Archives for March 2021

BALTIMORE (AP) — To pay out his coronavirus relief package, President Joe Biden must spend an average of $3.7 billion every day for the rest of this year. That’s $43,000 every second of every day until midnight chimes on 2022.

For the amount of time that readers took to reach this sentence, Biden needs to disburse nearly $800,000 to stay on track.

That’s according to Congressional Budget Office estimates, and even then, the Biden administration would still have plenty of the $1.9 trillion to spend in later years as a vaccinated country battles back to economic health.

The president signed the aid package into law Thursday without a comprehensive plan in place to distribute all of the funds, which will be a core focus of the administration in coming weeks.

The level of spending is a testament to the complexity of addressing a disease that seeped so widely across the nation in less than a year, and the economic pain that it has wrought.

“It’s taxpayer money that you want to put out fairly, but you also want to put out fast,” said Jack Smalligan, a senior policy fellow at the Urban Institute and a former White House budget official.

Some spending, such as cash transfers, can occur at speed.

The Biden administration already announced that it will send the $1,400 in direct checks — a total of about $400 billion–starting this weekend. The administration also will continue the enhanced jobless aid for the 20.1 million Americans who are collecting some form of the benefits. Both the direct checks and jobless aid were part of past COVID aid packages that totaled roughly $4 trillion, meaning the government has systems in place to distribute the money.

But other elements are trickier.

There is $130 billion for K-12 schools to hire teachers, upgrade ventilation systems and make other improvements so that in-person classes can resume. Universities are eligible for $40 billion. Separately, $30 billion in housing aid is available. And there is about $120 billion for vaccine distribution and coronavirus testing, among other public health expenses.

The White House said the billions for schools would “begin” to be distributed this month by the Education Department.

But some funds could take time to distribute, since government agencies with their normal spending can take six to nine months to release funds through competitive grants or an application process. Schools and state and local governments also might spread out spending to well after most of the country is vaccinated.

“A fair process can inherently take longer because of the checks and balances and the internal reviews,” Smalligan said. “Having the money flow out quickly and then having state and local government spend the money over the next two fiscal years is probably responsible on their part. You want to be hiring a teacher not for a month but for years.”

The Treasury Department is planning how to best distribute roughly $350 billion in state and local aid. But it hasn’t finalized a plan and is consulting with governors, mayors and other officials.

“Our Treasury team is going to work to get this aid out as in the quickest way possible – and the one that produces the greatest impact,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said at a Tuesday speech for the National League of Cities. “To do that, we’re going to need your input and advice.”

The Biden package also introduces about $140 billion in temporary tax credits. This includes an expanded child tax credit that would pay out monthly, rather than once a year. Parents with incomes below $150,000 could receive at least $250 a month per child beginning in July.

“The real troubles are going to show up in these new tax credit programs: Can the IRS administer this new monthly payment to tens of millions of American families?” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the center-right American Action Forum and a former director of the Congressional Budget Office.

Holtz-Eakin said the error rates on these tax credit programs tend to be high, since people move to new addresses, earnings change and the IRS might not have the correct ages for children. He noted that about a quarter of payments for the existing earned income tax credit that go to working parents are in error.

However, he also noted that there are few economic risks to Biden in terms of how the money gets released, since the economy was already poised to expand swiftly at the strongest rate in at least two decades.

Holtz-Eakin said the successful distribution of the funds would really influence two goals that he views as tangential to pandemic relief. First is the reduction in child poverty promoted by the Biden team through the tax credits and other aid. But secondly, the assorted child tax credits will expire and that puts pressure on Republican lawmakers to not block their extension before the 2022 elections.

That pressure could help Democrats in their push to expand narrow majorities in the House and Senate.

“It’s a clear political trap that they’re trying to set up,” Holtz-Eakin said.

But the spending in the Biden package also reflects how much has changed after the nation went into lockdown a year ago. Back then, the rapid aid was needed because of the mass layoffs as businesses shuttered. Now, money is needed to accelerate the recovery because vaccines are available.

