Author Archives: Reuters News Agency

U.S. coronavirus hospitalizations hit eight-month high over 100,000

By Anurag Maan

(Reuters) -The number of coronavirus patients in U.S. hospitals has breached 100,000, the highest level in eight months, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, as a resurgence of COVID-19 spurred by the highly contagious Delta variant strains the nation’s health care system.

A total of 101,433 COVID patients were hospitalized, according to data published on Friday morning.

U.S. COVID-19 hospitalizations have more than doubled in the past month. Over the past week, more than 500 people with COVID were admitted to hospitals each hour on average, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The United States reached its all-time peak for hospitalizations on Jan. 14 when there were over 142,000 coronavirus-infected patients in hospital beds, according to HHS.

As the vaccination campaign expanded in early 2021, hospitalizations fell and hit a 2021 low of 16,000 on in late June.

However, COVID-19 admissions rose suddenly in July as the Delta variant became the dominant strain. The U.S. South is the epicenter of the latest outbreak but hospitalizations are rising nationwide.

Florida has the highest number of COVID-19 hospitalized patients, followed by Texas and California, according to data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. More than 95% of intensive care beds are currently occupied in Alabama, Florida and Georgia.

The Delta variant, which is rapidly spreading among mostly the unvaccinated U.S. population, has also sent a record number of children to hospital. There are currently over 2,000 confirmed and suspected pediatric COVID-19 hospitalizations, according to HHS.

Three states – California, Florida and Texas – amount to about 32% of the total confirmed and suspected pediatric COVID-19 hospitalizations in the United States.

Children currently make up about 2.3% of the nation’s COVID-19 hospitalizations. Kids under 12 are not eligible to receive the vaccine.

The country is hoping for vaccine authorization for younger children by autumn with the Pfizer Inc vaccine.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said this week that the nation could get COVID-19 under control by early next year if vaccinations ramp up.

The United States has given at least one dose of vaccine to about 61% of its population, according to the CDC.

The United States, which leads the world in the most deaths and cases, has reported 38.5 million infections and over 634,000 deaths since the pandemic began last year, according to a Reuters tally.

(Reporting by Anurag Maan in Bengaluru; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Michael Perry)

NATO allies struggle to keep Kabul airport open for aid after withdrawal

By Stephanie Nebehay and Orhan Coskun

GENEVA/ANKARA (Reuters) – NATO allies are struggling to ensure that Afghanistan’s main gateway, Kabul airport, remains open for urgently needed humanitarian aid flights next week when they end their evacuation airlifts and turn it over to the Taliban.

The airport, a lifeline for tens of thousands of evacuees fleeing victorious Taliban fighters in the last two weeks and for aid arriving to relieve the impact of drought and conflict, was hit by a deadly attack outside its gates on Thursday.

Turkey said it was still talking to the Taliban about providing technical help to operate the airport after the Aug. 31 deadline for troops to leave Afghanistan but said the bombing underlined the need for a Turkish force to protect any experts deployed there.

Turkey has not said whether the Taliban would accept such a condition, and President Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday his country was “not in a rush to start flights” again to Kabul.

But aid groups say there is an urgent need to maintain humanitarian deliveries to a country suffering its second drought in four years and where 18 million people, nearly half the population, depend on life-saving assistance.

The World Food Program said this week that millions of people in Afghanistan were “marching towards starvation” as the COVID-19 pandemic and this month’s upheaval, on top of the existing hardships, drive the country to catastrophe.

The World Health Organization warned on Friday that medical supplies in Afghanistan would run out in days, with little chance of re-stocking them.

“Right now because of security concerns and several other operational considerations, Kabul airport is not going to be an option for the next week at least,” said WHO regional emergency director Rick Brennan.

Brennan said the organization hoped to operate flights in the next few days into Afghanistan’s northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif with the support of Pakistani authorities.

“One of the challenges we have in Afghanistan right now is there is no civil aviation authority functioning,” he told a briefing from Cairo.

Insurance rates for flying into Afghanistan had “skyrocketed at prices we have never seen before” since Thursday’s attack, he added. “Once we have addressed that we will hopefully be airborne in the next 48 to 72 hours.”

LAST FLIGHTS

The United States says the Islamist Taliban movement had indicated “in no uncertain terms” that it wants to have a functioning commercial airport to avoid international isolation.

“A functioning state, a functioning economy, a government that has some semblance of a relationship with the rest of the world, needs a functioning commercial airport,” U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said. “We are in discussions with the Taliban on this very front.”

On Friday the Pentagon said several nations were willing to work with the Taliban to keep Kabul airport operating.

Still, as aid groups struggle to keep supply routes into the country open after the Aug. 31 departure of foreign troops, Afghans trying to leave the country are finding the few remaining exits slamming shut.

Several European Union countries say they have ended evacuation operations from Kabul, and the United States has said that by Monday it will prioritize the removal of its last troops and military equipment.

Germany ended evacuation flights on Thursday, although its former envoy to Afghanistan, Markus Potzel, has been in talks with the Taliban representative in Doha to keep Kabul airport operating after Aug. 31.

Potzel said on Wednesday he had been assured by the Taliban that Afghans “with legal documents will continue to have the opportunity to travel on commercial flights after 31 August.”

(Additional reporting by Emma Farge in Geneva and Ali Kucukgocmen in Istanbul; Writing by Dominic Evans; Editing by Edmund Blair)

16 killed in Pakistan chemical factory fire

KARACHI, Pakistan (Reuters) – At least 16 people were killed in a factory fire on Friday in Pakistan’s largest city and financial hub, Karachi, raising questions about the industrial safety in a country not new to such accidents.

The fire broke out at a multi-story chemical factory in eastern part of the city, and most windows of the factory were blocked, police and fire officials said.

Many factory workers died after being trapped on the second floor in the fire, which broke out on the ground floor of the three-story factory.

“At least 16 people have died in the fire,” Saqib Ismail Memon, deputy inspector general of Karachi’s eastern part, told Reuters.

Private television channels’ footage showed thick grey smoke billowing out from the top floors of the factory.

“The factory had only one entry point, which was also being used as exit, and the roof exit was blocked, which badly hampered rescue efforts,” Mubeen Ahmed, chief fire officer of the fire department, told a Geo, a private television channel.

Over 260 workers were burnt alive when a multi-story garment factory was set on fire in September 2012 in what became the deadliest industrial blaze in Pakistan’s history.

Blazes and accidents are common in South Asia’s factories, many of which operate illegally and without proper fire safety measures.

(Reporting by Raza Hassan; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

Pentagon says Kabul attack carried out by one suicide bomber

By Idrees Ali

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A deadly attack in Afghanistan’s capital Kabul on Thursday was carried out by a single suicide bomber at a gate to the airport and there was no second explosion at a nearby hotel, the Pentagon said on Friday.

The Kabul airport attack, which killed 13 U.S. troops and at least 79 Afghans, was claimed by Islamic State militants. The Islamic State’s Afghan affiliate, ISIS-Khorosan, has emerged as an enemy of both the West and of the Taliban.

The attack marked the first U.S. military casualties in Afghanistan since February 2020 and represented the deadliest incident for American troops there in a decade.

U.S. General Frank McKenzie, the head of U.S. Central Command, had said on Thursday that initial information was that two suicide bombers had attacked the airport gate and the nearby Baron hotel.

“I can confirm for you that we do not believe that there was a second explosion at or near the Baron Hotel, that it was one suicide bomber,” Army Major General William Taylor told reporters on Friday. He said U.S. troops wounded in the attack were now being treated in Germany.

Taylor said about 300 U.S. citizens had been evacuated in the last 24 hours, bringing the total number of Americans evacuated to about 5,100.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told the reporters during the same briefing that the United States believed there are still “specific, credible” threats against the airport.

“We certainly are prepared and would expect future attempts,” Kirby said, adding: “We’re monitoring these threats, very, very specifically, virtually in real time.”

U.S. officials have said the biggest threat facing the airport are potential rocket attacks or car bombs.

Thursday’s attack occurred during a U.S.-led evacuation of tens of thousands of people. The Taliban came to power nearly two weeks ago as foreign forces began withdrawing, ending a 20-year war.

(Reporting by Idrees Ali and David Brunnstrom; Writing by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Howard Goller)

U.S. COVID-19 tests again in short supply as infections soar, schools reopen

By Carl O’Donnell

(Reuters) – U.S. companies are scrambling to boost production of coronavirus tests increasingly in short supply as COVID-19 cases soar and schools and employers revive surveillance programs that will require tens of millions of tests, according to industry executives and state health officials.

Test manufacturers including Abbott Laboratories, Becton Dickinson and Co, and Quidel Corp in recent months scaled back production of rapid COVID-19 tests, which can produce results on-site in minutes, as well as test kits that are sent to laboratories for analysis. The move followed a nearly 90% decline in testing and a similarly large drop in COVID-19 cases in the United States.

