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C.D.C Confirms Extra Instances of Uncommon Blood Clot Dysfunction Linked to J.&J. Vaccine

C.D.C Confirms More Cases of Rare Blood Clot Disorder Linked to J.&J. Vaccine

Federal health officials have now confirmed 28 cases, including six in men, of a rare bleeding disorder in adults who have received the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine.

Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, deputy director of the vaccination safety bureau at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, presented the new cases on Wednesday at a CDC advisory board meeting

The number is an increase from the 15 confirmed cases that were all women reported at the meeting last month.

Although officials have now identified a handful of cases in men, women – particularly between the ages of 30 and 49 – appear to be at increased risk. “The trend is that women in all age groups have higher reporting rates than men,” said Dr. Shimabukuro at the meeting.

Patients with the rare but serious disorder develop blood clots, often in the brain, as well as low levels of platelets, components of the blood that promote clotting. The disorder is a “rare, clinically serious, and potentially life-threatening condition,” said Dr. Shimabukuro.

Last month, after reports first emerged that six women who had received the vaccine had developed the disorder, federal health officials recommended discontinuing use of the vaccine during the investigation. They lifted the suspension 10 days later and warned the vaccine label of possible risks that suggest that there is a “plausible” link between the vaccine and the disease.

22 of the confirmed cases so far involved women and six men. All were adults between the ages of 18 and 59 who received the vaccine before the national break. (Another case was also recorded in a 25-year-old male who participated in the clinical trial.)

Three people have died and four remain in the hospital, including one in intensive care. No new deaths have been documented since last month’s meeting, said Dr. Shimabukuro.

The overall risk remains extremely low. More than 9 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine have now been administered in the United States.

There were 12.4 cases per million doses in women between 30 and 39 years of age and 9.4 cases per million doses in women between 40 and 49 years of age, the two demographics that appear to be at greatest risk. There were fewer than 3 cases per million doses in older women and men of all ages.

Of the 28 confirmed cases, 12 people who developed the disorder had obesity, 7 had high blood pressure, 3 had diabetes, and 3 were taking estrogen, although it is not yet clear whether any of these factors could significantly increase the risk of the disorder.

Officials will continue to look for cases of the coagulation disorder in vaccinated people, said Dr. Shimabukuro.

There were no confirmed cases of coagulation disorder after the Pfizer BioNTech or Moderna vaccines, which use a different technology, said Dr. Shimabukuro.

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World News

Many States with Unhealthy Latest Outbreaks Present Instances and Hospitalization Drops

Many States with Bad Recent Outbreaks Show Cases and Hospitalization Drops

According to a database from the New York Times, many of the states that have seen the worst coronavirus outbreaks recently have seen significant decreases in both new cases and hospitalizations over the past two weeks.

For example, in Michigan, which has had one of the steepest declines in the country, the average number of daily cases fell 45 percent and hospital admissions fell 32 percent during that period as of Tuesday.

The average number of new cases in the past two weeks has decreased 30 percent in Minnesota, 38 percent in Pennsylvania, and 33 percent in Florida. In the same three states, hospital admissions are down 20 percent, 27 percent, and 11 percent.

Advances for states like Michigan, which recently began to recover from one of the worst sections of the pandemic, may suggest vaccinations are starting to curb the virus in the United States. Hospitalization dates can often lag behind case numbers for a number of reasons.

The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Rochelle Walensky testified at a Senate hearing Tuesday that, although encouraged by the achievements against the pandemic, she urged Americans to remain vigilant about the threat from the virus around the world.

Ms. Walensky said a vaccine is the fastest way to end the pandemic.

“But even with this powerful tool, while we continue to have community transmission, we must adhere to public health measures that we know will prevent the spread of this virus, mask hygiene, hand hygiene and physical distancing “, she said.

Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said in an interview that the vaccines had been a major contributor to improving case numbers and hospitalizations, but that the virus behaved in surprising ways There remained aspects that experts had to learn more about.

As an example of the unpredictable ups and downs of the virus, Dr. Osterholm pointed to Indiana, which borders Michigan and has lower vaccination rates, but has not seen the same increase in case numbers recently as its northern neighbor.

“I don’t see any national upswing. We won’t be like India. I think the vaccine concentration has certainly helped us immensely in getting that off the table, ”said Dr. Osterholm. “But I think at the state level, where we have significant populations that need vaccination, we could still see significant activity.”

After reaching an average high of 3.38 million doses per day in mid-April, the pace of US vaccinations had slowed. Almost every state now has a spate of vaccine doses that could be quickly distributed to teenagers once the Pfizer BionTech vaccine is approved for 12-15 year olds.

President Biden is pursuing a strategy that focuses on local reach and expanded vaccine access to meet his goal of at least partially vaccinating 70 percent of Americans by Independence Day.

“When it’s available, when it’s close by, when it’s convenient, people get vaccinated,” Biden said at the White House on Wednesday, highlighting initiatives like the availability of walk-ins and free Uber and Lyft trips to vaccination sites .

The vaccination relief could appeal to the 30 million or so Americans who say they’ll get the shot but have not yet done so for a myriad of reasons. Local officials and private companies are also offering a wide range of different incentives, such as free subway rides, beer, baseball tickets, and cash withdrawals, to make Americans reluctant to get vaccinated.

The changes in the virus’ trajectory in the United States are due to other regions of the world, particularly India and Southeast Asia, being hit hard. A number of variants are also spreading around the world, and scientists told a US Congressional panel on Wednesday that variants will pose an ongoing threat to the nation.

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director general, said Monday that the world is seeing a plateau in known cases, “but it’s an unacceptably high plateau, with more than 5.4 million cases and nearly 90,000 deaths in the past week.”

He continued, “Any decline is welcome, but we’ve been here before. Over the past year, many countries have seen a downward trend in cases and deaths, public health and society policies too quickly eased, and individuals have disappointed their vigilance only for these hard-won gains are being lost. “

Bryan Pietsch contributed to the reporting.

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Business

Seychelles Sees Rise in Coronavirus Circumstances Regardless of Vaccinations

Seychelles Sees Rise in Coronavirus Cases Despite Vaccinations

Marie Neige, a call center operator in the Seychelles, really wanted to be vaccinated. Like the majority of residents of the tiny island nation, she received China’s Sinopharm vaccine in March and should be fully protected in a few weeks.

She tested positive for the coronavirus on Sunday.

“I was shocked,” said Ms. Neige, 30, who is isolated at home. She said she had lost her sense of smell and taste and had a slight sore throat. “The vaccine should protect us – not from the virus, but from the symptoms,” she said. “I took precautionary measures after precautionary measures.”

China expected its Sinopharm vaccines to be the linchpin of the country’s vaccine diplomacy program – an easy-to-carry dose that would protect not only Chinese citizens but much of the developing world as well. China has donated 13.3 million doses of Sinopharm to other countries to gain goodwill, according to Bridge Beijing, a consulting firm tracking China’s impact on global health.

Instead, the company that made two types of coronavirus vaccines faces growing questions about the vaccinations. First, there was a lack of transparency in the late-stage experimental data. Now, Seychelles, the world’s most vaccinated nation, has seen increases in some cases, despite the fact that much of its population has been vaccinated with Sinopharm.

For the 56 countries that are counting on Sinopharm’s shot to stop the pandemic, the news is a setback.

For months, public health experts had focused on bridging the access gap between rich and poor nations. Now scientists are warning that developing countries that choose to use the Chinese vaccines, with their relatively weaker efficacy rates, could lag behind those choosing vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. This loophole could allow the pandemic to continue in countries with fewer resources to fight the pandemic.

“You have to be using really powerful vaccines to get this economic benefit or you will be living with the disease long term,” said Raina MacIntyre, who heads the biosecurity program at the Kirby Institute, University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. “The choice of vaccine is important.”

Nowhere have the consequences been more apparent than in the Seychelles, which relied heavily on a Sinopharm vaccine to vaccinate more than 60 percent of their population. The tiny island nation in the Indian Ocean, northeast of Madagascar and with a little over 100,000 inhabitants, is fighting a wave of the virus and had to impose another lockdown.

Of the vaccinated population who received two doses, 57 percent received Sinopharm while 43 percent received AstraZeneca. Thirty-seven percent of the new active cases, according to the Ministry of Health, are fully vaccinated people who did not indicate how many people among them received the Sinopharm shot.

“At first glance, this is an alarming finding,” said Dr. Kim Mulholland, a pediatrician at Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia who has been involved in overseeing many vaccine studies, including those for a Covid-19 vaccine.

Dr. Mulholland said the first reports from the Seychelles correlate with a 50 percent rate of effectiveness for the vaccine instead of the 78.1 percent rate the company has touted.

“We would expect in a country where the vast majority of the adult population has been vaccinated with an effective vaccine to see the disease melt away,” he said.

Scientists say breakthrough infections are normal because no vaccine is 100 percent effective. The Seychelles experience, however, is in stark contrast to Israel, which has the second highest vaccination rate in the world and has managed to fight back the virus. A study showed that the Pfizer vaccine used by Israel was 94 percent effective at preventing transmission. On Wednesday, the number of new confirmed Covid-19 cases per million people in the Seychelles stood at 2,613.38 compared to 5.55 in Israel, according to The World In Data project.

Updated

May 12, 2021, 12:34 p.m. ET

Wavel Ramkalawan, the President of Seychelles, defended the country’s vaccination program, saying that the vaccines against Sinopharm and AstraZeneca “have served our people very well”. He pointed out that the Sinopharm vaccine was given to people aged 18 to 60, and that in that age group, a total of 80 percent of patients who had to be hospitalized were not vaccinated.

“People may be infected, but they are not sick. Only a small number, ”he told the Seychelles News Agency. “So what happens is normal.”

