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Biden announces plan to get booster shots to 100m Americans amid Omicron arrival in US
Biden announces plan to get booster shots to 100m Americans amid Omicron arrival in USPresident lays out pandemic battle plan for the winter months, including expanded pharmacy availability for vaccines Joe Biden announced new actions to combat the coronavirus in the US, including a nationwide campaign encouraging vaccine boosters, an expansion of at-home tests and tighter restrictions on international travel.Buffeted by the emergence of the Omicron variant and a political backlash from Republicans, the US president visited the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, on Thursday and laid out a pandemic battle plan for the winter months.“My plan pulls no punches,” Biden said “It is a plan that should unite us.”US expected to require stricter testing protocols for international travelersRead moreBiden announced steps to ensure that the nearly 100 million eligible Americans who have not yet received their booster shot do so as soon as possible, the White House said. There is new urgency to the effort after the first US case of the Omicron variant of Covid-19 was identified in California on Wednesday and a second one in Minnesota on Thursday.The president pledged to expand pharmacy availability during December while pharmacy partners send millions of texts, calls and emails to eligible customers with information on how to schedule an appointment or walk in for a booster shot.There will also be a public education campaign to encourage adults to get boosters, with a particular focus on the elderly. It will feature paid advertising across multiple channels, engagement with community organisations and media campaigns.The fight against the coronavirus in the US has politically divided the country with Republicans often seeking to undermine efforts to mandate public health policies around masks and vaccines.Biden directly took on the politicization of health policy, calling it a “sad commentary” on the state of politics in the US. He said his new measures should appeal to all Americans. “This is a moment we can put the divisiveness behind us, I hope,” he said.But, in addressing the threat from the Omicron variant, Biden threw a veiled punch at the often chaotic record of his predecessor, Donald Trump, whose efforts to combat the coronavirus were often marked by inconsistencies, quack cures and conspiracy theories. “We are going to fight this variant with science and speed, not chaos and confusion,” he said.Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to Biden on Covid-19, told reporters at the White House on Wednesday that boosting was “very important”, particularly when considering the rise in antibodies following a third dose.He added: “Even though we don’t have a lot of data on it, there’s every reason to believe that kind of increase that you get with the boost would be helpful at least in preventing severe disease of a variant like Omicron.”The emergence of Omicron has demonstrated the tenacity of the virus, which continues to drag down Biden’s political fortunes. Voters are divided on his handling of the pandemic, with 47% approving and 49% disapproving, according to a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll.But the White House defended his record, for example by pointing out that when he came into office more than half of schools were closed, where today 99% are fully open and in person. On Thursday, the president will unveil actions to get more children aged five and older vaccinated.These include the launch of hundreds of family vaccination clinics across the country, offering a “one-stop shop” of first shots for parents, teenagers and children, and boosters for those eligible. There will be “family vaccination days” with hundreds of community health centres across the country hosting family vaccination clinics throughout December.Biden also set out a plan to ensure that Americans have access to free at-home testing. More than 150 million people with private insurance will be able to get at-home tests reimbursed; for those not covered, at-home tests will be distributed through health centres and rural clinics.With the threat posed by the Omicron variant still uncertain, early next week the US will tighten pre-departure testing protocols by requiring all inbound international travellers to test within one day of departure, regardless of nationality or vaccination status.In a briefing call with reporters, a senior administration official said: “We have really strengthened our international travel system pretty dramatically over the last month or so.“We believe that tightening that testing requirement for pre-departure will help catch more potential cases of people who may be positive when they fly into the country and so now is the right time to do it, and we can implement it very quickly.”On domestic flights, the official added, “the masking requirement is in place already and in fact we will be extending that requirement from January all the way until mid-March”.The pandemic has killed almost 780,000 people in the US. Nearly 60% of Americans are fully vaccinated. This week the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued updated guidance recommending that every adult get a booster.TopicsUS newsJoe BidenBiden administrationCoronavirusVaccines and immunisationUS politicsnewsReuse this content More
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Biden responds to claim Trump tested positive for Covid days before their debate – video
Biden was questioned by a reporter over a claim in a book by Trump’s last chief of staff that the ex-president had tested positive for Covid-19 three days before the first 2020 presidential debate. When asked whether he thought Trump had put him at risk, Biden said: ‘I don’t think about the former president’
