Post on 25-Sep-2020
San Francisco Chronicle and SFChronicle.com | Sunday, July 26, 2020 | Section D xxxxx�
BusinessReport
If you missed it ...In a week when Tesla stunned
the world by posting a fourthconsecutive profitable quarter,this also happened:
1 The Commerce Departmentreported that sales of newhomes rose 13.8% in June, thesecond straight increase aftertwo months when sales plungedduring shutdowns because ofthe coronavirus. The June gainpushed sales of new homes to aseasonally adjusted annual rateof 776,000, but that is stillroughly 20% below pre-pan-demic levels. A separate reportshowed that sales of previouslyowned homes surged 20.7% inJune to a seasonally adjustedannual rate of 4.72 million.
1 Delta Air Lines will provide at-home coronavirus tests for someemployees and Southwest Airlines will tighten its rule on facemasks by ending exceptions for medical reasons. Those movescome as airlines try to reassure passengers and their employeesabout safety during a pandemic that has made many peopleafraid to fly. Delta will expand coronavirus testing at its hub air-ports and provide at-home tests for its employees in Florida and
Texas. Southwest will require all passengers older than 2 to wearmasks.
1 McDonald’s will be requiring customers to wear face coveringswhen entering its U.S. restaurants. The rule will go into effectSaturday. It joins companies issuing mask mandates recently,including Starbucks, Walmart, Target, Best Buy and Kohl’s.
1 The New York Times agreed to buy Serial Productions, thecompany behind the hit podcast “Serial,” the paper’s latest moveto broaden its digital journalism. The arrangement will allowSerial Productions to increase the number of shows it makes, saidJulie Snyder, executive editor of Serial Productions. The Timeswill promote the shows on its website, in its newsletters andthrough its other channels. The Times paid about $25 million forthe company, according to a person with knowledge of the deal.
DAILY BRIEFING
Chris O’Meara / Associated Press
Daily Briefing is compiled from San FranciscoChronicle staff and news services. For more itemsand links, subscribe to the Tech Chronicle newsletterat www.sfchronicle.com/newsletters/techchronicle.Twitter: @techchronicle
press the fight with a divisionof the Department of Industrial Relations, which overseessuch disputes.
The pandemic had otherplans. Garcia’s original Apriltrial date was postponed because of the coronavirus. It isone of hundreds of contestedcases the state agency has beenunable to handle remotely.
killing them both.The 2018 crash left Garcia
griefstricken but also withtwo children, including a smallson whose father was herfiance, that she now had toprovide for. After the insurance carrier denied Garcia’sworkers’ compensation claimseeking death benefits, herlawyer, Mark Vickness, spenttwo years getting a trial date to
It was two years ago thismonth when Sintia Garciafound out her fiance and sonhad died.
The two were travelingdown Interstate 5 from thefamily’s East Bay home toSanta Monica for a construction job when their vehiclecollided with another car,
Pandemic puts workers’ comp in limbo
Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle
Sintia Garcia(left),alongsidedaughterDallanaGarcia, holdspictures ofher son andfiance, whowere killedin a car crashon their wayto a construction job.
With trials delayed, injured claimants struggle to get by
By Chase DiFeliciantonio
Compensation continues on D3
Want to find the coronavirus’ infamous spike proteinthat allows it to latch ontohuman cells?
Look no further thanAtum, a 17yearold Newarkfirm specialized in makingsynthetic genes and proteins.
Like other firms in thebiotechnologyheavy BayArea, Atum has rapidly refocused on the pandemic. It’snow playing a vital role supplying cellular pieces to researchers who use them tobuild coronavirus antibodytests, drugs and vaccine candidates.
When the first publiclyreported COVID19 casesarose in the United Statesseveral months ago, Atumcofounder and Chief Commercial Officer Claes Gus
tafsson didn’t think his company would play such anactive role. In fact, the management team started thinking about winding downAtum’s operations, given thatmost of the company’s clientswere working in nonvirusareas and some appeared tobe shutting down.
