Tag: Covid19

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An empty classroom at Govalle Elementary School in Austin, Texas, in December.Credit…Sergio Flores for The New York Times

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday urged that K-12 schools be reopened and offered a comprehensive science-based plan for doing so speedily, an effort to resolve an urgent debate roiling in communities across the nation.

The new guidelines highlight the growing body of evidence that schools can openly safely if they put in effect layered mitigation measures. The agency said that even when students lived in communities with high transmission rates, elementary students could receive at least some in-person instruction safely — a finding echoed by an independent survey of 175 pediatric disease experts conducted by The Times.

Middle and high school students, the agency said, could attend school safely at most lower levels of community transmission — or even at higher levels, if schools put into effect weekly testing of staff and students to identify asymptomatic infections.

Among the pediatric experts surveyed by The Times, the point of most agreement was requiring masks for everyone: students, teachers, administrators and other staff. All respondents said universal masking was important, and many said it was a simple solution that made the need for other preconditions to opening less essential.

“C.D.C.’s operational strategy is grounded in science and the best available evidence,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the C.D.C., said on Friday in a call with reporters.

The guidelines arrive in the middle of a debate that is already highly fraught. Some parents whose schools remain closed are becoming increasingly frustrated, and public school enrollment has declined in many districts across the country.

Education and civil rights leaders are despairing about the harms being done to children who have not been in classrooms for nearly a year. And many of the pediatric health experts also expressed deep concern about other risks to students of staying home, including depression, hunger, anxiety, isolation and learning loss.

“Children’s learning and emotional and, in some cases, physical health is being severely impacted by being out of school,” said Dr. Lisa Abuogi, a pediatric emergency medicine physician at the University of Colorado, expressing her personal view. “I spend part of my clinical time in the E.R., and the amount of mental distress we are seeing in children related to schools is off the charts.”

The Biden administration has made a high priority of returning children to classrooms, and the new recommendations try to carve a middle ground between school officials as well as some parents who are eager to see a resumption of in-person learning and powerful teachers’ unions resisting a return to school settings that they regard as unsafe amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Whether the guidelines will persuade powerful teachers’ unions — allies of Mr. Biden — to support teachers returning to classrooms remains to be seen. In advice that may be disappointing to some unions, the document states that, while teachers should be vaccinated as quickly as possible, teachers do not need to be vaccinated before schools can reopen.

“I completely understand teachers’ and other school employees’ fear about returning to school, but there are now many well-conducted scientific studies showing that it is safe for schools to reopen with appropriate precautions, even without vaccination,” said Dr. Rebecca Same, an assistant professor in pediatric infectious disease at Washington University in St. Louis. “They are much more likely to get infected from the outside community and from family members than from school contacts.”

The C.D.C. document embraces the often-repeated mantra that schools should be the last settings to close in a community and the first to reopen. But that has been followed nowhere in the country, and these guidelines have no power to force communities where transmission remains high to take steps, such as closing nonessential businesses, to decrease it.

As a result, some teachers’ unions will continue to argue that the overall environment remains unsafe to return to in-person classrooms.

A majority of districts in the country are offering at least some in-person learning, and about half of the nation’s students are learning in classrooms. But there are stark disparities in who has access to in-person instruction, with urban districts, which serve mostly poor, nonwhite children, more likely to be closed than nonurban ones.

*Includes many deaths from unspecified days

U.S. vaccinations ›

Moderna currently supplies about half of the nation’s vaccine stock. Credit…Jim Wilson/The New York Times

The Food and Drug Administration has informed the drugmaker Moderna that it can put up to 40 percent more coronavirus vaccine into each of its vials, a simple and potentially rapid way to bolster strained supplies, according to people familiar with the company’s operations.

While federal officials want Moderna to submit more data showing the switch would not compromise vaccine quality, the continuing discussions are a hopeful sign that the nation’s vaccine stock could increase faster than expected, simply by allowing the company to load up to 14 doses in each vial instead of 10.

Moderna currently supplies about half of the nation’s vaccine stock. A 14-dose vial load could increase the nation’s vaccine supply by as much as 20 percent at a time when governors are clamoring for more vaccine and more contagious variants of the coronavirus are believed to be spreading quickly.

Two people familiar with Moderna’s manufacturing, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said retooling the company’s production lines to accommodate the change could conceivably be done in fewer than 10 weeks, or before the end of April. That is because while the amount of liquid in each vial would change, the vials themselves would remain the same size, so the production process would not drastically change.

