Coronavirus: The U.S. reported a record of more than 500,000 new coronavirus cases over the past week.
Wall Street had its worst day since June as cases surge across the globe.
Eli Lilly reached a $375 million deal with the U.S. government to provide Americans with its experimental antibody treatment for Covid-19.
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France and Germany re-enter lockdown
Europe has tried for weeks to slow the spread of the virus with targeted restrictions instead of the unpopular nationwide lockdowns that were imposed in the spring. But as a furious second wave pushes hospitalizations, deaths and cases to levels not seen since the beginning of the pandemic, countries have begun to change course.
France today announced a nationwide lockdown until Dec. 1, with just schools and essential businesses allowed to stay open. Germany moved very close to one, closing restaurants, gyms and museums for one month, but exempting schools and shops — “lockdown lite,” as the Germans called it.
Elsewhere on the continent, people were already seeing their lives heavily restricted. Spain went into a state of emergency last week, while the Italian government moved on Sunday to shut restaurants by 6 p.m. Belgium, which currently has the highest infection rate in the region, recently shuttered restaurants, museums and gyms.
The moves are roiling business leaders, who say the lockdowns will undo any hope for an economic recovery. European stocks sank to their lowest levels in months.
But as hospitals fill at an alarming rate, doctors and medical experts say the closures are necessary. In Germany, the number of patients in hospitals has doubled in the past 10 days, and in France, the health care system was two weeks away from reaching the same number of hospitalizations as the peak of the first wave.
Frédéric Valletoux, president of the French Hospital Federation, said that hospitals were in a much more precarious situation than in the spring: staff members were exhausted from the first wave, there was less leeway to defer treatments or surgeries to make room for Covid-19 patients, and other epidemics like the flu would soon be arriving with the start of winter.
The New York Times
Me: And the Chinese economy is booming with no traces of Coronavirus anymore. Better watch out for whatever the Chinese are doing behind your backs, America