Tag Archives: Coronavirus

Michigan governor signs bill giving state clerks more time to count absentee ballots

DETROIT (Reuters) – Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer on Tuesday signed into law a bill that gives clerks in larger cities of the battleground state an extra 10 hours to open and sort, but not count, absentee ballots in a move to speed the Election Day counting process on Nov. 3.

Whitmer and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, both Democrats, for months had advocated for the Republican-controlled state legislature to pass such a bill, arguing that without it election results could be significantly delayed and thousands of voters possibly disenfranchised.

“Your voice will be heard in November,” Whitmer said during a video news conference.

Benson called the new law “a step in the right direction,” but added that a final tally in Michigan may not be available until the Friday after Election Day.

The law also allows clerks to use an additional shift to process and count the ballots, and to contact voters if there are issues with signatures on the outside of the ballots, and calls for the installation of video monitors of absentee-ballot drop boxes.

The issue has taken on added importance as Americans rush to cast ballots ahead of the election at an unprecedented pace, indicating a possible record turnout for the showdown between President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden.

Michigan is an important state, which Trump won by fewer than 11,000 votes in 2016, but is now leaning toward Biden according to opinion polls.

Demand for absentee ballots, especially among Democrats, has been driven by fear of infection from the coronavirus in public. Trump has repeatedly claimed without evidence that mail-in voting is prone to fraud.

Counting mail ballots is often slower because officials must open thick envelopes, verify ballots and voters’ identities, compared with the simpler, speedier process at a polling center where voters cast ballots in person.

Last month, a Michigan judge ruled that mailed ballots postmarked by Nov. 2 must be counted in the state as long as they are received within two weeks of the election.

(Reporting by Ben Klayman in Detroit; Editing by Matthew Lewis)

U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff go into quarantine after coronavirus hits Coast Guard

By Phil Stewart

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff have gone into self-quarantine after the Coast Guard’s No. 2 tested positive for the novel coronavirus following a top-level meeting at the Pentagon last week, U.S. officials said on Tuesday.

U.S. defense officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, stressed that the military’s top brass – with the exception of the Coast Guard vice commandant, Admiral Charles Ray – had all tested negative so far and were still carrying out their duties.

But the disclosure risks adding to a sense of uncertainty about operations at the highest levels of the U.S. government after President Donald Trump himself contracted the illness, along with senior White House staff and other Republican leaders.

In a statement, Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said in a statement that all potential close contacts from Ray’s meetings at the Pentagon were tested Tuesday morning and that none of them exhibited symptoms.

“We have no additional positive tests to report at this time,” Hoffman said in a statement.

“There is no change to the operational readiness or mission capability of the U.S. Armed Forces.”

Ray attended meetings late last week with the U.S. military’s top brass, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army General Mark Milley, Trump’s top military advisor.

U.S. officials told Reuters that Milley was self-isolating, as was the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and military leaders from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines.

The Coast Guard disclosed earlier on Tuesday that Ray had tested positive on Monday for the virus after feeling mild symptoms over the weekend.

It said Ray will be quarantining from home.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart; Editing by Chris Reese and Grant McCool)

U.S. CDC reports 209,560 deaths from coronavirus

(Reuters) – The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Tuesday reported 7,436,278 cases of the new coronavirus, an increase of 39,548 from its previous count, and said that the number of deaths had risen by 361 to 209,560.

The CDC reported its tally of cases of the respiratory illness known as COVID-19, caused by a new coronavirus, as of 4 pm ET on Oct. 5 versus its previous report a day earlier.

The CDC figures do not necessarily reflect cases reported by individual states.

(Reporting by Dania Nadeem in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta)

Boeing cuts jet demand forecast on pandemic crisis

By Eric M. Johnson and Tim Hepher

SEATTLE/PARIS (Reuters) – Boeing cut its rolling 20-year forecast for airplane demand on Tuesday, sending its shares lower as the COVID-19 pandemic lays waste to deliveries over the next few years.

The U.S. plane maker, which dominates jet sales together with Europe’s Airbus, forecast 43,110 commercial aircraft deliveries over the next 20 years, down 2% from 44,040 projected a year ago and worth an unchanged $6.8 trillion at list prices.