Abbott in June shut down two production lines in Maine and closed a manufacturing plant in Illinois. Around the same time, Quidel shifted production away from COVID-19 tests. Becton Dickinson had also scaled back production in recent months.

Now, with the Delta variant pushing U.S. COVID-19 cases well above 100,000 per day, test makers are working to quickly reverse course, industry executives and state officials told Reuters.

“We’re hiring people and turning on parts of our manufacturing network that were idled or slowed when guidance changed and demand plunged,” Abbott said in a statement.

However, test makers including Abbott and Becton Dickinson cautioned that there may be supply constraints in the near term.

“With the rise of cases from the Delta variant… there is currently some tightness in supply as manufacturers ramp back up,” said Troy Kirkpatrick, a spokesperson for Becton Dickinson, adding that the company expects inventory levels “will normalize over the next couple of weeks.”

Demand for COVID-19 tests has been largely driven by healthcare providers, employers and schools, he added.

Supplies could tighten even further as more state governments and private employers demand staff either get vaccinated or agree to regular testing. Pfizer Inc and Goldman Sachs are among major employers requiring staff to be regularly tested.

Testing in schools is a top priority for federal and state officials as a minority of the roughly 70 million school-age U.S. children have been vaccinated. Those under 12 are not yet eligible for the shots.

Demand for diagnostic tests has surged nearly six-fold in the past two months, from around 250,000 per day in early July to nearly 1.5 million in mid-August, according to U.S. federal data. The data only tracks diagnostic tests that are run in laboratories.

That demand is only expected to grow.

More than half a dozen states, including California, Delaware, and South Carolina, have set up comprehensive surveillance testing programs for their public K-12 schools, while Pennsylvania and Arkansas are among at least a dozen other states developing similar plans. Even in states without such plans, many local school districts are rolling out surveillance programs.

Ysleta Independent School District in El Paso, Texas, expects to need around 40,000 Abbott rapid tests per month to monitor students for COVID-19, said Lynly Leeper, the district’s chief financial and operational officer.

Her school district had been planning to shut down its testing program until the Delta variant sent cases soaring in the state in recent weeks.

SUPPLY CHAIN CONCERNS

Delaware, which was among the first to roll out a comprehensive surveillance testing program in July, has already begun to see some test shortages, said Dr. Rick Pescatore, an associate medical director in the state’s public health agency.

The surge in test demand has sounded alarms among federal officials, who are “concerned that people are going to start shutting down our supply chain,” limiting the flexibility to respond to a spike in cases, said Quidel Chief Executive Douglas Bryant told Reuters.

The recent increase in surveillance testing “really stresses the supply chain,” said Dana Lerman, medical director at The COVID Consultants, a physicians group that provides COVID-19 testing and advisory services. Her organization has seen demand for rapid tests increase 200% since June.

Even if test makers are able to keep up with rising demand from U.S. schools, states will still face challenges covering the expense of widespread testing, which experts say will cost the average school district at least $1 million each year.

Ysleta in El Paso said it expects it will cost around $3 million to safely test its students this school year, and is relying on Texas to provide it with funds.

The Biden administration granted $10 billion to help states developing COVID-19 testing programs. Experts said the sum is far short of what states will need to cover testing for the full school year.

“More federal funding will be necessary,” said Dr. Antonia Sepulveda, president of the Association of Molecular Pathology that represents diagnostic testing laboratories, “for institutions to continue comprehensive testing programs.”

(Reporting by Carl O’Donnell; Editing by Michele Gershberg, Caroline Humer and Bill Berkrot)

Biden, Israeli PM begin talks in shadow of Afghan attack

By Trevor Hunnicutt and Matt Spetalnick

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett began their first White House meeting on Friday, with Iran topping the agenda, even as the U.S. leader grappled with the aftermath of a deadly suicide bombing in Kabul during the chaotic U.S. evacuation from Afghanistan.

After a one-day delay due to the Islamic State attack that killed 13 U.S. troops and 72 Afghans, Biden and Bennett met to reset the tone of U.S.-Israeli relations and search for common ground on Iran despite differences on how to address Tehran’s nuclear program.

Tensions complicated relations between Bennett’s predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu, who was close to former President Donald Trump, and the last Democratic administration led by Barack Obama with Biden as his vice president.

But the meeting, the first since the two men took office this year, was eclipsed by Thursday’s attack outside Kabul airport during a U.S. withdrawal that has posed the biggest crisis of Biden’s young presidency.

U.S. forces helping to evacuate Afghans desperate to flee new Taliban rule were on alert for more attacks on Friday.

Biden called the Israeli leader and “thanked (him) for his understanding of the change in time of their meeting, in light of the events in Afghanistan,” Bennett’s office said in a statement.

He said Israel shared America’s sorrow over the deaths.

The delay means that Bennett, an Orthodox Jew who does not travel on the Sabbath, will remain in Washington until after sundown on Saturday.

Iran, one of the thorniest issues between the Biden administration and Israel, was expected to be the main focus of their talks.

Bennett, a far-right politician who ended Netanyahu’s 12-year run as prime minister in June, intended to press Biden to harden his approach to Iran and back out of negotiations to revive an international nuclear deal with Tehran that Trump abandoned.

Biden was expected to tell Bennett that he shares Israel’s concern that Iran has expanded its nuclear program but remains committed for now to diplomacy with Tehran, a senior administration official said earlier.

Bennett has sought to move on from Netanyahu’s combative style and instead manage disagreements behind closed doors.

But he has been just as adamant as Netanyahu was in pledging to do whatever is necessary to prevent Iran, which Israel views as an existential threat, from building a nuclear weapon. Iran consistently denies it is seeking a bomb.

The visit gave Biden an opportunity to demonstrate business as usual with a key partner while contending with the volatile situation in Afghanistan.

On the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Biden and Bennett are also far apart. Biden has renewed backing for a two-state solution after Trump distanced himself from that longstanding tenet of U.S. policy. Bennett opposes Palestinian statehood.

(Additional reporting by Stephen Farrell in Jerusalem; Editing by Howard Goller)

Hurricane Ida hits Cuba’s Isle of Youth; U.S. Gulf Coast braces for hit

By Maria Caspani

(Reuters) – Hurricane Ida barreled into Cuba’s Isle of Youth on Friday, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said, and the U.S. Gulf Coast braced for a direct hit this weekend as the storm churned toward the region.

Ida reached hurricane status much more quickly than forecasters had expected. New Orleans city officials ordered residents to evacuate areas outside the levee system, with a voluntary evacuation for the rest of the parish.

Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards declared a state of emergency on Thursday and said on Friday he had sent a request to President Joe Biden for a “pre-landfall” federal declaration of emergency.

“Unfortunately, Louisiana is forecast to get a direct, strong hit from Tropical Storm #Ida, which is compounded by our current fourth surge of COVID-19. This is an incredibly challenging time for our state,” Edwards wrote on Twitter.

Ida smashed into the Isle of Youth packing maximum sustained winds of 75 miles per hour (120 km per hour), meteorologists said.

The storm was expected to keep gaining strength and speed over the warm Gulf waters, endangering the coast lines of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, forecasters said. Ida was expected to make landfall along the northern U.S. Gulf Coast on Sunday.

Officials in U.S. coastal areas preparing for the storm urged residents to move boats out of harbors and encouraged early evacuations.

Officials in Louisiana’s Lafourche Parish said they would enact a voluntary evacuation, especially for people in low-lying areas, mobile homes and RVs. Hurricane force winds of about 110 mph with gusts of 130 mph could hit the state, forecasters said.

“By Saturday evening, everyone should be in the location where they intend to ride out the storm,” Edwards said on Thursday.

Cuba’s meteorology institute said Ida would cause storm surges as far east as Havana. The governor of the Isle of Youth Adian Morera said an evacuation center was ready to receive families in the main town of Nueva Gerona, and sea vessels had already been secured along the coast.

Jamaica was flooded by heavy rains and there were landslides after the passage of the storm. Many roads were impassable and forcing some residents to abandon their homes.

(Reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta, Arpan Varghese in Bengaluru, Nelson Acosta in Cuba and Kate Chappell in Jamaica; Writing by Maria Caspani; Editing by Jason Neely, Kirsten Donovan and David Gregorio)

U.S. on alert for more attacks, death toll rises from Kabul airport carnage

(Reuters) – U.S. forces helping to evacuate Afghans desperate to flee new Taliban rule were on alert for more attacks on Friday after an Islamic State attack killed at least 92 people, including 13 U.S. service members, just outside Kabul airport.

Some U.S. media said the death toll was far higher in Thursday’s attack, which took place near the airport gates where thousands of people have gathered to try to get inside the airport and onto evacuation flights since the Taliban took control of the country on Aug. 15.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said hthe United States believed there are still “specific, credible” threats against the airport.

“We certainly are prepared and would expect future attempts,” Kirby told reporters in Washington. “We’re monitoring these threats, very, very specifically, virtually in real time.”.

U.S. and allied forces are racing to complete evacuations of their citizens and vulnerable Afghans and to withdraw from Afghanistan by an Aug. 31 deadline set by President Joe Biden.

Islamic State (ISIS), an enemy of the Islamist Taliban as well as the West, said one of its suicide bombers had targeted “translators and collaborators with the American army”.

The Pentagon said Friday that the attack was carried out by one suicide bomber, not two as earlier thought.

The number of Afghans killed has risen to 79, a hospital official told Reuters on Friday, adding that more than 120 were wounded. A Taliban official said the dead included 28 Taliban members, although a spokesman later denied any of their fighters guarding the airport perimeter had been killed.

Some U.S. media including the New York Times cited local health officials as saying as many as 170 people, not including the U.S. troops, had died in the attack.

The attack marked the first U.S. military casualties in Afghanistan since February 2020 and represented the deadliest incident for American troops there in a decade.

Biden was already facing strong criticism at home and abroad for the chaos surrounding the troop withdrawal that led to the Taliban’s lightning advance to Kabul.

The attack also underlined the realpolitikfacing Western powers in Afghanistan: Engaging with the Taliban who they have long sought to fend off may be their best chance to prevent the country sliding into a breeding ground for Islamist militancy.

Medical staff in the operating theatres of Kabul’s Emergency Hospital worked through the night treating casualties.

“Everybody is concerned at this moment in Kabul, nobody knows what to expect in the coming hours,” said Rossella Miccio, president of the Italian aid group that runs the hospital.

‘HUNT YOU DOWN’

Biden said on Thursday evening he had ordered the Pentagon to plan how to strike ISIS-K, the Islamic State affiliate that claimed responsibility. The group has killed dozens of people in attacks in Afghanistan in the past 12 months.

“We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay,” Biden said in televised comments from the White House.

Biden has defended the troop withdrawal, saying the United States long ago achieved its original rationale for invading the country in 2001. The U.S.-led invasion toppled the then-ruling Taliban, punishing them for harboring al Qaeda militants who masterminded the Sept. 11 attacks that year.

General Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, said on Thursday that the United States will press on with evacuations despite the threat of further attacks. He said some intelligence was being shared with the Taliban and he believed “some attacks have been thwarted by them”.

The United States said it would continue airlifting people right up to next Tuesday but will prioritize the removal of U.S. troops and military equipment on the last couple of days.

Most of the more than 20 allied countries involved in airlifting Afghans and their own citizens out of Kabul said they had completed evacuations by Friday.

Taliban guards blocked access to the airport on Friday, witnesses said. “We had a flight but the situation is very tough and the roads are blocked,” said one man on an airport approach road.

The pace of flights accelerated on Friday and American passport holders had been allowed to enter the airport compound, according to a Western security official inside the airport.

Another 12,500 people were evacuated from Afghanistan on Thursday, raising the total airlifted abroad by the forces of Western countries since Aug. 14 to about 105,000, the White House said on Friday.

France has held talks with Taliban representatives in recent days in Kabul and in Doha to ease its ongoing evacuations, the foreign ministry said on Friday.

Pakistani officials told Reuters that at the Torkham border crossing, Pakistani security forces had opened fire on a group of people trying to illegally enter Pakistan, adding that two Afghans were killed and two others wounded.

LEFT BEHIND

Those killed on Thursday included two British nationals and the child of a third British national, British foreign minister Dominic Raab said on Friday. The country’s defense minister, Ben Wallace, said the threat of attacks would increase as Western troops got closer to completing the huge airlift.

ISIS-K was initially confined to areas on the border with Pakistan but has established a second front in the north of the country. The Combating Terrorism Centre at West Point says ISIS-K includes Pakistanis from other militant groups and Uzbek extremists in addition to Afghans.

Russia called on Friday for rapid efforts to help form an inclusive interim government in Afghanistan after Thursday’s attack, saying ISIS was trying to capitalize on chaos in the country and endangering everyone.

Up to half a million Afghans could flee their homeland by year-end, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said on Friday, appealing to all neighboring countries to keep their borders open for those seeking safety.

There are also growing worries Afghans will face a humanitarian emergency with the coronavirus spreading and shortages of food and medical supplies looming.

