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Universities, cities and states are testing wastewater for the virus

InternationalDec 26. 2020Allan Matovu-Barigye collects untreated wastewater at the Ballenger-McKinney treatment facility in Frederick, Md., on Dec. 18. Twice a week, samples are collected and sent to a lab in Rockville to be screened for the coronavirus. Washington Post photo by Katherine Frey

By The Washington Post, Ovetta Wiggins

Students were just settling in on the campus of Mount St. Mary’s University in Western Maryland when researchers wearing protective gear began scooping up weekly samples from the pipes outside their dorms.

Before long, scientists, working with the local health team, had made a discovery from the toilet water: shed particles of SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus.

Without a single student getting a nose swab, public health officials knew that a student at the small, private university – potentially more than one – was carrying the virus. They just had to identify them.

Administrators quickly tested 221 students. Ten were positive. Nine had never shown symptoms and weren’t aware they were sick.

“It could have become quite a spreading event,” said Donna Klinger, a spokeswoman for the university. The coronavirus-positive students were put in isolation, and the college decided to increase its wastewater sampling to twice a week.

Mount St. Mary’s is one of a growing number of colleges and universities across the country that are testing wastewater to monitor and attack the spread of the coronavirus.

Now state and local governments are starting to follow suit, with Maryland launching a statewide wastewater testing program that will focus on nursing homes, prisons and low-income housing developments.

The District is joining a new federal initiative to identify coronavirus hot spots through wastewater testing. The initiative, run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, will compile data from individual waterwater treatment plans and systems.

“It’s an unintrusive way to study what is circulating in the community,” said Rita Colwell, a microbiologist and president of CosmosID, a Rockville-based firm that will analyze Maryland’s specimens.

CosmosID has been testing collections from as far as California and Maine for months. In the greater Washington region, the company has worked on collections in Frederick County, including at Mount St. Mary’s. The University of Virginia also has used wastewater sampling as a tool to detect the novel coronavirus.

Maryland began a two-month pilot program in July, testing samples from five wastewater treatment plants in Baltimore, Montgomery, Prince George’s, Allegany and Wicomico counties. The program gave state public health officials an early sense of areas where community spread of the virus might be high.

Last month, Gov. Larry Hogan (R) announced the state will spend $1 million for the Maryland Department of the Environment to launch its statewide effort.

Jay Apperson, a spokesman for the agency, said the program began in mid-December in coordination with the Baltimore City housing authority. The state ultimately intends to have 50 testing sites across the state.

State environmental secretary Ben Grumbles said wastewater testing does not replace clinical testing but can be a great predictor of where the virus is and how rampantly it is spreading, detecting its presence in people who may never show symptoms. The tool allows the state to t screen congregate settings for the virus without asking people to line up to take tests.

Researchers across the country and around the world have tested wastewater to study everything from polio to cholera and, more recently, opioids and heroin. Since the pandemic began this spring, scientists have learned that the ribonucleic acid, or RNA, of the coronavirus, which causes covid-19, can be detected in feces, and that infected individuals shed particles in their stool soon after being infected.

BioBot, a Boston-based wastewater epidemiology firm, was the first company in the United States to try this approach. Its scientists began working with MIT and the Harvard School of Public Health in February, collecting samples from wastewater treatment plants in Boston. Today the company is analyzing water from to 400 communities across 42 states, including Stafford County in Virginia, Miami-Dade County in Florida and Chattanooga, Tenn.

“Individuals who contract [coronavirus], they are shedding the virus in stool within days of infection,” said Newsha Ghaeli, the co-founder and president of Biobot.

Barbara A. Brookmyer, the health officer in Frederick County, said there are a lot of questions about wastewater testing, particularly of large sewage plants.

“This is still in the early stages of understanding everything from the sample collection up through and including interpretation of what the data means,” she said. “There is nothing in a textbook right now that says if you take a look at a wastewater treatment plant that serves 30,000 people and you see this many copies of this gene particle, then that is equivalent to X number of people who are in Day 1 of infection, X number of people in Day 2 of infection, X number of people who are still shedding virus.”

When the county initially started collecting samples, said Mark Schweitzer, the director of the Frederick County Division of Water and Sewer Utilities, he found “a lot of difficulty matching up the wastewater collection system area with the case data.”

He said there were a number of variables that affect the collection, including rainwater and the time it takes for the waste to reach the treatment facility.

Now the county is doing more targeted testing of congregate facilities, Schweitzer said.

“It’s one of the tools in the toolbox,” said Manoj Dadlani, the CEO of CosmosID. “It can’t solve everything, but it’s a useful tool in terms of decisions, in terms of policy and ramping up testing.”

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Pelosi sets up showdown on Trump’s $2,000 checks after GOP balks

InternationalDec 26. 2020House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., talks at a news conference on Sunday, Dec. 20, 2020. Bloomberg photo by Ting Shen

By Syndication Washington Post, Billy House

A surprise scuffle over pandemic relief is set to run up against a crucial federal funding deadline next week as Democrats side with President Donald Trump in his demand for $2,000 payments to most Americans and Republicans take up his criticism of government spending.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is planning a full floor vote Monday on pandemic aid that includes the $2,000 payments that Trump says he wants, replacing the $600 in the original legislation. Republicans blocked Majority Leader Steny Hoyer’s attempt to make that switch Thursday.