While fleets are still expected to almost double, it is the first time since the 2009 financial crisis that Boeing has cut the 20-year demand forecast in terms of the number of deliveries.

Boeing, also for the first time, lifted the lid on the first half of the 20-year period, showing steep declines for the coming decade on the heels of the COVID-19 crisis. It predicted 18,350 deliveries for 2020-2029, down 10.7% from an unpublished forecast of 20,550 embedded in the last report.

“The industry clearly has been dramatically impacted … by the pandemic,” Commercial Marketing Vice-President Darren Hulst said.

Boeing shares fell as much as 3.3% after the report.

A key forecast for passenger traffic growth – once a reliable 5% a year – has been edging lower since 2015 as a record aviation boom peaked. But it took a sharp knock lower in the latest report, falling to 4% from 4.6% a year ago.

Boeing, America’s largest exporter, lowered its assumption for average global economic growth over 20 years to 2.5% from 2.7% after the pandemic plunged key markets into recession.

Even so, Boeing expressed confidence that demand would return towards previous trends in the 2030’s, just as it did after earlier economic shocks. Environmentalist critics say the crisis is an opportunity for the industry to get smaller.

WEAK DEMAND FOR BIG JETS

“It will take longer from this crisis but … the industry will prove resilient again; the fundamentals aren’t changing,” Hulst said.

Demand will be buoyed in part by a rise in the number of replacements as airlines accelerate the retirement of older jets to save running costs and meet environmental goals.

Thousands of jets have been parked during the crisis, especially long-haul twin-aisle models, owing to the widespread border restrictions choking international air travel.

Boeing cut its 20-year forecast for twin-aisle models such as its 787 Dreamliner and the Airbus A350 by more than 10%. At 7,480 jets, down from 8,340 a year ago, that part of the 20-year forecast is now lower than 8,000 for the first time since 2010.

Twin-aisle demand will be especially slow in the next 10 years with deliveries of only 3,060 aircraft, Boeing said.

The 20-year forecast for smaller single-aisle jets, such as the grounded 737 MAX, dipped 0.5% from the last survey. Previously Boeing had been revising it up by about 3.5-4% year in, year out.

Boeing now sees 32,270 deliveries in the medium-haul single-aisle category, traditionally the cash cow of large plane makers. That includes 13,570 deliveries between now and 2029.

Although medium-haul travel is showing signs of revival, particularly in the booming China market, airlines there continue to sit on the sidelines amid U.S. trade tensions.

While global passenger demand has been mauled by COVID-19, demand for freighters has gone up as shippers seek alternatives to the cargo space being left empty in unused passenger jets.

Despite that near-term bump, Boeing cut its 20-year forecast for freighters by 10.6% to 930 jets on weaker trade and a move by carriers to group shipments into bigger jets to reduce costs.

(Reporting by Eric M. Johnson in Seattle; Editing by Mark Potter and David Goodman)

In face of COVID-19 spike, New York Orthodox Jews take holiday prayers outside

By Gabriella Borter

MONSEY, N.Y. (Reuters) – Standing at least six feet apart and wearing skullcaps, prayer shawls and face masks, about two dozen Orthodox Jewish men pored over texts this week on a lawn in New York’s Monsey suburb, filling a quiet morning with the soft hum of Hebrew prayer.

Rather than crowd into a synagogue, the group has congregated outside a neighbor’s house each day to observe the week-long festival of Sukkot, one of many Jewish holidays this time of year coinciding with a sharp rise in coronavirus cases among members of this insular religious community.

Rockland County, encompassing Monsey and lying about 40 miles (64 km) north of New York City, is one of the state’s most troubled hotspots. Since March, nearly 700 of its people have died from COVID-19, more than in 15 individual U.S. states, according to a Reuters tally.

A recent spike in infections after a summer lull has been a somber reminder that the virus is still spreading, especially in places where large groups gather for religious or other reasons without adhering to public health guidance.

