U.S. government gave $3.7 million grant to Wuhan lab at cent

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The Full Story of Trump and COVID-19
by NowThis News
Oct 6, 2020

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An inside look at Trump’s failed coronavirus response: America’s Pandemic
by Washington Post
Premiered Oct 29, 2020

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Coronavirus: How the deadly epidemic sparked a global emergency
by Four Corners
Feb 24, 2020

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Coronavirus: The fight to contain the global pandemic
by Four Corners
Mar 30, 2020

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Coronavirus: America's Reckoning
by Sky News
Apr 23, 2020

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How coronavirus is changing the world
by DW Documentary
Sep 1, 2020

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What we know -- and what we don't -- about the UK coronavirus variant
by Zamira Rahim
CNN
Updated 3:45 PM ET, Mon December 21, 2020

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(CNN) The United Kingdom has identified a new, potentially more contagious coronavirus variant linked to a recent surge in cases in England.

The new variant is being called VUI-202012/01 -- the first "Variant Under Investigation" in the UK in December 2020. While scientists hunt for more information about the variant, its impact is already being felt.

Multiple countries have now imposed restrictions on travelers from the UK. British Health Secretary Matt Hancock said Sunday that the variant was "out of control" and Prime Minister Boris Johnson chaired an emergency meeting Monday as his government tried to manage the fallout.

Here's what you need to know.

What is a variant and why are officials concerned about this one?

A variant occurs when the genetic structure of a virus changes, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. All viruses mutate over time and new variants are common, including for the novel coronavirus.

As with other new variants or strains of Covid-19, this one carries a genetic fingerprint that makes it easy to track, and it happens to be one that is now common. That alone does not necessarily mean the mutation has made it spread more easily, nor does it not necessarily mean this variation is more dangerous.

However, the UK government's New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group said it had "moderate confidence" that this new variant "demonstrates a substantial increase in transmissibility compared to other variants."

Chris Whitty, England's chief medical officer, said this particular variant "contains 23 different changes," which he described as an unusually large number. Whitty said the variant was responsible for 60% of new infections in London, which have nearly doubled in the last week alone.

On Monday, Chief Scientific Adviser Patrick Vallance added that he anticipated the spread of the new variant would increase after Christmas.

"Given that we're entering a period of inevitable mixing, I think there will be some increases in numbers over the next few weeks," he said, adding that local restrictions are likely to be tightened rather than eased in the new year.

That finding has immediate implications for virus control. More cases could place an even greater strain on hospitals and health care staff just as they enter an already particularly difficult winter period, and ultimately lead to more deaths.

Public Health England (PHE) has said that a mutation in the Covid-19 spike protein, the part of the virus that attaches itself to host cells, could increase its transmissibility. Scientists across the UK are conducting more research on this issue.

Where did the variant originate and how has it taken hold?

The new variant of Covid-19 originated in southeast England, according to the World Health Organization.

PHE have said that backwards tracing, using genetic evidence, suggests the variant first emerged in England in September. It then circulated in very low levels until mid-November.

"The increase in cases linked to the new variant first came to light in late November when PHE was investigating why infection rates in Kent [in southeast England] were not falling despite national restrictions. We then discovered a cluster linked to this variant spreading rapidly into London and Essex," PHE said.

Multiple experts have also suggested that this new variant could have been amplified because of a superspreader event, meaning the current spike in cases could also have been caused by human behavior.

"A higher genomic growth rate in the samples sequenced, may not necessarily mean higher transmissibility, e.g. if there was a rave of several thousand people where this variant was introduced and infected many people mostly in that rave, this may seem very high compared to a lower background of non-variant virus," Julian Tang, clinical virologist at the University of Leicester, told the Science Media Centre.

Which countries are affected?

The variant has already spread globally. As well as the UK, the variant has also been detected in Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands and Australia, according to the WHO.

Australia has identified two cases of the variant in a quarantined area in Sydney and Italy has also identified one patient infected with the variant.

A similar but separate variant has also been identified in South Africa, where scientists say it is spreading quickly along coastal areas of the country.

Is the new variant more deadly?

There is no evidence to suggest that the new variant is more deadly as of now, according to Whitty, who said that "urgent work" was underway on Saturday examining the implications for mortality.

