The president’s stance rejects both his predecessors’ plans.
April 30, 2021, 10:51 PM
• 6 min read
After months of closed-door talks, President Joe Biden’s administration has completed its review of North Korea policy, charting a path forward that rejects both of his immediate predecessors’ stances on the nuclear-armed rogue state.
The review has been highly anticipated, especially among U.S. allies Japan and South Korea, as the threat from North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs expands.
But the White House said Friday that its “goal remains the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, with the clear understanding that the efforts of the past four administration have not achieved this objective.”
It was a shot not just at Donald Trump, but also Barack Obama, Biden’s old boss. Trump’s personal diplomacy with Kim was an unprecedented effort to convince the young strongman to discard his nuclear arsenal, but it ultimately ended in failure and faced strong criticism from Biden during the 2020 presidential campaign.
The new policy, however, also said Biden will not “rely on strategic patience,” the term that defined the Obama era approach of hoping U.S. and United Nations sanctions would ultimately put the screws to the North Korean government.
While the Biden administration hasn’t provided full details, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Friday they will deploy a “calibrated, practical approach that is open to and will explore diplomacy with the DPRK and to make practical progress that increases the security of the United States, our allies and deployed forces.”
That means Kim could ultimately meet Biden, as he did Trump in two summits and one brief meeting at the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea. But Biden has emphasized such a meeting would not happen until working-level negotiators had actually achieved a deal.
Trump and Kim signed a joint statement after their first meeting in Singapore in June 2018 — a nonbinding agreement that committed to the “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” and some measures to build confidence between the two countries technically still at war, like returning the bodies of Americans that went missing or were killed in action 70 years ago in the Korean War.
But working-level talks never yielded any progress, despite Trump officials like then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claiming new commitments from the North Korean side. A second summit ended without an agreement after Kim refused to negotiate on his offer and Trump walked, saying he would only accept a grand bargain — the dismantlement of Kim’s entire nuclear weapons program in exchange for the lifting of all sanctions.
A senior administration official told The Washington Post, which first reported the review’s completion, that Biden’s officials won’t demand a full deal upfront.
“If the Trump administration was everything for everything, Obama was nothing for nothing, this is something in the middle,” the official told the newspaper.
The White House, National Security Council and State Department declined to provide more details to ABC News.
Biden will host South Korean President Moon Jae-in at the White House on May 21, Psaki confirmed Thursday — only the second world leader that Biden will host early in his term, after Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga visited on April 16.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken also made Japan and South Korea his first trips overseas, part of Biden’s focus on shoring up relations with the United States’ two treaty allies in East Asia and pushing back on neighboring China.
But both countries have eagerly awaited Biden’s North Korea policy announcement after Biden, Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan consulted their counterparts repeatedly for input on a path forward.
Some people have fevers and some cannot smell or taste, police said.
April 30, 2021, 6:54 PM
• 4 min read
More than 90 people were found “huddled together” in a home in Houston in a possible case of human smuggling, the Houston Police Department said Friday.
No one was seriously injured, but Houston Police Assistant Chief Daryn Edwards said, “We are concerned that there may be some positive COVID cases inside the house.”
Some people have fevers and some have lost their sense of smell and taste, Edwards said at a news conference.
The health department is headed to the scene to conduct rapid testing, he said.
No children were inside. About five women are in the house and the rest are men, Edwards said. They told police they hadn’t eaten in awhile, Edwards said, and they were brought food and water.
Houston police said they were made aware of a kidnapping call Thursday night, and authorities worked through the night to try to find the kidnapping victim’s location. Authorities executed a search warrant at a two-story Houston house and determined this was a “human smuggling investigation,” Edwards said.
The Biden administration on Friday announced it will restrict travel from India as the first U.S. relief arrived to help the country deal with a fast-growing COVID-19 crisis.
“On the advice of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Administration will restrict travel from India starting immediately,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement. “The policy will be implemented in light of extraordinarily high COVID-19 caseloads and multiple variants circulating in the India.”
Friday’s statement said that the restrictions will take effect on Tuesday, May 4.