“The community had such terrible losses in the early days, and the last thing we need is to have such things happen again,” said Rabbi Asher Bush of Congregation Ahavat Yisrael in the Rockland village of Wesley Hills. “That would be utter, utter catastrophe.”

The open-air service is one of many adjustments that Orthodox Jews throughout the world have had to make in their traditions. The High Holiday season that includes the Jewish New Year and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is typically marked by mass prayer services, big family meals and travel. The celebrations traditionally feature group dancing. All of that now is forbidden because of the virus.

Two Rockland zip codes had positive coronavirus test rates top 15% over the weekend, compared to the state average of just over 1%, according to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.

The viral spread has been especially acute in the Orthodox Jewish enclaves of Rockland County, as well as in New York’s Orange County and Brooklyn, areas where the governor says social distancing and mask-wearing have not been adequately enforced.

A drop in infection rates prompted some people – including, but not limited to, Orthodox Jews – to become more lax about mask-wearing and social distancing, several members of the Orthodox Jewish community told Reuters.

“It’s critically important for everybody to buy into this,” said Aaron Glatt, an associate rabbi at an Orthodox congregation in Woodmere, New York, and chief of infectious diseases at Mount Sinai South Nassau.

Tuvia Rotberg, a bookstore owner, hosted the outdoor Sukkot services in a white, open-air tent. He launched outdoor services for daily and Sabbath prayers just as the pandemic gripped New York in March and has kept them up, even though synagogues now are open with limited capacity.

‘PEOPLE ARE TRYING’

On Tuesday, Cuomo planned to meet with Orthodox Jewish leaders in Rockland and Orange counties and Brooklyn, after announcing the state would enforce mask mandates and social-distancing laws in those areas.

This week he ordered that schools be closed in 11 New York City neighborhoods where a high concentration of Orthodox Jews live. He also said he might enforce a new round of business and school shutdowns in Rockland County.

“I have to say to the Orthodox community tomorrow, if you’re not willing to live with these rules, then I’m going to close the synagogues,” Cuomo told reporters on Monday.

Health officials in Orange County on Tuesday shut down schools in the Village of Kiryas Joel and the Town of Palm Tree, which have large Orthodox Jewish populations, because of a burgeoning outbreak, News 12 Hudson Valley reported.

Rabbi Bush of Wesley Hills said his synagogue has been diligent about enforcing social distancing and masks, although he recently attended a service at another synagogue where other worshipers gathered in a tent outdoors without masks.

“There is a very large gamut of how different congregations are conducting themselves,” he said.

But if there was nonchalance at the end of the summer, recent hospitalizations of friends and family have forced many Orthodox Jews to acknowledge the severity of the situation, community members told Reuters.

“People are trying,” said Shoshana Bernstein, a communications professional in Monsey whose family has been attending outdoor services during Sukkot. “And if they weren’t doing the right thing last week, then more people are doing the right thing this week.”

(Reporting by Gabriella Borter; Editing by Howard Goller)

Trump compares COVID-19 to flu in tweet, Twitter raises red flag

(Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump played down the COVID-19 pandemic again, comparing it to the flu in a tweet on Tuesday, and Twitter Inc responded by putting a warning label on the tweet, saying the post included potentially misleading information.

“Flu season is coming up! Many people every year, sometimes over 100,000, and despite the Vaccine, die from the Flu. Are we going to close down our Country? No, we have learned to live with it, just like we are learning to live with Covid, in most populations far less lethal!!!” Trump had tweeted.

Earlier in the day, Facebook Inc removed a similar post by Trump, according to CNN.

The tweet comes hours after Trump was discharged from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.

On Monday, Trump told Americans “to get out there” and not fear COVID-19 as he returned to the White House after a three-night hospital stay to be treated for the new coronavirus and removed his white surgical mask to pose for pictures.

During the 2019-2020 influenza season, the flu was associated with 22,000 deaths, according to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates.

(Reporting by Subrat Patnaik in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernard Orr)

Pence-Harris VP debate to draw outsized attention after Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis

By James Oliphant and Jeff Mason

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – This week’s vice presidential debate has taken on an outsized and perhaps unprecedented significance, with questions about President Donald Trump’s health now looming over the U.S. election less than a month away.

