EU leaders launched fraught negotiations Friday, deeply divided over how to raise and then distribute a major recovery fund to revive a European economy ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic.
Europe faces its biggest recession in the bloc's 63-year history, and states are under pressure to look beyond their own borders and to find ways to lift the whole continent.
On the table at Friday's virtual summit is a proposal from European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen for a 750-billion-euro ($840-billion) rescue fund that, if accepted, would mark a historic milestone for EU unity.
"We have a collective responsibility to deliver," summit host Charles Michel, president of the leaders' European Council, said on Twitter. "Now is the time to engage."
But opposition is fierce from countries known as the "frugal four" -- The Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark and Austria -- who have promised to fight deep into the summer to rein in the spending.
"It is clear that we expect no essential agreements at this summit," said a government official in Germany, which takes over the EU's rotating presidency on July 1 and will drive the negotiations.
"We know about the difficulties. This will be a big piece of work," the official said.
A French source called it a "warm-up round" that would "take the temperature" before leaders land a compromise in late July.
- 'Sending the bill' -
Lined up against the frugals are EU countries such as Italy and Spain that were the first and hardest hit by the pandemic, and quickly asked for help from their better-off partners.
Crippled with overstretched finances, these countries lack the ability to fight the recession with a wave of extra spending and are looking for a highly visible act of solidarity.
The commission's plan is inspired by a German and French proposal in which EU money is raised on the financial markets to spend Europe-wide in the biggest slice of joint borrowing ever undertaken by the union.
By endorsing the plan, German Chancellor Angela Merkel broke Germany's long-held taboo against pan-European pooled borrowing, catching the "frugals" off guard.
They have vowed nonetheless to fight on, most notably in insisting that the funds should be released as loans with strict conditions and not as grants or subsidies.
Speaking in the Swedish parliament on Thursday, Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said the money needed to be repaid and quickly or otherwise leaders would be "sending the bill to future taxpayers."
In an interview with AFP, Italian Prime Minister tried to assuage these concerns, assuring that the money would build "a better Italy" that would be more modern and greener.
- 'No petrol' -
To help pay for the recovery plan, the proposal floats EU-wide taxation on big tech, or carbon emissions, to provide the European Commission with funds of its own.
A recovery plan without own-resources would be like "a motor without petrol", a European source warned.
But this too could prove too controversial for several member states that are loath to see the EU financially self-sufficient and too close in spirit to a federal government like in the United States.
Complicating matters still further, the recovery fund is linked to the EU's long-term, seven-year budget which is being negotiated in parallel.
This has countries usually on the receiving end of EU spending -- many in eastern Europe -- worried that funds that historically came their way could be cut because of the recovery plan and they have also threatened to block the talks.
After this first round, EU Council head Michel will launch consultations with a view to one or two new summits in July in Brussels, this time in person.
A face-to-face meeting between leaders, with well-timed breaks and asides, is considered indispensable to reach a compromise on such a complex issue, where unanimity is required.
President Donald Trump warned Thursday the United States had the option to separate from China's deeply intertwined economy, despite the powers' pledges to move forward on a trade deal.
Tensions have been mounting between Beijing and Washington on a number of fronts including trade, although the two sides signed a "phase one" deal earlier this year to bring a truce to a bruising trade war.
The US "certainly does maintain a policy option, under various conditions, of a complete decoupling from China. Thank you!" Trump tweeted.
The US president wrote that he was responding to comments by his trade representative Robert Lighthizer, who has been at the forefront of trade negotiations with Beijing.
Lighthizer told a congressional committee this week that China so far has been living up to the terms of a "phase one" agreement that eased the dispute, but that decoupling the two economic giants was now impossible.
"That was a policy option years ago, but I don't think it's a policy or reasonable policy option at this point," Lighthizer said.
Lighthizer described himself as a hardliner on China policy, and outlined the Trump administration's plans to "reset" the World Trade Organization, largely so that it can better rein in Beijing's policies, which he says run afoul of free trade rules.
But his admission that the world's two largest economies are inextricably linked -- despite Trump's aggressive campaign to push American firms to relocate production to the United States -- caused some angst in Republican circles.
On Friday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told a regular press briefing that "trying to artificially cut global industrial and supply chains, and using political power to change the laws of the economy, is neither realistic nor wise".
"This cannot solve the US' problems and will only cause ordinary Americans more harm," he added.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said a senior Chinese official also confirmed to him Beijing's commitment to phase one, which includes China stepping up purchases of US products.
Pompeo met Wednesday in Hawaii with Yang Jiechi, a veteran maker of Chinese foreign policy, in Hawaii to discuss soaring tensions.
Besides trade, the United States has sharply criticized China over its handling of the coronavirus pandemic, an upcoming security law in Hong Kong and its mass detention of Uighurs and other mostly Muslim minorities in the northwestern Xinjiang region.
Senior US diplomat David Stilwell, who accompanied Pompeo, said the United States insisted on a "more reciprocal" relationship but declined to discuss the discussions in depth.
"Whether or not they were productive or not, I will look at what comes up in the next couple of weeks. You'll see a reduction in aggressive behavior or not," Stilwell told reporters.
"If they come to the table with a reasonable proposal, the US is obviously going to treat it reasonably and look for ways to work toward a positive outcome."
The leading Democrats on the Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday introduced legislation to block Donald Trump's administration from withdrawing troops from Germany.
Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), the chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee and Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NY), the ranking member on the Senate's counterpart, unveiled the legislation on social media.
"The current U.S. troop presence in Germany is in the U.S. national security interest. Full stop. Just introduced legislation with Rep. Engel to prohibit funding for Trump’s reckless troop withdrawal," Menendez posted on Twitter.
Russia's embassy in America blasted the legislation.
"We urge the #US lawmakers to exercise restraint in their emotions and assessments. We need to maintain a civilized dialogue. Russia does not attack anyone and has no such intentions," the Russians claimed.
"Stop intimidating American and European citizens with horror stories about, 'Russian threat,'" the embassy demanded.
"The Vatican's call for divestment is a breath of hope in times when faith is more needed than ever," said 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben. "It is a powerful statement that attempting to profit off the destruction of the planet is plainly and simply immoral and unethical."
A new 226-page document issued by the Vatican on Thursday was applauded by climate campaigners who said the new environmental guidance from the Catholic Church and Pope Francis, including a call to divest financially from the fossil fuel industry, exemplifies the positive and far-reaching role that faith organizations can play in the global effort to lower emissions and usher in an era of spiritual as well as planetary rebirth.
With the text released so far only in Italian—and titled "On the Journey for Care of the Common Home"—the new treatise serves as a practical guide to help Catholics implement the Pope's 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’ which called on church followers to recognize climate action as a duty of the faithful and urge people throughout the world to treat Earth "like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us."
Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the Vatican's equivalent of a foreign affairs minister for foreign affairs, detailed the document at a Vatican news conference Thursday and placed the imperatives contained in the document—which sets guidelines the Church's dioceses, parishes, missions and movements around the globe—in the context of the current "historical moment " that includes environmental degradation, the coronavirus pandemic, and the many other challenges faced by a rapidly warming and gravely inequitable world.
"The COVID-19 pandemic leads us to further experience the socioeconomic, ecological and ethical crisis that we are living as the right moment to stimulate conversation and make concrete and urgent decisions," Gallagher said.
"Faith groups continue to lead the way and clearly indicate to the rest of the world that any future investments or stimulus funds must exclude fossil fuels and yield long-term structural emissions reductions. We must urge all sectors of society to use this opportunity to accelerate the transition needed towards low- and zero-carbon."
— Yossi Cadan, 350.orgAccording to the Vatican News,
the interdicasterial document examines the issue of climate change, saying it has "a profound environmental, ethical, economic, political, and social 'relevance'" which "impacts the poor above all." Therefore, we first need "a new model of development" that links the fight against climate change to the fight against poverty, "in tune with the Social Doctrine of the Church."
Recalling that "no one acts alone," the document calls for a commitment to "low carbon" sustainable development to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Proposals made in this area include the reforestation of areas such as the Amazon rainforest, along with support for the international process aimed at defining the category of "climate refugee" to ensure them "necessary legal and humanitarian protections."
While Gallagher in his remarks acknowledged that President Donald Trump has dragged the U.S. away from the previous commitments to robust climate action—including his withdrawal from the Paris Agreement—the Archbishop said there is still hope for America to rejoin the rest of the global community in the fight.
"I think that humanity will not be blown off course by any decisions by anybody," he said in a veiled reference to Trump. "But obviously we welcome anyone coming back to the table."
The document, which emerges with the Pope's blessing, urges the de-carbonization of the global economy and urges investment in "clean and renewable" energy to protect the world's oceans, "the common good of entire human family,' and ecological systems. It also promotes a more sustainable "circular economy" that reduces exploitation of people and natural resources and a reform to government subsidies of fossil fuels. In addition to a tax on carbon and other forms pollution, the document encourages Catholics to divest from oil, coal, and gas and to reinvest in life-affirming forms of energy.
In response to the call, author and 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben said it was a welcome development amidst otherwise dire landscape.
"The Vatican's call for divestment is a breath of hope in times when faith is more needed than ever," McKibben said in a statement. "It is also one of the handful of great moments in this decade-long campaign. It is a powerful statement that attempting to profit off the destruction of the planet is plainly and simply immoral and unethical."
Yossi Cadan, manager of the Global Finance Campaign at 350.org, added that while the Pope's Laudato Si —an unprecedented pronouncement when it was put forth five years—already made clear Francis' sense of urgency in the climate crisis, the new document is "a strong statement that the Vatican is supporting the call of many institutions, companies, the youth and other groups who already showed that the only way to rebuild our societies and economies is through a Just Recovery that centers people's needs and not major polluters corporate interests, which led us to the global climate crisis we face now."
Archbishop Gallagher said the text seeks “to relaunch the rich contents” of an encyclical still relevant today and even more so in the light of a world hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. It also aims to provide a guide to reading “Laudato Si’” and for its practical implementation. Furthermore, it seeks to encourage greater collaboration between the offices of the Roman Curia and Catholic institutions worldwide that are already engaged in the dissemination and implementation of “Laudato Si’.”
Tomás Insua, co-founder and executive director of the Global Catholic Climate Movement and a participant on the Vatican panel presenting the book, described the publication as “a road map for the post-Covid-19 world.” He said it includes “so many great stories from all corners of the globe and all sectors of the church,” including the movement he leads, that illustrate ways in which the encyclical is already being implemented across the world.
350.org noted that while the global fossil fuel divestment last month celebrated "the largest-ever announcement of divestment by faith institutions" in history—with 42 institutions across 14 countries pledging to cut financial ties with the fossil fuel industry—there is still a long way to go.
"Faith groups continue to lead the way and clearly indicate to the rest of the world that any future investments or stimulus funds must exclude fossil fuels and yield long-term structural emissions reductions," said Cadan. "We must urge all sectors of society to use this opportunity to accelerate the transition needed towards low- and zero-carbon."
Plants in dense tropical forests are able to mask their chemical scents in order to avoid being detected and eaten by insects -- a key advantage in the "information arms race" between themselves and plant-eating herbivores, according to a new study.
International researchers from Europe and North America examined 28 species of insects and 20 plant species in Chamela-Cuixmala, a tropical forest reserve on the western coast of Mexico.
Their research -- published Thursday in the journal Science -- sheds light on how individual members of "complex plant communities" evolve to emit similar odors, a pack mentality that keeps them alive and confuses hungry herbivores.
"Easily distinguished odors are to the herbivores' advantage and plants' disadvantage," said Professor Phil Stevenson, a researcher at Britain's Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
"So, we have an information arms race. Plants want to avoid being located and eaten so do their best to smell like other plants."
Thursday's study was the first time scientists were able to analyze the interactions between such a wide variety of plants and insects, lead author Pengjuan Zu at Massachusetts Institute of Technology said.
Previous attempts to understand the cat-and-mouse evolution game between plants and insects relied on the study of only individual plant species in controlled environments.
This is a far cry from the ensemble of plant and insect species that coexist in real-life forests, the authors wrote.
To do this, Zu collected chemical odors emitted by nearly two-dozen plant species in silicon tubes, which were then brought back to Kew to be analyzed.
Through a combination of "information theory" -- a technique for understanding communication patterns in humans -- and existing understandings of evolutionary biology, scientists were able to construct models of these plant-herbivore communication networks.
"We now know that all the chemicals produced by plants carry information which has an important role in chemically camouflaging plants in a complex plant community," Zu said.
The study could also help scientists better understand how information is passed between different species in the food chain, such as carnivores and insect-eating herbivores -- potentially paving the way for future research.
"Herbivores, consequently, have to evolve to be finer tuned with the information for locating specific plant hosts," Zu said. "The information can be further shared by carnivores that hunt insect herbivores, resulting in an information chain along the food chain."
Covid-19 lockdowns have led to heartbreaking delays for many parents eager to claim their infants born through surrogacy. With travel restrictions to Ukraine now easing, there have been a flurry of emotional homecomings. But dozens of babies remain uncollected, and the situation has shone a harsh light on the country's booming surrogacy industry.
