Water shutoffs in sharp focus amid coronavirus outbreak

By KAT STAFFORD MARCH 27,2020


Rabbi Yosef Chesed, left, helps unload bottled water being donated from Lorie Lutz, right, at the Brightmoor Connection Food Pantry in Detroit, Monday, March 23, 2020. The global coronavirus pandemic has brought water shutoffs in Detroit and in communities across the nation into sharp focus again amid a crucial time when officials are urging Americans to practice social distancing and basic hand-washing techniques to stop the spread of COVID-19. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

DETROIT (AP) — The advice is simple and universal: Washing your hands with soap and water is one of the most effective ways to stop the spread of the coronavirus. But for millions of people across the country, that’s not simple at all: They lack running water in their houses due to service shutoffs prompted by overdue bills.

The Rev. Roslyn Bouier remembers when children began to show up at the Brightmoor Connection Food Pantry on Detroit’s northwest side, clutching empty pitchers. It was the summer of 2014 and the kids were parched. But their thirst didn’t come from playing outside — they had no water at home.


That was the year the city of Detroit started its water shutoff campaign, turning off water to 28,500 residential accounts behind on payments. Through the end of 2019, the city has recorded about 127,500 total service cutoffs, according to the water department, though that figure includes households where the water was turned off repeatedly.

“In this pandemic, it’s the people who are living on the margins of society and the poorest of our society that’s being the most adversely impacted,” Bouier said.

Michigan has the sixth-highest number of coronavirus cases in the country, according to Johns Hopkins University’s data tracking of the disease. The state has reported 3,657 cases and 92 deaths as of Friday afternoon. Detroit leads Michigan with 1,075 cases and 23 deaths.

We the People of Detroit co-founder Monica Lewis-Patrick said her organization, which has campaigned for years to end shutoffs, has struggled to find bottled water to deliver to families without service because supplies are being hoarded.

“Water is locked down,” Lewis-Patrick said. “Many people have been texting and emailing me to say ‘What else can we do?’ The world is crying out that there must be a turning on of the water.”

Water advocates and elected officials argue that it’s impossible for families to follow the hygienic coronavirus standards outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization when they don’t have water in their homes. And members of Congress and national organizations are pushing for federal legislation and other action to protect residents facing high water bills and shutoffs amid the crisis.

House Democrats released proposed legislation Monday that included a $1.5 billion allocation to help cover water bills for low-income families and also would ban utility shutoffs during the pandemic.

Rev. Roslyn Bouier, Director of the Brightmoor Connection Food Pantry prepares bags of food in Detroit, Monday, March 23, 2020. The global coronavirus pandemic has brought water shutoffs in Detroit and in communities across the nation into sharp focus again amid a crucial time when officials are urging Americans to practice social distancing and basic hand-washing techniques to stop the spread of COVID-19.(AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

Michigan U.S. Congress members Rashida Tlaib, Debbie Dingell and Dan Kildee also sent a letter to the congressional leadership Wednesday, signed by 80 members, urging them to take action, citing Detroit’s water shutoffs and the longstanding water crisis in nearby Flint, where lead leached into the municipal water supply. The allocation was not part of Friday’s approved $2.2 trillion rescue package, so Tlaib is pushing for another bill to address shutoffs.

A White House official said Thursday that Wayne County, which includes Detroit, could be the next hotspot for COVID-19.

The coronavirus has sickened more than 566,000 people and killed more than 25,000 people worldwide. For most people, it causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. But for some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia.

Water shutoffs have been recorded in all 50 states, according to Mary Grant, director of the Food & Water Action’s Public Water for All Campaign.

Grant said her organization has tracked 417 municipalities and states that have issued moratoriums on the shutoffs, including the state of New York, where Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced the suspension of utility shutoffs March 13. The group estimates the moratoriums protect more than 142 million Americans from disconnections — or more than 40% of the U.S. population.

In Alaska, the Rural Utility Collaborative advisory committee, which manages water systems for 26 communities, just voted to immediately reconnect running water to homes cut off for not paying their bills.

“Hand-washing is the No. 1 prevention for spreading any illness,” said Francine Moreno, the utility’s senior program manager.

Grant’s group is calling for the moratoriums to be extended nationwide.

“At a time when we’re hearing the federal government, the CDC, our governors say ‘wash your hands,’ for people who have lost their water service because they can’t afford the water bill, they can’t take these measures,” she said.

A team of independent experts affiliated with the United Nations Human Rights Council has called on governments around the world to end water cuts.

“The global struggle against the pandemic has little chance to succeed if personal hygiene, the main measure to prevent contagion, is unavailable to the 2.2 billion persons who have no access to safe water services,” the experts said.

While many U.S. communities have announced moratoriums, the city of Detroit is one of the few to have a specific plan to turn on the water, announcing a program March 9 that would restore service for $25 a month.

The city has restored water to more than 840 homes, with about 190 work orders still pending, but does not know the exact number of homes without service, the water department said. An official said the city plans to reach out to 5,400 houses “out of abundance of caution.”

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan said Monday that he hopes service will be restored to all within the next two weeks, with crews working around the clock.

But some question the plan’s ambitious timeline and stipulations. After the COVID-19 outbreak passes, residents will be responsible for the full bill and any past due amounts incurred, though the city says individuals would be enrolled in plans to keep “water service affordable” afterward.