The restrictions were announced on the same day some initial American aid was flown into New Delhi aboard a U.S. Air Force C-17 cargo plane, including 1,100 cylinders of oxygen that can be refilled, 1,700 oxygen concentrators and multiple large-scale oxygen generation units arrived to India to meet the country’s dire need for oxygen-related supplies.
The U.S. also is sending 20,000 doses of remdesivir, an antiviral drug that has proven effective in treating COVID-19.
India has specifically requested certain high-priority resources, including oxygen concentrators and ventilators, therapeutics and PPE, as well as testing supplies.
The U.S. first announced that it would send supplies to India on Sunday as the situation worsened. Reported cases have surpassed 18.7 million, and deaths have topped 200,000. The World Health Organization said in a report Wednesday that India accounted for 38% of all globally reported COVID-19 cases last week.
“So, a military assistance flight departed from Travis Air Force Base at 8 p.m. last night with a cargo including 200 small oxygen cylinders, 223 large oxygen cylinders, regulators and pulse oximeters …” Psaki said during a gaggle with reporters aboard Air Force One Friday afternoon as President Joe Biden traveled to Philadelphia. “Approximately 184,000 rapid diagnostic tests, and approximately 84,000 N95s.”
Pskai also detailed a second tranche of aid which she said included 17 “large oxygen cylinders,” which has also arrived in India.
More aid was being sent Friday from Travis Air Force Base in California, and on another flight departing from Dulles International Airport outside Washington Friday evening.
State Department spokesman Ned Price called for the private sector to support the U.S. government’s new efforts and said America’s goal is only to see aid “put to immediate and effective use,” but declined to weigh in on how it should be distributed.
“Our assistance, we hope, will have a catalytic effect on society more broadly, here and around the world, to come to the aid of the Indian people,” Price said Thursday.
Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said in a tweet Friday that he had spoken with Secretary of State Antony Blinken about what Indians needed to address the pandemic. Jaishankar said India appreciates the “forthcoming response of the US in this regard.”
The U.S. also is deploying a strike team of public health experts, senior administration officials detailed Monday, to help Indian officials respond to the pandemic. On Wednesday, CDC director Rochelle Walensky said that the crisis in India is “horrifying.”
“CDC has had a very close relationship with infectious disease experts in the Ministry of Health and deploying a strike team this week to go and assist,” Walensky said.
Psaki also said during a gaggle Friday that the U.S. will “continue to communicate with India about its needs.
In addition to providing aid, the State Department has approved the voluntary departure of families of U.S diplomatic staff from India. The order is not mandatory, but families can depart on commercial flights. The order could be elevated if the situation grows worse.
The large U.S. diplomatic presence, with five consulates and one embassy, has been affected. One source told ABC News three locally-employed staff members have died in recent weeks.
ABC News’ Cheyenne Haslett and Christine Theodorou contributed to this report.
With vaccination totals increasing and coronavirus cases declining across the country, many Americans are feeling a newfound sense of hope, that perhaps, there is finally a light at the end of the tunnel.
However, health and government officials across the country are continuing to warn that the virus is still spreading among unvaccinated populations, with a larger share of younger Americans becoming infected, and in some cases, hospitalized with severe cases of the virus.
For the first time, patients between the ages of 18 and 64 now account for the largest cohort of the 37,000 total patients currently hospitalized with the virus. With more older Americans vaccinated, this marks the third week that the number of hospitalized individuals in the 65 and older age group has been smaller than both the 18-49, and the 50-64 age groups.
“Hospitals are seeing more and more younger adults, those in their 30s and 40s, admitted with severe disease,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky reported during a press briefing earlier this month.
Experts say the exact reason behind this trend is unclear, but could include the rise of variants, relaxed attitudes towards distancing and other mitigation measures, a younger population that is not yet fully vaccinated and vaccine hesitancy. It could also be merely more younger people getting the disease.
Even though not all hospitalizations are the result of severe illness, state officials say the trend is worrying.
“There is a very sharp increase, it appears, in younger adults… these are largely people who think that their age is protecting them from getting very sick from COVID-19, that is not happening,” Cassie Sauer, CEO and president of the Washington State Hospital Association, said during a press conference on Monday.
