US retail sales rise less than expected in July

Retail sales rose 1.2 percent last month after advancing 8.4 percent in June, the Commerce Department said on Friday.

Reuters

August 14, 2020 / 18:42 IST

US retail sales in July increased less than expected and could slow further in the months because of spiralling new COVID-19 infections and a reduction in unemployment benefit checks.

Retail sales rose 1.2 percent last month after advancing 8.4 percent in June, the Commerce Department said on Friday. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast retail sales rising 1.9 percent in July. The strong retail sales are now mostly history.

Coronavirus infections continue to spread across the United States, forcing authorities in some of the hot-spots to either shut down businesses again or pause reopenings. The respiratory illness has left consumers wary of visiting places like restaurants and shopping malls, cutting into spending.

Tens of millions of unemployed people lost a $600 weekly jobless benefits supplement at the end of July, which had accounted for 20 percent of personal income, helping with the buying of food and paying of bills. President Donald Trump on Saturday signed a bunch of executive orders, including extending the supplement, though he reduced the weekly payout to $400.

But states, who are required to cover $100 of the benefits under the order, are themselves under immense financial pressure caused by the pandemic. The remaining $300 will be funded from a limited emergency disaster relief program, which economists estimated could be depleted as early as September.

COVID-19 Vaccine

Frequently Asked Questions

How does a vaccine work?

A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine.

How many types of vaccines are there?

There are broadly four types of vaccine — one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine.

What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind?

Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time.

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