Author Archives: Reuters News Agency

FBI believes U.S. faces equal threats from domestic extremists and Islamic State -official

By Mark Hosenball

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. law enforcement and security agencies believe domestic extremists, notably white supremacists, pose a violent threat in the United States similar to that of Islamic State militants, top U.S. security officials told Congress on Wednesday.

Concern about racially motivated domestic extremists had prompted the FBI to elevate the threat to a level equal with that posed by the Islamist militants, said Timothy Langan, the assistant director who heads the counterintelligence division.

Langan told a House Intelligence subcommittee the Federal Bureau of Investigation had detected a significant increase in the threat of violence from domestic extremists over the last 18 months.

He said the bureau was conducting around 2,700 investigations related to domestic violent extremism, and there had been 18 lethal attacks targeting U.S. religious institutions in which 70 people had died in recent years.

The FBI has engaged with tech companies regarding their role in fueling extremism, has successfully disrupted planned acts of violence and will continue to “try to close the gap” on its inability to legally decode encryptions on mobile phones.

John Cohen, acting undersecretary for Intelligence and Analysis in the Department of Homeland Security, told the subcommittee that racial superiority and “hatred of immigrants” were major threat concerns.

He said his department believes the biggest domestic threat is posed by lone offenders and small groups indoctrinated in extremist ideology. The threat is fueled by a blend of extremist beliefs and personal grievances, he said.

Cohen noted that domestic extremists conduct so much discussion openly on social media that covert collection of intelligence on the threats they pose may often not be necessary to spot the threats.

Some Republican members of the House subcommittee suggested U.S. spy agencies should not be collecting information on U.S. political activity unless there is a connection to foreign actors.

(Reporting by Mark Hosenball; Editing by Howard Goller)

Ethiopian leader, marking year of war, says he will bury foes ‘with our blood’

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) -Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed pledged on Wednesday to bury his government’s enemies “with our blood” as he marked the start of the war in the Tigray region one year ago.

Abiy, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, was speaking a day after a state of emergency was declared in the country and with Tigrayan forces threatening to advance on the capital Addis Ababa.

“The pit which is dug will be very deep, it will be where the enemy is buried, not where Ethiopia disintegrates,” he said in a speech at an event at the military’s headquarters in Addis Ababa.

“We will bury this enemy with our blood and bones and make the glory of Ethiopia high again,” said Abiy, who won the Nobel prize for settling Ethiopia’s longtime conflict with Eritrea.

A moment of silence was observed at the candle-lit ceremony to commemorate those killed on Nov, 3, 2020, when forces loyal to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) – including some soldiers – seized military bases in Tigray. In response, Abiy sent more troops to the northern region.

The TPLF led Ethiopia’s ruling coalition for nearly 30 years but lost control when Abiy took office in 2018 following years of anti-government protests.

Relations with the TPLF soured after they accused him of centralizing power at the expense of Ethiopia’s regional states – an accusation Abiy denies.

The conflict in Africa’s second most populous country has killed thousands of people, forced more than two million from their homes, and left 400,000 people in Tigray facing famine.

A joint investigation by the United Nations and Ethiopia’s state-appointed human rights commission published on Wednesday found that all sides fighting in the war had committed violations that may amount to war crimes.

The African Union said on Wednesday that AU chair Moussa Faki Mahamat was following the escalation in Ethiopia with deep concern. He urged the parties to engage in dialogue.

Ethiopia’s neighbor Kenya, meanwhile, said its police had heightened security along the border.

Will Davison, senior analyst at the International Crisis Group think tank, said the Tigrayan forces’ gains had increased the pressure on Abiy government, as reflected by the State of Emergency.

“Right now, it looks difficult for the federal coalition to hold off the Tigray forces’ advance, and some of their leaders have recently said that at this late stage they are not looking to negotiate with Abiy,” he said.

TPLF spokesperson Getachew Reda did not respond to calls to his satellite phone on Wednesday.

A regional analyst in touch with the parties to the war and who spoke on condition of anonymity told Reuters the TPLF was likely to hold off on any advance on Addis Ababa until they secure the highway running from neighboring Djibouti to the capital.

That requires seizing the town of Mille. On Tuesday, Getachew told Reuters that Tigrayan forces were closing in on Mille.

ARRESTS

Abiy’s government imposed a six-month state of emergency on Monday with immediate effect.

The order came after the TPLF claimed to have captured several towns in recent days and said it might march on Addis Ababa, about 380 km (235 miles) to the south of their forward positions.

The state of emergency enables the government to order citizens of military age to undergo training and accept military duty.

It also allows authorities to arbitrarily arrest anyone suspected of collaborating with “terrorist groups” with a court order and detain them for the duration of the state of emergency, according to the proclamation.

The government designated the TPLF a terrorist group in May.

After the emergency was announced, there were scattered reports of arrests of ethnic Tigrayans in the capital.

A woman at a private health clinic in the city told Reuters she had witnessed four doctors and one nurse, all ethnic Tigrayans, taken away by the police on Tuesday evening.

A resident told Reuters he saw police in the central Bole district randomly stopping people on the street and asking them to show their government IDs, which list ethnic identity.

“I saw three people arrested,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

Another woman told Reuters that her husband, an engineer, was arrested by police while walking in the street speaking on his phone in his native Tigrinya language.

Two other people told Reuters there had been a number of arrests of Tigrayans on Tuesday in the districts of Bole and Lemi Kura.

The Addis Ababa police and a government spokesperson did not respond to phone calls requesting comment.

Two Addis Ababa residents told Reuters that they would heed Abiy’s call to join the military’s fight against the Tigrayan forces.

“We all want to have a country, so we all should respond to the call,” said Merkeb Shiferaw, 28, an engineer. Some people in Addis Ababa were panicking over the situation but the city remained peaceful, he said.

(Reporting by Addis Ababa newsroomAdditional reporting and writing by Maggie FickAdditional reporting by Ayenat Mersie and Duncan MiririEditing by Angus MacSwan and Mark Heinrich)

Analysis: Wide array of opponents prepare to fight Biden vaccine mandate

By Nandita Bose and Tom Hals

(Reuters) – The country’s first national COVID-19 vaccine mandate, expected to be unveiled by the Biden administration this week, is likely to unleash a frenzied legal battle that will hinge on a rarely used law and questions over federal power and authority over healthcare.

States, companies, trade groups, civil liberty advocates and religious organizations are expected to rush to court with demands to stop the mandate in its tracks. Two dozen Republican state attorneys general have already vowed to use “every legal option” to fight the mandate and 40 Republican lawmakers said on Wednesday they were preparing their own challenge.

Details of the vaccine and testing requirements for private employers remain under wraps. The administration has said that the rule is coming and that it requires certain businesses to “develop, implement and enforce” a mandatory policy that allows employees to either choose to get vaccinated or undergo regular testing and wear a face covering at work.

For opponents, the general principle could not be more clear: the administration’s zeal for fighting the pandemic with vaccinations and testing has trampled the law and the Constitution.

“There will be so much litigation it will never see the light of day,” said Josh Blackman, a professor at South Texas College of Law Houston.

Some legal experts, however, said protecting against a historic public health crisis provides a compelling justification for the mandate against constitutional challenges that claim it infringes on individual or state rights.

COVID-19 vaccine requirements by colleges, cities, states and companies have generally been upheld. The Supreme Court said on Friday that Maine could impose its mandate on healthcare workers, even without the usual religious exemptions.

However, the national vaccine and testing rule, which will likely run hundreds of pages, will differ in important ways from existing vaccine requirements.

It will be issued as an emergency temporary standard (ETS) by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which regulates workplace dangers. Businesses with at least 100 employees must enforce the rule on their staff or face penalties.

To issue an ETS, OSHA must show there is a “grave danger” in workplaces, and it needs to justify that emergency rule as a necessary response.

