Here’s what’s happening on Sunday with the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S.:
THREE THINGS TO KNOW TODAY:
– A group of ten Senate Republicans sent a letter to President Joe Biden asking him to meet with them to negotiate their proposed $ 1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package. His smaller counterproposal calls for $ 160 billion for vaccines, tests, treatment and personal protective equipment and more targeted relief than the president’s plan to issue $ 1,400 stimulus checks to most Americans. Ohio Sen. Rob Portman suggested that checks should be limited to individuals who earn no more than $ 50,000 a year and families who earn $ 100,000 a year.
– Biden wants most schools that serve students from kindergarten through eighth grade to reopen in late April, but even if that happens, millions of students, many of whom are minorities in urban areas, will be left out. Some argue that powerful teacher unions are on the way to bringing back students with face-to-face learning, while unions insist they are seeking to protect the health and safety of teachers and students and their families. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the federal government’s leading infectious disease specialist, said the reopening of K-8 classrooms may not be possible across the country within the Biden timeframe.
– Frustration is growing in long-term care institutions with the pace of COVID-19 vaccination efforts. Some nursing homes are still waiting for the first vaccines to fight the virus that can devastate their vulnerable elderly residents. CVS and Walgreens, who led the vaccination campaign in long-term care settings in almost every state, say they are moving ahead on schedule. But resident advocates and experts are concerned about delays in delivering vaccines that have been available for more than a month. Home operators and relatives of residents across the country became more irritated as states opened up the vaccine’s eligibility to other populations before work was completed in long-term care homes.
THE NUMBERS: According to data up to January 30 at Johns Hopkins University, the seven-day continuous average for new daily deaths in the United States has not increased in the past two weeks, from 3,335.3 on January 16 to 3,141 on 30 January .
The average number of daily deaths has increased in the three most populous states in the country, according to the COVID Tracking Project. The seven-day continuous average of daily deaths in California has increased in the past two weeks from about 532 deaths per day on January 16 to nearly 551 daily deaths on January 30. In the same period, Texas’ continuous average daily deaths increased from about 306 to 315, while Florida’s increased by almost one additional daily death to 176. Cases have increased most in the past seven days in Arizona and South Carolina, where about 1 in 200 people in each state were diagnosed with COVID-19.
QUOTE: “My hope is that the president will meet with us and be able to work on something that is bipartisan,” said Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, one of the ten Republican Party senators who asked President Joe Biden to negotiate with them a new help package for coronavirus. Portman discussed CNN’s “State of the Union” proposal on the Republican Party.
ICYMI: Many states have had problems distributing the coronavirus vaccine equitably. In North Carolina, blacks represent 22% of the population, but 11% of those receiving the first dose, according to state data. Whites, a category in which the state includes both Hispanic and non-Hispanic whites, are 68% of the population and 82% of those vaccinated. An analysis of the Associated Press shows that blacks in several other parts of the United States are lagging behind whites in receiving COVID-19 vaccines.