As more and more venture capital-backed startups acknowledge having received Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans, many have wondered why their VCs didn't bail them out.

What's happening: It comes down to the deep pocket fallacy. Venture capital funds are not the same as the rich uncle. They have their own investors, or limited partners, to whom they owe a fiduciary duty.

Image: Aïda Amer/Axios

The nation’s top health officials say they’re rushing to make sure Americans can get widespread access to the experimental drug remdesivir after a study showed that it shortens the recovery time for some coronavirus patients.

The push to give the drug the regulatory approval it needs for broader distribution comes a day after the government’s top infectious disease expert, Anthony Fauci, called the drug “an important proof of concept” and compared it to the discovery of the earliest HIV treatments in the 1980s. Investors sent U.S. stocks surging after the news was announced.

Image: Rubber stoppers are placed onto filled vials of the investigational drug remdesivir at a Gilead manufacturing site in the U.S. | Gilead Sciences via AP

A staggering 22 million jobs have been lost in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic so far. To identify which cities are most susceptible to rising unemployment, WalletHub has released a new report. ‘Cities with the Biggest Growth in Unemployment to COVID-19’ identifies where businesses and workers have been worse affected by the pandemic. WalletHub, the personal finance website, compared the unemployment rates of 180 cities across the US. The data compared the unemployment rates in March 2020 to those in March 2019 and January 2020.

The Paycheck Protection Program offers an alluring loan of up to $10M tax free. If you comply, you don’t even have to pay it back. What’s more, there is no forgiveness of debt income when your loan is forgiven, something that is standard fare if you are relieved of paying back debt. However, IRS Notice 2020-32 confirms you can’t claim tax deductions, even if the wages, rent, etc. that are normally fully deductible. The CARES Act provisions for small business include the Paycheck Protection Program, which calls for up to $10 million in forgivable loans to cover employee payroll, and immediate tax credits that are designed to do the same thing.

Startups come out of stealth for a variety of reasons but what’s common to the unveiling is that they always follow a predetermined calendar.

A pandemic, of course, can wreak havoc on the best-laid plans. But for New York-based Tomorrow Health Covid-19 is a crisis that equals a great opportunity. As the greatest public health emergency in modern history took hold in the world, the home health company — built around an e-commerce platform where patients can buy needed medical supplies and equipment — saw a “400 percent increase in inbound” interactions, said it’s CEO Vijay Kedar.

Image: https://medcitynews.com

BALTIMORE (WJZ) – Behind layers of personal protective equipment, Kathleen Bailey is just trying to make it through the coronavirus crisis in the acute care unit at Johns Hopkins.

“It’s just a very different way of life at work now,” said Bailey who told WJZ the hardest part has been not being able to connect with people because they all have to stay distant and cover their entire faces.

Most leaders say they’re customer-centric, but if everything they measure is company-centric, how could that be true? Revenue, growth, and similar Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) measure how customers are performing for the company. But organizations that wish to be customer-centric (and maximize growth) must also measure how the company is performing for its customers.

Image: HBR Staff

Delta Air Lines, American Airlines and United Airlines will make passengers wear face masks, establishing a new standard for the industry as it fights to win back customers during a pandemic.

The larger carriers are following JetBlue Airways, which announced April 27 that travelers would have to cover their nose and mouth throughout trips starting May 4. Delta and United start their mandate the same day, with American’s kicking in on May 11. Small children are exempt.

A student-led initiative is connecting hundreds of Stanford affiliates – mostly students – to projects and ventures that are fighting COVID-19 and its ramifications.

The COVID-19 Response Innovation Lab is a new organization sponsored by the Stanford Biosecurity program in the School of Medicine. The lab is an incubator that provides pro bono services, financial assistance and general support to organizations working on projects that address everything from job searching to social isolation to health data detection.

Image: Stanford students Josh Payne and Juli Romero are two of the co-directors of the COVID-19 Response Innovation Lab. (Image credit: Courtesy Josh Payne)

The Therapeutics Accelerator was launched less than two months ago. Can you share an update on its progress?

