Coronavirus: The Hill and the Headlines, December 15 2020

In Washington:

• The bipartisan “908 negotiators” unveiled summaries and text of their $908 billion coronavirus relief proposal that has now been divided into two sections to allow the House and Senate to vote on the controversial and noncontroversial sections separately.   The proposal now consists of a $748 billion proposal, “The Bipartisan Emergency COVID Relief Act of 2020,” containing largely agreed-upon measures, including support for unemployment insurance, education, Payroll Protection Program (PPP) for small businesses.  The second $160 billion proposal, “Bipartisan State and Local Support and Small Business Protection Act of 2020,” separates off the two most contentious issues: liability protection for businesses in the pandemic and support for state and local governments. 

• House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) office tweeted that she spoke with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin for over an hour today about a COVID-19 and omnibus deal.  House and Senate leaders are meeting on Tuesday at 4 p.m. as they try to finalize a mammoth government funding bill and work out an agreement on coronavirus relief.  Secretary Mnuchin will be joining the meeting by phone.  The meeting comes as appropriators are hoping to file text of an agreement on an omnibus funding bill, which would keep the government open until Oct. 1, on Tuesday, setting up votes in the House as soon as Wednesday.

• On Tuesday, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) vowed that congress would not adjourn for the year until they passed a new stimulus plan during his weekly press conference.   McConnell reiterated his offer to drop liability protection from the deal if Democrats set aside their insistence on state and local funding. "We all know the new administration will be asking for yet another package," McConnell said. "It's not like we won't have another opportunity to debate the merits of liability reform and of state and local government in the very near future."

• Meanwhile, some senior Democrats are pulling back from insisting on immediate funding to state and local governments in order to pass a COVID-19 relief deal.   Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (IL) and Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) signaled they would support the $748 billion proposal.  

• The Supreme Court on Tuesday sided with houses of worship in Colorado and New Jersey that sought carve-outs from their states’ COVID-19 limits, the latest in a series of recent orders favoring religious challenges to health restrictions. The court ruled 6-3 in favor of a Colorado church that sought an exemption from state health orders. In a second case, the court sided with a New Jersey Catholic priest and a rabbi who sued over health orders put in place by Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy and state officials that imposed capacity limits at places of worship. 

• Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA) revealed Tuesday that he tested positive for COVID-19 late last month but has since recovered after quarantining. Calvert is the 15th member of Congress since the start of November alone to have tested positive for COVID-19. Thirty-six members of Congress have tested positive for the virus since March.

• The Food and Drug Administration staff has endorsed Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine in its report to the agency’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee.  The committee will be meeting this week and is expected to recommend the vaccine for emergency use authorization. If the FDA approves the vaccine, it would be the second vaccine to win emergency use and could be administered to the public as early as next week. 

• The FDA issued an emergency use authorization for the first over-the-counter COVID-19 test from Ellume, which is also authorized explicitly for individuals without symptoms.

• The nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci says the U.S. could see herd immunity by the end of the second quarter of 2021 depending on how efficiently the vaccine is rolled out and if enough people decide to become vaccinated. During an interview with MSNBC on Monday, Fauci said “I believe if we’re efficient about it and we convince people to get vaccinated, we can accomplish [herd immunity] by the end of the second quarter of 2021, namely by the end of the late spring early summer.”

• Vice President Mike Pence is expected to receive Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine by Friday, according to CNN citing sources close to Pence. It’s unclear if Pence will receive the vaccine before President Trump. White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Tuesday said that the President is open to receiving the vaccine, but did not say when it might happen. 

In the News:

• Scientists at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have found Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine to be safe and 94 percent effective at preventing severe cases of the virus. The evidence will be discussed during a panel meeting of independent experts on Thursday.  Based on the track taken by the vaccine manufactured by Pfizer and BioNTech, the FDA could grant emergency use authorization for the Moderna vaccine as soon as Friday. 

• Nurse Sandra Lindsay, who is thought to be the first American to receive the COVID-19 vaccine outside of a clinical trial, said she is not experiencing any side-effects after receiving the inoculation on Monday. “I feel great this morning, no muscle pain, no aches, no maladies, no fever. Mild soreness at the site, on a scale of 1 to 10 it’s a 1,” Lindsay told "The View" on Tuesday. 

• Walgreens is planning to place freezers that can maintain the temperature needed to store the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine in about 100 sites across the U.S.  Walgreens’ senior vice president of pharmacy and healthcare Rick Gates told CNN on Tuesday "You need to think about the Pfizer vaccine, which does have more challenging storage requirements, but that's something that's just – we've had to plan for. So we are putting out ... ultra-cold freezers in about 100 sites across the US, and then dry ice as well.”  

• About a quarter of Americans said they will “definitely not” get the coronavirus vaccine, according to a new poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation. The survey found concerns about possible side effects to be the most common reason for hesitancy, with 59 percent of people who said they did not intend to take it citing that as the main reason. Fifty-five percent of those saying they would not take the vaccine mentioned distrust the government would ensure the vaccine is safe, 53 percent cited concerns the drug is too new and 51 percent expressed worries that the development process has been politicized.

Authored by Ivan Zapien