Nick Leonard, the executive director of the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center, said the center has asked the Michigan Department of Human Services to immediately require all the state’s public water systems to turn water on, provide service at a flat rate no greater than $25 a month as long as COVID-19 is classified as a pandemic, and prevent them from assessing or collecting deferred payments for service provided during the crisis.

“At this point, it’s a bigger public health question now than it’s ever been,” Leonard said.

A spokesperson said the state is reviewing the most recent request and “believes that water is critical to ensuring the public health and safety of Michiganders.”

Already, an additional 150 accounts in Detroit have been unable to be restored because the homes need significant plumbing repairs.

Black and Hispanic households are more likely to have incomplete plumbing in their households, according to a 2019 study by Shiloh Deitz & Katie Meehan. African Americans account for just 12.8% of U.S. households, but 16.6% of households with incomplete plumbing.

Of U.S. cities larger than 100,000 households, San Francisco has the highest number without plumbing facilities with 2.5%, followed by Detroit with 1.1%, according to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.

California grassroots organizer Crystal Huang noted that even though the Bay Area is one of the richest regions in the U.S. “a lot of people, especially service workers, still have to work two or three jobs and are still barely able to survive.”

“I think it’s a very common reality across the country,” she said.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Tlaib, the Michigan congresswomen, echoed that the problem stretches beyond Detroit.

“These are front-line communities and neighborhoods that haven’t actually recovered since the Great Recession,” she said. “And now with the coronavirus, they are going to be hurt the most if we don’t do something very aggressively and with a sense of urgency.”

Drugmaker backpedals on specialty status for COVID-19 drug

By MATTHEW PERRONE March 25, 2020

FILE - In this July 9, 2015, file photo, a man walks outside the headquarters of Gilead Sciences in Foster City, Calif. Gilead Sciences said Wednesday, March 25, 2020 it will give up the specialty status it received days earlier for its COVID-19 drug amid public outrage that the company was seeking to boost the profits of its treatment. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg, File)


WASHINGTON (AP) — Facing public criticism, the maker of a promising coronavirus drug said Wednesday it will waive a special regulatory designation that could have allowed it to block competition and boost profits for its treatment.

Gilead Sciences said it will ask U.S. regulators to revoke the so-called “orphan drug” status it received for its experimental drug remdesivir. The status would have entitled the company to financial incentives and exclusive marketing intended for rare disease treatments.

The Food and Drug Administration granted the company’s request for the designation on Monday, noting that COVID-19 qualified as a rare disease under U.S. rules, since fewer than 200,000 Americans are infected.

But experts and public advocates blasted Gilead for seeking the status.

“COVID-19 is anything but a rare disease,” stated a letter sent to the company earlier Wednesday by more than 50 consumer and patient advocacy groups. The groups noted that millions of Americans are expected to eventually be infected with the virus. As of Wednesday, cases in the U.S. topped 61,000.

Gilead said in a statement Wednesday afternoon that it asked the FDA to rescind the orphan drug designation and that the company “recognizes the urgent public health needs posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Currently, there are no FDA-approved drugs, vaccines or specific treatments for the coronavirus. A few existing and experimental drugs are being studied, and vaccines are being developed.

Remdesivir, originally developed for Ebola, is being tested in at least five experiments. The drug interferes with viral reproduction and has shown some promise in lab and animal studies against other coronaviruses that cause similar diseases, MERS and SARS.

The drug has been given to hundreds of COVID-19 patients thus far, but rigorous studies are needed to determine if it works before it is approved.

Congress created the orphan drug program more than 35 years ago to encourage companies to develop drugs for niche diseases and conditions Since then, filing for the program has become a standard industry tactic.

Under FDA rules, manufacturers of orphan drugs receive seven years of exclusive U.S. marketing rights and tax credits on their research and development costs.

For most people, the new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia.

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Maine sail-maintenance shop turns to sewing medical masks
MARCH 27, 2020

In this Monday, March 23, 2020, photo, Karen Haley cuts cotton fabric for masks to be given to caregivers during the coronavirus outbreak, at the North Sails shop in Freeport, Maine. The sail-maintenance business has converted part of its operation towards stitching masks instead of sails. Owner Eric Baldwin stitches masks in background. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

NEW YORK (AP) — On the coast of Maine, Eric Baldwin and his staff of two usually spend their days selling, repairing and washing sails for boats. They transform their surplus sailcloth into tote bags to bring in extra money.

But when the coronavirus outbreak slowed business, they turned their industrial sewing machines to a new task: making cotton masks for caregivers and others who need protection from the disease.

“We wanted to do something to give back,” Baldwin said from his North Sails workshop in the small village of South Freeport, about 20 miles north of Portland. “Doing something like this just makes you feel good.”

In this Monday, March 23, 2020 photo, Eric Baldwin examines the stitching on a cotton mask, one of hundreds he and the employees at his sail-maintenance business are making for caregivers during the coronavirus outbreak, at his shop in Freeport, Maine. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

The 53-year-old Baldwin, who has operated his shop, known as a loft, for about 25 years, got the idea from employee Karen Haley. They went to w
ork immediately and are now shipping to recipients as far away as Arizona after word spread on social media that masks were available.
“People are out there just pleading for masks and have no supplies. Eric immediately said yes,” Haley said.

Haley’s mother is a quilter. She raided her mom’s stash of cotton remnants to turn into double-ply rectangles called for by a mask pattern they found on a hospital website. Baldwin’s former wife got a Jo-Ann fabric store to provide elastic at a discount.





