• Vaccine Candidates Move Forward
• More Transparency Needed on Emergency Use Authorizations 
• As Workers Got Sick, Managers Placed Bets

American Oversight’s Covid-19 Oversight Hub provides news and policy resources to help you keep track of the investigations into the government’s pandemic response. The project brings together a public documents database, an oversight tracker of important ongoing investigations and litigation, regular news updates, and deeper dives into key issues. 

State of the Pandemic
As Thanksgiving approaches, Covid-19 cases continue to rise in the United States. 

• The CDC recommends no Thanksgiving travel. In guidelines released last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention encouraged all Americans to stay home for Thanksgiving and avoid large indoor gatherings and crowded travel venues. State officials, including the governors of hotspot Midwestern states, have joined the plea. 
• The number of infections is rising everywhere. Unlike in previous surges, the pandemic is now widespread — infections are rising in 83 percent of U.S. counties. According to a new study, official numbers may only be part of the story, with up to 3 million Americans possibly having active Covid-19 infections. 
• Medical infrastructure is being stretched. As commercial labs reach testing capacities, state officials are saying they lack the supplies and the staff to conduct widespread, rapid testing. With hospitalizations reaching record highs, even the best-prepared hospitals are struggling with space and staffing limitations.  
• Disparate statewide strategies endure. While some states are imposing mask mandates or stay-at-home orders, others, such as Florida, refuse to implement any statewide restrictions. Some localities, like New York City, have closed schools while allowing gyms and restaurants to remain open. 

• Potential Fraud in SBA's Coronavirus Relief Programs: Sen. Rick Scott requested that the GAO provide updates about its review of potential fraud in the Small Business Administration’s Covid-19 relief programs, including the Paycheck Protection Program and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program. 
• Challenging Gilead’s High Prices: Six senators requested information about the Department of Health and Human Services’ pricing negotiations with Gilead Sciences for a large supply of remdesivir. The current arrangement allowed Gilead to charge American health insurers the highest price in the world for the drug, leading to revenues of up to almost half a billion dollars for the company. 
• Seeking Federal Contracts for Covid-19 Treatments and Vaccines: Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Katie Porter requested that HHS, the Department of Defense, the National Institutes of Health, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency provide information and documents for all federal contracts issued for the development, manufacturing, and distribution of coronavirus treatments and vaccines.

• The Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General released reports showing that in March and April, two residential reentry centers in Brooklyn, N.Y., and Newark, N.J., did not conduct effective Covid-19 screening or testing, and delayed providing masks. In Newark, residents did not receive face masks until nearly three weeks after the CDC recommended that all individuals wear cloth face coverings whenever they were unable to maintain distance. 
• American Oversight published documents showing BOP communications from the early months of the pandemic, including a memo instructing facilities to find alternative medicines for incarcerated people who used hydroxychloroquine — the drug dubiously promoted by Trump as a Covid-19 treatment — to treat long-term conditions like lupus and arthritis. The documents also include a complaint from March about management having refused to provide cleaning supplies to staff.

 
More Transparency Needed on Emergency Use Authorizations 
The Government Accountability Office released a report on the need for the FDA to disclose more information from its scientific review of safety and effectiveness data when issuing emergency use authorizations for coronavirus treatments and vaccines. The GAO recommended greater transparency, since the FDA does not uniformly disclose its data review for these authorizations as it does for non-emergency approvals of new drugs and biologics.
 
The Postal Service’s Covid-19 Response 
The U.S. Postal Service’s inspector general released a report identifying three ways the agency's Covid-19 response failed to protect its employees. First, it was unclear whether state mask mandates (or lack thereof) overruled USPS’s face-covering policy, resulting in non-compliance among some employees. Second, the agency's Close Contact Tracing Program did not have adequate staffing or clear goals. Lastly, although the CDC recommended temperature-taking for employees in April, USPS did not deploy temperature-taking within its facilities nationwide.
 
As Workers Got Sick, Managers Placed Bets
Amid heartbreaking news of record-high hospitalizations and deaths last week, new allegations surfaced that supervisors at a Tyson Foods plant in Iowa had placed bets on how many workers would get infected with the coronavirus. While managers took measures to protect themselves, by May more than 1,000 employees in the plant had tested positive for Covid-19. As cases rise rapidly in Iowa, the plant remains open. We’ve previously reported on records showing how the meatpacking industry influenced the federal government’s decision to allow plants to stay open in the spring.
 
Political Donations Followed PPP Loans 
The Project on Government Oversight and the Anti-Corruption Data Collective found that large political donations flowed from more than a hundred businesses after those companies received Paycheck Protection Program loans, suggesting that many of those loan recipients might not have needed the relief funds meant for struggling small businesses.
 
Trump Donor Received Pandemic Loan
The Washington Post reported that Wellshire Financial Services — a company owned by major Trump donor Rod Aycox, which operates auto-title loan stores that sell loans with a 350 percent annual rate — received a $25 million low-interest loan from the Federal Reserve’s Main Street Lending program. The program’s rules prohibit such lenders from accessing the aid, but advocates say that Wellshire exploited a loophole to secure the funds.