The Washigtnon Post - 03.04.2020

friday, april 3 , 2020. the washington post ez sU A

HeALtH

FDA eases restrictions

for blood donations

The U.S. government Thursday
eased restrictions on blood
donations from gay men and
other key g roups because of a
drop in the nation’s b lood supply
triggered by the coronavirus
outbreak.
The Food and Drug
Administration’s n ew p olicy aims
to allow t ens of thousands m ore
Americans to give blood,
including gay and bisexual men
and people with recent t attoos
and piercings.
Canceled blood drives have
decimated donations to the
American Red Cross and other
nonprofits that provide m ost of
the blood supply. L ast month, the
Red Cross estimated t here had
been 86,000 fewer blood
donations in recent weeks
because blood drives were
canceled at w orkplaces, colleges
and other l ocations.
The FDA’s previous r ules
barred donations from men who
have had sex with a man in the
previous year. The same policy
applied to women who’ve had sex
with gay or bisexual men a nd
people who’ve received tattoos or
piercings in the past year.
Under the new policy, t he
disqualifying time period w as
reduced to three months. FDA
officials said the m ove t o three
months matches recent changes
in Britain and o ther developed
countries.
The FDA on Thursday m ade

similar changes to restrictions for people who have recently traveled to countries where malaria exposure is a risk. Donated blood is screened for a number o f infectious diseases, including HIV. The novel coronavirus can’t b e spread through blood. — Associated Press

ARiZONA

Court upholds taxi fees at Phoenix airport

Arizona’s high court o n Thursday upheld a $4 pickup and drop-off fee that led Uber and Lyft t o threaten to stop serving the Phoenix airport, one of the busiest i n the n ation. The Arizona Supreme Court unanimously rejected a challenge by the state’s attorney general who said the f ees were unconstitutional. The city currently charges $2.66 f or each pickup but doesn’t charge for rider drop-offs. The $ fee was put on hold w hile the court evaluated it. Airport officials are evaluating how long it will take to implement, said Annie DeGraw, a spokeswoman for Mayor Kate Gallego (D). Attorney General Mark Brnovich (R) said the f ee increases violate a 2018 constitutional a mendment that banned n ew f ees on services. Lawyers f or the c ity argued the higher fees a re not taxes on services, but rather permissible charges for businesses t o use the city-owned Sky Harbor

International Airport, one o f the largest U.S. airports s erving about 44 million passengers a year. Phoenix runs the airport independently, primarily using revenue from p assenger tickets and the companies that operate there. City officials likened the ride-hailing fees to rent and landing fees charged to restaurants and airlines. A city aviation commission had recommended the f ee increase after a study showed

airports in many other cities charge ride-hailing companies more to drop off and pick up passengers. The fight over the fee increases is not over. Several lawmakers have introduced legislation that would block t hem. The legislative session is on hold due to the coronavirus outbreak, but the bill could b e revived when lawmakers return. A group of airlines, airport c onstruction companies and others who operate at S ky

Harbor have started a n advertising and lobbying campaign to stop it. — Associated Press

geORgiA

Man pleads guilty to plot to hit White House

A Georgia man a ccused of plotting to attack the White House with an antitank r ocket and explosives has pleaded guilty

to a federal charge. Hasher Jallal Ta heb, 23, pleaded guilty Wednesday to a charge of attempting to destroy, by fire or an explosive, a building owned by or leased to t he United States, f ederal prosecutors said. Local law enforcement reached out to the F BI in March 2018 after getting a tip from a community member saying Ta heb had adopted radical i deas. In c onversations w ith undercover federal investigators in October 2018, Ta heb mentioned plans t o travel overseas and wanting to a ttack the White House a nd the S tatue of Liberty, prosecutors said. D uring meetings in D ecember 2018, he broadened his p otential targets to also include the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial and a synagogue. He t hen produced sketches he had made of the White House, described a detailed plan to attack it and described weapons and explosives he wanted to use, including semiautomatic weapons, improvised explosive devices, an antitank weapon, and hand grenades. Federal agents arrested Ta heb on Jan. 16, 2019, when he showed up for a meeting w ith an undercover agent and a n FBI source thinking they were going to rent a car and trade their vehicles f or weapons, with the intention of driving t o Washington, D.C., to carry out t he attack, prosecutors have said. Ta heb is scheduled to be sentenced June 23. — Associated Press

Digest

Kareem elgazzar/associated Press A woman walks a dog along the Ohio River on Thursday at Smale Riverfront Park in Cincinnati.

