By CHRISTOPHER RUGABER

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal Reserve officials are grappling this week with the timing and scope of their next policy moves at a time when the raging viral pandemic has weakened the U.S. economy.

No major changes are likely when the Fed releases a statement Wednesday after its two-day policy meeting ends and just before Chair Jerome Powell holds a news conference. But the central bank is working toward providing more specific guidance on the conditions it would need to see before considering raising its benchmark short-term interest rate, which is now pegged near zero.

Economists call such an approach “forward guidance,” and the Fed used it extensively after the 2008-2009 recession. The Fed probably won’t provide such guidance until its next meeting in September, economists say. But given signs that the economy is stalling in the face of the pandemic and that several aid programs have expired as Congress debates another rescue package, there’s a chance that Fed officials could update their guidance as early as Wednesday.

After its previous meeting last month, the Fed had signaled that it expected to keep its key short-term rate near zero through 2022. Since then, the pandemic’s threat to the economy has appeared to worsen. According to the minutes of their June meeting, “various” Fed officials felt it would “be important in the coming months … to provide greater clarity” about the future path of rates.

Some Fed watchers expect no rate increase until 2024 at the earliest given their bleak outlook for the economy and expectations of continued ultra-low inflation. But more specificity from the Fed could provide further assurance to businesses and households of a low-rate environment for years to come.

As the pandemic intensified in March, the central bank’s policymakers slashed their key short-term rate to nearly zero and directed that the Fed buy roughly $2 trillion of Treasury and mortgage-backed securities. Those purchases were intended to ensure that lower borrowing rates would remain available for households and businesses to help spur spending and growth.

The Fed also launched nine lending programs to enable businesses and Wall Street banks to borrow at low rates. On Tuesday, the Fed said it would extend seven of those programs, which had been set to expire Sept. 30, through the end of the year.

One potential form of forward guidance would be for the Fed to announce that it won’t raise rates until annual inflation has reached or exceeded its target of 2% for a specific period. This would be intended to allow inflation to rise above 2%, to offset inflation that has fallen below that target nearly continuously since 2012. (Inflation is now running at just 0.5%, according to the Fed’s preferred gauge.)

In recent speeches and appearances, Fed policymakers have sounded largely pessimistic about the economy. Several, including Powell, warned in late May, as many states began allowing more businesses to reopen, that a resurgent virus could imperil any recovery.

Since then, confirmed case counts have soared around the country, especially in such large Sun Belt states as Florida, Texas, Arizona and California, though their case levels have generally flattened in the past week. The outbreaks have led at least 22 states to either pause or reverse their re-openings, thereby forcing companies to impose layoffs or to stop hiring.

The number of people applying for unemployment benefits has exceeded 1 million for 18 straight weeks. And other data, such as credit card spending, point to a pullback in spending.

Lael Brainard, a member of the Fed Board of Governors, said earlier this month that the resurgence of the virus around the country has underscored its severe threat to the economy.

“The recent resurgence in COVID cases is a sober reminder that the pandemic remains the key driver of the economy’s course,” she said in a speech. “A thick fog of uncertainty still surrounds us, and downside risks predominate.”

At his news conference Wednesday, Powell is likely to call for Congress to continue providing stimulus for the economy, as he has done before. The chairman has repeatedly stressed that the Fed has “lending powers, not spending powers,” and while he has usually avoided supporting specific policies, he has clearly urged Congress to spend more.

“He’s really pivoted from being the artful dodger to being quite direct,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Grant Thornton, a tax and accounting firm.

By LAURAN NEERGAARD

AP – The world’s biggest COVID-19 vaccine study got underway Monday with the first of 30,000 planned volunteers helping to test shots created by the U.S. government — one of several candidates in the final stretch of the global vaccine race.

There’s still no guarantee that the experimental vaccine, developed by the National Institutes of Health and Moderna Inc., will really protect.

