TUESDAY, JULY 28 , 2020. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A1 7
Economy & Business
MANUFACTURING
Capital goods orders
increase in June
New orders for key U.S.-made
capital goods increased by the
most in nearly two years in June
and shipments accelerated, but
the gains were probably
insufficient to avert the deepest
plunge in business investment
and economic activity since the
Great Depression in the second
quarter because of the covid- 19
crisis.
The improvement in
manufacturing reported by the
Commerce Department on
Monday was driven by pent-up
demand following the reopening
of businesses. The budding
recovery is threatened by a
resurgence in cases of the
coronavirus, which has forced
some authorities in the hard-hit
South and West regions to either
close businesses again or halt
reopenings.
“ The sugar rush from
reopenings has now faded and a
resurgence of domestic
coronavirus cases, alongside
very weak demand, supply chain
disruptions, historically low oil
prices and high levels of
uncertainty, will weigh heavily
on business investment,” said
Oren Klachkin, lead U.S.
economist at Oxford Economics
in New York.
Orders for nondefense capital
goods excluding aircraft, a
closely watched proxy for
business spending plans, jumped
3.3 percent last month, the
Commerce Department said.
That was the biggest increase in
these core capital goods orders
since July 2018 and followed a
1.6 percent rise in May.
Core capital goods orders
remained 3.2 percent below their
pre-pandemic level. Orders last
month were boosted by demand
for machinery, fabricated metals
and primary metals. Orders for
electrical equipment, appliances
and components increased
1.2 percent, probably driven by
workers setting up home offices.
Core capital goods orders fell
2.3 percent on a year-on-year
basis in June.
— ReutersTRAVELRV sales rise amid
coronavirus fearsEager to travel — but wary of
hotels, airplanes and restaurants
— more Americans are taking
their homes with them
everywhere they go, reviving arecreational vehicle business
that had been devastated by
shutdowns earlier this year.
Wholesale shipments of RVs
posted their highest monthly
total in June since October 2018,
according to the RV Industry
Association, the industry’s main
trade group, marking a sharp
reversal after months of deeplydepressed business. In data
provided to Reuters, the group
tallied 40,462 units shipped last
month, a 10.8 percent increase
over a year ago.
By contrast, shipments in
April were down more than
82 percent from a year ago and
down nearly 30 percent in May.
“ We didn’t anticipate this turnbeing as strong as it has been,”
said Craig Kirby, the group’s
president. “People don’t want to
fly, they don’t want to stay in a
hotel.”
Kirby said his group expects
more people to start using RVs
as mobile offices as well.
One indication that the
upturn is a response to the
pandemic is the large number of
first-time buyers, Kirby said.
Surveys of RV dealers indicate
that m ost buyers — 5 0 percent to
80 percent, depending on
location — a re first-time
purchasers. A year ago, that
share ranged between 25 percent
and 35 percent. RVs are also
attracting more younger buyers.
— ReutersALSO IN BUSINESS
Delta Air Lines said Monday
that it is teaming up with Reckitt
Benckiser Group, the makers of
Lysol, to research and develop
new disinfecting solutions for
high-traffic areas in airports and
onboard, with a first focus on
airplane lavatories. Since the
coronavirus pandemic
decimated air travel demand
earlier this year, airlines,
including Delta, have raced to
join forces with medical experts
and cleaning product makers.Target is joining Walmart in
closing its stores on
Thanksgiving Day, ending a
decade-long tradition of jump-
starting Black Friday door-
buster sales. The move,
announced Monday, come as
stores are rethinking the Black
Friday in-store bargain shopping
as they try to curb the spread of
the coronavirus, which has seen
a resurgence in a slew of states.
Walmart, the nation’s largest
retailer, announced the move
last week.Under Armour said Monday
that it received a warning from
U.S. regulators that the company
and two of its executives could
be punished over past
accounting practices. The
sporting goods company said in
a government filing Monday that
the warning, known as a “Wells
Notice,” was sent last week from
the U.S. Securities and Exchange
Commission. The two executives
who received the notice were
founder Kevin Plank and Chief
Financial Officer David
Bergman.COMING TODAY
Earnings: McDonald’s, Pfizer,
Ford, Starbucks, Visa.— From news servicesDIGESTLEON NEAL/GETTY IMAGES
Mannequins and empty clothing racks are seen in a shuttered
London store on Monday. Britain saw a 70 percent increase in
clothing and footwear sales when retail stores reopened in June, but
the sector remains one of the hardest-hit with spending more than
30 percent below pre-coronavirus levels, according to Reuters.○
DOW 26,584.
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UP $30.20, 1.6% ○CRUDE OIL $41.
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$1=105.42 Y EN, 0.85 EUROSBY CAROLYN Y. JOHNSONAt 6:45 a.m. Monday, a volun-
teer in Savannah, Ga., received a
shot in the arm and became the
first participant in a massive
human experiment that will test
the effectiveness of an experi-
mental coronavirus vaccine can-
didate. The vaccine is being de-
veloped by the biotechnology
company Moderna in collabora-
tion with the National Institutes
of Health.
