VIRUS these days: Congress prepares to vote on aid equipment
right here’s what’s occurring Monday with the coronavirus pandemic within the U.S.:
THREE issues to know these days
—Congress is making ready to vote on a long-awaited $900 billion pandemic relief kit, delivering lengthy-sought cash to businesses and people in addition to elements to vaccinate a nation confronting a frightening surge in COVID-19 cases and deaths. The equipment would establish a brief $300 per week supplemental jobless advantage and a $600 direct stimulus fee to most american citizens.
—California’s overwhelmed hospitals are developing makeshift additional beds for coronavirus sufferers, and a handful of facilities in hard-hit l. a. County are drawing up emergency plans in case they ought to limit what number of people acquire life-saving care.
—President-decide on Joe Biden received his first dose of the coronavirus vaccine on are living television as part of a becoming effort to convince the American public the inoculations are secure. The president-elect took a dose of Pfizer’s vaccine at a health center not removed from his Delaware home.
THE NUMBERS: The seven-day rolling average for daily new deaths in the U.S. expanded over the pasts two weeks from 2,a hundred ninety on Dec. 6 to 2,625 on Dec. 20, based on data from Johns Hopkins college.
death TOLL: The U.S. dying toll stands at 317,858 americans, about 5,000 greater than the population of Stockton, California.
QUOTABLE: “The prisoners think so helpless because they can’t control it and they can’t stop it. They believe like they’re sitting geese — and they are.” — Matt Tjapkes of Humanity for Prisoners, a nonprofit dedicated to inmates’ scientific rights in Michigan. A survey conducted by way of The Marshall mission and The linked Press found that almost all states have lifted restrictions on transferring prisoners that have been imposed previous this year to limit spread of the virus.
ICYMI: agencies are checking out medicine that mimic the way the physique fights COVID-19, hoping they can fill a key gap as vaccines remain months off for most americans. One company confirmed greater than three,300 antibodies earlier than settling on two for its drug, which has long gone into the arm of a U.S. president and others fighting COVID-19.
ON THE HORIZON: A 2nd vaccine, produced via Moderna, is due to beginning arriving in states. It joins Pfizer’s in the nation’s arsenal towards the COVID-19 pandemic.
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find AP’s full insurance of the coronavirus pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic