GOP-led Senate rejects vote, dooms $2K checks; virus variant spreads to California
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell shut the door Wednesday on President Donald Trump’s push for $2,000 COVID-19 relief checks, declaring Congress has provided enough pandemic aid as he blocked another attempt by Democrats to force a vote.
The GOP leader made clear he is unwilling to budge, despite political pressure from Trump and even some fellow Republican senators who demanded a vote. Trump wants the recently approved $600 in aid increased threefold. But McConnell dismissed the idea of bigger “survival checks,” saying the money would go to plenty of American households that don’t need it.
McConnell’s refusal to act means the additional relief Trump wanted is all but dead.
Meanwhile, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the first known case of the new and apparently more contagious variant of the coronavirus in the nation’s most populated state, following the first reported U.S. case in Colorado.
Newsom said he had just learned of the finding in a Southern California infection Wednesday. He announced it during an online conversation with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious-disease expert.
“I don’t think Californians should think that this is odd; it’s to be expected,” Fauci said.
Newsom did not provide any other details about the person who was infected with the mutated version of the virus.
The Colorado and California cases have triggered a host of questions about how the variant circulating in England arrived in the U.S. and whether it is too late to stop it now, with top experts saying it is probably already spreading elsewhere in the United States.
The first person in the U.S. known to be infected with the variant was identified Wednesday as a Colorado National Guardsman who had been sent to help out at a nursing home struggling with an outbreak. Health officials said a second Guard member may have it too.
In other developments:
- The Bureau of Prisons has started vaccinating staff members and some inmates at the federal prison complex where the Justice Department carries out federal executions, as officials work to contain a coronavirus outbreak at the facility.
- If ever a year’s end seemed like cause for celebration, 2020 might be it. Yet the coronavirus scourge that dominated the year is also looming over New Year’s festivities and forcing officials worldwide to tone them down.
- The organizers of an indoor music festival in Barcelona to test the effectiveness of same-day coronavirus screening said Wednesday that preliminary results indicate there was zero transmission inside the venue.
- Britain became the first country to authorize AstraZeneca’s inexpensive, easy-to-handle COVID-19 vaccine Wednesday, gaining another weapon against the virus amid a resurgence so severe that the government extended lockdowns to three-quarters of England’s population.
- The Canadian government says that passengers must have a negative COVID-19 test taken within three days before they arrive in the country.
- The NFL cites outside influences for the most recent set of positive coronavirus tests, including exposures during the holiday season.
