The Latest: Congress OKs $1.9T relief bill for Americans

WASHINGTON — Congress has sent President Joe Biden the landmark $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill.

Democrats claimed a triumph on a bill that marshals the government’s spending might against twin pandemic and economic crises that have upended a nation.

Most noticeable to many Americans are provisions to provide up to $1,400 direct payments this year to most adults and extend $300 per week emergency unemployment benefits into early September.

Included is hundreds of billions for COVID-19 vaccines and treatments, schools, state and local governments and ailing industries from airlines to concert halls.

There are expanded tax credits over the next year for children, child care and family leave — some of them credits that Democrats have signaled they’d like to make permanent — plus spending for renters, feeding programs and people’s utility bills.

There’s aid for farmers of color, pension systems and student borrowers, and subsidies for consumers buying health insurance and states expanding Medicaid coverage for lower earners.

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THE VIRUS OUTBREAK:

— What's inside the newly passed $1.9T relief bill for Americans

— Dr. Fauci: US virus shots ramping up toward immunity

— WHO report on Wuhan virus mission expected soon

— AP source: US to buy additional 100M J&J doses

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— Follow AP’s pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic, https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-vaccine and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak

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HERE’S WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING:

MADRID — Spain’s health authorities will tighten restrictions during the upcoming Easter week to try to prevent another coronavirus spike.

Health Minister Carolina Darias says between March 26-April 9 travel will be prohibited between Spain’s peninsular regions. Meetings will be limited to four people in closed spaces and six people in open spaces, and the nightly curfew already in place must start by 11:00 p.m. from the current midnight.

Those same restrictions will apply to seven regions, including central Madrid, from March 17-21 for their celebration of the San José festival. Madrid’s region, Darias says, was the only one to vote against the order.

Spain’s rolling 14-day cases per 100,000 inhabitants lowered to 139 cases on Wednesday. Spain has confirmed 71,727 deaths from the coronavirus.

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ISTANBUL — Daily coronavirus infections have climbed to 14,556 in Turkey, more than a week after the government eased restrictions in dozens of provinces.

It’s the highest number of infections confirmed by the health ministry since late December. With 67 more deaths, the confirmed death toll has reached 29,227. The number of patients in need of critical care has also increased.

Health Minister Fahrettin Koca says the more transmissible mutations of the virus were tracked. They included 41,488 cases of the U.K. variant in 76 provinces, 61 cases of the South African variant in nine provinces and one case of the Brazilian variant.

Nighttime curfews, introduced in late November, are still in place across the country but weekend lockdowns are fully applied only in “very high-risk” cities.

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SALT LAKE CITY — Utah’s governor says all adults in the state will be eligible to receive COVID-19 vaccines on April 1.

A spokeswoman for Governor Spencer Cox says state officials expect to have 1.5 million doses by April 10, when Utah’s statewide mask order will be lifted.

Mask orders will remain in place for schools and large gatherings. Utah also reported the first death of a child in the state because of COVID-19 on Tuesday. The state’s number of newly confirmed coronavirus cases and virus-related hospitalizations have continued to decrease since January.

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PHOENIX — Arizona on Wednesday reported 830 confirmed coronavirus cases and 78 deaths, following two days of no new deaths.

The latest figures reported by the Department of Health Services increased the state’s pandemic totals to 828,630 confirmed cases and 16,404 confirmed deaths.

The number of related hospitalizations continued to drop, with COVID-19 patients occupying 868 inpatient beds on Tuesday, down from 925 on Monday. The pandemic peak was 5,082 on Jan. 11.

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ATLANTA — A U.S. government report suggests the early substantial racial and ethnic gaps in COVID-19 case rates narrowed for some groups of young people late last year.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the report Wednesday. It finds some groups of young people — Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islanders, American Indians, Alaska Natives and Hispanic people — continue to have higher rates of coronavirus compared to whites.

Large racial and ethnic COVID-19 disparities were seen early in the pandemic, possibly reflecting the demographics of essential workers who weren’t able to comply with stay-at-home orders. Living in multigenerational households also increases risk and is more common in some groups.

Disparities decreased among young people of all racial and ethnic minority groups during the year. In the latter part of the year, the incidence among young Black, Asian and multiracial people was lower than among young white people in the states studied.

The CDC analyzed cases among children and adults younger than 25. The data came from 15 states and Washington, D.C., and included nearly 700,000 cases where race and ethnicity were reported.

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BERLIN — The German government says it expects the supply of coronavirus vaccines to rise steadily in the coming month, hitting a peak of nearly 10 million doses a week in July.

Government spokesman Steffen Seibert says models used by the government indicate the weekly supply could reach nearly 5 million by the end of April. Germany’s vaccine campaign has lagged behind countries such as Britain and the United States.

By Wednesday, about 5.6 million people in Germany had received at least a first dose of vaccine, compared with 22.6 million in Britain. Chancellor Angela Merkel has pledged all Germans will be offered a vaccine before the national election on Sept. 26.

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CHARLESTON, W.Va. — West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice announced an estimated 168 coronavirus deaths went unreported.

Justice says officials discovered that 70 deaths — mostly hospitals and nursing homes — weren’t reported to the state’s health department. The Republican governor on Monday had heralded a sharp drop in COVID-19 deaths since the beginning of the year, metrics health officials cited to support the governor easing restrictions on businesses.

“This is absolutely not acceptable,” Justice said. “I’m really sorry.”

Dr. Ayne Amjad, the state’s health officer, said officials are waiting to find out if there are more unreported deaths. She blamed it on facilities not filling out death reports online to the state’s health department in a timely matter.

The health department’s public data currently shows 2,330 total deaths — which does not include the 168.

Coronavirus cases and hospitalizations declined in the past two months according to state data, which led Justice to lift capacity restrictions on businesses and allow larger social gatherings last week.