“House and Senate Democrats have repeatedly fought for bigger checks for the American people, which House and Senate Republicans have repeatedly rejected – first, during our negotiations when they said that they would not go above $600 and now, with this act of callousness on the Floor,” Pelosi said in a statement Thursday.

The standoff over stimulus payments comes after months of intense negotiations yielded a compromise to inject $900 billion into the U.S. economy – including forgivable loans for small businesses, supplemental unemployment benefits, support for renters facing eviction and funds for vaccine distribution. Those measures were combined with $1.4 trillion in annual government spending, and now the entire package is in limbo.

Trump has not explicitly said he would veto the legislation, which Congress finished processing Thursday after it passed both chambers Monday. The White House did not respond to requests for comment. The bill has been flown to Florida, where Trump is spending Christmas at his private Mar-a-Lago club, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Trump played a Christmas Day round of golf at his private club in West Palm Beach with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., an ally of the president who has urged him to sign the measure.

If the president does not do so by Monday night, the government – now operating under temporary funding – would begin a partial shutdown starting Tuesday. The House may attempt to pass another stopgap funding measure on Monday if Trump has not acted.

The president tweeted a video Tuesday criticizing the $2.3 trillion bill. His call for $2,000 payments, which most Republicans rejected as too costly, surprised GOP lawmakers.

“Republicans in Congress and the White House can’t agree on what they want,” Hoyer, D-Md., told reporters Thursday at the Capitol. “Surely, the president of the United States, whether he is in Mar-a-Lago or someplace else, ought to empathize with the suffering and apprehension and deep angst people are feeling this Christmas Eve.”

Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri, a member of the GOP leadership, said there were not enough Republican votes in the Senate to pass the $2,000 payments.

“I hope the president looks at this again and reaches that conclusion that the best thing to do is to sign the bill,” Blunt told reporters.

The House will reconvene Monday to vote on the Cash Act, a bill introduced by Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., to increase stimulus checks to $2,000. Democrats will have a video conference call before the vote to discuss Congress’s pandemic response, according to a person briefed on the plan.

Republicans on Thursday tried to seek unanimous consent on a measure to examine taxpayer money spent on foreign aid, but Democrats blocked that move. In his complaint Tuesday about Congress’s combined virus aid and government spending bill, Trump criticized federal resources spent on international programs, even though such spending was included in his budget and was allocated as part of the bipartisan appropriations process.

Trump’s conflict with Congress further escalated this week with his veto Wednesday of the National Defense Authorization Act, which passed both chambers by large bipartisan support this month. The House plans to vote to override Trump’s veto Monday, with the Senate following suit Tuesday. It would be the first time Congress overrules Trump.

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U.S. to require negative coronavirus test for all airline passengers from U.K.

InternationalDec 26. 2020

By The Washington Post, Paulina Firozi and Michael Laris

Vaccinations for the coronavirus continued on Christmas Day, as authorities worried that that holiday gatherings will further spread infection and the federal government said anyone bound for the U.S. from the United Kingdom must first test negative for the virus.

Suzanne Czerniak, a diagnostic radiology resident at Yale New Haven Hospital in Connecticut, got her first coronavirus vaccine dose on Christmas afternoon.

She said she brought homemade cookies to the health-care staff working on the holiday to administer vaccinations, and the one who gave her a shot was sporting a holiday sweater.

“It’s the best Christmas present,” she said. “When I got the email that I was eligible and I needed to schedule the first shot, I cried. I cried when I got home, too.”

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, this week called on hospitals and nursing home operators to work over the holidays to vaccinate people.

In a Christmas message, Pope Francis called for equal distribution of coronvirus vaccines, “especially for the most vulnerable and needy,” across national boundaries. Rich countries have bought up billions of potential doses, which could leave some poor countries without sufficient supplies for years.

In Britain, Queen Elizabeth II’s televised Christmas remarks highlighted everyday acts of empathy and kindness. “Let the light of Christmas, the spirit of selflessness, love and, above all, hope, guide us in the times ahead,” she said.

On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention signed an order that mandates American citizens and others flying from the United Kingdom must be tested for the coronavirus, a move U.S. officials hope will thwart a new faster-spreading variant of the virus.

The requirement, which takes effect Monday, could affect tens of thousands of travelers per month but stops short of an outright ban, as dozens of other nations, including Canada, have done.

The decision follows President Donald Trump’s order in March barring entry to the United States by many foreign nationals who had been in the U.K. in the past 14 days. “This additional testing requirement will fortify our protection of the American public to improve their health and safety and ensure responsible international travel,” the CDC said in a statement.

Passengers must get a viral test – meaning one that detects current infections – within three days of their flight, the CDC said. Travelers are required to provide airlines written documentation of the results. PCR or antigen tests are both considered acceptable.

Officials in Washington took action after some state officials had loudly called for federal intervention.

In New York, Cuomo had said the United States should follow the lead of other countries and “halt travel until we know what we’re talking about and we know the facts.”