Politics & the Nation

BY MATT ZAPOTOSKY, ISAAC STANLEY-BECKER AND JOHN WAGNER

The death toll and economic
devastation from the novel coro-
navirus reached staggering new
levels in the United States on
Thursday, as officials reported
more than 1,000 deaths from the
pandemic in a single day and re-
vealed more than 6.6 million
Americans had sought unemploy-
ment benefits in a single w eek.
The White House is expected to
urge at least some people across
the c ountry to begin wearing c loth
masks or face coverings in public
to dampen the spread of the virus.
The potential reversal of earlier
mask recommendations — which
White House officials indicated
Thursday were still being debated
— signaled the seriousness of the
outbreak and rising concerns in
Washington about the effect it
could have on millions of Ameri-
cans.
Local officials in one Te xas bor-
der town already have threatened
to fine those who don’t cover their
nose and mouth if they go out in
public. Vice President Pence said
guidance on the topic would be
issued in coming days; a White
House official later said that the
guidance would be targeted to
those in areas where community
transmission is high.
But c oronavirus task force coor-
dinator Deborah Birx o n Thursday
said officials worry that encourag-
ing mask use might interfere with
the White House’s prior social dis-
tancing guidance, which calls for
people to stay home, avoid gather-
ings of more than 10 people and
keep a safe distance from those
other t han family members.
“The most important thing is
the social distancing and washing
your hands, and we don’t want
people to get an artificial sense of
protection because they’re behind
a mask,” Birx s aid. “When the a dvi-
sory comes out, it will be an addi-
tive piece, if it comes out, rather
than saying this is a substitute f or”
social distancing.
The United States cemented its
position as the new front line of
the o utbreak Thursday as it t allied
a total of more than 240,000 i nfec-
tions and 5,800 virus-related
deaths. The number of people in-
fected w orldwide passed 1 million,
and the number who have died of
the d isease rose above 52,000.
Officials have warned that hun-
dreds of thousands of Americans
could die o f covid-19, a nd t hat does
not account for the lives upended
in other ways because of the mea-
sures local, state and federal offi-
cials have taken t o stop the v irus.
On Thursday, the federal gov-
ernment released figures showing
that more than 6.6 million Ameri-
cans applied for unemployment
benefits last week — a record —
and that more than 10.4 million
Americans lost their jobs in
March. Economists said the un-
employment rate likely now
stands close to 10 percent — a
massive spike from February,
when it s tood at a half-century low
of 3.5 percent. Much of the nation

is operating under government- imposed stay-at-home orders. President Trump said at the White House’s coronavirus brief- ing T hursday that t he government was racing to provide relief on a number of fronts, including the launch Friday of a loan program for small businesses. Pence also announced that the coronavirus task force is considering a plan to reimburse hospitals for coronavirus treatment, in part so those without health insurance would not face hefty bills for seeking help. Trump said he remains optimis- tic that the nation will recover once the virus subsides. “I think it’s going to come back very quick- ly, but first we have to defeat this enemy,” h e said. Trump also r evealed he h ad taken a second test for the virus “out of curiosity” t o try a version that delivered a faster result; he said h e was n ot i nfected. House S peaker Nancy Pelosi (D- Calif.) said Thursday she was cre- ating a select committee to oversee the Trump administration’s han- dling o f the trillions o f dollars Con- gress is pouring into the effort to rescue the health-care system and the U.S. economy. Pelosi said the new committee needs to serve as an everyday watchdog o f the m ore than $2 tril- lion already allocated to fight the virus and the virtual lockdown it has placed on the economy, and it will have the full investigative au- thorities of any congressional oversight committee, including subpoena p ower. Republicans voiced immediate skepticism about the panel, which Pelosi dubbed the House Select Committee on the Coronavirus.

Trump made it clear he was un- happy, saying Democrats were conducting “endless partisan in- vestigations.” “It’s not any time for witch hunts,” T rump said. “ It’s t ime to g et this enemy d efeated.” The hard-hit areas inside of the United States continued to see virus-related casualties rise precipi- tously Thursday. New York added more than 430 to its death toll, bringing the total there to more than 2,300. Neighboring New Jer- sey added more than 180, bringing its total to 530. Michigan, which is drawing increasing concern, added 80 deaths on Thursday, bringing i ts total to m ore t han 410. “Michigan is a hot spot for covid-19 cases,” Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) said. “We’re on the upswing.” Trump on Thursday sought to suggest t he problems were isolated in some states, after Birx said she was disheartened that cases being reported now involved people in- fected after the White House issued its social distancing guidelines. “You can’t condemn people liv- ing in a flat-liner,” Trump said, referring to states that have not seen immense i ncreases. Governors across the country reiterated their desperate calls for medical supplies, asserting that i f current projections hold, they could run out of needed equipment. New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) said that if his state continues to use ventilators at the current rate, its stockpiles would be depleted in j ust six d ays. Peter T. Gaynor, the Federal Emergency Management Agen- cy’s administrator, told members of Connecticut’s congressional delegation in a telephone call

