Tag Archives: Coronavirus

What you need to know about the coronavirus right now

(Reuters) – Here’s what you need to know about the coronavirus right now:

Republicans and Democrats in tough talks

U.S. Republicans and Democrats faced difficult talks on Tuesday over how best to recover from the coronavirus pandemic, after Republicans unveiled a relief proposal four days before millions of Americans lose unemployment benefits.

Senate Republicans announced on Monday a $1 trillion aid package hammered out with the White House, which Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell touted as a “tailored and targeted” plan to reopen schools and businesses while protecting firms from lawsuits.

But the proposal brought opposition from both sides. Democrats decried it as too limited compared with their $3 trillion proposal that passed the House of Representatives in May. Some Republicans called it too expensive.

Vaccine updates

U.S. and company officials are hopeful Moderna Inc’s vaccine against COVID-19 could be ready for widespread use by the end of this year, after the drugmaker announced the start of a 30,000-subject trial to demonstrate it is safe and effective, the final hurdle prior to regulatory approval.

German biotech BioNTech and U.S. drugmaker Pfizer Inc said on Monday they would begin a pivotal global study to evaluate their lead vaccine candidate. If the study is successful, the companies could submit the vaccine for regulatory approval as early as October.

Meanwhile, European efforts to secure potential COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer, Sanofi and Johnson & are mired in wrangles over price, payment method and potential liability costs, three EU officials told Reuters.

‘Negligence’ blamed for Germany’s virus case rise

Negligence is behind Germany’s steady rise in new coronavirus infections, the head of a state-funded research body said on Tuesday, adding it was unclear if a second wave was underway.

“The new developments in Germany make me very worried,” said Lothar Wieler, of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases. “The rise has to do with the fact that we have become negligent,” he added, urging people not to flout social distancing rules.

The number of daily new cases almost doubled on Tuesday to 633, and the RKI linked that to increased contact at parties and the workplace.

Swift moves in Vietnam

Vietnam suspended all flights to and from Danang for 15 days after at least 14 coronavirus cases were detected in the city. Two people were in critical condition.

“All evacuation flights now are cancelled,” CAAV deputy director Vo Huy Cuong told Reuters by phone on Tuesday. “We operated 90 flights to evacuate tourists stranded in Danang yesterday but most tourists had already left Danang on Sunday, mostly by coach or train to nearby provinces.”

All bus and train services to and from Danang have also been suspended from Tuesday. With over 95 million people, Vietnam is the most populous country in the world to have recorded no COVID-19 fatalities.

Fly all you want

China Southern Airlines, China’s biggest carrier by passengers, on Tuesday rolled out a “Fly Happily” deal, which allows buyers to use passes for as many flights as they wish for destinations across the country from Aug. 26 to Jan. 6 for 3,699 yuan ($529).

At least eight of China’s dozens of airlines have introduced similar deals since June. Industry watchers say the packages have been a shot in the arm.

But Luya You, transportation analyst at BOCOM International, said these promotional packages can only stimulate demand when coronavirus risks are already sufficiently reduced. “While these packages may work in domestic markets, we do not expect similar rollouts for outbound routes anytime soon,” she said.

(Compiled by Linda Noakes and Karishma Singh; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)

Exclusive: Vaccine alliance eyes range of prices for COVID shots, says $40 would be maximum

By Kate Kelland and Julie Steenhuysen

LONDON/CHICAGO (Reuters) – Coordinators of a global coronavirus vaccines funding scheme are looking at a wide range of potential prices for COVID-19 shots, with a reported $40 per dose price tag the “highest number” in that range, one of the co-leads of the project said on Monday.

Seth Berkley, chief executive of the GAVI vaccine alliance, which is co-leading the COVAX facility designed to ensure fair global access to COVID-19 shots, said the facility had no specific target price and would also seek to negotiate tiered pricing for richer and poorer countries.

Berkley rejected comments from European Union sources last week who said the COVAX facility was targeting a $40 price for COVID vaccines for wealthy countries. The EU sources had said the EU would be seeking to secure cheaper deals outside of the COVAX scheme.

“There was a large range of numbers, and they (the EU sources) put the highest number out,” Berkley said in an interview. He said that in a presentation to EU officials, COVAX officials had given “a range of different prices”.

“And that ($40) was the maximum price in the range for high income countries, rather than a set price,” he told Reuters.