On Friday, he tweeted calling the CDC’s decision a “Christmas wish answered.”

Mark Jarrett, chief quality officer for New York’s Northwell Health, said the provider took a pause on vaccinations Christmas Day but will be “back in full swing,” starting on Saturday.

“We are going to be continuing vaccinations tomorrow, Sunday, all next week,” he said. “We did not do vaccines today, since it’s a holiday a lot of staff likes off. They’ve been working so hard and we do have resurgence going on. We felt that on both the human side and staffing side we wouldn’t do it, but we are back in full swing tomorrow.”

Jahan Fahimi, an emergency physician at UCSF Health in San Francisco, said the start of vaccinations have been a morale booster for weary health-care workers.

“Nobody is exhaling quite yet. Many of us gave gotten the first shot of the vaccine, we know we’re starting to develop a small amount of immunity, but nobody has enough immunity quite yet to feel completely at ease,” Fahimi said. “We’re still playing by the same set of rules, which is masking and all the PPE we buried ourselves under on a daily basis when we’re working.”

He urged people to continue to take precautions, stay home and avoid travel through the holidays, including New Year’s.

“I’m hopeful that if we can do the right thing now, we’ll be on the downslope sooner,” he said.

The Transportation Security Agency announced this week that it screened 1,191,123 individuals at airport checkpoints across the country on Wednesday, more than any day since March 16.

“A lot of us are nervous about that and what that’s going to mean,” said Stephen C. Dorner, an emergency physician at Massachusetts General Hospital. “But it’s going to take a little while to see what happens, since hospitalization rates lag behind infection rates.”

British officials have been alarmed at the swift spread of the new variant and are also concerned about an even faster-spreading mutation identified in South Africa. Researchers say there is no evidence either variant of the coronavirus is more deadly, and they are optimistic existing vaccines will combat them effectively. It is also possible the vaccines could quickly be updated if changes are needed, they said.

“Viruses constantly change through mutation, and preliminary analysis in the UK suggests that this new variant may be up to 70% more transmissible than previously circulating variants,” the CDC said.

Experts said the variants could already be working their way, undetected, through American communities, where coronavirus testing and the sequencing to track variants is less far-reaching than in many other countries.

The CDC notes on its website that a negative test result means a person was probably not infected when their sample was taken. But it could also mean “your sample was collected too early in your infection” and you could still become sick.

Given the uncontrolled spread of the coronavirus across the United States, there has been some debate among U.S. officials about whether banning flights made sense. Federal officials ultimately decided testing was the better approach. More than 328,000 people have died of the coronavirus in the United States.

Canada has banned flights from the U.K. until Jan. 6, “so we can prevent this new variant of covid-19 from spreading in Canada,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said.

According to the latest figures from the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics and aviation data firm Cirium, more than 13,600 passengers flew directly from the U.K. to the United States in June.

That figure has continued to climb, and Airlines for America, the industry advocacy group, said total passengers arriving from London’s Heathrow Airport topped 30,000 in November.

Drew Harris, a population health analyst, said the new variant is a cause for caution, but much remains unknown.

Harris said the administration’s partial travel ban from March, which remains in effect, was “very porous.”

“There’s no sense of having a travel ban if you allow American citizens,” permanent residents and other exceptions, said Harris, who recently retired from Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. He said testing is a useful step.

“If people are coming in, then it’s important they be tested to determine if they’re bringing the new strain in with them,” Harris said. “As bad as things are in the United States, they could get worse if we had a faster spreading virus. But we don’t know that just yet.”

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Trump wields pardon power as political weapon, rewarding loyalists and undermining prosecutors

InternationalDec 25. 2020

By The Washington Post · Toluse Olorunnipa, Josh Dawsey

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – Among the dozens of people who received pardons from President Donald Trump this week were several who lied to investigators andobstructeda federal probe into the president’s links to Russia.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/c/embed/617d36f7-e809-4a97-beed-2c3cae1c6411?ptvads=block&playthrough=false

Some had personal connections to Trump or his most loyal backers. A handful were Republican lawmakers rewarded for fealty to the president after betraying the public trust. Others abused their authority in more violent ways, killing or injuring unarmed civilians.

Taken together, the rogue’s gallery of criminals receiving clemency this week showcased Trump’s willingness to exert raw political power for his own personal gain, handing out favors to friends at a time when he is seeking GOP support for his flailing bid to reverse his election loss.

In a process White House aides describe as ad hoc, many of the pardon seekers ended up on the president’s radar after conservative activists, television commentators or other friends-of-Trump made personal appeals on their behalf.

The brazenness of the announcements – which included pardons for his daughter’s father-in-law, a former campaign manager and convicted killers from a private security firm founded by a longtime political ally – rocked Washington and sparked calls for an overhaul of the Constitutional power.

Trump’s pardon spree, coming less than a month before he is set to leave office, is his latest exploitation of his executive powers in ways that offend the spirit of the Constitution if not its letter, said Russell Riley, a presidential historian at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center.

“The pardon is an unfettered power, so I don’t think that there was ever a chance that he wasn’t going to look after the people he’s been quietly authorizing and protecting all along,” he said. “Nobody with a straight face can argue that this use of the pardon power is consistent with what the Framers envisioned when they conveyed it in Article II.”