The needed proof: Volunteers won’t know if they’re getting the real shot or a dummy version. After two doses, scientists will closely track which group experiences more infections as they go about their daily routines, especially in areas where the virus still is spreading unchecked.

“Unfortunately for the United States of America, we have plenty of infections right now” to get that answer, NIH’s Dr. Anthony Fauci recently told The Associated Press.

Moderna said the vaccination was done in Savannah, Georgia, the first site to get underway among more than seven dozen trial sites scattered around the country.

Several other vaccines made by China and by Britain’s Oxford University earlier this month began smaller final-stage tests in Brazil and other hard-hit countries.

But the U.S. requires its own tests of any vaccine that might be used in the country and has set a high bar: Every month through fall, the government-funded COVID-19 Prevention Network will roll out a new study of a leading candidate — each one with 30,000 newly recruited volunteers.

The massive studies aren’t just to test if the shots work — they’re needed to check each potential vaccine’s safety. And following the same study rules will let scientists eventually compare all the shots.

Next up in August, the final study of the Oxford shot begins, followed by plans to test a candidate from Johnson & Johnson in September and Novavax in October — if all goes according to schedule. Pfizer Inc. plans its own 30,000-person study this summer.

That’s a stunning number of people needed to roll up their sleeves for science. But in recent weeks, more than 150,000 Americans filled out an online registry signaling interest, said Dr. Larry Corey, a virologist with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Institute in Seattle, who helps oversee the study sites.

“These trials need to be multigenerational, they need to be multiethnic, they need to reflect the diversity of the United States population,” Corey told a vaccine meeting last week. He stressed that it’s especially important to ensure enough Black and Hispanic participants as those populations are hard-hit by COVID-19.

It normally takes years to create a new vaccine from scratch, but scientists are setting speed records this time around, spurred by knowledge that vaccination is the world’s best hope against the pandemic. The coronavirus wasn’t even known to exist before late December, and vaccine makers sprang into action Jan. 10 when China shared the virus’ genetic sequence.

Just 65 days later in March, the NIH-made vaccine was tested in people. The first recipient is encouraging others to volunteer now.

“We all feel so helpless right now. There’s very little that we can do to combat this virus. And being able to participate in this trial has given me a sense of, that I’m doing something,” Jennifer Haller of Seattle told the AP. “Be prepared for a lot of questions from your friends and family about how it’s going, and a lot of thank-you’s.”

That first-stage study that included Haller and 44 others showed the shots revved up volunteers’ immune systems in ways scientists expect will be protective, with some minor side effects such as a brief fever, chills and pain at the injection site. Early testing of other leading candidates have had similarly encouraging results.

If everything goes right with the final studies, it still will take months for the first data to trickle in from the Moderna test, followed by the Oxford one.

Governments around the world are trying to stockpile millions of doses of those leading candidates so if and when regulators approve one or more vaccines, immunizations can begin immediately. But the first available doses will be rationed, presumably reserved for people at highest risk from the virus.

“We’re optimistic, cautiously optimistic” that the vaccine will work and that “toward the end of the year” there will be data to prove it, Dr. Stephen Hoge, president of Massachusetts-based Moderna, told a House subcommittee last week.

Until then, Haller, the volunteer vaccinated back in March, wears a mask in public and takes the same distancing precautions advised for everyone — while hoping that one of the shots in the pipeline pans out.

“I don’t know what the chances are that this is the exact right vaccine. But thank goodness that there are so many others out there battling this right now,” she said.

___

AP photographer Ted Warren in Seattle contributed to this report.

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

By JOE McDONALD

BEIJING (AP) — China ordered the United States on Friday to close its consulate in the western city of Chengdu, ratcheting up a diplomatic conflict at a time when relations have sunk to their lowest level in decades.

The move was a response to the Trump administration’s order this week for Beijing to close its consulate in Houston after Washington accused Chinese agents of trying to steal medical and other research in Texas.