Although they still have orders to fill for totes and sails, a portion of each day is dedicated to masks. Baldwin’s other worker, Alan Platner, volunteered to sew masks at home as well.

The trio have divided labor according to skill set. Haley is on cutting.

“I do not sew, actually,” she laughed.

Baldwin chuckled, “Just the men sew here.”



In this Monday, March 23, 2020, photo, cotton masks to be given to caregivers battling the coronavirus outbreak are stacked on a table at the North Sails shop in Freeport, Maine. The sail-maintenance business has converted part of its operation towards stitching masks instead of sails. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

Baldwin hired Haley to help run the tote side of the business nearly two years ago. Turning sailcloth into totes was a side gig he came up with during the 2008 recession to shore up his business and avoid having to lay off his tiny staff.

Now he faces uncertainty once again as the economic toll of the health crisis plays out.

“I have every intention of keeping both of these people employed, and we’re not at a point yet where that’s even close to being in jeopardy, but I do think in terms of the tote business. I would be shocked if that picks up. We’re essentially missing the tourist season,” Baldwin said.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fabric masks are an option when other supplies have been exhausted. The world’s flow of masks has slowed to a trickle during the pandemic.


In this Monday, March 23, 2020 photo, Eric Baldwin, right, helps Alan Pratner fold a sail at North Sails in Freeport, Maine. The sail-maintenance business has converted part of its operation towards stitching masks instead of sails. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)


Baldwin and his crew join a wealth of volunteers around the globe churning out fabric masks that can be washed and reused. Their work has been met by an outpouring of gratitude from recipients.

“The response from the people has been overwhelming,” Haley said. “They’ve been so appreciative of what we’re doing. The recipients include a woman who works for the Department of Homeland Security whose husband is an EMT. Others are nurses and nursing assistants. One is a social worker who makes home visits.”

For most people, the new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia and death. The vast majority of people recover.

Full Coverage: One Good Thing

Baldwin estimates he and his crew have enough materials for up to 500 masks. There’s been a run on elastic so when their stash is gone they might have to quit. He’s scrounging for more.

Even if he’s no longer able to produce the masks in Maine, the effort is likely to continue elsewhere. Baldwin put out the word to other North Sails lofts around the country, letting them know what he was doing. Four have already offered to begin making masks, including shops in San Diego, Chicago and Annapolis, Maryland.

On the sail side, the three have work in house but new sales have dried up, and other customers have put their orders on hold.

“People aren’t necessarily thinking about their boats,” Baldwin said.

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While nonstop global news about the effects of the coronavirus have become commonplace, so, too, are the stories about the kindness of strangers and individuals who have sacrificed for others. “One Good Thing” is an AP continuing series reflecting these acts of kindness.

Veterinarians donate vital supplies to coronavirus fightTHE BEST HEALTHCARE MONEY CAN BUY

March 25, 2020

In this March 24, 2020, photo, a woman walks past a dog sculpture on the campus of the North Carolina State University College of Veterinary Medicine in Raleigh, N.C. The school is one of several vet schools around the country that have donated breathing machines, masks and other supplies to their human health-care counterparts in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)

RALEIGH, NC (AP) — Veterinary hospitals are donating breathing machines, masks, gowns and other vital equipment and supplies purchased with Fido in mind, but now being redeployed to help doctors fight the spread of COVID-19 among humans.

“We buy at the same stores,” said Paul Lunn, dean of the North Carolina State University College of Veterinary Medicine in Raleigh, which on Monday turned over two full-service ventilators, 500 protective suits and 950 masks for use in area hospitals. “There’s no difference in the equipment.”

In response to a call last week by U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue for materials to combat the pandemic, vet schools from North Carolina to Colorado to New York are stepping up.
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There are 30 fully accredited veterinary medical schools in 26 states, according to the Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges. Of those, 27 have veterinary teaching hospitals with comprehensive services treating everything from pet cats and dogs to horses and other large animals. Lunn said the schools have identified more than six dozen ventilators that could be commandeered for human treatment.

The 2009 outbreak of H1N1 influenza had veterinarians readying to help in this kind of emergency, he added: “This isn’t the first time we’ve prepared for this, although it’s the first time in my personal experience that we’ve actually had to pull the trigger.”




Private institutions are also heeding the call.

Dr. Virginia Sinnott-Stutzman, chair of the Infection Control Committee at Angell Animal Medical Center in Boston, said members of the Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care Society have identified about 100 full-service ventilators that can provide long term breathing support. She said there are also hundreds more relatively simple anesthesia ventilators — “basically like an automated hand squeezing a bag ... to get air into the patient” — nationwide that could be pressed into service, though it amounts to just a dent in the overall need with officials saying tens thousands of ventilators are needed in New York alone.

“While that may not seem like a lot, if it’s, you know, your grandmother, spouse that gets that ventilator, we’re hoping it can save a life,” she said.

For most people, the new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia and death. The vast majority of people recover

Experts say there is no evidence that household pets can contract the disease.

The Colorado State University vet school delivered to Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins a breathing machine that was “brand new, right out of the box,” professor Tim Hackett said. “We did not get a chance to use it.”

And in New York, the hardest-hit place in the United States by the new coronavirus, the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine has loaned two full-service ventilators and a high-flow oxygen unit to a hospital in Manhattan. It is also preparing to send three full-service breathing machines and 19 of the smaller anesthesia ventilators to Cayuga Medical Center in Ithaca, where the vet school is located.

