Coronavirus: The Hill and the Headlines, April 26 2021

In Washington:

• President Biden is expected to announce on Tuesday updated guidance on masking from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The guidance is still being finalized but is likely to ease recommendations that Americans wear masks even while outdoors. Biden is expected to outline the changes in a speech on Tuesday more broadly addressing where the country stands in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic.

• National Institutes of Health (NIH) official Dr. Anthony Fauci said Sunday that sending excess vaccines to India was "on the table," but offered no timetable or plan for such a move. The Biden administration is under mounting pressure to share doses as India faces soaring death tolls, mass cremations, and oxygen and ICU bed shortages. Reps. Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-CA) have called for sending vaccines, as has Ashish Jha, Dean of the Brown School of Public Health, in a weekend Washington Post op-ed. The administration said Sunday it will send ventilators, PPE, rapid test kits, and therapeutics. The U.S. has about 40 million AstraZeneca doses.

• On Monday, the Biden administration announced that it will donate millions of doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to other countries after pressure from lawmakers and experts. The U.S. has millions of doses of the vaccine, which is authorized abroad but not in the U.S., and could play a key role amid worsening spikes in cases abroad, particularly in India. “U.S. to release 60 million Astra Zeneca doses to other countries as they become available,” tweeted White House senior coronavirus adviser Andy Slavitt. Slavitt claimed limited current supply meant the speed of the administration’s decision to release the shots had not caused any unnecessary delay.

• U.S. diplomatic staff in India are coping with a major coronavirus outbreak. Two staff members have died and more than 100 people are testing positive in recent weeks. The U.S. operates five consulates in different cities and an embassy in the capital of New Delhi.  US personnel, family members, and locally employed staff in India only began receiving their COVID vaccines within the past two weeks.

In the News:

• Stella Kyriakides, the European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, announced Monday that the EU is suing AstraZeneca for failing to deliver on its coronavirus vaccine contract. AstraZeneca in a statement said it had complied with its contract, rejecting the lawsuit's allegation. AstraZeneca twice announced last year that it would not be delivering the amount of vaccines that the EU was counting on. 

• Moderna announced that global vaccine maker Sanofi will help produce up to 200 million doses of Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine starting in September to help meet demand for the shots.  The agreement is Sanofi’s third in recent months to help other companies produce vaccines. 

• The University of California-San Francisco reported the first known case of a male in the U.S. developing a blood clot after receiving the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. More than a dozen previous cases involved women under 50.

• American tourists could soon be allowed to visit Europe again, more than a year after the E.U. restricted travel to the 27-nation bloc to contain the coronavirus.

• Few Americans who have not been vaccinated against the coronavirus say they are willing to take the Johnson & Johnson vaccine following the temporary pause in its distribution due to rare blood clots. Just 22 percent of unvaccinated Americans in a Washington Post-ABC News poll released Monday said that they would be willing to get the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Almost three in four — 73 percent — said they were unwilling. About 93 million people, or more than a quarter of Americans, are fully vaccinated.

• The mayor of Pamplona, Spain, cancelled the city's annual San Fermín Festival, also known as the Running of the Bulls, on Monday, citing ongoing concerns brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. Enrique Maya told reporters that the region's low vaccination rate and continued high rates of the virus contributed to the need to suspend the festival for the second year in a row. Spain has seen its rate of new COVID-19 infections rise slightly over the month of April, though the rate remains far lower than during two previous fall and winter waves.

• India continues to fall into a desperate state of crisis as it recorded the highest number of cases in the world on Saturday.  Today, the country reported 350,000 new cases, taking the country’s total to 1.7 million and more than 2,500 deaths a day.  Almost half of all new cases reported globally are in India.

Authored by Ivan Zapien