Tag Archives: Coronavirus

Explainer: Fraud is rare in U.S. mail-in voting. Here are the methods that prevent it

By Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – With the number of Americans voting by mail on Nov. 3 expected to nearly double due to COVID-19, election experts see little reason to expect an increase in ballot fraud, despite President Donald Trump’s repeated claims.

Voting by mail is not new in the United States — nearly 1 in 4 voters cast 2016 presidential ballots that way. Routine methods and the decentralized nature of U.S. elections make it very hard to interfere with mailed ballots, experts say.

While mail balloting has its drawbacks, it can help minimize the long lines, faulty voting machines and COVID-19-induced staffing shortages that have plagued some elections this year.

HOW SECURE IS IT?

Election experts say it would be nearly impossible for foreign actors to disrupt an election by mailing out fake ballots, a scenario floated by Attorney General William Barr.

For one thing, voters won’t just be selecting a president: They might be choosing candidates for city council, school board and weighing in on ballot initiatives. That can require hundreds of different ballot designs in a single county and the United States has more than 3,000 counties.

Ballots aren’t counted if they aren’t printed on the proper type of paper and don’t include specific technical markings.

States also require voters to sign the outside of their envelope, which they match to a signature on file.

Some 29 states and the District of Columbia allow voters to track their ballots to ensure they are received, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Fourteen states and D.C. also allow voters to return their ballots by hand if they don’t trust the mail.

Those envelopes are typically opened by a different group of workers than those who scan the ballots. Outside observers are allowed to monitor the process to ensure voter privacy.

IS FRAUD A PROBLEM?

As with other forms of voting, documented cases of mail-ballot fraud are extremely rare.

The conservative Heritage Foundation, which has warned of the risks of mail voting, found 14 cases of attempted mail fraud out of roughly 15.5 million ballots cast in Oregon since that state started conducting elections by mail in 1998.

The most prominent cases of mail fraud have involved campaigns, not voters. North Carolina invalidated the results of a 2018 congressional election after state officials found that a Republican campaign operative had orchestrated a ballot fraud scheme.

Experts say those scenarios can be minimized by nixing requirements — currently in place in 11 states — which instruct voters to get at least one witness to sign their return envelopes.

“All of these policies remove the need to hand over your ballot to someone you don’t know,” said Tammy Patrick, a former election official in Maricopa County, Arizona.

DOES IT HELP TURNOUT?

Turnout rates tend to be higher in states that conduct elections by mail. A Stanford University study found that participation increased by roughly 2 percentage points in three states that rolled out universal voting by mail from 1996 to 2018. It had no effect on partisan outcome and did not appear to give an advantage to any particular racial, economic or age group.

In Colorado, 77% of voting age citizens cast ballots in the 2016 presidential election, the highest figure in the country, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. In Oregon, that figure was 72% and in Washington it was 68%, well above the national rate of 63%.

ARE THERE BARRIERS?

Like any other voting method, mail balloting has its drawbacks.

States rejected 1% of returned ballots in 2016 for arriving too late, missing signatures or other problems, according to EAC figures — though that figure was as high as 5% in some states. It can be more difficult to fix errors on mail ballots than on those cast in person, experts say.

Mail ballots can pose additional barriers to those who don’t speak English or have disabilities, and delivery can be problematic on Native American reservations, where residents sometimes don’t have street addresses.

In California, which started transitioning to mail ballots in 2018, Black and Hispanic voters were twice as likely to cast their ballots in person, according to David Becker, head of the Center for Election Innovation and Research.

(Reporting by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Scott Malone and Aurora Ellis)

U.S. govt to invest $42 million in Becton Dickinson to ramp up vaccination efforts

(Reuters) – Becton Dickinson and Co said on Wednesday the U.S. government will invest $42 million to expand the medical technology company’s manufacturing capacity for syringes and needles to support vaccination efforts against COVID-19.

The company has also finalized an initial order from the government for 50 million needles and syringes to be delivered by the end of December 2020.

As the pandemic continues to rage, drug makers’ push to mass produce their potential COVID-19 vaccines even before they are shown to work in trials is creating concerns over supplies, including potential shortage of vials.

Brokerage Evercore ISI said the Becton deal indicates the demand for syringes could be higher than expected, and the expansion of manufacturing capacity could add over $150 mln of revenue to the company.

The investment is under a public-private partnership with the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), part of the U.S. Health and Human Services Office, Becton Dickinson said.

BARDA has invested more than $3 billion in vaccines and funded more than 30 projects as part of “Operation Warp Speed,” the White House program aimed at accelerating access to vaccines and treatments for the new coronavirus.

BARDA will get priority access to the injection devices from the new manufacturing lines, the company said.

(Reporting by Vishwadha Chander in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)

New Jersey to make face masks mandatory outdoors as U.S. outbreak widens

By Peter Szekely and Barbara Goldberg

NEW YORK (Reuters) – New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy said on Wednesday he would sign an executive order requiring people to wear face coverings outdoors to prevent a resurgence of the novel coronavirus whenever social distancing is not possible.

More than 15,000 people have died from COVID-19 in New Jersey, ranking it second after neighboring New York state in the total number of deaths, according to a Reuters tally.

A Democrat, Murphy told MSNBC that requiring the public to wear masks outdoors was critical to controlling the spread of the virus in the state, an early hot spot where rates of the virus have started to creep up again.

“There’s no question that face coverings are a game-changer,” he said, acknowledging that it would be hard to enforce the order but saying the state needed to build on the progress made in its battle against the virus.

“We’ve gone through hell in New Jersey. We’ve lost over 13,000 people, we’ve brought our numbers way down. We can’t go through that hell again.”

The order, when formally announced later in the day, would be one of the most stringent coronavirus restrictions on public activity in the United States. Many states require use of masks in public indoor areas and recommend they be used outside.

Murphy is taking action as infections skyrocket in many other states, including California, Florida and Texas, and health officials warn of a coming spike in the death toll from the virus, which has killed more than 131,000 Americans.

The U.S. outbreak crossed a grim milestone of over 3 million confirmed cases on Tuesday, roughly equivalent to 1% of the population, as more states reported record numbers of new infections.

In New Jersey, some people voiced surprise that face coverings were not already mandatory.

“I figured that was already the rule – it’s confusing that it’s not clear and I try pretty hard to keep up,” said Calia Nochumson, a 42-year-old high school teacher from Maplewood, New Jersey. She said she was disappointed to see so few people wearing face coverings during a recent trip to the beach.

Ohio is ordering people in seven counties to wear face coverings in public starting on Wednesday evening.

TRUMP PUSHES RETURN TO SCHOOL

President Donald Trump, who owns a golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, has eschewed the idea of wearing a face mask and has exhorted Americans to return to their daily routines since the end of mandatory lockdowns imposed in March and April.

The Republican president, seeking a second White House term in a Nov. 3 election, threatened on Wednesday to cut off federal funding to schools that fail to open in the autumn due to the coronavirus outbreak.

“The Dems think it would be bad for them politically if U.S. schools open before the November Election, but is important for the children & families. May cut off funding if not open!” Trump posted on Twitter.

It was unclear what specific aid Trump had in mind. States are responsible for primary and secondary education under the U.S. Constitution but the federal government provides some supplementary aid.

SURGE IN NEW CASES

Nineteen states have reported record increases in cases this month and about 24 states have reported disturbingly high infection rates as a percentage of diagnostic tests conducted over the past week.

In Texas alone, the number of hospitalized patients more than doubled in just two weeks, and the number of available hospital intensive care unit beds for adults in Florida has fallen sharply in recent days.

Additional hospitalizations could strain healthcare systems in many areas, leading to an uptick in lives lost. The U.S. death toll rose by 962 on Tuesday, the biggest one-day rise since June 10, according to a Reuters tally.