Dean Lorin Warnick, whose institution has also provided hundreds of respirator and surgical masks, and testing materials, said the college is providing only essential emergency service to animal patients and following FDA guidelines on conserving protective equipment.

The aim, Warnick said, is “to make sure we can divert as much of our supply as possible to human health care.”

Beyond equipment and supplies, veterinarians are looking to help out with operating and bed space, and even to detail staffers to coronavirus duty.
Full Coverage: One Good Thing

“We also made contingency plans to go a lot further,” Lunn said. To provide our people … as technical experts who could work under the supervision of medical doctors, possibly to provide our physical facility. Because we have large hospital spaces with piped oxygen and a variety of other medical supplies.”

Hackett said the veterinary and human health systems already collaborate a lot.

“There are times we have to run over there and get drugs that we don’t carry, pieces of equipment or parts,” he said. “They’ve always been very open. So it’s really, it’s really nice to be able to pay that back.”

Kevin Unger, president and CEO of Poudre Valley, said he’s heard stories animals coming to its facilities after hours for CAT scans and MRIs, and agreed it’s a relationship that “goes both ways.”

“Colorado State really stepped up in a big way,” he said. “Go Rams!”

But fear not for the nation’s furry critters — Warnick and others said they have retained enough equipment to care for people’s pets.

“They are really part of the family,” Warnick said. “We are in it together.”

___

While nonstop global news about the effects of the coronavirus have become commonplace, so, too, are the stories about the kindness of strangers and individuals who have sacrificed for others. “One Good Thing” is an AP continuing series reflecting these acts of kindness.

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support from the Lilly Endowment through the Religion News Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

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More time sought for public input on nuclear fuel proposal

By SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN March 21, 2020

FILE - In this April 29, 2015, file photo, an illustration depicts a planned interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel in southeastern New Mexico as officials announce plans to pursue the project during a news conference at the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History in Albuquerque, N.M. Federal regulators are recommending licensing a proposed multibillion-dollar complex in southern New Mexico that would temporarily store spent fuel from commercial nuclear reactors around the United States. But the preliminary recommendation of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is making waves with critics who say the agency did not look closely enough at potential conflicts with locating the facility in the heart of one of the nation's busiest oil and gas basins. (AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan, File)


ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Members of New Mexico’s congressional delegation are requesting that federal regulators extend the public comment period for an environmental review related to a multibillion-dollar complex that would store spent nuclear fuel from commercial power plants around the United States.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission recently issued a preliminary recommendation, favoring approval of a license for Holtec International to build the facility in southeastern New Mexico.

The comment period is set at 60 days, but the New Mexico congressional leaders say that should be extended and any public meetings delayed given the health emergency that has resulted from the new coronavirus.


“The proposal to store high-level nuclear waste has prompted a great deal of public interest across New Mexico,” they wrote in a letter sent Friday to the commission chairman. “The concerns are driven in part by the prospect that any temporary storage facility will remain in the state indefinitely while a pathway for permanent disposal for high-level radioactive waste is identified.”

It wasn’t immediately clear if the commission would entertain the request, as the federal government is moving ahead with numerous rule-makings and comment periods involving other government projects.

New Jersey-based Holtec International is seeking a 40-year license to build what it has described as a state-of-the-art complex near Carlsbad. The first phase calls for storing up to 8,680 metric tons of uranium, which would be packed into 500 canisters. Future expansion could make room for as many as 10,000 canisters of spent nuclear fuel.

Holtec said the U.S. currently has more than 80,000 metric tons of used nuclear fuel in storage at dozens of sites around the country and the inventory is growing at a rate of about 2,000 metric tons per year.

The NRC staff’s preliminary recommendation states there are no environmental impacts that would preclude the commission from issuing a license for environmental reasons. That recommendation was based on a review of Holtec’s application and consultation with local, state, tribal and federal officials.

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and other top elected officials are among those who have long had concerns about the potential environmental effects and the prospects of the state becoming a permanent dumping ground for spent nuclear fuel because the federal government lacks a permanent plan for what to do with the waste piling up at power plants around the country.


The governor and others also have questions about whether the facility would compromise oil and gas development in the Permian Basin, one of the world’s most prolific energy production regions.

There were a handful of public meetings in 2018, and another round was set to begin in the coming weeks.

“NRC has been running on auto-pilot to approve the Holtec license application, but hopefully this letter from the delegation will help them to wake up to the pandemic,” said Don Hancock with the watchdog group Southwest Research and Information Center.

The governor has issued several orders in recent days limiting public gatherings as restaurants and other businesses have been forced to cutback their operations as part of the state’s efforts to curb the spread of the virus.

U.S. Sens. Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich and Reps. Ben Ray Lujan, Deb Haaland and Xochitl Torres Small all signed Friday’s letter to the commission. They’re asking that regulators wait for the threat of COVID-19 to pass and to schedule public meetings at locations around New Mexico to allow ample opportunity for full participation.

Trump agencies steadily push rollbacks as pandemic rages

By ELLEN KNICKMEYER March 24, 2020

FILE - In this Feb. 27, 2020, file photo, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler testifies during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington. The Trump administration is steadily pushing major public health and environmental rollbacks toward enactment, rejecting appeals that it slow its deregulatory drive while Americans grapple with the pandemic. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)


WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is rejecting appeals to slow its deregulatory drive while Americans grapple with the coronavirus, pushing major public health and environmental rollbacks closer to enactment in recent days despite the pandemic.