A White House spokesperson did not comment for this story. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki has said a pandemic that has killed over 740,000 Americans qualifies as a “grave risk to workers.” The Department of Labor declined to comment.

An average of 1,100 Americans are still dying daily from COVID-19, according to the latest U.S. data, the vast majority of them unvaccinated.

However, critics expect the OSHA rule to be vulnerable to legal attacks.

COVID-19 infections are trending down, some 70% of U.S. adults are fully vaccinated and treatments for the disease have improved, potentially undermining the grave danger claim.

“I think there’s an issue as to whether they can show that in every business, in every industry, every employer that has more than 100 employees, there is a grave danger from COVID,” said Scott Hecker, an employment attorney with Seyfarth Shaw, which represents businesses.

Or, as the National Retail Federation described it in a letter to Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, “workers face the danger of COVID-19 wherever they go … because they are human beings going about the world, not because they go to work.”

OSHA has convinced courts to uphold emergency standards in the past with evidence that as few as 80 lives would be saved. It will also be able to argue that masking and other COVID-19 safety measures proved no match for the extremely contagious Delta variant, necessitating the current rules.

“The fact that a person can be exposed to the COVID virus outside of the person’s place of employment does not eliminate OSHA’s authority to regulate,” Sidney Shapiro, a law professor at Wake Forest University, told a Congressional hearing last week.

Republican governors and right-wing talk show hosts have waged a political war against vaccine mandates and mask wearing, hoping to galvanize voters against Democratic President Joe Biden.

Vaccine mandates have been effective at shrinking the ranks of the unvaccinated, although they have also touched off protests, and employers worry they could worsen a national labor shortage.

Mandates on individuals have a long history and have been upheld by courts for more than a century, but they have been imposed by local and states governments, not Washington, which is restrained by the U.S. Constitution.

Critics of the mandate will argue it interferes with traditional states’ roles, namely, regulating healthcare within their boundaries.

OSHA is also fighting history. The agency has issued 10 ETS over its 50 years. Of the six that were challenged in court, only one survived entirely intact.

In the meantime, a huge number of U.S. employers will be left dealing with an uncertain outcome of the legal challenges, even as many focus on achieving compliance.

Mike Bennett, the vice president of human resources for Cianbro, a Maine construction company with 4,000 employees, said he is planning to carry out the OSHA rule.

“Unless something comes from the federal government that says ‘pause until further notice,’ we’ll continue to go down the road that this is coming,” he said.

(Reporting by Nandita Bose in Washington and Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware, Editing by Chris Sanders, Amy Stevens and Bill Berkrot)

U.S. begins effort to vaccinate young children against COVID-19

By Carl O’Donnell and Maria Caspani

(Reuters) -The United States on Wednesday began administering the COVID-19 vaccine to children ages 5 to 11, the latest group to become eligible for the shots that provide protection against the illness to recipients and those around them.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended the Pfizer Inc/BioNTech SE shot for broad use in that age group.

Only a limited number of the 15 million shots being distributed now will be available on Wednesday. They are expected to be more widely accessible at pediatrician’s offices, children’s hospitals and pharmacies next week.

The big national pharmacy chains, Walgreens Boots Alliance, CVS Health and Rite Aid are among those offering appointments for this weekend.

Virginia Commonwealth University Health received the vaccine on Tuesday but will probably not start administering it until next week because of logistics and safety protocols, Director of Pharmacy Services Rodney Stilner told Reuters.

“For us to be able to receive the vaccine and even start today would just be like, almost impossible,” he said.

While about 58% of Americans are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, some 28 million children under 12 have not been eligible until now.

The 10-microgram shot of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine authorized for school-age kids – a third the strength given to adolescents and adults – offers protection from the Delta variant of the virus that has led to thousands of pediatric hospitalizations.

‘MUCH EASIER, MUCH SAFER’

The vaccine, shown to be more than 90% effective at preventing symptomatic infection in children, also provides an avenue for fewer quarantines or school closures and more normal activities and freedoms.

“I think it’s going to make the issue of schools much easier, much safer,” White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci said in an interview with CNN on Wednesday.

Still, it remains unclear how many parents will jump at the chance. Even many who have been vaccinated themselves are more divided over whether to vaccinate their own younger children, given that severe COVID-19 is much less common for them.

There were no new safety issues in Pfizer’s study of the vaccine in thousands of children, but there is also no long-term data for its use.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized the Pfizer/ BioNTech vaccine for children aged 5 to 11 years on Friday. A few other countries, including China, are already vaccinating children. The European Union and Canadian regulators are currently considering Pfizer’s application for the vaccine in this younger age group.

So far, only Pfizer’s shot has been authorized for use in the United States for those under age 16.

Moderna Inc has delayed its request for authorization for its vaccine for children aged 6 to 11 and is waiting on an FDA review of safety data in connection with its application for 12- to 17-year old’s.

The states with the highest adult COVID-19 vaccination rates are preparing bigger pushes to get children inoculated than states where hesitancy remains strong, potentially widening the gaps in protection nationwide, public health officials and experts said.

COVID-19 vaccines have emerged as yet another issue exposing deep political fault lines in the United States that led to opposing stances on vaccinations, face covering and other pandemic restrictions in various parts of the country.

California, New York and Washington state, all led by Democratic governors who have promoted vaccination and mask-wearing, are setting up mobile sites and high-volume vaccination clinics for children, spokespeople for the public health departments of those states said.

California has also mandated that school-age children get a COVID-19 vaccine once their age group is eligible, a measure being considered in New York and Washington.

Republican state governors have largely resisted measures such as mask mandates or vaccine requirements in workplaces, schools and public venues. More than a dozen states, including Florida and Texas, have tried to block schools from imposing such requirements themselves.

(Reporting by Carl O’Donnell; additional reporting and writing by Maria Caspani; Editing by Caroline Humer, Jonathan Oatis and Bill Berkrot)

Russian regions extend workplace shutdown, Moscow to lift curbs

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Four Russian regions said on Wednesday they would extend a one-week workplace shutdown that took effect nationwide on Oct. 30 in response to a surge in COVID-19 cases, as the death toll from the country’s epidemic hit a record high.

President Vladimir Putin ordered the shutdown last month, giving regional authorities the option of extending it.

Authorities in the Kursk and Bryansk regions, which border Ukraine, the Chelyabinsk region near the Ural mountains and Tomsk in Siberia said their shutdowns would be prolonged.

“The tense epidemiological situation forces us to extend the period of non-working days by another week,” Tomsk governor Sergei Zhvachkin said in a statement. “One non-working week is not enough to stop the chain of infection.”

Russia’s daily COVID-19 death toll rose to a record 1,189 on Wednesday as the government coronavirus task force also reported 40,443 new infections in the last 24 hours.

Moscow authorities, meanwhile, said businesses there would reopen on Monday.

“The spread of the disease has stabilized in terms of its detection and its severe forms requiring hospitalization,” RIA news agency quoted the capital’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, as saying.

Other measures, including a requirement that companies have at least 30% of their staff work from home, would remain in place, Sobyanin said.

The health consumer watchdog in Moscow said it had recorded violations of COVID-19 regulations at more than a quarter of the businesses it inspected last week.

The Moscow region, which includes the small cities and towns surrounding the city, also said it would not prolong the shutdown.

The Novgorod region announced on Monday it was extending its shutdown by a week.

(Reporting by Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber and Gleb Stolyarov; editing by John Stonestreet)

Chinese stock up on staples after government ‘just in case’ advice prompts confusion

By Dominique Patton and Martin Quin Pollard

BEIJING (Reuters) – Beijing shoppers stocked up on cabbage, rice and flour for the winter on Wednesday, after the government urged people to keep stores of basic goods in case of emergencies, though it assured them there were sufficient supplies after some panic-buying.

The Ministry of Commerce on Monday published a seasonal notice encouraging authorities to do a good job in ensuring food supplies and stable prices ahead of the winter, following a recent spike in the prices of vegetables and a growing outbreak of COVID-19.