The surge has forced authorities to backpedal on moves to reopen businesses, such as restaurants and bars, after mandatory lockdowns in March and April reduced economic activity to a virtual standstill and put millions of Americans out of work.

(Reporting by Peter Szekely and Barbara Goldberg in New York and Doina Chiacu and Susan Heavey in Washington; Writing by Paul Simao; Editing by Howard Goller)

Harvard, MIT seek temporary halt to Trump administration rule on international students

By Mimi Dwyer

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology sued the Trump administration on Wednesday, seeking to block a new rule that would bar foreign students from remaining in the United States if their universities move all courses online due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The two universities filed a lawsuit in federal court in Boston asking for an emergency temporary restraining order on the new directive issued by the government on Monday.

“We will pursue this case vigorously so that our international students – and international students at institutions across the country – can continue their studies without the threat of deportation,” Harvard President Lawrence Bacow wrote in a statement addressed to the Harvard community.

The lawsuit filed by Harvard and MIT, two of the most elite U.S. universities, is the first to challenge the order that could force tens of thousands of foreign students to leave the country if their schools switch fully to remote learning.

Harvard had announced it would hold all classes online in the coming fall term.

The U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.

U.S. President Donald Trump is pushing schools across the country to re-open in the fall.

The Trump administration announcement blindsided academic institutions grappling with the logistical challenges of safely resuming classes as the coronavirus pandemic continues unabated around the world, and surges in the United States, especially among young people.

There are more than a million foreign students at U.S. colleges and universities, and many schools depend on revenue from foreign students, who often pay full tuition.

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency rule said most students on F-1 and M-1 visas could stay if their programs were in person or offered a mix of online and in-person instruction.

In the wake of the announcement, students, professors, and universities were scrambling to figure out exactly who would be affected by the rule and come up with ways to comply without having to leave the country. On Twitter, professors across the country offered to teach outdoor in-person independent study courses for affected students.

The ICE policy change marked an unexpected reversal of exceptions to the rules limiting online learning for foreign students when colleges and universities in March rushed to shutter campuses and move to virtual classes as the pandemic forced lockdowns.

ICE “proceeded without any indication of having considered the health of students, faculty, university staff, or communities,” the complaint said.

The suit alleges the government skirted the proper rule making process and is asking the court to strike it down.

Judge Allison Burroughs, appointed by former President Barack Obama, is assigned to hear the case. In 2017, she ordered a halt to Trump’s travel ban on several Muslim-majority countries, a policy that was eventually upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

(Reporting by Mimi Dwyer in New York; Additional reporting by Dan Burns and Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Mica Rosenberg and Bernadette Baum)

Kanye West breaks ranks with Trump, vows to win presidential race

(Reuters) – Rapper Kanye West signaled he no longer supported U.S. President Donald Trump and said he would enter the presidential race to win it, according to an interview published on Wednesday.

West, previously a vocal supporter of Trump, announced on Saturday that he would run for president in 2020.West and his reality TV star wife Kim Kardashian West have visited Trump in the White House.

“I am taking the red hat off, with this interview,” West told Forbes magazine, referring to Trump’s trademark red “Make America Great Again” baseball cap. “Like anything I’ve ever done in my life, I’m doing (this) to win.”

He said he would run under a new banner – the Birthday Party.

There was no record of West filing any official paperwork with the Federal Election Commission. The deadline to add independent candidates to the ballot has not yet passed in many states.

West denied that his aim was to split the Black vote and hurt the chances of Trump’s Democratic opponent, Joe Biden. It was “a form of racism and white supremacy” to suggest all Black people should support the Democrats, he said.

Trump, who hosted Kanye West in a widely publicized visit to the Oval Office in 2018, said the rapper’s candidacy “would be a great trial run” and that he had a “real voice,” according to an interview Tuesday with Real Clear Politics news website.

White House spokesman Hogan Gidley on Wednesday called Kanye’s announcement “a scathing indictment of the Democrat Party, not just their policies on abortion, the Planned Parenthood, but also the policies that disproportionately affected African Americans in a negative way.”