"We waited three days to meet our baby. It felt so long, I can’t imagine having to wait three months."
After finally getting permission to board a repatriation flight meant for Ukrainian nationals and undergoing a subsequent mandatory quarantine, Sangy and Bhanwar met their baby for the first time in a Kyiv nursery on June 9.
The British couple is one of more than 120 from around the world who have found themselves caught out by one of the stranger consequences of the global Covid-19 pandemic: Scores of surrogate babies await uncollected, their geneticparents prevented from entering Ukraine to pick them up. The baby of one Chinese couple, born before Europe went into lockdown, is now almost four months old.
BioTexCom, Ukraine’s largest surrogacy operation, says it is currently caring for some 60 infants; at the height of the crisis there were 80. Clinic director Albert Tochilovsky attributes the reduction to his decision in April to release footage of the dozens of babies in his care, lined up in parallel rows of cribs.
"We needed the public to know what was happening," he said. "And we succeeded."
Within days the story was making headlines around the world. Soon after, Ukrainian authorities began granting travel ban exemptions for desperate parents, Sangy and Bhanway among them.
But the footage also sparked a thorny debate about the ethics of Ukraine’s booming commercial surrogacy industry.
‘Baby factories’
Until 2015, wealthy couples pursuing surrogacy had a glut of clinics to choose from in Thailand, Nepal or India. But as allegations of exploitation mounted, one by one they closed their doors to foreigners. Business in Ukraine and Georgia – some of the few places in the world that still allow commercial surrogacy – has been booming ever since. And with surrogacy banned outright in many countries – including France and Germany – and heavily restricted elsewhere, there is no shortage of demand.
Maria Dmytriyeva, a women’s rights advocate at Ukraine’s Democracy Development Centre, said that, before the footage was released, "there was very little journalistic interest" in Ukraine’s surrogacy industry. But now, "People are much more aware about these baby factories."
Among those outraged by the footage was Ukraine’s ombudsman for children’s rights, Mykola Kuleba. Writing on his Facebook page, he said the pandemic had revealed Ukraine to be an "international online store for babies" with infants treated as nothing more than "commodities". He has since called for a blanket ban on foreigners accessing Ukrainian surrogacy services – a market he said accounts for more than 80 percent of the country’s surrogate births. However, with no official data collected on Ukrainian surrogacy, the real figures are impossible to know.
Exploitation of vulnerable women
NGOs around the world have also seized on the issue as a new battleground for women’s rights.
At the beginning of June, some 200 women’s organisations signed a letter to the Ukrainian president, calling for an end to "reproductive tourism" in Ukraine. One French signatory, Mouvement du Nid, argued that the current situation in Ukraine "relies on the exploitation of society’s most vulnerable" – that is, poor women, who they argue must relinquish control of their bodies once the contract is signed.
Anti-surrogacy campaigners cite, for example, the trauma of being forced to abort foetuses if commissioning parents opt to implant multiple fertilised embryos but only want to take one baby home. Women's advocacy group La Strada receives around 100 calls a year regarding surrogacy, including from women suffering medical complications or psychological harm as a result of their work. Vice president Kateryna Cherepakha of the NGO's Ukrainian chapter said she regularly comes across surrogate contracts that "contain provisions violating civil legal norms". Other women struggle with having to part with the baby after birth.
Life-changing money
And yet there is no shortage of women willing to sign up.
In the Georgian capital Tbilisi, 36-year-old single mother Nana is seven months pregnant with twins, her second surrogacy with the New Life clinic. She said carrying other people's babies offers economic independence in a country "where finding a job to provide for your family isn’t easy". She’ll receive a lump sum of US$18,000 when she gives birth in addition to monthly payments of several hundred dollars.
It’s life-changing money, and significantly more than the average national wage. She had only praise for the clinic she works for, explaining that, "whatever time it is, day or night, I have the right to get in touch with my doctor and get a consultation".
She said she wouldn't hesitate to be a surrogate for a third time if she needed to.
‘Mutual need’ or ‘economic coercion’?
The industry’s detractors, many of them feminist activists, believe surrogacy simply shouldn’t be an option for women like Nana. But those who have reaped the rewards of surrogacy say that view is condescending and paternalistic.
Nursing her week-old baby in her Kyiv apartment, Sangy is clear about the contract she entered into with her surrogate. "We all exchange work for money," she said. "Who are we to decide what women are allowed to do with their bodies?" She described the parent-surrogate relationship as one of "mutual need", a simple transaction between a woman who needs money and a couple desperate to become parents.
But Dmytriyeva and her allies insist that argument misses the point and whitewashes "the economic coercion" of the disadvantaged women the industry relies on. Her NGO is launching a petition that calls for all forms of commercial surrogacy to be banned in Ukraine, for both foreigners and Ukrainians.
But she is doubtful it will bear fruit. "It’s shameful that we’ve become a country where people can buy babies à la carte," she said.
"It is a provocation... to all the citizens of the world who say that it is still legitimate for all the digital giants to pay their taxes."
The Trump administration on Wednesday abruptly withdrew from international negotiations over how best to tax the profits of multinational corporations such as U.S.-based tech giants Amazon and Google, leading European allies to accuse the White House of torpedoing years-long talks that were close to a resolution.
In a letter to the finance ministers of France, the U.K., Italy, and Spain obtained by the Financial Times, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said negotiations were at an "impasse" and threatened to retaliate "with appropriate commensurate measures" against any country that attempts to unilaterally move ahead digital services taxes on U.S.-based companies—a warning that sparked fears of a potentially devastating trans-Atlantic trade war.
"We were inches away from an agreement on digital taxation at a time when the digital giants are the only ones in the world to have benefited immensely from the coronavirus crisis."
—Bruno Le Maire, French finance minister"The U.S. is a rogue state," writer Nando Vila tweeted in response to news of Mnuchin's letter.
The New York Timesreported Wednesday that "several European countries, led by France, have been rolling out digital services taxes, which would fall heavily on American internet companies. Italy, Spain, Austria, and Britain have all announced plans to levy digital services taxes, which impose duties on the online activity that takes place in those countries, regardless of whether the company has a physical presence."
French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire on Thursday denounced Mnuchin's letter as a "provocation for everyone who was negotiating in good faith" and said France will reimpose its currently suspended 3% tax on digital services if OECD nations can't reach a deal on a fair tax system by the end of the year.
"We were inches away from an agreement on digital taxation at a time when the digital giants are the only ones in the world to have benefited immensely from the coronavirus crisis," Le Maire said in a radio interview. "So it is a provocation... to all the citizens of the world who say that it is still legitimate for all the digital giants to pay their taxes. It is also a provocation to the U.S. allies. What is this way of treating U.S. allies—the British, Spanish, Italians, French—by threatening us with sanctions?"