“There is a light at the end of the tunnel,” said Kathleen McKiernan, an economics professor at Vanderbilt University. “Biden’s plan targets areas of need, including vaccine distribution and state and local government aid, which will take time but will help the economy bounce back after the virus is controlled.”

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LONDON (AP) — Unlike lead character Meredith, “Grey’s Anatomy” is not fighting for its life.

It is the most-watched entertainment series for the season to date among young adults on Thursday night and resumes season 17 this week. It has not been announced whether there will be a season 18.

The series — which follows the staff of a Seattle hospital — has provided life support for its audience, whether it’s an emotional outlet or career guidance.

During the pandemic, it also entertained people stuck inside, re-watching or discovering it for the first time. Viewers have gathered on social media to discuss love, life or death plotlines from recent and more older seasons.

Chandra Wilson, an original cast member, noticed this trend and has been viewing old episodes herself — with her daughter.

“If it was up to her, we’d have been done with 16 seasons in 16 days,” she laughs. “I’m new to this whole binging thing.”

Watching old episodes has given her daughter the chance to pass verdict on the similarities between Wilson and her character, Dr. Miranda Bailey.

“I always say that we just really are different people for so many reasons, the way we talk, how we think, what we say to people,” explains Wilson. “But from my daughter’s perspective, she would say, ‘no that’s you, that’s you Ma.’”

Something that hasn’t changed during her 16 years as Bailey — and often as a director on the show — is the influence of her character.

Bailey is a successful Black female surgeon, who has coped with mental health issues yet takes no nonsense from anyone.

This fictional character has provided real life career options for viewers.

Since the first season of the ABC series created by Shonda Rimes — Krista Vernoff is the current showrunner — “Grey’s Anatomy” has received mail from people inspired to pursue medical careers.

“They tell us about where they are in residency or where they are in med school or are or, you know, just that this door has opened up for them, but particularly women of color that let me know before I saw a Miranda Bailey on television, that I hadn’t even thought of that for myself.”

Letters have been sent by surgeons, general practitioners and nurses.

“If that’s the service that we have provided with all these seasons, then we will take it, because it’s just amazing,” she adds.

An added responsibility in 2020-2021 is the portrayal of the pandemic.

“Grey’s Anatomy,” more than other U.S. medical drama, demonstrated the toll of COVID-19 on patients, health workers and the public in storylines across the first half of season 17. Bailey dealt with loss after she struggled to keep her parents safe.

“At the time that the episode aired where Miranda lost her mom, we hadn’t had like a national day of grieving yet. We hadn’t really been able to mourn yet as a country, as a community.” says Wilson.

“So the response that that we got right away was, ‘this happened to me and I haven’t had a chance to cry yet. Thank you for giving me a place I could go to cry’.”

When the show went on hiatus in December, Ellen Pompeo’s Meredith Grey was on a ventilator fighting the coronavirus. Losing consciousness has led Grey to a dream state, where she’s met long dead characters — including her husband, Dr. Derek Shepherd (Patrick Dempsey) and Dr. George O’Malley (T.R. Knight) — on a beach.

As it picks up this week, it’s expected she’ll still be ill.

Could they kill off Meredith and end the series this year?

Pompeo’s contract is up and there’s no word on if “Grey’s Anatomy” will survive long enough to tie up long-running storylines and say a proper goodbye to the beloved characters in a world beyond COVID-19.

Wilson says that if it was the final season, there should be a lot of fanfare.

“I think after 17 seasons, our show deserves the biggest celebration, end, final season ever,” she said.

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UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations chief is criticizing the “many examples of vaccine nationalism and vaccine hoarding” as well as side deals with COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers that undermine access to all people in the world.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement Thursday marking one year since the U.N. World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic that “the global vaccination campaign represents the greatest moral test of our times.”

Ensuring that all people are vaccinated — and “many low-income countries have not yet received a single dose” — is essential to restart the global economy “and help the world move from locking down societies to locking down the virus,” he said.

