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March 3, 2021 - Brief Issue 161

The Coronavirus Daily Brief is a daily news and analysis roundup edited by New America’s International Security Program and Arizona State University.

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Top Headlines

U.S. To Receive Vaccines For All Adults By End of May, Says Biden (Health & Science)

U.S. C.D.C. To Release Public Health Guidelines For Vaccinated Individuals (Health & Science)

Only 4% of U.S. Children Live in Counties That Should Return to School Under C.D.C. Reopening Guidelines (Health & Science)

EU Considers Emergency Approvals for Vaccines (Around the World)

Pope Francis to Visit Iraq Despite Pandemic (Around the World)

Brazil’s Crisis Should Serve as a Warning (Around the World)

Caribbean Nations Look to Vaccines to Save Economies (Around the World)

Kenya Receives 1M Vaccines from COVAX (Around the World)

Senate Democrats Split Over Unemployment Benefits (U.S. Government)

Major Senate Democrats Push for Recurring Relief Checks (U.S. Government)

Target Sales Grows as Rivals Have More Mixed Results (U.S. Economy)

Dolly Parton Receives Moderna Vaccine that She Helped Fund (U.S. Society)

Health & Science

There have been 28,719,627 coronavirus cases in the United States, and 516,608 people have died (Johns Hopkins). The United States has conducted 353,137,885 tests and distributed 102,353,940 vaccine doses, with 78,631,601 doses administered (U.S. CDC). Worldwide, there have been 114,795,908 confirmed cases of coronavirus, with 2,550,334 deaths. At least 64,938,670 people have recovered from the virus.

U.S. To Receive Vaccines For All Adults By End of May, Says Biden

President Joe Biden announced on Tuesday that enough vaccines will be delivered to the U.S. by the end of May to vaccinate all American adults, two months earlier than previously anticipated. “This country will have enough vaccine supply for every adult in America by the end of May. … That’s progress,” Biden said at a White House press conference. News of the accelerated rollout came the same day that it was reported that the pharmaceutical firm Merck will help Johnson & Johnson manufacture its single-shot vaccine, which was approved for emergency use by the Food and Drug Administration on Saturday (AP, Washington Post). 

It was reported earlier in the day that the federal government helped facilitate the deal between Merck and Johnson & Johnson, which are ordinarily fierce competitors in the pharmaceutical industry. Both have encountered problems in the fight against the coronavirus, with Johnson & Johnson having fallen behind on production while Merck failed to develop a vaccine in the first place. Under the arrangement, Merck will use one of its U.S. facilities to provide “fill-finish” services, the final stage of production during which the vaccine is physically inserted into vials and packaged for market. A second Merck facility will be devoted entirely to vaccine manufacturing, with senior Biden administration officials saying that the added production site could double the supply of what Johnson & Johnson could have produced independently (Washington Post). The first doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine were administered in Ohio on Tuesday, with only four million of the originally pledged 12 million doses on hand (Politico, CNN).

Biden also used his Tuesday address to call for accelerated vaccinations for teachers and school workers, adding that states ought to plan to administer at least one dose to all grade school employees by the end of March. "As yet another move to help accelerate the safe reopening of schools, let's treat in-person learning like an essential service that it is. And that means getting essential workers who provide that service — educators, school staff, child care workers — get them vaccinated immediately. They're essential workers,” said Biden (NPR).

C.D.C. To Release Public Health Guidelines For Vaccinated Individuals

Politico reported this week that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expected to release safety guidelines this week for fully vaccinated individuals. Under the new guidance, according to two senior Biden administration officials, Americans will get their first sense of how they can safely take steps to resume non-distanced social habits. The recommendations are expected to permit small, in-home social gatherings of fully-vaccinated people. They are likely to reflect comments made to reporters by top presidential advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci on Monday.

“I use the example of a daughter coming in from out of town who is doubly vaccinated, and a husband and wife doubly vaccinated, and maybe a next-door neighbor who you know are doubly vaccinated,” Fauci said. “Small gatherings in the home of people, I think you can clearly feel that the risk — the relative risk is so low that you would not have to wear a mask, that you could have a good social gathering within the home.”

However, the new advice is not expected to encourage easing of social distancing practices in public places. Mask-wearing will still be the norm, while further openings of bars, restaurants and other indoor gathering spots will not be encouraged even as some states ease restrictions. In an interview with Politico, Fauci said that the experience of last summer proved to be a warning against resuming normal patterns too hastily.  

“That’s a big lesson. In my mind, what occurred back last early summer, when we said, ‘okay, let's try and open up the country and open up the economy’, and we gave gateway guidelines ... there were two things about that that were problematic,” Fauci told Politico.

