Million MAGA March: Pro-Trump protesters hold rallies as tensions grow

 

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image captionGathering demonstrators cheered as a motorcade carrying President Trump passed as it left the White House

Thousands of supporters of President Donald Trump are rallying in Washington DC to back his unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud in the US election.

Far-right and anti-government groups including the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and QAnon had indicated they would attend, amid tensions over the result.

Earlier protesters swarmed the presidential motorcade as Mr Trump drove past on his way to his golf course.

Joe Biden won the 3 November election.

On Saturday, he solidified his victory with a projected win in the state of Georgia - making him the first Democratic candidate to take the state since 1992.

He now has 306 votes in the electoral college - the system the US uses to choose its president - which far exceeds the 270 threshold to win.

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However, Mr Trump has so far refused to concede. He has launched a flurry of legal challenges in key states and made unsubstantiated allegations of widespread electoral fraud - but his efforts have so far been unsuccessful.

What's the plan for the pro-Trump rally?

Mr Trump's supporters kicked off the rally about noon local time (17:00G) near Freedom Plaza, just east of the White House.

They are using different names for the event, including Million MAGA March - using the acronym for Mr Trump's Make America Great Again slogan - as well as the March for Trump and Stop the Steal DC.

It is expected to bring more mainstream Trump supporters together with neo-Nazis, far-right militias and conservative commentators, including prominent conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and white nationalist Nicholas Fuentes.

Organisers and right-wing media figures, along with the White House officials, had predicted a huge turnout. Several thousand are so far reported to have joined.

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image captionProtesters wave Trump 2020 banners as they march through the streets

Mr Trump said on Friday he may "try to stop by and say hello". His motorcade passed the gathering demonstrators on Saturday morning and did a circuit of Freedom Plaza, but carried on to his golf club in Sterling, Virginia. It was unclear if he planned to make a further appearance.

Some left-wing groups are planning counterdemonstrations.

media caption"My message to Republican friends"

Earlier this week accommodation website Airbnb cancelled a reservation made by an alleged member of the far-right group the Proud Boys, saying "anyone affiliated with hate groups has no place on Airbnb".

Meanwhile, fans of Korean pop music (K-pop) have been using the #MillionMAGAMarch hashtag online to post pictures of pancakes in protest at the pro-Trump rally.

In the latest example of K-pop fans using innocuous images to drown out Trump supporters, actress Shea Depmore urged people to fill the hashtag with "syrupy goodness".

A growing sense of a fight losing its energy

At the scene - Will Grant, BBC News, Washington DC

A gradual stream of pro-Trump supporters has been making its way towards Freedom Plaza, adorned with T-shirts and carrying placards which read "Stop the Steal" and "Trump 2020".

The demonstrators were also identifiable by their lack of face-masks as many participants rejected measures to contain the spread of coronavirus.

In that regard alone, this pro-Trump rally is seen by its critics as reckless and irresponsible. It comes as the United States grapples with some of its worst Covid-19 infection rates since the pandemic began, with more than 180,000 new cases and 1,400 deaths recorded in the country over the past 24 hours.

None of that appeared to matter much to the participants who excitedly greeted President Trump's motorcade as it made an impromptu pass around the plaza on route to his golf course. They are desperate to see this election result overturned and fully back his unsubstantiated claims of election fraud and his refusal to concede.

Still, although they may deny it, there is a growing sense of a fight losing its energy and that - like it or not - these supporters will see President-elect Joe Biden in the White House in January.

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image captionPresident Trump drove past on his way to his golf course

What is Trump saying?

The president continues to dispute the election result. A tweet on Saturday questioned the checks on postal ballots in Georgia, saying: "Expose the crime!"

It was the latest in a slew of tweets backing his claims of widespread election fraud, although he has provided no evidence.

On Friday, election officials said the vote was the "most secure in American history", the most direct rebuttal from federal and state authorities of the president's claims.

media captionPresident Trump: "Who knows which administration it will be, I guess time will tell"

On Friday, White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany told Fox News: "President Trump believes he will be President Trump, have a second term."

