In Brief: April 18, 2020

No plan in sight: Test troubles cloud Trump recovery effort

WASHINGTON — The United States is struggling to test enough people to track and control the spread of the novel coronavirus, a crucial first step to reopening parts of the economy, which President Donald Trump is pushing to do by May 1.

Trump on Thursday released a plan to ease business restrictions that hinges on a downward trajectory of positive tests.

But more than a month after he declared, “Anybody who wants a test, can get a test,” the reality has been much different. People report being unable to get tested. Labs and public officials say critical supply shortages are making it impossible to increase testing to the levels experts say is necessary to keep the virus in check.

“There are places that have enough test swabs, but not enough workers to administer them. There are places that are limiting tests because of the CDC criteria on who should get tested,” said Dr. Megan Ranney, an emergency physician and associate professor at Brown University. “There’s just so many inefficiencies and problems with the way that testing currently happens across this country.”

Trump’s plan envisions setting up “sentinel surveillance sites” that would screen people without symptoms in locations that serve older people or minority populations. Experts say testing would have to increase as much as threefold to be effective.

‘LIBERATE!’: Trump pushes states to lift virus restrictions

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump urged supporters to “LIBERATE” three states led by Democratic governors Friday, apparently encouraging protests against stay-at-home restrictions. Some states under Republican leadership edged toward easing up the mandates aimed at stopping the coronavirus.

A day after laying out a road map to gradually reopen the crippled economy, Trump tweeted the kind of rhetoric some of his supporters have used to demand the lifting of the orders that have thrown millions of Americans out of work.

“LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” “LIBERATE VIRGINIA,” he said in a tweet-storm in which he also lashed out at New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo for criticizing the federal response. Cuomo “should spend more time ‘doing’ and less time ‘complaining,’” the president said.

Responding to pleas from governors for help from Washington in ramping up testing for the virus, Trump put the burden back on them: “The States have to step up their TESTING!”

Trump claimed Friday that “very partisan voices” had spread “false and misleading information” about the nation’s testing capacity. But he said “we’ll help New York and all of the other states get even better on their testing.”

From wire sources

Biden looks to placate Sanders by letting him keep delegates

WASHINGTON — Seeking to avoid the bitter feelings that marred the 2016 Democratic convention, Joe Biden’s campaign is angling to allow Bernie Sanders to keep some of the delegates he would otherwise forfeit by dropping out of the presidential race.

Under a strict application of party rules, Sanders should lose about a third of the delegates he’s won in primaries and caucuses as the process moves ahead and states select the actual people who will attend the Democratic National Convention. The rules say those delegates should be Biden supporters, as he is the only candidate still actively seeking the party’s nomination.

Quiet talks between the two campaigns center on allowing Sanders to keep some of his delegates, essentially a goodwill gesture from a presumptive nominee seeking to court Sanders’ progressive supporters and unite the party. It is not yet settled how many.

“We feel strongly that it is in the best interest of the party to ensure that the Sanders campaign receives statewide delegates to reflect the work that they have done to contribute to the movement that will beat Donald Trump this fall,” said a Biden official, who wasn’t authorized to discuss private negotiations publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. “We are in discussion with them now on how to best accomplish that.”

Sanders’ campaign declined to comment on the talks. “Nothing to add from us,” said Sanders spokesman Mike Casca.

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Senators urge anti-bias police training over mask fears

NEW YORK — Democratic lawmakers want police departments to be vigilant about any racially biased policing during the coronavirus pandemic, as people in communities of color express fears of being profiled while wearing masks or other face coverings in public.

In a letter sent Friday to Attorney General William Barr and FBI Director Christopher Wray, Sen. Kamala Harris of California and other Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee urged federal law enforcement agencies to provide anti-bias training and guidance to police officers. The officers may increasingly encounter masked residents as the nation weighs a gradual reopening of the economy in the coming weeks, the senators said.

“With the ongoing public health emergency, it is more important than ever for law enforcement to build trust with communities of color,” the senators said in the letter, which was first shared with The Associated Press.

Earlier this month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that people who go out in public wear a surgical mask or a cloth covering their nose and mouth to prevent the spread of the virus. And already, some black men have reported incidents of racial profiling while following the recommendations.

“If communities of color — especially African American communities — feel at risk of disproportionate or selective enforcement, they may avoid seeking help or adopting precautionary measures recommended by the CDC,” the letter reads. “This, in turn, could have dire public health consequences.”

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White House moves to weaken EPA rule on toxic compounds

WASHINGTON — The Trump White House intervened to weaken one of the few public health protections pursued by its own administration, a rule to limit the use of a toxic industrial compound in consumer products, according to communications between the White House and Environmental Protection Agency.

