pounds, the national health service could save more than $130 million over the next five years.

Some businesses said the new regulations would have little effect beyond hurting companies that are already trying to recover from the economic effects of the lockdown.

Sue Eustace, director of public affairs at the Advertising Association, told the BBC that the U.K. already had some of the “strictest” advertising rules in the world.

“Children’s exposure to high fat, salt, and sugar adverts on TV has fallen by 70 percent over the last 15 years or so, but there’s been no change to obesity, so we don’t think these measures are going to work.”

Graham MacGregor, professor of cardiovascular medicine at Queen Mary University of London, noted that the measures announced Monday were largely focused on marketing.

“I wouldn’t see it as a major revolution to beat obesity, but it’s certainly a positive step,” he said.

He added that this campaign was likely to have less impact than efforts by previous British governments, including salt reduction targets and a “sugar tax” that resulted in manufactures reducing the sugar in soft drinks.

“These are very clever maneuvers,” MacGregor said, “because people go on buying the same rubbish, but it’s got less of the sugar or less salt or less fat. And, if it’s done slowly, they don’t actually realize.”

Johnson has opposed those types of interventions in the past.

In his leadership race last year, he vowed to review “sin taxes” on unhealthy food and alcohol. He recently told the Times Radio that “in the great anthology of embarrassing former articles that people always drag up . . . you will find I have taken a sort of very libertarian stance on obesity.”

That stance seemed to shift somewhat on Monday. Though Johnson might need to work a bit more on his sales pitch.

The vaccination marks a much-anticipated milestone: the official launch of the first in a series of large US clinical trials that will each test experimental vaccines in 30,000 participants, half receiving the medicine and half receiving a placebo.

Samples at a clinical trial at Meridian Clinical Research in Rockville.

At 6:45 am Monday, a volunteer in Savannah, Georgia in US, received a shot in the arm and became the first participant in a massive human experiment that will test the effectiveness of an experimental coronavirus vaccine candidate. The vaccine is being developed by the biotechnology company Moderna in collaboration with the National Institutes of Health.

The vaccination marks a much-anticipated milestone: the official launch of the first in a series of large US clinical trials that will each test experimental vaccines in 30,000 participants, half receiving the medicine and half receiving a placebo. Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer also announced that it was initiating a 30,000-person vaccine trial, at 120 sites globally.

“We are participating today in the launching of a truly historic event in the history of vaccinology,” Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said at a news conference. He noted that the United States has never moved faster to develop a vaccine, from basic science to a large Phase 3 trial designed to test safety and effectiveness.

Fauci predicted that researchers probably would be able to tell whether the Moderna vaccine was effective by November or December, though he explained that it was a “distinct possibility” that an answer could come sooner. Pfizer officials have said the company expects to be able to seek regulatory authorization or approval by October.

Company and government officials repeatedly underscored that while the vaccine effort is moving at record-breaking speed, safety is not being sacrificed.

“There is no compromise at all, with regard to safety, nor of scientific integrity,” Fauci said.

Both vaccines require two doses, spaced several weeks apart. Then researchers will have to wait to see whether people get infected or sick from the novel coronavirus. What they hope to witness is a clear benefit: fewer infections in people who received the vaccine, or less severe episodes of covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. There are many unknowns about how long it could take to see a clear signal of success or failure – including how fast the trials will recruit participants and how long it takes for enough people to become infected to observe whether there is an effect.

Statisticians have been crunching the numbers to predict how many infections would need to occur in the study population to gauge the vaccine’s effectiveness. To show that the Moderna vaccine is 60% effective, Fauci said, there would need to be about 150 infections among the 30,000 participants.

The trials are also the biggest test yet of a promising technology that has never been approved for use outside medical research. Either vaccine could become the first in a new class of medicines. The vaccines deliver a snip of genetic material that carries the blueprint for the spiky protein that dots the surface of the coronavirus. After a person is vaccinated, their cells will follow the genetic instructions to build the proteins, and their immune systems, confronted with the spike protein, learn how to recognize and mount a defense to the virus without ever being infected.

“I believe it is a historic day: the first Phase 3 covid-19 vaccine being run in the U.S.,” Moderna chief executive Stephane Bancel said. “It’s a historic day for science, as well. This is the first Phase 3 of a messenger RNA medicine in the world.”

Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld during a clinical trial at Meridian Clinical Research in Rockville.

Mark Mulligan, director of the New York University Langone Health’s vaccine center, said eight people will be vaccinated in the late-stage Pfizer trial Tuesday, after promising results in early stage human tests.

“Now it becomes important to continue to assess them in larger numbers of people, and to ask the final question: Does it provide the protection?” Mulligan said.

Matt Slovick, 61, volunteered to be part of that history and showed up to receive a shot Monday afternoon at Meridian Clinical Research in Rockville, Md. Before the pandemic, Slovick, who works for an insurance company, did much of his work face-to-face, with on-site visits to clients and presentations to groups of people. Now, he works remotely and has seen small businesses shut down. His oldest daughter was furloughed from her hospitality job because of the pandemic, and his younger daughter was on the USS Theodore Roosevelt, the Navy aircraft carrier that was home to a major outbreak in March.

“Thank goodness, my daughter’s results came back negative,” Slovick said. “As an American, I was doing what I was supposed to do – staying at home, wearing a mask. I thought: Maybe I can help the whole populace of the country to get this thing going” when he heard about the vaccine trial.

Meridian Clinical Research is one of nearly 87 sites recruiting participants across the country for the Moderna trial – and was scheduled to vaccinate the first dozen people on Monday. Shishir Khetan, a physician leading the effort to recruit 300 to 400 people there, said that the first day of any trial is typically slower, but that conducting a trial in a global pandemic is even more complicated. Researchers cannot conduct information sessions about the trial with groups, as they might under normal circumstances, or let people stay in a communal waiting room after their vaccination.

Khetan said the biggest misconception he hears about the vaccine trial is the worry that the vaccine could infect people. But the vaccine does not pose an infection risk; it’s just a fragment of genetic material that codes for a piece of the virus. He also encounters people who mistakenly believe that the trial participants will be infected with the virus.

“That’s absolutely not true. Nobody is given the virus,” Khetan said. “You’re encouraged to follow CDC guidelines of wearing a mask and social distancing.”

At least three other large trials facilitated by Operation Warp Speed, the federal effort to speed vaccine development, are expected to follow. Those include an experimental vaccine being developed jointly by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca, one from Johnson & Johnson, and another candidate from the biotechnology company Novavax.

Interest in the trials is surging in the pandemic, but researchers said it would be essential for volunteers to include those who are most at risk of severe consequences of covid-19, including black, Hispanic, Native American and older people.

“This is going to be a big American opportunity for people to come onboard as our partners, to take part in what is a historic effort to bring to an end what has been the worst pandemic our world has seen in over 100 years,” National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins said.

Moderna is planning to produce 500 million vaccine doses a year, with the possibility of making 1 billion doses annually in 2021. Over the weekend, the US government committed $472 million to support the large trial, doubling the federal investment in Moderna’s vaccine candidate.

President Donald Trump visited Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies in North Carolina on Monday, a contract development and manufacturing organization that is working to ramp up production of the vaccine candidate being developed by Novavax. The Department of Health and Human Services also announced that it was improving the nation’s ability to manufacture vaccine by reserving capacity through December 2021 at Texas A&M University’s Center for Innovation in Advanced Development and Manufacturing.

Several other vaccine developers have begun large trials designed to test effectiveness, including two candidates from Chinese companies and one being developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca that is being tested in Brazil and South Africa and will soon start US trials.