The vaccination marks a
much-anticipated milestone: the
official launch of the first in a
series of large U.S. clinical trials
that will each test experimental
vaccines in 30,000 participants,
half receiving the shot and half
receiving a placebo. Pharmaceu-
tical giant Pfizer also announced
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 vaccinolo-
gy,” Anthony S. 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 vac-
cine, from basic science to a large
Phase 3 trial designed to test
safety and effectiveness.
Fauci predicted that research-
ers would probably be able to tell
whether the Moderna vaccine
was effective by November or
December, although he ex-
plained that it was a “distinct
possibility” an answer could
come sooner. Pfizer officials have
said the company expects to be
able to seek regulatory authoriza-
tion or approval by October.
Company and government of-
ficials repeatedly underscored
that although the vaccine devel-
opment effort is moving at re-
cord-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 dos-
es, 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 epi-
sodes 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 pre-
dict how many infections would
need to occur in the study popu-
lation to gauge the vaccine’s ef-
fectiveness. To show the Moder-
na vaccine is 60 percent 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 technolo-
sions about the trial with groups,
as they might under normal cir-
cumstances, or let people wait in
a communal waiting room after
vaccination.
Khetan said the biggest mis-
conception he hears about the
vaccine trial is the worry that the
vaccine could infect people. But
the vaccine doesn’t pose an infec-
tion risk; it’s just a fragment of
genetic material that codes for a
piece of the virus. He said he also
encounters people who mistak-
enly believe 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 wear-
ing a mask and social distanc-
ing.”
At least three other large trials
facilitated by Operation Warp
Speed, the federal effort to speed
vaccine development, are expect-
ed to follow. Those include an
experimental vaccine being de-
veloped jointly by the University
of Oxford and AstraZeneca, one
from Johnson & Johnson, and
another candidate from the bio-
technology company Novavax.
Interest in the trials is surging
during the pandemic, but re-
searchers said it would be essen-
tial 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 Di-
rector Francis Collins said.
Moderna is planning to pro-
duce 500 million vaccine doses a
year, with the possibility of mak-
ing 1 billion doses annually in- Over the weekend, the U.S.
government committed
$472 million to support the large
trial, doubling the federal invest-
ment in Moderna’s vaccine can-
didate.
President Trump visited Fuji -
film Diosynth Biotechnologies in
North Carolina on Monday, a
contract development and manu-
facturing organization working
to ramp up production of the
vaccine candidate being devel-
oped by Novavax. The Depart-
ment of Health and Human Ser-
vices also announced it was
ramping up the nation’s ability to
manufacture a vaccine by reserv-
ing capacity at Texas A&M Uni-
versity System’s Center for Inno-
vation in Advanced Development
and Manufacturing through De-
cember 2021.
Several other vaccine develop-
ers have begun large trials de-
signed to test effectiveness, in-
cluding two candidates from Chi-
nese 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 U.S.
trials.
[email protected]
Last phase of testing begins for 2 virus vaccine candidates
First participants receive doses in a 30,000-person trial spearheaded by Moderna, marking a major milestone in the fight against the pandemic
gy 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 coro-
navirus. After a person is vacci-
nated, their cells will follow the
genetic instructions to build the
proteins, and their immune sys-
tems, 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 Stéphane Bancel
said. “It’s a historic day for sci-
ence, as well. This is the first
Phase 3 of a messenger RNA
medicine in the world.”
Mark Mulligan, director of theNYU Langone Vaccine Center,
said eight people will be vaccinat-
ed in the late-stage Pfizer trial on
Tuesday, after promising results
in early-stage human tests.
“Now, it becomes important to
continue to assess them in largernumbers 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 insur-
ance 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-business ownerswho are among his clients shut
down. His oldest daughter was
furloughed from her hospitality
job during the pandemic, and his
younger daughter was on the
USS Theodore Roosevelt, the
Navy aircraft carrier that was
home to a major coronavirus
outbreak in March.“Thank goodness, my daugh-
ter’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 in
Rockville is one of 87 sites re-
cruiting participants throughout
the country for the Moderna trial
— and was scheduled to vacci-
nate the first dozen people on
Monday.
Shishir Khetan, a physician
leading the effort to recruit 300
to 400 people there, said the first
day of any trial is typically slower
than later days, but conducting a
trial in a global pandemic is even
more complicated. Researchers
cannot conduct information ses-PHOTOS BY AMANDA ANDRADE-RHOADES FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
TOP: Meridian Clinical Research in Rockville, Md., is one of 87 sites recruiting participants throughout the country for the Moderna trial.
ABOVE: Shishir Khetan, left, i s leading the effort there to recruit 300 to 400 people. A site director, right, processes samples.“There is no compromise...
with regard to safety.”
Anthony S. Fauci, director of infection diseases agency