In January of last year, employees of Novavax Inc. met at a local Maryland bar to discuss how they might salvage their careers. For decades, the small biotech had tried to develop an approved vaccine, with no success. The company had enough cash to survive only another six months or so and its shares traded under $4, with a market value of $127 million.
Today, Novavax is advancing toward authorization of a Covid-19 vaccine. Scientists believe that, if cleared, it could be one of the more powerful weapons against the pandemic, offering key possible advantages over its competitors. Some early data suggest the Novavax shot may be one of the first shown to stem asymptomatic spread of the coronavirus and also potentially provide longer-lasting protection.
If the vaccine is authorized, Novavax will still face the challenge of making and distributing it in large quantities. The firm sold some manufacturing assets in 2019 when it was desperate for cash.
Investors, who left the 33-year-old company for dead last year, are betting that regulators will authorize Novavax’s vaccine in the next couple of months. They have sent shares on Nasdaq up to $229, up 106% so far this year. Late last month, Novavax released preliminary data indicating its shot was effective at protecting against Covid-19, though less so against a new strain identified in South Africa that appears to be a challenge for other shots, too. Results of the vaccine’s late-stage U.S. trial could be released late next month.
Novavax now has a market value of $15.4 billion, greater than that of companies with billions of dollars of annual sales, including generic drug giant Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd.
BRUSSELS—The European Union will impose fresh sanctions on Russian officials over the jailing of opposition leader Alexei Navalny and will move ahead with measures to challenge Beijing over its crackdown in Hong Kong, signaling a shift in the bloc’s position on the two countries toward the U.S.’s.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Monday evening he will propose a list of Russian officials to be hit with asset freezes and travel bans over the Navalny case. Speaking after a meeting of EU foreign ministers, he said he hopes the list will be approved within a week.
The sanctions will target “those responsible for his arrest, sentencing and persecution,” Mr. Borrell said in a press conference. Two diplomats said they expected the EU to sanction around half a dozen people.
It will be the first use of the EU’s new human-rights sanctions framework, similar to the U.S. Magnitsky Act.
The EU decision came as foreign ministers held a two-hour videoconference with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Discussions touched on a range of subjects from the Biden administration’s goal of working with European allies on challenges from Russia and China to the Iranian nuclear deal.
Some countries are sharpening their Covid-19 vaccination pitches to the public: Get a shot or face a potential penalty.
With vaccination campaigns ramping up globally and some supply shortages easing, governments are looking for ways to make sure that holdouts don’t undermine efforts to vaccinate enough people to achieve herd immunity.
The penalties range from fines and restricting access to public places to threatening the loss of priority access to vaccines.
Indonesia has already levied fines for refusing vaccination of around $356—or more than a month’s salary on average, according to the country’s per capita gross domestic product.
Israel, home to the world’s fastest Covid-19 vaccine rollout, drew a firm line between those who had and hadn’t received shots as it unveiled plans on Sunday to reopen society. Those with what are called green passports, which verify a vaccination, could enter gyms, hotels and eventually travel without quarantining. Holdouts, Israel’s health minister said, “will be left behind.”
The outlook for a rebound in travel this year has dimmed after the global pandemic ravaged the industry and hurt tourism-dependent economies, with travelers postponing plans amid vaccine delays and border restrictions.
Tourist destinations from Thailand to Iceland had been hoping Covid-19 vaccines would allow countries to reopen their borders and drive a much-needed recovery in 2021. Now, with vaccine rollouts delayed in some places and new virus strains appearing, it is looking more likely that international travel could be stalled for years.
After declaring that 2020 was the worst year for tourism on record, with one billion fewer international arrivals, the United Nations World Tourism Organization says prospects for a 2021 rebound have worsened. In October, 79% of experts polled by the agency believed a 2021 rebound was possible. Only 50% said they believed that in January, and some 41% didn’t think travel would reach pre-pandemic levels until 2024 or beyond.
James Sowane, who owns a transportation company catering to tourists in Fiji, called a staff meeting earlier this month and told employees to start looking for other jobs. He recently took advantage of a government-assistance program and had brought back some laid-off workers, optimistic that vaccines could spark a travel rebound as early as April.
But now Mr. Sowane doesn’t think tourists will return until next year, and he and his wife can’t afford to keep paying wages at their company, Pacific Destinations Fiji. He is borrowing from his bank to keep a few core employees.
The record-fast creation of Covid-19 vaccines was a triumph. So why is it taking so long to vaccinate Americans?
