With the White House’s surprise decision to bar foreign nationals from Europe from entering the United States, the already battered airline industry is facing yet another challenge. Unsurprisingly, we are now seeing even more cancellation across the industry as even U.S. citizen and legal permanent residents can now only enter the United States through 11 CDC-approved airports.

The approved airports are Atlanta (ATL), Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW), Detroit (DTW), Newark (EWR), Honolulu (HNL), New York-JFK (JFK), Los Angeles (LAX), Chicago-O’Hare (ORD), Seattle (SEA), San Francisco (SFO) and Washington-Dulles (IAD). All of these are major hub airports that also currently certified to handle flights from China, but in recent years, a lot of airlines added direct international flights from smaller fields as well.

As Delta announced today, it’ll temporarily cancel flights between cities like Amsterdam and Orlando, Portland and Salt Lake City, for example, as well as flights to Paris from Cincinnati, Raleigh/Durham and Indianapolis. These flights will still operate from the U.S. on Thursday and then return one last time on Friday.

American Airlines tells me it is still working through this “evolving situation,” but it’ll surely be forced to make similar cuts as it also operates European flights to airports that are not on the CDC’s list. Lufthansa and others are also in the process of canceling their flight schedules to smaller airports. Even before this announcement, Lufthansa alone canceled 23,000 flights.

You can find all of our coverage of Covid-19 here.

European on-demand food delivery startups are starting to add ‘contactless’ deliveries in response to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.

Earlier this month U.S. startups including Postmates and Instacart added an option for customers to choose not to have their meal handed to them by the courier — and instead have it dropped off at their door without the need for human contact. In China similar services began adding contactless deliveries last month.

Today UK-based Deliveroo said it will launch a no-contact drop-off option early next week.

“At Deliveroo we are taking action to keep our customers, riders and restaurants safe. To make our delivery service even safer we are introducing a no-contact, drop-off service,” it told us.

Currently, Deliveroo customers not wanting to expose themselves — or, indeed, the courier delivering their food — to unnecessary human contact can add a note to an order to request a no-contact drop off.

According to the latest World Health Organization (WHO) situation report on Covid-19 the UK had 373 confirmed cases and six deaths as of yesterday.

Deliveroo told us it has plans in place to respond should a rider be diagnosed with the virus or be told to isolate themselves by a medical authority. This includes a multi-million pound fund that it said will be used to support affected riders by paying in excess of the equivalent of UK statutory sick pay for 14-days.

Other steps it’s taking include ordering hand sanitizer for riders and setting up a dedicated support team in each market to answer any queries or questions riders have.

“Riders’ safety is a priority and we want to make sure those who are impacted by this unprecedented virus and cannot work are supported. Deliveroo will provide support for riders who are diagnosed with the virus or who are told to isolate themselves by a medical authority,” the company added.

In yesterday’s budget the UK chancellor set out measures intended to support gig workers during the Covid-19 crisis, announcing a £500M boost to the benefits system and steps to make it quicker and easier for self employed people to access social security — a move unions were quick to characterize as a sticking plaster atop the systemic problem of precarious gig work. 

“It is unfortunate that it takes a global health pandemic for this government to recognise that precarious workers need some form of sick pay,” said the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain’s general secretary, Jason Moyer-Lee, in a statement. “Rather than half-baked proposals on benefits, the government should be ensuring that all workers have properly enforced worker rights, including full sick pay from day one. The unaffordability of becoming ill or injured is something precarious workers face on a daily basis, and it needs a permanent solution.”

Over in the European Union, Spain’s Glovo also told us it’s implementing new measures globally from today — including recommending ‘no contact’ deliveries and removing the requirement for couriers to obtain a mobile signature from the customer.

Italy, the European country most severely affected by the novel coronavirus outbreak thus far, is one of Glovo’s biggest markets.

This month the government announced a nationwide lockdown to try to contain the spread of the virus.  Per the WHO, Italy had 10,149 confirmed cases of Covid-19 as of yesterday morning and 631 people had died.

Yesterday the Italian prime minister announced a further tightening of quarantine rules, closing all bars and restaurants to the general public but allowing for home delivery — leaving the door open for meal delivery startups to continue operating. Food stores in Italy have also not been shut.

A report by UBS today looking at the impact of Covid-19 on online food delivery across multiple markets suggests there is a general uptick in meal delivery demand in most markets, including Italy. Though the investment bank cautions this could change — highlighting the risk of supply disruption and the consumer safety concerns related to eating pre-prepared meals during a health crisis, as it says has been the case in China (with grocery delivery growing as meal delivery orders slumped).   

It’s not clear how Glovo’s on-demand business is weathering the coronavirus storm. A spokesman told us it’s unable to share any data regarding the rise/fall of orders in Italy during the quarantine.

It’s worth noting the startup has never been solely focused on meal delivery — with the app supporting requests for anything (practicable) to be delivered by bike courier in the urban centers where it operates.

Groceries have also been a growing area of focus for Glovo which has been building out a network of dark supermarkets to support fast delivery of convenience shop groceries.

When we asked it about support for riders, Glovo told us it will be covering courier incomes for 2-4 weeks during the Covid-19 outbreak if they report being sick.

“The health and wellbeing of our couriers and customers is our top priority and we think these practices will help give some peace-of-mind to our fleet, while also decreasing the interaction and contact between both parties,” said the spokesman.

We also asked Uber Eats — which operates a meal delivery service in multiple markets across Europe — what measures it’s taking to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic.

A spokeswoman told us it’s currently working to inform customers of an existing ability to communicate with delivery people via the app to give them specific guidance on where and how they’d like deliveries made — such as leaving a note to say ‘leave at door’ or ‘leave in lobby/reception’.

“Safety is essential to Uber and it’s at the heart of everything we do. In response to the ongoing spread of coronavirus, we’ve reminded Uber users that they can request deliveries be left on their doorsteps,” Uber Eats said in a statement.

“We’re simultaneously at work on new product features to make this process even smoother, which we hope will be helpful to everyone on the platform in the coming weeks,” it added.

Uber also confirmed it will compensate drivers and delivery people who have to go into quarantine for up to 14 days — provided they are able to show documentation confirming the diagnosis; or if they have to self isolate or get removed from the app at the direction of a public health authority.

The company added that it has a dedicated global team, led by SVP Andrew Macdonald and advised by a consulting public health expert and public health organizations, working on its Covid-19 response.

TikTok, the popular social media app owned by Chinese tech company ByteDance, has been under a national security investigation by U.S. lawmakers who have raised concerns about the company’s access to U.S. user data and whether it was censoring content at the behest of the Chinese government. Today, TikTok tries to combat these concerns with the opening of a “Transparency Center” that will allow outside experts to examine and verify TikTok’s practices.

The new facility in TikTok’s L.A. office will allow outside experts to view how TikTok’s teams operate day-to-day, the company explains, as staff moderates content on the platform. This includes how moderators apply TikTok’s content Guidelines to review the content its technology automatically flagged for review, as well as other content the technology may have missed.

In addition, the experts will be shown how users and creators are able to bring concerns to TikTok and how those concerns are handled. TikTok will also explain how the content on the platform aligns with its Guidelines, the company says.

This center mainly aims to address the censorship concerns the U.S. has with TikTok, which, as a Chinese-owned company may have to comply with “state intelligence work,” according to local laws, experts have said. TikTok has long denied that’s the case, claiming that no governments — foreign or domestic — have directed its content moderation practices.

That being said, The Washington Post reported last year that searches on TikTok revealed far fewer videos of the Hong Kong protests than expected, prompting suspicions that censorship was taking place. The Guardian, meanwhile, came across a set of content guidelines for TikTok that appeared to advance Chinese foreign policy through the app. TikTok said these guidelines were older and no longer used.

Today, TikTok’s moderation practices are still being questioned, however. In November, it removed a video that criticized China’s treatment of Muslims, for example. The video was restored after press coverage, with TikTok citing a “human moderation error” for the removal.

While the larger concern to U.S. lawmakers is potential for China’s influence through social media, TikTok at times makes other moderation choices that don’t appear to be in line with U.S. values. For example, singer Lizzo recently shaded TikTok for removing videos of her wearing a bathing suit, even as TikTok stars posted videos of themselves dancing in their bathing suits. (The deleted video was later restored after press coverage). The BBC also reported that transgender users were having their posts or sounds removed by TikTok, and the company couldn’t properly explain why. And The Guardian reported on bans of pro-LGBT content. Again, TikTok said the guidelines being referenced in the article were no longer in use.

TikTok says the new transparency center will not only allow the experts to watch but also provide input about the company’s moderation practices.

“We expect the Transparency Center to operate as a forum where observers will be able to provide meaningful feedback on our practices. Our landscape and industry is rapidly evolving, and we are aware that our systems, policies and practices are not flawless, which is why we are committed to constant improvement,” said TikTok  U.S. General Manager, Vanessa Pappas. “We look forward to hosting experts from around the world and continuing to find innovative ways to improve our content moderation and data security systems,” she added.

The Center will open in early May, initially with a focus on moderation. Later, TikTok says it will open up for insight into its source code and efforts around data privacy and security. The second phase will be led by TikTok’s newly appointed Chief Information Security Officer, Roland Cloutier, who starts next month.

The company notes it has taken many steps to ensure its business can continue to operate in the U.S. This includes the release of its new Community Guidelines and the publishing of its first Transparency Report a few months ago. TikTok has also hired a global General Counsel and expanded its Trust & Safety hubs in the U.S., Ireland, and Singapore, it said.

Startups have welcomed proposals from the European Commission aimed at cutting red tape and shrinking cross-border barriers for small businesses as part of a new EU industrial strategy plan with a twin focus on digital and green transitions unveiled today.