Medical supplies will run out within days in Afghanistan, the World Health Organization said on Friday, adding that it hopes to establish an air bridge into the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif with the help of Pakistan.

(Reporting by Reuters bureaux; Writing by Stephen Coates, Mark Heinrich and Hugh Lawson; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore and Frances Kerry)

Paraguay grains ships cut loads, face delays as river levels drop

By Daniela Desantis

ASUNCION (Reuters) – Grains ships and vessels transporting other products on the Paraguay River are loading at around half capacity due to a historic drought that has hit river levels in the South American region, hurting trade of key agricultural commodities.

Industry insiders said that many cargo holds on ships were being left empty, travel times were being delayed and farmers in the world’s fourth-largest exporter of soybeans were having to hold on longer to grains that they couldn’t ship.

“The situation is critical and delicate,” César Jure, president of the Paraguayan Chamber of Cereal and Oilseed Exporters, told Reuters.

“A large proportion of cargo holds are going unused, which translates into a direct cost when it comes to taking the products to the River Plate (estuary in Argentina).”

Low rainfall has drastically reduced the level of the waterway, which originates in Brazil, crosses landlocked Paraguay and empties into the Paraná River in the north of major grains producer Argentina, a place that is also facing shipping hold-ups.

Experts estimate the phenomenon, which began three years ago, will last until at least 2022, stymieing trade. Jure said that the situation was forcing exporters to look for alternatives such as land routes to ports in Brazil to fulfill contracts.

“At the end of the year we will still have an inventory of merchandise to export, both for industry and for soybeans. The new crop will have to wait in silos until we can release the old one,” Jure said.

The director of the Center for Fluvial and Maritime Ship-owners of Paraguay, Juan Carlos Muñoz, said that the drought was causing travel times to triple.

“All trade is late, everything is delayed. It is a very complicated year since 96% of Paraguay’s overseas trade is handled by the river and this implies a very important impact on the national economy,” he said.

The soybean planting that begins next month could also be affected by the lack of fertilizers arriving, Muñoz added.

Paraguay, which produces some 10 million tonnes of soybeans each year, has a fleet of around 3,000 vessels that transport local production – as well as part of what is produced in nearby regions of neighboring Brazil and Bolivia – along the Paraguay-Paraná waterway to river ports downstream.

(Reporting by Daniela Desantis; Editing by Adam Jourdan and Steve Orlofsky)

Texas House passes voting bill that lawmakers fled state to protest

By Julia Harte

(Reuters) -Texas’ House of Representatives on Friday passed a bill restricting voting access, more than six weeks after Democratic lawmakers fled the state in an effort to deny the legislature the quorum needed to approve the Republican-backed measure.

The House resumed business on Aug. 19 after three of the absentee Democrats returned to the statehouse, saying they had successfully brought national attention to the Texas bill and galvanized U.S. lawmakers to move forward on federal voting rights legislation.

Friday’s vote followed hours of fiery debate late into the night on Thursday, but its outcome was widely expected because the state legislature is dominated by a Republican majority.

The bill, passed on an 80-41 vote, will now proceed to the Texas Senate. It is widely expected to also pass there, clearing the way for Republican Governor Greg Abbott to sign it into law.

The Democratic lawmakers’ exodus on July 12 set up one of the most prolonged political showdowns over U.S. statehouse measures limiting voting access. Republicans have pushed the measures, citing former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims that voter fraud cost him the November election.

The Texas bill would outlaw drive-through and 24-hour voting locations, add new identification requirements to mail-in voting, prevent election officials from sending out unsolicited mail-in ballot applications and empower partisan poll watchers.

Democratic lawmakers and voting rights advocates have warned that limiting flexible voting methods and other provisions of the bill would disproportionately hamper voters of color, a charge denied by its Republican backers.

House Speaker Dade Phelan, a Republican, asked members to refrain from using the word “racism” during Thursday’s House floor debate, and rebuked Democratic Representative Gina Hinojosa when she asked whether intentional discrimination against people of a certain race was “racism.”

“I’m sorry that when we talk about discriminatory impact, it bothers people,” Democratic Representative Rafael Anchia said during the debate, citing federal court rulings that found other recent Texas voting legislation discriminatory.

Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday approved the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to update existing federal voting safeguards, though it faces slim chances of passage in the Senate. Senate Democrats vow to push forward with the more expansive For the People Act that has stalled in that chamber.

(Reporting and writing by Julia Harte in New York; Additional reporting by Bhargav Acharya; Editing by Chris Reese and Jonathan Oatis)