Vice President Mike Pence’s sole face-off against Senator Kamala Harris, Democrat Joe Biden’s running mate, on Wednesday in Salt Lake City comes as the Trump campaign reels from a COVID-19 outbreak that has infected not only the Republican president but several in his inner circle.

The pressure on Pence, who often toils in Trump’s deep shadow, is great. Trump trails Biden by 10 percentage points nationally, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll, with voters faulting what they viewed as the president’s carelessness about the pandemic.

Pence needs to show the public he is ready to step in as president if the situation requires, while also defending the Trump administration’s handling of a 7-month-old health crisis that has killed nearly 210,000 Americans.

For her part, Harris, who has largely stayed out of the spotlight in recent weeks as Biden ramped up campaign travel, must demonstrate to voters that she, too, could assume the presidency if needed at some point in the 77-year-old Biden’s tenure should he win the election.

Traditionally, the vice presidential debate is considered an afterthought to the three presidential debates, watched by fewer voters and viewed as almost irrelevant in terms of shifting public opinion.

“This debate is different,” said Christopher Devine, an expert on the vice presidency at the University of Dayton. “Some people may be worrying about Mike Pence and how he may perform if called upon. And there are questions about Joe Biden’s ability to stay healthy.”

Trump, 74, returned to the White House on Monday following a three-day stay at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center where he was treated for his illness. While doctors say he is recovering, it remains uncertain when he will be able to resume campaign activities.

Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh said on Monday the president intended to participate in the next scheduled debate with Biden on Oct. 15 in Miami.

Pence will also be charged with trying to slow the Biden-Harris momentum, something Trump was unable to do in his unruly debate with Biden last week. Trump struggled to make a case for his re-election and often resorted to insults to try to rattle Biden.

Pence, a talented and even-tempered communicator who once hosted a radio show while a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, can be more effective on a debate stage than the undisciplined Trump, said Michael Steel, who worked with Pence in the House when Steel was an aide to then-Speaker John Boehner.

“The vice president can make a more cogent and thoughtful case for the Trump administration’s record than almost anyone else,” Steel said. “He’s in a position to have a much stronger debate than the president.”

But, Steel added: “I don’t know how much that matters.”

ATTACK LINES

Reuters/Ipsos polling has shown the presidential race to be relatively stable, with Biden consistently holding a lead nationally and a small set of undecided voters who have yet to make up their minds. More than 3.8 million Americans already have voted ahead of the Nov. 3 Election Day, according to the University of Florida, which tracks the early vote.

A Biden campaign official told Reuters the campaign was prepared for Pence to launch attacks on Harris suggesting she is to the left of the mainstream of the Democratic Party, along with other allegations that Biden’s campaign says are untrue about his son Hunter Biden and Biden’s stance on China.

The official conceded that Pence was a strong debater, but “just because Mike Pence can deliver a line doesn’t make it true.”

Harris, a former Democratic presidential contender, cemented her reputation as a skilled questioner at the 2018 hearings for now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. She will “make a very forceful case” that Biden is the right leader for the moment, the Biden official said.

Harris has panned the administration’s coronavirus response headed by Pence. On Wednesday, she will have to thread the needle between renewing those criticisms without attacking the recovering Trump personally, Devine said.

“It’s a delicate balance,” Devine said. “Harris is probably better prepared than most, having been on the national stage before.”

During a series of primary debates last year, Harris had to navigate how to take shots at Biden, a beloved party statesman, without alienating swaths of Democratic voters. Her criticism of Biden’s past record on forced school busing earned her media attention but may have backfired with the electorate. She ended her campaign in December before voting began.

Coronavirus protocols at the debate on Wednesday will be strengthened following Trump’s diagnosis.

Pence and Harris will be seated more than 12 feet (3.7 m) apart on the stage, farther than the 7 feet (2 m) that separated the lecterns at the Sept. 29 debate between Trump and Biden. The candidates will also be separated by a plexiglass barrier during the debate, as requested by the Biden campaign.

All debate attendees, including members of the media, will be required to get tested for COVID-19. The debates commission said anyone not wearing a mask would be “escorted out.”