We’re very excited about the number of partners who have joined the effort over the past two months. The Therapeutics Accelerator was originally launched with $125 million in support from Wellcome, Mastercard, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. As of today, more than $250 million has been committed, and donors now include the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development, the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, Avast, Alwaleed Philanthropies, EQT, and the artist and philanthropist, Madonna.

Remote meetings are plagued with challenges. It’s often difficult to find a communication rhythm and flow, especially when there’s background noise or poor connection quality. As a result, people may feel detached or removed; they’ll engage less, be less present, and multitask more. Voices become lost, especially from people who tend to be more introverted. These problems only amplify as meeting size increases, where air time becomes scarce and anonymity becomes the default.

As the world races to contain the spread of Covid-19, socially distant modes of working have become the norm. What that looks like, however, varies wildly. Countries have taken vastly different measures to stop the spread of the virus. Some, such as India, mandated complete lockdowns. Others, such as Singapore, have been more measured in turning off face-to-face working and only declared a lockdown recently. And some, such as Brazil, have even dismissed the need to do so. Many countries, such as Germany, Denmark, New Zealand, among others, are planning a cautious re-opening and in the United States, President Trump has given each state the license to set its own easing calendar.

In a typical year you will take two million breaths in your office.

This, however, is not a typical year.

The pandemic spawned by the novel coronavirus has forced a global reckoning with the awesome power of infectious diseases to grind economies to a halt. The forced lockdowns and retreat into home isolation has also given us a heightened awareness of the role our surroundings play in our health and wellbeing.

Image: https://hbr.org - Illustration by Anna Hurley

One of the positive impacts of Covid-19 on the global economy, is that it is accelerating the pace of digital transformation within public and private organisations.

Health authorities, like the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA), that have otherwise been slow to adopt telehealth or virtual care have now approved digital platforms for patient care; government too has released the long-awaited additional spectrum to support data requirements and telecommunication companies.

New Brunswick-based online accelerator Propel is shifting to a continuous intake model, meaning startups can begin the accelerator program whenever they need to, instead of waiting for the next cohort.

For businesses battling the COVID-19 crisis, it may be hard to envision what the world is going to look like in the future. What is clear is that uncertainty will remain constant. These insights from five CEOs on how they manage in uncertain times — which were published before the pandemic — are a reminder that resilience and agility are important drivers of success, whatever the economic and business environment. For more insight, see PwC's Succeeding in uncertainty.

WASHINGTON - The National Institutes of Health is urging all scientists and inventors to compete in a national, “Shark Tank”-like challenge to help create accurate and easy-to-use COVID-19 tests — with the ultimate goal of making millions of much-needed tests available to Americans grappling with the current coronavirus pandemic. 

Image: https://www.fox9.com

Science’s COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Pulitzer Center.

The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) today announced a $1.5 billion initiative to speed breakthroughs in diagnostic tests for the virus that causes COVID-19. The program aims to increase the U.S. capacity for SARS-CoV-2 testing up to 100-fold by late summer, in time for the start of the flu season.

NIH Director Francis Collins said during a conference call with reporters that the improved tests are desperately needed to deal with the global pandemic, at least until an effective vaccine is rolled out. “These technologies will play a pivotal role in getting us back to normal,” Collins said.

Image: Today’s testing for the novel coronavirus requires nasal swabs, but a $1.5 billion National Institutes of Health initiative could develop easier-to-use tests. REUTERS/LINDSEY WASSON

Warren Buffett's favorite stock-market indicator has climbed to a record high, signaling that stocks are overvalued and that another crash could be coming. The so-called Buffett indicator takes the combined market capitalizations of a country's publicly traded stocks and divides it by quarterly gross domestic product. Investors use it to gauge whether the stock market is overvalued or undervalued relative to the size of the economy.

For tens of millions of Europeans, the coronavirus pandemic will be a life-changing event. Even if they are untouched by the disease itself, the upheaval caused by the virus will have a profound effect on many people’s livelihoods and life circumstances. Never before, except in wartime, have whole industries shut down and consumer demand dropped so far so fast.