“It would be a great step forward,” said Dr. Moncef Slaoui, who served as the scientific leader of the Trump administration’s vaccine development program. “I think it will have an impact in the short term.”

In a recent email response to questions about the company’s discussions with regulators, Stéphane Bancel, the chief executive officer of Moderna, wrote, “No comment.” Ray Jordan, the company’s spokesman, said talks with federal officials were continuing.

Outreach workers try to sign up homeless people to go to shelters at the Woodlawn subway station in The Bronx.Credit…Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

Advocates for homeless people in New York City sued the Metropolitan Transportation Authority on Friday over a series of Covid-19 rules that the suit says unfairly target people who shelter in the city’s subways.

The rules prohibit people from staying in a subway station for more than an hour or after a train is taken out of service, and ban carts more than 30 inches long or wide. They were enacted on an emergency basis last April and made permanent in September.

Last spring, the pandemic and shutdowns emptied the subways of regular commuters, and dozens of transit workers died of the coronavirus. Images of trains half-filled with sleeping homeless people accompanied by the sprawl of their belongings became a symbol of a city in crisis and helped prompt Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to shut down the system every night for cleaning.

The rules’ stated purposes were to “safeguard public health and safety,” help first responders get to work and “maintain social distancing.” But the rules exempt so many activities from the one-hour limit — including public speaking, campaigning, leafleting, artistic performances and collecting money for religious or political causes — as to make it “clearly apparent” that their real purpose is to exclude homeless people from the subways, the suit says.

The lawsuit was filed by the Urban Justice Center’s Safety Net Project on behalf of Picture the Homeless and a homeless man named Barry Simon.

Mr. Simon had been ordered out by the police “dozens of times” while resting in a station and threatened with arrest on several occasions, according to the lawsuit. Mr. Simon, 54, was ejected from stations at least 10 times because the cart he wheels his possessions in was too big, the suit says.

Because those experiencing homelessness in New York City are disproportionately Black and Latino and people living with disabilities, the rules violate state human and civil rights law, the suit says. It also says that the rules were enacted without proper review.

Abbey Collins, a spokeswoman for the M.T.A., said in a statement: “We are reviewing the lawsuit that we first learned of in the press. We will vigorously defend the regulations in court that were put in place to protect the health and safety of customers and employees in the midst of a global pandemic — period.”

Homeless people’s use of the subways as de facto shelters, long a fact of life in New York, has become a hot-button issue. Many homeless people now avoid the city’s barracks-style group shelters for fear of contracting the coronavirus. While the city is adding hundreds of private rooms in hotels to the shelter system, the contested rules and the nightly shutdown have left some people to choose between sleeping outdoors in winter and taking their chances in the group shelters.

Calls have grown in recent days to end the nightly shutdown.

Rosario Sabio, 77, receiving a coronavirus vaccine in San Diego last month.Credit…Ariana Drehsler for The New York Times

Although vaccines for the coronavirus were developed and approved in record time, distribution efforts in the United States and elsewhere have been plagued with problems.

The rollout, which has largely prioritized older people and health care workers, has faced difficulties, delays and confusion as people try to figure out whether their state is now allowing them to get shots, how to sign up and where to go.

But American health officials say that while current vaccine supply levels still limit how many doses they can administer, states are becoming more efficient at immunizing people as shipments arrive.

On Jan. 1, just a quarter of Covid-19 vaccine doses delivered across the United States had been used. As of Thursday, that figure had risen to 68 percent. A handful of states have administered more than 80 percent of the doses they have received, and even states with slower vaccine uptake are making strides.

“We are in a much better place now,” said Claire Hannan, the executive director of the Association of Immunization Managers.

The Biden administration says it has secured enough vaccine to inoculate every American adult. On Thursday, officials said that they had arranged to get 200 million more doses of vaccine by the end of summer, which amounts to a 50 percent increase. That should be enough vaccine to cover 300 million people — enough for all adults in the country, with tens of millions of doses to spare. And Friday was the start of a new federal effort to deliver doses directly to grocery store pharmacies and drugstores.

But President Biden warned that logistical hurdles would most likely mean that many Americans will still not have been vaccinated by the end of the summer.

He also expressed open frustration with the former administration. “It was a big mess,” he said on Thursday. “It’s going to take time to fix, to be blunt with you.”

The average number of shots administered daily has been increasing steadily since late December. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday reported more than two million new vaccinations, bringing the latest seven-day average to about 1.66 million a day. About 35.8 million people have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, and about 12.1 million of them have also received the second dose, according to the C.D.C.