But the ministry’s advice to households to also stock up on daily necessities in case of emergencies prompted confusion, sending some rushing to supermarkets for extra supplies of cooking oil and rice.

China’s cabinet late on Wednesday said it would guarantee supplies of daily necessities, including meat and vegetables, and stabilize prices, state media reported.

China’s instructions also pushed up domestic edible oil futures as well as Malaysian palm oil.

“It’s going to be a cold winter, we want to make sure we have enough to eat,” said one woman loading rice on to a bicycle outside a supermarket in central Beijing.

A long line formed at the supermarket’s cabbage stall, as people bought supplies of the vegetable that is traditionally stored at home and consumed over the winter months.

But many residents said there was no need to buy more food than normal.

“Where could I stockpile vegetables at home? I get enough for my daily needs,” said a Beijing retiree surnamed Shi leaving another Beijing supermarket.

Others said they did not expect any shortages, particularly in the capital.

Government advice to residents to buy supplies ahead of the winter is issued every year, said Ma Wenfeng, an analyst at A.G. Holdings Agricultural Consulting.

“It is necessary because there is often heavy snowfall in the winter … and it seems there will be some uncertainty about the weather conditions this year. So I think this is quite a normal matter,” he said.

China’s National Meteorological Center is predicting a plunge in temperatures over the weekend in the northwest, southwest and most central and eastern regions.

China’s state broadcaster CCTV reported on Tuesday that there had been some “over-interpretation” of the ministry’s advice.

“Currently, the supply of daily necessities in various places is sufficient, and the supply should be fully guaranteed,” it quoted Zhu Xiaoliang, director of the ministry’s Department of Consumption Promotion, as saying.

Some cities including Tianjin in the north and Wuhan further south have released winter vegetables from stockpiles for sale at lower prices in supermarkets.

But some panic-buying appeared to continue on Wednesday, with several people complaining online of empty supermarket shelves, attributed largely to a growing COVID-19 outbreak.

China reported its highest number of new locally transmitted COVID-19 cases in almost three months on Wednesday, including nine new infections in Beijing, the biggest one-day increase in the capital this year.

“Even bulk rice has been stripped off (shelves),” said a resident in the southern city of Nanjing, writing on China’s microblog Weibo.

“There is uncertainty about the occurrence of the COVID-19 outbreaks. Once an outbreak occurs, people’s livelihoods will be affected. That’s why people are stocking up on winter supplies to avoid the impact of COVID-19,” said Ma at A.G. Holdings.

Chinese authorities typically respond to COVID-19 cases by locking down entire communities where they occur, restricting movement in and out of affected areas.

(Reporting by Dominique Patton and Martin Quin Pollard. Additional reporting by Beijing Newsroom. Editing by Karishma Singh, Christian Schmollinger and Nick Macfie)

U.S. Supreme Court poised for major gun rights case from New York

By Andrew Chung and Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court returns to the divisive issue of gun rights on Wednesday with arguments in a challenge to New York state’s limits on carrying concealed handguns in public – a case that could imperil certain firearms restrictions nationally.

The justices are set to hear an appeal by two gun owners and the New York affiliate of the National Rifle Association, an influential gun rights group closely aligned with Republicans, of a lower court ruling throwing out their challenge to the state’s law, enacted in 1913.

Ahead of the oral arguments, advocates for gun control held a rally outside the courthouse, with victims of gun violence including former Democratic Representative Gabby Giffords speaking about their experiences. Giffords was shot in the head in 2011 at a community meeting in Arizona.

Across the street, a small group of gun rights activists posted signs including one reading, “We stand for the Bill of Rights,” a reference to the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.

Lower courts rejected the argument by the plaintiffs that the New York law violates the Second Amendment. The lawsuit seeks an unrestricted right to carry concealed handguns in public.

The court’s 6-3 conservative majority is considered sympathetic to an expansive view of Second Amendment rights.

