Random and illustrative stories about the global pandemic and how businesses and various business sectors are trying to recover from it, with brief, occasional, italicized and sometimes gratuitous commentary…
• In the US, there now have been 44,054,825 total coronavirus cases, resulting in 711,222 deaths and 33,520,958 reported recoveries.
Globally, there have been 233,644,163 total coronavirus cases, with 4,781,097 resultant fatalities and 210,457,637 reported recoveries. (Source.)
• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that 75.3 percent of the US population has received at least one dose of vaccine, with 64.9 percent being fully vaccinated.
• The New York Times reports that "Pfizer and BioNTech announced on Tuesday that they had submitted data to the Food and Drug Administration that the companies said showed their coronavirus vaccine is safe and effective in children ages 5 to 11.
"The companies said they would submit a formal request to regulators to allow a pediatric dose of their vaccine to be administered in the United States in the coming weeks. Similar requests will be filed with European regulators and in other countries.
"The announcement, coming as U.S. schools have resumed amid a ferocious wave of the highly contagious Delta variant, brings many parents another step closer to the likelihood of a coronavirus vaccine for their children."
• The Washington Post reports that United Airlines is saying that almost all its employees now have been vaccinated for the coronavirus, and that it "it has begun the process of terminating 593 employees who declined to be vaccinated and did not apply for a health or religious exemption. The company said less than 3 percent of its roughly 67,000 workforce applied for exemptions, while 1 percent didn’t comply."
“This is a historic achievement for our airline and our employees as well as for the customers and communities we serve,” chief executive Scott Kirby and President Brett Hart wrote in a memo to employees. “Our rationale for requiring the vaccine for all United’s U.S.-based employees was simple — to keep our people safe — and the truth is this: everyone is safer when everyone is vaccinated, and vaccine requirements work.”
• The Wall Street Journal reports that "Harvard Business School has moved most of its M.B.A. classes online following a spate of breakthrough Covid-19 infections among its students.
"The move to remote instruction for all first-year courses and some second-year courses will run until at least Oct. 3, the school said, and comes about a month after the start of classes. It is one of the first instances of a major university halting some in-person instruction this fall and signifies the challenges that schools, which have traditionally attracted students with their in-person teaching and socializing, face as they bring students back."