West told Forbes he believed “Planned Parenthoods have been placed inside cities by white supremacists to do the Devil’s work.” The group provides reproductive health care and education, with most of that being preventive care.

The rapper also said he had been ill in February with COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, and would be suspicious of any vaccines developed to prevent the infection. Reiterating false theories that link vaccines with child developmental disorders, he said: “So when they say the way we’re going to fix COVID is with a vaccine, I’m extremely cautious.”

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Peter Graff)

U.S. tops 3 million known infections as coronavirus surges

By Callaghan O’Hare and Lisa Shumaker

HOUSTON (Reuters) – The U.S. coronavirus outbreak crossed a grim milestone of over 3 million confirmed cases on Tuesday as more states reported record numbers of new infections, and Florida faced an impending shortage of intensive care unit hospital beds.

Authorities have reported alarming upswings of daily caseloads in roughly two dozen states over the past two weeks, a sign that efforts to control transmission of the novel coronavirus have failed in large swaths of the country.

California, Hawaii, Idaho, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma and Texas on Tuesday shattered their previous daily record highs for new cases. The biggest jumps occurred in Texas and California, the two largest U.S. states, with more than 10,000 each. About 24 states have reported disturbingly high infection rates as a percentage of diagnostic tests conducted over the past week.

In Texas alone, the number of hospitalized patients more than doubled in just two weeks.

The trend has driven many more Americans to seek out COVID-19 screenings. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said on Tuesday it was adding short-term “surge” testing sites in three metropolitan areas in Florida, Louisiana and Texas.

In Houston, a line of more than 200 cars snaked around the United Memorial Medical Center as people waited hours in sweltering heat to get tested. Some had arrived the night before to secure a place in line at the drive-through site.

“I got tested because my younger brother got positive,” said Fred Robles, 32, who spent the night in his car. “There’s so many people that need to get tested, there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Dean Davis, 32, who lost his job due to the pandemic, said he arrived at the testing site at 3 a.m. Tuesday after he waited for hours on Monday but failed to make the cutoff.

“I was like, let me get here at 3, maybe nobody will be here,” Davis said. “I got here, there was a line already.”

In Florida, more than four dozen hospitals across 25 of 67 counties reported their intensive care units had reached full capacity, according to the state’s Agency for Health Care Administration. Only 17% of the total 6,010 adult ICU beds statewide were available on Tuesday, down from 20% three days earlier.

Additional hospitalizations could strain healthcare systems in many areas, leading to an uptick in lives lost from the respiratory illness that has killed more than 131,000 Americans to date. At least 923 of those deaths were reported Tuesday, the biggest single-day toll since June 10 but still far fewer than the record 2,806 tallied back in April.

A widely cited mortality model from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) projected on Tuesday that U.S. deaths would reach 208,000 by Nov. 1, with the outbreak expected to gain new momentum heading into the fall.

A hoped-for summertime decline in transmission of the virus never materialized, the IHME said.

“The U.S. didn’t experience a true end of the first wave of the pandemic,” the IHME’s director, Dr. Christopher Murray, said in a statement. “This will not spare us from a second surge in the fall, which will hit particularly hard in states currently seeing high levels of infections.”

‘PRESSURE ON GOVERNORS’

President Donald Trump, who has pushed for restarting the U.S. economy and urged Americans to return to their normal routines, said on Tuesday he would lean on state governors to open schools in the fall.

Speaking at the White House, Trump said some people wanted to keep schools closed for political reasons. “No way, so we’re very much going to put pressure on governors and everybody else to open the schools.”

New COVID-19 infections are rising in 42 states, based on a Reuters analysis of the past two weeks. By Tuesday afternoon, the number of confirmed U.S. cases had surpassed 3 million, affecting nearly one of every 100 Americans and a population roughly equal to Nevada’s.

In Arizona, another hot spot, the rate of coronavirus tests coming back positive rose to 26% for the week ended July 5, leading two dozen states with positivity rates exceeding 5%. The World Heath Organization considers a rate over 5% to be troubling.

