Covid-19 Live Updates: Senate Republicans Plan Vote on ‘Skinny’ Aid Bill

Senate Republicans are pushing ahead with their ‘skinny’ stimulus bill.

Senate Republicans plan to force a vote Thursday on their substantially scaled-back stimulus plan, in a maneuver all but guaranteed to fail amid opposition by Democrats who call the measure inadequate.

After months of struggling to overcome deep internal divisions over the scope of another relief measure, Republicans hope to present a near-united front in support of their latest plan. They can then try to blame the continuing impasse on Democrats, who are expected to oppose it en masse, denying it the 60 votes it would need to advance.

The package, which Republicans refer to as their “skinny” bill, includes federal aid for unemployed workers, small businesses, schools and vaccine development.

“I’m optimistic that we’ll have a good vote on our side,” Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, said on Wednesday. “I would hope this might appeal to some of the Democrats.”

But Democrats, who have refused to accept any proposal less than $ 2.2 trillion, argue that the legislation does little to address the economic devastation of the pandemic.

The measure does not include another round of stimulus checks for American taxpayers or aid to state and local governments, omissions that cut down the overall price tag of the legislation. And while it would resume weekly federal jobless benefits that lapsed at the end of July, it would set them at $ 300 — half the original amount. Democrats are pressing to reinstitute the full payment.

“Instead of improving their offer, Senate Republicans have made it stingier and even less appropriate to the looming crisis that we have,” said Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader. “I’m not sure what kind of negotiating strategy that is, but it sure isn’t serious strategy, and it sure won’t be successful.”

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who has been a point man in negotiations with Democrats on a recovery package, cast doubt Wednesday on whether any agreement could be reached, saying he was not sure whether there was still a chance.

“We’ll see,” Mr. Mnuchin said. “I hope there is. It’s important to a lot of people out there.”

More than 900,000 people worldwide have now died from the virus.

The global death toll from the coronavirus has surpassed 900,000, according to a New York Times database, and sickened at least 27.8 million people as of Thursday morning.

Seven months into the pandemic, the virus has been detected in almost every country.

The true death toll may be higher; The New York Times has found underestimates in the official death tallies in the United States and in more than a dozen other countries. The United States has the highest number of cases, followed by India, which reported more than 95,000 new cases on Thursday, and Brazil. In deaths, the United States is first, with Brazil second and India third.

The pandemic is ebbing in some countries that were hit hard early on, but the number of new cases is growing faster than ever worldwide, with more than 200,000 reported each day on average. Cases are worryingly high in the India, the United States and Israel. In Brazil, cases are high but appear to be decreasing.

Scientists praise AstraZeneca’s move to suspend a vaccine trial.

Scientists on Wednesday praised the decision by AstraZeneca to suspend its late-stage coronavirus vaccine trials and begin a safety review after learning that a participant had developed a serious neurological condition. Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, testifying at a Senate hearing on Wednesday, said the step “ought to be reassuring.”

The results of the safety review, to be conducted by an independent board of experts, will help determine if the participant’s condition was a reaction to the vaccine candidate or merely coincidental, and are expected to heavily influence whether and when trials might resume.

But many details about the trial’s suspension and the event that triggered it remain murky. For example, researchers do not yet know what caused the volunteer’s symptoms, how long the evaluation process will take or what the consequences might be.

In early stage trials, AstraZeneca’s vaccine candidate, built from an innocuous virus known to cause common colds in chimpanzees that was engineered to carry coronavirus genes, yielded promising safety data in people, although several participants experienced mild or moderate side effects including fevers and aches.

More than 10,000 adult volunteers were later dosed with AstraZeneca’s vaccine in the company’s Phase 2/3 trial in the United Kingdom, where the participant fell ill. “The larger your study group, the more likely you’ll find an adverse event,” said Mark Slifka, a vaccine expert at Oregon Health and Sciences University. “This could occur spontaneously.”

Part of the review will include generating a timeline of the participant’s symptoms to see if they match up roughly with when the vaccine was administered. The committee will also investigate other potential causes of the symptoms, in a process of elimination.