(Reporting by Jeff Mason and James Oliphant; Additional reporting by Michael Martina; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Peter Cooney)

More than 4 million Americans have already voted, suggesting record turnout

By John Whitesides

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Americans are rushing to cast ballots ahead of the Nov. 3 election at an unprecedented pace, early voting numbers show, indicating a possible record turnout for the showdown between President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden.

With four weeks to go before Election Day, more than 4 million Americans already have voted, more than 50 times the 75,000 at this time in 2016, according to the United States Elections Project, which compiles early voting data.

The shift has been driven by an expansion of early and mail-in voting in many states as a safe way to cast a ballot during the coronavirus pandemic and an eagerness to weigh in on the political future of Trump, said Michael McDonald of the University of Florida, who administers the project.

“We’ve never seen this many people voting so far ahead of an election,” McDonald said. “People cast their ballots when they make up their minds, and we know that many people made up their minds long ago and already have a judgment about Trump.”

The early surge has led McDonald to predict a record turnout of about 150 million, representing 65% of eligible voters, the highest rate since 1908.

Biden leads Trump in national opinion polls, although surveys in crucial battleground states indicate a tighter race.

The numbers reported so far come from 31 states, McDonald said, and will grow rapidly as more states begin early in-person voting and report absentee mail-in totals in the next few weeks. All but about a half-dozen states allow some level of early in-person voting.

The percentage of voters who cast their ballot at a voting machine on Election Day already had been in steady decline before this year, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, a federal agency.

The total number of early or mail-in votes more than doubled from nearly 25 million in 2004 to 57 million in 2016, it said, representing an increase from one in five of all ballots cast to two in five of all ballots cast.

Trump has railed against mail-in voting, making unfounded accusations that it leads to fraud. Experts have said such fraud is rare.

Those attacks by the president have shown signs of depressing Republican interest in voting by mail. Democrats have more than doubled the number of returned mail-in ballots by Republicans in seven states that report voter registration data by party, according to the Elections Project.

In the crucial battleground state of Florida, Democrats have requested more than 2.4 million mail-in ballots and returned 282,000, while Republicans have asked for nearly 1.7 million and returned more than 145,000.

A national Reuters/Ipsos poll taken last week found 5% of Democrats nationwide said they had already voted compared to 2% of Republicans. About 58% of Democrats planned to vote early compared to 40% of Republicans.

McDonald said early voting typically starts strong, then drops before surging just ahead of the election. But in some states, rates of participation already have skyrocketed a month out.

In South Dakota, early voting this year already represents nearly 23% of the total turnout in 2016. It is nearly 17% of total 2016 turnout in Virginia and nearly 15% of total 2016 turnout in the battleground state of Wisconsin.

“That’s just nuts,” McDonald said. “Every piece of data suggests very high turnout for this election. I think that’s just a given.”

(Reporting by John Whitesides; Editing by Scott Malone, David Gregorio and Will Dunham)

India’s coronavirus infections rise to 6.69 million

India’s total coronavirus cases rose by 61,267 in the last 24 hours to 6.69 million on Tuesday morning, data from the health ministry showed.

Deaths from COVID-19 infections rose by 884 to 103,569, the ministry said.

India’s death toll from the novel coronavirus rose past 100,000 on Saturday, only the third country in the world to reach that bleak milestone, after the United States and Brazil, and its epidemic shows no sign of abating.

Last week, India further eased restrictions and permitted states to open schools and movie theatres.

Defying critics, Trump says Americans are learning to live with COVID-19

By Alexandra Alper and Deena Beasley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Defying critics, U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday said Americans were learning to live with COVID-19, a day after returning to the White House for further intensive treatment after being hospitalized with the coronavirus.

Trump, who returned late on Monday after nearly four days at Walter Reed Medical Center outside Washington, was due to receive a fifth transfusion of the antiviral drug remdesivir while being treated with the steroid dexamethasone, normally used only in the most severe cases.

The Republican president, who is running against Democrat Joe Biden in an election four weeks away, has repeatedly played down the disease, which has killed more than 1 million people worldwide. The United States has the world’s highest death toll from the pandemic, with more than 209,000 deaths.