Maria Jesus Montero, a spokesperson for the Spanish government, said Thursday that "neither Spain, nor France, nor Italy, nor Britain, no country will accept any type of threat from another country."
"We are not legislating to damage the interest of other countries," said Montero. "We are legislating so that our tax system is orderly, fair, and adapted to current circumstances."
Current rules generally allocate corporate profit for tax purposes based on where value is created. But modern multinationals—particularly ones with digital offerings—can sell their products across borders in ways that leave little taxable profit in a country where those products are consumed.
Many big European countries say that tech companies should pay more taxes in the countries where their products are consumed, something that could boost their tax revenues by billions of dollars. But the U.S. has opposed any solution that is too targeted at tech companies, where it has more to lose...
Tech companies, for their part, have opposed national digital-services taxes like France's, but have supported the OECD process, arguing that they would like to avoid a patchwork of overlapping national initiatives.
Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel prize-winning economist and professor at Columbia University, said in an interview with the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation Wednesday that the coronavirus pandemic "has helped the very companies that have been the tax avoiders," bolstering the case for measures like digital services taxes until a global tax framework is established.
"The internet companies are the big beneficiaries, because they are the people who can continue to operate... So they're the big beneficiaries of the pandemic," said Stiglitz. "Part of their advantage is they're not paying taxes. They're not paying their fair share in taxes."
"That's why the proposals—as an interim measure until we work out a whole global system—of just having a digital tax is one that had a lot of resonance before the pandemic, but now becomes an imperative," Stiglitz added.
A drawing by the French writer Victor Hugo of a hot air balloon escaping from Paris during the 1870 Prussian siege, sold for more than twice its estimate Thursday.
Sotheby's said the sketch by the author of "Les Miserables" went for 37,500 euros ($42,000) at its auction room in the French capital.
Hugo was a talented artist, and the drawing entitled "Departure of the Balloon" showed it floating across the rooftops of the encircled and starving city.
It was his hommage to the 67 hot air balloons that were launched from Paris during the four-month siege after Napoleon III's humiliating defeat in the Franco-Prussian war.
One of them in September 1870 even dropped pamphlets by Hugo over the Prussia lines.
The great photographer Nadar asked the writer would he lend his name to another balloon carrying mail that took off three weeks later.
"I could not ask for more than to be lifted up into the sky by you," the poet replied, who kept body and soul together by eating animals given to him from the Paris Zoo.
Hugo noted in his diary that often he was "eating the unknown".
The "Victor Hugo" balloon eventually took from the Tuileries garden near the Louvre to shouts of "Vive la Republique!"
But the writer kept Nadar's letter as a keepsake after ripping off the stamp adorned with the head of Napoleon III, who Hugo called "Napoleon the Small".
Hugo had fled into exile in Guernsey in the Channel Islands to escape the lesser Bonaparte after the writer branded him a "traitor" when he seized power in a coup in 1851.
It’s been six months since researchers in China said they had identified a novel coronavirus spreading in the city of Wuhan. Hope and desire for a vaccine to end the global devastation is growing with each passing week.
Almost every day, I hear people making plans around the eventual arrival of a coronavirus vaccine — office reopenings, rescheduled weddings, family reunions and international travel. In recent weeks, colleagues and friends have asked me with growing urgency: “When will we have a vaccine? Will it be any good?”
At the same time, other friends have been telling me, “When I hear that this is going to be the fastest vaccine developed ever, that doesn’t make me feel good — it makes me feel nervous that they’re going to cut corners.”
These questions and concerns resonate with me. I, too, want a vaccine, but I want reassurance that it’s truly safe and effective. So I talked to a dozen people in the vaccine world: scientists, pediatricians, pharmaceutical manufacturers, as well as staff at the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration.
Let me tell you this up front: If you’re imagining there’ll be one golden day when a vaccine is approved and the pandemic will be over — Finally! We can all crowd into one another’s living rooms and resume choir practice again — I’m afraid it won’t be quite like that. But it will be the beginning of the end.
There’s much to be hopeful about, and enormous challenges lie ahead. Let’s dig in.
Scientists Are Optimistic About a COVID-19 Vaccine
Everyone I spoke to was optimistic that manufacturers would eventually develop a COVID-19 vaccine. This isn’t just because there are so many scientists and pharmaceutical companies working on the endeavor, and so much money being poured into it, though that also raises the chance of success.
The goal of vaccine developers is to mimic a natural infection as closely as possible without getting a healthy individual sick. There are many ways to do this. You can give a person a weakened virus or a dead virus. You can also show the immune system just part of the virus. Many manufacturers are creating vaccines involving only the “spike protein,” the part on the surface of the coronavirus that attaches to the human cell it is trying to enter. Once the immune system has learned what the spike protein looks like, when it encounters it again, as part of a real coronavirus, it should know how to defend itself.
A transmission electron microscope image shows coronavirus particles. Spike proteins on the outer edge of the virus attach to human cells. (Image Point FR - LPN/BSIP/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Dr. John Mascola, director of the Vaccine Research Center at the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said he is hopeful because our natural immune system, when healthy, is capable of handling the infection. “Most of the time, people recover from COVID-19, because their immune system eventually clears the virus,” he said. He contrasted the coronavirus to HIV, for which scientists so far have struggled to create an effective vaccine: “In HIV, the natural immune system is not effective and people get AIDS.” In this virus’s case, if we can mimic a natural infection closely enough, it’s likely that a vaccine will work.
The Coronavirus Is Not the Flu. In This Case, That’s Good News.
There are some vaccines that are extremely effective, like the MMR vaccine: One dose is about 93% effective at preventing measles; two doses (which is what’s recommended) are about 97% effective.
Other vaccines aren’t as perfect. The flu shot’s effectiveness varies year to year. During the 2019-20 flu season, it was about 45% effective at preventing infections, according to the CDC. The year before, it was just 29% effective.
The experts I talked to said that the flu shot was an outlier because of the rapidly shifting nature of the influenza virus. Because of its frequent mutations, developers have to make each year’s vaccine based on educated guesses on what strains of the flu virus will be circulating next year. Sometimes, they misjudge, resulting in a vaccine that doesn’t exactly match up with the flu strains that are most prevalent the following season.
“Influenza changes year in, year out, and the people who get it tend to be extremes in age — elderly and children — so you don’t tend to have as good an immune response,” said Dr. Nicholas Kartsonis, infectious disease and vaccines clinical research lead for Merck, which has two COVID-19 vaccine candidates that it plans to start in human trials this year.
