Here’s what you need to know:
- Hands are out as Congress is set to begin negotiating a new round of pandemic stimulus.
- Europe thought it was ready. Pride was its downfall.
- America’s response to the pandemic, in two charts.
- Delta says passengers who are unable to wear masks will face a health screening.
- That mask you’re wearing? Forced labor may have produced it.
- New York City is easing into its next phase of reopening, but indoor limits remain.
- India announces a record 40,000 cases in one day.
Hands are out as Congress is set to begin negotiating a new round of pandemic stimulus.
Airlines, hotels and restaurants. Military contractors and banks. Broadway actors. These are just a few of the special interests already maneuvering to get a piece of the next coronavirus relief package about to be taken up by Congress, which is back in session this week.
The House has signaled that it wants $3 trillion in aid, the Senate appears to want something in the range of $1 trillion, and the White House is now involved in negotiations. The main components on the table are additional payments to individuals, money for state and local governments, extended unemployment insurance and liability protections for companies and other institutions that are trying to reopen.
But the package is also likely to be the last opportunity before the election in November for a wide range of industries and interests to push for narrower provisions that would benefit them, setting off intensive lobbying.
The process is still at an early stage, but with the pandemic raging across the country and the economy showing few signs of the rapid rebound President Trump had predicted, Congress and the administration are under pressure to come together on a substantial stimulus bill. And lobbyists are optimistic about getting at least some of the breaks they are seeking.
“With the extraordinarily unsuccessful disease management, the economy is a grave risk again,” said Bruce P. Mehlman, a Republican lobbyist whose firm represents dozens of corporate clients, including 3M and United Airlines. “It makes it more likely the White House will tell Republicans to cut a big-dollar deal.”
The $3 trillion stimulus package passed by the Democratic-controlled House in May would send aid to state and local governments and provide another round of direct $1,200 payments to taxpayers.
But it lacks many of the special provisions that various interest groups are pushing for, leaving them to focus now on the Senate and any bipartisan negotiations between the two chambers and the White House.
Republicans hope to unveil a tailored package in the coming days, likely to be about $1 trillion, that would include a series of liability protections for businesses, hospitals and schools fearful of getting sued by customers and employees who contract the virus. The conference remains divided over how to address extended unemployment benefits, which amount to an additional $600 per week, with some Republicans pushing to lower the amount instead of outright eliminating the benefit altogether.
Europe thought it was ready. Pride was its downfall.
When European health ministers met in February to discuss the coronavirus emerging in China, they commended their own health systems and promised to send aid to poor and developing countries.
Barely a month later, the continent was overwhelmed. Officials once boastful about their preparedness were frantically trying to secure protective gear and materials for tests, as death rates soared.
This was not supposed to happen. Many European leaders felt so secure after the last pandemic — the 2009 swine flu — that they scaled back stockpiles of equipment and faulted medical experts for overreacting.
But their pandemic plans were built on a litany of miscalculations. Though European leaders boasted of the superiority of their world-class health systems, they had weakened them with a decade of cutbacks.
When Covid-19 arrived, those systems were unable to test widely enough to see the peak coming. National stockpiles of medical supplies were revealed to exist mostly on paper, consisting in large part of “just in time” contracts with manufacturers in China. European planners overlooked the fact that a pandemic could disrupt those supply chains.
Britain most embodies Europe’s overconfidence. Prime Minister Boris Johnson was so certain of his country’s forecasts about the virus, records and testimony show, that he delayed locking down until two weeks after British emergency rooms began to buckle under the strain.
With the number of infections doubling every three days at the time, some scientists now say that locking down a week sooner might have saved 30,000 lives.
America’s response to the pandemic, in two charts.
In a confrontational interview with Chris Wallace of Fox News on Sunday, President Trump defended his handling of the coronavirus with misleading evidence and attacked his own health experts, calling Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, an “alarmist” who provided faulty information in the early days of the pandemic.
In today’s edition of the Morning newsletter, David Leonhardt offered an overview of the U.S. response to the virus and how it compares to that of other countries. He writes:
The virus has still been deadlier in several European countries than in the U.S., after adjusting for population. But the total death rate in the U.S. is among the worst for any country in the world:
And the U.S. may continue to climb this ranking. Most high-income countries now have a relatively small number of new cases and deaths each day, while the U.S. does not:
The U.S. is conducting a large number of tests — but that isn’t why the virus statistics look so much worse here. According to Johns Hopkins University, the U.S. has now conducted more tests per capita than any other country.
That high test rate obviously leads to a greater number of official cases. If some other countries with major outbreaks, like Brazil, Mexico and Nigeria, were conducting more tests, they would likely be reporting many more cases. Some would probably show worse per capita outbreaks than the U.S.
But the U.S. is still an outlier, especially among rich countries. A higher percentage of its tests are coming back positive than in many other countries, and the death toll continues to mount, which are both signs that the main issue in the U.S. is a failure to control the virus.
There have been 14.4 million coronavirus cases around the world, and at least 605,000 deaths, according to a New York Times database.
Delta says passengers who are unable to wear masks will face a health screening.
Delta Air Lines said it would require passengers unable to wear face masks because of health conditions to undergo a medical clearance at the airport before boarding — or the passengers should “reconsider travel” altogether.
The policy is an addition to Delta’s rules that call on passengers to wear face masks at check-in, boarding gates and during the flight. It follows reports of some passengers on U.S. airlines failing to wear masks onboard and air staff not enforcing them.
“Customers with health conditions or disabilities that explicitly prevent the wearing of a face covering or mask are strongly encouraged to reconsider travel or should be prepared to complete a ‘Clearance-to-Fly’ process,” the statement said.
The screening process will take place before departure at the airport and can exceed an hour, the airline said. Should passengers falsify health claims, the statement said, they risk being barred from the airline until masks are no longer required.
Delta in July is running only 30 percent of its normal flight schedule. The airline has told pilots it will not furlough them for a year if they accept a 15 percent cut to guaranteed pay, according a memo sent to staff on Friday.
That mask you’re wearing? Forced labor may have produced it.
As companies across China rush to produce personal protective equipment amid the pandemic, a New York Times visual investigation has found that some of them are using Uighur labor through a government-sponsored program that experts say often puts people to work against their will.
Uighurs are a largely Muslim ethnic minority primarily from the Xinjiang region of northwest China. The government promotes the labor transfer program, which sends Uighurs and other ethnic minorities into factory and service jobs as a way to reduce poverty, but quotas on the number of workers put into the labor program and the penalties faced by those who refuse to cooperate mean that participation is often coerced.
Now, that labor is part of the P.P.E. supply chain.
According to China’s National Medical Products Administration, only four companies in Xinjiang produced medical grade protective equipment before the pandemic. As of June 30, that number was 51. After reviewing state media reports and public records, The Times found that at least 17 of those companies participate in the labor transfer program.
The companies produce equipment primarily for domestic use, but The Times identified several other companies outside Xinjiang that use Uighur labor and export globally. We traced a shipment of face masks to a medical supply company in the state of Georgia from a factory in China’s Hubei Province, where more than 100 Uighur workers had been sent.
New York City is easing into its next phase of reopening, but indoor limits remain.
New York City will enter a limited fourth phase of reopening on Monday, allowing some art and entertainment venues, like zoos and botanical gardens, to open for outdoor activities at a limited capacity.
But stringent restrictions will remain on indoor activities: Gyms, malls, movie theaters and museums will remain shuttered, and indoor dining will still not be allowed.
“We’ve got to strike a balance, and we’ve got time to look at the evidence,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said at a news conference on Friday. “Watch what’s happening around the country, watch what’s happening here in the city and make further decisions on some of these pieces, and we will do that very carefully with the State of New York.”
New York City is the last part of the state to enter the final phase of reopening, which permits groups of up to 50 people and indoor religious gatherings to operate at one-third of maximum capacity. Restrictions will also be eased to allow the resumption of outdoor film production and professional sports without audiences.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said last week that in New York City, bars and restaurants would be subject to a special “Three Strikes and You’re Closed” regimen: If they overlooked violations of social-distancing rules or allowed customers to drink without ordering food, they could lose their liquor licenses after three violations.
India announces a record 40,000 cases in one day.
India recorded at least 40,000 new coronavirus infections on Monday, its highest single-day total.
In recent weeks, as Indian officials began lifting a nationwide lockdown, infections have jumped sharply. Many states, from Tamil Nadu in the south to Uttar Pradesh in the north, reimposed partial lockdowns, hoping to blunt the spread of the virus.
But new hot spots have emerged, and researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology now estimate that India will be the worst-hit country in the world by the end of next year. India, with 1.1 million confirmed cases, now falls behind only the United States, with 3.7 million, and Brazil, with two million.
In recent days, the number of India’s new daily infections has started to surpass Brazil’s, with about 34,000 new cases a day over the past week compared to 33,000 in Brazil, according to a New York Times database.
After reopening this month, the Bahamas closes its door to U.S. citizens.
The Bahamas, one of the international destinations where U.S. citizens could still travel, will ban commercial flights or vessels from the United States starting this week, the country’s prime minister announced on Sunday.
The ban does not include commercial flights from Canada or the European Union or “private international flights,” the prime minister, Hubert Minnis, said. Pleasure craft and yachts will also be permitted.
The government-owned airline, Bahamasair, will also cease flights to the United States “effective immediately,” Mr. Minnis said.
The Bahamas has recorded 153 cases of the virus and 11 deaths, according to a New York Times database.
Reporting was contributed by Geneva Abdul, Matt Apuzzo, Alexander Burns, Jason DeParle, Luis Ferré-Sadurní, Lalena Fisher, Selam Gebrekidan, Maggie Haberman, Drew Jordan, David D. Kirkpatrick, Christoph Koettl, David Leonhardt, Eric Lipton, Jonathan Martin, Jeffery C. Mays, Sean Piccoli, Natalie Reneau, Dana Rubinstein, Kai Schultz, Kaly Soto, Haley Willis and Muyi Xiao.
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