Minister for Foreign Affairs and Tourism Sylvestre Radegonde said the surge in cases in Seychelles was partly due to people abandoning their vigilance, according to the Seychelles News Agency. Sinopharm did not respond to a request for comment.

In response to a Wall Street Journal article on Seychelles, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman accused the Western media of attempting to discredit Chinese vaccines and “cultivating the mentality that” everything related to China must be smeared “.

In a press conference, Kate O’Brien, director of vaccinations at the World Health Organization, said the agency assessed the rise in infections in the Seychelles and called the situation “complicated”. Last week the global health group approved the Sinopharm vaccine for emergency use, raising hopes of an end to the global supply crisis.

She said that “some of the cases that are reported occur either shortly after a single dose, or shortly after a second dose, or between the first and second dose.”

According to Ms. O’Brien, WHO is studying the strains currently circulating in the country, when the cases occurred, relative to when someone was dosed and the severity of each case. “Only through this type of assessment can we judge whether or not it is vaccination failure,” she said.

However, some scientists say it is becoming increasingly clear that the Sinopharm vaccine does not offer a clear path to herd immunity, especially considering the numerous variants that appear around the world.

Governments using the Sinopharm vaccine must “accept a significant failure rate and plan accordingly,” said John Moore, a vaccine expert at Cornell University. “You need to make the public aware that you still have a good chance of getting infected.”

Many in Seychelles say the government was not ready.

“My question is, why did you push everyone to take it?” said Diana Lucas, a 27-year-old waitress who tested positive on May 10th. She said she received her second dose of the Sinopharm vaccine on February 10th.

Government attorney Emmanuelle Hoareau, 22, tested positive on May 6th after the second dose of the Sinopharm vaccine in March. “It doesn’t make sense,” she said. She said the government failed to provide enough information about the vaccines to the public.

“They don’t explain the real situation to people,” she said. “It’s a big deal – a lot of people get infected.”

Ms. Hoareau’s mother, Jacqueline Pillay, is a nurse at a private clinic in Victoria, the capital. She believes there is a new variant in the Seychelles because a lot of foreigners have arrived in the last few months. The tourism-dependent country opened its borders to most travelers without quarantine on March 25.

“People are very scared now,” said Ms. Pillay, 58. “If you gave people the right information, people wouldn’t speculate.”

Health officials recently appeared on television to encourage those who only took the first dose of the Sinopharm vaccine to come back for the second shot. But Ms. Pillay said she was frustrated that the public health officer hadn’t addressed why the vaccines don’t seem to be working as well as they should.

“I think a lot of people don’t come back,” said Ms. Pillay.

Marietta Labrosse, Elsie Chen, and Claire Fu have contributed to the research.

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Business

WHO says it accounts for 50% of reported instances final week

WHO classifies triple-mutant Covid variant from India as global health risk

A Covon-19 coronavirus patient rests in a banquet room temporarily converted into a Covid care center in New Delhi on May 10, 2021.

Arun Sankar | AFP | Getty Images

India’s daily Covid-19 death toll hit another record high on Wednesday as the World Health Organization said the country accounted for half of all reported cases worldwide last week.

Health ministry data showed that at least 4,205 people died within 24 hours – the largest increase in deaths in a day the South Asian country has reported since the pandemic began. However, reports suggest that India’s death toll is under counting.

A total of 23 million cases have been reported in India and more than 254,000 people have died.

The World Health Organization said India accounted for half of all cases reported worldwide last week, as well as 30% of the world’s deaths.

India has reported more than 300,000 cases per day for 21 consecutive days. However, on Tuesday, the Ministry of Health said its data showed a net decrease in total active cases over a 24-hour period for the first time in 61 days.

The second wave began around February and accelerated until March and April, after large crowds, mostly without masks, were allowed to gather for religious festivals and election campaigns in different parts of the country.

India’s health system is under tremendous pressure from the surge in cases despite the influx of international aid, including oxygen concentrators, bottles and generation equipment, and the antiviral drug remdesivir.

To ease pressure on healthcare workers, India is recruiting 400 former medical officers from the armed forces, the Defense Ministry said on Sunday.

WHO update on India, South Asia

In its latest weekly epidemiological update on the pandemic, the UN Department of Health said it was observing “worrying trends” in India’s neighboring countries, where cases are also increasing.

In Nepal, for example, nearly 50% of all people tested for Covid-19 are reported to be infected as the inland struggles with a second wave. Vaccines are said to have run out when India stopped exporting given the situation at home.

The WHO recently classified variant B.1.617 of Covid, which was first discovered in India, as a matter of concern, indicating that it has become a global threat. The variant has three sub-lines, “which differ by a few, but possibly relevant mutations in the spike protein as well as by the worldwide prevalence of detection,” said the WHO in the report.

India’s dramatic increase in cases has raised questions about the role of Covid variants such as the B.1.617 and B.1.1.7, which were first discovered in the UK.

The International Health Authority said it recently carried out a risk assessment of the situation in India and found that the resurgence and acceleration of Covid-19 transmission in the country have several likely factors may have increased portability, as well as mass gatherings and lower compliance with public health and social measures.

“The exact contributions of these factors to increased transmission in India are not precisely known,” said the WHO.

Elsewhere, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will not personally attend a G7 summit in the UK next month due to the situation in Covid-19 at home, the Indian Foreign Ministry said. Modi was invited as a special guest by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the ministry said.

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Health

Every day instances rise above 400,000 once more

Daily cases rise above 400,000 again

Medical workers attend to a patient with coronavirus disease (COVID-19) as a syringe infusion pump donated by France is seen next to his bed in the emergency room of Safdarjung Hospital in New Delhi, India on May 7, 2021.

Adnan Abidi | Reuters

India’s daily new Covid-19 cases topped 400,000 for the third time this month as the country struggles to contain a devastating second wave.

Health ministry data released on Friday showed there were 414,188 new cases in 24 hours of at least 3,915 people who had succumbed to the disease. However, reports of overburdened crematoria and cemeteries, as well as a growing number of obituaries in local newspapers, suggest that the official figures underestimate the real death toll.

The total number of reported cases in the South Asian country is currently 21.49 million while the number of deaths exceeds 234,000. In just the past seven days, India has reported more than 2.7 million cases and over 25,700 deaths, or an average of at least 153 people an hour die.

While the Indian government has so far resisted calls for another national lockdown, states have tightened restrictions, including local lockdowns and curfews. However, health professionals are concerned that the pandemic is now spreading to small towns and villages where health infrastructure is not advanced enough to support a surge in certain cases.

The second wave started in February, but cases rose at an alarming rate from April. The World Health Organization has stated that the sharp rise in infections may be due in part to several mutated versions of the virus circulating in the country, including local variant B.1.617 and variant B.1.1.7, which have been detected in the UK

However, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration has criticized the fact that large crowds gathered for religious festivals and election campaigns across the country earlier this year and then left most of the responsibility for combating the outbreak to state governments. India’s hospitals are overwhelmed and there is a lack of beds, medical oxygen and drugs to treat Covid-19 patients.

India’s Supreme Court reportedly asked the central government to prepare for an expected third wave of outbreaks and revise its formula for distributing oxygen across the country. That comes a day after the Supreme Court gave the government 24 hours to formulate a plan to meet Delhi’s oxygen needs.

The court intervened after 12 Covid-19 patients, including a doctor, died in a New Delhi hospital last week when medical oxygen was gone for 80 minutes, according to the Associated Press.

K. VijayRaghavan, the main scientific advisor to the Indian government, urged people on Twitter to maintain social distancing and other Covid-appropriate behavior to prevent the virus from spreading exponentially. But many of the cities that are experiencing an increase in certain cases are also very densely populated.

Earlier this week, he told a press conference that a third wave “is inevitable given the higher levels of the virus circulating. However, it is not clear on what timescale this third phase will take place. Hopefully gradually, but we should prepare for it.” new waves. “

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World News

Covid-19 Reside Updates: Vaccines, Variants and Circumstances

A vaccination site administering the Sinopharm Covid-19 vaccine in North Macedonia on Thursday.

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Ognen Teofilovski/Reuters

The World Health Organization on Friday approved China’s Sinopharm’s Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use, easing the way for poorer nations to get access to another much-needed shot to help end the pandemic.

The approval allows the Sinopharm vaccine to be included in Covax, the World Health Organization’s global initiative that is designed to promote equitable vaccine distribution around the world.

The need is dire.

Rich countries are hoarding doses. India, a major vaccine maker, has stopped exports to address its worsening coronavirus crisis. Questions about safety after exceedingly rare side effects led some countries to briefly pause using AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson doses or change their guidance around the use.

Reliable vaccine access could improve further next week when the W.H.O. considers another Chinese shot, made by the company Sinovac.

Andrea Taylor, who analyzes global data on vaccines at the Duke Global Health Institute, called the potential addition of two Chinese vaccines into the Covax program a “game changer.”

“The situation right now is just so desperate for low- and lower-middle-income countries that any doses we can get out are worth mobilizing,” Ms. Taylor said. “Having potentially two options coming from China could really change the landscape of what’s possible over the next few months.”

But the fanfare may be short-lived. While China has claimed it can make up to 5 billion doses by the end of this year, Chinese officials say the country is struggling to manufacture enough doses for its own population and are cautioning a pandemic-weary world to keep expectations in check.

“This should be the golden time for China to practice its vaccine diplomacy. The problem is, at the same time, China itself is facing a shortage,” said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations. “So in terms of global access to vaccines, I don’t expect the situation to significantly improve in the coming two to three months.”

Still, the approval represents a high point in its vaccine diplomacy efforts and a chance to fill the gap left by Western nations and pharmaceutical companies in low- and middle-income countries. Sinopharm is the first Chinese shot to be classified as safe and effective by the W.H.O., and its approval could ease concerns about the lack of transparency from Chinese vaccine companies.