Among the package of measures being proposed by the European Union’s executive body are for Member States to sing up to a “Startup Nations Standard” — which would aim to promote best practices to support startups and scale-ups, such as one-stop shops, favourable employee stock-options arrangements and visa processing to reduce cross-border friction for entrepreneurs starting and growing businesses in the bloc.

In recent years European startups have organized to campaign for reforms to rules around stock options –with 30 CEOs from homegrown startups including TransferWise, GetYourGuide, Revolut, Delivery Hero, TypeForm and Super cell (to name a few) signing an open letter to policymakers two years ago calling for legislators to fix what they dubbed “the patchy, inconsistent and often punitive rules that govern employee ownership”.

The effort appears to have made a dent in the EU policymaking universe. Both regulatory and practical barriers are now in the Commission’s sights, with it proposing a joint task force to work on sanding down business bumps.

It also today reiterated a perennial warning against Member States ‘goldplating’ pan-EU rules by adding their own conditions on top. 

“The Single Market is our proudest achievement — yet 70% of businesses report that they do not find it is sufficiently integrated,” said EVP Margrethe Vestager, laying out an industrial strategy package with a big focus on smaller companies, including those with big ambitions to scale. “Across Europe barriers are still preventing startups from growing into European businesses and our report is identifying those barriers and we also then address them in the Single Market enforcement action plan.”

In a letter responding to the Commission’s plan for an EU Startup Nations Standard, 14 European startup founders (listed below) and a number of European startup associations welcomed the proposal — urging EU Member States to get behind it.

“By making it easier to start a business, expand across borders and attract top talent, this new Standard will help to level the playing field with powerful global tech hubs in the US and China,” the tech CEOs and startup advocacy organizations wrote. “We applaud the EU’s ambition of seeking a pan-European solution to address the needs of startups. We are also encouraged that the Commission has specifically called out the treatment of stock options as one of the key issues.

“As highlighted by more than 500 leading European entrepreneurs who joined the Not Optional campaign, the inability of startups to use stock options effectively to attract and retain talent is a major bottleneck to the growth of startups in Europe.”

“The Commission’s proposals will be a major step towards unleashing the full entrepreneurial firepower of Europe – but only if they are adopted and implemented by all Member States,” they added. “That’s why we are today calling on all Member States to sign up to the EU Startup Nations Standard, including a commitment to increase the attractiveness of employee ownership schemes.”

Here’s the list of startup CEOs signing the letter:

• Christian Reber, CEO & Founder, Pitch
• Felix Van de Maele, CEO & Founder, Collibra
• Jean-Charles Samuelian, CEO & Founder, Alan
• Johannes Reck, CEO & Co-Founder of GetYourGuide
• Johannes Schildt, CEO & Founder, KRY / LIVI
• John Collison, Co-Founder and President, Stripe
• Juan de Antonio, CEO & Co-Founder of Cabify
• Markus Villig, CEO & Founder, Bolt
• Miki Kuusi, CEO & Co-Founder, Wolt
• Nicolas Brusson, CEO & Co-Founder, BlaBlaCar
• Peter Mühlmann, CEO & Founder, Trustpilot
• Sebastian Siemiatkowski, CEO & Founder, Klarna
• Taavet Hinrikus, Founder & Chairman, TransferWise
• Tamaz Georgadze, CEO & Founder, Raisin

Also welcoming the stock option proposals, Martin Mignot, a partner at Index Ventures — another backer of the Not Optional campaign — said: “The biggest challenge facing startups today is recruiting and retaining top talent. That’s why we are pleased that the EU Startup Nations Standard addresses stock options, making it easier for startups to allow employees to share in their success.”

“We are pleased to see the European Commission recognise the contribution that startups make to Europe and its citizens, and pursue a pan-European policy initiative to support this growing sector,” he added in a statement. “For too long, the focus in Europe has been on taming US tech giants. Today’s announcement confirms Europe’s ambition to create its own champions.”

EU startup advocacy member association, Allied for Startups, is another signatory to the letter. And in an additional response it broadly welcomed the Commission’s SME strategy — while pressing for a strong focus on startups as independent actors in the implementation of the strategy, rather than as a sub category of SMEs.

“The talent-focus of the proposed Startup Nation Standard has significant potential for startup ecosystems, since access to talent is still a bottleneck for startups in Europe.” said Benedikt Blomeyer, the lobby group’s director of EU policy, in a statement.

“Through the SME strategy, we are pleased to see concrete measures such as better startup visas and improved employee stock options on the table. Allied for Startups has repeatedly called for both measures over the past years.”

“Unlike SMEs, startups can only succeed at scale,” he added. “They are global from day one and aim to grow big and fast. Specific measures that work for SMES, for instance a regulatory exemption, might not work for startups. On the contrary, it could incentivise a startup to stay small. To account for these differences, the European Commission should consider a startup strategy that focuses on scalability, complementing the SME strategy.”