“The first was that the baseline level of daily infections at that time was really quite high. So you were starting off in a precarious situation," he continued. "The second problematic thing is that many of the states did not adhere to the reopening guidelines. The reason I go back to that story is that as we get the level of cases to be very low … and get more and more people vaccinated you're going to have to gradually pull back in a very measured way. You can't make it like a light switch.”

Texas Drops Most Coronavirus Restrictions

The Texas state government will implement the most expansive rollback of coronavirus public health restrictions yet implemented in the U.S., Governor Greg Abbott announced Tuesday. Contrary to federal guidance, the state of 29 million will remove mask mandates and allow businesses to operate at 100% capacity. “It is now time to open Texas 100%,” said Abbott, adding that the order will take effect on March 10. Under the new rules, local governments will be prohibited outright from implementing mask mandates. County judges, nonjudicial officials who function as the equivalent of county commissioners in Texas, may implement restrictions in areas where hospital bed capacity rises 15% above capacity for seven consecutive days, although they will be forbidden from decreasing business operating capacity to less than 50% (Reuters).

Abbot’s orders received immediate pushback from Texas Democrats. Judge Lia Hidalgo of Harris County, which is home to Houston, said: “This is not the time to promote more infections, more hospitalizations, to promote more deaths for the sake of political expediency.” Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner similarly accused the governor of ignoring public health to appeal to his political base. “"Maybe he's trying to appeal to a group that will find favor with saying 'take the mask down,’” said Turne. "But what about the rest of us?” (Chron).

The lifting of the mask mandate has also drawn pushback from the private sector. The Retail Industry Leaders Association trade association criticized the plan, with Vice President Jason Brewer saying it will “unfairly put retail employees back in the role of enforcing guidelines still recommended by the CDC and other public health advocates.” Retail giants Target Corp and Macy’s Inc both announced they would maintain their mask policies in their stores. Toyota, which maintains its U.S. headquarters in Plano, also said it would continue to require masks, as has General Motors, which employs about 13,500 people in the state. 

While Texas’ rollback measures are the most extreme nationwide, the governor’s orders arrived as other states and cities ease public health restrictions, often against federal advice. Restaurants in Massachusetts began operating at full capacity this week, while South Carolina has done away with its prohibitions on large public gatherings. Mississippi has also ended its mask mandate. Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, implored local governments to slow down the pace of the return to normalcy. “I know people are tired; they want to get back to life, to normal,” she said on Monday. “But we’re not there yet” (NYT).

Only 4% of U.S. Children Live in Counties That Should Return to School Under C.D.C. Reopening Guidelines

The New York Times reported Tuesday that only 4% of American children live in counties with coronavirus transmission rates low enough to allow full-time in-person teaching in elementary schools under Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (C.D.C.) guidelines. Under the federal recommendations, which are non-binding, full in-person learning should only take place in counties with fewer than 50 new cases per 100,000 people in a week and a seven-day positivity rate of less than 8%. Only one out of six counties nationwide meet this threshold, with most in sparsely-populated areas in western and midwestern states. Additional health measures, such as mask-wearing and six-foot distancing when possible, are still recommended.

Hybrid learning is recommended for areas with 50 to 100 new weekly cases per 100,000 people or a seven-day positivity rate of 8 to 10 percent. It is also recommended for all elementary schools in communities with even higher caseloads. The implementation of hybrid learning varies, with some schools rotating students between in-person and online learning. Other schools maintain full-time in-person learning for special needs students while the rest learn virtually full-time. When at school, six-foot separation is supposed to be maintained at all times. 

Decisions on school openings are made by states, which in turn often defer to local governments. Florida, Iowa, Texas and Arkansas have ordered all schools to open statewide despite federal guidance. Of those four states, only Iowa has a majority of counties falling under the C.D.C.’s criteria for full reopening. However, C.D.C. spokesperson Jasmine Reed objected to using the agency’s guidelines to categorize counties by recommendation level, adding that the criteria ought to be applied to each individual school community (NYT).

NIH Halts Blood Plasma Trial

The National Institute for Health (NIH) has stopped enrolling new patients in a convalescent blood plasma treatment trial for mild to moderate Covid-19 cases, the U.S. agency announced on Tuesday, citing a lack of promising results (Reuters). The trial, which enrolled 511 emergency room patients with underlying risk factors for the virus, neither significantly helped nor harmed the subjects, according to the findings of the independent Data and Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB). A total of 900 participants were expected to take part before NIH’s announcement (NIH).