Regulators from China and other countries have approved the Sinopharm vaccine in recent months, though the company has not released Phase 3 clinical trial data for scientists to independently assess.

The W.H.O. was given access to this data before the announcement, but there is limited data on how well the vaccine will work against the many coronavirus variants cropping up around the world.

United States › United StatesOn May 6 14-day change
New cases 47,325 –27%
New deaths 818 –4%
World › WorldOn May 6 14-day change
New cases 856,719 Flat
New deaths 13,873 +9%

U.S. vaccinations ›

Where states are reporting vaccines given

Ton Tran, 106, receiving his second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine at a clinic in San Jose, Calif., on Thursday.Credit…Noah Berger/Associated Press

Pfizer and the German company BioNTech have become the first companies to apply to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for full approval of their Covid-19 vaccine for use in people 16 and older. The vaccine is currently being administered to adults in America under an emergency use authorization granted in December.

The approval process is likely to take months.

The companies said in a statement on Friday that they had submitted their clinical data, which includes six months of information on the vaccine’s safety and efficacy, to the F.D.A. They plan to submit additional material, including information about the manufacturing of the vaccine, in the coming weeks.

“We are proud of the tremendous progress we’ve made since December in delivering vaccines to millions of Americans, in collaboration with the U.S. government,” Dr. Albert Bourla, Pfizer’s chief executive, said in the statement. “We look forward to working with the F.D.A. to complete this rolling submission and support their review, with the goal of securing full regulatory approval of the vaccine in the coming months.”

As of Thursday, more than 134 million doses of the vaccine had been administered in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Full approval would allow Pfizer and BioNTech to market the vaccine directly to customers.

It could also make it easier for companies, government agencies and schools to require vaccinations. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said in December that employers could mandate vaccination, and legal experts have generally agreed.

Many companies have been hesitant to require the vaccines, especially while they have only emergency authorization, which is designed to be temporary. Some institutions, like the University of California and California State University systems, have said that they would do so only after a vaccine has full approval.

Full approval could also prompt the U.S. military, which has had low uptake of Covid-19 vaccines, to mandate vaccinations for service members.

If the F.D.A. grants full approval, it could also help raise confidence in the vaccine. The pace of vaccination has slowed in the United States in recent weeks, and a recent national survey indicated that most people in the country who planned to get the shots had already done so.

The agency is also expected to issue an emergency authorization for use of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in 12- to 15-year-olds next week. The companies have said that they plan to file for emergency authorization for 2- to 11-year-olds in September.

Moderna plans to apply for full approval for its Covid-19 vaccine this month, the company said during its quarterly earnings call on Thursday.

Director of the Center for the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases Dr. Nancy Messonnier spoke in Washington in January 2020.Credit…Amanda Voisard/Reuters

Dr. Nancy Messonnier, who famously warned the nation early last year that the coronavirus would upend their lives, resigned from her position at the Centers for Disease Control and Protection on Friday.

Dr. Messonnier’s resignation is effective May 14. She is taking on a new role as an executive director at the Skoll Foundation, a philanthropical organization based in Palo Alto, Calif., she told staff in an email on Friday.

Her exit may augur more changes at the agency. Reports have circulated for weeks that the C.D.C.’s new director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, planned to completely reorganize the division Dr. Messonnier led.

“My family and I have determined that now is the best time for me to transition to a new phase of my career,” Dr. Messonnier wrote in the email to staff.

Dr. Messonnier began her career in public health in 1995 with a stint in the prestigious Epidemic Intelligence Service. She has since held a number of leadership posts in the C.D.C. Since 2016, she has served as director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, the C.D.C. division responsible for managing influenza and other respiratory threats.

In late 2019, she became the agency’s lead in responding to the coronavirus, and initially shared a stage with President Trump at briefings about the coronavirus.

She fell out of favor with President Trump and sent stocks tumbling after she sounded a dire alarm about the coronavirus, saying it would disrupt the lives of every American.

“It’s not a question of if this will happen but when this will happen and how many people in this country will have severe illnesses,” she said on Feb. 25, just as Mr. Trump was boarding Air Force One in New Delhi for his flight home.

Soon after that, she stopped appearing at briefings of the White House and of the C.D.C.

Patients with Covid-19 in the emergency ward at the Holy Family hospital in New Delhi on Thursday.Credit…Rebecca Conway/Getty Images

India’s worsening coronavirus outbreak has spread far outside its cities to rural areas with poor health care infrastructure and limited testing capacities, doctors and experts say.

One factor behind the surge of cases, they believe, is a series of recent campaign rallies held without social distancing.

The state of West Bengal, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party lost an election last week after more than a month of campaigning to vast crowds, is recording the highest rate of positive coronavirus tests in the country. More than 31 percent of tests in the state are now coming back positive.

“There is a clear pattern here: States that went through elections and where large rallies were held are witnessing a huge rise in cases,” said Dr. Thekkekara Jacob John, a senior virologist in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.

In Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, 1,028 new coronavirus cases and four deaths were recorded on March 26. On April 29, after campaigns for local village council elections were held, there were 35,104 cases and 288 deaths. A teachers’ union in the state said that 577 teachers and support staff members who were on duty as election workers had died of Covid-19.

The country’s cases as a whole have been skyrocketing since late March, from a seven-day average of more than 62,000 on March 31 to more than 385,000, according to the Our World in Data project at the University of Oxford. On Friday, the country reported more than 410,000 new daily infections, a record, and more than 3,900 deaths.

As the outbreak reaches new heights, India’s vaccination campaign has slowed down, marred by supply shortages and competition among states.

The official daily death in the country has stayed over 3,000 over the past 10 days, and experts say the numbers are much higher,.

The true scope of the outbreak remains hard to measure. Nationwide, India conducted about 1.9 million coronavirus tests on Thursday, an increase from about 1.2 million daily tests last month, but hardly enough to keep up with a daily caseload that has almost quadrupled in that time.

West Bengal, a state of 90 million people that has poor health care infrastructure and is under a partial lockdown, has carried out fewer than 60,000 coronavirus tests a day. That is one of the lowest rates in the country, according to data compiled by researchers at the University of Michigan.

Dr. Abhijeet Barua, a physician in Kolkata, the state’s capital, said that cases had exploded in every corner of the city and that infections were spreading quickly in the state’s rural areas. At his 10-bed clinic, two people have died every day over the past 15 days, Dr. Barua said.

“What is making things worse in Kolkata is that over 70 percent of the population lives in close contact,” he said, adding that he was receiving dozens of calls a day from patients seeking help. “You can’t isolate yourself, because it is so congested here.”

Mr. Modi has repeatedly refrained from imposing a nationwide lockdown. Instead nearly a dozen of India’s 28 states have imposed restrictions, though they are less stringent than the nationwide lockdown put in place last year.

Protective masks are worn in March in Tokyo, the host of this summer’s Olympic Games.Credit…Noriko Hayashi for The New York Times

TOKYO — Japan on Friday extended a state of emergency in Tokyo and other regions until the end of May to contain a surge of coronavirus cases, casting further doubt on the country’s ability to safely host the Summer Olympics, which are scheduled to begin in 11 weeks.

Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga made the announcement at a meeting of the government’s coronavirus task force, saying that the measures were necessary because infections remain at a “high level, mainly in large cities.”

The announcement extends emergency measures imposed last month to two more prefectures, covering a total of six prefectures, including Tokyo and Osaka, that are together home to over a third of Japan’s 126 million people. Another eight prefectures will be under slightly looser restrictions.

The existing state of emergency, which were imposed to curb travel during the just-ended Golden Week holiday period and had been set to expire next week, have not slowed Japan’s fourth wave of coronavirus infections. In early March, the country recorded about 1,000 daily new. It is now recording nearly 6,000, according to a New York Times database.

Health officials say that they are seeing a growing number of cases of coronavirus variants spreading in the population, including at least 26 cases of the strain first detected in India. The authorities in Tokyo say that in four out of five cases found in the city, the infected person neither traveled abroad nor had close contact with someone who had.

The outbreak is stretching health care systems even in Japan’s biggest cities. On Thursday, there were 370 people being treated for serious cases of Covid-19 in Osaka, a prefecture of nine million people, more than the number of hospital beds available for seriously ill patients.

Japan, which has recorded more than 620,000 infections and 10,000 deaths since the start of the pandemic, has controlled the virus better than many countries. But the government has faced criticism for the sluggish pace of vaccinations, and for pledging to go ahead with the Tokyo Olympics, scheduled to begin on July 23, despite widespread public opposition.

Toru Hashimoto, a lawyer and a former governor of Osaka prefecture, said on a television show on Friday that Olympic organizers were ignoring the severity of Japan’s outbreak, and that it was inappropriate to continue holding pre-Olympic “test events” during the state of emergency, even though they are taking place without spectators.

“If the government wants to reduce the number of people in the city, it’s not a time when test events can be held,” Mr. Hashimoto said.

The government has imposed two previous states of emergency during the pandemic, although they are looser than the total lockdowns seen in many nations. The measures allow the prefectures to ask businesses to close or to restrict their hours, and to fine those that do not.

Under the extended state of emergency, people are asked not to go out for nonessential matters, especially after 8 p.m., and to refrain from traveling outside their prefectures. Karaoke parlors are asked to close, and restaurants requested not to serve alcohol, with fines of up to 300,000 yen, or $2,750, for noncompliance.

A vaccination center in Johannesburg in March.Credit…Joao Silva/The New York Times

A global debate is heating up over how to get Covid-19 vaccines to the nations most in need.

The United States supports an effort to suspend intellectual property protections on Covid-19 vaccines, and European countries say that richer nations should begin exporting more of their vaccine supply to poorer ones.

The European Union — whose approval is needed for any waiver of vaccine patents — said on Thursday that it would consider the Biden administration’s proposal. But Germany, the bloc’s largest economy, said that pushing pharmaceutical companies to share vaccine patents could have “significant implications” for the production of vaccines. The European Commission signaled it wouldn’t support the U.S. proposal.