"We are not seeing any increased virulence (clinical severity) or any gross changes in the [spike protein] that will reduce vaccine effectiveness -- so far," Tang told the Science Media Centre (SMC.)

Multiple experts have pointed out that for some viruses increasing transmissability can accompany decreasing virulence and mortality rates. This may mean that the variant is less lethal, though it's currently too early to tell.

"New viruses will adapt to a new host over time -- with decreasing mortality, and possibly increasing transmissibility," Tang said.

"As viruses are transmitted, those that allow for increased virological 'success' can be selected for, which changes the properties of the virus over time. This typically leads to more transmission and less virulence," Martin Hibberd, professor of emerging infectious disease at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said to the SMC.

Will the developed vaccines work against this variant?

Whitty said Saturday that current vaccines should still work against the new variant.

His remarks were echoed in the US by the head of Operation Warp Speed. "Up to now, I don't think there has been a single variant that would be resistant to the vaccine," Moncef Slaoui told CNN on Sunday. "We can't exclude it, but it's not there now."

The UK, the US and the EU have authorized the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine and several others are in development.

What measures are being taken to contain the variant?

England's chief medical officer has urged people in Britain to take steps to reduce the virus' spread.

"Given this latest development it is now more vital than ever that the public continue to take action in their area to reduce transmission," Whitty said on Saturday.

Large swathes of England, including London and the southeast, are now under strict Tier 4 Covid-19 restrictions, which is only the latest disruption to a Christmas holiday shadowed by the pandemic.

Dozens of countries across Europe, the Middle East and the Americas have also announced travel bans for the UK.

Others, such as Greece and Spain, have imposed restrictions that require travelers arriving from Britain to undergo coronavirus tests or quarantine.

America's top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, told CNN on Monday that he would advise against additional restrictions on UK travel. The US must "without a doubt keep an eye on it," Fauci said, but "we don't want to overreact."

The US has maintained a ban on travel from the UK, Ireland, and Europe's Schengen zone as well as number of other countries since March.

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Hospital releases video showing dire COVID crisis in California
by CBS News
Dec 22, 2020

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White House security director has part of leg amputated after falling severely ill with COVID-19, fundraiser says: It is the most serious publicly reported case linked to the White House.
by Ben Gittleson
abcnews.go.com
December 16, 2020, 2:04 PM

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The director of the White House security office, Crede Bailey, was in an intensive care unit for three months and had part of his leg amputated after contracting COVID-19 several months ago, according to a fundraising campaign set up to help him.

Bailey, who recently moved to a full-time rehabilitation facility, now faces significant medical bills, according to the online fundraiser. He was hospitalized in September after falling ill with the coronavirus, people familiar with his condition told ABC News.

His illness came as dozens of White House staffers and allies of President Donald Trump tested positive for COVID-19 in a series of outbreaks tied to the White House. Among them were the president, first lady and their teenage son.

While a number of coronavirus cases were linked to a Sept. 26 White House celebration for then-Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, Bailey had been hospitalized before the event, according to the people familiar with his situation.

According to the fundraising page, Bailey suffered permanent injuries from his bout with COVID-19, including the amputations of his right foot, lower right leg, and big toe on his left foot.

In appealing for donations, the person listed as the campaign's organizer, Dawn McCrobie, wrote that Bailey would need to pay for a prosthetic leg, a wheelchair and modifications to his home, among other medical expenses. McCrobie said that "even with insurance," the expenses were "astronomical."

McCrobie did not respond to requests for comment. Bailey and his relatives also did not respond to requests for comment.

The White House last week declined to comment to ABC News on his condition, but asked about him at a news conference on Tuesday, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany for the first time publicly acknowledged his battle with the virus.

"Our heart goes out to his family," McEnany said. "They have asked for privacy. And he is recovering, from what I understand. We are very pleased to see that. But he and his family will be in our prayers."

Trump has not publicly commented about Bailey's situation. McEnany said she was "not sure if the president's had a private conversation with him, nor would I confirm any private conversation that he did have."

Bailey's experience with COVID-19 is the most serious publicly reported case linked to the White House.

Trump and several close allies were also hospitalized and received exceptional access to treatment or therapeutics. Among them were the president's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani; former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who is also an ABC News contributor; and Ben Carson, the secretary of housing and urban development.