One lucky break COVID-19 vaccine developers have had is that this coronavirus hasn’t mutated in any significant way so far, including, crucially, the part that is most visible to the immune system, that spike protein. So long as that remains true, the vaccine they make should match up with the virus that our bodies will encounter in the real world, meaning it’ll likely work as intended. Given the stability seen so far in the coronavirus’s genetic sequence, “I am hopeful that when we do develop a vaccine, it will provide long-term protection,” Kartsonis said.
Even a Vaccine That’s Not 100% Effective Could Be Good Enough
When vaccine manufacturers talk about “effective,” there are two common definitions. One is preventing people from getting sick. The other is preventing people from getting infected at all. In the case of COVID-19, this could be a nontrivial difference.
We know now that many people infected with the coronavirus may be asymptomatic carriers, which means that they never feel sick or get symptoms like a cough or fever, even if they are, in fact, infected with the virus. So you can have a vaccine that is effective in that it prevents symptomatic COVID-19, but that doesn’t mean it’ll stop everyone from being infected.
Vaccine candidates developed by Novavax, an American company. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)
Let’s be clear: A vaccine that can significantly reduce sickness would be fantastic. If a vaccine can reduce the severity of COVID-19 so that it’s far less deadly, decrease hospitalizations and minimize symptoms even for those who catch it, that’s a win.
“In terms of what you’d expect for approval, it should at least be 50% efficacy against symptoms and 70% against moderate to severe disease, to keep you out of the hospital,” said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the vaccine education center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
Even so, it’s important not only to measure what the vaccine does, but also for politicians, health officials and journalists to clearly explain to the public exactly what it is that the vaccine is capable of doing. If it ends up that the first vaccine to go to market is “70% effective,” we should be clear on whether it is 70% effective at reducing sickness or infection, so members of the public have the appropriate context and don’t feel let down if they are vaccinated and still get a mild case of COVID-19.
Large Scale Trials Will Tell Us if the Vaccine Works
When experimental vaccines are tested, they usually go through three phases of clinical trials. The first phase is the smallest and focuses on safety, making sure that the product doesn’t have any dangerous health effects. The second is a little larger, continuing to gather safety data while testing if the vaccine can induce an immune response, producing antibodies in participants. The third trial is the largest, and it needs to be big enough to confirm that the vaccine is actually effective in the real world.
Moderna Therapeutics is currently expected to be the first U.S. manufacturer to start a phase 3 trial. Candidates by AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson will follow, according to The Wall Street Journal. Moderna’s trial is planned to begin in July and will enroll about 30,000 participants. Half will get the vaccine and half will get a placebo, according to Moderna’s chief medical officer Dr. Tal Zaks. (I should disclose: Paul Sagan, chairman of ProPublica’s board, is also one of Moderna’s board members. That said, ProPublica’s board members have no say in what reporters write about, nor do they know about articles before they are published.)
The participants will be tracked carefully throughout the study. If they have any symptoms related to COVID-19, they’ll get tested to see if they have contracted the virus. The participants will also get blood drawn at regular intervals to get tested for antibodies, which will determine if they got infected but perhaps didn’t know because they didn’t develop symptoms.
A participant receives a shot in the first phase of Moderna Therapeutics’ clinical trial in March. (Ted S. Warren/AP Photo)
“But wait!” you say. “Doesn’t a vaccine also create antibodies? How can you tell by looking in a participant’s blood whether the antibodies come from the vaccine or from an infection that the vaccine failed to prevent?” Excellent question.
At least for Moderna’s vaccine trial, here’s how they’re going to tell the difference: Moderna’s vaccine is what’s known as an mRNA vaccine. Instead of using the actual virus or even a little bit of the virus, it uses a piece of genetic code, kind of like a recipe, that gives instructions for making the spike protein. Once injected into the arm and introduced into human cells, the cell’s protein-making factories read the recipe and manufacture the spike protein, churning out copies for the immune system to check out. The immune system should then create antibodies that correspond to the spike protein, like a matching puzzle piece.
When you get infected by an actual coronavirus, however, there are more parts to it than just the spike protein. Your body will produce other antibodies that match up with other parts of the virus, including what’s called the nucleoprotein, found inside the virus. We can also measure for those antibodies in a trial participant’s blood, the NIH’s Mascola explained. So if we find so-called NP antibodies, that means you’ve been infected for real, because there’s no way you could induce NP antibodies from the vaccine alone.
The Moderna trial is designed to end when a predetermined number of people have gotten sick, according to Zaks. Then, the study investigators will count up the number of people that have gotten sick in the placebo arm and compare it with the vaccine arm. Hopefully, there will be far fewer in the vaccinated cohort.
There’s one more question that a phase 3 trial cannot answer: How long will protection last? Right now, we don’t even know if people who have gotten sick via natural infection have lifelong immunity. The only way to find out how long a vaccine’s protection lasts will be to keep tracking study participants and whether their antibody levels drop over time. We may end up needing periodic booster shots. Truly, only time will tell.
Shortcuts Involve Trade-Offs
To give you a sense of what a blistering pace we are attempting to move at, consider that under normal circumstances, it typically takes 10 to 15 years to develop a vaccine. Creating the HPV vaccine was a 15-year journey from key research findings in 1991 until the vaccine was approved, initially for the prevention of cervical, vulvar and vaginal cancers, in 2006. Merck’s Ebola vaccine, one of the fastest ever to be approved, still took about four years from start to finish, according to Kartsonis.
The speed of the phase 3 trials depends on the rate of infection wherever people are enrolled. If there is a huge outbreak going on, people in the placebo group will get sick at a high rate, and the trial may be over in a matter of a few months. If infection rates are very low, however, the trial could drag on for months on end. Moderna hasn’t announced its trial sites yet, but it will have sites “well dispersed” in the U.S. and is considering international trials as well, according to a spokesman.
Among the many ways to shorten the vaccine development timeline, approving a treatment based on antibody data — without completing a phase 3 trial — could be contentious. This is why.
“There have been some European countries that wanted to be part of our trial, and we said: ‘Look at your epidemiology, you’re a victim of your own success — there’s just not enough cases happening. It would take five years!’” Moderna’s Zaks said. “So speed here is going to be enabled by what we anticipate is ongoing attack rates. We expect there will be infections amongst the participants on our trial.”
Still, there have been discussions of some potential ways to speed up trials even more. One common proposal is to conduct what are known as challenge trials, in which vaccinated participants are deliberately “challenged” with the coronavirus to see if they get sick.
This idea was dismissed as unethical by some experts I interviewed. “We don’t have a treatment — we can’t guarantee to any volunteer that if we gave them a challenge with the actual virus, that it wouldn’t make them very, very sick,” said Dr. William Schaffner, professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at Vanderbilt Medicine. “That would make a lot of people very uneasy.”