COVAX is co-led by GAVI, the World Health Organization and the CEPI Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and is designed to guarantee fast and equitable access globally to COVID-19 vaccines once they are developed.

Its aim is to secure supplies of and deliver 2 billion doses across countries who sign up by the end of 2021. GAVI said earlier this month that more than 75 countries have expressed interest in joining COVAX.

Berkley said most vaccines are so early in the testing process that it’s too soon to know what the final price will be.

“The truth is nobody has an idea what the price is going to be, because we have no idea which (potential COVID) vaccine is going to work,” he said.

He said questions about which technology might be most effective, whether vaccines would be single or a double dose, or what yields from manufacturing facilities might be were still unanswered and would all influence eventual vaccine pricing.

Berkley said COVAX has started putting together estimates based on what is known, but there are no firm prices. “The challenge is trying to come up with a cost. Anybody who tells you they know isn’t being honest.”

Berkley, who through the GAVI alliance negotiates with manufacturers to bulk-buy vaccines for use in poor countries, said drugmakers frequently use a tiered pricing approach, in which poorer countries pay one price, middle-income countries a higher price, and rich countries pay the highest price.

He said it’s not clear what manufacturers of potential COVID-19 vaccines will propose, but they are trying to put forward cost estimates based on what they know so far.

“You’re going to have a range of different prices, depending upon which ones (vaccine candidates) are going to succeed.

“Frankly, it’s likely that we’ll have lower prices given the large volumes that we’re trying to access here.”

Berkley said COVAX and several others are also including a “speed premium” into the cost of COVID-19 vaccines that encourages companies to make millions of doses at risk, even before they know if their vaccine candidate works. “We see that as being 15% or 20% of what the cost will be,” he said.

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago and Kate Kelland in London, editing by Jane Merriman)

Miami medical teams feel helpless as COVID-19 devastates South Florida

By Zachary Fagenson

MIAMI (Reuters) – As the coronavirus ravages Florida, healthcare workers in Miami hospitals are struggling to cope with the emotional and physical impact of treating a crushing wave of COVID-19 patients.

After seeing 10,000 new cases a day become the norm across the state in July, many of those on the front lines are frustrated with the apparent inability of local, state, and federal governments to coordinate an adequate response. They are equally aghast with what appears to be the reluctance or refusal of many Floridians to honor safety precautions to stop the spread of coronavirus.

“I know, and my colleagues know, that we’re putting a Band-Aid on a problem, we’re supporting people as best we can to get them through, but the real fight happens outside,” said Dr. Eric Knott, a pulmonary and critical care fellow working in three of Miami’s largest hospitals. “If you can’t stop the spread, all of my work is for nothing.”

For Miami doctors, concerns about the virus far surpass those stirred up by even the largest hurricanes.

“A hurricane tends to be a sort of finite amount, and this is infinite,” said Dr. Mark Supino, an attending physician in Jackson Memorial Hospital’s emergency department.

Many healthcare workers and union leaders were critical of Miami’s reopening several weeks after the number of cases of the novel coronavirus first began rising in early March.

On Friday, state health officials reported a total of 402,312 cases across Florida, with 135 new deaths bringing the total to more than 5,600.

While the death toll in South Florida has not approached that of New York City, an early epicenter of the U.S. outbreak, hospital beds and intensive care units across the region have filled to capacity, and in some cases surpassed it.

At Jackson Memorial Hospital, the largest facility in the region, officials have called in hundreds of additional medical workers as employees have fallen sick and had to stay home or be hospitalized. An auditorium was sealed and prepared for COVID-positive patients with a negative pressure system to limit the air flow to prevent new infections.

“In 10 years of medicine I never had to put another nurse on life support, I never had to worry about my co-workers dying,” said Kevin Cho Tipton, a critical care nurse practitioner who works at one of Miami’s largest public hospitals. “It’s been emotionally very challenging, physically very challenging.”

Among the most difficult and stressful parts of the job are the sheer number of ICU patients.

Healthcare workers must constantly keep tabs on the vital organs of patients on ventilators, and many of the sick have to be flipped over and over again to stave off any complications from lying in one position for a prolonged period. To do so without risking detaching any of the life support systems can take up to six people.

The intensity has overwhelmed some.

Jude Derisme, vice president of Service Employees International Union 1199, which represents 25,000 medical workers across Florida, said the union had to help get one nurse, a 25-year veteran, off a hospital floor after a “break down.”