Wednesday night that the Strate- gic National Stockpile had been emptied of the vital supplies like masks and gloves needed by doc- tors and nurses to protect them- selves as they treat patients sick- ened with the coronavirus. He said virtually no such per- sonal protective equipment, or PPE, is produced in the United States but emphasized that the administration is working to fly i n shipments of the equipment from around the world. “Competition is off the charts,” Gaynor said, according to partici- pants on the call. Gaynor told the delegation that 20 percent o f the new material the government obtains will be taken off the top to help replenish the nation’s stockpile. Of the remain- ing 80 percent, half of it will be directed by the agency to high-im- pact areas, while the other h alf w ill be let loose in the commercial market. That alarmed some lawmakers, who said the federal government needs to step in to pre- vent states from competing against one another and other potential buyers, d riving up p rices. In California, though, there seemed to be cautious optimism that the s ystem w ould not be over- loaded. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), who i ssued the f irst statewide s tay- at-home order in the United States, said his state was on track to meet its patient needs. “It’s the individual acts of tens of millions of Californians that allow me to say the following... the [intensive-care unit] numbers and the hospitalization numbers, while they’re growing, are not growing as significantly as you’re seeing in other parts of the country,” Newsom said Thursday,

though he made it clear t he state is not “out of the woods.” Rear Adm. John Polowczyk, who is leading FEMA’s supply chain task force, said the federal government had shipped 27.1 million surgical masks, 22.4 million pairs of protective gloves, 5.2 million face shields and more than 7,600 ventilators and was scouring the globe for more supplies. But Trump also lashed out at state leaders, saying some were “com- plainers” or had “insatiable appe- tites” and that they should have built more reserves locally. “Long before this pandemic ar- rived, they should have been on the open market, just buying,” Trump said. Federal officials announced Thursday they had seized nearly 1 million pieces of PPE, hand sani- tizer and disinfectant spray from price gougers and planned to re- distribute them to health-care workers in New York and New Jersey, t he two hardest-hit states. Though the Dow Jones indus- trial a verage r ose 469 points, or 2. percent, a nd t he Standard & Poor’s 500 and Nasdaq composite also posted healthy g ains, t hose figures were not enough to dampen the bleak economic reality for many people: Almost 4 in 10 Americans have been laid off or lost income due to the coronavirus outbreak, according t o a Kaiser Family Foun- dation p oll r eleased Thursday. The Internal Revenue Service plans to send electronic payments as soon as late next week to more than 115 m illion A mericans a s part of the stimulus package, a week sooner than expected, according to a plan circulated within the administration. B ut $ 30 million in paper checks for millions of other

Americans won’t start being sent out until April 24, as the government lacks t heir b anking informa- tion. Some of those checks won’t reach people until September, the document shows. Democrats announced Thurs- day they would delay their presi- dential nominating convention until the week of Aug. 17 to increase t he likelihood t hat the party can still hold an in-person gather- ing i n Milwaukee. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R), meanwhile, said he had only just learned that people can spread the coronavirus without showing symptoms, despite warnings of that possibility from media and federal officials dating to late Jan- uary. The governor’s remark came as he e xplained why he was i ssuing a stay-at-home order, after previ- ously resisting the step taken by at least 3 0 states. “What we’ve been telling people from directives from the CDC for weeks now is that if you start feel- ing bad, stay home,” Kemp said. “Those individuals could have been infecting people before they ever felt bad. We didn’t know that until t he last 24 hours.” In an email, Kemp spokesman Cody Hall said the governor was referring to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Monday guidance noting that studies found infections in patients who never developed symptoms. Federal and state officials have warned that the U. S. is still ap- proaching the “peak” of the crisis, which could come in the next two to four weeks, and that until then Americans should expect each d ay to bring more death and suffering than the last. They have urged people to practice social distancing t hrough the end o f April. In s ome of the h ardest-hit countries abroad, though, there were some positive signs. The Italian and Spanish a mbas- sadors to the United States said Thursday they had seen signs of improvement in their countries, where numbers of confirmed infections, hospitalizations and deaths remain high but are begin- ning to stabilize. “These are just the first positive signs, and they have to be taken cautiously,” Italian Ambassador Armando Varricchio said. “But they show that measures taken both nationally and at the local level have started to p ay o ff.” Italy, which has the most fatali- ties of any country in the world, saw its death toll rise to nearly 14,000 Thursday, while Spain’s virus-related deaths passed 10,000. [email protected] isaac.stanley- [email protected] [email protected]

miriam Berger, Josh dawsey, Karen deYoung, andrew Fr eedman, emily guskin, arelis r. hernández, Paul Kane, hannah Knowles, dan lamothe, annie linskey, heather long, Katie mettler, siobhán o’grady, samantha Pell, lisa rein, missy ryan, michael scherer, Brittany shammas, Felicia sonmez, lena h. sun and erica Werner contributed to this report.

Single-day death toll in U.S. tops 1,000 as Trump insists country will recover

matt mcclain/the Washington Post The Federal Triangle Metro station in the District is closed. Many states have issued stay-at-home orders to encourage social distancing.

The Washigtnon Post - 03.04.2020

Get our desktop app

Company

Features

Documentation

Resources