The other shortcoming of approving a vaccine via a challenge trial is that because of the inherently risky nature of giving participants a live virus, challenge trials are typically very small. “That diminishes the safety database, and you need a large safety database to give us comfort to communicate to the public that we think that this is a safe vaccine,” Schaffner said.
Another potential would be to green light use of a vaccine based on expected benefit, if manufacturers can show it reliably generates levels of antibodies in study participants that are similar to those found in people who have been naturally infected. Not everyone is a fan of that idea — some experts I interviewed told me that immune responses aren’t always predictive of a vaccine’s real-world capabilities. (Read more about this discussion.)
Children and Pregnant Women Won’t Be First in Line
In the phase 3 trials currently being planned, the vaccines will be tested in adults. People over the age of 55 are being specifically recruited, and it’s important to include them because the need for the vaccine in that demographic is particularly high.
One group that won’t be in the initial set of phase 3 trials: children.
This is for two reasons. First, as a safety precaution, the NIH’s Mascola explained. Traditionally, when running trials with an experimental vaccine or drug, developers make sure it’s safe in adults before moving on to children. Second, for the COVID-19 vaccine specifically, the most acute need isn’t in children.
This means that when the vaccine is first approved, it likely won’t be available for those under 18, because it hasn’t yet been studied in that population. However, Mascola said there are already discussions for how to run future trials for children. Moderna will eventually run trials in children, Zaks confirmed.
Another special population is pregnant women. They are also not going to be enrolled in the initial phase 3 trial for the Moderna vaccine, according to Zaks. But Mascola said that it’s essential that that population eventually be studied. “If we’re not able to immunize women of childbearing age, that excludes a large proportion of the population. There’s a strong interest in getting those studies done,” he said. “The FDA is encouraging companies/sponsors to include in their development plans studies that would provide data to support use of COVID-19 vaccines during pregnancy,” the agency said in a statement.
The FDA added that it “strongly encourages the enrollment of populations most affected by COVID-19, specifically racial and ethnic minorities.” African Americans have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic, contracting the virus and dying at higher rates.
Manufacturing “At Risk” Is a Safe Time-Saver
One strategy that everyone agreed was a safe way to save a whole lot of time without any risk to human health is what’s known as “manufacturing at risk.” This is one of the key components of the U.S. government’s Operation Warp Speed, which is supporting five candidates with billions of dollars of federal funding.
Typically, drugmakers will manufacture only enough doses for clinical trials and make sure the trials are successful before starting mass production. Manufacturing at risk means that developers will instead begin mass production at the same time as clinical trials, which means that if a vaccine fails in human trials, they’ll have to throw away all the product they’ve made, wasting money and materials. But if a product is successful, it means that the minute its trial is completed, there’ll be millions of doses ready to go.
Manufacturing at a massive scale is no simple task. “If we’re going to immunize 300 million people in the U.S. — we don’t even do that with the flu vaccine every year — we need a lot of glass vials, we have to make sure we have printing supplies and paper to make the labels and package inserts, we need stoppers for the vials, and they all need to be made to a very high standard. All this in addition to the raw materials to the vaccine itself,” Schaffner said.
Mass production of H1N1 flu vaccines at Sinovac in 2009. (China Photos/Getty Images)
Pfizer and its partner, German company BioNTech, are planning to have a few million doses ready by the end of the year, and hundreds of millions of doses available in 2021, even though the first of their four vaccine candidates just began its first early-stage human trials in May. The companies are currently preparing manufacturing facilities in St. Louis, Andover, Massachusetts, and Kalamazoo, Michigan, as well as in Europe, according to Dr. Philip Dormitzer, Pfizer’s vice president and chief scientific officer for viral vaccines.
Development Is the First Hurdle, Distribution Is the Next Challenge
On the day that a vaccine is approved, you’ll find me jumping up and down in my apartment, cheering loudly enough to startle my neighbors. And then … I’ll keep on washing my hands, wearing a mask and maintaining social distancing.
Why? Because I know that when a vaccine is first approved by the FDA, there won’t be enough available for everyone who wants it. There will need to be a prioritization, with the vaccine given first to those who need it most: essential workers and the elderly. As a healthy adult who is fortunate to be able to work from home, I’ll be nowhere near the front of the inoculation line.
Distribution is going to be a massive challenge. “There’s a need to have in place a mechanism to ensure people who should get the vaccine get it,” Dr. Walter Orenstein, associate director of Emory University’s vaccine center, said. “We won’t have 8 billion vaccines. So who should get priority, and how should it get delivered? We will need to remove barriers to access, including cost and distance.”
In all likelihood, we’ll have several vaccines that come to market and are in use at the same time, because of the unprecedented need to vaccinate so many people around the globe. No one company has the manufacturing capability to make it all.
There may also be differences in what works best for different countries and populations. Some of the vaccines will require cold shipping or storage. Some will require two doses (Moderna’s is a two-dose vaccine, taken a month apart). All these variations will add to the complexity of delivery and distribution.
“Since I have gray hair, I’m trying to remind my colleagues that in previous distribution and prioritization schemes, flexibility is very important,” Schaffner warned me. He has long worked with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practice, which reviews data on vaccines and gives recommendations on which populations they should be used for. He is now on the COVID-19 vaccine working group. “Adverse events will come up that have to become investigated. There will be bumps in the road. War plans are great, until the war starts. Then you will have to be flexible.”
Safety Monitoring Doesn’t End After Trials Are Over
Vaccinating 15,000 to 20,000 people before approval should give regulators a large pool of data to help them understand what side effects are to be expected and help ensure that the vaccines that go to market don’t have any major safety issues.
But of course, 20,000 people isn’t 20 million or 200 million or 2 billion people.
“When we have tens of thousands of people being evaluated, we can at least pick up safety signals for serious adverse events for the more frequent adverse events,” Orenstein said. “Now for very rare events, if it’s 1 per million, you’re not going to catch that in clinical trials.”
What everyone wants to avoid is a repeat of the mass immunization program following the swine flu outbreak at Fort Dix in 1976. After 45 million doses were distributed, the vaccine was found to be associated with increased cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome, which can cause paralysis and sometimes death. Even worse, there wasn’t actually a pandemic — the program had been launched in fears that the swine flu virus circulating among recruits at Fort Dix would cause a catastrophic outbreak. In the end, there was no transmission across the U.S., and the vaccination program was canceled.
So there will need to be some sort of mechanism to track and monitor for rare safety events even after the vaccine goes on the market. There is already a program to do so, which is the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, run by the CDC.