The vast majority of the 94 people who have received clemency from Trump have a personal or political connection to him, according to a compilation by Harvard Law School professor Jack Goldsmith and Matthew Gluck on the Lawfare blog.

Democrats in Congress, good governance groups and several former prosecutors slammed the pardons as antithetical to the rule of law and yet another example of hypocrisy from a president who campaigned on a pledge to restore “law and order” and end political cronyism.

Some called for an overhaul of the pardon power, saying Trump has so corrupted it that it should be amended or even stripped from the Constitution.

“Once one party allows the pardon power to become a tool of criminal enterprise, its danger to democracy outweighs its utility as an instrument of justice,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., wrote Thursday on Twitter after Trump pardoned several individuals who were charged in special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into whether Trump conspired with Russia or obstructed justice. “It’s time to remove the pardon power from the Constitution.”

For their part, Republican lawmakers have largely been silent – abandoning the kind of outrage they expressed with Democratic presidents issued pardons to political allies on a far smaller scale.

One Republican who did speak out, Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse called the moves “rotten to the core.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump is likely to issue dozens more pardons after the Christmas holiday, according to aides, who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Before leaving office, Trump is preparing to deliver parting gifts to allies who have demonstrated loyalty to him, officials said.

Trump has taken something of an impromptu approach to the pardon process, polling advisers, friends and allies for potential candidates, according to advisers. Alice Johnson, a criminal justice advocate from Tennessee who received a pardon for a drug conviction after an intervention by the celebrity Kim Kardashian and spoke at the Republican National Convention, has played a key role by sending names to Trump family members and other White House advisers.

Trump continues to consider a pardon for his personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani and former chief strategist Steve Bannon, a White House adviser said. Bannon, who was indicted earlier this year on charges of defrauding donors to a charity, has pled not guilty. Giuliani, whose business practices have drawn scrutiny from investigators, did not respond to a request for comment.

Several advisers said Trump has asked lawyers and aides to look into the issue of preemptive pardons.

Legal scholars have debated whether Trump could issue a pardon for himself in the coming weeks, a prospect that appeared more likely after his latest clemency push focused largely on allies whose legal predicaments were closely linked to his own.

Trump has used his constitutional power to undermine Mueller’s investigation, which neither charged nor exonerated him of obstructing justice. Mueller, who indicted several of Trump’s close allies and aides, cited longstanding Justice Department guidelines against indicting a sitting president.

Trump has told allies he wants to erode the Mueller probe through the presidential power to pardon. His pardons Wednesday of former campaign manager Paul Manafort and political confidant Roger Stone – both convicted of trying to impede investigations into Russia’s interference into the 2016 presidential race – were part of the effort to discredit Mueller and reward those who stood by him even as they faced prosecutorial pressure, aides said.

In its announcement of the pardons, the White House said Manafort was “one of the most prominent victims of what has been revealed to be perhaps the greatest witch hunt in American history.”

The defiant tone drove home another way Trump’s pardons differ from those of his predecessors: Many of the recipients are unrepentant and the White House has portrayed the prosecutors as the actual wrongdoers.

While Trump has so far pardoned five people who were charged by Mueller, some onetime Trump allies who cooperated with the investigation and expressed remorse for their crimes have not received pardons.

They include Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen and former deputy campaign manager Rick Gates. After Cohen implicated Trump in several crimes, Trump lashed out at him and called him a “rat.”

“Trump has upended the traditional criteria for clemency,” Goldsmith, has tracked Trump’s pardons and commutations, wrote Thursday on Twitter. He linked to a Justice Department document that said “a pardon is granted on the basis of the petitioner’s demonstrated good conduct for a substantial period of time after conviction and service of sentence.”

The Office of the Pardon Attorney, which produced that document, has largely been eliminated from the pardon process.

The process is being overseen by White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, but many of the names are coming directly from Trump, who hears about cases on television and from friends, officials said.

Aides say the candidates for clemency fall, broadly, into two categories -political allies with criminal convictions for mostly white-collar crimes and unaffiliated people recommended to be pardoned for what one aide described as “actual crimes” such as drug convictions. White House officials have tried to roll out the pardons so far with a mix of both, sometimes moving the politically affiliated ones toward the bottom of the list.

Those involved in the process say future pardon announcements will also feature a mix of names.

“I can’t talk about it and I don’t think you will find anyone who will. There are a lot of names in the hopper,” said Doug Deason, a Trump donor who is working on the issue.

Deason said he was working on pardons with Jared Kushner and Brooke Rollins, the head of the domestic policy council. Deason said he believed the majority of the remaining pardons will be for less controversial convictions, including those who were served lengthy sentences for small amounts of drugs.

But Trump has also told allies that he wants to use his pardon power to help political allies who have been loyal to him. On Wednesday, he pardoned a former aide to Rand Paul, a senator who has regularly supported him on some of his positions that are unpopular in the conference and has raised concerns about voter fraud.

Other pardon recipients have benefited from their powerful connections to those in the president’s orbit.

In announcing the pardons, the White House has listed several Trump loyalists who had advocated for clemency – including former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi and Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy.