“The first reaction was,‘Everything’s going to cometo a screeching halt,’ ” Gustafsson said.
Then new customers camealong and old customerspivoted.
“To our surprise, good andbad, I think we doubled,” hesaid. The next few weeks(were), probably, the biggestweeks we’ve had when itcomes to both orders comingin and production. It went acompletely different way.”
Photos by Gabrielle Lurie / The Chronicle
Biotech firm reboundsto combat coronavirus
Gabrielle Lurie / The Chronicle
Top: Brian Huang, a production associate at biotechnologycompany Atum in Newark, works to make spikeshapedprotein and antibodies that can neutralize the coronavirus.Above: Atum cofounder Claes Gustafsson in the lab wherethe firm specializes in making synthetic genes and proteins. Atum continues on D2
By J.D. Morris
Questions about unemployment inCalifornia keep rollingin, so in this column I’ll answerones onhow to get extendedbenefitswhenyour first 26weeks runout,when the statewill require people onunemployment to begin looking forwork andwhat thedifferencesbetweenCOBRAandCalCOBRAhealth care continuationare.
Q: Igot laidoff at theendofJanuaryandhavebeenon
KATHLEENPENDERNet Worth
Extendingjobless,health carecoverage
Get the latestPandemic relief, benefits
and more: sfchronicle.com/networth
Pender continues on D2
Everyone in California issupposed to wear a maskthese days — in stores, onsidewalks, when socializingwith others.
But many don’t.And that’s a problem. Lack
of masks and social distancingare key reasons, experts say,that California is experiencinga surge in coronavirus cases.Though data are sparse, about64% of Californians reportedusing masks consistently in anAxios/Ipsos poll conductedJune 1922, a week or two
Amping upmessagingonmasks
Masks continues on D4
By Anna Kramer
D2 | Sunday, July 26, 2020 | SFChronicle.com XXXXX
BUSINESS
DILBERT By Scott Adams
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The company, which worksout of a roughly 4,500squarefoot office near the Dumbarton Bridge, essentially buys“buckets” of tiny biologicalbuilding blocks that it canassemble in various ways,according to Gustafsson.
Atum’s ability to make components such as the spikeshaped protein and antibodiesthat neutralize the virus iscrucial. It helps other researchers begin quickly working with the pieces they needto make tests or therapeutics— instead of having to rely ona live, highly infectious virus.
“It really changes the concept,” Gustafsson said. “If yougo back prior to syntheticgenes ... the process to gofrom research into a productwas much, much longer,much more expensive and,frankly, a lot more dangerous.”
Atum has more than 100 orso employees and thousandsof worldwide customers, afew hundred of which areworking on the coronavirus,Gustafsson estimated. Hecouldn’t discuss them atlength, but the Stanford Dailystudent newspaper recentlyreported that Atum helpedresearchers at the universitymake an internal test to identify whether someone hasantibodies for the coronavirus.
All of Atum’s revenuecomes from charging otherfirms for services, and it became profitable within abouttwo years of its founding,according to Gustafsson,though he declined to sharespecific figures. He said heand the other cofoundersstarted the company withoutrelying on venture capital orprivate equity.
“We started small and havejust been growing ever since,”he said. “To this day, we don’t
have a single penny fromoutside investors.”
Atum joins a long list of
Bay Area efforts to beat backthe pandemic, from GileadSciences’ COVID19 drugremdesivir to various initiatives and studies under way atUCSF, Stanford, Kaiser Permanente and elsewhere. Otherlocal companies building toolsto combat the coronavirusinclude LakePharma, whichhas offices on the Peninsulaand in the East Bay, and SanFrancisco’s Twist Bioscience.
“Companies that are doingthe cuttingedge project development — they don’t exist insilos,” said Sean Randolph,senior director at the BayArea Council Economic Institute. “They depend on avery diverse biotech and lifescience ecosystem of companies that provide materialsand ingredients and differentreagents and virus pieces. ...
Having companies that fillvery specific needs for othercompanies is part of how thesystem works.”