“My fear is that if we don’t find a way to bring these numbers down over the next two weeks, if they’re worse than these last two weeks, we’re going to be stretched too thin,” said Martha Baker, a registered nurse and president of Service Employees International Union 1991, which represents about 5,600 medical professionals within Miami’s Jackson Health System. “The sad news is that that’s when patients die.”

While her chapter of the union along with others across Florida have advocated for more personal protective equipment, better overtime pay, hazard pay, and worker’s compensation for those waylaid by the virus, they also acknowledged that medical workers can only do so much against the pandemic.

“This is war, and instead of bullets we’ve got viruses,” Baker said. “If we don’t find a way to dampen our curve we just keep chasing our tails.”

(Reporting by Zachary Fagenson in Miami; Editing by Frank McGurty and Tom Brown)

Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate moves into late-stage trial

By Manojna Maddipatla

(Reuters) – Moderna Inc. said on Monday it had started a late-stage trial to test the effectiveness of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate, the first such study under the Trump administration’s program to speed development of measures against the novel coronavirus.

News of the study, which will test the response to the vaccine in 30,000 adults who do not have the respiratory illness, pushed shares in Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Moderna up more than 8% before the bell.

The federal government is supporting Moderna’s vaccine project with its Operation Warp Speed program. Moderna has received nearly $1 billion from the U.S. government, which has chosen it as one of the first to enter large-scale human trials.

More than 150 coronavirus vaccine candidates are in various stages of development, with 23 prospects in human trials across the globe and Moderna’s candidate among the farthest along in development.

“Having a safe and effective vaccine distributed by the end of 2020 is a stretch goal, but it’s the right goal for the American people,” National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins said in a release from the NIH announcing the start of the study.

The large late-stage trial is designed to evaluate the safety of Moderna’s mRNA-1273 and determine if the vaccine can prevent symptomatic COVID-19 after two doses.

The study also seeks to answer if the vaccine can prevent death caused by COVID-19 and if just one dose can prevent symptomatic COVID-19.

Trial volunteers will receive two injections about 28 days apart, with volunteers randomly assigned to receive either two 100 micro gram injections of mRNA-1273 or two shots of a saline placebo. The study is blinded, so the investigators and the participants will not know who is assigned to which group.

Results of a small early-stage study published earlier this month showed volunteers who got two doses of Moderna’s vaccine had high levels of virus-killing antibodies that exceeded the average levels seen in people who had recovered from COVID-19.

Moderna said it remains on track to deliver about 500 million doses a year, and possibly up to 1 billion doses a year, beginning 2021.

Brokerage BMO Capital Markets said a U.S. supply deal with Moderna for its vaccine candidate is inevitable, adding that there likely will be deals with other governments as well.

(Reporting by Manojna Maddipatla and Ankur Banerjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli, Lewis Krauskopf and Steve Orlofsky)

Republicans, White House seek $400 cut to weekly unemployment aid: report

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Senate Republicans and the White House plan to seek a reduction in emergency federal weekly unemployment benefits from $600 to $200 until states can handle a more complicated benefit formula, the Washington Post reported on Monday.

Democrats, who control the U.S. House of Representatives, have sought to keep the current federal benefit in place. Senate Republicans are expected to unveil their latest coronavirus relief plan later on Monday.

(Writing by Susan Heavey; Editing by Tim Ahmann)

Trump national security adviser O’Brien tests positive for coronavirus

By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, has become the highest ranking official in President Donald Trump’s inner circle to test positive for the coronavirus.

Announcing the infection on Monday, the White House said in a statement there was no risk of exposure to Trump or Vice President Mike Pence.

The announcement caught some White House staff off guard, as there had not been an internal memo about it, one source said. Because of the regular testing regimen, White House officials do not reliably wear masks while working in the West Wing.

An administration official said O’Brien had not had contact with the president in several days. The NSC did not immediately respond to questions about O’Brien.

The White House statement said: “He (O’Brien) has mild symptoms and has been self-isolating and working from a secure location off site. There is no risk of exposure to the president or the vice president. The work of the National Security Council continues uninterrupted.”

O’Brien, who took over as national security adviser from John Bolton last September, had traveled to Paris in mid-July to represent the United States at Bastille Day ceremonies. He met French President Emmanuel Macron while there.

The virus has been disruptive for Trump, who last week was forced to cancel plans for the Republican convention in Jacksonville, Florida, where he was to be formally nominated for a second term.

A U.S. military member who works at the White House as a valet tested positive for coronavirus in May as did Pence’s press secretary.