“Many people every year, sometimes over 100,000, and despite the Vaccine, die from the Flu. Are we going to close down our Country? No, we have learned to live with it, just like we are learning to live with Covid, in most populations far less lethal!!!” Trump tweeted on Tuesday.

About 22,000 people are estimated to die from influenza in the 2019-2020 season, according to U.S. government statistics. Even before he contracted COVID-19, Trump acknowledged in taped conversations with a journalist that the disease was deadlier than the flu.

White House physician Dr. Sean Conley has also stressed Trump would have world-class medical care available around the clock, something many health experts have noted is unavailable to millions of other Americans.

“Don’t let it dominate you. Don’t be afraid of it,” Trump said in a video after his return on Monday night.

“I’m better, and maybe I’m immune – I don’t know,” he added, flanked by American flags and with the Washington Monument in the background. “Get out there. Be careful.”

He returned to the White House in a made-for-television spectacle, descending from his Marine One helicopter wearing a white surgical mask, only to remove it as he posed, saluting and waving, on the mansion’s South Portico.

Trump has repeatedly flouted social-distancing guidelines meant to curb the virus’ spread and ignored his own medical advisers. He mocked Biden at last Tuesday’s presidential debate for wearing a mask when campaigning.

“I was aghast when he said COVID should not be feared,” said William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville.

“This is a disease that is killing around a thousand people a day, has torpedoed the economy, put people out of work. This is a virus that should be both respected and feared.”

Democrats also weighed in. “This is a tragic failure of leadership,” Democratic Senator Chris Coons tweeted.

But Trump depicted himself as a man who vanquished the disease and emerged stronger.

“If the President bounces back onto the campaign trail, he will be an invincible hero, who not only survived every dirty trick the Democrats threw at him, but the Chinese virus as well,” he wrote on Twitter.

White House spokesman Judd Deere said every precaution was being taken to protect the president and his family. Physical access to Trump would be limited and appropriate protective equipment would be worn by those near him.

Questions swirled around the true state of Trump’s health after a weekend when his doctors offered contradictory or opaque assessments of his condition.

His oxygen saturation dipped enough to require supplemental oxygen on Friday and Saturday, his doctors said, but have not answered key questions about his lung function, his blood work, or when he lasted tested negative.

SETBACK POSSIBLE

Many aides and confidants have been diagnosed with the disease since his announcement last week that he had tested positive for it, intensifying scrutiny and criticism of the administration’s handling of the pandemic.

Trump had no public events listed for Tuesday and it was unclear when he would be able to resume a full schedule.

“I’m sure he’ll rest the next two days. And he’ll get going as soon as they say it’s OK to get going,” Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani told Fox News on Tuesday, adding that Trump would still do light work like making phone calls.

“You never know with this disease, but it seems like he is making a very rapid recovery and a strong one. And certainly his spirit is back. He’s raring to go,” Giuliani said.

Republican Senator Thom Tillis, who also tested positive for COVID-19 after a Sept. 26 White House visit, said on Twitter that Trump called him Monday night and said he was “feeling great and working hard.”

After recent opinion polls showed Trump slipping further behind Biden, early voting data indicated that nearly 4 million Americans have already cast ballots four week before election day, suggesting there may be a record turnout.

The severity of Trump’s illness has been the subject of intense speculation, with some experts noting that, as an overweight, elderly man, he was in a high risk category.

#GaspingForAir began trending on Twitter after video showed Trump appearing to take several deep breaths while standing on the White House balcony.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN Trump looked good when he came out of the hospital, but noted that patients sometimes have a setback five days after they get sick.

“Sometimes when you’re five days in you’re going to have a reversal … It’s unlikely that it will happen, but they need to be heads-up (alert) for it,” Fauci said.

(Additional reporting by Alexandra Alper, Doina Chiacu, Ross Colvin, Steve Holland and Mohammad Zargham in Washington and by Deena Beasley in Los Angeles; Writing by Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Ross Colvin, Catherine Evans and Howard Goller)