One benefit of using synthetic products is that theycan be modified, said Gustafsson, the Atum cofounder.For example, Atum can helptweak the virus’ spike proteinto “make it more recognizable,make it more soluble, make itexpress better,” he said.
Santa Clara’s AntibodySolutions, a contract researchorganization, uses Atum products in its work helping othercompanies identify drug candidates, including to combatthe coronavirus.
“Some people say if you’regoing to make a fine wine,you have to have great grapes.Maybe in Atum’s case, they’rereally making the grapevinesthat make the great grapes,”said Antibody Solutions cofounder and President JohnKenney. “As the technologyhas become more complex ...you can’t do everything,” Kenney said. “You have to rely onpeople who can create thatgreat tool for you.”
Randolph compared theefforts of Atum and companies like it to the many different kinds of businesses thatsupport the automotive industry. Their presence in theBay Area now, he said, shouldunderscore how the region’sbusiness importance does notlie solely with the major software companies in SiliconValley.
“What’s going on right nowwith COVID should remindus how important and howbig biotech is in the BayArea,” he said.
J.D. Morris is a San FranciscoChronicle staff writer. Email:jd.morris@sfchronicle.comTwitter: @thejdmorris
Biotech firm rebounds to combat coronavirusAtum from page D1
Photos by Gabrielle Lurie / The Chronicle
Production associate Brian Huang works at biotech firm Atum. When the pandemic began,Atum focused its work to synthesize key cellular pieces for coronavirus research.
Tubes contain DNA infused into bacteria at the Newarkbiotech firm, which specializes in making genes and proteins.
unemployment eversince.OnMonday Igotanemail that said, “Youhavereceivedall benefitspayable toyouatthis time.Youcannotfile anotherCaliforniaunemployment insurance claimuntil yourcurrentbenefit yearends.”Why isEDDcuttingmeoff after 26weeks?YourJuly 1columnsaidyoucannowgetup to59weeksinCalifornia.
A:TheEmploymentDevelopmentDepartmentalso started getting questions like this, so startingJuly 16, it added this informationnear the endofitsweeklynews release onjobless claims,EDDspokeswomanLoreeLevysaid:
“If you runout of theupto 26weeks associatedwith a regularUI claim,anotherup to 13weeks ofbenefits is available in thePandemicEmergencyUnemploymentCompensation (PEUC) extensionprovidedby the federalgovernmentuntil the endof the year.
“If you are stillwithinyour 12monthbenefitperiod of your claimandyou runout of benefits,theEDDwill automatically file aPEUCclaim for
youandyou should get anotice bymail 57 business days laterwithmoreinformation. For fasterupdates and to certify forbenefits, checkyourUIOnline account inbox.
“If your 12monthbenefit periodhas expired andyou runout of yourbenefits, youmust reapply forbenefits and the quickestway todo so is throughUIOnline.”
TheEDDwill first“check to see if youhaveearned enoughwages toqualify for anewregularclaim. If youdon’t, youwill get a $0 awardnoticein themail on that newclaim.Butwithin a fewdays, youwill get anothernotice showing thatweautomatically filed aPEUCextension for youandadvising you that youneed to certify for benefits.You canalso checkyourUIOnline accountfor updates.”
At the endof this 13week extension, if you arestill unemployed, youcouldbe eligible for a“FedEd” extension forupto 20moreweeks. TheEDD“is sweeping thesystemdaily to identify”peoplewhomeet the“slightly different eligibili
ty requirements” forFedEd. If youqualify, theEDDwill automaticallyfile aFedEd extensionandmail you anotice.Youwill thenneed to completetheusual biweekly certification.
If youdon’t qualify for aFedEd extensionyou“will receive anoticeabout that disqualificationbut theEDDwillproactively reopen theirPUAclaim if they alreadyhadone established.”PUA,which stands forPandemicUnemploymentAssistance, is afederal program thatprovidesunemploymentbenefits for peoplewhodon’t qualify for orhaverunout of regular stateunemployment benefits.“For thosewhohavenotpreviously established aPUAclaim, theDepartmentwill proactively file aPUAclaim inorder tohelpmaintain the availability of benefits.”