In pardoning Charles Kushner for witness retaliation and other crimes, the White House cited support from campaign adviser Matt Schlapp and David Safavian, himself a recipient of a presidential pardon from Trump. It did not mention Trump’s son-in-law and White House aide Jared Kushner.

Trump has granted clemency to a handful of Republican lawmakers who were found guilty of crimes including fraud, obstruction of justice and campaign finance violations. Two former members of Congress who received pardons this week, Duncan Hunter and Chris Collins, were among the first Republicans to endorse Trump’s presidential bid.

Former Palm Beach County Commissioner Mary McCarty was pardoned for a 2009 charge of honest services fraud. Her brother, Brian Ballard, is a longtime lobbyist for Trump’s business and a Trump fundraiser.

While the majority of people receiving pardons were guilty of non-violent crimes, Trump also broke from tradition by granting clemency to several people involved in acts of cruelty against the innocent.

Four private security contractors who received full pardons – Nicholas Slatten, Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard – were each sentenced to lengthy prison sentences for their roles in shootings that killed 14 Iraqi civilians, including women and children. The contractors all worked for the Blackwater Worldwide security company, which was founded by Erik Prince – a longtime Trump ally and brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

Trump also pardoned two Border Patrol agents convicted of shooting an unarmed suspect near El Paso, Texas, and another Border Patrol agent who spent 27 months in prison for assaulting a Mexican national who illegally crossed into Texas.

He pardoned a Prince George’s County, Md., police officer who served 10 years in prison for releasing her police dog to attack a man who had surrendered.

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Visit to restaurant outside Seoul may have infected 31 Thais

InternationalDec 25. 2020

By The Nation

So far, 31 Thais based in South Korea have tested positive for Covid-19, the Centre of COVID-19 Situation Administration (CCSA) reported on Friday.

CCSA said the 31 people had possibly picked up the infection from a Thai restaurant in Cheonan, located to the south of Seoul.

One patient had visited the restaurant on December 23, and there were some 90 Thai people in the restaurant at the time.

An additional 28 people who were at risk of being exposed to the virus have been tested and are awaiting the result.

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Despite progress, backups persist on Christmas Eve at Port of Dover

InternationalDec 25. 2020Trucks and vehicles sit in stationary traffic on the access road toward the Port of Dover in Dover, England, on Dec. 23, 2020. Routes to Dover, Britain’s busiest cross-channel port, have been choked for days after France shut its border with Britain, blaming an outbreak of a novel strain of the coronavirus. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Chris Ratcliffe

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Lizzy Burden, Deirdre Hipwell, Christopher Jasper

Britain’s main trucking gateway to the European Union remained backed up for a fifth day, despite progress moving traffic through the Port of Dover.

Thousands of truckers were stuck in logjams around Britain’s busiest ferry port on Christmas Eve, separated from families, many as far away as Poland. Some 4,000 trucks alone were crowded onto the site of Manston Airport, a disused airfield in Kent being used to conduct coronavirus testing required before they can board ferries to Calais, France.

Only 100 trucks made it across overnight, a spokesman for the port said. The facility remained “very congested,” with progress slowed partly to ensure full ferry sailings.

Some 170 military personnel tested hauliers overnight, enabling their journeys to continue into Europe, the U.K. Ministry of Defence said. They were aided by French firemen who brought over 10,000 coronavirus tests. France reopened its borders on Wednesday after a two-day blockade, on the condition that drivers have proof of a negative test.

“We have information from Polish drivers who managed to drive through the Channel Tunnel and enter France,” the Polish Embassy tweeted. “Successive drivers are tested and queue up for the crossing. There is progress at the border.”

Ferries will continue to sail on Christmas and Boxing Day to help clear the backlog, U.K. Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said on Twitter.

However, the U.K.’s Road Haulage Association said it was awaiting clarity from the French government on whether trucks would be allowed to keep working once they reach Calais — they are not usually allowed to move on roads on Sundays and holidays such as Christmas.

Many drivers, some stranded since Saturday, risk spending Christmas parked by the side of an English road. Sikh humanitarian group Khalsa Aid is set to return to the congested M20 today to distribute 2,500 Domino’s pizzas among them.

Coronavirus testing firms said they’d been contacted about helping with the effort to process truckers waiting to cross the Channel, but were struggling to provide any assistance given surging demand at their main business at airports.

“This may take out capacity in other testing locations,” Denis Kinane, chief medical officer at the ExpressTest division of Cignpost Diagnostics, said in an email. “Our testing facilities at Gatwick and Heathrow have been inundated by the number of people who want a test in a very tight time frame.”

Collinson Group, which provides a range of coronavirus tests for travelers at Heathrow, Luton, Stansted, London City, Manchester and East Midlands airports, said it had provided advice on how to implement and streamline screening, but hadn’t been able to directly participate.

“The government had to bring in the military because it’s a massive challenge,” Scott Sunderman, Collinson’s managing director for medical and security assistance, said in an interview. “You need to deploy large numbers of well trained people very quickly.”