Trump has for months minimized the severity of the virus and its impact on those it sickens. “Remember, when you catch it, you get better, and you’re immune," he said in an interview with Fox Business following his own recovery, which was aided by a world-class medical team and an experimental treatment that had, at the time, only been offered to a handful of people outside of clinical trials. In reality, COVID-19 has killed over 300,000 Americans.

Last week, a White House spokesman did not respond when asked whether Trump had donated, or considered donating, to Bailey. The official on Wednesday declined to comment.

The online fundraiser had raised over $30,000 by last week and more than doubled that total this week after a Monday article by Bloomberg News -- and the mention at McEnany's briefing -- brought more attention to Bailey's situation.

ABC News' Katherine Faulders and John Santucci contributed to this report.

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‘Subpoenas are necessary’: House watchdog details extensive meddling with CDC Covid-19 reports: New documents show political appointees sought to influence at least 13 reports as they ignored warnings from career officials.
by Dan Diamond
Politico
12/21/2020 10:02 AM EST
Updated: 12/21/2020 11:45 AM EST

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The House panel probing the Trump administration's coronavirus response released new documents detailing political appointees’ extensive efforts to modify or scuttle scientific Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports, as it also ordered top Trump health officials to quickly provide documents.

Trump appointees attempted to “alter or block” at least 13 scientific reports on the coronavirus as outbreaks surged across the spring and summer, Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), the chair of the House select subcommittee on coronavirus, wrote on Monday in a letter that was shared with POLITICO.

"Top political officials at [Health and Human Services] and [the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] not only tolerated these efforts, but in some cases aided them," Clyburn added in the letter to HHS Secretary Alex Azar and CDC Director Robert Redfield.

Clyburn issued subpoenas to Azar and Redfield, ordering them by Dec. 30 to produce "full and unredacted" documents that Clyburn said his panel has sought for months.

The panel’s probe into administration’s coronavirus response began in mid-September, shortly after a POLITICO story revealed how appointees meddled with the famed Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports, which are authored by career scientists and are typically free of political interference. In recent weeks, the panel released evidence alleging that Redfield ordered agency staff to delete an email that appeared to show political interference and that a political adviser repeatedly advocated a controversial “herd immunity” strategy regarded by most public health experts as reckless.

Clyburn's subcommittee on Monday produced dozens of new documents detailing how Trump appointees — including then-science adviser Paul Alexander, the department's top spokesperson Michael Caputo and other health department officials — worked to subvert the CDC's MMWR reports.

Among the MMWRs that were targeted for edits: reports on the use of masks, the spread of Covid-19 in children, the virus' transmission during an April 7 primary election in Milwaukee and other reports that were seen as politically sensitive.

The newly released documents further detailed appointees' extensive efforts to suppress and even write a rebuttal to planned reports on hydroxychloroquine, the malaria drug favored by President Donald Trump as a coronavirus treatment despite little evidence of its effectiveness. CDC has historically insisted that political appointees not review the draft content of the MMWRs, but in at least one case, Trump appointees obtained the full text of a pending report.

"I got the draft of the WWMR [sic] about hydroxychloroquine and media that was supposed to be released on Tuesday," then-CDC adviser Nina Witkofsky wrote on June 29 to Alexander, Caputo and Caputo's aide Madeleine Hubbard. Witkofsky, who served as a contractor helping plan events for Medicaid chief Seema Verma before joining the Trump administration this summer, was tapped in August to be the CDC's acting chief of staff.

The MMWR on hydroxychloroquine, which reviewed how doctors prescribed the drug, was originally scheduled to be published on June 30 but was not published until Sept. 4.

The reasons for the delay were not immediately clear, but Trump appointees in the meantime further strategized on how to minimize the CDC’s findings – including Alexander’s plans to publicly dismiss the agency’s hydroxychloroquine report. “The authors of this study are a disgrace to public service,” Alexander wrote in a planned rebuttal that does not appear to have been publicly released.

In his letter to HHS, Clyburn said the department continues to block his panel's scheduled interviews with Redfield, CDC principal deputy director Anne Schuchat and Witkofsky, among other officials that HHS previously agreed to make available. HHS also waited until after the election to release its documents, which were mostly pulled from Alexander's files, Clyburn wrote, rather than from officials like Azar and Caputo despite a previous commitment to do so.