The treatment involves taking donor plasma from people who have recovered from Covid-19 and infusing it into patients. Approved for emergency use by the Food and Drug Administration last summer, the hope was that the antibodies in the plasma would assist in recovery. While the therapy is not evidently dangerous, it has long faced skepticism from the scientific community regardless of symptom severity. Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former FDA commissioner, said in August that while the treatment met the criteria for emergency authorization, it did not appear to be a “home run.” In January, the international medical trial platform REMAP-CAP also halted a study into blood plasma infusions after finding no marked benefit in severely ill Covid-19 patients (CNBC).

Bonus Read: “Biden’s First Month of Covid-19 Response Marked by Larger Federal Role,” (WSJ).

Around the World

EU Considers Emergency Approvals for Vaccines

The European Commission said on Tuesday that it was considering using emergency approvals for Covid-19 vaccines as a faster alternative to the more rigorous authorizations that have been used so far (Reuters). The potential change comes as the EU’s executive arm and the drug regulator face increasing pressure for what many consider to be slow vaccine approvals that have contributed to a slow rollout of Covid-19 shots across the 27 nation bloc. Using emergency approvals would mean using a procedure that the EU had considered dangerous before and had been reserved for exceptional authorization at the national level of drugs for terminally ill patients, including cancer treatments. The national emergency approvals used previously force countries to take full responsibility if something goes wrong, whereas under the more rigorous marketing authorization, pharmaceutical companies remain liable. But the details are still being sorted out and it was not clear whether an EU-wide emergency authorization procedure would entail the same conditions needed or those that take place at the national level. “We are ready to reflect with the member states on all possible avenues to indeed accelerate the approval of the vaccines,” an EU Commission spokesman told a news conference after the matter was discussed earlier on Tuesday at a COVID-19 meeting with EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Pope Francis to Visit Iraq Despite Pandemic

Pope Francis will begin a four-day tour of Iraq this week, his first international trip since the coronavirus pandemic began. The tour of Iraq starts on Friday and will include six cities, meetings with religious and political leaders, and Mass in a soccer stadium where ten thousand socially distanced worshippers will gather. The pope says he wants to promote dialogue with Islam and show support for the country’s Christian minority (WSJ). Iraq is currently confronting a surge in coronavirus cases and the government imposed a curfew and a ban on public worship last month, though that ban will end just in time for the pope’s visit.

Brazil’s Crisis Should Serve as a Warning

Brazil is now battling a more contagious variant of the coronavirus, known as P.1., that preliminary studies suggest could reinfect people who have already recovered from other versions of the virus (NYT). On Tuesday, Brazil recorded over 1,700 Covid-19 deaths, the highest single-day death toll since the start of the pandemic. “The acceleration of the epidemic in various states is leading to the collapse of their public and private hospital systems, which may soon become the case in every region of Brazil,” the national association of health secretaries said in a statement. “Sadly, the anemic rollout of vaccines and the slow pace at which they’re becoming available still does not suggest that this scenario will be reversed in the short term.” Brazil hoped it had seen the worst of the outbreak last year but case numbers started rising again in September and in January, scientists discovered the new variant now known as P.1. The New York Times writes: “By the end of January, a study by government researchers found it was present in 91 percent of samples sequenced in the state of Amazonas. By the end of February, health officials had reported cases of the P.1 variant in 21 of 26 Brazilian states, but without more testing it is hard to gauge its prevalence.” Scientists and other government officials around the world are watching as Brazil struggles to make headway against the virus and new variants. Ester Sabino, an infectious disease researcher at the University of São Paulo who is among the leading experts on the P.1 variant, said other countries should take heed. “You can vaccinate your whole population and control the problem only for a short period if, in another place in the world, a new variant appears,” she said. “It will get there one day.”

Caribbean Nations Look to Vaccines to Save Economies

The Caribbean is turning to India and China for vaccines in hopes that the shots will revive the tourism industry sooner rather than later. India has sent vaccine doses to Barbados, the Dominican Republic, Antigua, and Barbuda (AP). China also sent doses of its Sinopharm vaccine to the Dominican Republic. Meanwhile, some of the nations in the Caribbean have reopened to tourism or tried to promote themselves as havens for remote workers, but the Covid-19 infection rates have been rising as a result.  “The rate of increase has been alarming,” said Dr. Joy St. John, executive director of the Trinidad-based Caribbean Public Health Agency. A record 31.5 million tourists to the Caribbean in 2019, but visits plummeted by an estimated 60% to 80% as the pandemic hit last year. “Many countries prefer hurricanes compared to what has happened with the pandemic,” said Vincent Vanderpool-Wallace, a former Bahamian tourism minister who also led the Caribbean Tourism Organization.