Sunderman said Collinson is already grappling with a rapidly changing requirements at airports, with Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd. introducing testing for flights to the U.S. today and Spain last week changing rules for visiting the Canary Island “overnight.” He said the company is braced for a jump in bookings from people flying to France who need to comply with the new rules.

Supermarkets said they aren’t worried about food shortages on Christmas Day but there will likely be shortages next week, especially of products from Spain, transported by road, such as citrus fruits, salad ingredients and some field vegetables which are expensive to send by airfreight, said Clive Black, a retail analyst at Shore Capital Ltd.

Trucks that are meant to be in Europe on Christmas Day and Boxing Day collecting new loads of fresh produce to bring back to the U.K. remain stuck in Kent, he said.

“A single lorry can carry about 30 to 40 tonnes of product,” he said. “You can see how if trucks don’t start moving quickly, and if Dover is not operating fluidly, we could absolutely have more empty shelves than has been suggested so far between Christmas and New Year and beyond.”

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Pence under pressure as the final step nears in formalizing Biden’s win

InternationalDec 25. 2020Vice President Pence addresses the crowd at a rally for Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue in Augusta, Ga. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Melina Mara

By The Washington Post · Colby Itkowitz, Josh Dawsey

Vice President Mike Pence urged an audience of conservative youth activists earlier this week to “stay in the fight,” as they chanted “Four more years” and “Stop the steal” to trumpet their embrace of the groundless notion that President Donald Trump was the true victor of the recent election.

“I’ll make you a promise: We’re going to keep fighting until every legal vote is counted, we’re going to keep fighting until every illegal vote is thrown out,” Pence said at the event Tuesday. “So – for all we’ve done, for all we have yet to do – stay in the fight.”

But in less than two weeks, it will fall to Pence to declare that fight over – and lost. A joint session of Congress on Jan. 6 will take the last step in formalizingPresident-elect Joe Biden’s victory, and Pence, in his role as president of the Senate, will preside over the session after four years of ceaseless efforts to demonstrate his loyalty to Trump.

Some die-hard Trump supporters are declaring that Pence will be a traitor if he does not somehow derail the proceedings. There is no evident way for him to do that even if he wanted to, but such demands ratchet up the pressure on Pence, who is unlikely to escape their wrath – or Trump’s.

“Trump would probably tell Pence, ‘Just go declare us reelected,’ ” said Joel Goldstein, a professor at the Saint Louis University School of Law. “Part of his constitutional duty is to be responsible. Just because you’re vice president doesn’t mean you get to engage in behavior that is threatening the underpinning of democratic institutions of the country.”

Pence is hoping for a low-key Jan. 6 and is not planning any unnecessary drama, aides said, intending to stick to his perfunctory role. He is eyeing a trip overseas soon after.

Trump realized only recently that Pence would play a notable role on that day and has been asking associates, including Pence, what can be done to block Biden’s win. The president became angry after a group called the Lincoln Project recently aired an ad suggesting Pence was abandoning the president, aides said.

The vice president has sought to avoid the appearance of breaking with the president, while trying to avoid echoing some of Trump’s most aggressive rhetoric, advisers said. His office is participating in the presidential transition, although Trump himself is not.

Yet for weeks, Pence has been near the center of the desperate, chaotic efforts to keep Trump in office. On Monday, he attended White House meetings with conservative House Republicans intent on challenging the results on Jan. 6; Pence told them his constitutional duty will be to open and count the results, not to determine their legitimacy, said a person familiar with the meeting who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about it publicly.

But rumors of Pence’s power at the joint session of Congress have been greatly exaggerated online. Some Trump supporters are insisting that he could use his role as presiding officer to invalidate the results from various states, causing the hashtag “Pence card” to trend on social media – meaning the pro-Trump forces should play that card.

But that is a misunderstanding of a provision in the U.S. Code saying that if a state does not submit its electoral votes by the fourth Wednesday of December, the vice president should prod the state to send them expeditiously. It does not give the vice president the power to reject any electoral votes.

Still, some Trump supporters are furious with Pence for letting that Dec. 23 deadline pass.

“Pence’s actions today and over this next 2 weeks will determine whether he’s a front-runner for 2024, or a traitor to the Patriot base. Simple as that,” Rogan O’Handley, a conservative activist, tweeted to his nearly 440,000 followers.

As Pence reads aloud the vote tallies at the joint session, several GOP lawmakers have said they will challenge the results of several Biden-won states. If a member of both the House and the Senate object, that would trigger a two-hour debate in each chamber and then a vote.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is eager to avoid forcing his members, especially those facing difficult reelections in 2022, to take that vote. Accepting the results could mean alienating the still-powerful Trump base, while opposing them could be seen as undermining democracy.

But Trump wants the drama of such a challenge. A senior administration official said Trump is “mad at everyone,” not just Pence, because he wants his whole team to fight more.

“At a meeting in Florida today, everyone was asking why aren’t the Republicans up in arms & fighting over the fact that the Democrats stole the rigged presidential election? Especially in the Senate, they said, where you helped 8 Senators win their races. How quickly they forget!” Trump tweeted Thursday from Mar-a-Lago, his estate in Palm Beach, Fla.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga.,, a prominent Trump defender, said he had not spoken to Pence, but argued that it would be a mistake for McConnell or anyone else to stand in the way of a debate over the election results.