The surge has forced authorities to backpedal on moves to reopen businesses, such as restaurants and bars, after mandatory lockdowns in March and April reduced economic activity to a virtual standstill and put millions of Americans out of work.

The Texas state fair, which had been scheduled to open on Sept. 25, has been canceled for the first time since World War Two, organizers announced on Tuesday.

In Ohio, Governor Mike DeWine said the state was ordering people in seven counties to wear face coverings in public starting Wednesday evening.

(Reporting by Callaghan O’Hare in Houston and Lisa Shumaker in Chicago; Additional reporting by Maria Caspani, Gabriella Borter, Caroline Humer and Peter Szekely in New York and Susan Heavey and Jeff Mason in Washington Writing by Paul Simao and Steve Gorman; Editing by Bill Berkrot, Cynthia Osterman, Tom Brown and Leslie Adler)

Trump administration to encourage schools to safely reopen amid coronavirus surge

By Alexandra Alper and Susan Heavey

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump is pushing for schools to reopen in the fall and is hosting White House events on the topic on Tuesday, despite a steady increase in coronavirus infections across the country led by younger Americans and rising hospitalizations in many states.

Trump on Monday tweeted “SCHOOLS MUST OPEN IN THE FALL!!!”, as local officials across the country began pausing or scaling back their re-openings due to the surge in infections.

On Tuesday, he will hold a discussion at the White House on re-opening schools, while Vice President Mike Pence speaks with governors on the topic, according to a senior administration official who briefed reporters.

“It is really … critically important to get our schools open,” the official said, highlighting the role schools play in communities. “There are a variety of different strategies that schools can adopt that really minimize the risk and can open these schools quite safely.”

The call comes as state and local governments, which largely control schools for kindergarten through 12th grade, grapple with how to handle the upcoming school year, seeking to balance the need for education with the risk of spreading the highly contagious disease.

Educators say socialization and other benefits such as school food programs are critically important. Experts have also shown online learning exacerbates the divide between poorer and more wealthy Americans, who have greater access to technology.

Most working parents of school-age children also depend on in-person instruction to allow them to work.

But an alarming surge in cases in the United States, especially among younger people, has raised concerns about the increased risk of spread by children to vulnerable adults at home as well as to older teachers and school staff.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “encourages school districts to make reopening plans that anticipate COVID-19 cases, minimize risk of spread and then limit the need for the potential of school closures,” the official said.

Florida, a Republican-led state, on Monday issued a sweeping executive order for children to return to school this fall, despite sharply rising new COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations there.

Asked about Florida, the senior administration official stressed that “these are state and local decisions at the end of the day and we are confident that state and local leaders across the country are taking these decisions very seriously.”

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, said it was too soon to decide on schools given the nature of the resurgent outbreak.

If Trump wants schools to re-open, he should call for masks to be worn nationwide, she told CNN, calling mask wearing “a simple, cost effective” solution to mitigate virus spread.

Colleges and universities are also weighing plans to resume this autumn, including calendar changes on online classes.

The Trump administration on Monday said foreign students must leave the country if their schools move to fully online classes, which could choke off revenue for those schools.

(Reporting by Alexandra Alper and Susan Heavey; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

U.S. signs $450 million contract with Regeneron for COVID-19 therapy

By Manojna Maddipatla

(Reuters) – The U.S. government signed a $450 million contract with Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc for its potential COVID-19 antibody cocktail, the drug maker said on Tuesday.

The agreement, the first by the Trump administration to support a therapy, comes under the government’s “Operation Warp Speed” program that is aimed at faster distribution of vaccines and treatments to fight the new coronavirus when trials are successful.

The United States is also funding manufacturing and several trials for potential vaccines and has rushed to secure billions of doses of the vaccines being tested by companies around the world.

Earlier in the day, Novavax Inc received a $1.6 billion grant, the biggest award yet from Operation Warp Speed, to cover testing, manufacturing and sale of a potential coronavirus vaccine.