Kenya Receives 1M Vaccines from COVAX

On Wednesday Kenya received just over 1 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine through the global COVAX initiative (AP). The doses, manufactured by the Serum Institute of India, arrived in Nairobi where Kenyan Health Minister Mutahi Kagwe expressed optimism about stopping the spread of the coronavirus. “We have been fighting the pandemic with rubber bullets but what we have acquired today is equivalent, metaphorically speaking, to bazookas and machine guns,” Kagwe said. The vaccines will be used to inoculate 400,000 medical workers with the remaining doses going to other frontline workers, like teachers and police officers. Kenya has had more than 106,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus and more than 1,800 deaths since the start of the pandemic.

U.S. Government & Politics

Senate Democrats Split Over Unemployment Benefits 

As Senate Democrats prepare to begin debate on a Covid relief bill, potentially as soon as today, splits are emerging over the proper level of unemployment benefits (Politico). Politico writes, “Some moderate Democrats are calling for more narrow targeting aof the aid bill's unemployment benefits and stimulus checks, including cutting the weekly federal benefits the bill would add from $400 to $300 — while extending that money over a longer period of time. That debate is taking place roughly 24 hours before party leaders want the bill on the floor.” Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) stated regarding his opposition to currently proposed unemployment benefits, “Three hundred dollars is where we’ve been. It’s consistent with what we’ve been doing. It’s kind of hard to explain you’re getting a bump up now basically, when you’re ready to come off.” Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin signaled his opposition to the change but said that such narrower targeting “is being discussed.” Budget Committee Chairman Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) reiterated his support for the currently proposed level of support, stating, “the president believes, I believe, that the supplement should be $400.” On the other hand, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has signaled its support for the proposed narrowing of support.

Major Senate Democrats Push for Recurring Relief Checks

In a letter on Tuesday, ten Democratic Senators including the chairs of three committees that deal with economic issues, called for the provision of recurring relief checks as part of the Biden administration’s next spending bill (WaPo). The letter reads in part: “We urge you to include recurring direct payments and automatic unemployment insurance extensions tied to economic conditions in your Build Back Better long-term economic plan. This crisis is far from over, and families deserve certainty that they can put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads.” It was signed by Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-OR), Senate Budget Committee Chair Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and Senate Housing and Urban Affairs Committee Chair Sherrod Brown (D-OH).

Teachers Union Calls Newsom School Plan a “Recipe” for Structural Racism

On Monday, the United Teachers of Los Angeles, California’s largest teacher’s union, criticized Governor Gavin Newsom’s plan for reopening schools as “a recipe for propagating structural racism” (Politico). As we covered in a prior brief, Newsom proposed incentivizing reopening of younger grades via grants. UTLA President Cecily Myart-Cruz stated, “We are being unfairly targeted by people who are not experiencing this disease in the same ways as students and families are in our communities. If this was a rich person's disease, we would've seen a very different response. We would not have the high rates of infections and deaths.”

Bonus Read: “Inside Joe Biden’s Decision to Dive into the Amazon Union Drive,” (Politico). 

U.S. Economy

Target Sales Grows as Rivals Have More Mixed Results

On Tuesday, the retail giant Target reported that its sales grew 20% in 2020 even as many of its rivals had more mixed results amid the pandemic (WSJ). Target’s sales growth was greater than its past eleven years of growth combined. The growth is in part a result of the company’s long standing investment in online sales. The Wall Street Journal reports, “Target became more e-commerce-dependent because of the disruption. For the full fiscal year, 18% of sales came from digital channels, up from 8.8% a year earlier.” As the Journal previously reported and we covered in an earlier brief, other retailers have had mixed results. For example, Home Depot reported a 20% rise in revenue driven largely by home improvement projects amid the pandemic, Macy’s saw an almost 30% drop. 

Bonus Read: “Drive-Through Lanes Become Hotter Commodities in Pandemic,” (WSJ).

U.S. Society

Dolly Parton Receives Moderna Vaccine that She Helped Fund

The iconic country music star Dolly Parton was inoculated with the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine that she helped to fund by donating $1million to Vanderbilt University medical center in Nashville, TN (Guardian). “I’m so excited. I’ve been waiting a while,” the singer told fans in a video posted from the university. “I’m old enough to get it and I’m smart enough to get it. Parton added, “I just want to say to all of you cowards out there – don’t be such a chicken squat. Get out there and get your shot.”

Analysis & Arguments

The New York Times examines the issues surrounding the naming of Covid variants (NYT).

Oren Cass critiques the Biden and Romney family plans (NYT).

Amy Davidson Sorkin asks if we are finally winning against the pandemic (New Yorker).

 Readers can send in tips, critiques, questions, and suggestions to coronavirusbrief@newamerica.org.

The Brief is edited by David Sterman and Emily Schneider with Senior Editor Peter Bergen.

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