US to share AstraZeneca shots with world after safety check

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. will begin sharing its entire stock of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines with the world once it clears federal safety reviews, the White House said Monday, with as many as 60 million doses expected to be available for export in the coming months.

The move greatly expands on the Biden administration’s action last month to share about 4 million doses of the vaccine with Mexico and Canada. The AstraZeneca vaccine is widely in use around the world but has not yet been authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The White House is increasingly feeling assured about the supply of the three vaccines being administered in the U.S., particularly following the restart of the single-dose Johnson & Johnson shot over the weekend. The U.S. has also been under mounting pressure in recent weeks to share more of its vaccine supply with the world, as countries like India experience devastating surges of the virus and others struggle to access doses needed to protect their most vulnerable populations.

“Given the strong portfolio of vaccines that the U.S. already has and that have been authorized by the FDA, and given that the AstraZeneca vaccine is not authorized for use in the U.S., we do not need to use the AstraZeneca vaccine here during the next several months,” said White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients. “Therefore the U.S. is looking at options to share the AstraZeneca doses with other countries as they become available.”

More than 3 million people worldwide have died of COVID-19, including more than 572,000 in the U.S. The U.S. has vaccinated more than 53% of its adult population with at least one dose of its three authorized vaccines from Pfizer, Moderna and J&J, and it expects to have enough supply for its entire population by early summer.

About 10 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine have been produced but have yet to pass review by the FDA to “meet its expectations for product quality,” Zients said, noting the U.S. regulator is recognized as the “gold standard” for safety around the world. That process could be completed in the next several weeks. About 50 million more doses are in various stages of production and could be available to ship in May and June pending FDA sign-off.

The U.S. has yet to finalize where the AstraZeneca doses will go, Zients said. Neighbors Mexico and Canada have asked the Biden administration to share more doses, while dozens of other countries are looking to access supplies of the vaccine.

“We’re in the planning process at this point in time,” said White House press secretary Jen Psaki, when asked where the doses would go.

The AstraZeneca doses will be donated by the U.S. government, which has contracted with the company for a total of 300 million doses — though the company has faced production issues.

The administration’s move to share vaccines drew praise from nongovernmental aid groups, who encouraged the White House to develop plans to share even more doses.

“The Biden administration’s decision to begin sharing AstraZeneca vaccines is welcome news and an important first step towards the US sharing more of its massive vaccine stockpile,” said Tom Hart, acting CEO at The ONE Campaign. “The Biden administration should build on this welcome first step and start sharing more vaccines as soon as possible.”

AstraZeneca’s doses in the U.S. were produced at an Emergent BioSolutions plant in Baltimore that has come under increased regulatory and public scrutiny after botching batches of the J&J vaccine. The U.S. pressed J&J to take over the plant and, as part of the effort to ensure the quality of newly produced vaccines, directed the facility to stop making the AstraZeneca shot. AstraZeneca is still looking to identify a new U.S. production facility for its future doses.

AstraZeneca’s vaccine was initially expected to be the first to receive federal emergency authorization, and the U.S. government ordered enough for 150 million Americans before issues with the vaccine’s clinical trial held up clearance. The company’s 30,000-person U.S. trial didn’t complete enrollment until January, and it still has not filed for an emergency-use authorization with the FDA.

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Boris Johnson rules out Covid public inquiry ‘for months’

 The Government has told bereaved families it is too busy dealing with the coronavirus pandemic to launch an immediate public inquiry into its handling of the crisis.

In a letter to lawyers representing families who have lost loved ones during the pandemic, the Government appeared to rule out starting an official probe for months.

It said ‘an inquiry now is not appropriate’ because ‘the very people who would need to give evidence to an inquiry are working round the clock’.

It said that ‘it is not anticipated that the Government’s workload will ease in the coming months’.

The comments come amid growing calls for an immediate statutory inquiry into the Government’s handling of the crisis.

Boris Johnson has previously committed to holding a probe but he is yet to set out a timetable for doing so.

The letter, seen by The Guardian, was sent to lawyers representing the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group.

The letter, sent on April 1, relates to potential legal action to force an inquiry to begin.

Jo Goodman, the co-founder of the group, said the Government’s stance was ‘an insult to the bereaved [and] prevents the government from protecting future lives to the best of their ability’.

It comes just days after the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, piled the pressure on Mr Johnson to launch an inquiry as he said the time for an independent probe ‘must be coming close’.

Mr Welby said during a visit to the National Covid Memorial Wall in central London that a probe should focus on ‘lessons to be learned’ and must be ‘very independent’ and ‘very wide-ranging’.

A Government spokesman told The Guardian that an inquiry will be held ‘at the appropriate time’ but officials are currently ‘rightly focused on protecting public health and saving lives’.

Mr Johnson said in March this year that the Government will launch a public inquiry into the crisis ‘as soon as it is right to do so’.

He said the probe will take place ‘as soon as it would not be an irresponsible diversion of the energies of the key officials involved’.

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US States lose, gain Congressional seats as census shows population shift

Migration away from Northeastern states and California benefits Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Colorado, Montana, and Oregon

WASHINGTON (AP) — The nation’s political center of gravity shifted further to the Republican-led South and West on Monday, with Texas, Florida and other Sun Belt states gaining congressional seats while chillier climes like New York and Ohio lost them.

Altogether, the U.S. population rose to 331,449,281, the Census Bureau said, a 7.4 increase that was the second-slowest ever.

The new allocation of congressional seats came in the U.S. Census Bureau’s first release of data from a 2020 headcount. The numbers chart familiar American migration patterns, and confirm one historic marker: For the first time in 170 years of statehood, California is losing a congressional seat, a result of slowed migration to the nation’s most populous state, which was once a symbol of the country’s expansive frontier.

The census release marks the official beginning of the once-a-decade redistricting battles. The numbers released Monday, along with more detailed data expected later this year, will be used by state legislatures or independent commissions to redraw political maps to account for shifts in population.

Those shifts have largely been westward. Colorado, Montana and Oregon all added residents and gained seats. Texas was the biggest winner — the second-most populous state added two congressional seats, while Florida and North Carolina gained one. States losing seats included Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

The reshuffling of the congressional map moved seats from blue states to red ones, giving Republicans a clear, immediate advantage. The party will have complete control of drawing the congressional maps in Texas, Florida and North Carolina — states that are adding four seats.

In contrast, though Democrats control the process in Oregon, Democratic lawmakers there have agreed to give Republicans an equal say in redistricting in exchange for a commitment to stop blocking bills. In Democratic Colorado, a nonpartisan commission will draw the lines, meaning the party won’t have total control in a single expanding state’s redistricting.

It’s been a bumpy road getting this far. The 2020 census faced a once-in-a-century coronavirus pandemic, wildfires, hurricanes, allegations of political interference with the Trump administration’s failed effort to add a citizenship question, fluctuating deadlines and lawsuits. Division of federal money to the states is also a stake.

The GOP can shape districts to maximize the influence of Republican voters and have a major advantage in upcoming elections — possibly enough to win back control of the U.S. House.

But in the long term, it’s not clear the migration is good news for Republicans. Many of the fastest growing states are increasingly competitive political battlegrounds where the new arrivals — including many young people and people of color — could at some point give Democrats an edge.

“What’s happening is growth in Sunbelt states that are trending Democratic or will soon trend Democratic,” said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.

That means Republicans may be limited in how many favorable seats they can draw as Democrats move to their territory.

“It’s going to be harder and harder for the Texas Legislature to gerrymander advantageous congressional districts” for Republicans, said William Fulton, director of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University in Houston. “Texas hasn’t flipped blue yet as a state, but the blue population centers are growing really fast.”

Fulton, who moved to Texas from California, said his former home has become “the new California — the big state that’s adding a lot of population.” He believes California risks becoming the new Northeast — which he characterized as a stagnant, crowded area that retains wealth and intellectual clout but loses innovators to more promising places.

Despite California’s slow growth, the state still has 10 million more residents than Texas.

North Carolina and Texas, Fulton said, are positioned to become the intellectual powerhouses of the new economy, as the South has snatched away major manufacturing industries like automobiles from the Rust Belt. “We are 10-20 years away from the South and the West being truly dominant in American culture and American society,” Fulton said.

But population booms also bring new burdens, like increased traffic, rising home prices and strains on an infrastructure already grappling with climate change — vividly illustrated when the Texas power grid failed in the winter storms of February.

The pattern outlined in the the Census data was one started in the 1930s with the invention of modern air-conditioning and has been steady since then, according to experts. The only change in the pattern was the halt in California’s growth.

That has happened as home prices have soared in California, contributing to a steady stream of residents leaving for other Western states. Those relocations helped turn Colorado and Nevada into Democratic states and made Arizona competitive.

“That’s the California exodus, blue state immigrants,” Frey said. “Californians are taking their votes and moving to other places.”

It’s not just Californians who are moving. Brad Baskin and his wife, Janie, moved from the Chicago suburbs to Orlando, Florida, three years ago to be closer to their daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren. Janie Baskin is a registered Democrat, while Brad Baskin hasn’t registered a party affiliation but was turned off by Trump.

The political views they have encountered in Florida have been a bit jarring, going from a state overwhelmingly dominated by Democrats to one where Republicans are in control at the state level, though Democrats control most municipal offices in the county that is home to Orlando.

Baskin, a photographer, said he recently made head shots for a client who told him, “It’s OK for you guys to move down here, but leave your liberal views up there.”

The power shift is also being driven by Hispanics. Over the decade, Hispanics accounted for around half of the growth in Arizona, Florida and Texas, according to figures from the American Community Survey, a Census Bureau program separate from the decennial census.

The state population figures known as the apportionment count determine not only political power but the distribution of $1.5 trillion in federal spending each year.

The legal deadline for turning in the apportionment numbers was Dec. 31, but the Census Bureau pushed back that date to April because of challenges caused by the pandemic and the need for more time to correct not-unexpected irregularities.

More detailed figures will be released later this year showing populations by race, Hispanic origin, gender and housing at geographic levels as small as neighborhoods. This redistricting data will be used for redrawing precise congressional and legislative districts.

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Follow Mike Schneider on Twitter at https://twitter.com/MikeSchneiderAP

Follow Nicholas Riccardi on Twitter at https://twitter.com/NickRiccardi

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