While it may be impossible for a phase 3 trial to catch a very rare potential side effect, Offit, of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, points out that “it’s not a risk-free choice to not get the vaccine, if the virus is still circulating.”
He added, “If the data were clear that in 20,000 people it appears to be safe and highly efficacious, then you should get the vaccine, because if you’re choosing not to get a vaccine, you’re choosing to risk getting a natural infection, which could be fatal.”
When Will a Coronavirus Vaccine Be Ready? Let Data Determine the Timeline.
The Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed has said it “aims to have substantial quantities of a safe and effective vaccine available for Americans by January 2021.”
Experts I’ve spoken to have ranged in their optimism about that timeline. The NIH’s Mascola said, “If a study is started in the summertime, it’s possible that by the end of the year we’ll have an answer.”
Dr. Luciana Borio, former FDA acting chief scientist and current vice president at In-Q-Tel, a nonprofit strategic investment firm, concurred. “Depending on the results of the clinical trials, I think we might see some vaccine become available before the end of the year, but most people will have to wait for 2021.”
Others were more cautious. Orenstein said he thinks there is a “real possibility” that we will have a vaccine by summer next year, “if everything goes well.”
Vanderbilt’s Schaffner said he prefers to avoid timelines altogether. “We’re making the same mistake we made back in 2009 when we developed the H1N1 vaccine. We made the same statements and then it took more time than people anticipated, and when it finally came out, the media all said, ‘It’s a late vaccine!’
“So we overpromised and underdelivered in 2009, and we haven’t learned that lesson. We are overpromising now, and I wish we wouldn’t do that. I wish we would just say, ‘We’re working as hard as we can and we’ll get it to you whenever it’s finished, but we’ve got to do it right.’ And that would be a much more solid message.”
ProPublica deputy managing editor Charles Ornstein wanted to know why experts were wrong when they said U.S. hospitals would be overwhelmed by COVID-19 patients. Here’s what he learned, including what hospitals can do before the next wave.
Many of the experts I talked to stressed that they wanted to see the phase 3 trials run to completion, however long they took.
Dr. Brit Trogen, a pediatrics resident at NYU Langone, said she worries about political pressures on developers. “I consider vaccines to be one of the greatest public health achievements of the past few centuries, and I know the consequences of undervaccinating, because I treat kids who are seriously ill with preventable illness,” she said. “But I worry that at the first hint of something positive, politicians will swoop in and push for an early release beyond what the science allows.”
Some also noted that vaccine hesitancy has been growing in the United States, thanks to a fervent anti-vaccination movement.
Dr. Peter Hotez, a vaccine scientist, professor and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, said communication that focuses solely on speed “is very tone deaf to the fact that there’s an aggressive anti-vax lobby that says that vaccines are rushed and aren’t adequately tested for safety.”
I brought these concerns to the FDA, as the agency will ultimately be the one to make the call on when there is sufficient data to approve a vaccine.
“We recognize that there are some that are concerned that ‘rapid development’ means that vaccine development steps are being skipped, but the FDA scientists will not cut corners in order to approve a vaccine,” the agency responded. “The FDA will thoroughly evaluate the data submitted in support of a vaccine’s safety and effectiveness, and will approve a vaccine for the prevention of COVID-19 only if the FDA determines that it is safe and effective for its intended use.”
When I pause to really think about it, I am staggered by what an enormous undertaking is underway around the globe — and what lies ahead — to develop and distribute a COVID-19 vaccine to billions of people. There is so much at stake, both to give the world a vaccine as soon as possible, and also to not make any critical mistakes in the process. As I cheer on all of the developers, I hope that every country’s leaders will let science and evidence guide decisions every step of the way.
I asked Zaks, of Moderna, what kind of pressure he felt, and he answered me in two ways. He said: “Every day and every minute counts.” And then he told me this — that normally, when he works on vaccines, he never gets to meet the people that he’s making the vaccine for. But this pandemic has been different. His future daughter-in-law is a second-year internal medicine resident in New York City, where the coronavirus has hit hard. “This one’s personal,” he said. “This one cuts close to home.”
It's hardly the stuff of little green men, but a mysterious balloon-like object seen floating across the skies of northern Japan has captured national attention, even prompting questions to the government.
The unidentified flying object was first spotted on Wednesday morning when residents in northern Sendai city took to social media to post pictures and debate what they were seeing.
"This white thing isn't moving at all. What is it? Can anyone tell me?" wrote one user, with others chiming in using the hashtag "unidentified flying object" in Japanese.
Authorities said they were baffled by the object, which close-up images taken by local residents and media suggest is composed of a balloon-like object attached to crossed sticks with propellers.
"The object looks like a balloon for monitoring weather, but it's not ours," an official at the Sendai bureau of the Japan Meteorological Agency told AFP on Thursday.
Local police reportedly flew a helicopter to confirm the presence of the object, but also drew a blank on its identity -- even after consulting other authorities and organisations.
Kyushu University's aeronautics department publicly denied the device belonged to them, after public speculation.
Shinichiro Higashino, an associate professor at the department told Fuji TV that a close-up image suggested the object was equipped with solar panels.
"It's possible it could conduct scientific observations or monitor something," he said.
The mystery received coverage nationwide, and even prompted a question to the top government spokesman at his daily briefing.
Yoshihide Suga said the government was aware of the mystery object, but batted away suggestions it might be the work of foreign governments or be capable of causing damage.
The mystery may remain unresolved -- the object has now reportedly floated out to the Pacific, where authorities have lost track of it.
An Oxford University college has voted in favor of removing a statue of 19th-century colonialist Cecil Rhodes, less than two weeks after thousands of protestors called for it to be taken down.
Oriel College said it also wanted to set up an independent inquiry into the "key issues" surrounding the statue of the Victorian mining tycoon.
"Both of these decisions were reached after a thoughtful period of debate and reflection and with the full awareness of the impact these decisions are likely to have in Britain and around the world," it said in a statement Wednesday.
The move comes after a large protest by the Rhodes Must Fall campaign on June 9, with demonstrators chanting "Take it down!" and "Decolonise!"
The campaign to remove the statue, which started four years ago, was reignited by the global explosion of Black Lives Matter demonstrations, following the killing in the United States of African-American George Floyd by a white police officer.
Campaigners had also demanded changes to the Rhodes scholarship, which has been awarded to more than 8,000 overseas students to study at Oxford University, since 1902.
Rhodes -- a white supremacist like many builders of the British empire -- gave his name to the territories of Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe and Zambia, and founded the De Beers diamond company.
He studied at Oxford and left money to Oriel College after his death in 1902.
Oriel's statement said it would examine how to improve access and attendance of Black Asian and minority ethnic undergraduate and graduate students.
