Archive for ‘Milan’

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09/04/2020

Automakers push to reopen plants with testing and lots of masks

MILAN/DETROIT (Reuters) – Global automakers reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic are accelerating efforts to restart factories from Wuhan to Maranello to Michigan, using safety protocols developed for China and U.S. ventilator production operations launched in recent weeks.

Certain safety measures differ from manufacturer to manufacturer. Italian sports car maker Ferrari NV (RACE.MI) said on Wednesday it would offer voluntary blood tests to employees who wanted to know if they had been exposed to the virus.

General Motors Co’s (GM.N) head of workplace safety, Jim Glynn, told Reuters on Wednesday GM is not persuaded blood tests are useful. But Glynn said GM has studied and adapted measures taken by Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) to protect warehouse workers, such as temperature screening to catch employees with fevers before they enter the workplace.

Auto manufacturers and suppliers are converging on a consensus that temperature screening, daily health questionnaires, assembly lines redesigned to keep workers 3 to 6 feet (0.9 m to 1.8 m) apart, and lots and lots of masks and gloves can enable large-scale factories to operate safely.

“We know the protocols to keep people safe,” Gerald Johnson, GM’s executive vice president for global manufacturing, told Reuters in an interview. GM has relaunched vehicle plants in China and kept factories running in South Korea, he said.

GM has not said when it will reopen assembly plants in the United States. Other automakers are putting dates out in public, even though health officials and federal and state policymakers are wary of lifting lockdowns too soon.

“You see vehicle manufacturers … putting a stake in the ground,” said Brian Collie, head of Boston Consulting Group’s automotive practice. By setting a public date to restart production, they signal suppliers to get ready to ramp up, he said.

The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown the global auto industry into the worst tailspin since the 2008-2009 financial crisis. Consumer demand for vehicles has collapsed as governments have enforced lockdowns in China, and then in Europe and the United States. For the Detroit automakers and their suppliers, the shutdown of profitable truck and sport utility vehicle plants in North America has choked off cash flow.

In Europe, major automakers have said they hope to begin building vehicles again in mid-to-late April. In the United States, several big automakers, including Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV (FCHA.MI) (FCAU.N), Honda Motor Co Ltd (7267.T) and Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T), are aiming to restart production during the first week of May.

Fiat Chrysler (FCA) and unions are discussing plans for beefed-up health measures at Italian plants to pave the way for production to restart as soon as the government eases a national lockdown due to expire on April 13, unions said on Wednesday.

Among the proposals from Fiat Chrysler’s Italian unions: move meals to the end of shifts, allowing employees to chose to avoid canteens, eat their food elsewhere and leave half an hour earlier without losing pay.

FCA did not comment on specific measures.

In the United States, some non-union automakers have also said they hope to restart vehicle plants as soon as next week.

Tire maker Bridgestone said on Wednesday it plans to restart U.S. production on April 13.

But the Trump administration has said people should continue to practice social distancing until April 30.

VENTILATOR ASSEMBLY

For the Detroit automakers, the United Auto Workers union will play a key role in deciding when and how plants will restart.

UAW President Rory Gamble said in a statement on Wednesday the union is in “deep discussions with all three companies to plan ahead over the implementation of CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] safety standards and using all available technologies to protect all UAW members, their families and the public.”

Among the union’s concerns is that members who report being ill can take time away from work without penalty, Gamble added.

The UAW has supported GM and Ford Motor Co’s (F.N) efforts to launch production of ventilators in U.S. plants – operations that have allowed the companies and the union to road-test safety measures at small scale.

At GM’s ventilator assembly plant in Kokomo, Indiana, workers and managers have been fine-tuning details such as when employees are handed masks, and when they step in front of a temperature screening device.

At first, ventilator assemblers in training at Kokomo walked down a hall before getting a mask, said Debby Hollis, one of the UAW-represented workers. Last week, she said, “They met us at the door and had us get in the masks there.”