After determining whether AstraZeneca’s vaccine is the probable cause, experts will advise the company on whether to resume its trials.

The number of U.S. workers filing new state jobless claims remains above 800,000.

More than four months after Americans began emerging from the coronavirus-caused lockdown across most states, the job market remains treacherous, according to new data from the Labor Department.

More than 857,000 workers filed new claims for state unemployment insurance last week, before seasonal adjustments, a slight increase from the previous week. Although the unemployment rate has fallen to 8.4 percent, the level of layoffs reflects the challenges for many workers in the fitful recovery.

On a seasonally adjusted basis, the total was 884,000, unchanged from the previous week.

In addition, about 839,000 new claims were filed under a federal program called Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, which provides assistance to freelancers, part-time workers and others who do not ordinarily qualify for state benefits.

“The story among gig workers and part-timers has become more grim in recent weeks,” said Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics.

While the reason for the surge in those claims is uncertain, he said, it is consistent with private data showing an overall decline in small-business employment. And for many caught in the maw of the coronavirus economy, the program has been a lifeline.

For Black and Latino Americans, the virus is taking a disproportionate emotional and economic toll.

A new survey highlights once again the disproportionately devastating effects the pandemic has had on Black and Latino Americans.

The survey, released on Thursday by the Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation, found that one-third of respondents had experienced stress, anxiety or sadness since the coronavirus crisis began.

But mental health concerns were reported at significantly higher rates for Black, Latino, female and low-income respondents.

“The same systemic inequities that affect health outcomes are also affecting social issues,” said Yaphet Getachew, one of the survey’s authors.

Data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has shown that Black and Latino residents are three times as likely to become infected with the virus and twice as likely to die from it as white Americans.

And last month, a C.D.C. survey found that Black and Latino people reported rising levels of anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts, and increased substance abuse, stemming from the stress of the virus.

Black and Latino Americans might experience more emotional stress because they are overrepresented in service sector jobs that do not allow for social distancing, the Commonwealth researchers said.

The researchers also found a gender disparity when it came to mental health problems, probably because of the child care burden falling disproportionately on women as schools closed.

The survey’s authors noted that mental health is often intertwined with economic stability. Their research shows Black and Latino people are more likely to have experienced financial challenges amid the health crisis, like the depletion of personal savings or debt.

They argued that their results point to an urgent need for more economic resources directed to Black and Latino communities. The Paycheck Protection Program, for example, was intended to prioritize lending to businesses owned by women and people of color, but many have reported trouble gaining access to those relief funds.

“We need to make sure the resources being disseminated for Covid-19 relief actually get to the communities that need them most,” said Laurie Zephyrin, another author of the report. “These surveys can help target where the need is.”

Julian Assange’s extradition trial is halted while a lawyer is tested for the virus.

The U.S. extradition hearing of Julian Assange, the embattled WikiLeaks founder, which began in London this week, was abruptly halted on Thursday after a member of the prosecution team may have been exposed to the coronavirus.

The hearing had been delayed for months amid the pandemic before it began on Monday, and was the first time Mr. Assange, 49, had been seen since February. But the judge decided to further postpone the hearing until at least Monday, pending the coronavirus test result of the lawyer. It is unclear when the hearing will resume.

Mr. Assange has been kept in jail since being arrested in London last year after spending years holed up in the Ecuadorean Embassy there. His lawyers have argued that he be granted bail because they say he is at risk from the coronavirus and has medical conditions, but the judge denied that request.

Mr. Assange has been indicted in the United States on charges that he conspired with Chelsea Manning, a former Army intelligence analyst, to hack into a Pentagon computer network, and that he published the secret documents. The closely watched hearing, which is a major moment in the prolonged legal battle, was expected to last until early October, but could extend further if delays continue.

global roundup

Jakarta will reimpose restrictions as its hospitals fill up.

As hospitals in Indonesia’s capital near capacity, the authorities will reimpose a partial shutdown on Monday that includes a work-from-home requirement, a ban on large gatherings and restrictions on houses of worship.

“We will pull the emergency brake, which means we are forced to re-implement large-scale social restrictions like in the early days of the pandemic,” Jakarta’s governor, Anies Baswedan, told reporters on Wednesday.