The case could yield the most important gun rights ruling in more than a decade. The court in 2008 recognized for the first time an individual’s right to keep guns at home for self-defense, and in 2010 applied that right to the states.

New York’s law requires a showing of “proper cause” for carrying concealed handguns. To carry such a weapon without restrictions, applicants must convince a state firearms licensing officer of an actual, rather than speculative, need for self-defense.

Decisions by Justice Richard McNally Jr., a state trial court judge, to deny gun owners Robert Nash and Brandon Koch unrestricted concealed-carry licenses triggered the legal fight. Nash and Koch, along with the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association, sued in federal court.

The plaintiffs have argued that the right to self-defense matters most outside the home because that is where the chance of confrontation is highest.

New York has justified its law by arguing that analogous restrictions run from medieval England through the founding of the United States and ever since. The plaintiffs have argued that centuries-old restrictions were limited to dangerous and unusual weapons, not common arms for self-defense like handguns, and that many of America’s founders “carried firearms and supported the right to do so.”

Advocates for gun restrictions fear that the New York case could threaten other state and local measures such as “red flag” laws targeting the firearms of people deemed dangerous by the courts, expanded criminal background checks for gun buyers or restrictions on selling untraceable “ghost” guns.

Eight states including New York empower officials to decide whether people can carry concealed handguns in public even if they pass criteria such as criminal background checks. New York has said that about two-thirds of applications for unrestricted permits are granted in the state, amounting to tens of thousands annually.

Gun rights, held dear by many Americans, are a contentious issue in a nation with high levels of firearms violence. President Joe Biden has called gun violence a “national embarrassment.”

The Supreme Court’s ruling is due by the end of June.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Will Dunham)

Lebanese carry ‘worthless’ stacks of cash after currency crash

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Restaurant owner Antoine Haddad has been in business for over 35 years but says he is running out of hope as Lebanon struggles with one of the deepest financial crises of modern times.

The Lebanese pound lost around 90% of its value in the past two years, propelling three quarters of the population into poverty.

For Haddad, the difference between this and other crises that Lebanon has experienced, including the 1975-1990 civil war, is that it feels like there is no end in sight.

“Previously, you had hope that: ‘tomorrow the war will end, we do this and that and go back to where we were’, but this time there is no hope,” he said.

“They (those in power) promised us we would have plenty of money in our hands, and we indeed have a lot of it to play with,” he said sarcastically referring to the growing stacks of banknotes needed for even basic purchases after the currency drop.

Haddad, whose small restaurant has been in business since 1984, said he can only buy 10% of the olive oil he used to buy with the same money.

The government, facing an election in March as it tries to secure an IMF recovery plan, has tripled transport allowance for employees to alleviate some of the pain but most salaries, including the minimum wage, have not been adjusted.

Pub-owner Moussa Yaakoub is also taken aback by the amount of cash he needs to run his business.

“I have never before held in my hands this amount of money,” he said as he counted some 10 million pounds, worth $6,600 at the pre-crisis rate but now less than $500 at the market rate.

That much money used to cover a pub’s operation for months, but now only pays a couple of bills, he said.

Grocery store owner Roni Bou Rached has changed the way he stores money in his cash drawer now that smaller notes are used less, and coins are almost non-existent.

“I am hesitant how much to carry in my pocket when I leave. I sometimes carry 1 million or 1.5 million … but I mean, they are worthless,” he said.

A single restaurant bill now could amount to sums higher than some workers’ earnings.

“God help those who do not have an income or are not able to work around things,” Ali Jaber, a private sector employee, said.

(Reporting by Issam Abdallah; Writing by Yara Abi Nader; Editing by Alison Williams)

U.S. CDC advisers recommend COVID-19 vaccine for young children

By Michael Erman

(Reuters) -Advisers to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Tuesday unanimously supported broad use of Pfizer and BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine in children ages 5 to 11, with shots potentially going into young arms as soon as Wednesday.

They said the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks of the vaccine. Much of their discussion stemmed from rare cases of heart inflammation that have been linked to the vaccine, particularly young men.