“The limiting factor in vaccine manufacturing is production capacity and high-quality standards, not patents,” a spokeswoman for Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said in a statement.

Europe’s position emphasized the challenges of winning support for the waivers at the World Trade Organization, where the bloc wields significant influence, and where unanimous approval would be needed for any measure to suspend patents.

Many experts believe that the waivers are needed to expand the manufacturing of vaccines and get them to poorer parts of the world where inoculations have lagged behind those of richer countries.

Until the Biden administration’s announcement this week, the United States had been a major holdout at the W.T.O. over a proposal by India and South Africa to suspend some intellectual property protections. The move could give drugmakers access to the trade secrets of how the vaccines are made.

The pharmaceutical industry has argued that suspending patent protections would undermine risk-taking and innovation.

The debate arises amid a growing divide between wealthy nations that are slowly regaining normal life, and poorer countries that are confronting new and devastating outbreaks.

In India, which is suffering the world’s worst outbreak since the start of the pandemic, only 2.2 percent of the population is fully vaccinated, according to a New York Times database. South Africa has fully vaccinated less than 1 percent of its people. By contrast, vaccinations are slowing down in the United States — where one-third of people are fully inoculated — as they begin to pick up in Europe.

Even if a waiver receives support from the trade body, it alone would not increase the world’s vaccine supply. Large drug manufacturers in India and elsewhere would need extensive technological and other support to produce doses, experts say.

The American jobs engine slowed markedly last month, confounding rosy forecasts of the pace of the recovery and sharpening debates over how best to revive a labor market that was severely weakened by the coronavirus pandemic.

Employers added 266,000 jobs in April, the government reported Friday, far below the vigorous gains registered in March. The jobless rate rose slightly to 6.1 percent, as more people rejoined the labor force.

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“It turns out it’s easier to put an economy into a coma than wake it up,” Diane Swonk, chief economist for the accounting firm Grant Thornton, said of the disappointing report. “It’s understandable, it’s going to take some time, you’re not just going to snap your fingers and get everyone back to work,

Economists had forecast an addition of about a million jobs. The increase for March was revised down to 770,000 from 916,000.

The Alliance for American Manufacturing blamed supply chain problems for the loss of 18,000 jobs in that sector, noting in particular the impact that a shortage of semiconductors has had on the automotive industry.

And many offices are not yet ready to reopen fully. “I just think it takes a while for businesses to figure out how many people they need,” Ms. Swonk said, noting there is still a lot of skittishness on the part of employers and workers. “I don’t view this as terribly troubling or distressing.”

Ben Herzon, executive director of U.S. economics at the financial services company IHS Markit, agreed. “A single report with unexpected weakness in job gains is not a cause for concern,” he said. “Demand is picking up, activity is picking up.”

He noted that labor force participation had been on the upswing for two months in a row, rising to 61.7 percent last month from 61.4 percent in February.

More opportunities are bubbling up as coronavirus infections ebb, vaccinations spread, restrictions lift and businesses reopen. Job postings on the online job site Indeed are 24 percent higher than they were in February last year.

“There’s been a broad-based pickup in demand,” said Nick Bunker, who leads North American economic research at the Indeed Hiring Lab. The supercharged housing market is driving demand for construction workers. There is also an abundance of loading, stocking and other warehousing jobs — a side-effect of the boom in e-commerce.

The economy still has a lot of ground to regain before returning to prepandemic levels. Millions of jobs have vanished since February 2020, and the labor force has shrunk.

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As the economy fitfully recovers, there are divergent accounts of what’s going on in the labor market. Employers, particularly in the restaurant and hospitality industry, have reported scant response to help-wanted ads. Several have blamed what they call overly generous government jobless benefits, including a temporary $300-a-week federal stipend that was part of an emergency pandemic relief program.

But there are other forces constraining the return to work. Millions of Americans have said that health concerns and child care responsibilities — with many schools and day care centers not back to normal operations — have prevented them from returning to work. Millions of others who are not actively job hunting are considered on temporary layoff and expect to be hired back by their previous employers once more businesses reopen fully. At the same time, some baby boomers have retired or switched to working part time.

An 18-year-old student received a shot of a coronavirus vaccine in Los Angeles last month.Credit…Etienne Laurent/EPA, via Shutterstock

A series of vaccine developments and the loosening of restrictions amid an improving virus trajectory may foreshadow a welcome return to normalcy for many young Americans, just as summer vacation nears.

By early next week, the Food and Drug Administration is expected to issue an emergency use authorization allowing the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine to be used in children 12 to 15 years old, a major step ahead in the United States’ efforts to tackle Covid-19. Pfizer also expects to seek federal clearance in September to administer the vaccine to children age 2 to 11, the company said on Tuesday.

Vaccinating children is key to raising the level of immunity in the population, experts say, and to bringing down the numbers of hospitalizations and deaths. It could also put school administrators, teachers and parents at ease if millions of adolescent students become eligible for vaccination before the next academic year begins.

The move would be a major leap forward, experts say, and comes as the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, said that vaccinated adolescents would be able to remove their masks outdoors at summer camps.

Yet the eagerness of parents to let their children be vaccinated is limited, according to a new national poll, which found that three in 10 parents surveyed said they would get their children vaccinated right away and 26 percent said they wanted to wait to see how the vaccine was working. About 23 percent said they would definitely not get their children vaccinated, and 18 percent said they would do so only if a child’s school required it. The survey also noted that only 9 percent of respondents said they had not yet gotten a shot but still intended to do so, one more indication that achieving widespread immunity in the United States is becoming increasingly challenging.

As health experts focus on the future of vaccinating children, a growing number of students have returned to in-person learning this school year. In March, 54 percent of K-8 schools were open for full-time in-person learning, and 88 percent were open for either full-time in-person and/or hybrid learning, according to data from a federal government survey released on Thursday. But Black, Hispanic and Asian students are enrolled in full-time in-person learning at much lower rates than white students.

The Biden administration has made an aggressive push for reopening schools in recent months, including an effort to prioritize vaccinations for teachers and employees.

An airplane landing at the airport in Frankfurt, Germany.Credit…Michael Probst/Associated Press

One returning pilot lost control of an aircraft during landing and skidded off the runway into a ditch. Another just returning from furlough forgot to activate a critical anti-icing system designed to prevent hazards in cold weather. Several others flew at the wrong altitudes, which they attributed to distractions and lapses in communication.

In all of these incidents, which were recorded on NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System, a database of commercial aviation mistakes that are anonymously reported by pilots and other airline crew, the pilots involved blamed the same thing for their mistakes: a lack of practice flying during the pandemic.

In 2020, global air passenger traffic experienced the largest year-on-year decline in aviation history, falling 65.9 percent compared with 2019, according to the International Air Transport Association. Flights were grounded, schedules reduced and thousands of pilots were laid off or put on furlough for up to 12 months.

As vaccination programs pick up speed across some parts of the world and travel starts to rebound, airlines are beginning to reactivate their fleets and summoning pilots back as they prepare to expand their schedules for the summer. But returning pilots can’t just pick up where they left off.

“It’s not quite like riding a bike,” said Joe Townshend, a former pilot for Titan Airways, a British charter airline, who was laid off when the pandemic hit in March last year.

“You can probably go 10 years without flying a plane and still get it off the ground,” he said, “but what fades is the operational side of things.”

Marc Johnson, a virologist at the University of Missouri, examining samples of wastewater to track the coronavirus.Credit…MichaelB Thomas for The New York Times

Although Covid-19 is primarily a respiratory disease, research conducted early in the pandemic revealed that people infected with the coronavirus often shed it in their stool. This finding, combined with the scale and urgency of the crisis, spurred immediate interest in tracking the virus by sampling wastewater.

In the past year, many scientists have been drawn into the once niche field of wastewater epidemiology. Researchers in 54 countries are tracking the coronavirus in sewage, according to the Covid19Poops Dashboard, a global directory of the projects.

These teams have found that the wastewater data seemed to accurately indicate what was happening in society. When the number of diagnosed Covid-19 cases in an area increased, more coronavirus appeared in the wastewater. Levels of the virus fell when areas instituted lockdowns and surged when they reopened.

Several teams have also confirmed that sewage can serve as an early warning system: Wastewater viral levels often peaked days before doctors saw a peak in official Covid-19 cases.

And wastewater analysis has allowed scientists to detect the arrival of certain variants in a region weeks before they are found in people — and to identify mutations that have not yet been detected in people anywhere.

The surveillance is not a replacement for clinical testing, experts said, but can be an efficient and cost-effective complement. The approach is likely to be especially valuable in low- and middle-income countries, where testing resources are more limited.

“Not every population gets tested, not everyone has access to health care,” said Dr. Marc Johnson, a virologist at the University of Missouri. “If there’s groups of people that are asymptomatic, they probably aren’t getting tested either. So you aren’t really getting the full big picture. Whereas for our testing, everyone poops.”

global roundup

Administering the AstraZeneca vaccine in Nottingham, England, last month.Credit…Oli Scarff/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Britain’s vaccines regulator advised on Friday that all adults under 40 in the country should be offered alternatives to AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine. It factored in concerns over very rare blood clots, the dwindling risk of severe coronavirus infection in younger adults and the availability of alternatives.

The guidance extends earlier advice that people under 30 would be offered alternative doses.

The use of the AstraZeneca vaccine has been marred by uncertainty after reports of a possible link between the doses and very rare blood clots, but public health experts around the world say that the vaccine’s benefits far outweigh the risks for most people.

Britain’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization stressed that the chances of younger people becoming seriously ill with the coronavirus had grown smaller as infection rates decrease across the country. It said that this new reality paired with the availability of alternative vaccines had factored into the decision.