The answer starts with tens of millions of Covid-19 vaccine doses that sat unused in medical freezers across the U.S. in the early weeks of the rollout.
In the launch, the federal government set aside far more doses for nursing homes than the facilities needed. A fragmented chain of communication between federal authorities dispatching doses and the local sites ultimately injecting them left the vaccinators in the dark about how many patients they could schedule. Worried about limited supplies, some hospitals and health departments held back doses to make sure they had enough to administer second shots for staff or to meet appointments, creating a bottleneck to the outflow.
Vaccinations are now picking up. But early stumbles might extend the pandemic, and leave more people without protection. Health officials say the new coronavirus variants that appear to spread more easily make the distribution of vaccines more urgent.
The Trump administration invested heavily in rapid vaccine development, but it left the last mile of getting shots into arms to states and localities. That approach resulted in multiple, sometimes contradictory systems, and failed to ensure local sites had information about vaccine shipments that they needed to quickly administer shots.
When America’s amusement parks and baseball stadiums no longer must serve as COVID-19 mass vaccination sites, some investors believe that households pocketing pandemic financial aid from the government might start to splurge.
While a consumer splurge could initially boost the parts of the economy devastated by the pandemic, a bigger concern for investors is that a sustained spending spree also could cause prices for goods and services to rise dramatically, dent financial asset values, and ultimately raise the cost of living for everyone.
“I don’t think inflation is dead,” said Matt Stucky, equity portfolio manager at Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Company. “The desire by key policy makers is to have it, and it’s the strongest it’s ever been. You will see rising inflation.”
Wall Street investors and analysts have become fixated in recent weeks on the potential for the Biden Administration’s planned $1.9 trillion fiscal stimulus package that targets relief to hard-hit households to cause inflation to spiral out of control.
Economists at Oxford Economics said on Friday they expect to see the “longest inflation stretch above 2% since before the financial crisis, but it’s unlikely to sustainably breach 3%.”
Severe inflation can hurt businesses by ratcheting up costs, pinching profits and causing stock prices to fall. The value of savings and bonds also can be chipped away by high inflation over time.
Another worry among investors is that runaway inflation, which took hold in the late 1970s and pushed 30-year mortgage rates to near 18%, could force the Federal Reserve to taper its $120 billion per month bond purchase program or to raise its benchmark interest rate above the current 0% to 0.25% target sooner than expected and spook markets.
At the same time, it’s not far-fetched to argue that some financial assets already have been inflated by the Fed’s pedal-to-the-metal policy of low rates and an easy flow of credit, and might be due for some cooling off.
U.S. stocks, including the Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
+0.09%,
S&P 500 index
SPX,
+0.47%
and Nasdaq Composite
COMP,
+0.50%
closed on Friday at all-time highs, while debt-laden companies can now borrow in the corporate “junk” bond, or speculative-grade, market at record low rates of about 4%.
Read: Stock market stoked by stimulus hopes — what investors are counting on
In addition to rallying stocks and bonds, home prices in the U.S. also have gone through the roof during the pandemic, despite the U.S. still needing to recoup almost as many jobs from the COVID-19 crisis as during the worst of the global financial crisis in 2008.
This chart shows that jobs lost to the pandemic remain near to levels seen in the aftermath of that last crisis.
Job losses need to be tamed
LPL Research, Bureau of Labor Statistics
Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said Wednesday that he doesn’t expect a “large or sustained” outbreak of inflation, while also stressing that the central bank remains focused on recouping lost jobs during the pandemic, as the U.S. looks to makes serious headway in its vaccination program by late July.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Friday reiterated a call on Friday that the time for more, big fiscal stimulus is now.
“Broadly, the guide is, does it cost me more to live a year from now than a year prior,” Jeff Klingelhofer, co-head of investments at Thornburg Investment Management, said about inflation in an interview with MarketWatch.
“I think what we need to watch is wage inflation,” he said, adding that higher wages for upper income earners were mostly flat for much of the past decade. Also, many lower-wage households hardest hit by the pandemic have been left out of the past decade’s climb in financial asset prices and home values, he said.
“For the folks who haven’t taken that ride, it feels like a perpetuation of inequality that’s played out for some time,” he said, adding that the “only way to get broad inflation is with a broad overheating of the economy. We have the exact opposite. The bottom third are no where near overheating.”
Klingelhofer said it’s probably also a mistake to watch benchmark 10-year Treasury yields for signs that the economy is overheating and for inflation since, “it’s not a proxy for inflation. It’s just a proxy for how the Fed might react,” he said.
The 10-year Treasury yield
TMUBMUSD10Y,
1.209%
has climbed 28.6 basis points in the year to date to 1.199% as of Friday.
But with last year’s sharp price increases, is the U.S. housing market at least at risk of overheating?
“Not at current interest rates,” said John Beacham, the founder and CEO at Toorak Capital, which finances apartment buildings and single family rental properties, including those going through rehabilitation and construction projects.
“Over the course of the year, more people will go back to work,” Beacham said, but he added that it’s important for policy makers in Washington to provide a bridge for households through the pandemic, until spending on socializing, sporting events, concerts and more can again resemble a time before the pandemic.
“Clearly, there likely will be short-term consumption increase,” he said. “But after that it normalizes.”
The U.S. stock and bond markets will be mostly closed on Monday for the Presidents Day holiday.
On Tuesday, the only tidbit of economic data comes from the New York Federal Reserve’s Empire State manufacturing index, followed Wednesday by a slew of updates on U.S. retail sales, industrial production, home builders data and minutes from the Fed’s most recent policy meeting. Thursday and Friday bring more jobs, housing and business activity data, including existing home sales for January.
PESHAWAR, Pakistan—After decades of work, polio had been wiped out almost everywhere in the world. All that was left were pockets in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Medical experts hoped 2020 would be the last year that the main form of the virus, which can permanently paralyze or cause death, posed a threat.
The coronavirus pandemic put a halt to that progress.
In March, house-to-house vaccination teams working across Pakistan were forced to stop their work because of Covid-19. As a result, polio resurged, including a mutated form of the virus. It has now been detected in samples taken from sewers in 74% of Pakistan in late 2020, up from just 13% in early 2018.
“Now the virus isn’t just in select pockets. The risk is everywhere” in the country, said Rana Safdar, the doctor in charge of Pakistan’s polio campaign.
The decadeslong battle to eradicate polio around the world is one of the most ambitious and expensive public-health campaigns in history. The mass-vaccination drive and its progress toward arresting a malady that has disabled or killed millions of people point to the success possible in the efforts to inoculate people around the world against Covid-19.
LONDON—A Covid-19 vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and
AstraZeneca
PLC is effective against a variant of coronavirus that is spreading rapidly in the U.S. and around the world, according to a new study, a reassuring sign for governments banking on mass vaccination to bring the pandemic to an end.
The preliminary findings, published in a study online Friday that hasn’t yet been formally reviewed by other scientists, follow similarly positive results from other manufacturers.
Preliminary studies from
Pfizer Inc.
and
Moderna Inc.
found their Covid-19 shots continued to offer protection against new virus variants that have contributed to a fresh surge in cases in the U.K., Europe, South Africa and elsewhere.
Vaccine makers are nevertheless readying new shots that zero in on the new variants more precisely, underlining how mutations in the virus risk morphing the year-old pandemic into a long-running cat-and-mouse game between scientists and a shifting enemy. The virus behind Covid-19 has so far been linked to almost 2.3 million deaths worldwide and more than 100 million cases.
The study published Friday looked at the AstraZeneca vaccine’s effectiveness against a new variant of coronavirus first identified in the U.K. last year.
As new coronavirus variants sweep across the world, scientists are racing to understand how dangerous they could be. WSJ explains. Illustration: Alex Kuzoian/WSJ
The variant has now displaced older strains to become the dominant version of the coronavirus in Britain and is spreading in many other countries, including the U.S., where public-health officials have said it could become the dominant version of the virus.
Preliminary estimates suggest the variant from the U.K. is 50%–70% more transmissible than earlier versions of the virus. U.K. scientists said recently that early data suggested it could also be deadlier.
Researchers examined blood samples from around 256 participants in an ongoing clinical trial of the vaccine in the U.K. who tested positive for Covid-19.
Genetic sequencing allowed them to identify which participants were infected with the new variant and which had an older version. A little under a third had the new variant.
By testing antibody levels and other markers of immune system activity against the virus, the researchers found the vaccine triggered an effective immune response against the new variant in 75% of cases that showed symptoms of infection, and in around two-thirds of cases if those that didn’t show symptoms were also included.
The U.K. Coronavirus Variant
The small-scale study showed the vaccine works slightly better against older, more established versions of the virus. For those with the older strain, the vaccine was effective in 84% of symptomatic cases and 81% of all cases.
