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

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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