But many places are still plagued by shortages, as demand far outpaces supply and health care providers struggle to predict how many doses they might receive.

Some countries are faring far worse. While wealthier countries have been able to make deals with drug manufacturers to secure enough vaccine to ensure their citizens can be vaccinated, poorer countries have been not, leaving many unprotected — an imbalance that is expected to have global ripple effects.

The leaders of the World Health Organization and the United Nations agency for children, Unicef, warned in a joint statement this week that the vast chasm of inequality in the global vaccine rollout will “cost lives and livelihoods, give the virus further opportunity to mutate and evade vaccines and will undermine a global economic recovery.”

Of the 128 million vaccine doses administered globally, more than three quarters were in just 10 countries, while nearly 130 other countries are yet to administer a single dose, the statement said.

The French National Authority for Health has recommended a single dose of the vaccine for people who have already been infected with Covid and have had the results confirmed by a P.C.R. or antigen test.Credit…Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times

France’s top health authority said Friday that one dose of the coronavirus vaccine, rather than two, would be sufficient for most people who have recovered from Covid-19.

The Pfizer-BioNTech, AstraZeneca and Moderna vaccines — all of which are approved for use in the European Union — are meant to be injected in two doses spaced a few weeks apart.

But most people who have been infected with the coronavirus have already developed a strong immune response. In those cases, the French National Authority for Health said in a news release, a single shot could suffice, essentially serving as a booster.

It said the shot should be administered at least three months — and ideally closer to six months — after a Covid-19 infection.

While Britain and a number of other countries are delaying second doses to prioritize getting first doses to more people, the French announcement appeared to be the first to recommend only a single dose for those who have had the virus.

The independent body’s recommendation came with exceptions for people with compromised immune systems. It added that people who contract Covid-19 shortly after getting a single dose of the vaccine should wait three to six months before getting a second dose.

By contrast, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that people who become infected in the days after their first dose can get their second dose after they recover, but that they can also choose to delay receiving the second dose.

According to a study posted online this month, which was not peer reviewed, researchers at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York found that Covid survivors had far higher antibody levels after both the first and second doses of the vaccine and might need only one shot. But some scientists have urged caution, warning that more data was needed to prove that those antibodies could effectively stop the virus from replicating.

The pandemic has devastated businesses in San Francisco’s Chinatown, where banquet halls are closed and few shoppers are in the mood to buy Lunar New Year decorations.Credit…Jim Wilson/The New York Times

SAN FRANCISCO — The fish and crab tanks at the back of the wood-paneled restaurant are empty, and chairs are stacked here and there. Bill Lee, the owner of the Far East Café in San Francisco’s Chinatown, surveyed the empty second-floor banquet hall that during any other Lunar New Year would be packed with hundreds of customers.

“I keep losing money,” Mr. Lee said of his century-old restaurant, a former Cantonese social club and speakeasy. “If it continues this way, I’d rather to close down.”

As the Year of the Ox began on Friday, there were only muted attempts to celebrate. The pandemic has hit San Francisco’s Chinatown, America’s oldest and largest, particularly hard. The lack of tourists, a spate of violent attacks and robberies in Chinese neighborhoods across the Bay Area, and pandemic-related racism against Asian-Americans have combined to exacerbate the economic pain felt in Chinatown.

From a strictly medical perspective, the neighborhood has fared better than many other parts of the country, heading off a mass outbreak early. And mask wearing was ubiquitous this week on the streets of the densely packed neighborhood, where shoppers strolled through the handful of shops selling Lunar New Year decorations.

But a few blocks away, in a park where older residents gathered to play board games, Will Lex Ham, a New York-based actor, was helping lead a neighborhood safety patrol, handing out whistles and a Chinese-language pamphlet titled “How to Report a Hate Crime.”

“During the Lunar New Year there is an assumption that the elderly have money on them,” Mr. Ham said.

He flew in from New York on Wednesday after seeing video on social media that has rocketed around the world of attacks on Asian-Americans in Oakland and San Francisco, including the killing of Vicha Ratanapakdee, an 84-year-old Thai man who was shoved to the ground last month and died of his injuries.

“So often, people in the community don’t speak out when violence happens to them for fear of repercussions and a sense that nothing ever comes of it,” Mr. Ham said. “This is our time to speak out.”