(Reporting by Steve Holland and Alexandra Alper; Writing by Susan Heavey and Lisa Lambert; Editing by Chris Reese and Howard Goller)

New travel curbs imposed as world tackles second COVID-19 wave

By Stephen Coates and Peter Graff

SYDNEY/LONDON (Reuters) – Nations in Asia imposed new restrictions on Monday and an abrupt British quarantine on travelers from Spain threw Europe’s summer reopening into disarray, as the world confronted the prospect of a second wave of COVID-19 infections.

In the United States, where infection rates have been climbing since mid-June, President Donald Trump’s national security adviser Robert O’Brien became the most senior White House official to test positive.

Surges were reported in a number of countries previously singled out as places where the virus was under control.

Australia recorded a record daily rise. Vietnam locked down the city of Danang, forcing tens of thousands of visitors to evacuate. Mainland China confirmed the most new locally transmitted cases since early March. Papua New Guinea shut its borders.

Hong Kong banned gatherings of more than two people, closed down restaurant dining and introduced mandatory face masks in public places, including outdoors.

Just weeks after European countries trumpeted the reopening of tourism, a surge in infections in Spain prompted Britain to order all travelers from there to quarantine for two weeks, torpedoing the travel plans of hundreds of thousands of people.

The World Health Organization said travel restrictions could not be the answer for the long term, and countries had to do more to halt the spread inside their borders by adopting proven strategies such as social distancing and the wearing of masks.

“It is going to be almost impossible for individual countries to keep their borders shut for the foreseeable future. Economies have to open up, people have to work, trade has to resume,” WHO emergencies program director Mike Ryan said.

“What is clear is pressure on the virus pushes the numbers down. Release that pressure and cases creep back up.”

NOT LIKE BEFORE

Officials in some of the European and Asian countries where the virus is again spreading say new outbreaks will not be as bad as the original waves that hit earlier this year, and can be contained with local measures rather than nationwide shutdowns.

But countries that have suffered extreme economic hardship from months of lockdowns are also determined not to let the virus get out of control again, even if that means reversing the path to reopening.

Europe has yet to lift bans on travelers from many countries, including the United States where the White House said national security adviser O’Brien presented no risk of infection for Trump or Vice President Mike Pence.

Britain’s announcement of the return of quarantine for Spain was likely to torpedo the revival of airlines and tourism businesses across the continent, which had thought they had survived their biggest crisis in living memory.

Britain accounts for more than 20% of foreign visitors to Spain, where tourism represents 12% of the economy.

Europe’s biggest airline, Ryanair, cut its annual passenger target by a quarter on Monday and warned a second wave of COVID-19 infections could lower that further.

A British junior health minister said more European countries could end up on the “red list” if infections surge.

“If we see the rates going up, we would have to take action because we cannot take the risk of coronavirus being spread again across the UK,” Helen Whately told Sky News when asked if Germany or France might be next after Spain.

In China, which managed to squelch local transmission through firm lockdowns after the virus first emerged in the central city of Wuhan late last year, a new surge has been driven by infections in the far western region of Xinjiang.

In the northeast, Liaoning province reported a fifth straight day of new infections and Jilin province reported two new cases, its first since late May.

Australian authorities who have imposed a six-week lockdown in parts of the southeastern state of Victoria said it could last longer after the country’s highest daily increase in infections.

“The tragedy of COVID-19 is that we know, with the number of new infections that we have seen today, that there will be many further deaths in the days ahead,” Australian Deputy Chief Medical Officer Michael Kidd told reporters.

In Japan, the government said it would urge business leaders to ramp up anti-virus measures such as staggered shifts, and aimed to see rates of telecommuting return to levels achieved during an earlier state of emergency.

“At one point, commuter numbers were down by 70 to 80%, but now it’s only about 30%,” Economy Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura said late on Sunday. “We really don’t want to backtrack on this, so we have to explore new ways of working and keep telecommuting high.”

Vietnam is evacuating 80,000 people, mostly local tourists, from Danang after three residents tested positive at the weekend. Until Saturday, the country had reported no community infections since April.

North Korean state media reported on the weekend that the border town of Kaesong was in lockdown after a person who defected to South Korea three years ago returned this month with symptoms of COVID-19. If confirmed, it would be the first case officially acknowledged by Pyongyang.

Papua New Guinea halted entry for travellers from Monday, except those arriving by air, as it tightens curbs against infections that have more than doubled over the past week.