The independent commission of inquiry would also review "how the college's 21st-century commitment to diversity can sit more easily with its past."
- Debate over colonial past -
Statues commemorating Britain's colonial past have become the focus of anger in recent weeks, most dramatically with the toppling of a memorial to the slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol.
In addition, a London statue of British wartime leader Winston Churchill was controversially boxed up after anti-racism protests.
AFP/File / Adrian DENNIS The campaign to remove the statue was reinvigorated by the global explosion of Black Lives Matter demonstrations after the killing of George Floyd in the US
The Rhodes Must Fall campaign said it was cautiously optimistic after the college's announcement.
"However, we have been down this route before, where Oriel College has committed to taking a certain action, but has not followed through: notably, in 2015, when the college committed to engaging in a six-month-long democratic listening exercise," it said in a statement.
"Therefore, while we remain hopeful, our optimism is cautious," it said, urging the college to commit to removing the statue.
Susan Brown, the leader of Oxford City Council, said she welcomed the news from Oriel College and paid tribute to the campaigners.
"The city council would welcome an early submission of a formal planning application from Oriel to accompany the review process and feed into it," she said in a statement.
"I would like to pay particular tribute to the Rhodes Must Fall campaign who have seen their aims come a big step closer today, and also to Black Lives Matter campaigners who have reinvigorated this debate about our history and how it should be recognised."
Earlier on Wednesday, universities minister Michelle Donelan said she was opposed to removing the statue, calling it "short-sighted".
"Because if we cannot rewrite our history, instead what we should do is remember and learn from it," she told a Higher Education Policy Institute event, the PA Media news agency reported.
Nearly 80 million people have been forced to flee their homes due to violence and persecution, marking a near-doubling of global displacement in a decade, the UN said Thursday.
By the end of 2019, one out of every 97 people in the world was living uprooted and displaced, according to a fresh report by the United Nations refugee agency, highlighting swelling displacement from conflicts in places like Syria and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
"One percent of the world population cannot go back to their homes because there are wars, persecution, human rights violations, and other forms of violence," UN refugee chief Filippo Grandi told AFP in an interview.
The UNHCR agency found that by the end of last year, a record 79.5 million people were living either as refugees, asylum seekers or in so-called internal displacement within their own countries, marking a dramatic increase of nearly nine million from a year earlier.
"This is a trend that has been going on since 2012: the figures are higher than the year before," Grandi said, pointing out that this meant "there has been more conflict, there has been more violence that has pushed people away from their homes."
AFP / Jonathan WALTER The global refugee crisis
It also means, he said, "that there have been insufficient political solutions" to the conflicts and crises that would allow people to return home.
Grandi pointed out that 10 years ago, the number of people living in displacement around the global stood at around 40 million.
"So it has basically doubled. And we don't see this trend diminishing," he said.
- Fears for 2021 -
"With the international community so divided, so unable, so incapable of making peace, unfortunately the situation won't stop growing, and I am very worried that next year it will be even worse than this year."
Thursday's report showed that at the end of 2019, nearly 46 million of those displaced remained inside their own country, while 26 million had fled across borders as refugees.
Another 4.2 million people were asylum seekers, while 3.6 million Venezuelans displaced abroad were tallied separately.
AFP/File / MUNIR UZ ZAMAN A Rohingya refugee carries a chicken as he walks back to his makeshift house in Jamtoli refugee camp in Ukhia
Last year, some 11 million people were newly displaced, many in a handful of conflict-wracked countries and regions, the report showed.
They include Syria, which after more than nine years of civil war counts 13.2 million people displaced either inside or outside the country -- a full sixth of the global total.
In fact, Grandi pointed out, a full 68 percent of the world's refugees come from just five countries: Syria, Venezuela, Afghanistan, South Sudan and Myanmar.
This, he stressed, "means that if the international community found the unity, the political will and the resources to help these countries get out of crisis and rebuild, most likely we would have solved well over half of the world (refugee) problem."
- Coronavirus impact? -
The report did not address the evolving displacement situation since the global coronavirus pandemic struck.
Grandi said it was clear the crisis was complicating the situation for the displaced at a time when everyone is being told that "being on the move is a liability for yourself and for others."
But he pointed out that the poor and middle-income countries that host around 85 percent of the world's refugees had so far been relatively spared the worst health impacts of the pandemic.
However, he warned, the economic impacts were taking a dire toll.
"What we have really seen escalating dramatically is poverty," he said, pointing out that lockdowns in many countries had eliminated any chance most displaced people have of making an income.
Without significant support for displaced people and their host communities, this could spark "further population movements", he warned.
Grandi also reiterated that countries must continue granting asylum to those in need, despite border closures and lockdown measures.
"One activity that doesn't seem to have been discouraged by the pandemic is war, or conflict or violence," he said.
"Unfortunately people continue to flee their homes, because pandemic or not, they are at risk... and they need to continue to be given refuge, protection, asylum."
The Eiffel Tower is preparing to welcome back visitors after the Covid-19 lockdown, but they will need to be fit: Because of lingering concerns about infection, the elevators will initially be off-limits.
Workers at the Parisian landmark, which looms 324 metres (1,062 feet) over the French capital, were on Wednesday making preparations to re-open on June 25, after three months of shutdown. It has been the site’s longest period out of action since World War Two.
Managers said they hoped to get operations fully back to normal later in the summer. In the meantime, a series of safety measures will be in place.
Visitors will not be able to go any higher than the second level of the tower, and until the start of July access will be only via the staircases. The elevators, with their confined space, represent a risk of disease transmission.
There will also be a one-way traffic system in force on the staircases, and all visitors over the age of 11 will be required to wear a face covering.
A stringent cleaning operation is in place and will continue daily from next week.
“There is a new protocol,” said Eiffel Tower hygiene consultant Alain Miralles. “The day cleaning teams will be able to clean all the points of contact every two hours, from the opening of the site to its closing.”
Tourists planning trips to the City of Light are advised to book tickets to visit the Eiffel Tower online once the ticket office reopens Thursday.
Paris tourism officials have expressed muted optimism about the city’s reemergence as a travel destination. Since confinement measures were imposed in March, tourism levels have dropped by around 80 percent compared to the same month in previous years, they say.
“To attract people, the most important thing is that security measures are taken, and that's why we're promoting safe distances,” said Patrick Branco Ruivo, director of the Eiffel Tower's operating company.
He said that with foreign travel yet to recover from restrictions put in place to slow the pandemic, most of the visitors would in the initial stage be domestic.
“For the French public, this is the moment to come to the Eiffel Tower,” he added.
AFP/File / Adrian DENNIS 
AFP / Jonathan WALTER 
AFP/File / MUNIR UZ ZAMAN