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Republicans boost benefits for workers who quit over vaccine mandates
Republicans boost benefits for workers who quit over vaccine mandatesCritics say decision from legislatures in four states in effect pays people for not getting vaccinated Some Republican states are expanding unemployment benefits for employees who have been fired or quit over vaccine mandates, a move critics say in effect pays people for not getting vaccinated.Celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz set to run for US Senate as RepublicanRead moreFour states – Iowa, Tennessee, Florida, and Kansas – have changed their rules on unemployment to include people who have been terminated or who have chosen to leave their jobs because of their employers’ vaccine policies.The partisan divide is striking, Anne Paxton, staff attorney and policy director for the Unemployment Law Project in Washington state, told the Guardian. “It’s very hard to regard this particular move as being based on anything much more than political reasons.”The development also comes as the new Omicron variant has emerged, triggering concern that the strain could already be inside the US. If so, it would likely see a new spike in infections in America.There are 30 states with Republican-led legislatures that could follow suit. “I would be very surprised if it stopped at this four,” Paxton said. Missouri is contemplating similar laws, while states like Maryland are considering “mitigating factors” around unemployment and vaccine rules.Some Democrat states, on the other hand, have said that leaving a job because of mandates will disqualify former employees from these benefits unless they have demonstrated exemptions.“Partisanship continues to be a sharp dividing line in vaccine attitudes,” the Kaiser Family Foundation reported in October, with 90% of Democrats and 61% of Republicans saying they have gotten at least one dose.Only 5% of unvaccinated workers said they have left a job over mandates, and unemployment is dropping swiftly across the country.Unemployment benefits are not equivalent to full-time wages, Dorit Reiss, professor of law at UC Hastings College of the Law, pointed out. But rules like these may form an incentive against vaccination.“It’s like offering a financial benefit for not vaccinating,” Reiss told the Guardian. “If the person would not get unemployment benefits if they refused to wash their hands at work and were fired over that, they should be treated the same way.”Unemployment law in the United States is governed partly by federal law, but states have latitude to set their own requirements or restrictions, Paxton said.Typically, when employees are fired or they quit because of a business’s policies they aren’t eligible for unemployment benefits, unless they have an exemption for established religious or moral objections, or medical reasons.“Benefits are for people who are unemployed through no fault of their own,” Paxton said. But the interpretation of fault can vary.And in recent weeks, the Republican leaders of these states have signed bills protecting benefits around vaccination mandates, essentially liberalizing unemployment rules around vaccines in conservative states.If states want to change the rules around unemployment benefits for those who clash with employers’ policies, they should change the rules for everyone, Reiss said.“They should pass a law that’s broader that says, ‘Anyone who’s fired for cause gets unemployment benefits anyway.’ And that’s fine. That’s a value judgment, and states can make it,” Reiss said. But “limiting it to vaccines alone, it’s sending a message that vaccines are not important, and that’s a bad message.”There were already marked differences along partisan lines in how states handle unemployment benefits.“The blue states tend to be more generous in their eligibility rules,” Paxton said. “They tend to have higher benefits. And the red states have a tendency to be on the stingy side.”In Florida, for instance, the maximum benefit is set at $275 a week, which is lower than the weekly minimum in Washington.Many Republican-led states also opted to end federal unemployment assistance earlier this year.“They were not trying to help people who were jobless in that respect,” Paxton said. “So it’s hard to take this very seriously as a substantive, well-thought-out policy move in these four states.” Instead, she said, the decision seems to be less about unemployment policy and more about political tools “to aggravate the partisan divide,” Paxton said.Nine states have introduced restrictions on the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for businesses with more than 100 employees and for federal agencies and contractors.Tennessee and Montana have banned private employers from mandating the vaccines, and seven other states have introduced wide-ranging restrictions on mandates, according to the National Academy for State Health Policy. After Florida restricted the rules, for instance, Disney World halted its employee vaccination requirements.When it comes to ending the pandemic, Reiss said, working around mandates like these is “going to make it substantially harder”.TopicsUS politicsCoronavirusRepublicansnewsReuse this content More
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Trump tested positive for Covid few days before Biden debate, chief of staff says in new book