The researchers reported sharply differing antibody responses among the two groups, saying certain types of antibodies induced by the vaccine were up to nine times less effective at neutralizing the new variant than the old. Overall protection was similar, however, suggesting other parts of the immune system are playing a key role.
Andrew Pollard,
director of the Oxford Vaccine Group at the University of Oxford, said it isn’t entirely clear which biological mechanisms are most important. It might be infection-fighting T-cells or other types of antibodies, he said.
“We don’t know the answer,” he said.
Almost 120 million doses of vaccine have been administered worldwide, according to figures compiled by the University of Oxford’s Our World in Data project. Roll-outs have been patchy, with some countries such as Israel and the U.K. moving rapidly to inoculate their most at-risk citizens and others, including in Europe, lagging behind due to supply and other issues. The U.S. has so far given at least one dose of vaccine to 35 million people, around 10% of its population.
Vaccine makers say the technology behind Covid-19 vaccines should allow them to swiftly retool their production lines to produce shots targeted more precisely at new and emerging variants.
Some studies have suggested a variant first identified in South Africa might be less susceptible to existing vaccines than the U.K. variant. Companies including Moderna, Pfizer and its partner
BioNTech
SE,
Johnson & Johnson
and
Novavax Inc.
are designing new vaccines to specifically target the South African variant.
Babak Javid,
associate professor of infectious diseases at the University of California, San Francisco, said small differences in how vaccines perform against new variants compared with established versions isn’t a major concern provided those vaccinated are protected against severe illness and hospitalization. That will be critical to determining when countries relax lockdowns and other public health restrictions, he said.
As a shortage of Covid-19 shots slows vaccination efforts in the West, groups that haven’t been given high priority are increasingly jostling for the right to get immunized first.
In most countries that are currently deploying vaccines, those most at risk of dying or getting seriously ill from the virus—nursing home residents and those caring for them, medical workers and the elderly—have been at the front of the queue.
For months, few questioned the wisdom of a strategy focused on reducing the number of deaths rather than slowing the spread of the virus. But as the weeks roll on, infections remain high and fears grow about the new variants of the virus, groups ranging from essential workers to teachers and people with chronic diseases are growing louder in demanding to be next.
In the U.S., where the vaccination effort started early and has moved relatively fast, many states are moving to immunize those 65 and older as well as people with certain health conditions. Following pressure from interest groups, a few have now started inoculating teachers or farmworkers.
In Europe, where vaccination is progressing painfully slowly because of a mixture of bureaucracy and vaccine-manufacturing hiccups, calls for less vulnerable groups to be given fast-track access are gathering force.
The emerging fight for what is likely to remain a scarce resource for months is the latest challenge for governments that are increasingly under pressure to bring back a degree of normalcy after a year of recurring lockdowns and assorted restrictions.
It is also politically explosive because it raises hard moral questions, including whether elderly people, some bedridden and others well over 100 years old, should have priority over younger cancer patients; or whether groups who no longer play a big role in the economy should take precedence over teachers, police officers, retail workers, bus drivers and others who are statistically less likely to die but will on occasion contract severe cases of Covid-19.
Giving priority to the most vulnerable helps protect the public-health system, but it also means some people who are highly exposed because of their jobs will have to wait, all at a cost to education or the economy, said Alberto Giubilini, a senior researcher on ethical vaccines distribution at the University of Oxford.
“The concept of prioritization means that we have to sacrifice certain values,” he said. “It’s very hard to strike a balance.”
In France, where schools have remained open throughout most of the pandemic and where daily cases have risen steadily since early December, teachers are lobbying the government to be considered a priority for vaccination.
“More and more teachers are scared to go to work,” said Guislaine David, co-secretary general of the SNUipp-FSU teachers union, pointing to data from the education ministry that shows an increase in school shutdowns due to Covid-19 outbreaks since early January. “If we want to keep schools open, getting teachers vaccinated is essential.”
France’s education minister recently said the country would start vaccinating teachers in March. But France’s vaccine rollout has been among the slowest in Europe, raising doubts as to whether any teacher could gain access to shots in the spring, Ms. David said. Unions especially want preschool teachers to get vaccinated urgently as children under the age of 6 don’t wear masks in school in France.
Protesters gathered in Marseille, France, on Jan. 26 to demand more government support for teachers during the pandemic.
Photo:
Daniel Cole/Associated Press
In Italy, teachers unions have also pleaded with the government to vaccinate teachers before other categories, possibly immediately after the elderly and medical personnel, to help reopen schools that have stayed shut longer than in most other European countries.