Indonesia, the world’s fourth-most-populous nation, implemented social-distancing restrictions early in the pandemic but later relaxed them in the hope of restarting its stalled economy. In recent weeks, however, the number of reported cases has surged past 200,000, and independent experts say the total is likely many times higher.

Indonesia’s health care system is notoriously understaffed and underfunded. More than 185 doctors, dentists and nurses have died from Covid-19, professional associations say.

Since Sunday, Jakarta has been reporting more than 1,000 new cases a day — about a third of the national daily total — and Mr. Anies said the city’s hospitals were filling quickly with coronavirus patients.

He predicted that all hospital beds would be taken by early October and that intensive care units would be full by Sept. 25 if the city did not take immediate action to slow the spread of the virus.

In the neighboring city of Bekasi, another virus hot spot, officials were preparing the city’s stadium as an isolation center to house people who have tested positive for the coronavirus but do not have symptoms, said the mayor, Rahmat Effendi.

In Jakarta, where the city had reported nearly 50,000 cases and more than 1,300 deaths as of Thursday morning, the designated cemetery for coronavirus victims has been filling quickly and was expected to run out of room by mid-October.

Mr. Anies said the city was still working out details of restrictions on gatherings, travel, and prayers at mosques, always a sensitive issue in the predominantly Muslim country. Most schools have not reopened since they were shut down months ago — a particular challenge for rural schoolchildren who lack internet and cellphone service.

In other developments around the world:

• The authorities in Austria reported 626 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, a 24-hour rate not seen since the end of March, before the country came out of its lockdown. Despite the rise in cases, the number of patients in intensive care or who have died from the disease remains relatively low in Austria. Of the 4,251 people thought to be currently infected, only 39 are in intensive care beds, according to data from the country’s health ministry.

• The Japanese Sumo Association said 19 wrestlers have tested positive for the virus, just days before the next major tournament is scheduled to start, Reuters reported. A sumo wrestler who went by the name Shobushi died of the virus in May.

Wuhan, the pandemic’s first epicenter, will resume international flights this month.

First pool parties, now international vacations.

The Chinese city of Wuhan, where the coronavirus was first detected, is one of many in the country that have been gradually returning to an almost pre-pandemic sense of normality. Wuhan’s water parks and night markets are packed elbow to elbow, buzzing as they did in the days before the authoritarian government imposed sweeping lockdowns.

The next step is resuming international flights. The first is a Sept. 16 T’way Airlines flight between Wuhan and Seoul, the South Korean capital, China’s state-run media reported on Thursday.

Several carriers are applying for permission to restart direct flights between Wuhan and cities such as Bangkok; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Hanoi, Vietnam; Singapore; and Tokyo, according to a report in People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party.

Thousands of infected travelers who left Wuhan in January, ahead of the Lunar New Year, helped to unwittingly spread the virus across the country and beyond. The industrial hub of 11 million people was placed under lockdown later that month.

Wuhan began to cautiously reopen in April, and other cities have since followed suit, even as experts warn that China may face a Covid-19 resurgence as the weather cools and people spend more time indoors. Earlier this month, Beijing restarted direct flights to Canada, Greece, Thailand and other countries.

Eerily empty this spring, Wuhan’s Tianhe International Airport processed up to 60,000 travelers a day last month, a record since the end of the lockdown, according to state media reports. And by late August, the airport had recovered 90 percent of its pre-pandemic volume of domestic flights compared with the same period last year.

On Thursday, China reported zero domestically transmitted cases for the 25th consecutive day. The Chinese mainland has had a total of almost 93,000 cases and 4,634 deaths, according to a New York Times database.

Reporting was contributed by Emily Cochrane, Gillian Friedman, Emma Goldberg, Mike Ives, Claire Moses, Richard C. Paddock, Motoko Rich, Christopher F. Schuetze, Nelson D. Schwartz, Dera Menra Sijabat, Karan Deep Singh, Muktita Suhartono, Megan Specia, Jin Wu, Katherine J. Wu and Elaine Yu.