France says thousands have received Covid-19 vaccinations after slow

France says thousands have received Covid-19 vaccinations after slow start

The US Senate's Republican leader has rejected calls from an unlikely alliance of President Donald Trump, congressional Democrats and some Republicans to boost coronavirus aid.

 

Mitch McConnell said hiking aid cheques from $600 (£440) to $2,000 would be "another fire hose of borrowed money".

The Democratic-controlled US House of Representatives had voted to increase the payments to Americans.

The outgoing president's intervention has divided his fellow Republicans.

Congress agreed the smaller $600 payments in a Covid relief and government funding bill that Mr Trump sent back to Capitol Hill before Christmas, with the president seeking higher stimulus payments.

On Monday, congressional Democrats - usually sworn political foes of Mr Trump - passed the measure for $2,000 cheques that he requested.

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Dozens of House Republicans, reluctant to defy Mr Trump, sided with Democrats to approve the package.

 

Mr Trump begrudgingly signed the original bill with the lower payments into law on Sunday, but has continued to demand more money.

"Unless Republicans have a death wish, and it is also the right thing to do, they must approve the $2,000 payments ASAP," he tweeted on Tuesday.

What did McConnell say?
The Kentucky senator rejected Senate Democrats' calls for the upper chamber to vote on the $2,000 cheques package passed by their counterparts in the House.

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"The Senate is not going to be bullied into rushing out more borrowed money into the hands of Democrats' rich friends who don't need the help," Mr McConnell said on the chamber floor.

Instead he offered to roll the proposal for $2,000 cheques into another bill to include other measures that have been requested by Mr Trump but raised objections from Democratic leaders.

One would end legal protection for tech companies, known as Section 230. The other would set up a bipartisan commission to investigate electoral fraud, something which Mr Trump has alleged in the presidential election without providing evidence.

Democrats said Mr McConnell's proposal was merely a legislative poison pill designed to kill higher stimulus payments.

How are Democrats reacting?
Liberal Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent who votes with Democrats, said on the Senate floor: "All we are asking for is a vote. What is the problem?

"If you want to vote against $2,000 checks for your state, vote against it."

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said: "What we're seeing right now is leader McConnell trying to kill the cheques - the $2,000 cheques desperately needed by so many American families."

And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said: "These Republicans in the Senate seem to have an endless tolerance for other people's sadness."

How do other Republicans see it?
The party usually professes an opposition to government spending as an article of faith, but some of its top senators have rallied behind Mr Trump's call for $2,000 cheques.

They include Marco Rubio of Florida and Josh Hawley of Missouri, both considered possible presidential contenders in 2024.

So have Georgia's Republican senators, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, who are fighting for their political lives in a 5 January election against two Democratic challengers. The vote will decide which party controls the Senate next year.

But other Republicans have argued the relief bill already provides a wider safety net once its jobless benefits, rental assistance and loans to small businesses to keep workers on their payroll are taken into account.

Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania said that he opposed "blindly borrowing" billions of dollars to send cheques to "millions of people who haven't lost any income".

France is accelerating its COVID-19 vaccination of medical staff in hospitals, its health minister said on Monday, after an initial roll-out that was slowed by bureaucracy and precaution in one of the most vaccine-sceptical countries in the world.

Health Minister Olivier Veran said several thousand COVID-19 shots developed by Pfizer and Germany's BioNTech had been administered across France on Monday.

France was slow off the mark, delivering just 516 COVID-19 inoculations during the first week of a campaign that focused on nursing home residents.

"We have decided to accelerate the campaign by widening the target group to health staff without waiting to complete the vaccination campaign in retirement homes," Veran said during a visit to a Paris hospital.

The sluggish start compared with European neighbours such as Britain and Germany irritated President Emmanuel Macron, who has called a meeting with his prime minister and health minister on Monday evening to speed up deployment of the vaccine.

Macron wanted to "put pressure on the system" and quicken the vaccine's deployment, an Elysee official said.

"It's going too slowly," epidemiologist and government adviser Arnaud Fontanet told France Info radio.

"But the real deadline is to reach 5-10 million (vaccinations) by the end of March, because that's the point at which you have a real impact on the spread of the virus.”

The coronavirus has killed more than 65,000 people in France, the seventh-highest national toll globally. Even so, a survey over the weekend showed six in every 10 French citizens intend to refuse vaccination.

Fontanet said it would be "useful" to simplify the bureaucracy involved in the vaccination roll-out. He stopped short of saying whether a mandatory consultation with a doctor several days before getting a COVID jab was time wasted.

Cautious Approach

A slow vaccination campaign risks jeopardising France's recovery from an unprecedented economic slump in a time of peace.

France's National Academy of Medicine last week said the government was taking "excessive precautions". Government officials have said vaccinating in care homes was complex logistically.

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A spokesman for nursing home operator Korian said that the company had been told to be ready for vaccinations at three of its sites in the greater Paris area on Monday but that the doses had not yet been delivered.

Britain, which has used more than a million COVID-19 vaccine shots already, has now begun vaccinating its population with the shot developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca, boasting a scientific triumph.

Dominique Le Guludec, head of France's medical regulator, said there was still insufficient data to approve the AstraZeneca vaccine.

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