“If there is a member of the House and Senate who feels strongly enough, then there should be a strong, methodical review that will lead to a final vote,” Gingrich said in an interview. “If you’re part of the 74 million who voted for Trump, you don’t think you’re getting a fair hearing anywhere. I believe it will be a disaster if there is a move to cut off debate.”

Still, Gingrich predicted that Pence “will play it very straight.”

The danger for Pence, perhaps, is that footage of him declaring Biden the winner could potentially damage his political prospects within the Republican Party, especially if he seeks the presidency in 2024.

Edward Foley, a law professor at Ohio State University who also is a contributing columnist for The Washington Post, said Congress’s job is not to determine whether the election was fraudulent, but to certify that the results received are the ones that each governor signed off on.

Some Republicans have spoken of sending Pence alternate slates of electors. But such slates would have no standing, and in any case it is unclear if any Trump electors have taken that step.

Pence is not the first vice president to find himself in a difficult role as the Senate declares a new president. Several have been forced to oversee the congressional declaration of their own defeat.

After the bitterly contested 2000 election, then-Vice President Al Gore went to Capitol Hill to certify the victory of his rival, Republican George W. Bush, overruling the vocal protests of some Democrats who felt Florida’s vote had been miscounted.

That event was widely seen as an effort to bring the country together and reaffirm a peaceful transfer of power.

“I think what the vice president can do is really very limited,” Goldstein said. “But one of the things the vice president can do is use it as a way of helping to unify the country and underscore the fact that we’re committed to the rule of law in democracy – and if you lose, you accept it and you move on.”

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Mortgage rates slide to historic lows for third time this month

InternationalDec 25. 2020

By The Washington Post · Kathy Orton

Fixed mortgage rates didn’t move much this week, but they declined enough to reach another record low, marking the third time this month and the 16th time this year they have hit historic lows.

The 30-year fixed-rate average, the most popular mortgage product, sank to 2.66% with an average 0.7 point, according to the latest data released Thursday by Freddie Mac. (Points are fees paid to a lender equal to 1% of the loan amount and are in addition to the interest rate.) It was 2.67% a week ago and 3.74% a year ago.

The 30-year fixed rate has never been this low since Freddie Mac began tracking mortgage rates in 1971. It surpassed the previous low of 2.67% set last week. Since the start of 2020, the 30-year rate has fallen more than a percentage point, going from 3.72% in January to 2.66% this week.

Freddie Mac, the federally chartered mortgage investor, aggregates rates from around 80 lenders across the country to come up with weekly national average mortgage rates. It uses rates for high-quality borrowers with strong credit scores and large down payments. These rates are not available to every borrower.

Because the survey is based on home purchase mortgages, rates for refinances may be different. This is especially true since the price adjustment for refinance transactions went into effect earlier this month. The adjustment is 0.5% of the loan amount (e.g., it is $1,500 on a $300,000 loan) and applies to all Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac refinances.

The 15-year fixed-rate average dropped to 2.19% with an average 0.5 point. It was 2.21% a week ago and 3.19% a year ago. The five-year adjustable rate average was unchanged at 2.79% with an average 0.2 point. It was 3.45% a year ago.

“Mortgage rates were little changed this week as markets digested the authorization of a second coronavirus vaccine and $900 billion stimulus package,” said Danielle Hale, Realtor.com’s chief economist. “Taking a broader look, mortgage rates have steadily declined over the last 12 months and are currently more than a whole percentage point lower than this time last year.”

When it comes to the mortgage market, the week between Christmas and New Year’s is typically quiet. With many lenders off for the holidays, rates don’t tend to make big moves. However, with President Donald Trump throwing a wrench into the stimulus package and investors concerned about recent economic data showing a decline in consumer spending and income, rates may continue to seek new lows.

However, Bankrate.com, which puts out a weekly mortgage rate trend index, found nearly half the experts it surveyed predicted rates would stay about the same in the coming week, while 40% expected them to rise.

Jennifer Kouchis, senior vice president of real estate investing at VyStar Credit Union in Jacksonville, Fla., is one who says they will hold steady.

“With the holidays upon us, I think rates will remain on a sideways trend,” she said. “My immediate guess is that rates will continue to ignore market indicators and will hold pretty firm until year-end with minimum movement expected.”

Meanwhile, mortgages applications were flat last week. According to the latest data from the Mortgage Bankers Association, the market composite index – a measure of total loan application volume – increased 0.8% from a week earlier. The purchase index fell 5% from the previous week but was 26% higher than a year ago. The refinance index rose 4% and was 124% higher than a year ago. The refinance share of mortgage activity accounted for 74.8% of applications.

“Last week’s increase in refinance applications was driven by FHA and VA activity, while conventional refinances saw a slight decline,” said Joel Kan, an MBA economist. “Purchase applications decreased for the second time in three weeks, as both conventional and government applications saw a drop-off . . . and the average loan balance reached another record high.”