However, Mr Trump's efforts to overturn the result suffered three setbacks on Friday:

• In Arizona, his team dropped a lawsuit seeking a review of ballots cast on Election Day after it became clear his rival's lead was unassailable. The challenge was based on a claim that some legal votes had been rejected
• In Michigan, a judge rejected a request by two Republican poll watchers - who had alleged fraud in Wayne County - to block the certification of election results in Detroit
• In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Trump campaign's requests to invalidate several batches of mail-in ballots were rejected

A manual recount is to be carried out in Georgia because of the narrow margin between the two candidates, but the Biden team said they did not expect it to change the results there.

media captionObama: Claims of election fraud are "delegitimising" democracy

What's happening with the transition?

Pressure is growing on Mr Trump to acknowledge Mr Biden's victory and help prepare the transition from one administration to another.

The General Services Administration (GSA), the government agency tasked with beginning the process, has yet to recognise Mr Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris as winners.

Meanwhile, the Biden team have not been given access to classified security briefings, federal agencies and funding needed to ensure a smooth transition of power. Biden spokesperson Jen Psaki said this lack of access could affect Mr Biden's ability to govern.

"You need real-time information to deal with crises of the moment," she said, highlighting the impact of the pandemic. "It's imperative that our team and our experts have that access."

Adding his voice to those calls, President Trump's former chief of staff, John Kelly, said the delay in starting the transition was hurting national security. "It's not a process where you go from zero to 1,000 miles per hour," he told Politico.

A small but growing number of Republicans are also backing calls for the president-elect to be given daily intelligence briefings.

Russian Covid vaccine shows encouraging results

 Early results from trials of a Covid vaccine developed in Russia suggest it could be 92% effective.

The data is based on 20 cases of Covid-19 from 16,000 volunteers given the Sputnik V vaccine or a dummy injection.

While some scientists welcomed the news, others said the data had been rushed out too early.

It comes after Pfizer and BioNTech said their vaccine could prevent 90% of people getting Covid-19, based on a study of 43,500 people.

Although the Sputnik data is based on fewer people being vaccinated and fewer cases of Covid developing during the trial, it does confirm promising results from earlier research.

The Sputnik V vaccine, developed at the National Research Centre for Epidemiology and Microbiology in Moscow, is currently going through phase III clinical trials in Belarus, UAE, Venezuela and India.

So far there are no safety issues, with Russian researchers saying there were "no unexpected adverse events" 21 days after volunteers received their first of two injections.

Questions to answer

But there's still a long way to go - this is interim data and, like the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine trial, the data is still being collected and the full results have not yet been published or scrutinised.

There are questions that still need answering for both vaccines - for example, how well does it protect older people who are most at risk and how long does protection from the vaccine last?

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The Russian researchers say their data will be published "in one of the leading international peer-reviewed medical journals".

If it's positive, it means there will almost certainly be more than one way of protecting people against the virus.

Hundreds of vaccines are in development and around a dozen are in the final stages of testing - the Sputnik, Pfizer and Oxford vaccines are three of those.

media captionHow close are we to Covid immunisation?

The Pfizer vaccine injects part of the genetic code of the virus into the body to train the immune system. The other two use a harmless virus that has been genetically modified to resemble the coronavirus.

Two doses are also required, but one advantage of Sputnik is that it doesn't need to be stored at very low temperatures, around -80C, unlike Pfizer's.

'Not a competition'

Alexander Gintsburg, director of Moscow's Gamaleya Research Centre, said Sputnik V would soon be available for a wider population and "lead to an eventual decrease in Covid-19 infection rates, first in Russia, then globally".

Prof Charles Bangham, chair of immunology at Imperial College London, said the results "provide further reassurance that it should be possible to produce an effective vaccine against Covid-19".

However, he added that proper evaluation of the safety and efficacy of both the Russian and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines was needed when the full data on the trials is published.

Prof Eleanor Riley, from University of Edinburgh, worried the data had been rushed out too soon.

"This is not a competition. We need all trials to be a carried out to the highest possible standards," she said.

The researchers say there have been requests for more than 1.2 billion doses of the Sputnik vaccine from more than 50 countries.

They claim it's possible to produce 500 million doses every year for the global market.

Delhi's Covid cases spike as temperatures drop and pollution rises

 India's capital, Delhi, is battling a winter surge in Covid-19 cases as temperatures plummet and air pollution rises to dangerous levels.