Guterres reiterated his call for COVID-19 vaccines to be seen as “a global public good.”

“The world needs to unite to produce and distribute sufficient vaccines for all, which means at least doubling manufacturing capacity around the world,” he said. “That effort must start now.”

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THE VIRUS OUTBREAK:

— AP poll: 1 in 5 in US lost someone close to them in pandemic

— A year after declaring a pandemic, World Health Organization is struggling to fight vaccine nationalism and to keep up with the rapidly evolving science around COVID-19

— Four former US presidents and first ladies urge getting shots in ad

— Austria targets one hard-hit region with mass vaccinations to fight virus variant first found in South Africa

— Follow AP’s pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic, https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-vaccine and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak

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HERE’S WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING:

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden will use his first prime-time address on Thursday night to announce that he is directing states to make all American adults eligible for a coronavirus vaccine no later than May 1.

That’s according to two senior administration officials who briefed reporters ahead of Biden’s evening address on the one year anniversary of the pandemic. The officials say the president will also say that there is a good chance Americans will be able to safely gather in small groups by July 4.

Biden is also expected to stress that the “fight is far from over.” But he’ll say the nation will be in a “far better place” by the Independence Day holiday if Americans wear masks, follow public health guidelines and get vaccinated when it is their turn. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to keep the focus on the president’s address.

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WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden is planning to announce during his prime-time address Thursday night that he’ll deploy 4,000 additional U.S. troops to support coronavirus vaccination efforts. He’s also vastly expanding the pool of people who are eligible to serve as vaccinators.

That’s according to a senior administration official who briefed reporters ahead of Biden’s address to the nation. The official says the president will also announce plans to double the number of pharmacies participating in the vaccination program, expand mobile operations to vaccinate people in communities that have been hard-hit by the virus, and double the number of federally run mass vaccination centers.

There are currently 2,000 active duty troops supporting vaccination efforts around the country.

The official says the White House plans to detail plans on Friday to expand who can administer shots. Dentists, paramedics, physician assistants, veterinarians, and medical students will become eligible to administer vaccinations under the new guidance.

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WELLINGTON, New Zealand __ New Zealand has removed the remaining coronavirus restrictions on the city of Auckland after containing a small outbreak.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced Friday the city of 1.6 million would join the rest of the country in having no restrictions other than an ongoing requirement to wear masks on public transport and planes.

After a community outbreak of 15 cases last month, Auckland was placed first into a three-day lockdown and later into a weeklong lockdown. Since the end of the second lockdown Sunday, the city had continuing restrictions on crowd sizes.

New Zealand has adopted a zero-tolerance approach to the virus and eliminated community spread.

“I know everybody in our largest city will be looking forward to a weekend with fewer restrictions, with life feeling mostly back to normal,” Ardern said. “And Auckland deserves that. Once again, the city has stepped up.”

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AUSTIN, Texas — Acting on his threat, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Austin and Travis County officials on Thursday over their decision to continue requiring mask-wearing in public.

Paxton had threatened a suit after the local officials decided Tuesday to exempt the city and county from Gov. Greg Abbott’s lifting of the state’s mask mandate Wednesday.

In announcing their opt-out Tuesday from Abbott’s order, Austin Mayor Steve Adler and Travis County Judge Andy Brown said they were merely enforcing the COVID-19 prevention rules made by Dr. Mark Escott, medical director and health authority for the city and county, as they contend state law provided.

“Judge Brown and I will fight to defend and enforce our local health officials’ rules for as long as possible using all the power and tools available to us,” Adler said in a statement. “We promised to be guided by the doctors, science and data as concerns the pandemic and we do everything we can to keep that promise.”

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LAS VEGAS — Workers in the key Las Vegas restaurant, hospitality and casino industry were told Thursday they can get a coronavirus vaccine.

State COVID-19 response officials issued an order immediately adding “frontline commerce and service industries” in Clark County to an eligibility list that started in December with doctors and first responders and has added teachers, government and community support employees.

People 65 and older became eligible for vaccinations last month.

In a statement, Nevada Health Response said plans “by next week” could allow people at least 55 years old with underlying health conditions to begin booking vaccination appointments at pharmacies, along with people with disabilities and the homeless.

Thursday’s order came after state COVID-19 officials acknowledged this week that some vaccination appointment slots were going unused at the two biggest Las Vegas-area vaccination sites.

Each site can deliver up to 4,000 doses per day, but the chief health officer at the Southern Nevada Health District said neither was regularly drawing 3,000 appointments a day.

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OLYMPIA, Wash. – The Seattle Mariners, Seattle Sounders and OL Reign will soon be able to welcome a limited number of fans to the stadium when they open their seasons, as the state prepares to move into a third phase of a COVID-19 economic reopening plan announced by Washington Gov. Jay Inslee.

The allowed 25% seating capacity for spectators — who must be physically distanced and wearing masks — comes a year after Inslee announced a ban on at sporting events as the pandemic took hold. The same capacity of spectators will be allowed at high school sports, motorsports, rodeos and other similar outdoor events that have permanent seating.

Expanded spectator capacity for high school and youth sports will start March 18, while the remainder will take effect on March 22, when all of the state’s 39 counties will move to a newly created Phase 3.

Opening day for the Mariners is April 1, while the Sounders start their season April 16. OL Reign of the National Women’s Soccer League start May 15.

Under Phase 3, all indoor spaces — including indoor dining at restaurants, indoor fitness centers, and retail — can increase capacity from 25% to 50%. Larger events like concerts and graduation ceremonies will also be OK since up to 400 people will be allowed to gather for indoor and outdoor activities as long as physical distancing and masking are enforced.

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BATON ROUGE, La. — Louisiana will let family and friends begin seeing inmates in-person again at the state’s prisons.

Thursday’s announcement from the Department of Corrections comes a year after suspending visits at prisons because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The department says it will phase in visitation starting Saturday at some facilities. The move comes as Gov. John Bel Edwards has loosened his COVID-19 restrictions.

Prison visitors will have to follow social distancing guidelines, wear a face covering and won’t be able to have contact with the inmate. Visits must be scheduled in advance, and they’ll be handled on a rotating schedule by dorm or unit.

The new visitation rules don’t yet cover lawyers seeking to see their clients. The department said it’s working on plans to resume face-to-face visits with attorneys.

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GAITHERSBURG, Md. — Another COVID-19 vaccine is getting closer to the finish line, as Novavax said Thursday its shot prevented hospitalizations and deaths in studies in Britain and South Africa where mutated versions of the virus are spreading.

In a study of 15,000 people in Britain, the Novavax vaccine was about 90% effective overall against mild, moderate or severe COVID-19, the company said. Of 106 illnesses confirmed, 10 were among people given the vaccine and 96 among people given dummy shots.

Only five of the illnesses were severe, all in the placebo group. Four of those were caused by an easier-to-transmit coronavirus variant first discovered in Britain. Novavax determined the vaccine was 96% effective against symptomatic illness caused by the original virus — and 86% effective against that mutated version.

In South Africa, an even more worrisome variant is spreading widely. Novavax studied nearly 3,000 people there, some who have HIV. The company said its vaccine was 55% effective against symptomatic COVID-19 in HIV-negative volunteers. Like in Britain, the only severe illnesses occurred in study participants given dummy shots.

“The bigger picture is our vaccine works against variants,” said Novavax CEO Stanley Erck.

Erck said he expected to file an application with British health authorities early in the second quarter for widespread use of the vaccine The company also is awaiting results from a 30,000-person U.S. study.

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UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations Population Fund says new data indicate that nearly 12 million women in 115 countries lost access to family planning services as a result of disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic over the past year.

The fund which now calls itself the U.N. sexual and reproductive health agency, said the data released Thursday indicate that the lack of family planning led to 1.4 million unintended pregnancies.

Natalia Kanem, executive director of the fund known as UNFPA, said: “We must ensure that women and girls have uninterrupted access to life-saving contraceptives and maternal health medicines.”

“Pregnancies don’t stop for pandemics, or any crisis,” she said in a statement. “The devastating impact that COVID-19 has had on the lives of millions of women and girls in the past year underscores just how vital it is to ensure the continuity of reproductive health services.”

UNFPA said that in the 115 low- and middle-income countries studied, women faced an average 3.6 month disruption in their family planning services, with the worst disruptions largely concentrated in April and May 2020, soon after the World Health Organization declared a pandemic.

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BUCHAREST, Romania — Romanian authorities on Thursday decided to halt the usage of a remaining batch of AstraZeneca vaccines that have already been administered to at least 77,000 people in 22 counties across the country.

The decision to stop the administration of the remaining 4,257 doses of the total 81,600 ABV2856 AstraZeneca batch, the same batch that Italy stopped using after two people who were vaccinated died, was taken out of “extreme precaution,” Romania’s National Committee For The Vaccination Activities Against COVID-19 said in a statement.

The vaccination committee also said that there is “no scientific argument” at this stage to prevent the usage of the ABV2856 batch and that it was a decision taken on the basis of events that unfolded in Italy.

Romania has so far recorded more than 845,000 COVID-19 infections, 21,252 people have died, and it has administered almost 2 million vaccinations.

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OKLAHOMA CITY — Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt said Thursday that he is lifting coronavirus restrictions statewide as more people are receiving vaccinations and the number of new cases and hospitalizations decline.

“There will be no statewide restrictions on events for Oklahomans,” Stitt said. “I’m also removing a requirement to wear masks inside state buildings … wearing a mask should be a personal decision based on your circumstances.”

State health commissioner Dr. Lance Frye said more than 1.3 million people in Oklahoma have received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine.

The seven-day rolling average of new cases in Oklahoma has declined from 736 per day on Feb. 23 to 643 on Tuesday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The state health department reported 288 hospitalizations, down from a record 1,994 on Jan. 5.

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LISBON, Portugal — Portuguese nursery and elementary schools and hair salons will reopen next week under the government’s plan for emerging from a two-month lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The easing of restrictions will be staggered, and most limits will remain in place until after Easter, Prime Minister António Costa told a late evening press conference Thursday.

The plan covers a seven-week period of cautious and gradual reopening, Costa said, with restaurants and cafes operating close to normal only after May 3.

Costa said the plan will be reassessed every two weeks to see whether the measures bring a new surge of COVID-19 cases.

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ROME — A U.N. epidemiologist who publicly denounced the World Health Organization’s withdrawal of a report on Italy’s coronavirus response has resigned, citing the “unsustainable situation” he faced as a whistleblower.

Francesco Zambon said Thursday his resignation was effective March 31. He declined further comment other than to say it was “humanly and professionally” impossible for him to continue on.

Zambon had filed an internal ethics complaint with the WHO in May after he said he was pressured by a senior WHO official to falsify data to obscure that Italy hadn’t updated its influenza pandemic preparedness plan since 2006. Zambon refused, and the report eventually was published saying Italy’s initial response to the outbreak was “improvised, chaotic and creative.”

The WHO pulled the report from its website on May 14, a day after it went up, and never republished it.

The scandal over the report’s withdrawal made headlines in Italy amid suggestions that WHO spiked it to spare the Italian government criticism, embarrassment and liability.

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WASHINGTON — The White House says the $1,400 direct payments for most Americans funded by the American Rescue Plan will start showing up in bank accounts as early as this weekend.

Press secretary Jen Psaki says the government will make the first direct deposits this weekend. She says payments will continue throughout the next several weeks.

President Joe Biden signed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan in the Oval Office on Thursday.

Besides the $1,400 direct payments to individuals, the plan includes money to help distribute coronavirus vaccines, provide relief to homeowners and renters, help reopen schools, provide aid to state and local governments, and an expansion of the child tax credit, among other features.

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