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky must sign off on recommendations before the United States can begin administering the vaccine to children in the age group. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted emergency use authorization of the vaccine in 5-11 year old’s on Friday.

The FDA authorized a 10-microgram dose of Pfizer’s vaccine in young children. The original shot given to those age 12 and older is 30 micrograms.

At the outset of the meeting Walensky said that pediatric hospitalizations had surged during the recent wave driven by the Delta variant of the coronavirus.

The risk from COVID-19 “is too high and too devastating to our children and far higher than for many other diseases for which we vaccinate children,” she said.

Walensky said school closures have had detrimental social and mental health impacts on children.

“Pediatric vaccination has the power to help us change all of that,” she said.

The U.S. government and Pfizer have already begun distributing the vaccine in preparation for a widespread rollout for children, many of whom are back in school for in-person learning.

Earlier this week, the White House said the United States has enough supply of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for all 28 million children aged 5 to 11. While some children may be able to get their first shots as soon as Wednesday, the plans is for the U.S. pediatric vaccine program to be running at full strength by next week, a Biden administration official said.

Only a few other countries, including China, Cuba and the United Arab Emirates, have so far cleared COVID-19 vaccines for children in this age group and younger.

(Reporting by Michael Erman in New Jersey, Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago and Manas Mishra, Manojna Maddipatla in Bengaluru; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

COVID-19 still rages, but some U.S. states reject federal funds to help

By Andy Sullivan

(Reuters) – As the resurgent COVID-19 pandemic burns through the rural U.S. state of Idaho, health officials say they don’t have enough tests to track the disease’s spread or sufficient medical workers to help the sick.

It’s not for want of funding.

The state’s Republican-led legislature this year voted down $40 million in federal aid available for COVID-19 testing in schools. Another $1.8 billion in pandemic-related federal assistance is sitting idle in the state treasury, waiting for lawmakers to deploy it.

Some Idaho legislators have accused Washington of overreach and reckless spending. Others see testing as disruptive and unnecessary, particularly in schools, since relatively few children have died from the disease.

“If you want your kids in school, you can’t be testing,” said state Representative Ben Adams, a Republican who represents Nampa, a city of about 100,000 people in southwestern Idaho.

Meanwhile, the state is reporting the fifth-highest infection rate in the United States, at 369 confirmed cases per 100,000 people, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Schools in at least 14 of Idaho’s 115 districts, including Nampa, have had to close temporarily due to COVID-19 outbreaks since the start of the year, according to Burbio, a digital platform that tracks U.S. school activity.

Idaho’s experience illustrates how political ideology and polarization around the COVID-19 epidemic have played a role in the decision of mostly conservative states to reject some federal funding meant to help locals officials battle the virus and its economic fallout.

For example, Idaho was one of 26 Republican-led states that ended enhanced federally funded unemployment benefits before they were due to expire in September. Gov. Brad Little claimed that money was discouraging the jobless from returning to work. At least six studies have found that the extra benefits have had little to no impact on the U.S. labor market.

Idaho has also rebuffed $6 million for early-childhood education, as some Republicans in the state said mothers should be the primary caretakers of their children.

The state also did not apply for $6 million that would have bolstered two safety-net programs that aid mothers of young children and working families. Little’s administration said it had enough money already for those programs.

Idaho has accepted some federal COVID-19 help. In fact, the rejected funds are just a small portion of the nearly $2 billion in federal relief Idaho has spent since March 2020 to fight the virus and shore up businesses and families, state figures show.

But hundreds of millions more remain untouched. Idaho has deployed just $780 million, or 30%, of the $2.6 billion it received under the federal American Rescue Plan Act, signed into law in March.

Neighboring Washington state, by contrast, has parceled out nearly three-quarters of the $7.8 billion it received under that legislation. Washington has recorded roughly 60% as many cases per capita as Idaho since the start of the pandemic, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Some in Idaho are exasperated that a state of just 1.8 million people would turn down a dime of assistance when it’s struggling to tame the pandemic.