Source: Reuters

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29/03/2020

Italian professor repeats warning coronavirus may have spread outside China last year

  • Giuseppe Remuzzi’s comments were seized on by Chinese state media amid the acrimonious row with the US, but he says the key question is how far Covid-19 had spread before it was identified
  • Academic says ‘strange pneumonias’ in Italy last November suggest it may have reached Europe before anyone knew what the disease was
Giuseppe Remuzzi told NPR there had been ‘strange pneumonias’ in Italy in November and December. Photo: Handout
Giuseppe Remuzzi told NPR there had been ‘strange pneumonias’ in Italy in November and December. Photo: Handout
The coronavirus that causes Covid-19 may have spread beyond China before the health authorities had even discovered the disease, according to the Italian professor who recently said there had been “very strange pneumonias” in Europe as early as November last year.
The comments by Giuseppe Remuzzi, director of the Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research in Milan, during an interview with US National Public Radio last week were quickly seized upon in the increasingly acrimonious blame game between Washington and Beijing
.
Remuzzi’s comments attracted much attention in China, where the authorities have been working hard to steer the international narrative about the pandemic, and stop people describing it as the “China virus” or “Wuhan virus” after the city where the disease was first identified.
In an interview with the Chinese science and technology news outlet DeepTech, which was published on Tuesday, Remuzzi said the key point in his NPR interview was not where the virus came from, but how far it had spread before it was discovered.
Coronavirus: Italy has a brief glimpse of hope as new cases drop to a five-day low
24 Mar 2020

He said a major question was how long the disease, which has so far infected more than 378,000 and killed over 16,500 people worldwide, had been spreading in China before health authorities realised its severity.

Taking into account the long incubation period, Remuzzi said he would not be surprised if some asymptomatic carriers had travelled around China or even abroad before December.

The professor also said that while it was possible it originated outside Wuhan, there had so far been no proof to support the theory.

As the outbreak gathered pace in the US, where it has now killed more than 500 people, Washington has escalated its rhetoric. President Donald Trump had repeatedly referred to it publicly as the “Chinese virus” until he changed tone on Monday and declined to use the phrase.

China, meanwhile, has described the rhetoric adopted by “certain US politicians and senior officials” as an attempt to defame and stigmatise China over the pandemic.

A number of Chinese state media outlets, including party mouthpiece People’s Daily and its tabloid affiliate Global Times, seized on Remuzzi’s comments about “strange pneumonias” to counter the “Chinese virus rhetoric”.

Coronavirus: why are so many more people dying in Italy than Germany?

23 Mar 2020

In the NPR interview, Remuzzi tried to explain why Italy had been caught off guard when the outbreak started gathering pace in February.

He discussed the difficulty of combating a disease that people did not know existed, and said the unusual cases in November and December could mean that virus was already circulating in Lombardy, the country’s worst-hit region, before people were aware of what was unfolding in Wuhan.

Remuzzi also shared details of the early suspected cases in Lombardy with DeepTech and Chinese state-run international network CGTN.

Remuzzi said he had learned about the cases from a few general practitioners and he has not yet been able to verify the information.

But he said there are some other suspicious cases he “knows for sure”, including two pneumonia cases in Scanzorosciate in northern Italy in December, where the patients developed high fever, a cough and had difficulty in breathing.

He said there had also been 10 patients who developed bilateral interstitial pneumonia in two other nearby towns, Fara Gera D’Adda and Crema, who had similar symptoms.

Coronavirus: confusion as Chinese face masks bound for Italy end up in Czech Republic

23 Mar 2020

Remuzzi said local doctors considered these cases to be “unusual” but ruled out the possibility of seasonal influenza, as all these patients had been vaccinated.

“The reason we don’t know if it was Covid-19 is because at that time this could not be tested; the patients didn’t have X-rays,” he told CGTN.

They recovered within 15 days, with some receiving two or three courses of antibiotics.

Remuzzi added there had also been a patient diagnosed with bilateral interstitial pneumonia in Alzano Lombardo Hospital in Lombardy around the time.

Source: SCMP

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23/03/2020

Coronavirus: ‘strange pneumonia’ seen in Lombardy in November, leading Italian doctor says

  • Virus was circulating ‘before we were aware of the outbreak in China’, says Giuseppe Remuzzi, director of the Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research
  • Italy has now reported more than 4,800 deaths from Covid-19, more than any other country in the world
Italian doctors became aware of a “strange pneumonia” circulating in the Lombardy region in November. Photo: AFP
Italian doctors became aware of a “strange pneumonia” circulating in the Lombardy region in November. Photo: AFP
A “strange pneumonia” was circulating in northern Italy as long ago as November, weeks before doctors were made aware of the novel coronavirus outbreak in China, one of the European country’s leading medical experts said this week.
“They [general practitioners] remember having seen very strange pneumonia, very severe, particularly in old people in December and even November,” Giuseppe Remuzzi, the director of the Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research in Milan, said in an interview with the National Public Radio of the United States.
“This means that the virus was circulating, at least in [the northern region of] Lombardy and before we were aware of this outbreak occurring in China.”
Remuzzi’s comments came as scientists continue to search for the origin of the coronavirus. Chinese respiratory disease expert Zhong Nanshan said earlier that although China was the first to report the pathogen, it was not yet certain where it actually came from.