Trump tested positive for Covid few days before Biden debate, chief of staff says in new bookMark Meadows makes stunning admission in new memoir obtained by Guardian, saying a second test returned negative Donald Trump tested positive for Covid-19 three days before his first debate against Joe Biden, the former president’s fourth and last chief of staff has revealed in a new book.Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to testify before Capitol attack committeeRead moreMark Meadows also writes that though he knew each candidate was required “to test negative for the virus within seventy two hours of the start time … Nothing was going to stop [Trump] from going out there”.Trump, Meadows says in the book, returned a negative result from a different test shortly after the positive.Nonetheless, the stunning revelation of an unreported positive test follows a year of speculation about whether Trump, then 74 years old, had the potentially deadly virus when he faced Biden, 77, in Cleveland on 29 September – and what danger that might have presented.Trump announced he had Covid on 2 October. The White House said he announced that result within an hour of receiving it. He went to hospital later that day.Meadows’ memoir, The Chief’s Chief, will be published next week by All Seasons Press, a conservative outlet. The Guardian obtained a copy on Tuesday – the day Meadows reversed course and said he would cooperate with the House committee investigating the deadly Capitol attack of 6 January.Meadows says Trump’s positive result on 26 September was a shock to a White House which had just staged a triumphant Rose Garden ceremony for supreme court nominee Amy Coney Barrett – an occasion now widely considered to have been a Covid super-spreader event.Despite the president looking “a little tired” and suspecting a “slight cold”, Meadows says he was “content” that Trump travelled that evening to a rally in Middletown, Pennsylvania.But as Marine One lifted off, Meadows writes, the White House doctor called.“Stop the president from leaving,” Meadows says Sean Conley told him. “He just tested positive for Covid.”It wasn’t possible to stop Trump but when he called from Air Force One, his chief of staff gave him the news.“Mr President,” Meadows said, “I’ve got some bad news. You’ve tested positive for Covid-19.”Trump’s reply, the devout Christian writes, “rhyme[d] with ‘Oh spit, you’ve gotta be trucking lidding me’.”Meadows writes of his surprise that such a “massive germaphobe” could have contracted Covid, given precautions including “buckets of hand sanitiser” and “hardly [seeing] anyone who ha[d]n’t been rigorously tested”.Meadows says the positive test had been done with an old model kit. He told Trump the test would be repeated with “the Binax system, and that we were hoping the first test was a false positive”.After “a brief but tense wait”, Meadows called back with news of the negative test. He could “almost hear the collective ‘Thank God’ that echoed through the cabin”, he writes.Meadows says Trump took that call as “full permission to press on as if nothing had happened”. His chief of staff, however, “instructed everyone in his immediate circle to treat him as if he was positive” throughout the Pennsylvania trip.“I didn’t want to take any unnecessary risks,” Meadows writes, “but I also didn’t want to alarm the public if there was nothing to worry about – which according to the new, much more accurate test, there was not.”Meadows writes that audience members at the rally “would never have known that anything was amiss”.The public, however, was not told of the president’s tests.On Sunday 27 September, the first day between the tests and the debate, Meadows says Trump did little – except playing golf in Virginia and staging an event for military families at which he “spoke about the value of sacrifice”.Trump later said he might have been infected at that event, thanks to people “within an inch of my face sometimes, they want to hug me and they want to kiss me. And they do. And frankly, I’m not telling them to back up.”In his book, Meadows does not mention that Trump also held a press conference indoors, in the White House briefing room, the same day.On Monday 28 September, Trump staged an event at which he talked with business leaders and looked inside “the cab of a new truck”. He also held a Rose Garden press conference “on the work we had all been doing to combat Covid-19”.“Somewhat ironically, considering his circumstances”, Meadows writes, Trump spoke about a new testing strategy “supposed to give quicker, more accurate readings about whether someone was positive or not.”The White House had still not told the public Trump tested positive and then negative two days before.On debate day, 29 September, Meadows says, Trump looked slightly better – “emphasis on the word slightly”.“His face, for the most part at least, had regained its usual light bronze hue, and the gravel in his voice was gone. But the dark circles under his eyes had deepened. As we walked into the venue around five o’clock in the evening, I could tell that he was moving more slowly than usual. He walked like he was carrying a little extra weight on his back.”Trump called aides hours before Capitol riot to discuss how to stop Biden victoryRead moreTrump gave a furious and controversial performance, continually hectoring Biden to the point the Democrat pleaded: “Will you shut up, man? This is so unpresidential.”The host, Chris Wallace of Fox News, later said Trump was not tested before the debate because he arrived late. Organisers, Wallace said, relied on the honor system.The White House had not said Trump had tested positive and negative three days before.Three days later, on 2 October, Trump announced by tweet that he and his wife, Melania Trump, were positive.That evening, Meadows helped Trump make his way to hospital. During his stay, Meadows helped orchestrate stunts meant to show the president was in good health. Trump recovered, but it has been reported that his case of Covid was much more serious than the White House ever let on.TopicsDonald TrumpTrump administrationCoronavirusUS politicsJoe BidenUS elections 2020newsReuse this content More
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Fauci: US could face ‘fifth wave’ of Covid as Omicron variant nears
Fauci: US could face ‘fifth wave’ of Covid as Omicron variant nears
Collins and Fauci emphasise need for vaccines and boosters
Warning that variant shows signs of heightened transmissibility