In other news from around the world:

  • Australia will resume repatriation flights for Australian nationals in India after May 15, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Friday. The resumption will end a travel ban that made it a criminal offense for citizens and residents of Australia to enter the country from India. No other democratic nation has issued a similar ban on all arrivals.

  • Tunisia will enter a weeklong nationwide lockdown starting on Sunday, Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi said on Friday. The country of nearly 12 million people has reported 11,122 deaths and 315,000 cases, according a New York Times database.

Categories
Health

New Covid Instances in Arizona Are Up 21 P.c in Two Weeks

New Covid Cases in Arizona Are Up 21 Percent in Two Weeks

While most of the United States has seen a steady decline in new coronavirus cases recently, Arizona was an outlier.

The state has not been inundated with another wave of the virus, but public health experts are concerned about a steady increase in cases and hospitalizations. As of Tuesday, Arizona’s daily average was up 19 percent in the past two weeks, the second largest increase in the nation over that period after Wyoming. Only four other states reported increases of more than 10 percent during this period: Washington, Hawaii, Arkansas and Oregon.

The daily number of new cases in Arizona is 10 per 100,000 people, still below the national average of 14 per 100,000. In the past 14 days, the country has seen a 26 percent decrease in new coronavirus cases, and 27 states have seen a 15 percent or more decrease in new coronavirus cases, according to a New York Times database.

Will Humble, a former state health director who heads the Arizona Public Health Association, attributed the spike in new cases to several factors, including a spring influx of travelers and the spread of a variant of the virus first discovered in the UK. Variant B.1.1.7 was associated with increased transferability.

Mr Humble said the Arizona surge likely wouldn’t result in a significant increase in deaths, which have declined in the state. Most older adults and other people in the state who are at increased risk of developing serious illnesses have already been vaccinated, while those in their twenties, thirties, and forties who are more likely to have new infections are more likely to be.

Mr Humble said the surge in cases had “very different public health implications” than it did a few months ago, when far fewer people were vaccinated.

“We’re not going to have the kind of deadly experiences we’d have in December, January or February,” said Humble. Even so, there has been “a remarkable upward movement” in hospital and intensive care units.

Arizona was slow to put restrictions in place last summer and was quick to remove them as falls have skyrocketed and ICU beds are nearly full. From early June to mid-July, the state reported new cases at the highest rate in the country for its size, peaking at 3,800 per day.

In January, Arizona again had its highest daily incidence rate in a while. At one point it was averaging over 8,000 a day, more than double that of the summer summit.

Governor Doug Ducey signed an executive order in March that lifted all Covid-19 restrictions in the state and prevented local governments from issuing mask mandates.

Mr Humble said politics may have made Arizona more vulnerable: “There is no mitigation here at all, and it has not been in months,” he said.

About 41 percent of Arizonans received a first dose of the vaccine, and 30 percent were fully vaccinated, just below the national average. However, the picture varies greatly from country to country. Three of Arizona’s 15 counties vaccinated more than 40 percent of residents, but five vaccinated less than 30 percent as of Tuesday.

Dr. Cara Christ, the director of the Arizona Department of Health, said last month that the initial rush for vaccines had slowed significantly. “Before, vaccine appointments were made almost immediately as soon as they were available,” she said. “The time has come now that it is possible to make an appointment on the same day at practically every state location.”

Categories
World News

Covid-19 Information: Dwell Updates on Vaccine, Instances and India

Darwin Albania received a vaccine dose in Miami last week.

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Saul Martinez for The New York Times

President Biden will announce Tuesday afternoon that he is directing tens of thousands of pharmacies to offer walk-in appointments for coronavirus vaccine shots, creating more pop-up and mobile clinics and shipping more doses to rural clinics, all aimed at vaccinating 70 percent of American adults at least partially by July 4.

The efforts reflect a shift in strategy by the administration as the pace of the nation’s vaccination effort slows. The federal government has also decided that if states do not order their full allocation of doses in any given week, that supply can be shifted to other states that want more.

In an afternoon address, the president plans to pledge more funding for outreach campaigns designed to convince those reluctant to get shots of the need to protect their own health and that of others. The number of shots administered daily has slowed by about half since a peak in mid-April, despite a flood of vaccine available.

Senior health officials have decided that herd immunity — the point at which the virus dies out for lack of hosts to transmit it — will likely remain elusive. But if the 70 percent to 85 percent of the population is vaccinated, the infection rate will be low enough so that normal life will be within reach, senior administration officials said.

The president will call for about 160 million adults to be fully vaccinated by Independence Day. As of Monday, more than 105 million Americans were fully vaccinated and at least 56 percent of adults — or 147 million people — had received at least one shot. That has contributed to a steep decline in infections, hospitalization and deaths across all age groups, federal officials said.

To increase availability of shots, the White House informed states that if they choose not to order their full allocation of vaccine each week, the doses will go back into a federal pool so that other states can draw on it, according to state and federal officials.

States that do not claim their full allotment one week will not be penalized because they will still be able to request the full amount the next week, officials said.

The shift, reported earlier Tuesday by The Washington Post, makes little difference to some states like Virginia that have routinely drawn down as many doses as the federal government was willing to ship. But it could help some states that are able to use more doses than the federal government allotted to them based on their population. They will now be allowed to ask for up to 50 percent more doses than the government allotted them.

Until now, White House officials had been unwilling to shift doses to states that were faster to administer them out of concern that rural areas or underserved communities would lose out to urban or richer areas where residents were more willing to get shots.

But with the pace of vaccination slowing nationwide, officials have determined that freeing up unused doses week by week will not exacerbate equity issues Some state officials have been arguing for the change for weeks.

United States › United StatesOn May 3 14-day change
New cases 50,058 –26%
New deaths 751 –3%
World › WorldOn May 3 14-day change
New cases 682,232 +6%
New deaths 10,714 +12%

U.S. vaccinations ›

Where states are reporting vaccines given

In Midtown Manhattan last week.Credit…Gabby Jones for The New York Times

Three U.S. states that were once at the center of the pandemic — New York, New Jersey and Connecticut — are taking steps to relax nearly all their coronavirus restrictions, raising hopes among many residents that life is returning to normal, but causing angst for others who are still worried about the virus.

Many people who own or work for establishments that have been hard hit by pandemic closures, like restaurants and bars, nightclubs and cultural institutions, expressed optimism.

But for some others, it may be too soon to celebrate.

Felipe Perez, 48, a construction worker who lives in Brooklyn, said that he did not trust Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s move to ease capacity limits for nearly all businesses starting on May 19.

“It’s too fast,” Mr. Perez added.

Mr. Cuomo’s plan says businesses should still abide by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s social distancing guidelines requiring six feet of separation between people.

Businesses that monitor whether everyone inside has been vaccinated or has a negative coronavirus test can allow more people inside, as can restaurants that introduce barriers between tables.

Mr. Cuomo said that the New York City subway, which has been closed nightly to allow for thorough cleaning since last May, will resume operating 24 hours a day on May 17.

About 80,000 municipal workers in the city had already returned to the office when the governor announced the reopening plan.

Mayor Bill de Blasio said on NY1 Monday night that it was time for remote municipal workers to return, even though some may still have concerns about the virus.

Mr. de Blasio said that returning to the office was a necessary step “so we can supercharge this recovery,” adding that the city would continue safety precautions like requiring workers to wear masks in the office.

The mayor said last week that he hoped to reopen the city on July 1, more than a month after the timeline Mr. Cuomo laid out on Monday. The accelerated reopening is the latest in a series of conflicting announcements and political squabbles between the mayor and governor.

“I don’t tend to be surprised by his particular choices lately, let’s put it that way,” Mr. de Blasio said.

Some major employers in the city, like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, will require that their employees return to the office this summer.

Other industries were somewhat taken aback by the announcement. New York City’s theaters and arts venues, for instance, will now face pressure to expedite productions and will have to work around the social distancing requirements.

Broadway is not expected to reopen until September, the Broadway League said in a recent statement. Many performing arts organizations are waiting for clarity about seating rules before putting tickets on sale.

Across the Hudson River, Al Pilone, who has owned the Our Hero sandwich shop in Jersey City, N.J., for 40 years, was reluctant to leap back to normal.

Mr. Pilone, 72, said the shop had been operating through most of the pandemic, but that he was wary about resuming indoor dining, which New Jersey establishments have been allowed to do with limitations since last summer.

He said he was waiting until 70 to 80 percent of the population is vaccinated, because “I don’t want to subject the staff to anybody if I don’t know they’ve vaccinated.”

According to a New York Times database, the average number of new cases reported daily has dropped by 44 percent or more in all three states over the past two weeks, as of Monday, and more than one-third of each state’s population has been fully vaccinated.

Still, experts have warned that in New York, and some other major cities, the slowing pace of vaccinations, the prevalence of undervaccinated areas and the spread of worrisome variants mean that the pandemic is far from over, and that reopening might be premature.

“It just seems poorly thought through, and almost a little reckless,” Dr. Denis Nash, an epidemiologist at the City University of New York, said Monday.

In the nation’s other large cities, plans for reopening have been mixed amid shifting case counts as vaccinations roll out.

In Chicago, where Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced on Tuesday that she plans to fully reopen the city by July 4, officials already have relaxed many restrictions on restaurants, churches, bars and other indoor gatherings, and allowed popular street festivals to resume this summer.

In Los Angeles, restrictions on restaurants were loosened early last month, and in Anaheim, Disneyland reopened on Friday. And that other symbol of California life seems to have returned as well: Traffic is back on the highways.

But in Seattle’s King County, where restaurants and other businesses are still under orders to have a maximum capacity of 50 percent, state leaders are considering a plan to restore more restrictions on Tuesday amid a rise in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations.

Reporting was contributed by Nate Schweber, Kevin Armstrong, Winnie Hu, Luis Ferré-Sadurní Kate Kelly, Julie Bosman, Manny Fernandez and Mike Baker.

