Washington:
The number of deaths in the US from the deadly coronavirus rose to six on Monday while the total number of confirmed cases in the country crossed 90, Vice President Mike Pence has said, as the novel virus continues to spread around the world despite travel restrictions.
All the six deaths in the US are from the Washington state with 43 domestic cases and 48 cases of the individuals who returned to the US, officials said on Monday.
The coronavirus outbreak that started in China's Wuhan city in December has killed 2,943 people in the country with total confirmed cases crossing 80,000 as it continues to spread to new countries around the world.
US President Donald Trump along with Pence reviewed the situation at the White House on Monday with top health officials and those leaders from the pharma corporate sector who are working on either vaccine or therapeutics for the COVID-19.
"Despite today's sad news, let's be clear, the risk to the American people of the coronavirus remains low according to all of the experts that we are working with across the government," Pence told reporters at the White House.
"As the president has said, we are ready for anything, but this is an all hands on deck effort," he said.
"The coronavirus shows the importance of bringing manufacturing back to America so that we are at home the medicines and equipment and everything else that we need to protect the public's health and I have been talking about this for a long time," Trump said.
At a political rally in North Carolina later in the day, the president pointed to the meeting at the White House with pharmaceutical executives.
"They're really working hard and they're working smart. They're going to have vaccines, I think, relatively soon, he said.
"Washington Democrats are trying to politicise the coronavirus, denigrating the noble work of our public health professionals," he said.
Trump said his administration is encouraging the quick development of coronavirus therapies: We will bring these therapies to market as rapidly as possible," he added.
Pence told reporters at the White House that many companies are already beginning to work on, but just as importantly, the development of therapeutics and it is remarkable to think that there may well be a vaccine going to clinical trials within the next six weeks.
"The nature of trials, as the experts have explained to us, is that the vaccine might yet not be available till late this year or early next, but the therapeutics giving relief to people that contract the coronavirus could literally be available by the summer or early fall," he said.
The US pharmaceutical companies, have formed a consortium to work together to share information in the development of therapeutics and vaccines.
Meanwhile, the ongoing coronavirus outbreak is not expected to have a meaningful adverse impact on the financial results of U.S. property/casualty (P/C) companies, nor their ratings, according to Fitch.
The financial services ratings agency has said that a combination of the nature of insured commercial exposures and restrictive language embedded in policies, will most likely mitigate the level of claims that P/C firms experience from the outbreak.
According to Fitch, for U.S. P/C companies, the most notable and immediate financial impact will be fluctuations in capital levels for firms with large common stock holding.
The reality of the matter is that P/C solutions offer protection against damage to physical objects and also liability-related risks, but have limited direct exposure to claims related to a pandemic. As noted by Fitch, areas more likely to have a direct exposure include travel insurance and cancellation policies, although wording here can exclude pandemic events.
“The risk of pandemic-related claims could derive within business interruption insurance or contingent business interruption policies,” notes Fitch, but again adds that policy wording might limit the exposure here also.
One area of the insurance arena that may have losses from the event, although as with other lines of business it is still too early to tell, is event cancellation, says Fitch.