As Americans stockpiled food and medicine and retreated indoors and businesses shuttered in hopes of riding out COVID-19, federal agencies in recent days moved forward on rollbacks that included a widely opposed deregulatory action by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The proposed rule would require disclosure of the raw data behind any scientific study used in the rulemaking process. That includes confidential medical records that opponents say could be used to identify people.


The EPA says the rule, first introduced in 2018, is designed to increase transparency. But early drafts drew more than a half-million comments, most of them in opposition. Health experts say it would handcuff federal officials’ ability to regulate proven health threats in the future, by making it impossible for regulators to draw on findings of public health studies.

The EPA has dismissed demands from 14 attorneys general, the National Governors Association, the National League of Cities and dozens of other government, public health and environmental groups and officials that it at least tap the brakes on that proposed rule while officials confront “the national emergency that arises from the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Federal agencies should suspend steps toward enactment for any nonessential rule changes, Attorney General Maura Healey of Massachusetts, one of those signing the appeal, said in a separate email. “During this unprecedented public health emergency, we should be focusing our resources on protecting the health and well being of our residents not on fighting against the Trump Administration’s reckless environmental proposals and actions,” Healey said.

Asked for comment, EPA spokeswoman Enesta Jones said the agency is “open and continuing our regulatory work as usual.”

Jones said that the public can still have its say on the proposed rule. “As regulations.gov is fully functioning, there is no barrier to the public providing comment,” Jones said.

President Donald Trump and his agency chiefs have less than 10 months left in his current term to complete the administration’s business-friendly easing of the way the federal government enforces scores of environment and public health protections.

The Interior Department, for example, is moving ahead with a measure that would greatly ease protections under the more than century-old Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Interior closed the 30-day comment period for the change as scheduled last week. Critics say the changes could devastate threatened and endangered species and speed an already documented decline in U.S. bird populations overall.

Interior also ticked off required procedural steps in March on consideration of a ConocoPhillips oil and gas project in the Alaska wilderness and on a development plan for land surrounding New Mexico’s Chaco Culture National Historical Park, a World Heritage site at the center of a long debate over oil and gas development, among other projects.

Interior spokesman Conner Swanson called it “unfortunate that these interest groups are playing politics at a time when all Americans need to come together.”

“All DOI actions, including comment periods, are being evaluated on a case-by-case basis and adjustments are being made to ensure we are allowing for proper public input, while protecting the health and safety of the public and our employees,” Swanson said.

Opponents also say they expect the White House to make public as soon as next week the latest version of its rollback in vehicle emissions standards, weakening one of the Obama administration’s major efforts against climate-damaging fossil fuel emissions.

The ongoing push on rule-cutting as most of the world deals with the coronavirus shows the EPA “clearly in a hurry to meet procedural rules” to wrap up key rollbacks, said Stan Meiburg, the agency’s acting deputy administrator from 2014 to 2017 and a 39-year EPA veteran.

Last week, the EPA released its latest redo of the science rule. The release starts the clock on what the agency said would be a 30-day public comment period, moving the rule a big step closer toward adaptation.

Attorney generals from 13 states and the District of Columbia say the 30-day timeline is even shorter than the agency’s usual 60-day comment period for such a change.

States objecting include New York, where a statewide lockdown is in effect as New York City deals with about 10,000 coronavirus cases and about 100 deaths. Around the world, more than one-fifth of the global population is under lockdown orders or advisories as officials struggle for medical supplies to face a new contagion that has no known vaccine or treatment.

Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, a Texas Democrat and chairwoman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, separately wrote the agency of the “massive disruption” of the coronavirus emergency and the “personal and professional turmoil” that health experts and others who normally would speak out on the science rule are facing.

Agencies have moved public hearings on proposed rules online or to conference calls.

Collin O’Mara, head of the National Wildlife Federation, pointed to the many low-income Americans in particular all but unable to have their say now that some public comments have moved online.

Nearly 20 million Americans — most of them rural residents, including many members of tribes — have no access to broadband internet, and another 100 million Americans have no broadband internet subscription, the federal government estimates.

In the regulatory world, the public comment periods are vital both for showing support or opposition for a rule change and for laying out the groundwork for any future legal challenges.

In Washington state, the first big U.S. battleground in the pandemic, Joseph Bogaard took time for a telephone call-in comment period on a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plan for the Snake River this month, even as he worried for elderly parents vulnerable to the disease and for a daughter forced to make her way home when her California university closed because of the virus.

“What we’re finding is people are so distracted and concerned” for families that it seemed wrong to ask the public at large to divert attention to the Corps’ public comment period, Bogaard said last week. That’s even though earlier, in-person public hearings on the same matter routinely drew hundreds of people.

“We made a decision, and a bunch of others did, too, that we’re not going to try to organize people and encourage people to turn out, whether it’s meetings or phone calls right now,″ he said. “Because people were so distracted.”

Tracking the spread of coronavirus in the US

For most people, the virus causes only mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. For some older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia.

Page 1 of 6 

	LOCATION	CONFIRMED CASES	DEATHS
1	New York	46,094 46,094	605 605
2	New Jersey	8,825 8,825	108 108
3	California	4,885 4,885	102 102
4	Washington	3,726 3,726	175 175
5	Michigan	3,657 3,657	92 92
6	Massachusetts	3,240 3,240	35 35
7	Florida	3,198 3,198	46 46
8	Illinois	3,029 3,029	34 34
9	Louisiana	2,746 2,746	119 119
10	Pennsylvania	2,345 2,345	23 23

This chart updates twice daily.