The city confirmed more than 8,500 cases on Wednesday alone, its highest daily record yet.

It also added 85 deaths in a day, putting the total beyond 7,000.

The sharp spike in cases after a months-long lull has also put pressure on hospitals - more than half the available beds are already occupied.

Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has written to the federal government asking for more beds at government hospitals as public pressure mounts.

At 8.6m and counting, India currently has the world's second-highest caseload. But it had been on the decline from the middle of September: daily case counts dropped from nearly 100,000 to as low as 37,000 in the weeks that followed, even as testing remained consistent.

The daily national tally continues to hover between 40,000-50,000 - India recorded some 48,200 cases on Wednesday.

But Delhi has seen an alarming spike in recent weeks, recording more new cases than any other state. The capital has confirmed just over 450,000 cases so far, some 42,000 of which are active.

It comes as large swathes of northern India confront a winter season and dangerously high levels of air pollution - two factors that could significantly worsen efforts to control the virus, according to experts.

The rising numbers also coincide with a busy festival season in India, with Hindus celebrating Diwali this weekend. Delhi has banned the sale and use of fireworks and officials have reinforced the need for social distancing, but visuals of crowds thronging markets in the city have caused alarm. Authorities found a high positivity rate among shopkeepers in some of the oldest markets, which are at risk of becoming hotspots.

"Two elderly patients of mine had to wait for more than 20 hours to get a bed," said Dr Joyeeta Basu, a physician in Delhi.

Nearly 8,600 beds out of the 16,573 Covid beds in Delhi's public and private hospitals were full as of Wednesday evening, according to the government's Corona app. But more worryingly, unoccupied beds in intensive care units (ICU) are more scarce - only 176 beds with ventilators and 338 beds without ventilators are available.

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image captionResidents in Delhi have flocked to markets during the festive season

Doctors say the the pandemic is raging inside the city's hospitals, where free beds are getting filled up by the minute.

Thousands of beds in the government-owned hospitals remain free, according to the app. But there are no vacant beds in at least 24 private hospitals and less than 50 are available across 80 private hospitals listed on the app.

But many who can afford private healthcare will not choose to go to a public hospital in India, where the quality of infrastructure is often poorer. India has an abysmal record in public health, spending just over 1% of its GDP on it.

"All of my patients would only go to a private hospital. But with the way things are going, we may have to settle for whatever beds we can get in the coming days," Dr Basu added.

Dr Randeep Guleria, director at All India Institute of Medical Sciences, one of India's biggest public hospitals, told local media that the spike means patients requiring admission into hospitals will rise.

"Additionally, there is an increase in the number of patients coming to the emergency [room] with acute respiratory problems because of air pollution and respiratory viral infections," he told NDTV.

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Air quality monitors show that pollution levels are 14 times greater than the World Health Organization's (WHO) safe levels.

Another worrying factor is that general immunity in colder weather is reduced regardless of one's age or comorbidities, according to Prof K Srinath Reddy, president of the Public Health Foundation of India, a Delhi-based think tank.

Cold weather is also more hospitable to the virus, whose survival time rises in dry and chilly air, he said.

"Cold air is heavier and less mobile, which means viral clouds or viral particles will hover closer to the ground, making it easier to get into one's lungs."

Add pollution to this scenario, and it's "a double whammy", he added, as cooler air means that pollutants will stick around longer.

Studies around the world have linked air pollution to higher Covid-19 case numbers and deaths. A Harvard University study showed that an increase of only one microgram per cubic metre in PM 2.5 - dangerous tiny pollutants in the air - is associated with an 8% increase in the Covid-19 death rate.

media captionWatch how children in India's capital Delhi are affected by air pollution

Another study by Cambridge University found a link between the severity of Covid-19 infection and long-term exposure to air pollutants, including nitrogen oxides, car exhaust fumes or burning of fossil fuels.

"We have to keep our fingers crossed," said Prof Reddy, adding that Delhi initially felt a strain when cases shot up in April. "It started to come back down in June when we had warmer weather and much better air."

European countries like France and Italy, which grabbed headlines at the start of the pandemic for rising cases, were hit hard in January and February under a harsh winter, he said.

"This is the first time we will have to deal with the virus under a winter season so we can't go by what happened in the summer. We will certainly be more vulnerable."