(Reporting by Reuters bureaus; Writing by Stephen Coates and Peter Graff; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Travel bans cannot be indefinite, countries must fight virus at home: WHO

By Michael Shields and Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – Bans on international travel cannot stay in place indefinitely, and countries are going to have to do more to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus within their borders, the World Health Organization said on Monday.

A surge of infections has prompted countries to reimpose some travel restrictions in recent days, with Britain throwing the reopening of Europe’s tourism industry into disarray by ordering a quarantine on travelers returning from Spain.

Only with strict adherence to health measures, from wearing masks to avoiding crowds, would the world manage to beat the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Health Organization’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said at a virtual news briefing.

“Where these measures are followed, cases go down. Where they are not, cases go up,” he said, praising Canada, China, Germany and South Korea for controlling outbreaks.

WHO emergencies program head Mike Ryan said it was impossible for countries to keep borders shut for the foreseeable future.

“…It is going to be almost impossible for individual countries to keep their borders shut for the foreseeable future. Economies have to open up, people have to work, trade has to resume,” he said.

“What is clear is pressure on the virus pushes the numbers down. Release that pressure and cases creep back up.”

Ryan praised Japan and Australia for having had “good success in containing the disease” but said that it was to be expected that the virus would re-surge in areas with active transmission if restrictions are lifted and mobility increased.

“And that is what has essentially occurred in many countries is that in nightclubs, other situations, dormitories, other environments in which people are close together can act as amplification points for the disease and then it can spread back into the community. We need to be hyper-alert on those.”

Measures must be consistent and kept in place long enough to ensure their effectiveness and public acceptance, Ryan said, adding that governments investigating clusters should be praised not criticized.

“What we need to worry about is situations where the problems aren’t being surfaced, where the problems are being glossed over, where everything looks good.”

Ryan said Spain’s current situation was nowhere near as bad as it had been at the pandemic’s peak there, and he expected clusters to be brought under control, though it would take days or weeks to discern the disease’s future pattern.

“The more we understand the disease, the more we have a microscope on the virus, the more precise we can be in surgically removing it from our communities,” he added.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay, Emma Farge, Michael Shields; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Peter Graff)

Hanna pummels Texas coast with strong winds, heavy rain

By Adrees Latif

PORT MANSFIELD, Texas (Reuters) – Hanna, the first hurricane of the 2020 Atlantic season, left a trail of destruction along the Texas coast on Sunday, downing power lines, flooding streets and toppling 18-wheeler trucks as torrential rains threatened the area.

Hanna came ashore on Padre Island on Saturday afternoon as a Category 1 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale of intensity and later made a second landfall in Kenedy County, Texas. It swept through a part of the state hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic. By Sunday, it had weakened to a tropical depression.

Powerful winds from Hanna knocked over at least three 18-wheeler trucks and a recreational vehicle, with tow trucks trying to right the toppled vehicles on Sunday, shutting down a 2-mile (3.2-km) stretch of U.S. Route 77 in Sarita, Texas, near the Mexican border.

In Port Mansfield, 150 miles (240 km) south of Padre Island, winds flattened sugarcane fields and leveled trees. Deer roamed the streets, stopping to nibble downed branches in the yards of homes, some that lost their roofs.

Heavy downpours of more than a foot (30 cm) of rain flooded roadways and swelled streams and rivers across south Texas, the National Weather Service said.

There were no immediate reports of injuries.

“You could hear the wind blowing and the rain blowing and you looked outside you could see sheets of water blowing down the street,” said Sharon Pecce, 75, a resident of Port Mansfield, whose roof was ripped off her house on Saturday night.

“It’s scary to go through this at my age, a lot could have happened … we could have been killed,” added Pecce, who was at a friend’s home with her 70-year-old husband when the damage occurred. “We are lucky we weren’t there.”

Roderick Kise, a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection in the Rio Grande Valley, told the Caller Times newspaper in Corpus Christi that his agency was looking into a report that winds toppled a newly constructed portion of the border wall built between the United States and Mexico.

At one point, more than 283,000 homes and businesses were without electricity. But that figure fell to 98,000 by Sunday night, according to poweroutage.us.

The storm was not expected to affect offshore oil-and-gas production. Energy companies have not evacuated workers or shut down production from their Gulf of Mexico platforms because of Hanna.