Across the Bay, Carl Chan, the president of the Oakland Chinatown Chamber of Commerce, has tallied more than 20 assaults in the area over the past two weeks. Many of them were not reported, Mr. Chan said, partly because it can take hours for police officers to arrive at the scene.

“Our seniors are afraid to walk their own streets,” Mr. Chan said.

David Lee, a political science lecturer at San Francisco State University who is an expert on the history of the Chinatowns in Oakland and San Francisco, said these neighborhoods were among the first in the nation to feel the effects of the pandemic last year.

Last February, before any lockdowns, tourists had deserted San Francisco’s Chinatown, prompting Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, whose district includes Chinatown, to visit in a show of support.

Mr. Lee says that many of the shops that are boarded up and padlocked in San Francisco’s Chinatown may not return. But the neighborhood, he says, has survived fires, an emergence of the bubonic plague at the turn of the 20th century and decades of racism.

“We will not let Chinatown die,” Mr. Lee said. “It is too important to the cultural fabric of the people of San Francisco. But is Chinatown going to look the way it did before the pandemic? That is the question I have.”

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‘We Need a Circuit Breaker’: Victoria Enters Lockdown

After multiple new cases of coronavirus were identified in Victoria, Australia, officials placed the region under lockdown, despite the tennis tournament currently taking place there.

I am sad to have to report it is the advice to me that we must assume that there are further cases in the community than we have positive results for, and that it is moving at a velocity that has not been seen anywhere in our country over the course of these last 12 months. Because this is so infectious and is moving so fast, we need a circuit breaker. Therefore, I’m announcing on advice from the chief health officer and after a meeting of relevant cabinet committees and the full cabinet, that from 11:59 p.m. tonight, Victoria, all of Victoria, will go to Stage 4. These restrictions are all about making sure that we respond appropriately to the fastest-moving, most infectious strain of coronavirus that we have seen. I know this is not the news that Victorians want to hear today. I know it’s not the place that we want it to be in. However, we’ve all given so much. We’ve all done so much.

After multiple new cases of coronavirus were identified in Victoria, Australia, officials placed the region under lockdown, despite the tennis tournament currently taking place there.CreditCredit…Darrian Traynor/Getty Images

More than six million people in Victoria, Australia, will enter into a snap lockdown for five days in response to a coronavirus outbreak at a quarantine hotel.

The order came as the Australian Open was being held in Melbourne, Victoria’s capital, but the tennis tournament will continue — without spectators — the authorities said on Friday.

Victorians will be allowed to leave home only for essential shopping, work, exercise and caregiving, and must wear masks whenever they leave home.

But while sports and entertainment venues will be shut down, professional athletes like tennis players will be classified as “essential workers” and allowed to continue their matches.

“There are no fans; there’s no crowds. These people are essentially at their workplace,” Daniel Andrews, the premier of Victoria, told reporters on Friday. “It’s not like the only people that are at work are supermarket workers.”

Tennis Australia said in a statement that it would notify all ticket holders of the changes and continue “to work with the government to ensure the health and safety of everyone.”

The lockdown, which goes into effect at 11:59 p.m. on Friday, comes after an outbreak at a Holiday Inn near the Melbourne Airport that was being used to house returned travelers.

By Friday, 13 people linked to the hotel had tested positive with the new virus variant that first emerged in Britain. In the past 24 hours, five new cases have been identified, bringing the state’s total number of cases to 19.

Describing the lockdown as a “circuit breaker,” the authorities said it was critical to stopping the spread of the variant, which is highly infectious and has outwitted contact tracers before they can contain outbreaks. Similar snap lockdowns in Perth and Brisbane in recent months were successful in quashing infections.

“The game has changed,” Mr. Andrews said. “This is not the 2020 virus.”

He said he hoped Victorians, who endured among the longest lockdowns in the world last year, would work together to prevent the state from entering a third wave of the coronavirus. “We will be able to smother this,” he said.

The order had ripple effects in Australia’s other states, which all announced travel restrictions with Victoria. International flights, excluding freight, into Melbourne were also canceled.

In other global developments:

• Germany will close its border to the Czech Republic and the Austrian state of Tyrol starting Sunday as it tries to protect against new variants of the virus. As part of that effort, Germany this week extended its national lockdown for another month.

• Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced new travel restrictions on Friday. Beginning Feb. 22, all travelers by both land and air must show proof of a negative virus test taken within 72 hours before arrival in the country and they will be given another test when they arrive at the border. Air travelers will also be required to book a three-night stay in a government-authorized hotel at their own expense to quarantine while they await test results. All travelers must complete a full 14-day quarantine or risk heavy fines and possible jail time.

