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U.S. companies are relaxing many of the vaccine and other COVID-related requirements that had become a staple of corporate life in the pandemic, the Wall Street Journal reported. As office occupancy nears pandemic-era highs in many U.S. cities, a number of employers have communicated new, looser safety protocols to workers. Some companies made masks optional in the office for all workers, while others dropped testing requirements for the unvaccinated or simplified the daily return-to-office questionnaires. The new protocols in many cases follow updated guidance from health authorities, who have moved away from blanket preventive measures in favor of a more targeted approach focused on limiting infection and severe illness in high-risk areas. Infections have edged up again in the U.S., and the omicron BA.2 variant accounts for more new COVID-19 cases.

A group of investors bought this small city’s only hospital in late 2019. To pay for the deal, its buildings and land were sold to one of the country’s largest owners of medical properties. Two years later the hospital went bankrupt, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Watsonville Community Hospital has served the largely Latino farming region of strawberry fields and apple orchards for more than a century. Now, the community is trying to raise as much as $70 million to buy the hospital and save it from closure. “It would be a disaster,” said John Martinelli, chairman of S. Martinelli & Co., a family-owned producer of apple juice and sparkling cider, based in Watsonville. Across the U.S., hospital real estate deals like the one in Watsonville have surged, leaving the facilities paying rent on property they once owned. Many such buyouts are being financed by Medical Properties Trust Inc. Even before these deals, called sale-leasebacks, some hospitals in small cities were struggling financially because they often served relatively poor populations. The deals have made Birmingham, Ala.-based MPT one of the biggest owners of U.S. hospital real estate, with hundreds of properties around the country and more than $20 billion of assets. Its strategy attracted many investors, who fueled MPT’s growth by buying its stock and bonds. The deals at times also have enabled private-equity giants to fund large payouts to their investors by tapping hospitals’ real estate equity. In other situations, the hefty financing that MPT offered drew in lesser-known investors like the group that bought the Watsonville hospital. By acquiring hospitals with MPT’s money, some investors have been able to avoid putting up much of their own cash. If the deal goes bad, the losses fall on the hospital and MPT.

Over the course of the pandemic, something remarkable happened in consumer credit: It got way less risky to lend. At the outset of the crisis, U.S. lenders started setting aside huge reserves anticipating that a surge in unemployment and economic stress could lead many debts to go unpaid. But after stimulus payments and tax credits from the government, private forbearance and restructuring programs, and a drop in nonessential spending, the wave of defaults didn’t come, according to a Wall Street Journal commentary. By the end of last year, U.S. banks’ charge-offs of credit card loans had dropped to the lowest rate since at least the mid-1980s — an annualized rate of 1.57% of balances, according to Federal Reserve data. But that was then. The average percentage of credit-card loans with payments at least 30 days past due — or delinquent, in credit parlance — rose sequentially in each of December, January and February, according to data on big U.S. issuers’ credit card loans tracked by Autonomous Research analyst Brian Foran. Typically delinquencies only jump in January after people have stretched their budgets over the holidays. This delinquency rate is still historically quite low at roughly 2.2%, or about a third below the level it was at going into the pandemic, according to Autonomous. That presents little immediate threat to lenders’ earnings, especially as many are still carrying relatively large set-asides for loan losses on their books. But indicators like these have been enough to mark a turning point in some investors’ minds, since they have been accompanied by a rapid rebound of borrowing and spending.

Major automakers are expected to report on Friday that first-quarter U.S. car and light truck sales fell sharply compared to a year ago, with more uncertainty ahead because of parts shortages, high fuel prices and rising interest rates, Reuters reported. J.D. Power and LMC Automotive forecast that January-March U.S. car and light truck sales will decline 18% from a year ago, and predict the annualized sales pace for March will slump to 12.7 million vehicles, down from 17.8 million a year ago. Cox Automotive said earlier this week first-quarter U.S. auto sales would be the weakest in a decade. Tesla Inc. could buck the downward trend. The world's most valuable automaker is expected to report its first quarter deliveries as soon as Friday, and Wall Street had been expecting an improvement from the fourth quarter figure of 308,650 vehicles. However, Tesla has had to shut down production at its Shanghai factory this week to comply with COVID-19 lockdowns. Two years after the first wave of COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns derailed the U.S. economy, automakers are still trying to find their balance. The spike in gasoline prices, propelled by the war in Ukraine and the worst inflation in 40 years, have rattled consumer confidence. Rising rates coupled with high pump prices have often been harbingers of recessions for the auto industry in the past. Consumer intentions to buy a new or used vehicle in the next six months have slumped in March for the second month in a row, and for used vehicles are at the lowest levels in 15 months, according to a survey released by the Conference Board this week.