Remuzzi said it was only recently that he had heard from Italian doctors about the disease, which meant it had existed and been spreading without people’s knowledge.

Despite reporting its first locally transmitted coronavirus infections – in Lombardy – only on February 21 – it had had only imported cases before then – Italy has since had more than 53,000 confirmed cases and 4,825 deaths from Covid-19, the disease caused by the pathogen. By comparison, China has had just over 81,000 cases and 3,261 fatalities.

Italy suspended all flights to China on January 31, the first nation to do so.

Coronavirus vaccine trial volunteers recount their experiences

22 Mar 2020
In the central China city of Wuhan, where the epidemic was first identified, doctors began noticing a “pneumonia with an unknown cause” in December. The first known infection in the city can be traced back to December 1.
A report by the South China Morning Post said that the first Chinese case might have been as early as mid-November, but that has not been confirmed by Beijing.

The current thinking among the scientific community is that the first infection in Lombardy was the result of an Italian coming into contact with a Chinese person in late January. However, if it can be shown that the novel coronavirus – officially known as SARS-CoV-2 – was in circulation in Italy in November, then that theory would be turned on its head.

The debate over the possible origin of the pathogen has also been at the heart of a war of words between Beijing and Washington, with US President Donald Trump repeatedly referring to it as the “Chinese virus” and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo calling it the “Wuhan virus”, infuriating Beijing in the process.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian took to Twitter to contest the claims.

“By calling it ‘China virus’ and thus suggesting its origin without any supporting facts or evidence, some media clearly want China to take the blame, and their ulterior motives are laid bare,” he said.

He then went on to suggest that the coronavirus outbreak might have started in the United States and been carried to Wuhan by the US Army.

Source: SCMP

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11/03/2020

Cathay Pacific expects ‘substantial loss’ this year

A Cathay Pacific staff member wearing a facemask next to a row of self-check in terminals in Hong Kong.Image copyright GETTY IMAGES

Cathay Pacific has said it expects a “substantial” loss in the first half of this year as the impact of the coronavirus outbreak takes it toll.

The Hong Kong carrier also saw a 28% drop in 2019 profits as it struggled during the city’s political protests.

The airline is now battling with the fallout of the virus as passenger numbers plummet.

Chairman Patrick Healy said the first half of 2020 was expected to be “extremely challenging financially”.

The development comes with thousands of flights already cancelled worldwide, as airlines struggle to cope with a slump in demand caused by the coronavirus outbreak.

British Airways, Ryanair and EasyJet have all cancelled flights to and from Italy until April, while Norwegian Air and American Airlines have also announced significant cuts to services.

Calling 2019 a “turbulent year”, Mr Healy said he expected “our passenger business to be under severe pressure this year and that our cargo business will continue to face headwinds”.

While Cathay Pacific has reduced flights to help save costs, “we expect to incur a substantial loss for the first half of 2020,” he added.

The airline reported a net profit of HK$1.69bn (£170m) for last year, down from a HK$2.35bn profit in 2018.

In other developments:

  • Dutch airline KLM is cancelling all its flights to and from Milan, Venice and Naples until 3 April
  • Austrian rail operator OBB has announced it is suspending all trains in and out of Italy – which has more than 10,000 confirmed cases of the virus – until further notice
  • Seat, the Spanish unit of car-maker Volkswagen, is considering temporary lay-offs at its Barcelona plant
  • Ride-hailing app Uber says it plans to offer an as-yet unspecified amount of financial assistance to its drivers who have to self-isolate for up to 14 days

Embattled sector

The airline industry faces a loss of revenue of up to $113bn this year, according to aviation trade body IATA, as thousands of planes are grounded amid travel restrictions across the globe.

After UK-based airline Flybe went into administration last week, analysts are warning of more failures to come for the embattled airline industry.

Earlier this week, Korean Air warned the coronavirus outbreak could threaten its survival, in a memo sent to employees.

The global spread of the coronavirus has hit both holidaymakers and business travellers. The Global Business Travel Association said on Wednesday that 43% of its member companies have cancelled business trips booked for this month.

Source: The BBC

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