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WASHINGTON — The nation’s top infectious disease expert says the U.S. could see significant steps toward a return to the pre-pandemic normal, even before the country reaches coronavirus herd immunity.

Dr. Anthony Fauci says best estimates when enough people are immune to end the outbreak range between 70-85% of the population -- a figure expected to be attained by late summer or early fall.

He says as the pace of vaccination ramps up and the most vulnerable to the virus are protected, some government restrictions could be lifted.

Said Fauci: “You don’t have to wait until you get full herd immunity to get a really profound effect on what you can do.”

CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky cautioned only about 10% of the population is fully vaccinated, but her agency anticipated loosening federal guidelines as more people receive shots.

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LONDON — One of the leaders of the recent World Health Organization-led mission to China to investigate the origins of the coronavirus expects finding out “fairly soon, within the next few years” what started the pandemic.

In a press briefing, Peter Daszak estimated collective scientific research could pin down how animals carrying COVID-19 might have infected the first people in Wuhan.

“There was a conduit from Wuhan to the provinces where in South China, where the closest relative viruses to (the coronavirus) are found in bats,” says Daszak, the president of EcoHealth Alliance. He says the wildlife trade seemed to be the most likely explanation of COVID-19 arriving in Wuhan, where the first human cases were detected last December.

That hypothesis, Daszak says, was “the one that’s most strongly supported both on the WHO (and) the China side.”

Daszak and his co-authors are set to release a report, as early as next week, on the initial conclusions of their recent mission to Wuhan. They concluded it was “extremely unlikely” the pandemic was the result of a laboratory accident.

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SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Public schools across Puerto Rico are reopening for the first time in nearly a year, with officials reporting scarce attendance amid COVID-19 concerns.

Of the island’s 858 public schools, 95 were authorized to reopen on Wednesday because they’re in a municipality with a low number of coronavirus cases and met a list of requirements issued by Puerto Rico’s Health Department.

For now, only kindergarteners, special education students and children in first, second, third and 12th grades can return to school. They’ll attend in-person classes twice a week and be dismissed before noon.

The island of 3.2 million people has reported more than 180,700 confirmed cases and more than 2,000 confirmed deaths. As of Sunday, more than 607,000 people have been vaccinated, with nearly 227,000 getting the second dose.

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BRUSSELS — The leaders of the European Union and the United Kingdom had an angry exchange over vaccine exports as relations between the recently separated sides took another diplomatic dip.

London summoned the EU envoy to explain comments by EU Council President Charles Michel that Britain had issued a vaccine export ban. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told the House of Commons that it was his “wish to correct the suggestion from the European Council president that the UK has blocked vaccine exports.”

The spat comes as the COVID-19 vaccination drive in Britain has given about 35% of its adults given a shot. The 27-nation bloc has vaccinated about 9.5% of its population. Britain’s population is 66 million, compared to the EU’s 446 million.

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LISBON, Portugal — Portugal is expected to gradually begin easing its national lockdown starting Monday, when nursery schools are set to reopen.

Officials say they’ll allow some businesses in less-affected regions to open before others.

Popular gathering places such as bars and restaurants are not expected to reopen until April or May.

Economy Minister Pedro Siza Vieira said after meeting with business leaders and labor groups they are reluctant to keep staff working from home for much longer.

The government says it has so far spent more than 3 billion euros ($3.6 billion) -- about 1.5% of annual GDP -- on non-refundable financial support for companies.

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WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden is expected to announce Wednesday the U.S. is buying an additional 100 million doses of the single-shot Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine.

The drugmaker is already obligated to supply 100 million doses to the federal government by the end of June. The additional vaccine would be delivered in the months following. A White House official previewed the news on the condition of anonymity before the president’s remarks.

The U.S. is set to receive enough doses of the three approved vaccines by the middle of May to cover all adults. The surplus would ensure supply to cover young adults and children, pending the result of safety and efficacy trials. They also could be used as potential “boosters” to further protect against emerging virus variants, or be shared with allies overseas once Americans are protected. — Zeke Miller

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RAMALLAH, West Bank — Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh is appealing to the international community to deliver promised vaccines against COVID-19.

His office says the prime minister on Tuesday urged friendly countries and companies, as well as the World Health Organization, to “fulfill their obligations to us.”

Shtayyeh says U.N. deliveries expected this month through COVAX, the WHO-backed program to assist poorer nations, are now delayed.

The virus has surged through the West Bank and Gaza Strip and Israel has come under significant international criticism for giving its own population vaccines without doing the same for Palestinians. This week, the government began vaccinating Palestinian laborers who work in Israel.

However, that effort will only vaccinate a small percentage of the roughly 5 million Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and blockaded Gaza Strip. Israel says under past peace accords, it is not responsible for vaccinating the Palestinian populations in those areas. Human rights groups say Israel remains an occupying power with an obligation to assist the Palestinians.

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BRUSSELS — The European Commission says it has secured an agreement with Pfizer-BioNTech for an extra four million doses of COVID-19 vaccines for its 27 nations to tackle the surge of cases in several coronavirus clusters.

EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said “this will help member states in their efforts to keep the spread of new variants under control. Through their targeted use where they are most needed, in particular in border regions, these doses will also help ensure or restore the free movement of goods and people.”″

The European Union mentioned Tyrol in Austria, Nice and Moselle in France, Bolzano in Italy and some parts of Bavaria and Saxony in Germany where COVID-19 hospitalizations have been on the rise. The Commission said the new doses will be made available to all member states on a pro-rata basis this month.

EU officials have been dismayed at how virus surges driven by variants have prompted EU nations to put in border restrictions.

Overall, the EU has six contracts for more than 2 billion doses of vaccines to inoculate its 450 million people.

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