"Given the importance of the Select Subcommittee’s investigation and the continued obstruction by HHS, subpoenas are necessary," Clyburn wrote.

Asked about the House panel's findings, HHS said that it had pulled more than 1 million documents for the subcommittee's probe and that Alexander, who has since left the department, did not set strategy.

"While the Administration is focused on vaccination shots, the Subcommittee is focused on cheap shots to create headlines and mislead the American people," said HHS spokesperson Caitlin Oakley.

HHS did not respond to a question about whether the department would comply with the panel's subpoena. CDC did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Alexander and Witkofsky did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Caputo, who took medical leave the same day that Alexander left the department in September, has referred previous inquiries to HHS.

According to the new documents, Bill Hall, the top career civil servant in the HHS press shop, on June 5 warned Alexander, Caputo and other officials that they should not interfere with the MMWRs, comparing the CDC's flagship reports to a "peer-reviewed journal" akin to the Journal of the American Medical Association.

"[A]s matter of long-standing policy, we do not engage in clearing scientific articles, as that arena needs to remain an independent process," Hall wrote in an email obtained by the subcommittee.

But the subcommittee's documents reveal that political appointees instead kept trying to edit a series of internal and external reports.

"Hi Michael, is this not the article we were shelving?" Alexander wrote to Caputo and Witkofsky on June 29 about a pending CDC-authored report on hydroxychloroquine that was set to run in JAMA. The House panel concluded that Alexander "appeared to mistake" the planned JAMA report for the MMWR report that would be delayed.

The subcommittee also released documents showing how Alexander repeatedly petitioned Charlotte Kent, the MMWR editor-in-chief, to make changes to planned reports, such as an upcoming MMWR on the spread of Covid-19 at a Georgia summer camp amid a robust debate about whether it was safe to reopen schools in the fall. In a separate email chain, CDC career officials discussed how best to navigate the political pressures, and Kent ultimately sent Alexander an email seeking to placate him.

"In response to thoughtful comments from CDC leadership and you, the opening sentence of Georgia’s report has been reframed," Kent wrote to Alexander and other officials on July 28. "The opening sentence was the only reference to schools or institutions of higher learning in the report, and reference to them has been removed."

However, the Georgia summer camp report, which was released on July 31, still angered the health department’s Trump appointees, sparking another effort to author their own response that they believed would be more favorable to the president.

“I am not sure where it can be published but this has very re-assuring information and even for the White House,” Alexander wrote in a planned rebuttal to the report.

HHS has insisted that there was no interference in the MMWRs, pointing to comments from Kent, the reports' editor, who during a Dec. 7 interview with House investigators said that the agency published reports that were scientifically sound.

"Dr. Kent’s interview established there was no political interference in the publication of MMWR Articles," Sarah Arbes, the HHS assistant secretary for legislation, wrote to Clyburn last week.

Clyburn, however, said Kent's testimony made clear there was political pressure to alter her office's reports.

"To the extent career staff were successful in limiting the damage, as Dr. Kent stated she was, that is a testament to the career staff’s integrity and resilience — not an indication that the Trump Administration’s political pressure tactics were appropriate or scientifically sound," Clyburn wrote Monday.

The documents released by Clyburn's panel also further shed light on interactions between Trump appointees and career health department officials as the outbreak worsened. In one exchange, a CDC official complaining about the "pattern of hostile and threatening behavior" from Caputo, the department's top spokesperson who was personally installed by the president.

"In what world did you think it was your job to announce an Administration public service announcement to CNN?” Caputo wrote to a CDC official who confirmed to a CNN reporter in June that the health department was pursuing a vaccine education campaign. Caputo had previously told the reporter she was "wildly incorrect" when she inquired about the campaign.

In another set of July emails, Caputo demanded the name of a CDC press officer who arranged an interview between a senior official and NPR about the health department's data changes without his permission.

After POLITICO obtained emails of Alexander pressuring infectious-disease expert Anthony Fauci to not speak publicly about the risks of Covid-19 to children, Alexander protested to colleagues that he wanted to go public with his complaints about Fauci.

"They have no clue what they are saying and I welcome the chance to inform them," Alexander wrote on Sept. 9. HHS announced that Alexander, who is a part-time professor at a Canadian university, would exit the department a week later.