The documents show that the White House Office of Management and Budget formally notified the EPA by email last July that it was stepping into the crafting of the rule on the compound, perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, used in nonstick and stain-resistant frying pans, rugs, and countless other consumer products.

The White House repeatedly pressed the agency to agree to a major loophole that could allow substantial imports of the PFAS-tainted products to continue, greatly weakening the proposed rule. EPA pushed back on the White House demand for the loophole, known as a “safe harbor” provision for industry.

Pushed again in January, the agency responded, “EPA opposes proposing a safe harbor provision, but is open to a neutrally-worded request for comment from the public” on the White House request.

The rule is one of the few concrete steps that the Trump administration has taken to deal with growing contamination by PFAS industrial compounds. The EPA has declared dating back to 2018 that consumer exposure to the substances was a “national priority” that the agency was confronting “aggressively.”

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Detained migrant with COVID-19 forced to call in to court

HOUSTON — A detained immigrant who said he tested positive for COVID-19 was required to call in for a court hearing even after a guard said he was too weak to talk, his attorney said.

When the judge asked Salomon Diego Alonzo to say his name Thursday, the guard responded that Alonzo “does not have the lung capacity,” according to his lawyer, Veronica Semino, who was listening by phone. The call lasted about two hours, though Judge Mary Baumgarten eventually agreed to delay Alonzo’s final asylum hearing, the attorney said.

Alonzo was hospitalized later that day, Semino said, and by Friday, she had not received an update on his condition.

Speaking to The Associated Press on Wednesday, the 26-year-old from Guatemala responded to most questions with one- or two-sentence answers, often interrupted by coughing. Alonzo says he has headaches, diarrhea and severe exhaustion that made it difficult for him to get out of bed. He’s confined with one other person in a dorm at an immigration detention center in rural Louisiana, where medical staff check his vital signs twice a day.

“I can barely walk,” Alonzo said. “I’m not safe here.”

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Hope takes the reins on Wall Street, stocks rally worldwide

NEW YORK — In Wall Street’s tug of war between hope and pessimism about the coronavirus pandemic, hope is fighting back.

U.S. stocks joined a worldwide rally Friday and closed out their first back-to-back weekly gain since the market began selling off two months ago. The S&P 500 jumped 2.7% for the day, following up on even bigger gains in Europe and Asia.

Investors latched onto several strands of hope about progress in the fight against the coronavirus. They included the White House’s release of guidelines for states to reopen their economies and a very early but encouraging report on a possible treatment for COVID-19. Those events dovetailed with recent numbers that raised hopes for a leveling off of infections in some of the world’s hotspots.

The gains came even as data piles higher showing the severe economic and human toll of the outbreak. The virus has killed more than 150,000 worldwide and forced the formerly high-flying Chinese economy to shrink a crunching 6.8% last quarter. A measure of leading economic indicators in the U.S. plunged last month by the most in its 60-year history, the latest in a string of similarly unprecedented data reports.

The S&P 500 rose 75.01 points to 2,874.56. The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 704.81, or 3%, to 24,242.49, and the Nasdaq added 117.78, or 1.4%, to 8,650.14.

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Scant testing in US migration system risks spreading virus

GUATEMALA CITY — The Trump administration’s failure to test all but a small percentage of detained immigrants for the novel coronavirus may be helping it spread through the United States’ sprawling system of detention centers and then to Central America and elsewhere aboard regular deportation flights, migrants’ advocates said Friday.

More than 1,600 people deported from the United States to Guatemala over the last month were allowed to go home and into voluntary, unenforced quarantine. Fears are rising that it may have seeded the Central American nation with an untold number of undetected cases, increasing its vulnerability to the pandemic.

U.S. authorities took passengers’ temperatures before departure, and Guatemalan officials checked them for cough, fever and other symptoms on arrival. Those with possible COVID-19 symptoms had their mucous and saliva tested, but apparently healthy deportees underwent no testing and were allowed to head home even if they arrived on a flight with sick people.

Health experts say that was very risky because many infected people never show symptoms but are still highly contagious. Airport workers and at least one family member of a deportee have tested positive in Guatemala and are believed to have been infected by returned migrants, said Dr. Edwin Asturias, a University of Colorado epidemiologist who is from Guatemala and maintains close contact with health authorities there.

“It’s clear that deportees have been coming infected and without appropriate safety measures in the same airspace with other people,” Asturias said. “As we’re seeing, this type of deportation is producing contagion in Guatemala.”