Allied for Startups also welcomed the Commission’s general goal of reducing the administrative and regulatory burden for startups within the Single Market — saying the consideration of regulatory sandboxes as part of the support toolkit is “potentially valuable for startups, who build innovative products and services”.

The Commission is also looking to support SMEs to go public in Europe — announcing an SME Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) Fund under the InvestEU SME window which will aim to make IPOs more accessible to local small businesses.

Another push aims to reduce late payments for SMEs, with the Commission noting today that one in four regional small businesses go bankrupt as a result of not being paid on time.

It also said it wants to stimulate investment in women-led companies and funds to “empower female entrepreneurship”. (Notably all the signatories on the aforementioned letter are male.)

Industrial to digital transformation

More broadly, the Commission’s new industrial strategy intends to underpin core EU policy priorities for the next five years — which include a focus on driving the digitization of legacy industries and simultaneous retooling to transition to a carbon neutral economy under the pan-EU Green Deal.

“Europe has the strongest industry in the world. Our companies — big and small — provide us with jobs, prosperity and strategic autonomy. Managing the green and digital transitions and avoiding external dependencies in a new geopolitical context requires radical change — and it needs to start now,” said Thierry Breton, commissioner for internal market, in a statement today.

During a press briefing Vestager emphasized the Commission’s view that new and more inclusive working methods are needed to deliver on the planned transformation.

“The twin digital and green transitions are posing both opportunities and challenges for the industry in general and for small and medium sized businesses in particular. Business models are changing. All across Europe companies are confronted with consumers’ decreasing trust and increasing demand for transparency,” she said. “The world around us is also changing… Today global competition, trade disputes, the return of protectionism — I think that creates a shared feeling of uncertainty.

“This is challenging Europe’s industry as it sets out to meet the twin transitions. Fortunately, the European industry is coming to this reality from a strong position. Our new strategy is building on Europe’s strength and on our values.”

On the proposals to shift to “inclusive” working methods, Vestager said the aim is “to work much closer with small and large companies, Member States, researchers, academia, social partners and other EU institutions”.

To that end, the Commission is proposing a new industrial forum to enable closer working with such stakeholders that it aims to have set up by September.

It also wants to work on identifying a number of industrial ecosystems — which Vestager said “may require a bespoke approach”, in terms of policy support.

At the press briefing Breton suggested there could be between 15 and 20 such industrial ecosystems.

“We don’t want to leave anybody out,” he said. “This is an industrial strategy but we all know that underpinning this there are large corporations but many, many, many small ones too and we have to bring these on board. If we don’t have the big and the small we won’t have a dynamic, innovative, living sector.”

“A lot of companies do this among themselves already, locally in fact, but we do hope it is going to be done in an even more horizontal manner across the EU and within the internal market,” he added.

Skills is another focus for the SME strategy — with the Commission saying it will expand Digital Innovation Hubs to every region in Europe to help small businesses plug in cutting edge tech, with expanded options for volunteering and training on digital technologies.

Helping SMEs find the skills they need to shift to sustainable ways of working is another stated aim.

The Commission has published a Q&A on the industrial strategy here.

Last month the executive body also set out proposals aimed at encouraging industrial data sharing and reuse, along with proposals for regulating high risk uses of artificial intelligence.

A further major piece of EU digital policy due later this year is the forthcoming Digital Services Act — which is slated to address platform liabilities and responsibilities, including towards smaller businesses that rely on them as a marketplace.

In interviews across the major television networks on Sunday, U.S. officials all-but-admitted that efforts to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, have failed and that the country now needs to move to mitigate the effects of the continuing spread of the disease on the nation’s health and economy.

“We now are seeing community spread and we’re trying to help people understand how to mitigate the impact of disease spread,” U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams said on CBS’ Face the Nation on Sunday.

Dr. Adams’ concerns were echoed by Dr. Anthony Fauci head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health.

“There comes a time,” Fauci said in an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, “when you have containment which [sic] you’re trying to find out who’s infected and put them in isolation. And if and when that happens — and I hope it’s if and not when — that you get so many people who are infected that the best thing you need to do is what we call mitigation in addition to containment.”

The admissions are supported by data from Johns Hopkins University, which indicates that despite government efforts to contain the novel coronavirus from spreading in the U.S. there are now at least 474 people infected with the virus across at least 31 states.

Exact information is difficult to ascertain since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that it would no longer be able to provide an official tally of tests conducted or under investigation, earlier this week. The CDC made the decision because states and private institutions are now authorized to conduct their own tests — making it difficult for the agency to keep up with the latest information.

“We are no longer reporting the number of PUIs or patients under investigation nor those who have tested negative,” said Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the Director of the Center for the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, at the CDC. “With more and more testing done at states, these numbers would not be representative of the testing being done nationally.  States are reporting results quickly and even — states are reporting results quickly and in the event of a discrepancy between CDC and state case counts, the state case counts should always be considered more up to date.”

A coronavirus (COVID-19) test kit from the CDC.

Mistakes were made

Faulty test kits and internal divisions over how to respond the spread of the virus in the United States hamstrung early efforts to get an accurate picture of how rapidly the virus was moving through the population, according to multiple reports.

“They’ve simply lost time they can’t make up. You can’t get back six weeks of blindness,” Jeremy Konyndyk, a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development and an Obama-era administration staffer involved in the government’s response to the spread of the ebola virus, told The Washington Post. “To the extent that there’s someone to blame here, the blame is on poor, chaotic management from the White House and failure to acknowledge the big picture.”

There is a world in which a coordinated U.S. response to the outbreak of the coronavirus, which the Chinese government first reported to the World Health Organization in late December, would have been led by the global health security team within the National Security Council, but that group was dissolved in 2018 by the National Security Advisor at the time, John Bolton.

In that world, perhaps the U.S. could have ramped up the production and acquisition of testing kits, provisioned facilities in communities deemed to be more at-risk with the necessary equipment, and issued emergency authorizations to enable public institutions to administer tests without undergoing formal approval processes. In that world, the CDC would not have needed to impose severe restrictions on who could be tested for the virus, because they would not have needed to limit the number of tests they could conduct to only the most pressing — or obvious — cases.

Instead, as reporting in both The Washington Post and the New York Times indicates, a series of poor decisions, slow responses, and technological missteps limited the government’s ability to respond effectively to the threat.

The problems seem to have been threefold — the Centers for Disease Control did not move quickly enough to manufacture test kits at scale (either because of lack of funding or political will) nor did it open up testing options to other institutions that could have worked to develop tests — and because of the limited availability of tests, the CDC rationed how many tests were performed. Those issues were compounded by the initial release of faulty tests by the CDC in early February.

As former U.S. Food and Drug Administration official Scott Gottlieb wrote on Twitter in early February, “Since CDC and FDA haven’t authorized public health or hospital labs to run the tests, right now #CDC is the only place that can. So, screening has to be rationed. Our ability to detect secondary spread among people not directly tied to China travel is greatly limited.”

“We have an epidemic underway here in the United States”

The Federal Government is now facing an epidemic, according to health experts, and the question now is how can it help states and local governments respond.

“We have an epidemic underway here in the United States,” said former Food and Drug Administration commissioner, Scott Gottlieb, in an interview on Face the Nation.

Gottlieb, who recently returned to his position as a managing partner at the venture capital firm NEA, has been monitoring the government’s response from afar and was once rumored to be a candidate for the position of “Coronavirus Czar” overseeing the Administration’s response to the outbreak.

“We have to implement broad mitigation strategies. The next two weeks are really going to change the complexion in this country. We’ll get through this, but it’s going to be a hard period. We’re looking at two months probably of difficulty,” said Gottlieb. “To give you a basis of comparison, two weeks ago, Italy had nine cases. Ninety-five percent of all their cases have been diagnosed in the last 10 days. For South Korea, 85 percent of all their cases have been diagnosed in the last 10 days. We’re entering that period right now of rapid acceleration. And the sooner we can implement tough mitigation steps in places we have outbreaks like Seattle, the- the lower the scope of the epidemic here.”

Part of mitigation involves continuing to track the spread of the disease, and Gottlieb has been encouraging the FDA to move quickly to get new tests approved for weeks. Already, the Gates Foundation and private companies are rushing to bring an at-home coronavirus test kit to market — and ways to share the results from testing with appropriate government agencies.

But testing alone isn’t enough, says Gottlieb. The U.S. needs to “[close] businesses, close large gatherings, close theaters, cancel events,” Gottlieb said.

Businesses have started to cancel large conferences and events, and universities like Stanford are turning to remote classes for the remainder of their winter term. No city or state has yet to take measures as drastic as Italy, which closed down the entire Northern region of the country over the weekend in an effort to contain the spread of the coronavirus.

“I think we need to think about how do we provide assistance to the people of these cities who are going to be hit by hardship, as well as the localities themselves to try to give them an incentive to do this.”

His recommendations align with policy suggestions issued recently by the International Monetary Fund, which are all steps that the U.S. government could take should it choose to proactively approach its response to the virus’ spread.

Indeed, the over $8 billion coronavirus response package approved by Congress last week goes a long way to addressing the first suggestion from the IMF, which is to spend on the prevention, detection, control, treatment and containment of the virus.

Equally as important, according to the IMF, is to provide cash flow relief to the people and firms that are most affected — either in the form of wage subsidies, accelerated and expanded unemployment benefits, or tax benefits for companies affected by the virus outbreak.

“We’re going to end up with a very big federal bailout package here for stricken businesses, individuals, cities and states,” said Gottlieb. “We’re better off doing it upfront and giving assistance to get them to do the right things than do it on the back end after we’ve had a very big epidemic.”

Meanwhile, leadership in the U.S. at the highest level insists that there’s nothing to worry about.

Is it good news to say that stocks fell less sharply than they had on previous days?

That’s the bright side of another turbulent trading day across the Nasdaq and New York Stock Exchange. The major indices were down again — although their declines were less severe than they had been during the week.

Investors appeared to shake off positive labor statistics (the U.S. added 273,000 jobs, ahead of expectations), as the expanding number of coronavirus cases in the U.S. and lack of a coordinated response from the Trump Administration took their toll on investor confidence that the impact on the economy would be minimal.

With that said, things could have been worse?

The Dow fell 256.50 points, or just under 1%, to close at 25,864.78, while the S&P stumbled 51.57 points, or 1.7%, to close at 2,972.37 while the Nasdaq slid 1.8%, or 162.98 to close at 8,575.62. The benchmark indices are in the territory of a market correction — hovering at around a 10% loss already on the year.

For startups, it’s important to note that these market pressures can have implications for their businesses. Jittery buyers may be inclined to curb spending and save to conserve cash on their own balance sheets; consumers may rethink priorities and focus on essential purchases as they tighten their own belts.

Sequoia Capital warned in a blog post yesterday that things may change as time rolls along and the global economy stutters.

Here’s their take:

• Drop in business activity. Some companies have seen their growth rates drop sharply between December and February. Several companies that were on track are now at risk of missing their Q1–2020 plans as the effects of the virus ripple wider.
• Supply chain disruptions. The unprecedented lockdown in China is directly impacting global supply chains. Hardware, direct-to-consumer, and retailing companies may need to find alternative suppliers. Pure software companies are less exposed to supply chain disruptions, but remain at risk due to cascading economic effects.
• Curtailment of travel and canceled meetings. Many companies have banned all “non-essential” travel and some have banned all international travel. While travel companies are directly impacted, all companies that depend on in-person meetings to conduct sales, business development, or partnership discussions are being affected.

Postmates announced today it would be adding a “non-contact delivery option,” for those concerned about COVID-19 exposure from workers bringing them food. Instacart set up something similar earlier this week, announcing sales were 10x’s higher this week over last due to coronavirus concerns and rolling out the “leave it at my door” option for customers concerned about coronavirus.

This flu-like virus has already infected nearly 100,000 people worldwide, killing thousands of those with the disease, including one man so far in the Bay Area, the hub of Silicon Valley and the startup world.

Similar services starting offering this contactless option in China last month, where COVID-19 took a stronghold and started spreading from Wuhan. The majority of stores in the area had closed shop, leaving delivery as most people’s only option. The contactless measure seemed aimed at keeping everyone safe and minimizing exposure.

While plenty of customers have praised this effort, not everyone is pleased, believing this move is just passing the buck to low-wage workers.

Postmates counters this argument, telling TechCrunch the move is beneficial to both customers and couriers. “Community health and safety is paramount at Postmates, and we have shared precautionary CDC guidance with our Postmates,” a Postmates spokesperson told TechCrunch. “Customers have an option to designate the drop-off of item without contact; and will continue to encourage employees, merchants and consumers to follow preventative measures. While we are operating with business as usual, we are tracking the situation closely and will help provide the resources necessary to mitigate increased risks.”

For those who like this option and want to use it with your next Postmates order, you just order as normal. You’ll then be prompted to select your delivery preference before checking out. The option is similar with your Instacart order.

While we’ve so far only heard this option is being offered by these two delivery startups, we’re likely going to see more contactless rollouts as coronavirus fears continue to change our shopping habits in the next couple of months.

The $71 million in financing that quantum computing technology developer Rigetti Computing recently raised came at a significant cut to the company’s valuation, according to several sources with knowledge of the company.

The company declined to comment on its valuation or the recent round of funding it secured.

Rigetti is one of a handful of startups attempting to make quantum computing commercially viable. It’s a vitally important emerging technology with implications for national security and a broad swath of industries that depend on better data analysis and more powerful computing to continue innovating around materials science, genetics, and … well… pretty much anything else.

In July, Rigetti acquired QxBranch, a quantum computing and data analytics software startup to build on Rigetti’s full-stack strategy and expand the company’s ability to deliver quantum algorithms, solutions, and services, according to a statement

“Our mission is to deliver the power of quantum computing to our customers and help them solve difficult and valuable problems,” said Chad Rigetti, founder and C.E.O. of Rigetti Computing, in a statement at the time. “We believe we have the leading hardware platform, and QxBranch is the leader at the application layer. Together we can shorten the timeline to quantum advantage and open up new opportunities for our customers.”

Huge corporations including Google and IBM have invested hundreds of millions to develop quantum computers and there’s a growing push among politicians in the U.S. government to devote more money to the technology — out of fear that China’s scientists and national efforts have outpaced American advances in the field.

Quantum computing is an area that’s set for a windfall of government dollars under the budget proposed earlier this year by the Trump Administration. The National Science Foundation will receive $210 million for quantum research, while the Department of Energy will receive a $237 million boost and an additional carve out of $25 million for the Depart of Energy to begin development of a nationwide Quantum Internet.

Fundamentally, quantum computing is hard and there are few commercially viable applications for a technology that’s still in its infancy. The “computers” are notoriously difficult to operate, so not many companies are pursuing the creation of the hardware itself. Instead, companies in the market are pitching the ability to adapt the hard questions that corporations and research institutions would like to pose into a form amenable to solving by quantum computing, and flexible access to shared quantum hardware.

That’s a variation on the wildly successful cloud computing and software as a service business models now all the rage among technology companies developing services for other industries.

If commercial traction is one issue for quantum computing startups — which lack access to the billions available to companies like Alphabet (Google’s parent company) or even the struggling tech giant IBM — then recent trends in venture capital investment have proven to be another.

It’s very likely that the company fell victim to the irrational exuberance of the stupid money unicorn era, where firms raised billions of dollars in capital in an effort to compete with massive sovereign wealth-backed corporate investment firms led by people who had previously burned dumpsters full of cash in the dot-com era made billions off of well-timed investments in Chinese e-commerce companies.

That said, financing a company that can achieve a quantum breakthrough is one of those moonshot investments where the return on a successful investment is basically unlimited. There’s so much potential in the technology, and so little viable commercial businesses that the first to break through the noise could be a real win.

Recently, investors are gambling more on the middleware layer of a quantum computing stack. These are companies like Zapata, Q-CTRL, Quantum Machines, and Aliro that improve the performance of quantum computers and create an easier user experience.

In 2017, Rigetti announced that it had raised $64 million over a period of several years while it developed its quantum computing technology. That was followed with another $50 million investment later that year, as Bloomberg reported. This latest investment was led by Battery Ventures, according to data available on Crunchbase.

The lack of available, non-dilutive capital for companies like Rigetti may be a problem going forward, if the U.S. wants to provide a broad base of support for the pursuit of quantum technology innovations, according to some industry observers.

“This is a national security issue. We should be trying to be doing everything we can,” said one industry observer. “If we don’t fight this war and somebody else wins this war it’s going to have significant ramifications for the U.S. For some of these things… private companies and government have to collaborate. For our own national security.”

Some big moves in the payments platform space: Ant Financial Group, the owner of China’s Alipay payment platform has announced it’s taking a minority stake in Swedish payments platform Klarna — which has a strong European presence and a flagship product that lets shoppers buy now and pay later in interest-free instalments (typically 14 or 30 days after the purchase).

The pair have not disclosed terms of the deal but Reuters reported the stake amounts to less than 1% and was made up of existing and new shares. It also cites its source telling it the stake was done at a “slight uptick” to Klarna’s $460 million funding round last August — which valued the company at $5.5BN.

A spokeswomen for Klarna told us it’s not disclosing the value of the investment but she confirmed Reuters reporting, saying the stake is less than 1%.

Ant Financial is part of Chinese ecommerce and retail services multinational giant, Alibaba Group, which took a 33% stake in the fintech affiliate back in 2018 that gave it direct ownership of its suite of products and services — including an investment fund, micro-loans, insurance services, a digital bank and the Alipay mobile payments platform. 

Prior to Ant taking a stake, Klarna and Alipay had already been collaborating via Alibaba’s global ecommerce marketplace, AliExpress — which offers Klarna’s ‘Pay later’ option in multiple markets.

Now the pair touted their deepening partnership as set to bring more “innovative and convenient” financial services to consumers worldwide.

They are also clearly hoping to further grease the wheels of East to West ecommerce by expanding opportunities for China’s growing middle class to tap into Klarna’s network of European and global merchants via their preferred local online payment method.

Commenting in a statement, Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiątkowski said: “For too long consumers have had to endure non-intuitive, boring and overly complex services when shopping both online and offline. At the heart of this cooperation between Klarna and Alipay is a shared ambition of innovating truly superior shopping experiences and creating destinations of inspiration for consumers across the world.”

“Alipay, and the wider Alibaba Group, have truly set the global pace on retail innovation and the app economy. We are delighted in this confidence shown in Klarna in defining the future of payments and shopping and are very much looking forward to working together further in the future,” he added.

Klarna said its technology is being used by more than 200,000 retailers and e-commerce platforms globally at this point, including AliExpress, H&M, ASOS, Expedia Group, IKEA, Farfetch, Adidas, Spotify, Samsung and Nike .

Last year it said it added over 75,000 new merchants — describing itself as a “strategic growth partner” for these retailers and claiming it’s driving “millions of referrals and traffic each month” from owned channels to partner merchants from consumers who it says are actively seeking where they can shop with Klarna. (It claims a base of 85 million shoppers.)

Ant Financial, meanwhile, has been working on expanding Alipay’s global footprint by cutting local deals in markets outside China where it cannot build up its transaction volume organically. Notably, back in 2015, it  took a stake in India’s One97 — which operates a major local mobile payment platform, Paytm.

TechCrunch’s Ingrid Lunden contributed to this report

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said today that it would allow new diagnostics technologies to be used to test for the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, at elite academic hospitals and healthcare facilities around the country.