‘Mind-boggling’
Dr. Chris Baliga, an infectious disease physician from the Virginia Mason Franciscan Health in Washington state, reported earlier this week that he has seen more patients under the age of 40 than at any other time in the pandemic, while noting that these younger patients appear to be coming in sicker than before.
“40% of our cases were under the age of 40, which is mind-boggling to me. We never saw that earlier in the pandemic,” Baliga said during a briefing on Monday.
This trend, according to experts, may be the result of a number of factors.
Dr. Katie Sharff, an infectious disease expert at Kaiser Permanente, told ABC News that one of the driving factors may be simply more young people are becoming infected, and with that, inevitably, there will be more severe cases.
While earlier in the pandemic, the disease was affecting predominantly older adults, currently, coronavirus infections among Americans 18-54 account for the highest proportion of new cases per 100,000 residents.
Sharff, too, said she has seen more patients in her Oregon hospital between the ages of 40 and 50 requiring hospitalization, with some patients as young as 30 ending up in the ICU, and a lower percentage have had to be placed on mechanical ventilation.
In Oregon, daily COVID-19 cases have doubled, and the number of patients hospitalized with the virus has surged by 106%.
“If you have that many more young people getting infected there will at least be a subset who develop severe disease,” Sharff explained. Although some patients have pre-existing medical conditions, like obesity, what has been “really striking with this surge” is that not all younger patients needing care have concerning medical conditions that put them at high risk.
Part of the problem, Sharff said, is that younger people, when infected, tend to stay home a bit longer to manage their symptoms, as opposed to older Americans, who generally have been hospitalized earlier in their illnesses.
Because the U.S.’ vaccination strategy targeted high-risk individuals by age, almost all of these younger hospitalized patients have yet to be vaccinated, Samuel Scarpino, epidemiologist and assistant professor at Northeastern University, told ABC News.
“In previous surges, the majority of our patients were elderly and had chronic medical conditions. We’re seeing less of that very elderly population and I think that really speaks to the efficacy of the vaccines,” Sharff noted.
Earlier this month, all 50 states opened vaccinations to residents 16 years and older, but it will take some time for those younger populations to be fully protected, Scarpino explained.
“With the 4 to 6-week delay between first dose and the full level of immunity, it will be a few more weeks before those age groups have the same level of protection as older individuals who were vaccinated in months prior,” Scarpino said.
Vaccine hesitancy, pandemic fatigue and variants
But there are other younger people who have chosen not to get vaccinated, Sharff said. “I think that vaccine hesitancy is pretty real,” Sharff noted.
Vaccine demand has been steadily decreasing in recent weeks, as those who were eager to be inoculated get their shots and officials work to convince those wearier to be vaccinated.
Just in the last seven days, the average number of vaccines administered has dropped by nearly 12%, down from the average of 3.3 million doses administered a day, earlier this month, to 2.6 million on Thursday.
According to a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll, nearly 1 in 4 Americans, 24%, are disinclined to receive any of the coronavirus vaccines, down from 32% three months ago. 16% of those polled ruled out vaccination entirely.
Additionally, more transmissible and potentially deadlier variants now account for the majority of new cases across the U.S. The national prevalence of B.1.1.7, first identified in Britain and now, is now estimated to account for nearly 60% of new cases, according to the CDC.
Baliga said he believes the rise of coronavirus variants, and in particular, the B.1.1.7 variant, first identified in the United Kingdom, is behind the rise in cases and hospitalizations among younger people.
“I think that’s what’s driving a lot of what we’re seeing in the younger population,” Baliga said, saying he viewed it as the “single most important” factor driving up numbers.
With more people are succumbing to “pandemic fatigue,” and thus letting down their guard, with lax social distancing and COVID-19 protocols, experts say, with many also blaming their infection on increased social gatherings and travel.
Moreover, the combination of more infectious strains of the virus with lower vaccination rates have made young people more vulnerable to the virus.
In Massachusetts, coronavirus variants appear to be hitting younger people more seriously than earlier strains of the disease last year, with an increasing number of residents in their 20s-50s hospitalized, Gov. Charlie Baker said during a press conference on Monday.
While the risk of COVID-19 related death among young populations remains lower than among older age groups, Baliga reported that there are still some young patients who are succumbing to the virus, which he calls a “preventable disease” with vaccines, he said.
To date, over 86,000 Americans between the ages of 18 and 64 have died due to COVID-19, accounting for approximately 19.4% of the U.S. virus-related death toll.
Younger people, in particular, can harbor the feeling that they are less vulnerable to the disease than the more at-risk older adults, Sauer said, but they shouldn’t assume that they are “safe from this disease.”
“Our best way out of this pandemic is to get vaccinated,” Sharff said. “We are all so exhausted, myself included, but like when you see young people in the hospital dying, you just have to kind of face it head-on and say this is real. We have got to get vaccinated.”
ABC News’ Brian Hartman contributed to this report.
Biden, an avid rail user, said Amtrak had given him another “family.”
April 30, 2021, 8:34 PM
• 5 min read
On the 50th anniversary of Amtrak on Friday, President Joe Biden reflected on how the rail service had given him a second “family” and used the celebratory event to pitch his $2 trillion infrastructure plan, which would allocate $80 billion for the rail service.
Biden, an avid rail user who earned the name “Amtrak Joe” for his devoted use over decades as a senator, became sentimental about what rail service means to him and noted its value as a form of American transportation.
He estimated, with the help of an Amtrak conductor, that he’d ridden 1.5 million miles by train.
“It provided me, and I’m not joking, an entire other family,” he said, adding that, “We’ve shared milestones of my life. And I have been allowed to share milestones in theirs. I’ve been to an awful lot of weddings and christenings, and unfortunately some burials as well. We’re family.”
Biden used Amtrak’s event to make his case for the importance of investing in rail as part of the “Back on Track” tour the administration is currently on.
“I’ve come to see that Amtrak doesn’t just carry us from one place to another. It opens up enormous possibilities. And especially now, it makes it possible to build an economy and a future, and one that we need,” Biden said.
As he did during his joint address to Congress, Biden pitched this moment as a “once in a generation opportunity” for an investment in rail.
“We have a once in a generation opportunity to position Amtrak and rail and inner-city rail as well, in general, to play a central role in our transformation and transportation economic future, to make investments that can help America get back on track, no pun intended,” Biden said
The president also talked about the jobs the expansion will create.
“It’s going to provide jobs,” Biden said. “It will also accommodate jobs. And what this means is that towns and cities that have been in danger of being left out and left behind will be back in the game. It means families don’t have to sacrifice the cost of living or quality of access to opportunity that sometimes only occurs if they live in a big city.”
Biden touted the environmental benfits of rail, saying its expansion could be a “gamechanger” and that with high-speed trains, people could travel from Washington, D.C. to New York in an hour and 32 minutes.
He also highlighted the importance of investing in infrastructure to keep the U.S. competitive, noting China’s advancement on high-speed rail in particular and lamenting that America is “behind the curve.”
“We need to remember, we’re in competition with the rest of the world. People come here and set up businesses, people stay here, people grow because of the ability to access, access transportation, access all the infrastructure,” Biden said. “It’s what allows us to compete.”
About 5 million Americans missed receiving their second dose of Pfizer or Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data released on Sunday.
But with some upcoming activities — traveling and returning to school among them — possibly requiring proof of a full vaccination — two doses of Pfizer or Moderna vaccine or a single dose of Johnson & Johnson — experts told ABC News it’s still not too late for those who still need a second shot.
“Absolutely go and get that second dose,” said Dr. Anna Durbin, a professor of international health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “I think if you get your second dose at eight weeks after your first dose, at 12 weeks after your first dose, you’re still going to have very good what we call ‘boost response’ to that second dose.”
Experts said it’s unclear exactly what’s leading to so many missed second appointments for COVID-19 vaccines.
“Some people have a change in circumstance, some people are not able to take time off work,” said Dr. Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
Part of it may be increasing concern over potential side effects, said Dr. Paul Goepfert, a professor of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Director of the Alabama Vaccine Research Center.
But it’s also not just a COVID vaccine problem — it’s a vaccine problem in general, Durban told ABC News. Missing doses, especially for multi-shot vaccines, isn’t uncommon.
Ideally, people should schedule their second Pfizer dose three weeks after the first and a second Moderna shot four weeks after the first although, according to the CDC, waiting up to six weeks for either is OK.
But experts said even if you’re beyond six weeks, it’s a good idea to get that second shot.
“It’s likely that getting a second shot, even at a later point in time, is still very beneficial,” Barouch said.
There’s existing data that other parts of a person’s immune system — memory B-cells and T-cells, in particular — last long enough to mount an antibody response, even if the second shot is later than typically advised, added Goepfert.
“That’s their whole job — to last forever,” he said. “And so they’ll be there ready when they see that antigen again, when they see that vaccine again, to really explode and divide and cause another antibody response.”
Although the experts who spoke to ABC News agreed more data is required to get a fuller understanding of the effects of receiving second shots later, they also agreed that even late, the second dose still provides added protection.
And the longer people wait, Durbin cautioned, the more they’re putting themselves at risk.
“The risk is, you could get COVID in between that first and second dose,” Durbin said. “We just don’t know how long protection of that first dose lasts, so the longer you wait, the higher at risk you are of getting COVID.”
Olivia Davies, a fourth-year student at the Medical College of Wisconsin who will be starting her residency at Massachusetts General Hospital this summer, is a contributor to the ABC News Medical Unit.
The harassment was not by the soldier who allegedly murdered her, a review said.
April 30, 2021, 7:43 PM
• 7 min read
A long-awaited U.S. Army investigation released Friday has determined that murdered Spc. Vanessa Guillen was sexually harassed by a supervisor, as her family had claimed, and that the leaders in her unit at Fort Hood, Texas, did not take appropriate action after she stepped forward.
Twenty-one soldiers have been reprimanded or disciplined as a result of the investigation that also found that the incidents of harassment were not related to Guillen’s murder and were not carried out by the fellow soldier who is alleged to have murdered her in 2020.
The command investigation, known by the Army regulation 15-6, determined that Guillen was sexually harassed on two occasions by one of her supervisors.
“SPC Guillen was sexually harassed by a supervisor. This supervisor created an intimidating, hostile environment,” the report said. “The unit leadership was informed of the harassment as well as the supervisor’s counterproductive leadership, and failed to take appropriate action.”
“While the investigating officer did find evidence of sexual harassment and mistreatment toward SPC Guillen, after examining all the evidence and witness statements, he determined that those incidents were not related to her murder,” said the report.
Authorities have said Army Spc. Aaron Robinson is believed to have murdered Guillen on April 22, 2020, the day that her disappearance triggered a large search for her on the base. Robinson died by suicide on June 30, as police closed in on him as the main suspect in her disappearance and murder.
The investigation does not provide a potential motive for Guillen’s murder and raises even more questions since it found “no credible evidence to conclude Spc. Robinson sexually harassed Spc. Guillén or that they had any relationship outside of their work setting, only that he had a work relationship with Guillen.”
Investigators determined that Robinson had not sexually harassed Guillen, but that he had harassed another female enlisted soldier the previous year.
Guillen’s family has maintained that she had told them she had been sexually harassed by a supervisor and had tied the incident to her murder.
The allegations led to a reckoning within the military community that led to current and former members of the military to step forward with their own experiences as victims of sexual assault and sexual harassment.
During the summer of 2019 one of Guillen’s supervisors made “an inappropriate sexual comment in Spanish which SPC Guillén translated as a solicitation for her to participate in a ‘threesome’,” according to the investigation.
After those comments another supervisor “noticed a marked change in her demeanor, which prompted the supervisor to ask if she was okay,” said the report. “It was then that SPC Guillen reported the incident to her supervisor and another Soldier.”
“Between 16 September 2019 and 9 October 2019, two Soldiers reported this incident to her unit leadership, who failed to initiate an investigation,” said the report.
The investigation determined that the supervisor who had made the comments to Guillen “was unprofessional” and then engaged in “counterproductive behaviors” like targeting her in front of peers to make “an example out of her.”
During a later field training exercise, Guillen felt “uncomfortable” after the supervisor” encountered Guillen while she was engaging in personal hygiene by a wood line.
Last December, the Army fired or suspended 14 officers and enlisted soldiers at Fort Hood, including two generals, following an independent panel’s investigation into the command climate at the base.
Six of those soldiers relieved of duty in December were among the 21soldiers who received administrative punishments as a result of the investigation released on Friday.
On Friday, Army officials said they were not at liberty to disclose the identity or rank of the supervisor who had sexually harassed Guillen.
The Biden administration on Friday announced travel restrictions from India as the first U.S. relief arrived to help the country deal with a fast-growing COVID-19 crisis.
“On the advice of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Administration will restrict travel from India starting immediately,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement. “The policy will be implemented in light of extraordinarily high COVID-19 caseloads and multiple variants circulating in the India.”
Friday’s statement said that the restrictions will take effect on Tuesday May 4.
The restrictions were announced on the same day some initial American aid was flown into New Delhi aboard a U.S. Air Force C-17 cargo plane, including 1,100 cylinders of oxygen that can be refilled, 1,700 oxygen concentrators and multiple large-scale oxygen generation units arrived to India to meet the country’s dire need for oxygen-related supplies.
The U.S. also is sending 20,000 doses of remdesivir, an antiviral drug that has proven effective in treating COVID-19.
India has specifically requested certain high-priority resources, including oxygen concentrators and ventilators, therapeutics and PPE, as well as testing supplies.
The U.S. first announced that it would send supplies to India on Sunday as the situation worsened. Reported cases have surpassed 18.7 million, and deaths have topped 200,000. The World Health Organization said in a report Wednesday that India accounted for 38% of all globally reported COVID-19 cases last week.
“So, a military assistance flight departed from Travis Air Force Base at 8 p.m. last night with a cargo including 200 small oxygen cylinders, 223 large oxygen cylinders, regulators and pulse oximeters …” Psaki said during a gaggle with reporters aboard Air Force One Friday afternoon as President Joe Biden traveled to Philadelphia. “Approximately 184,000 rapid diagnostic tests, and approximately 84,000 N95s.”
Pskai also detailed a second tranche of aid which she said included 17 “large oxygen cylinders,” which has also arrived in India.
More aid was being sent Friday from Travis Air Force Base in California, and on another flight departing from Dulles International Airport outside Washington Friday evening.
State Department spokesman Ned Price called for the private sector to support the U.S. government’s new efforts and said America’s goal is only to see aid “put to immediate and effective use,” but declined to weigh in on how it should be distributed.
“Our assistance, we hope, will have a catalytic effect on society more broadly, here and around the world, to come to the aid of the Indian people,” Price said Thursday.
Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said in a tweet Friday that he had spoken with Secretary of State Antony Blinken about what Indians needed to address the pandemic. Jaishankar said India appreciates the “forthcoming response of the US in this regard.”
The U.S. also is deploying a strike team of public health experts, senior administration officials detailed Monday, to help Indian officials respond to the pandemic. On Wednesday, CDC director Rochelle Walensky said that the crisis in India is “horrifying.”
“CDC has had a very close relationship with infectious disease experts in the Ministry of Health and deploying a strike team this week to go and assist,” Walensky said.
Psaki also said during a gaggle Friday that the U.S. will “continue to communicate with India about its needs.
In addition to providing aid, the State Department has approved the voluntary departure of families of U.S diplomatic staff from India. The order is not mandatory, but families can depart on commercial flights. The order could be elevated if the situation grows worse.
The large U.S. diplomatic presence, with five consulates and one embassy, has been affected. One source told ABC News three locally-employed staff members have died in recent weeks.
ABC News’ Cheyenne Haslett and Christine Theodorou contributed to this report.
Relief supplies on a U.S. Air Force plane included 1,100 canisters of oxygen.
April 30, 2021, 4:56 PM
• 7 min read
As India faced a growing crisis with COVID-19 spreading rapidly through the country, the first U.S. relief to help with the pandemic has began to arrive, including a planeload of badly needed oxygen supplies in New Delhi on Friday.
The initial U.S. aid includes 1,100 cylinders of oxygen that can be refilled, 1,700 oxygen concentrators and multiple large-scale oxygen generation units. The U.S. also is sending 20,000 doses of remdesivir, an antiviral drug that has proven effective in treating COVID-19.
India has specifically requested certain high-priority resources, including oxygen concentrators and ventilators, therapeutics and PPE, as well as testing supplies.
The U.S. first announced that it would send supplies to India on Sunday as the situation worsened. Reported cases have surpassed 18.7 million, and deaths have topped 200,000. The World Health Organization said in a report Wednesday that India accounted for 38% of all globally reported COVID-19 cases last week.
More aid was being sent Friday from Travis Air Force Base in California, and on another flight departing from Dulles International Airport outside Washington Friday evening.
State Department spokesman Ned Price called for the private sector to support the U.S. government’s new efforts and said America’s goal is only to see aid “put to immediate and effective use,” but declined to weigh in on how it should be distributed.
“Our assistance, we hope, will have a catalytic effect on society more broadly, here and around the world, to come to the aid of the Indian people,” Price said Thursday.
Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said in a tweet Friday that he had spoken with Secretary of State Antony Blinken about what Indians needed to address the pandemic. Jaishankar said India appreciates the “forthcoming response of the US in this regard.”
The U.S. also is deploying a strike team of public health experts, senior administration officials detailed Monday, to help Indian officials respond to the pandemic. On Wednesday, CDC director Rochelle Walensky said that the crisis in India is “horrifying.”
“CDC has had a very close relationship with infectious disease experts in the Ministry of Health and deploying a strike team this week to go and assist,” Walensky said.
In addition to providing aid, the State Department has approved the voluntary departure of families of U.S diplomatic staff from India. The order is not mandatory, but families can depart on commercial flights. The order could be elevated if the situation grows worse.
The large U.S. diplomatic presence, with five consulates and one embassy, has been affected. One source told ABC News three locally-employed staff members have died in recent weeks.
The State Department has declined to say whether the U.S. would ban travel to India, although travelers from India and any foreign country have to show a negative COVID-19 test within 72 hours before they can board.
Price said at a briefing Thursday that any decision would be made “under the advice of public health professionals at CDC and HHS.”
White House COVID-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients demurred on Friday about whether the Biden administration would impose a travel ban, but did not rule it out.
“So, in terms of travel from India, we remain in very close contact with our foreign counterparts and are continuously monitoring the situation, our current inbound travel precautions and mandatory testing before travel, the quarantine for unvaccinated individuals and the retesting,” Zients said, answering a reporter’s question at a White House briefing.
ABC News’ Cheyenne Haslett and Christine Theodorou contributed to this report.
Josh Duggar, the eldest son from the reality TV show “19 Kids and Counting,” has been charged with possession of and receiving child pornography, the Justice Department announced on Friday.
Duggar was arrested on Thursday by U.S. Marshals in Arkansas and booked at the Washington County jail.
Duggar is accused of downloading child sexual abuse material, some of which depicts children younger than 12, and having it in his possession in May of 2019, according to the indictment.
He appeared in an Arkansas courtroom on Friday via Zoom and pleaded not guilty from the Washington County Detention Center wearing a gray-and-black prison jumpsuit.
The government has requested that Duggar be detained pending trial. A detention hearing is scheduled for next week.
In May of 2015, Duggar admitted to “wrongdoing” after it was reported that he inappropriately touched five minors.
“Twelve years ago, as a young teenager, I acted inexcusably for which I am extremely sorry and deeply regret. I hurt others, including my family and close friends,” Duggar told People Magazine in a 2015 statement. “I confessed this to my parents, who took several steps to help me address the situation. We spoke with the authorities where I confessed my wrongdoing, and my parents arranged for me and those affected by my actions to receive counseling. I understood that if I continued down this wrong road that I would end up ruining my life.”
TLC canceled “19 Kids and Counting” in 2015 after allegations surfaced about Duggar’s behavior.