Mall operator PREIT's February comparable sales at core malls hit an "all-time high" of $618 per square foot, according to a press release, Retail Dive reported. The company, which filed and emerged from bankruptcy in 2020, also said that over 60% of that portfolio had sales productivity of more than $550 per square foot. After filing for bankruptcy in 2020, PREIT recapitalized, grew its sales and cut its losses by nearly half. Its losses, though, still remained substantial at $135.9 million for 2021. "We've continued our recovery ahead of expectation, capitalizing on broad based momentum, and confirming that the work we've done in shaping our portfolio, replacing anchors and remerchandising has positioned [the] portfolio to perform," CEO and Chairman Joe Coradino told analysts earlier in March, according to a Seeking Alpha transcript. A massive shortfall in rent payments sent PREIT into chapter 11, along with its peer CBL Properties, as retailers worked through the financial impact of temporary store closures and lingering traffic declines during the early phases of the pandemic. For PREIT and other mall operators, the challenges of the pandemic followed years of decline in revenue as the mall's place in the U.S. continued to diminish through the past decade.

Nevada’s tourism economy is putting the coronavirus pandemic behind it, with regulators reporting a 12th straight month of $1 billion or more in casino house winnings statewide and the airport serving Las Vegas planning to add international service in April, the Associated Press reported. The Nevada Gaming Control Board on Wednesday reported the best February ever in casino winnings, at $1.1 billion, in the key marker of state economic health. The state reaped almost $59 million in casino taxes based on the figure, up more than 34% from a year ago. Harry Reid International Airport on Tuesday reported monthly passenger traffic more than doubled in February from a year ago, with 3.3 million arriving and departing passengers. That was down just 13.5% from the 3.8 million passengers tallied two years ago, in February 2020 — the last month before COVID-19 closed casinos and businesses for more than two months.

Federal health officials are dropping the warning they have attached to cruising since the beginning of the pandemic, leaving it up to vacationers to decide whether they feel safe getting on a ship, the Associated Press reported. Cruise-ship operators welcomed Wednesday’s announcement, which came as many people thought about summer vacation plans. An industry trade group said the move by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention validated measures that ship owners have taken, including requiring crew members and most passengers to be vaccinated against the virus. The CDC removed the COVID-19 “cruise ship travel health notice” that was first imposed in March 2020, after virus outbreaks on several ships around the world. However, the agency expressed reservations about cruising. “While cruising will always pose some risk of COVID-19 transmission, travelers will make their own risk assessment when choosing to travel on a cruise ship, much like they do in all other travel settings,” CDC spokesman Dave Daigle said in an email.

Job openings last month remained near record levels, and the number of workers voluntarily leaving their positions increased, the Labor Department said yesterday, the New York Times reported. The data, released as part of the agency’s monthly report on job openings, layoffs and quitting, serve as indicators of how much demand there is for workers in the U.S. economy and the extent to which employers are still struggling with labor shortages months after the economy began recovering from the pandemic’s worst damage. There were about 11.3 million job openings in February, essentially the same as the month before and down a little from a record in December, though the number of hires overall edged up by 263,000 last month, to about 6.7 million. After falling during the peak of COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020, the rates at which so-called prime-age workers — those aged 25 to 54 — are working or seeking work has rallied back to pre pandemic levels. Yet with the economy growing faster than in decades, demand for labor has outpaced the availability of workers — at least at the wages and benefits employers are offering. There are still roughly three million or so people who have not returned to the work force, according to the government data.

Consumer confidence went up in March despite inflation that has become a top worry for Americans. The Conference Board’s index found consumer confidence rose to 107.2 in a report yesterday, Bloomberg reported. However, March also saw an increase in concerns about inflation, which has hit at its highest level in decades, with consumers believing it could get as high as 7.9 percent, according to the report. In a Gallup poll, 59 percent said they worry a “great deal” about the cost of living, with inflation the No. 1 economic issue among respondents. The concern about the economy has become a problem for the Biden administration, as another poll found that only 35 percent of voters somewhat or strongly approve of the job the president is doing with the economy.

A group of 21 states led by Florida on Tuesday asked a U.S. judge to block a federal COVID-19 mandate requiring masks on airplanes and other forms of transportation, Reuters reported. The lawsuit is the latest in a series of recent legal challenges to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) public health order and Transportation Security Administration (TSA) directive that have been in place since February 2021 covering airports, trains, buses, ride-share vehicles and transit hubs. The administration of President Joe Biden said earlier this month it would extend the transportation mask requirements through at least April 18 and is reviewing if they should be extended again. The White House and CDC did not immediately comment. State attorneys general joining the lawsuit include Arizona, Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio, Utah and Virginia. On Wednesday, the chief executives of American Airlines, United Airlines, Delta Air Lines and other carriers urged Biden to end the airplane mask mandate, which has resulted in significant friction on airplanes. The Federal Aviation Administration says since January 2021, there have been a record 6,900 unruly passenger incidents reported — and 70% involved masking rules.