Source: Esri; Johns Hopkins Graphic Phil Holm & Nicky Forster

Associated Press writers Matthew Brown in Billings, Montana, and Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, New Mexico, contributed to this report.

US could get stake in airlines in exchange for virus grants

By DAVID KOENIG and MARCY GORDON March 26, 2020

FILE - In this Wednesday, March 25, 2020 file photo, American Airlines jets sit idly at their gates as a jet arrives at Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix. The Trump administration is raising the possibility of the U.S. government getting ownership stakes in U.S. airlines in exchange for $25 billion in direct grants to help the carriers survive a downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic, according to people familiar with the matter, Thursday, March 26, 2020. (AP Photo/Matt York, File)


The Trump administration is raising the possibility of the government getting ownership stakes in U.S. airlines in exchange for $25 billion in direct grants to help the carriers survive a downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic, according to people familiar with the matter.

Details were unclear on Thursday, but one approach being considered by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is to give the government warrants — options to buy shares in airlines that accept grant money, the people said.

A key factor would be the price at which the government could exercise the warrants. Airlines would balk if the government could buy their shares near the current, depressed prices.


The issue is wrapped up in discussions between the Trump administration and Republicans and Democrats in Congress over a $2 trillion plan designed to soften the economic blow of the COVID-19 outbreak. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier that Mnuchin disclosed the plan for the government to take stakes in airlines during final negotiations over the rescue plan.

Officials from the Treasury Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Aid to airlines is one of the last sticking points in Washington’s negotiations over the economic-rescue plan, which includes $500 billion in loans and guarantees to businesses, state and local governments.

The White House and Senate Republicans had favored only zero-interest loans and loan guarantees to the airlines, while Democrats supported the industry’s request if they were accompanied by conditions such as a ban on stock buybacks and limits on executive compensation.

Some lawmakers questioned the need to give cash from taxpayers to the airlines, which have enjoyed a decade-long run of huge profits and spent much of it buying back their own shares. Buybacks tend to raise stock prices by reducing the number of shares in circulation, which can benefit executives whose compensation is mostly in stock awards and options — not salary.

Airlines for America, an industry trade group, asked for $50 billion in aid to passenger airlines — equally divided between cash grants and loans — and another $8 billion for cargo airlines. When it appeared that the airlines might not get grants needed to make payroll costs -- only loans – the carriers and their labor unions mounted a furious lobbying effort on Capitol Hill, promising to delay massive layoffs if the government gave the companies an infusion of cash.

The trade group’s CEO, Nicholas Calio, praised a long list of officials involved in crafting the relief package, starting with President Donald Trump, and said he hoped the government would release the money quickly and “with as few restrictions as possible.” He didn’t mention equity stakes for the government in his statement.


The relief package, which was passed by the Senate and now goes to the House, includes restrictions on other companies that receive aid besides airlines:

—Employment: Companies that receive loans through the $500 billion emergency fund must maintain current employment levels “to the extent practicable” and in any event not to cut more than 10% of their workforce through September.

—Stock buybacks: Companies will be barred from buying back their own shares for at least 12 months after the loan term ends. No dividends on common stock during the same period.

—Executive pay: No increase in compensation for any executive who was paid more than $425,000 last year. For those who made more than $3 million last year, the maximum compensation they could receive is $3 million plus half of any difference over that amount.

—Golden parachutes: Severance for employees who made more than $425,000 last year can’t exceed twice their 2019 compensation.

—New watchdog: A new government office and a panel appointed by Congress will monitor how loans and loan guarantees are used, with the goal of preventing abuse.

Airlines were singled out in the rescue package because of the massive blow they have suffered in the face of the global pandemic. Air travel has plummeted due to government restrictions and passengers’ fear of flying. Some flights have fewer than 10 passengers, according to airline officials. The Transportation Security Administration said it screened 239,234 people on Wednesday, compared with nearly 2.3 million on the same Wednesday a year ago – a drop of nearly 90%.

Major cruise lines have also seen revenue and stock prices battered by the outbreak, but a cruise industry official said the bill appears to exclude the industry. The measure limits relief to U.S.-based companies with a majority of their workers based in the U.S. Carnival, Norwegian Cruise Line and Royal Caribbean are all based outside the U.S. The trade group Cruise Lines International Association did not immediately comment.

The bill likewise does not mention Boeing, which had asked for $60 billion in help for itself and other aircraft makers and parts suppliers. However, it includes $17 billion in loans for “businesses critical to maintaining national security,” which lawmakers said was partly to help Boeing. The company declined to comment.

The $2 trillion package has drawn comparisons to the 2008 bailout of banks and automakers during the financial crisis. Critics including some lawmakers were furious when banks and car companies that received help turned around and gave bonuses to executives.

The government gained equity stakes in some companies then. At one point the government owned 61% of General Motors, but it lost $11.3 billion on its $51 billion investment -- more than $60 billion in today’s dollars, after considering inflation— when it sold the last shares, according to the Treasury Department.

Can blood from coronavirus survivors treat the newly ill?