  “These are some of the strongest restrictions in the world. But with new variants emerging, we’re stepping them up even further,” Trudeau said during a news conference Friday.

• New Zealand will receive the first batch of its 1.5-million-dose order of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine next week and expects to begin vaccinating its border workers on Feb. 20, ahead of schedule, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Friday. The country, which has all but eliminated local transmission of the virus, has additional purchase agreements with Janssen Pharmaceutica, Novavax and AstraZeneca, and expects to start vaccinating its wider population in the second quarter of this year, Ms. Ardern said.

Funeral proceedings in Cape Town, South Africa, in June of last year. The World Health Organization said that deaths across the African continent had risen by 40 percent in the last month. Credit…Marco Longari/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

NAIROBI — The number of people dying from the coronavirus has swelled in more than half of the countries in Africa in the past month, the World Health Organization has warned, linking the rise to overwhelmed hospitals and health workers.

“The increasing deaths from Covid-19 we are seeing are tragic, but are also disturbing warning signs that health workers and health systems in Africa are dangerously overstretched,” said Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, the W.H.O.’s regional director for Africa. “This grim milestone must refocus everyone on stamping out the virus.”

The global health body said on Thursday said that deaths had increased in 32 of the continent’s 55 countries in the last month, pushing the overall African death toll near 100,000. Mortalities rose overall by 40 percent, the W.H.O. said, with more than 22,300 deaths recorded in the last 28 days compared with 16,000 deaths in the 28 days preceding that.

The rise in deaths comes as the continent faces a second deadlier wave of the virus, the emergence of new variants that vaccines may not fight effectively — particularly in hard-hit South Africa — and growing concerns around inequalities in distributing vaccines.

To forestall more deaths, the W.H.O. directed governments to ramp up investments in health care systems and to enforce measures including mask wearing, washing hands and social distancing.

Dr. Moeti also encouraged Africans to “go out and get vaccinated when a vaccine becomes available in your country.”

Her statement came just a week after she urged Tanzania’s government to start sharing data on its Covid-19 situation and begin preparations for a vaccination campaign. The East African nation has not submitted information about coronavirus cases to the W.H.O. since last April. The country’s president, John Magufuli, insists that Tanzania is coronavirus free and argues that “vaccines don’t work.”

In a leaked phone call, Melissa DeRosa, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s top aide, told lawmakers that “basically, we froze.”Credit…Justin Lane/EPA, via Shutterstock

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and his top aides were facing new allegations on Friday that they covered up the scope of the coronavirus death toll in the state’s nursing homes, after admissions that they withheld data in an effort to forestall potential investigations into state misconduct.

The latest revelations came in the wake of private remarks by the governor’s top aide, Melissa DeRosa, and a cascading series of reports and court orders that have nearly doubled the state’s official toll of nursing home deaths in the last two weeks.

The disclosures have left Mr. Cuomo, a third-term Democrat, scrambling to contain the political fallout.

In a conversation reported on by the New York Post, Ms. DeRosa told a group of top lawmakers on Wednesday during a call to address the nursing home situation that “basically, we froze,” after being asked last summer for information by the Trump administration’s Department of Justice.

At the time, the governor’s office was simultaneously facing requests from the State Legislature for similar information.

“We were in a position where we weren’t sure if what we were going to give to the Department of Justice, or what we give to you guys, and what we start saying, was going to be used against us and we weren’t sure if there was going to be an investigation,” Ms. DeRosa told lawmakers, according to a partial transcript obtained by The New York Times.

The news of Ms. DeRosa’s remarks sparked a flurry of angry denunciations from both Democrats and Republicans. Early on Friday, Ms. DeRosa sought to clarify the context for her remarks, saying she was trying to explain that “we needed to temporarily set aside the Legislature’s request to deal with the federal request first.”

“We informed the houses of this at the time,” she said, referring to the upper and lower chambers of the Legislature.

Inoculations at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass.Credit…Joseph Prezioso/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

This week, Massachusetts launched a first-in-the-nation experiment, offering vaccinations to younger people who accompany people who are 75 and older to mass vaccination sites.

The plan was intended to ease access problems for older people, who have struggled to book online appointments and travel to sports stadiums. Right away, it met with criticism from state legislators and some public health experts, who said it could result in scarce doses going to young, healthy people.