In the U.K., where vaccinations are progressing much faster than in the European Union, government officials have been looking at whether front-line workers, including teachers and police officers, should be bumped up the priority list. One petition from a teacher in the north of England obtained nearly half a million signatures and triggered a parliamentary debate.
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS
How do you think people should be prioritized for the vaccine? Join the conversation below.
The government currently says it wants to vaccinate everyone over the age of 50 before considering front-line workers such as teachers. Given the pace of the rollout, this may not happen until the spring.
British Prime Minister
Boris Johnson
said last week that taking away vaccinations from vulnerable groups could result in additional deaths. Mr. Johnson is due to lay out a road map for future vaccination plans and the gradual removal of lockdown measures in the week of Feb. 22.
New research could help explain why thousands of Covid-19 survivors are facing debilitating neurological symptoms months after initially getting sick. WSJ breaks down the science behind how the coronavirus affects the brain, and what this could mean for long-haul patients. Illustration: Nick Collingwood/WSJ
While people with vulnerabilities in principle take high priority for vaccinations in most countries, some complain they have been overlooked.
In Germany, people with disabilities, some with chronic rare illnesses and cancer patients are lobbying—even suing—authorities to obtain priority treatment.
Christian Homburg is campaigning for people with serious conditions to be moved up the priority list for vaccination.
Photo:
Christian Homburg
“Reducing deaths is the main goal of our current vaccination strategy yet somehow people like me were forgotten,” said Christian Homburg, 24, who has Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a severe form of muscle loss that means he currently only has some 20% of his lung capacity.
Mr. Homburg said doctors warned him that catching Covid-19 would likely kill him. But because he is young and doesn’t live in a care facility, where vaccinations are already happening, and because his condition isn’t explicitly mentioned in Germany’s vaccine regulation, Mr. Homburg isn’t entitled for priority treatment.
He has now launched a petition to change that. Advocacy groups defending people with disabilities or diseases made similar appeals, while some patients succeeded in obtaining prioritization by going to court.
Faced with pressure, the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases’ standing vaccination committee, which advises the government, last month updated its advice, recommending a case-by-case assessment of people whose disease might put them at a high risk of dying from Covid-19 even in the absence of statistics proving it.
Rainer Schell managed to obtain an exception for his son, who also has Duchenne, can’t breathe without a ventilator and needs 16 caregivers to look after him. But it took him nearly four weeks, the help of a lawyer and hours of pleading with different authorities to get the vaccination appointment.
Newsletter Sign-up
Coronavirus Daily Briefing and Health Weekly
Get an early-morning briefing about the coronavirus each weekday and a weekly Health newsletter when the crisis abates.
The problem, said André Karch, an epidemiologist at the University of Münster, is that because there is little evidence on the level of risk for many rare diseases, such case-by-case decisions will be difficult to make.
Prioritization strategies will change over time as new studies appear on risks for certain populations and new vaccines get approved, health officials say. In Germany, some people in lower-priority groups could get vaccinated faster now after the government decided not to clear
AstraZeneca
PLC’s Covid-19 vaccine for use in people over 65, potentially freeing up supplies for younger adults.
But virologists and epidemiologists say that until there is more hard evidence that vaccines prevent recipients from transmitting the virus—not just from falling ill when infected—or statistics emerge that show an increased risk of illness or death for certain essential workers, governments will have trouble justifying vaccinating younger before older.
“That’s a real dilemma we have here,” said Uwe Liebert, a virologist at Leipzig University. “Of course there are many groups where we can relate why they should be prioritized, but from a pure epidemiological and virological perspective, the current strategy is right.”
—Max Colchester in London and Giovanni Legorano in Rome contributed to this article.
WASHINGTON—President Biden indicated in a call with House Democrats that he was open to sending $1,400 payments to a smaller group of Americans in the next round of coronavirus relief legislation and changing the overall price tag of his $1.9 trillion plan, according to people familiar with the call.
Mr. Biden told House Democrats on Wednesday that he wouldn’t change the amount of the proposed $1,400 payments, saying people had been promised that amount, according to the people.
Instead, he said he would consider targeting them differently than the previous two rounds of direct aid to Americans. Members of both political parties have questioned whether the $1,400 payments he has proposed would go to people who don’t need the aid.
“We can better target that number. I’m OK with that,” Mr. Biden said, according to the people.