Coronavirus: live coverage
Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, Anthony Fauci, said on Sunday the US has “the potential to go into a fifth wave” of coronavirus infections amid rising cases and stagnating vaccination rates. He also warned that the newly discovered Omicron variant shows signs of heightened transmissibility.Biden and Harris briefed as US braces for arrival of Omicron Covid variantRead moreAs Fauci toured the US political talkshows, countries around the world including the US scrambled to guard against Omicron, which has stoked fears of vaccine resistance.A White House official told reporters Joe Biden would meet members of his Covid-19 response team, including Fauci, regarding the Omicron variant.Speaking to NBC’s Meet the Press, Fauci discussed why Omicron has raised such alarm.“Right now we have the window into the mutations that are in this new variant,” he said, “and they are troublesome in the fact that there are about 32 or more variants in that very important spike protein of the virus, which is the business end of the virus.“In other words, the profile of the mutations strongly suggest that it’s going to have an advantage in transmissibility and that it might evade immune protection that you would get, for example, from the monoclonal antibody or from the convalescent serum after a person’s been infected and possibly even against some of the vaccine-induced antibodies.“So it’s not necessarily that that’s going to happen, but it’s a strong indication that we really need to be prepared for that.”Fauci also pointed to how Covid case numbers shifted dramatically in South Africa, where Omicron was discovered, over a short period.“You were having a low level of infection, and then all of a sudden, there was this big spike … and when the South Africans looked at it, they said, ‘Oh my goodness. This is a different virus than we’ve been dealing with.’“So it clearly is giving indication that it has the capability of transmitting rapidly. That’s the thing that’s causing us now to be concerned, but also to put the pressure on ourselves now to do something about our presentation for this.”The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has said no Omicron cases have been discovered in the US.Fauci told NBC: “As we all know, when you have a virus that has already gone to multiple countries, inevitably, it will be here.”On CBS, Fauci said any fifth wave of cases “will really be dependent upon what we do in the next few weeks to a couple of months”.“We have now about 62 million people in the country who are eligible to be vaccinated,” he added, “who have not yet gotten vaccinated.“Superimpose upon that the fact that, unquestionably, the people who got vaccinated six, seven, eight, nine, 10 months ago, we’re starting to see an understandable diminution in the level of immunity. It’s called waning immunity, and it was seen more emphatically in other countries before we saw it here.”Fauci said an increase in immunization rates and booster shots might prevent another surge – but the US had to act fast.“So if we now do what I’m talking about in an intense way, we may be able to blunt that,” Fauci said. “If we don’t do it successfully, it is certainly conceivable and maybe likely that we will see another bit of a surge. How bad it gets is dependent upon us and how we mitigate.”Politically charged resistance to vaccine mandates and other public health measures would seem to make a rapid increase in US vaccination rates unlikely.While more than 70% of US adults are fully vaccinated, the most recent CDC data indicated that cases had increased 16% over the prior week’s seven-day average. By Sunday there had been 48,202,506 cases in the US with 776, 537 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data.Another senior US government scientist, the National Institutes of Health director, Francis Collins, discussed the Omicron variant on Sunday.“I think the main thing that has us focused on this,” he told CNN’s State of the Union, “and it’s caused a lot of us to be sort of 24/7 on Zoom calls in the last four days, is that it has so many mutations”.Collins also said there were “good reasons to think it will probably be OK but we need to know the real answers to that and that’s going to take two or three weeks”.On Friday, Biden said the US would follow much of the rest of the world and impose restrictions on travel from South Africa and seven other countries. The restrictions, which Biden called “as a precautionary measure until we have more information”, will go into effect on Monday.Collins told CNN: “I know, America, you’re really tired of hearing these things, but the virus is not tired of us and it’s shape-shifting itself. If you imagine we’re on a racetrack here … it’s trying to catch up with us, and we have to use every kind of tool in our toolbox to keep that from getting into a situation that makes this worse.“We can do this but we have to do it all together.”Boris Johnson ‘ignored’ my plan to tackle deadly Covid variants – senior officialRead moreOn CBS, Fauci was also asked about Republican attacks on his reputation, over federal research prior to the coronavirus pandemic and about his role in the response under the Trump administration.“Anybody who’s looking at this carefully realizes that there’s a distinct anti-science flavor to this,” he said. “They’re really criticizing science because I represent science. That’s dangerous. To me, that’s more dangerous than the slings and the arrows that get thrown at me.”Asked if he thought attacks were meant to scapegoat him and deflect attention from Donald Trump’s failures, Fauci said: “You have to be asleep not to figure that one out.”“I’m just going to do my job and I’m going to be saving lives and they’re going to be lying,” he said.TopicsCoronavirusAnthony FauciBiden administrationUS politicsInfectious diseasesVaccines and immunisationUS domestic policynewsReuse this content More