Some residents took advantage of the wild weather, with Alejandero Carcano, 16, and Jesse Garewal, 18, both of Galveston, surfing the high swells whipped up by Hanna.

Governor Greg Abbott said in a statement on Sunday that the Federal Emergency Management Agency declared the storm a federal emergency and would help fund evacuation and shelter efforts.

“I continue to urge Texans to heed the guidance from their local leaders and follow best practices to keep themselves and their loved ones safe as severe weather continues to move through our communities,” he said.

The Texas area struck by Hanna has struggled to contain outbreaks of COVID-19 in recent weeks. Cases along the state’s coast have soared into the tens of thousands.

More than 440 people in the Corpus Christi area were hospitalized with the illness, according to the state health department.

STILL A THREAT

Weakening as it headed west over land, Hanna’s center on Sunday was about 35 miles (55 km) from Monterrey, Mexico, as it moved 9 miles per hour (15 kph), the U.S. National Hurricane Center said in a bulletin posted at 4 p.m. (2100 GMT).

The storm’s top sustained winds were around 35 mph (56 kph), the center said.

The storm was forecast to lose more steam as it moved across Texas and northeastern Mexico. On Sunday, weather watch officials canceled a storm surge warning they had issued for the Texas coast.

Hanna still posed a threat, forecasters said, noting it could dump upward of 18 inches (45 cm) of rain in isolated areas of southern Texas through Monday.

“This rain will produce life-threatening flash flooding, rapid rises on small streams, and isolated minor-to-moderate river flooding,” the NHC said.

In the Pacific, Hurricane Douglas was churning near Hawaii on Sunday, with torrential rains and damaging winds.

(Reporting by Adrees Latif; Additional reporting by Raissa Kasolowsky, Barbara Goldberg and Brendan O’Brien; Editing by Daniel Wallis, Lisa Shumaker and Peter Cooney)

U.S. Republicans to unveil coronavirus aid proposal as time runs out on jobless benefits

By Susan Cornwell and David Lawder

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Senate Republicans on Monday are expected to unveil a $1 trillion coronavirus aid package hammered out with the White House, a starting point for negotiations with Democrats as unemployment benefits that have kept millions of Americans afloat are set to expire.

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows told reporters on Sunday that the plan just needed a few clarifications before Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell could unveil it on Monday afternoon.

Meadows and U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said their agreement in principle with Senate Republicans would include an extension of supplemental unemployment benefits that aims to replace 70% of laid off workers’ lost wages.

On Friday, an extra $600 per week in supplemental unemployment benefits is due to expire, severing a financial lifeline for laid-off workers and a key support for consumer spending.

But the extra funds – in some cases exceeding a workers’ former wages – was a sticking point for many Republicans, helping to delay agreement during a week of wrangling over the party’s negotiating position.

Some Republicans had complained about the high price tag; the federal government has already spent $3.7 trillion to cushion the economic blow from pandemic-forced shutdowns.

Mnuchin and Meadows earlier on Sunday floated the idea of a piecemeal approach to coronavirus aid, first addressing unemployment and demands by businesses and schools to be shielded from coronavirus-related lawsuits, while tackling other issues later.

“We are going to be prepared, on Monday, to provide unemployment insurance extension that would be 70% of wages,” Meadows said on ABC’s “This Week” program on Sunday.

DEMOCRATS’ DEMANDS

Democrats decried the Republican delay as U.S. coronavirus cases passed the 4 million mark, a milestone for a pandemic that has killed more than 146,000 people in the United States and thrown tens of millions out of work.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday that if necessary, the House would stay in session until a deal is passed and added that Democrats would not accept a measure urged by Republicans to include liability protections for employers.

“What we will not support is what they’re saying to essential workers: ‘You have to go to work because you’re essential, we place no responsibility on your employer to make that workplace safe and if you get sick you have no recourse because we’ve given your employer protection,'” she said.

Pelosi has said that House Democrats would pursue the $3 trillion coronavirus aid bill that they passed in May, which would extend the extra $600 a week in unemployment benefits through the end of 2020.

The Republican plan will include another round of direct payments of $1,200 for individuals, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow told CNN. He said it also would extend a federal moratorium on housing evictions contained in previous relief legislation.

Senate aides said the Republican plan also have more help for small businesses, $105 billion for schools, $16 billion for coronavirus testing, and legal protections for business that are reopening.

(Reporting by Susan Cornwell and David Lawder; Editing by Peter Cooney and Gerry Doyle)