Q:AtwhatpointwillEDDrequireabenefitrecipient toactivelylook forwork inordertokeepreceivingpayments?
A:Thishasnot beendecided. “We’re still in asituation of businessescloseddownso answering‘No’ towhether ornot youare looking forworkwon’t prevent payment atthis point. But, an individ
ual doeshave to remainable andavailable towork,” Levy said in anemail.
She added: “Wenoticeda lot of peopleweremakingmistakes on the firsttwoquestions of the biweekly certification forbenefits, unnecessarilydelayingbenefits, soweincluded someadditionaltext in theUIOnline certification app.”Formoretips, go to bit.ly/eddcoronavirusclaims andunder Step 2, click on thedropdownmenu titled“Whatmistakes can Iavoidwhen I certify somypayments aren’t delayed?”
Q:Myhusband losthisjobwitha sixpersoncompanydue to theCOVIDpandemicandisbeingofferedcontinuationofhealthbenefits throughCalCOBRA.Weare interestedin thepossible extensionof the60days inwhichyou typicallyhave to signup forCOBRA.YourJune 13article said recentDepartmentofLaborguidancegives laidoffworkersmuchmoretime tochooseandpayforCOBRAcoverage. IsCalCOBRAalso subject to theDepartmentofLaborchangeordotheyoperate independently?
A:ThenewLaborDe
partment rules donotapply toCalCOBRA,because it’s a state law.
COBRA, on the otherhand, is a federal lawofficially called theConsolidatedOmnibusBudgetReconciliationAct. Itletsmost employeeswhoquit or lose their job stayon their former employer’smedical, dental orvisionplan, generally forup to 18months. Theyalmost alwayshave topaythe full premium themselves, plus an administrative fee. FederalCOBRAgenerally applies togrouphealthplansmaintainedbyprivatesectoremployerswith 20ormore employees, andbystate or local governmentemployers.
CalCOBRAapplies tostateregulatedhealthplans offeredby employerswith two to 19 employees. It lets their exemployees stay in the grouphealthplan, again at theirownexpense, for up to 36months.
CalCOBRAalso letseligible peoplewho exhaust federalCOBRAstayin their old grouphealthplan for an additional 18months.However, CalCOBRAdoesnot coverselfinsured employers(thosewhopay employeemedical costs themselves)because their plans arenot stateregulated. Sotheir formerworkers
cannotmove from federaltoCalCOBRAafter 18months.Manynonprofitsand large companiesselfinsure,whether theirworkersknow it or not.
Normally, oncepeoplereceive anotice thatthey’re eligible forCOBRAorCalCOBRA(or tomove from federal toCalCOBRA), theyhave60days to enroll and45days after enrolling tobeginpayingpremiums.
Because of thepandemic, theLaborDepartmentgaveCOBRAeligibleemployees a longer timeperiod to enroll inCOBRAandpaypremiums.Thenewdeadline is 60days after thenationalCOVID19 emergencydeclaration ends orMarch1,whichever comes first.Myprevious columnexplainedhowpeoplemight use this longerperiod to their advantage.
Unfortunately, the statehasnot extended the timeframe forCalCOBRA, sothe olddeadlines stillapply, according to stateregulators.
If you lose your job orhave certain other lifechanging events, you canenroll inhealth carethroughCoveredCaliforniawithin 60days, even ifit’s outside the annualenrollment period. Because of thepandemic,CoveredCalifornia isletting any eligible individual apply through theendof July, even if theyhadno lifechangingevent.
Congress could addasubsidy forCOBRApremiums in its next coronavirus bill. TheHousepassedHeroesActwouldprovide a 100%subsidyfor laidoffworkersthrough Jan. 31. Republicans are expected tounveil their stimulusplanMonday.
Formore informationonCalCOBRA, see bit.ly/calcobrahelp.
KathleenPender is a SanFranciscoChronicle columnist. Email: kpender@sfchronicle.comTwitter:@kathpender
Extending jobless,health care benefitsPender from page D1