A Covid-19 patient receives oxygen in a parked car while waiting for a hospital bed to become available in New Delhi, as a volunteer checks her oxygen saturation level.Credit…Atul Loke for The New York Times

India on Tuesday passed the milestone of 20 million reported coronavirus cases, with many more undetected, according to experts, spurring new calls for a national lockdown.

With those reported numbers, India became the second country after the United States to cross 20 million infections. Although aid has begun to pour in from other countries, hospitals are still unable to help many of those who are critically ill, and families have been left to hunt for much-needed oxygen.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been sharply criticized by many for underplaying the virus earlier this year, and on Tuesday the opposition leader Rahul Gandhi said a national lockdown was desperately needed, calling it “the only option.”

Mr. Gandhi accused the authorities of helping the virus spread. “A crime has been committed against India,” he wrote on Twitter.

Mr. Modi has been reluctant to impose strict nationwide lockdown measures like the ones last spring, which remained in place for months.

While experts say that the lockdown helped reduce the number of cases in the first wave of the pandemic, it also triggered the biggest internal migration since the partition of the country in 1947. Millions of workers fled the cities, dealing a blow to the economy.

The economy had been recovering in recent months, but the current wave of disease has dampened hopes for a full recovery, and Mr. Modi asked states to consider lockdowns as “a last option.” Many states, including some governed by Mr. Modi’s party and its allies, have issued stay-at-home orders.

The regional authorities in Bihar in eastern India on Tuesday ordered a two-week lockdown. The southern state of Kerala also announced restrictions this week. The states of Maharashtra, Delhi and Karnataka already have lockdowns, and many states have weekend and night curfews.

Amid the scramble to try to contain the virus, the Indian Premier League announced on Tuesday that it was suspending all the remaining matches of the season after several players and staff tested positive. The league had drawn intense criticism for going ahead with its matches in cities that have been among the worst hit.

Made up of eight teams, the Indian Premier League is the biggest cricket league in the world.

Since the league’s season started last month, some of the biggest cricket stars have traveled across the country in so-called bubbles and played in empty stadiums. But even the stringent safety protocols couldn’t stop team members from being infected. At least five people on three teams have tested positive. The competition had been scheduled to finish at the end of the month.

“These are difficult times, especially in India and while we have tried to bring in some positivity and cheer, however, it is imperative that the tournament is now suspended and everyone goes back to their families and loved ones in these trying times,” the league said in a statement.

India reported over 368,000 new cases and 3,417 deaths on Monday. It has reported more than 222,000 Covid-19 deaths, although actual figures are most likely much higher.

With aid being shipped from countries like the United States and Britain, there was hope among weary residents that the situation could start easing.

Eight oxygen generator plants from France, each of which can supply 250 hospital beds, were earmarked for six hospitals in Delhi and one each in Haryana and Telangana, states in northern and southern India. One of the generators was installed at the Narayana hospital in Delhi within hours of being delivered, according to The Times of India. Italy has also donated an oxygen generation plant and 20 ventilators.

As criticism has mounted over the delay in dispatching oxygen concentrators and other equipment, the government announced on Monday that it was waiving all duties and taxes on lifesaving equipment and relief material that had been donated. But the authorities have faced calls for more transparency on the deployment of the international aid shipments.

The Indian Red Cross receives all shipments that arrive by air, then hands them over to a government agency in charge of distributing the supplies based on regional requests. The authorities have released a list of hospitals that received aid shipments, but did not specify which equipment was going where.

Keidy Ventura, 17, received a dose of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine in West New York, N.J., last month.Credit…Seth Wenig/Associated Press

Medical experts welcomed the news that the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid vaccine could be authorized by the Food and Drug Administration for use in adolescents ages 12 to 15 by early next week, a major step forward in the U.S. vaccination campaign.

Vaccinating children is key to raising the level of immunity in the population, experts say, and to bringing down the numbers of hospitalizations and deaths. And it could put school administrators, teachers and parents at ease if millions of adolescent students soon become eligible for vaccinations before the next academic year begins in September.

Pfizer’s trial in adolescents showed that its vaccine was at least as effective in them as it was in adults. The F.D.A. is preparing to add an amendment covering that age group to the vaccine’s existing emergency use authorization by early next week, according to federal officials familiar with the agency’s plans who were not authorized to speak publicly.

Dr. Ashish K. Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health and the father of two adolescent daughters, said the approval would be a big moment for families like his.

“It just ends all concerns about being able to have a pretty normal fall for high schoolers,” he said. “It’s great for them, it’s great for schools, for families who have kids in this age range.”

This is big. FDA set to authorize Pfizer for 12-15 year-olds. Soon

About 16 million humans in this age group in US

Getting them vaccinated will help US effort to get high levels of population immunity

I have 2 such humans at home ready to get the shothttps://t.co/aXjYxE8ddL

— Ashish K. Jha, MD, MPH (@ashishkjha) May 3, 2021

But with demand for vaccines falling among adult Americans — and much of the world clamoring for the surplus of American-made vaccines — some experts said the United States should donate excess shots to India and other countries that have had severe outbreaks.

“From an ethical perspective, we should not be prioritizing people like them over people in countries like India,” Dr. Rupali J. Limaye, a Johns Hopkins University researcher who studies vaccine use, said of adolescents.

Dr. Jha said that the United States now had a big enough vaccine supply to both inoculate younger Americans and aid the rest of the world. As of Monday, the United States had about 65 million doses delivered but not administered, including 31 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, according to figures collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

More than 105 million adults in the United States have been fully vaccinated. But the United States is in the middle of a delicate and complex push to reach the 44 percent of adults who have not yet received even one shot.

While adolescents so far appear to be mostly spared from severe Covid-19, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the Biden administration’s top Covid adviser, has repeatedly stressed the importance of expanding vaccination efforts to include them and even younger children. In March, Dr. Fauci said that he expected that high schoolers could be vaccinated by fall and elementary school students by early 2022.

Dr. Richard Malley, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Boston Children’s Hospital, said that immunizing adolescents was worthwhile because they can spread the virus, even if they transmit it at a lower rate than adults.

A group of activists gathered outside City Hall to call for an extension of the moratorium on evictions and for a roll back of the city’s rents for tenants in New York on Monday.Credit…Justin Lane/EPA, via Shutterstock

New York State lawmakers on Monday passed legislation that would extend a statewide moratorium on residential and commercial evictions through Aug. 31.

The extension would provide additional relief for tenants, who have had broad protection from being taken to housing court since the start of the pandemic, just as New York is expected to start distributing $2.4 billion in rental assistance to struggling renters.

That financial aid will provide up to a year’s worth of unpaid rent and utilities, a financial lifesaver for not just tenants but also their landlords, many of whom have endured more than a year of little income.

Together, the moratorium extension and rental assistance comes just as New York State, along with New Jersey and Connecticut, announced plans to lift almost all their pandemic restrictions later this month, offering a chance to boost the economy a year after the region became a center of the pandemic.

The state’s eviction moratorium would extend the state’s previous protections, which expired on May 1, and goes further than the nationwide moratorium, which expires on June 30 and were imposed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The new state eviction order would go into effect once Governor Andrew M. Cuomo signs it into law.

Since the start of the pandemic, nearly 49,000 eviction cases have been filed in New York City Housing Court, the highest number among any American city, according to the Eviction Lab at Princeton University. While most evictions are on pause, cases can still be filed with the courts.

An analysis of court data shows that the areas in New York City hit hardest by the virus — largely Black and Latino neighborhoods in the Bronx and Queens — have had the highest number of eviction cases. On average, renters owe $8,150 in unpaid rent, the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development, a coalition of housing nonprofits.

Tenants cannot be evicted if they can show a financial or health hardship because of the pandemic. Lawmakers said that without an eviction moratorium, hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers, if not more, could be at risk of losing their homes.

In addition to protections for renters, the new legislation in New York would also safeguard smaller landlords who have been unable to pay their mortgages, protecting them from tax lien sales or foreclosures. Commercial tenants with fewer than 50 employees can also file a hardship declaration to receive eviction protections.

global roundup

Prime Minister Scott Morrison of Australia spoke to reporters in Sydney last month.Credit…Joel Carrett/EPA, via Shutterstock

The Australian authorities have faced a growing backlash from human rights groups and opposition politicians after they barred Australian citizens stranded in India from coming home, prompted by India’s record-breaking Covid-19 outbreak.

It is a travel ban with no equivalent in other democratic countries. Introduced on Monday and in place until May 15, it wields a possible punishment of up to five years in prison and a fine equivalent to about $50,000 for anyone trying to return from India. It is believed to be the first time that Australia has made it a criminal offense for its citizens and permanent residents to enter.

Michael Slater, an Australian cricket commentator who was in India covering the sport, said in a tweet on Monday that the ban was a “disgrace” and a form of government neglect. “Blood on your hands PM,” Mr. Slater wrote, referring to Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

After the policy was announced, the Australian Human Rights Commission said it raised “serious human rights concerns,” and Tim Soutphommasane, Australia’s former race discrimination commissioner, wrote in The Guardian that the measure “undermines the very status of citizenship.”

On Tuesday, Mr. Morrison said that it was “highly unlikely” that anyone would be fined or go to jail for breaching the ban.

In an interview with the Australian broadcaster 9News, he said that the likelihood of imprisonment under the rule was “pretty much zero” and defended it as a necessary safety measure.

“I’m not going to fail Australia,” Mr. Morrison said. “I’m going to protect our borders at this time.”

In other news from around the world:

  • The European Union’s drug regulator has begun a rolling review of China’s Sinovac vaccine for Covid-19. The European Medicines Agency said on Tuesday that it would review laboratory and clinical-trial data provided by the company until it could determine that the vaccine’s benefits outweighed its risks and if it was fit to receive authorization. The World Health Organization has also been reviewing Sinovac’s vaccine and one manufactured by the Chinese state-owned company Sinopharm, with decisions expected this month.