China appealed to Washington to reverse its “wrong decision,” and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said the current difficulties are completely created by the U.S. side.

Chinese-U.S. relations have soured amid a mounting array of conflicts including trade, the handling of the coronavirus pandemic, technology, spying accusations, Hong Kong and allegations of abuses against Chinese Muslims.

“The measure taken by China is a legitimate and necessary response to the unjustified act by the United States,” said a foreign ministry spokesperson, Wang Wenbin.

“The current situation in Chinese-U.S. relations is not what China desires to see. The United States is responsible for all this,” Wang said. “We once again urge the United States to immediately retract its wrong decision and create necessary conditions for bringing the bilateral relationship back on track.”

Wang said some consulate personnel “interfered in China’s internal affairs and harmed China’s security interests” but gave no details. He said Beijing complained “many times” to Washington about that.

Also Friday, the U.S. State Department sent out a notice warning Americans in China of a “heightened risk of arbitrary detention.”

“U.S. citizens may be subjected to prolonged interrogations and extended detention for reasons related to ‘state security,’” the notice said.

Americans may be detained or deported for “sending private electronic messages critical” of the Chinese government, it said. The notice gave no indication of what prompted the warning.

On Tuesday, the Trump administration ordered the Houston consulate closed within 72 hours. It alleged Chinese agents tried to steal data from facilities including the Texas A&M medical system.

The ministry on Thursday rejected the allegations as “malicious slander.” It warned the Houston consulate’s closure was “breaking down the bridge of friendship” between the two countries.

The United States has an embassy in Beijing and consulates in five other mainland cities — Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Shenyang and Wuhan. It also has a consulate in Hong Kong, a Chinese territory.

The consulate in Chengdu is responsible for monitoring Tibet and other areas in the southwest inhabited by nonethnic Chinese minorities that are considered especially sensitive by Beijing.

Asian stock markets, already uneasy about the uncertain pace of recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, fell Friday on the news of the closure.

China’s market benchmark, the Shanghai Composite Index, lost 3.9%. Hong Kong’s main index declined 2.2%.

“Alongside the eviction of the Houston Chinese Consulate, the risk of the U.S.-China conflict escalating into a ‘Cold War’ is worrying,” Hayaki Narita of Mizuho Bank said in a report.

The consulate in Chengdu was in the news in 2012 when Wang Lijun, the police chief of the major city of Chongqing, visited and told American officials his concerns about the death of a British business associate of the wife of Chongqing’s Communist Party secretary, Bo Xilai.

That prompted the British Embassy to ask for a new investigation, which led to the arrest and conviction of Bo’s wife. Bo was later dismissed and sentenced to prison.

The consulate was surrounded by police while Wang was inside. He later emerged and was arrested and sentenced to 15 years on charges of corruption and defection. The U.S. government has refused to confirm whether Wang asked for asylum.

In March, American reporters for The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal were expelled from China. That was in response to the Trump administration’s decision to limit the number of U.S. visas for Chinese employees of state media.

Operations of nine Chinese state media outlets in the United States have been required to register as “foreign missions” due to their ties with the ruling Communist Party. That doesn’t affect their ability to conduct reporting but requires them to report their staff and real estate holdings as they would if they were embassies.

Also Thursday, the U.S. Justice Department said it believes the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco is harboring a Chinese researcher, Tang Juan, who is accused of lying about her background in the Communist Party’s military wing on a visa application.

The department announced criminal charges of visa fraud against Tang and three other Chinese researchers. It said Tang lied on a visa application last October as she made plans to work at the University of California, Davis, and again during an FBI interview months later.

U.S. authorities this week announced criminal charges against two Chinese computer hackers who are accused of targeting companies that are working on vaccines for the coronavirus.

U.S. officials including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have stepped up accusations of technology theft. In a speech Thursday, Pompeo said some Chinese students and others “come here to steal our intellectual property and to take this back to their country.”