By LAURAN NEERGAARD March 24, 2020

FILE - In this Feb. 18, 2020, file photo, Dr. Zhou Min, a recovered COVID-19 patient who has passed his 14-day quarantine, donates plasma in the city's blood center in Wuhan in central China's Hubei province. Plasma from recovered COVID-19 patients contains antibodies that may help reduce the viral load in patients that are fighting the disease. (Chinatopix via AP, File)


WASHINGTON (AP) — Hospitals are gearing up to test if a century-old treatment used to fight off flu and measles outbreaks in the days before vaccines, and tried more recently against SARS and Ebola, just might work for COVID-19, too: using blood donated from patients who’ve recovered.

Doctors in China attempted the first COVID-19 treatments using what the history books call “convalescent serum” -- today, known as donated plasma -- from survivors of the new virus.

Now a network of U.S. hospitals is waiting on permission from the Food and Drug Administration to begin large studies of the infusions both as a possible treatment for the sick and as vaccine-like temporary protection for people at high risk of infection.

There’s no guarantee it will work.

“We won’t know until we do it, but the historical evidence is encouraging,” Dr. Arturo Casadevall of Johns Hopkins University’s school of public health told The Associated Press.

Casadevall drew on that history in filing the FDA application. The FDA is “working expeditiously to facilitate the development and availability of convalescent plasma” a spokesman said.

Here are some questions and answers about this latest quest for a treatment.

WHAT EXACTLY IS THIS POSSIBLE THERAPY?

It may sound like “back to the Stone Age,” but there’s good scientific reason to try using survivors’ blood, said Dr. Jeffrey Henderson of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, who coauthored the FDA application with Casadevall and another colleague at the Mayo Clinic.

When a person gets infected by a particular germ, the body starts making specially designed proteins called antibodies to fight the infection. After the person recovers, those antibodies float in survivors’ blood -- specifically plasma, the liquid part of blood — for months, even years.

One of the planned studies would test if giving infusions of survivors’ antibody-rich plasma to newly ill COVID-19 patients would boost their own body’s attempts to fight off the virus. To see if it works, researchers would measure if the treatment gave patients a better chance of living or reduced the need for breathing machines.

One caution: While regular plasma transfusions are a mainstay of medicine, very rarely they can cause a lung-damaging side effect.

COULD IT ALSO ACT LIKE A VACCINE?

Sort of, but unlike a vaccine, any protection would only be temporary.

A vaccine trains people’s immune systems to make their own antibodies against a target germ. The plasma infusion approach would give people a temporary shot of someone else’s antibodies that are short-lived and require repeated doses.

Still, if FDA agrees, a second study would give antibody-rich plasma infusions to certain people at high risk from repeated exposures to COVID-19, such as hospital workers or first responders, said Dr. Liise-anne Pirofski of New York’s Montefiore Health System and Albert Einstein College of Medicine. That also might include nursing homes when a resident becomes ill, in hopes of giving the other people in the home some protection, she said.

“We need both things desperately,” Pirofski said. “We need to be able to break the cycle of transmission and we also need to be able to help people who are ill.”
Full Coverage: Understanding the Outbreak

WHAT’S THE HISTORY?

These plasma infusions were used most famously during the 1918 flu pandemic, and against numerous other infections, such as measles and bacterial pneumonia, before vaccines and modern medicines came along. Long-ago research is sketchy. But in the Journal of Clinical Investigation earlier this month, Casadevall and Pirofski cited evidence that 1918 flu patients given the infusions were less likely to die. And a 1935 medical report detailed how doctors stopped a measles outbreak from sweeping through a boarding school using “serum” from prior patients.

The old-fashioned approach still is dusted off every so often to tackle surprise outbreaks such as SARS in 2002, and in 2014 when Ebola survivors’ plasma was used to treat other patients during the West Africa epidemic. Even during those recent outbreaks, strict studies of the technique were not done, but Casadevall said there were clues that the plasma helped.

Casadevall thinks that when it didn’t work, it may have been used too late. “Somebody at the end of their lives, it’s very hard to affect” any disease at that point, he cautioned.

A more modern approach is to brew this type of antibody in the lab, something Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and other companies are working on. Using blood from COVID-19 survivors is a decidedly more labor-intensive approach — but researchers could start banking the plasma as soon as regulators give the OK.

HOW WOULD DOCTORS GET THE PLASMA?

Blood banks take plasma donations much like they take donations of whole blood; regular plasma is used in hospitals and emergency rooms every day. If someone’s donating only plasma, their blood is drawn through a tube, the plasma is separated and the rest infused back into the donor’s body. Then that plasma is tested and purified to be sure it doesn’t harbor any blood-borne viruses and is safe to use.

For COVID-19 research, the difference would be who does the donating -- people who have recovered from the coronavirus. Scientists would measure how many antibodies are in a unit of donated plasma — tests just now being developed that aren’t available to the general public — as they figure out what’s a good dose, and how often a survivor could donate.

Researchers aren’t worried about finding volunteer donors but caution it will take some time to build up a stock.

“I get multiple emails a day from people saying, ‘Can I help, can I give my plasma?’” Pirofski said.

——

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Virus test results in minutes? Scientists question accuracy

By ARITZ PARRA, CIARÁN GS and JILL LAWLESS 3/27/2020

FILE - This undated electron microscope image made available by the U.S. National Institutes of Health in February 2020 shows the virus that causes COVID-19. The sample was isolated from a patient in the U.S. Some political leaders are hailing a potential breakthrough in the fight against COVID-19: simple pin-prick blood tests or nasal swabs that can determine within minutes if someone has, or previously had, the virus. But some scientists have challenged their accuracy. (NIAID-RML via AP)


MADRID (AP) — Some political leaders are hailing a potential breakthrough in the fight against COVID-19: simple pin-prick blood tests or nasal swabs that can determine within minutes if someone has, or previously had, the virus.