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Fast-food boom drives rebound in meat sales for U.S. packers

InternationalDec 25. 2020An employee wearing protective gloves hands an order to a customer through a drive-through window at a McDonald’s in Oakland, Calif., on April 9, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by David Paul Morris

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Isis Almeida, Michael Hirtzer

American meatpackers are benefiting from one bright spot in the restaurant industry during the pandemic: fast-food sales.

With most restaurants closed or operating at reduced capacity, customers have flocked to places including McDonald’s and Burger King, where they can simply drive through to grab food. That’s helped Cargill Inc.’s protein sales to food-services business to return to near normal, while Sanderson Farms Inc. is encouraged by the chicken-sandwich rivalry among quick-service restaurants, or QSR.

Americans used to spend more than half of their food budget eating out before the virus struck, locking down cities from New York to Los Angeles and shuttering restaurants. Consumer behavior shifted, and businesses adapted to more online sales and increased delivery options.

“Our food-services business is pretty close to being back to where it was,” said Jon Nash, head of North America protein for Cargill, the third-largest U.S. beef producer. “The only places where we continue to see things being impacted is more fine dining, but the QSR space has been very strong.”

The turnaround boosted the meat industry, which was initially roiled by lower sales to restaurants. Companies have also come under fire this year for the way they handled the coronavirus crisis after processing plants became hot spots. Meatpackers faced scrutiny amid investigations and lawsuits involving price-fixing allegations, especially in the chicken industry.

Same-store sales at fast-food restaurants in November rose 1.1% from a year earlier after plunging more than 20% in April, according to a MillerPulse index. Figures may improve more in 2021, with McDonald’s planning faux-meat burgers and a new crispy chicken sandwich early next year, competing with Chick-fil-A Inc. and Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen Inc.

“We are encouraged by reports of a chicken sandwich war in 2021,” Joe Sanderson, chief executive officer of Sanderson Farms, the third-largest U.S. chicken producer, said Dec. 17 on an investor call, alluding to a major fast-food restaurant building inventory ahead of a sandwich rollout.

Chicken-breast prices in November climbed to $3.41 a pound, the highest in more than five years, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data.

The rebound in fast-food demand has focused on lunch and dinner. Breakfast sales are still suffering because people aren’t traveling to work or taking children to school in the same way as they did before the pandemic, Cargill’s Nash said. Even with a second wave of the coronavirus, Nash said he was upbeat.

“I’m pretty optimistic,” he said. “We are going to continue to see pretty robust demand.”

While U.S. drive-through shops performed strongly in the virus economy, a bigger recovery in the food-services sector will be tied to a vaccine and the economy returning to normal, Nash and Sanderson said.

“I don’t think any of that’s going to happen until the vaccine is widely distributed, and people start going out to eat again,” Sanderson said.

“The vaccine is an important determinant,” Nash said. “As that goes, we will see people willing to travel more, eat out more and let lose more and have some fun. It’s been a tough time for many many people around the world.”

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Vaccinations begin in Latin America, where covid hit hardest

InternationalDec 25. 2020

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Justin Villamil, Cyntia Barrera Diaz

Mexico, Chile and Costa Rica started administering Latin America’s first coronavirus vaccines Thursday as the region hardest hit by the disease seeks relief from the pandemic.

The first injection was broadcast live from a hospital in Mexico and shown during President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s daily press briefing. It was administered to the head of nursing at an ICU unit in Mexico City’s General Hospital. In Chile, the government selected five health workers for vaccination, which was also televised. Costa Rica started its vaccination campaign on Thursday as well. All three are applying Pfizer Inc shots.

The vaccine arrivals offer a glimmer of hope to a region particularly devastated by the virus. Brazil has the second-highest death count in the world from the virus, with Mexico following close behind in fourth place. Mexico’s fatality rate is also one of the highest in the world. Mexico City’s hospital occupancy has reached 85%, and one study says health services may be overwhelmed soon.

“Mexico is the first country in Latin America to have this vaccine,” Mexico’s president said in the press briefing. “Pfizer is fulfilling its commitment.”

Mexico’s government plans to vaccinate close to 3,000 people Thursday in what authorities are calling a trial run. Pfizer is expected to ship 50,000 more doses to Mexico next week.

In Chile, a plane arrived Thursday morning with the country’s first 10,000 doses. During a news conference, President Sebastian Pinera said that the country aims to vaccinate the majority of health personnel and at-risk citizens — about 5 million people — in the first quarter of 2021.

Brazil, the Latin American country with the highest number of cases of covid-19, has fallen behind in the region’s race to inoculate the population. The push to obtain injections has been hamstrung by political infighting and timeline setbacks of the locally produced Coronavac vaccine.

The earliest date publicized so far for vaccinations in Latin America’s largest economy is January 25, for the state of Sao Paulo only. The country’s Supreme Court has also determined that Brazilians can be mandated to take the vaccine.

While Latin American nations have lagged behind developed countries in their vaccine rollout programs — the U.S. has already administered over a million doses — Mexico and Chile have secured more doses of the virus than anyone else in the region.

300,000 doses of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine arrived in Argentina on Thursday as well. President Alberto Fernandez thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin in a social media post on Twitter Thursday afternoon for the “commitment” he had shown Argentina and said the shipment will kick-start the biggest vaccination campaign in the nation’s history.