Coronavirus: The Hill and the Headlines, January 4 2021

Your guide to the latest Hill developments, news narratives, and media headlines from Hogan Lovells Government Relations and Public Affairs practice.

In Washington:

  • Welcome back and to the new 117th Congress. The House of Representatives met Sunday to swear in new members of Congress and elect Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to be the Speaker of the House for the fourth time (216-206).  Pelosi will be responsible for guiding President-elect Joe Biden’s agenda, including further COVID-19 relief, through the House in the next congressional session.  The job will not be easy considering that the House has the slimmest margins in decades. 
  • The Trump administration has only been able to vaccinate 4.2 million U.S. citizens by the end of December, far below the 20 million it had promised.  Moncef Slaoui, chief adviser Operation Warp Speed, acknowledges that the pace of getting the vaccine in the arms of citizens needs to be accelerated and improved.  Slaoui said that 17.5 million doses of vaccines have been shipped to states, but also revealed that the administration is now depending on states and localities to distribute their allocations of vaccines rather than being involved on a national level in administering the vaccine. 
  • National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease Director Dr. Anthony Fauci said that there is no reason that the U.S. can’t immunize 1 million people a day now.  President-elect Joe Biden has pledged to administer 100 million shots of the vaccine within his first 100 days in office.  On ABC’s “New Week'' Fauci noted that understandably, there had been a “couple of glitches” but noted the improvement that in the last 72 hours, they've gotten 1.5 million doses into people's arms, which is an average of about 500,000 a day.
  • The Trump administration is continuing discussions with Moderna about the possibility of speeding up the COVID-19 vaccination process by giving people only half the recommended dose, a top adviser said Sunday.  Moncef Slaoui, the chief science adviser for Operation Warp Speed, said there is evidence that giving people between the ages of 18 and 55 two half-doses "induces identical immune response" to the normal full 100 microgram dose. On CBS's "Face the Nation," Slaoui said the strategy would result in “immunizing double the number of people with the doses we have." But media reports note that Slaoui has also strongly advocated against the idea that people need only one shot instead of the current two-dose regimen, so it's not clear how giving people two half-doses would be different. 
  • Rep. Kay Granger (TX), the top Republican on the House Appropriations Committee, announced on Monday that she tested positive on Sunday for COVID-19 after arriving in Washington for the start of the new Congress. Granger has received her first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine that the Capitol physician began distributing to members of Congress last month. (COVID-19 vaccines require two doses for effectiveness.) Granger is not feeling symptoms according to her spokesperson.  On December 29, 2020, just a week before he was to take office, Congressman-elect Luke Letlow died of COVID-19.
  • Due to COVID-19 and to limit the large gathering of crowds, the Biden Inauguration won’t get a traditional inaugural parade down Pennsylvania Avenue after he takes the oath of office, but he will get a presidential escort to the White House.  The inaugural committee will be hosting a televised “virtual parade across America” on Inauguration Day.

In the News:

  • COVID-19 has now killed over 352,000 Americans according to data from Johns Hopkins University. U.S. cases now top 20 million. Globally there are 1.8 million deaths and about 85 million total cases.
  • Drug manufacturer Moderna will increase its vaccine production from 500 million doses to 600 million for the U.S. for 2021, and hopes ultimately to produce one billion doses in total this year, the company announced on Monday. Previously, the company committed to 500 million doses for U.S. distribution. Moderna says it anticipates roughly 200 million doses will be available to Americans by the second quarter. As of today, Moderna has supplied the U.S. government with roughly 18 million doses of their COVID-19 vaccine.
  • On Monday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that England is closing all schools and imposing a strict national lockdown. Scottish officials also announced a host of new lockdown measures as the United Kingdom continues to grapple with a new, more infectious strain of COVID-19. The BBC reported that First Minister Nicola Sturgeon's government will close houses of worship, group exercise classes, and other places where in-person gatherings occur, while schools will revert to online classes. The new measures also include a stay-at-home order directing most workers to work from home.
  • India yesterday granted emergency approval to its first vaccines — Oxford-AstraZeneca and homegrown Covaxin — as it takes the first steps in undertaking an unprecedented immunization program for the country of more than 1.3 billion people.

 

 

Authored by Ivan Zapien

Contacts
Ivan Zapien
Partner
Washington, D.C.
Shelley Castle
Legislative Specialist
Washington, D.C.

 

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