The tests could reveal the true extent of the outbreak and help separate the healthy from the sick. But some scientists have challenged their accuracy.

Hopes are hanging on two types of quick tests: antigen tests that use a nose or throat swab to look for the virus, and antibody tests that look in the blood for evidence someone had the virus and recovered. The tests are in short supply, and some of them are considered unreliable.

“The market has gone completely mad,” Spanish Health Minister Salvador Illa said Thursday, lamenting the l ack of face masks, personal protection equipment and rapid tests “because everybody wants these products, and they want the good ones.”

The Spanish government on Friday said it already sent back a batch of 58,000 rapid antigen tests from a Chinese producer because the first 8,000 proved flawed. It said the producer agreed to replace the returned tests and another 582,000 tests ordered with kits that would meet requirements.

Chinese authorities said Thursday that the manufacturer did not have a license to sell the products. But Spain said the company did have permission to do so in Europe and the kits came with European Union certificates.

The Spanish government initially said 9,000 tests, not 8,000, had proved unreliable.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson this week called the rapid tests a “game changer” and said his government had ordered 3.5 million of them.

The U.K. hopes the tests will allow people who have had COVID-19 and recovered to go back to work, safe in the knowledge that they are immune, at least for now. That could ease the country’s economic lockdown and bring back health care workers who are being quarantined out of fears they may have the virus.

Many scientists have been cautious, saying it’s unclear if the rapid tests provide accurate results.

In the past few months, much of the testing has involved doctors sticking something akin to a long cotton swab deep into a patient’s nose or throat to retrieve cells that contain live virus. Lab scientists pull genetic material from the virus and make billions of copies to get enough for computers to detect the bug. Results sometimes take several days.

Rapid antigen tests have shorter swabs that patients can use themselves to gather specimens. They are akin to rapid flu tests, which can produce results in less than 15 minutes. They focus on antigens — parts of the surface of viruses that trigger an infected person’s body to start producing antibodies.

Health authorities in China, the United States and other countries have offered few details on the rates of false positive and false negative results on any coronavirus tests. Experts worry that the rapid tests may be significantly less reliable than the more time-consuming method.


Lower accuracy has been a concern with rapid flu tests. Spanish scientists said the rapid tests for coronavirus they reviewed were less than 30% accurate. The more established lab tests were about 84% accurate.

Those results “would prevent its routine introduction,” according to a report by the Spanish Society of Infectious Disease and Clinical Microbiology that triggered the alarms in Spain and spurred the government’s rejection of the 58,000 antigen tests.

Similar questions swirl around new antibody tests involving blood samples. Some versions have been described as finger-prick tests that can provide important information in minutes.

Antibody tests are most valuable as a way of seeing who has been infected in the recent past, who became immune to the disease and — if done on a wide scale — how widely an infection has spread in a community.

The antibody tests also will allow scientists to get a better understanding of how deadly coronavirus is to all people, because they will provide a better understanding of how many people were ever infected, ranging from those who never showed symptoms to those who became fatally ill. The results will also guide vaccine development.

But so much is unknown, including how long antibodies — and immunity — lasts, and who the blood tests should be used on.

“We don’t have all the answers,” said Dr. Robin Patel, president of the American Society for Microbiology.

For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia, and death. Most people recover.

More than 15 companies have notified the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that they have developed antibody tests, the agency said. The companies are permitted to begin distributing the tests to hospitals and doctors’ offices, provided they carry certain disclaimer statements, including: “This test has not been reviewed by the FDA.”

In Spain, the government sought the rapid tests for use first in hospitals and nursing homes, where efforts to halt the spread of the virus have been hampered by widespread infections among health workers.

Hopes about the transformative power of the tests have been raised, then partially dashed, in the U.K. Sharon Peacock, director of the national infection service at Public Health England, told lawmakers this week that the tests would be available in the “near future” for purchase through Amazon for use at home or to have completed in a pharmacy.

“We need to evaluate them in the laboratory to be clear, because these are brand-new products,” she said, explaining that the evaluation should be completed this week. She said “further millions” were being ordered on top of the 3.5 million the government had already bought.

Full Coverage: Virus Outbreak

But England’s chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, urged caution.

“I do not think, and I want to make this clear, that this is something you will suddenly be ordering on the internet next week,” Whitty told a news conference Wednesday. “The one thing worse than no test is a bad test.

“If they are incredibly accurate, we will work out the quickest way to release them. If they are not accurate, we will not release any of them,” he said.

The prime minister’s spokesman was unable to say Thursday how much the U.K. had paid for the tests, which come from several suppliers, or whether the money would be refunded if they turned out to be unreliable.

The chief scientist at the World Health Organization said wider testing would allow health officials to pinpoint infections in people who appear healthy but may be carrying the virus.

“We know that if you really go out and test everyone in the community, you’re going to find people walking around with this virus in their nose who do not feel at all ill,” Dr. Soumya Swaminathan said in an interview.

WHO believes most transmissions of the virus occur through people who already show symptoms, but “the question is still open” about how asymptomatic people may spread infection, Swaminathan said.

___

Jill Lawless reported from London. Jamey Keaten in Geneva and Mike Stobbe in New York contributed to this report.

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Follow AP coverage of the virus outbreak at https://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak