Latest COVID-19 Headlines
All the headlines from our COVID-19 Topic Page, ordered by recency.
China’s Swine Virus Epidemic Should Be a Global Concern: Opinion
Apr 25 2019 // It’s a familiar and ominous story. A deadly pathogen with no known cure begins spreading in China. Rather than acknowledge the problem, officials throughout the Chinese government shut down media coverage, while...
New Marsh Coverage Protects Businesses From Pandemic Losses
May 22 2018 // Marsh has launched a new insurance product to provide financial protection to US-based businesses and their global operations affected by an infectious disease outbreak. PathogenRX, developed by Marsh in collaboration with...
‘Globesity’ Reaches Pandemic Levels: Aetna International Report
Mar 13 2017 // Urgent action is required to limit the global fallout from rising obesity levels, according to a report published by health insurance provider Aetna International. Aetna International said it analyzed data from the World...
AIR Worldwide Expands Global Pandemic Model to Include 6 Additional Diseases
Jul 26 2016 // Boston-based catastrophe risk modeling firm AIR Worldwide (AIR) announced it has expanded its Global Pandemic Model to include outbreaks of six additional diseases. The model now explicitly accounts for nine pathogens,...
Disaster Response: Pandemic Insurance to the Rescue
Jul 11 2016 // The shoe may eventually be placed on the other foot for the United States. This nation has a long-standing tradition of innovating products and ideas – particularly insurance products – and then exporting them to other...
Study: Economic Costs of Pandemic in U.S. Could Be $34-45 Billion
Jun 29 2016 // A pandemic influenza outbreak in the United States could have economic costs nearly double the total amounts experts have previously calculated, depending on how the public, government and businesses respond to an...
AXIS Healthcare Launches Pandemic Protection for Hospitals
Jan 26 2016 // AXIS Healthcare—the division of AXIS Insurance that provides professional liability insurance and associated standard casualty coverages for physician groups, hospitals, allied healthcare facilities and individual...
Nations Must Wake Up to Catastrophic Potential of Pandemic Risk: Report
Jan 14 2016 // In October of 2000, an Ebola outbreak was detected in Gulu, Uganda. The virus spread across the country, infecting 425 people and killing over half of them. It was a wakeup call for the African nation, but apparently not...
Florida Hospital Says Workers Test Negative for Middle East Virus
May 14 2014 // Two Florida hospital workers suspected of exposure to a potentially lethal Arabian virus have tested negative for the disease, a hospital spokesman said. A Saudi Arabian patient who was confirmed to be infected with Middle...
MERS Virus Suspected in Illnesses of 2 Florida Hospital Workers
May 13 2014 // Two workers at the Florida hospital where federal officials reported a case of a potentially lethal Arabian virus have fallen ill after coming into contact with the patient. One of the workers has been hospitalized and...
AIR Model Estimates Pandemic Flu Losses
Jun 27 2013 // Catastrophe risk modeling firm AIR Worldwide (AIR) has released a Pandemic Flu Model, which it says captures the excess morbidity, mortality, and insurance losses caused by pandemic influenza. AIR said the model includes...
Analysis: Deadly New Bird Flu Virus Vindicates Controversial Research
Apr 8 2013 // Scientists in the Dutch city of Rotterdam know precisely what it takes for a bird flu virus to mutate into a potential human pandemic strain, because they’ve created just such mutant viruses in the laboratory. So, as...
Scientists in Race to Gauge Pandemic Risk of New Bird Flu
Apr 3 2013 // Genetic sequence data on a deadly strain of bird flu previously unknown in people show the virus has already acquired some mutations that might make it more likely to cause a human pandemic, scientists say. But there is no...
Has Flu Pandemic Peaked? ‘Not Quite,’ Say Health Experts
Feb 24 2010 // Has the swine flu pandemic peaked globally? Not quite, World Health Organization advisers decided on Tuesday. WHO is taking a big risk in making such an announcement at all, and the wording of WHO Director-General Dr....
Aon Offers Insurance for Pandemic Building Closures
Oct 28 2009 // Aon’s London office has announced that companies can now insure themselves for costs incurred if their building or the vicinity is officially closed due to a pandemic. Aon launched the coverage as cases of the H1N1...
British Insurers State Position on Nat’l. Pandemic Flu Service and Travel
Jul 24 2009 // The Association of British Insurers (ABI) has issued a bulletin to coincide with the start up of the UK’s National Pandemic Flu Service. The bulletin notes that the UK’s “travel insurance industry has...
Reinsurers See ‘No Major Losses’ from Flu Pandemic
Jun 12 2009 // Big European reinsurers said on Friday that they still expected no major losses from an influenza outbreak that the World Health Organization (WHO) this week declared the first flu pandemic of the 21st Century. “The...
WHO Official Says World Edging Towards Flu Pandemic
Jun 3 2009 // The spread of H1N1 flu in Australia, Britain, Chile, Japan and Spain has nudged the world closer to a pandemic, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday. The newly-discovered strain had caused more infections than...
New H1N1 Flu Virus Not Quite a Pandemic-Yet, Says WHO
May 12 2009 // The new H1N1 virus shows no signs of sustained person-to-person spread outside of North America and so has not yet tipped over into a pandemic, a top World Health Organization official said Monday. Dr. Keiji Fukuda, acting...
Buffett Criticizes Bank Stress Tests; Eyes Insurance for Flu Pandemic
May 4 2009 // Warren Buffett criticized the government’s stress tests of 19 large U.S. banks, and said he would buy more shares of three big banks in the portfolio of his Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Buffett also told reporters on...