The agency’s new initiative comes as critics have assailed various U.S. government agencies for being woefully underprepared to effectively address the spread of the novel coronavirus in the country despite being aware of the potential risks the virus posed since the first cases were reported in Wuhan, China in early December.

As the first diagnosed cases of the new virus appeared in the country, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had conducted only 459 tests. Meanwhile, China had five commercial tests for the coronavirus on the market one month ago and can now conduct up to 1.6 million tests per week. South Korea has tested another 65,00 people so far, according to a report in Science Magazine. Initial tests in the U.S. were hampered by the distribution of test kits which contained a faulty reagent — rendering the kits useless.

The CDC isn’t the only U.S. agency criticized for its mishandling of the response to a potential outbreak. On Thursday a whistleblower complaint was filed against the Department of Health and Human Services alleging that the agency sent over a dozen employees to Wuhan to evacuate American citizens from the country without the proper training or protective gear, as first reported by The Washington Post.

Now, the Food and Drug Administration is opening the doors for research centers across the country to use new technologies that have yet to be approved for emergency use in order to dramatically increase the number of tests healthcare facilities can perform.

“We believe this policy strikes the right balance during this public health emergency,” said FDA Commissioner Dr. Stephen M. Hahn, in a statement. “We will continue to help to ensure sound science prior to clinical testing and follow-up with the critical independent review from the FDA, while quickly expanding testing capabilities in the U.S. We are not changing our standards for issuing Emergency Use Authorizations. This action today reflects our public health commitment to addressing critical public health needs and rapidly responding and adapting to this dynamic and evolving situation.”

The new policy allows laboratories to begin to use validated COVID-19 diagnostics before the FDA has completed review of the labs’ Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) requests, the agency said in a statement.

In cases where the Department of Health and Human Services indicates that there’s a public health emergency or a significant potential for a public health emergency, the FDA can issue these EUAs to permit the use of medical products that can diagnose, treat, or prevent a disease. The HHS secretary determined that the outbreak of the COVID-19 coronavirus was just such an emergency on February 4.

So far, the FDA has authorized one EUA for COVID-19 that’s already being used by the CDC and some public health labs, the agency said.

“The global emergence of COVID-19 is concerning, and we appreciate the efforts of the FDA to help bring more testing capability to the U.S.,” said Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD).

Development of new diagnostics tests are handled by the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, part of the HHS Office responsible for preparedness and response to health issues.

“This step may reduce development costs, speed the process for availability at more testing sites, incentivize private development and, ultimately, help save lives,” said Rick Bright, the BARDA’s director.

Startups like the Redwood City, Calif.-based genome sequencing device manufacturer, Genapsys, and Co-Diagnostics, another molecular diagnostics startup out of Salt Lake City, have been approached by the Chinese government and European testing facilities, respectively.

In the U.S. a number of large, publicly traded companies and startups are pursuing new diagnostics tools that can be used to identify the novel strain of the coronavirus.

“At BARDA, we are identifying industry partners to develop rapid diagnostics that can be used in commercial and hospital labs or even doctors’ offices so that medical professionals and their patients have the information they need to take action,” Bright said.

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the Extra Crunch series that recaps the latest OS news, the applications they support and the money that flows through it all.

The app industry is as hot as ever, with a record 204 billion downloads in 2019 and $120 billion in consumer spending in 2019, according to App Annie’s recently released “State of Mobile” annual report. People are now spending 3 hours and 40 minutes per day using apps, rivaling TV. Apps aren’t just a way to pass idle hours — they’re a big business. In 2019, mobile-first companies had a combined $544 billion valuation, 6.5x higher than those without a mobile focus.

In this Extra Crunch series, we help you keep up with the latest news from the world of apps, delivered on a weekly basis.

This week, we’ll look at the coronavirus outbreak’s impact on the App Store, China’s demand for App Store removals — and soon-to-be-removals, it seems. We’re also talking about Facebook’s lawsuit over a data-grabbing SDK, Tinder’s new video series, the TSA ban on TikTok, Instagram’s explanation for its lack of an iPad app and how Democratic presidential primary candidates are performing on mobile and social, among other things.

Headlines

Coronavirus concerns send Chinese ride-hailing apps crashing, games surging

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.

Heading into the new year, it wasn’t known that the coronavirus, known as COVD-19, would shutter much of China, slowing its industrial output, its services industry and more. But heading into 2020, China’s venture capital world was already in steep decline. This morning we’re exploring the country’s Q4 2019 venture capital results and pulling in fresh data from 2020 to get a handle on what’s happening in China today.

Some years ago, China’s venture capital scene was a clear global leader, busy vying for the top spot in global venture capital activity. So great was China’s rise in the venture world you could find investors and founders alike extolling working culture in China as superior to that of the United States, paeans to the scale that China’s population offered technology startups and some concerns that China’s venture market could surpass the United State’s own, creating a new center of gravity in the world of technology.

Views on China have since changed. Let’s figure out how much.