White House press secretary
Jen Psaki
said later Wednesday that Mr. Biden is open to changes in the threshold for who would qualify for the $1,400 stimulus checks.”That’s something that has been under discussion,” she said.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer speaking to reporters Wednesday outside the West Wing following the meeting with President Biden.
Photo:
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Mr. Biden also said he was flexible on the overall cost of the package, which Democrats have started advancing through Congress through a process that will allow them to pass it along party lines, according to the people familiar with the call. He said Democrats could make “compromises” on several programs in the proposal, one of the people said.
Ms. Psaki said Mr. Biden isn’t expecting the final package to look exactly like what he proposed. “He knows that that’s part of the legislative process,” she said.
Beyond sending money to many Americans, the $1.9 trillion proposal would direct aid to state and local governments, provide funds for distributing Covid-19 vaccines and enhance federal unemployment benefits. Money would go toward schools, child-care facilities and renters under the plan, which also seeks to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.
Republicans have called Mr. Biden’s plan too expensive and premature after Congress approved roughly $900 billion in aid in December, and they have criticized provisions like raising the minimum wage as unrelated to the pandemic. A proposal advanced by 10 Senate Republicans would provide $618 billion in relief, paring back Mr. Biden’s proposals on unemployment insurance and direct checks and eliminating others.
In meetings with Democrats, Mr. Biden has said the GOP plan is too small to deal with the effects of the pandemic.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said Democrats “seem desperate to make their first act in power the same kind of massive, partisan, poorly targeted borrowing spree that permanently wounded the last Democratic presidency right out of the gate.”
Democrats are divided on who should benefit from a new round of direct payments to Americans. Previous relief bills began phasing out the payments for people making more than $75,000 a year and married couples with incomes of more than $150,000. The Biden administration hasn’t yet detailed the income cutoffs it would put in place, though some Democrats have said they want to stick with the same cutoffs as the previous efforts.
Other Democrats see the current thresholds as too generous, allowing Americans who haven’t been economically harmed during the pandemic to receive government aid.
Speaking to reporters at the White House on Wednesday after a meeting with Mr. Biden, Sen. Chris Coons (D., Del.) said: “We did have a conversation about the direct payments and how those might be modified in a way to ensure they’re targeted.” He added that Mr. Biden is “not going to forget the middle class.”
The Republican plan would reduce the size of the checks to $1,000 per adult and start to phase out the payments for individuals who make $40,000 a year or more and married couples with incomes of $80,000 or more. A bipartisan group of senators involved in kickstarting the last coronavirus relief bill also has discussed how to target the relief checks.
Ten Republican senators have offered a roughly $618 billion coronavirus-relief plan to counter the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill President Biden outlined after taking office. WSJ’s Gerald F. Seib explains the significant differences between the two proposals. Photo illustration: Laura Kammermann
Democrats this week began pushing forward with a process called reconciliation, which would allow them to pass the coronavirus relief bill with fewer than the 60 votes required for most legislation in the Senate. With the Senate split 50-50—Vice President
Kamala Harris
can break ties—Democrats cannot afford to lose a single vote on the package in the Senate.
According to a Penn-Wharton Budget Model estimate, households in the short term would save about 73% of the money they receive from the direct payments if Mr. Biden’s proposal for $1,400 per person uses the same income thresholds as earlier payments. That savings figure includes paying down debt.
Checks more focused on those who lost income would be more likely to be spent, the group said.
“A large portion of people getting checks are people who are just going to save it because they’re not in these industries who are being hurt,” said Rich Prisinzano, the group’s director of policy analysis.
Proponents of sending direct payments argue that casting a wide net helps people who may be slipping through the cracks of other aid programs.
Mr. Biden met with another group of Democratic senators in the Oval Office on Wednesday. After the meeting, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) told reporters it was a substantive discussion, and that Democrats were united on passing a large package.
“We want to do it bipartisan, but we must be strong,” Mr. Schumer said. “We cannot dawdle, we cannot delay, we cannot dilute, because the troubles that this nation has and the opportunities that we can bring them are so large.”
The meetings on Wednesday are the latest in a flurry of meetings the new president has had with lawmakers on Capitol Hill. He spoke with Senate Democrats on Tuesday, urging lawmakers to adopt a large package. On Monday, Mr. Biden hosted the group of 10 Senate Republicans at the White House to discuss their $618 billion alternative plan.
—Tarini Parti and Richard Rubin contributed to this article.
Write to Andrew Duehren at andrew.duehren@wsj.com and Eliza Collins at eliza.collins@wsj.com.
