Coronavirus: The Hill and the Headlines, December 10 2020

In Washington:

• The Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) vaccine advisory panel voted to recommend that the FDA authorize the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for emergency use.  A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advisory committee will vote on Sunday on whether they will recommend the vaccine as the final step.  The FDA panel, made up of independent scientific experts, infectious disease doctors, and statisticians, began meeting at 9 a.m. this morning and voted in the evening. The meeting comes as a record 3,140 people died yesterday in the U.S. of the novel coronavirus.  So far, the U.K., Canada, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain have already granted emergency use.

• Washington and the rest of the country continue to see their optimism undulate up and down as Congressional leaders just can’t seem to pull it together and come to an agreement on a COVID-19 relief package.  Even though the $908 negotiators have made tremendous progress, many lawmakers are frustrated that Democratic and Republican leaders are spending more time trying to score points in the press rather than getting together to iron out their differences.  Republican leadership can’t seem to rally their caucus to get behind state and local aid in exchange for a short-term liability shield.  Unless Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) can get a majority of his caucus behind such a deal, there is little hope that he will bring the vote to the floor.   Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) said, "Take the $908 billion deal. Are you going to get all the Democratic votes? Probably not. Certainly not going to get all the Republican votes. But it will still pass. Put it on the damn floor."  McConnell himself is refusing to support the $908 billion deal being negotiated by many in his caucus. Yet, he is “committed to back” a $916 billion White House package that included state and local funding and liability relief.  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has already made one big step in retreating from a $2.2 billion relief bill that Democrats were pushing; she is also showing support for the $908 billion deal, but, she is not signaling any change of position on state and local aid.  Meanwhile, America waits to see if there is some way that the leaders can meet in the middle as the country continues to play guessing games and keep their optimism riding on the waves’ crest.

• On Thursday, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) introduced stand-alone legislation to provide a second round of stimulus checks. Hawley said his proposal mirrors the CARES Act’s provisions for $1,200 check for individuals who made up to $75,000. 

• The number of new applications for unemployment insurance surged last week to 853,000, a jump of more than 100,000 from the previous week, amid record-high coronavirus cases that are slowing economic growth, according to data released Thursday by the Labor Department. Another 427,609 people applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA), a program created to expand jobless benefits to contractors, gig workers, and others who do not typically qualify for traditional unemployment insurance. More than 19 million Americans were on some form of jobless aid as of November 21, according to the Labor Department.

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) official Charlotte Kent told Congress Monday that the CDC director allegedly ordered the destruction of a Trump administration email that sought changes to a scientific report on the coronavirus’s risk to children.  Kent told the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis that she was instructed to delete an August 8 email from Paul Alexander, then-scientific adviser to Michael Caputo, assistant secretary of public affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), seeking to interfere in a scientific report, according to excerpts of the interview released by the Democratic-led subcommittee. Kent said other officials told her that the instruction came from CDC Director Robert Redfield, though she did not speak directly to Redfield. In response, an HHS spokesperson said the subcommittee was mischaracterizing the interview with Kent and is “not operating in good faith” despite departmental efforts to comply with the investigation.

• The General Services Administration (GSA) will “thoroughly clean and disinfect” the White House following President Trump’s exit in January and before the incoming Biden administration moves in. Workers will disinfect furniture, doorknobs, handrails, light switches, and more. Health experts have criticized such deep cleanings as “hygiene theater” because coronavirus spreads primarily through airborne transmission rather than surfaces, on which it can survive for hours or days. GSA plans to deploy “disinfectant misting services” for lingering airborne droplets, however.

In the News:

• The United States set a new record for coronavirus deaths in a single day on Wednesday, with more than 3,054 people dying from the virus, according to The COVID Tracking Project. Over 106,000 people are currently hospitalized with the coronavirus, according to the Project, also a record. The country is averaging a staggering total of more than 200,000 new cases every day. 

• The COVID-19 virus was likely circulating in northern Italy as early as November 2019, three months before the first case was formally identified in what would become the European region hardest hit by the first wave of the pandemic. In a new report, researchers from the University of Milan and Memorial University of Newfoundland said a swab taken from a four-year-old boy who lived near Milan showed a 100 percent match for an early strain of the virus that broke out in Wuhan, China. The boy showed his first symptoms on November 21.

Authored by Ivan Zapien