COVID-19 Compilation – March 30, 2020 Courtesy of Cornerstone Government Affairs

Common Acronyms Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), World Health Organization (WHO), National Institutes of Health (NIH), Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Department of Defense (DOD), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Central Command (CENTCOM), Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Transportation Security Administration (TSA), Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR), Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA)

Washington, D.C. • After last week’s passage of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, members of Congress are now looking ahead to a fourth supplemental funding package. For a more thorough update on the legislative landscape, please refer to the COVID-19 Legislative Update from Sierra Fuller. If you do not already receive that update and would like to subscribe, please email [email protected]. • President Trump on Sunday issued a major disaster declaration for Washington, D.C., marking the 22nd state/territory to receive a major disaster declaration and federal assistance from FEMA. The declaration allows states and territories to access federal funds to combat the coronavirus. • The Capitol Visitor Center and House and Senate office buildings will be closed to the public though May 1st. • The Department of Labor (DOL) has posted additional Questions and Answers regarding implementation of certain provisions of the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA). • HHS accepted 30 million doses of hydroxychloroquine sulfate donated by Sandoz, the Novartis generics and biosimilars division, and one million doses of chloroquine phosphate donated by Bayer Pharmaceuticals, for possible use in treating patients hospitalized with COVID-19 or for use in clinical trials. According to HHS, these and other companies may donate additional doses, and companies have ramped up production to provide additional supplies of the medication to the commercial market. Despite relatively scant evidence that the drug actually has an effect on COVID-19 patients, hospitals are getting desperate and are already using the drugs on severely ill patients. The mentioned drugs are the same ones used to treat malaria, as well as a slew of other illnesses whose patients are now facing a shortage of drugs on which they rely. o The FDA had already issued an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to BARDA to allow hydroxychloroquine sulfate and chloroquine phosphate products donated to the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) to be distributed and prescribed by doctors to hospitalized teen and adult patients with COVID-19, as appropriate, when a clinical trial is not available or feasible. • CMS today announced an array of temporary regulatory waivers and new rules to increase flexibility within the health care system and improve response to COVID-19. • Rep. Nydia Velasquez (D-NY) is the most recent member of Congress to receive a presumptive positive test result for COVID-19. She joins Reps. Joe Cunningham (D-SC), Mike Kelly (R-PA), Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL), and Ben McAdams (D-UT) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY). Twenty-eight other members are in self-quarantine and six members have completed a self-quarantine.

Updates from the States • Out of the cases under investigation detected by U.S. surveillance, there are total cases: 140,904 travel-related: 886 “close contact”: 2,351 The CDC now updates data Monday through Friday and data closes out the day before reporting. o The CDC is reporting 2,405 deaths in the U.S. related to COVID-19. • California Gov. announced the release of the state’s emergency stockpile of 21 million N95 respirators, all of which are expired. While the expired masks still have effective filtering capacity, the elastic bands may have lost their resilience. • ’s 911 system has reportedly been completely overwhelmed by COVID-19 medical distress calls. On a typical day, the system will receive about 4,000 emergency medical services (EMS) calls; however, on Thursday of last week, the service received more than 7,000 calls. The record for amount of calls in a day was broken three times in the last week. • Also in New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio received 250,000 facemasks for health workers as a donation from the United Nations. • Governors across the country continue to express concern at the lack of testing available for their residents. Montana, for example, was attempting to perform contact tracing (tracking people who have had contact with individuals who test positive) but they do not have adequate testing to keep up. • Maryland, Virginia, and D.C. are now all under stay at home orders by their respective governors. Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam signed his state’s into place until June 10th, the latest one so far. o Approximately three-fourths of Americans are either currently under stay at home orders or will be soon. o This resource from Bloomberg Law is a database of State Quarantine and Public Health Laws related to the COVID-19 response. o This series of maps shows how states are responding to COVID-19, and this tracker, created and maintained by MultiState Associates, has an up-to-date list of executive orders and various travel restrictions.

Military/Defense • The USNS Comfort arrived in New York this morning. The 1,200-person vessel will take on non- COVID-19 patients facing life-threatening ailments to alleviate the burden of the city’s increasingly overflowing hospitals. The Navy’s other , the Mercy, arrived in Los Angeles Friday with an identical mission. o The Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) is contributing over $2 million in pharmaceuticals and medical supplies, 975,000 gallons of fuel, as well as food and repair parts for both the USNS Comfort and Mercy. • The USS Theodore Roosevelt, a 5,000-person aircraft carrier that usually patrolls the Pacific and South China Sea, remains docked in Guam as the number of infected sailors continues to rise. Infections started cropping up after an early March port call in Vietnam, which Pentagon leaders say had about 16 known virus cases at the time. Defense Sec. Mark Esper says he will leave key decisions about how to address the outbreak to local commanders. • The Marine Corps said today it is temporarily halting the arrival of all new recruits to its boot camp in Parris Island, South Carolina, due to the threat of COVID-19. • A New Jersey Army National Guard soldier died from COVID-19 on Saturday after being hospitalized for the illness on March 21. New Jersey Gov. identified the soldier as a drilling Guardsman and physician’s assistant originally from Jackson, New Jersey. This marks the first death of a service member from COVID-19. • Last week, the Army sent more than 800,000 former soldiers with medical training an email to gauge their interest in assisting with the coronavirus pandemic response, and received more than 9,000 responses. This week, the number of responses has climbed to more than 17,000. • The number of Guard troops mobilized in the effort to cope with the pandemic continues to grow. As of yesterday morning, more than 14,830 Air and Army National Guard professionals are supporting the COVID-19 crisis response at the direction of their governors. • The Army’s Medical Command is using its Other Transaction Agreement (OTA) with the Medical Technology Enterprise Consortium (MTEC) to develop COVID-19 treatments.

International Affairs • Austria will require all residents to wear face masks when they shop for groceries starting this week, joining the growing ranks of experts who have questioned the prevailing guidance that healthy people don’t need to wear masks. The WHO has asserted from the beginning that masks should only be worn by the sick and health care providers, which has caused tension all over the world because of the PPE shortage. On the other hand, places like Hong Kong, where wearing masks started almost immediately, have managed to contain outbreaks. • In Israel, COVID-19 is spreading nearly eight times faster in ultra-Orthodox communities than in others. In the Tel Aviv suburb of Bnei Brak, where 95 percent of the residents are ultra- Orthodox, the number of confirmed cases nearly doubled in the last three days, from 267 on Friday to 508 today. • China’s claims that spread has mostly stopped are being questioned. While the official Chinese count is only 82,000 confirmed cases, the number only includes individuals who test positive AND get sick. It excludes anyone who is asymptomatic. Health officials will be keeping a close eye on cases as China begins to lift lockdown measures. • Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of Spain has tightened lockdown restrictions, now allowing only essential workers to leave their homes. This will last until at least April 9th. • Italian government officials have voiced that their national lockdown will also be extended beyond April 3rd. Timing will be decided by the Prime Minister and the cabinet. • Individuals in Britain should not expect things to go back to normal in fewer than six months. Their lockdowns will be reassessed every three weeks. • Facebook and Twitter took down posts featuring Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, over the past two days after he claimed that the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine was a “cure everywhere” for the coronavirus and called for an end to social distancing and shelter-in-place measures in Brazil. • Global Cases: 693,224 Total Deaths: 33,106

Lifestyle and Economy • The S&P rose 3 percent today despite last night’s futures report. Johnson & Johnson and Abbott Labs both saw promising gains following recent announcements of vaccines and testing. • Oil prices continue to plunge around the world. In the U.S., the West Texas Intermediate was down more than 5 percent at $20.25/barrel. While some of this is due to the price war between and Russia, analysts say that it is mostly caused by the pandemic. • The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) released a road map for navigating the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. It outlines specific directions for adapting the public-health strategy and suggests milestones for identifying when the country should reopen. • Several sports companies have pledged to use their manufacturing capabilities to produce medical equipment for hospitals nationwide. • Ford Motor and General Electric’s health care division said today that they together planned to produce 50,000 ventilators over the next 100 days to help meet the needs of hospitals during the coronavirus pandemic. Ford plans to continue making about 30,000 ventilators a month once the initial batch has been made. Ford will use a plant in Rawsonville, Michigan, and about 500 workers to make the medical devices. • Johnson & Johnson announced a $50 million commitment to support frontline health workers battling COVID-19. • Macy’s, which also owns Bloomingdale’s and Bluemercury, said today that with stores closed and sales down, it would furlough the majority of its 125,000 employees. • Similarly, Gap, which also owns Old Navy and Banana Republic, said on Monday it would furlough nearly 80,000 store employees in the United States and Canada. • The spread of COVID-19 in prisons continues to be a big concern as social distancing is pretty much impossible and hand sanitizer is usually banned. Defense lawyers, elected officials, health experts, and even prosecutors have said there needs to be increased efforts to release inmates to help slow the spread. • Facebook announced today that it would give out $25 million in grants to local news organizations and spend $75 million in marketing that will go to news outlets internationally. • has started its own tracker of cases in the U.S. to fill in the gaps left by agency data. • You can now pay a virtual visit to museums, aquariums, concert halls, and more through this Forbes list. • Forbes is keeping a running list of all major international airline COVID-19-related change and cancellation policies. • Following the multiple cruise ship infections over the last couple of months, Nature published an article examining what the cruise ship outbreaks taught us about COVID-19. • Tech companies are crucial players in the coronavirus response. Are they contributing what’s most needed? • The latest major event cancellation from COVID-19 is Queen Elizabeth II’s annual birthday parade, which was supposed to take place on June 13th in London. o Lists of canceled conferences and events can be found here (music), here (tech), here (general), and here (sports/entertainment).

Helpful Articles/Media • Daily WHO Situation Report (3/30) • Scientists Identify 69 Drugs to Test Against the Coronavirus • In Zimbabwe, ‘you win coronavirus or you win starvation’ • Other tracking data • Treating COVID-19—Off-Label Drug Use, Compassionate Use, and Randomized Clinical Trials During Pandemics (JAMA) • Fair Allocation of Scarce Medical Resources in the Time of Covid-19 (New England Journal of Medicine) • Why the Coronavirus Has Been So Successful (The Atlantic) • Coronavirus Drugs, Vaccine Are Many Months Away, Health Experts Say • In this article by Dr. Tom Frieden, he explains how we must continue to adapt our strategy to combat COVID-19 as we learn more about it. • If it wasn’t already hard enough to get tested, hospitals are running low on the swabs needed to perform COVID-19 tests. • Prevent Epidemics has a fantastic annotated bibliography of COVID-19 publications that includes links to the original articles. View its resources here. • Johns Hopkins data capture (and, while you’re admiring that Hopkins resource, Coronavirus plea from Johns Hopkins: please take social distancing seriously to save lives) • U.S. Hospitals Face Major Challenges as Coronavirus Spreads • This document contains useful information from the White House Coronavirus Task Force on measures to keep workplaces, schools, homes, and commercial establishments safe. • Shortage of personal protective equipment endangering health workers worldwide • Check the CDC’s page on information for travel for further insight into restrictions for individuals leaving and returning to the U.S., and take a look at their guidance for businesses and employers. • COVID-19 – Navigating the Uncharted (co-authored by Drs. Tony Fauci, Clifford Lane, and Robert Redfield) • If any businesses are interested in offering assistance to CDC during the response, contact the CDC Foundation here. • Businesses, hospitals, universities, and anyone else looking for a direct line to the CDC, you can contact the 24/7 hotline at 770-488-7100.

Common Acronyms Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), World Health Organization (WHO), National Institutes of Health (NIH), Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Department of Defense (DoD), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Central Command (CENTCOM), Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Transportation Security Administration (TSA), Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR), Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), United States Trade Representative (USTR)

Statistics

Map last updated 3/30. The 1-5 category as returned.

Oil- West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark.

(data from WHO daily situation reports)

For more information, visit CDC’s Novel Coronavirus 2019 website