  • Tourists traveling to Italy won’t need to quarantine starting after mid-May, Prime Minister Mario Draghi announced on Tuesday, anticipating the introduction of a European Digital Green Pass for travelers. Visitors will be able to enter and travel through the country only if they are fully vaccinated or can show a negative PCR test taken in the 72 hours before traveling to Italy. They will still need to respect restrictions like wearing masks and keeping social distance. “We look forward to welcoming you again soon,” Mr. Draghi said at a news conference.

  • After a major dairy product manufacturer in South Korea was accused of deliberately spreading misinformation that one of its drinks could fend off the coronavirus, the chairman and chief executive tendered their resignations this week. Local news media reported that sales of the Bulgaris yogurt drink and stocks for Namyang Dairy Products both soared after a research director claimed at a conference last month that the drink reduced the chances of contracting the coronavirus by more than 70 percent. Korea’s Ministry of Food and Drug Safety accused the company of illegally spreading misleading information, and the police raided Namyang’s headquarters and factory last week.

President Xi Jinping on a screen in Beijing last month. The Chinese government’s aggressive brand of “wolf warrior” diplomacy has drawn criticism from other countries.Credit…Greg Baker/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Even in China, where propaganda has become increasingly pugnacious, the display was jarring: A photograph of a Chinese rocket poised to blast into space juxtaposed with a cremation pyre in India, which has been overwhelmed by a wave of coronavirus infections.

“Chinese ignition versus Indian ignition,” the title read.

The image drew a backlash from internet users who called it callous, and it was taken down on the same day by the Communist Party-run news service that posted it. But it has lingered as a provocative example of a broader theme running through China’s state-run media, which often celebrates the country’s success in curbing coronavirus infections while highlighting the failings of others.

Chinese leaders have expressed sympathy and offered medical help to India, and the controversy may soon pass. But it has exposed how swaggering Chinese propaganda can collide with Beijing’s efforts to make friends abroad.

“You’ve had this growing tension between internal and external messaging,” said Mareike Ohlberg, a senior fellow in the Asia Program at the German Marshall Fund in Berlin who studies Chinese propaganda. Ms. Ohlberg said of the Chinese authorities, “They have an increasing number of interests internationally, but ultimately what it boils down to is that your primary target audience still lives at home.”

A woman pleaded for oxygen for her husband at a Sikh temple, in Ghaziabad, India, on Monday.Credit…Adnan Abidi/Reuters

Savita Mullapudi, an international development consultant in Pittsburgh, heard the ping of a WhatsApp message on her phone around 4 p.m. on Thursday. The sender was a former colleague who, like her, was an Indian immigrant who had lived in the United States for years. He had an urgent favor to ask.

With India’s health care system overwhelmed by the nation’s unprecedented Covid-19 surge and hospitals running out of lifesaving oxygen, an Indian charity was scrambling to find oxygen concentrators, which filter oxygen from the air. One manufacturer was based in Pittsburgh. Could Ms. Mullapudi visit the site to vet the equipment?

Like many members of the Indian diaspora who have watched and mobilized from afar as a deadly second wave of the coronavirus has swept across India in recent weeks, Ms. Mullapudi, whose parents and in-laws live there, leapt at the opportunity to help. She called the company a few minutes later but was told the earliest date for a visit was May 8 — far too late.

So Ms. Mullapudi, 44, said she did “the next-best thing.” She asked a few local doctor friends to tap their networks in Pittsburgh and across Pennsylvania for their opinions of the company and the quality of its products.

By 9 a.m. the next day, she had received texts and long emails from medical professionals and hospital executives with “rave reviews” of the manufacturer, she recalled, as well as detailed descriptions of the machines’ electricity costs and how long they lasted.

Credit…Aria M. Narasimhan

“The minute I said ‘India Covid,’ I was inundated with responses,” Ms. Mullapudi said. “These networks of people that we all work with or know as friends just churned it around, and that’s what really gave the organization confidence to go ahead.”

Before noon on Friday, the foundation ordered more than 400 oxygen concentrators to be flown to India. Though Ms. Mullapudi described her role as just “one drop in an ocean,” she acknowledged the profound impact of so many small acts of human kindness in the face of such dire challenges.

“Eventually it’s just people helping people,” she said. “That’s the story of hope.”

Pfizer’s vaccine is disproportionately reaching the world’s rich.Credit…Dado Ruvic/Reuters

On Tuesday, Pfizer announced that its Covid vaccine brought in $3.5 billion in revenue in the first three months of this year, nearly a quarter of its total revenue. The vaccine was, far and away, Pfizer’s biggest source of revenue, report Rebecca Robbins and Peter S. Goodman of The New York Times.

The company did not disclose the profits it derived from the vaccine, but it reiterated its previous prediction that its profit margins on the vaccine would be in the high 20 percent range. That would translate into roughly $900 million in pretax vaccine profits in the first quarter.

Pfizer has been widely credited with developing an unproven technology that has saved an untold number of lives.

But the company’s vaccine is disproportionately reaching the world’s rich — an outcome, so far at least, at odds with its chief executive’s pledge to ensure that poorer countries “have the same access as the rest of the world” to a vaccine that is highly effective at preventing Covid-19.

As of mid-April, wealthy countries had secured more than 87 percent of the more than 700 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines dispensed worldwide, while poor countries had received only 0.2 percent, according to the World Health Organization. In wealthy countries, roughly one in four people has received a vaccine. In poor countries, the figure is one in 500.

Foreign domestic workers waited to be tested for the coronavirus in Hong Kong on Sunday.Credit…Jerome Favre/EPA, via Shutterstock

The Hong Kong government on Tuesday backpedaled from a plan to require coronavirus vaccinations for all foreign domestic workers after several days of sharp criticism from foreign diplomatic missions and some residents, who called the requirement discriminatory.

Officials had announced on Friday that the domestic workers — largely low-paid, female migrants from Southeast Asia who clean, cook and perform other household tasks — would have to be vaccinated in order to renew their employment contracts. The government has not issued vaccination requirements for any other group in the city, including other foreign workers.

But officials said it was necessary after two domestic workers recently tested positive for variant strains of the coronavirus. Sophia Chan, the secretary for food and health, said that because domestic workers had a habit of “mingling” with each other during their time off — which, under Hong Kong law, is only one day a week — the entire group of roughly 370,000 workers was considered high-risk.

Hong Kong’s vaccine uptake has been slow, and none of its major outbreaks of the coronavirus have been attributed to domestic workers gathering on their days off.

The announcement provoked an immediate backlash, with critics alleging that the government was making scapegoats of the domestic workers, who make up about 5 percent of Hong Kong’s population of 7.5 million and have long endured poor treatment.

The consuls general of the Philippines and Indonesia — the two main sources of Hong Kong’s foreign domestic workers — said that if there were vaccination requirements, they should be applied to all foreign workers. The Philippines’ outspoken foreign secretary tweeted that the move “smacks of discrimination.”

The government denied that it was discriminating against the workers, but on Tuesday, Carrie Lam, the city’s chief executive, said that in light of the “discussion and attention” that the plan had elicited, she would ask the labor department to “study the specific situation again” and consult foreign consulates. A decision on the plan would be announced later, she said.

Still, the government has said that all foreign domestic workers who have not been fully vaccinated must be tested for the coronavirus by May 9.

Vaccinations have begun at Castello di Rivoli, a contemporary museum near Turin, Italy. The art installation is a wall painting by Claudia Comte, a Swiss artist.Credit…Alessandro Grassani for The New York Times

These days, visitors to the website of one of Italy’s most renowned contemporary art museums are met with a twofold invitation: “Book your visit in advance” and “Book your vaccination.”

The Castello di Rivoli, once a palace owned by the Savoy dynasty, recently became one of several Italian museums to join the country’s vaccine drive, following in the footsteps of cultural institutions throughout Europe.

With the rallying cry of “Art Helps,” the museum near Turin has set aside its third-floor galleries for a vaccination center run by the local health authorities. During their shots, patients can enjoy the wall paintings by Claudia Comte, a Swiss artist.

Comte worked with the composer Egon Elliut to create a soundscape that evokes “a dreamlike feeling,” the artist said, and lulls vaccine recipients as they move from room to room before and after the shot.

“Art has an extraordinarily important effect on well-being,” said Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, the museum’s director. She said that she couldn’t have commissioned “a more perfect” backdrop than Comte’s works for a “space to merge the art of healing the body and the art of healing the soul and the mind,” noting that in Italian the words for “to heal” and “curator” came from the same Latin word, “curo.” In history, she said, some of the first museums were former hospitals.

President Samia Suluhu Hassan of Tanzania has taken a different approach from her virus-denying predecessor, stating that the nation could not ignore the pandemic.Credit…Associated Press

Less than two months after Tanzania’s first female president took office, the government on Monday announced new steps to tackle the pandemic, in what could be the start of a shift for the East African nation, whose former leader had denied the seriousness of the virus before he died in March. His political opponents said he had died from Covid, but his government denied it.

Beginning Tuesday, all travelers arriving in Tanzania are required to present proof of a negative coronavirus test taken in the previous 72 hours and must pay for a rapid test after they land, the health ministry said.

The new president, Samia Suluhu Hassan, who was sworn into office in March, formed a committee in her first weeks in office to advise her on the status of pandemic in the country, and the steps needed to keep people safe.

Ms. Hassan, however, has not spoken publicly about whether she supports vaccinations or whether vaccines are even available in the country. She has also drawn criticism at times for not wearing a mask, including at her own swearing-in ceremony, and for addressing large gatherings of unmasked supporters. But she has worn one during foreign trips.