With no testing in place, nurses in Nampa schools rely mainly on parents to let them know when a child is infected, the district’s top nurse, Rebekah Burley, told the school board in September. She said she needed three or four more staffers to track existing cases and attempt to keep people quarantined.

“We’re tired, we are stressed, and something needs to change,” she said.

REJECTING FEDERAL MONEY

The refusal by red states to accept some types of federal aid that would benefit their constituents isn’t new.

For example, a dozen Republican-controlled states have rejected billions of dollars available through the landmark 2010 Affordable Health Care Act to cover more people under the Medicaid health program for the poor, which is jointly funded by the federal government and the states. Lawmakers from these places contended their states couldn’t afford to pay their share of an expansion. (Idaho initially was among them, but its voters opted in to the Medicaid expansion through a 2018 ballot referendum, bypassing state leaders.)

That same dynamic has played out during the coronavirus crisis. Since March 2020, Congress has approved six aid packages totaling $4.7 trillion under Republican and Democratic administrations, including the bipartisan CARES Act in March 2020 and the Democratic-backed American Rescue Plan Act this year.

Florida and Mississippi didn’t apply for benefits that would give more money to low-income mothers of young children. Four states, including Idaho, North Dakota and Oklahoma, opted not to extend a program that provided grocery money to low-income families with school-age kids in summer months.

Iowa, like Idaho, turned down federal money for COVID-19 testing in schools. New Hampshire rejected money for vaccinations.

Republican lawmakers in Idaho, like those elsewhere, cite concerns about local control, restrictive terms attached to some of the aid, and the skyrocketing national debt.

“We are chaining future generations to a lifetime of financial slavery,” said Adams, the Idaho legislator.

Yet even before the pandemic, Idaho long relied on Washington for much of its budget. Federal funds account for 36% of state spending in Idaho, according to the National Association of State Budget Officers, above the national average of 32%.

State officials say they have enough money to handle the COVID-19 crisis for now.

Critics say Idaho’s reluctance to use more federal aid is a symptom of its hands-off approach to COVID-19 safety. Few public schools require masks, and local leaders have refused to impose mask mandates, limits on indoor gatherings and other steps to contain the virus.

“There’s a lot of people in our legislature and some local officials who really have not taken this seriously,” said David Pate, the former head of St. Luke’s Health System, the state’s largest hospital network.

Idaho has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the nation, with only 55% of adults and teens fully immunized, compared to 67% nationally.

HOSPITALS FULL

COVID-19 is pummeling Idaho even as cases have plunged in much of the nation. Intensive-care units statewide are full, forcing hospitals to turn away non-COVID patients. At least 627 residents died of the disease in October, well above the previous monthly death toll of last winter, records show.

Idaho received $18 million through the American Rescue Plan to hire more public-health workers, but lawmakers did nothing with that money this year.

Some local public health departments say they do not have enough staff to track the virus. “We have a lot of people doing two or three jobs right now,” said Brianna Bodily, a spokesperson for the public-health agency serving Twin Falls, a southern Idaho city of 50,000. The department is working with a 12% smaller budget than last year.

Such staff shortages have contributed to a backlog of test results statewide, which the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare says is hurting its ability to provide an up-to-date picture of the disease’s prevalence.

With funding bottled up in the state capitol, Little, the governor, announced in August that he would steer $30 million from a previous round of COVID-19 aid to school testing.

The Nampa school district has requested some of that money but has yet to set up a testing program, spokeswoman Kathleen Tuck said. Roughly 20% of the district’s students were not attending class regularly in the first weeks of the school year due to outbreaks, according to superintendent Paula Kellerer.

Nampa resident Jaci Johnson, a mother of two children, ages 10 and 13, said she and other parents have been torn over whether to send their children to class, due to the potential risk.

“Do we feed our kids to the lions, or do we keep them home and make them miserable?” Johnson said.

(Reporting by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Scott Malone and Marla Dickerson)