Under the contract with Regeneron, signed with the HHS’ Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority and the Department of Defense, the doses manufactured under the project will be owned by the federal government.

Regeneron’s cocktail, REGN-COV2, contains an antibody made by the company and another isolated from recovered COVID-19 patients. Rivals Eli Lilly and AbbVie are also pursuing antibody therapies for the respiratory illness.

REGN-COV2 is being tested separately for both preventing and treating COVID-19, with a late-stage prevention trial being run jointly with the National Institutes of Health.

The agreement covers a fixed number of bulk lots intended to be completed in the fall of 2020, Regeneron said.

A range of 70,000 to 300,000 potential treatment doses or 420,000 to 1,300,000 prevention doses are expected to be available from these lots, with initial doses to be ready as early as end of summer.

The U.S. government would make the doses available to Americans at no cost, if EUA or product approval is granted, Regeneron said.

Shares of Regeneron were up 1.4% at $636.11. They have risen 67% so far this year.

(Reporting by Manojna Maddipatla in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)

Brazil President Bolsonaro tests positive for coronavirus

SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said on Tuesday he tested positive for the novel coronavirus, adding in a television interview that he was in good health despite running a fever.

The right-wing populist, who has played down the severity of the virus which he has called a “little flu,” took the test on Monday after developing symptoms.

In the interview broadcast on state-run TV Brasil, Bolsonaro said he began feeling ill on Sunday and has been taking hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug with unproven effectiveness against COVID-19.

Brazil has the world’s second-largest outbreak behind the United States. Latin America’s largest country has more than 1.6 million confirmed cases and 65,000 COVID-19 deaths.

Bolsonaro has repeatedly defied local guidelines to wear a mask in public, even after a judge ordered him to do so in late June. Bolsonaro has also railed against social distancing rules supported by the World Health Organization.

Over the weekend, Bolsonaro attended several events and was in close contact with U.S. Ambassador Todd Chapman during July 4 celebrations. Pictures showed neither wearing a mask.

The U.S. embassy in Brasilia said via Twitter on Monday that the ambassador had lunch on July 4 with Bolsonaro, five ministers and the president’s son, Congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro. The ambassador had no symptoms, but would undergo testing and is “taking precautions,” the embassy said.

(Reporting by Ana Mano; Writing by Stephen Eisenhammer; Editing by Brad Haynes and Daniel Flynn)

Fed’s Bostic: Business ‘getting nervous again’ as virus surges

(Reuters) – The surge in U.S. coronavirus cases has made business owners “nervous again,” Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank President Raphael Bostic said on Tuesday, and prompted him to focus on company decisions over the next three to six weeks.

“We are hearing it more and more as we get more data. People are getting nervous again. Business leaders are getting worried. Consumers are getting worried. And there is a real sense this might go on longer than we have planned for,” Bostic said in webcast remarks to the Tennessee Business Roundtable.

A Fed survey released on Tuesday morning showed Americans may be hunkering down for a longer than expected fight against the virus and the economic fallout from it.

The poll of 1,869 people took place between June 3 and June 12, as the first signs emerged of a newly growing coronavirus caseload, showed 46% of respondents now think it will take more than a year for conditions to return to normal. That is up from 35% in an April survey.

In conversations with managers in his Southern district, where several states are facing a renewed health crisis, Bostic said he is asking “what are their plans for the next three weeks, six weeks, how are they thinking about staffing decisions.”

That period could prove critical in the pace of an economic recovery Bostic suggested may plateau sooner and at a lower pace than expected.

At the end of July, some of the programs approved to support businesses and families during the pandemic will expire, most notably the $600-a-week addition to unemployment benefits.

With the caseload growing again, Bostic said it may become apparent that a longer bridge to the post-pandemic world is needed.

“It is pretty clear this is going to go on beyond the expiration of relief efforts,” Bostic said, adding that as the fact becomes clear, elected officials might “strongly consider doing more.”

(Reporting by Howard Schneider; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Jonathan Oatis)