Under the previous president, John Magufuli, Tanzania stopped sharing data about coronavirus cases or deaths with the World Health Organization in April 2020. Ms. Hassan’s government also has not submitted any data to the World Health Organization on new cases and deaths, and has not said if, or when, Tanzania would change course.

Ms. Hassan has stated, nevertheless, that Tanzania could not ignore the virus.

“We cannot isolate ourselves as an island,” she said in a speech last month.

The new measures announced on Monday appear to be focused on stopping coronavirus at the country’s borders. The health ministry said that foreigners arriving from countries with new Covid-19 variants would be placed in a mandatory 14-day quarantine at a government-designated facility, while returning residents would be permitted to isolate themselves in their homes.

Truck drivers crossing borders will be permitted to stop only at designated locations and could be tested for the coronavirus at random while in Tanzania.

The moves signal a departure from the blithe approach taken by Mr. Magufuli, the former president. He long opposed masks and social distancing measures, promoted unproven treatments as cures, argued that vaccines didn’t work and declared that God had helped Tanzania eradicate the virus.

Two weeks before he died, Mr. Magufuli changed course and told citizens to take precautions against the virus, including wearing masks and observing social distancing.

Cafes and restaurants have reopened in Greece for sit-down service for the first time in nearly six months.Credit…Petros Giannakouris/Associated Press

Greece has reopened to many overseas visitors, including from the United States, jumping ahead of most of its European neighbors in restarting tourism, even as the country’s hospitals remain full and more than three-quarters of Greeks are still unvaccinated.

It’s a big bet, but given the importance of tourism to the Greek economy — the sector accounts for one quarter of the country’s work force and more than 20 percent of gross domestic product — the country’s leaders are eager to roll out the welcome mat.

In doing so, Greece has jumped ahead of other European countries. On Monday, the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, said it would recommend its member states to allow visitors who have been vaccinated. But it remains up to individual countries to set up their own rules.

“We welcome a common position” on restarting tourism in the European Union, Greece’s tourism minister, Harry Theoharis, said in an interview. “All we’re saying is that this has to be forthcoming now. We cannot wait until June.”

Park Avenue between 46th and 59th Streets will go through renovation over the next few years, giving the city a unique opportunity to rethink the famed malls.Credit…Oscar Durand for The New York Times

At a moment when the pandemic has unleashed demand for open space, plans could transform the medians of Park Avenue in Manhattan and restore them to their original splendor.

Among the options New York City is considering: bringing back chairs and benches, expanding the median, eliminating traffic lanes and carving out room for bike and walking paths.

The revamping of Park Avenue is being driven by a major transit project below ground. A cavernous shed used by Metro-North commuter trains that travel in and out of Grand Central Terminal is over a century old and in need of major repairs.

The work requires ripping up nearly a dozen streets along Park Avenue, from East 46th to East 57th Streets, making possible a new vision.

Removal of traffic lanes is likely to elicit backlash from drivers who complain that pedestrian plazas and bike lanes across the city have made it difficult to get around.

But others say the city would be more livable with fewer cars, making streets safer for pedestrians and bicyclists as well as polluting less.

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Complete reported circumstances cross 20 million

Total reported cases cross 20 million

A man riding his bike on a street in Old New Delhi on April 19, 2021 as India’s capital is due to impose a week-long lockdown starting tonight, officials said as the megacity struggles to contain a huge surge in Covid-19 Cases with hospitals running out of beds and having low oxygen supplies.

Sajjad Hussain | AFP | Getty Images

India exceeded 20 million reported cases of Covid-19 on Tuesday.

According to the Ministry of Health, 357,229 new cases were reported within 24 hours, bringing the total to 20.28 million.

India’s first cases were discovered in late January last year, and a total of 10 million infections went undetected as of December, according to Johns Hopkins University. However, the next 10 million cases were reported in just under five months, mostly in April.

At least 222,408 people have died from the disease to date, but that number is likely lower than the actual death toll. Media reports suggest that crematoriums and burial grounds are overflowing with bodies of people who have died of Covid-19.

“The pandemic has now hit the small towns and villages and we are now quite concerned about how much devastation it will cause in areas where health systems are not well developed enough to provide support, even if some of the big ones . ” Metro has problems with case load from hospitals, “K. Srinath Reddy, president of the Public Health Foundation of India, told CNBC’s Capital Connection on Monday.

Some states are banned

During the first wave last year, India imposed a strict national lockdown between late March and May that hampered the country’s growth trajectory and left millions of people without a source of income.

While the central government appears unwilling to impose a second nationwide lockdown, several states have tightened restrictions in recent weeks, including local lockdowns and curfews. These include Maharashtra, India’s hardest hit state, Delhi, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Karnataka and others.

Some health experts have suggested that India needs a National Home Order and Emergency Medical Declaration to meet current health needs.

The Indian health system has been overwhelmed by the surge in cases due to a lack of hospital beds, oxygen supplies and drugs to treat patients.

Public Health Foundation’s Reddy told CNBC India needs a two-pronged approach to tackling the second wave. First, efforts to vaccinate more than 1.3 billion people must continue.

India is facing vaccine shortages, at least in the short term, and just over 2% of the population have received both doses. From May, India will open vaccinations for people over the age of 18.

Second, India needs a “very strong” containment strategy to reduce the spread.

We turned our backs on the virus, but the virus hasn’t turned our backs on us. And now we’re paying the price.

K. Srinath Reddy

President of the Public Health Foundation of India

“What we need to do right now is to reduce person-to-person transmission by making sure there are no large crowds,” Reddy said, adding that India should not allow more than four people to be in public places and to congregate in areas with high crowds, positivity rates should be placed in full containment mode.

He added that India needs to ensure adequate social support for people recovering from milder symptoms at home.

How did India get here?

India’s second wave started sometime in February when cases started to pick up again. Previously, the country reported an average of 10,000 infections a day. In April there was a steep spike in the curve with nearly 7 million reported cases.

The Indian government has been criticized for gathering large crowds for religious festivals and election campaigns earlier this year. These mass gatherings likely turned into super-spreader events.

Scientists say the increase in cases is also partly due to variants of the coronavirus currently circulating in India. This includes a local variant called B.1.617, which has several sublines with slightly different characteristic mutations.

Reddy stated that India, in its desire to get the economy back on its feet, ignored the looming threat of a second wave.

“I think by early January, when the daily case counts, the daily deaths count, and test positivity rates are falling, there has been a widespread impression that we have ended the pandemic forever,” he said, adding, “We had Turned our backs on the virus, but the virus hasn’t turned our backs. And now we’re paying the price. “

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UNICEF chief urges the world to assist India ‘now’ as Covid instances soar

UNICEF chief urges the world to help India ‘now’ as Covid cases soar

UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore told CNBC that she was “very concerned” about the current Covid-19 crisis in India and urged the world to send urgent aid to the country.

During World Immunization Week, Fore also said it was a “race to save lives” through vaccination, especially in some of the world’s poorest countries with “very fragile” health systems.

India is in the midst of a deadly second wave of the virus. On Saturday, daily coronavirus cases in the country went over 400,000 for the first time; The total number of cases in India has now exceeded 19 million and more than 215,000 people have died of Covid in the country.

“It is worrying for a number of reasons. First, is it a forerunner of what could happen in other countries, particularly in African countries, with much weaker health systems?” Fore said last week.

“It’s worrying because their healthcare system is overwhelmed. It’s the need for oxygen and therapeutics that we just haven’t seen in this pandemic in another country of this magnitude.”

People wearing face masks wait to receive a vaccine against coronavirus disease (COVID-19) at a vaccination center in Mumbai, India, on April 26, 2021.

Niharika Kulkarni | Reuters

Fore said both UNICEF and COVAX’s global immunization program had sent aid to the country, and help from other nations made a big difference. “But it is not enough because India is part of our supply chain. So this is where we source a lot of the vaccines and we now have to help India as the world,” she added.

UNICEF is the United Nations agency responsible for helping children around the world.

“Help us now”

As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, the world has stopped paying attention to other routine vaccinations, warned Fore. Around 60 routine vaccination campaigns have been halted around the world as countries focus on fighting the pandemic.

To address these challenges while helping recovery from the global pandemic, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance and other partners are supporting a global strategy known as the Immunization Agenda 2030. The initiative aims to save 50 million lives on “an ambitious new global strategy to maximize the life-saving effects of vaccines through stronger immunization systems”.

Fore said around half of the world’s vaccinations come from routine UNICEF vaccinations for children.

“Polio, measles, yellow fever … all of these are vaccines that children need, but they are also vaccines that adults need. So we are asking families to come to primary health clinics in their own communities, bring in and have their children If you are vaccinated against these childhood diseases, you will also get a Covid vaccine and we can save 50 million lives, “she said.

When asked if she had a message for world leaders today, Fore said, “Well, help us now.”

Henrietta H. Fore, Managing Director of UNICEF on July 05, 2018 in BERLIN, GERMANY.

Ute Grabowsky / Photo library via Getty Images

“We are concerned that the world is ignoring things like routine vaccinations. We cannot lose this population, our children, to an epidemic while we worry about Covid as a pandemic for our world. Please help us now,” she said added.

Despite the ongoing global pandemic, Fore said it was time to focus on such initiatives.

“People are now realizing that vaccines are important, that vaccines work, that they save lives, and right now we are in a race to save lives,” she said.

“So if we can save them through a routine vaccination program that targets everyone in a society, both routine vaccinations and Covid will help.”

Global investment

However, Fore told CNBC that it can be difficult to focus global investments on supporting the programs.

“The Covax facility called for $ 23 billion, which sounds like a huge amount, but when you look at global GDP and opportunities, it’s a very small number,” she said.

“So they realize that we as a world can afford this, and if we could bring out vaccines for children and adults in the years to come, we would be a world that would have more justice, more fairness and better health across the board.”