Futures Flat as FDA Authorizes Emergency Use of Plasma Therapy for Covid-19 Patients

President Donald Trump announced that the Food and Drug Administration has issued an emergency use authorization for convalescent plasma to treat patients infected with Covid-19. “We’re moving unnecessary barriers and delays,” he said, while urging people to sign up to donate plasma. Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar added, “this is a major advance in the treatment of patients.”

The announcement comes the day before the Republican National Convention starts and just days after top health officials intervened to put emergency authorization of the plasma treatment on hold because the data in trials so far was too weak. It’s still unclear how much the treatment, which uses blood plasma drawn from people who have recovered from Covid-19, helps patients, and there is no clear understanding of when it should be given and in what amounts. While the White House praised the announcement as a “breakthrough,” the former head of the FDA, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, said in an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday morning that it was already available to many patients and that an emergency authorization would be an “incremental” change.

• U.S. equity futures rose slightly after President Trump’s announcement on the FDA’s emergency authorization of blood plasma treatment. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were up 57 points, or 0.2%, to 27,916.00, while S&P 500 futures gained 0.1% and Nasdaq Composite futures were up 0.2%, putting the market on track to continue last week’s gains that saw the S&P 500 and Nasdaq pass prepandemic highs to set a fresh records.

• Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said in an interview that will air Sunday night that he would shut down the U.S. to stop the spread of coronavirus if such a move were recommended by scientists. “I would shut it down; I would listen to the scientists,” Biden said in an ABC News interview taped on Friday with his running mate Sen. Kamala Harris. “I will be prepared to do whatever it takes to save lives because we cannot get the country moving until we control the virus,” he said. “That is the fundamental flaw of this administration’s thinking to begin with. To keep the country running and moving and the economy growing, and people employed, you have to fix the virus, you have to deal with the virus.”

• The Democratically-controlled House of Representatives voted late Saturday night to approve $25 billion in additional funding for the U.S. Postal Service and prohibiting cuts at the USPS until January. Its extremely rare for the House to hold a Saturday-night vote in August and the move is a reflection of Democrats’ concerns about that delays in mail service could harm Americans’ ability to vote by mail in the November election, when tens of millions more voters are expected to request absentee ballots because of concerns about the safety of voting in person.

• Rampaging forest fires in California have charred over 1 million acres, forced tens of thousands of people to evacuate their homes and killed at least five people. The blazes have not been contained and some firefighters are working 24-hour shifts in an effort to get them under control. Two of the fires, one in the northern Bay Area and another east of San Jose, are over each 300,000 acres and are two of the state’s three largest wildfires ever recorded. Gov. Gavin Newsom has declared a state of emergency as the state faces more dry thunderstorms, which bring lightening but little rain, threaten to kick off more fires over the next few days.

• TikTok is planning to filing a lawsuit this coming week challenging President Trump’s executive order that would ban the popular video-sharing app unless it is sold to an American company, The Wall Street Journal reports. The company will claim that the order, which it wasn’t consulted on before it was signed, didn’t follow due process. The President signed the executive order requiring TikTok to find a U.S. buyer in 45 days on Aug. 6 and then signed another order on Aug. 14 requiring any transaction to be completed within 90-days. #US##USDollar_Rebound_or_Reversal?##StockMarket#

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