It also gave rise to an unusual online market, as entrepreneurial Massachusetts residents sought to forge caregiving relationships at top speed.

“I have a great driving record and a very clean Toyota Camry,” said one person in an advertisement on Craigslist. “I can pay $100 cash as well. I am a friendly conversationalist and will allow you to choose the music and show me all the pictures of your grandkids!”

Other inquiries were made more delicately.

At a Thursday news conference, Gov. Charlie Baker acknowledged that some were approaching the program opportunistically, and warned seniors to be cautious about offers of help from strangers.

“You should only reach out to somebody that you know or trust to bring you as your companion, whether that’s a child, a companion, a spouse, a neighbor or a caregiver,” he said. “Don’t take calls or offers from people you don’t know well or trust, and never share your personal information with anyone.”

Public health experts offered divergent opinions on the companion program, a concept that was not widely discussed before it was rolled out.

Andrew Lover, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said the plan would accelerate vaccinations by providing an “extra push” for older people who live alone.

“There’s definitely potential for people to game the system, but my assumption is it’s a reasonably small number,” he said. “The more people we can get vaccinated the better, in the grand scheme of public health, and we are more than happy to accept that small problematic fraction.”

Others worried that the policy allows young, healthy people doses that are in short supply.

VideoOhio officials said on Thursday they discovered about 4,000 overlooked Covid-19 deaths that occurred over the past several months after the state’s Health Department said the deaths had not been properly merged between the internal death certificate database and the federal database.CreditCredit…Doral Chenoweth/The Columbus Dispatch, via Associated Press

Ohio health officials said they had overlooked about 4,000 deaths that occurred over the past several months and would begin reporting them to the public this week. The announcement came just as deaths nationwide had started to ebb after peaking in mid-January.

The first 650 or so of Ohio’s older deaths were reported Thursday, accounting for about 17 percent of all coronavirus deaths announced nationwide that day. The backlog in Ohio was expected to inflate the national death average in the coming days.

“You’ll see a jump today, tomorrow, maybe the next day,” Gov. Mike DeWine said at a news conference on Thursday. “We’re not sure exactly how many days it’s going to take, but you’re going to see a distorted number.”

During a routine employee training event, Ohio health officials discovered that thousands of deaths, some of which dated back to October, had not been properly merged between one reporting system and another, according to the state’s Department of Health. “This was a failure of reconciliation not taking place,” Mr. DeWine said, “so we’re getting that straightened out.”

The unreported deaths represent a significant portion of the state total. Through Thursday, about 12,500 deaths had been announced statewide over the course of the pandemic.

Ohio is not the first state to report a major backlog of cases or deaths. Earlier this month, Indiana added more than 1,500 deaths to its total after reviewing death certificates. In June, New York City reported hundreds of deaths from unspecified dates. And in September, Texas reported thousands of backlogged cases, causing a one-day spike.

A laboratory assistant with a tube of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine in Budapest.Credit…Matyas Borsos/via Reuters

Hungary has begun administering the Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine, sidestepping the European Medicines Agency to become the first European Union member state to use the vaccine developed by the Gamaleya Research Institute, part of Russia’s Ministry of Health.

On Friday, an official at Honved Hospital in Budapest confirmed in a telephone interview that it had begun administering the vaccine.

Cecilia Muller, Hungary’s chief medical officer and head of the government’s coronavirus task force, had called on 560 general practitioners in Budapest on Tuesday to find five people each to receive the Sputnik V vaccine. The initial 2,800 doses available are what remain from a 6,000-dose batch that arrived for testing in December.

The government said it would receive two million doses of Sputnik V from Russia over the next three months. Hungary had said in November that it was in talks with the Russian manufacturer about importing, and even manufacturing, the Sputnik V vaccine.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban has cited Serbia, which has a sizable ethnic Hungarian population, as an example of a country whose vaccination strategy includes the Russian Sputnik and Chinese Sinopharm vaccines.

In a report this month in the respected British medical journal The Lancet, late-stage trial results showed that the Sputnik V vaccine was safe and highly effective. The Sinopharm vaccine has been approved for use in China, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, but the company has yet to publish detailed results of its Phase 3 trial.

The Hungarian government’s approach to vaccine procurement and approval has raised alarm in the country’s medical community.

Last month, its Chamber of Physicians released a statement calling on the government and regulators to approve vaccines only after transparently following drug safety rules and testing in accordance with European Medicines Agency standards. They cited a need to strengthen the public’s confidence in vaccines and to ensure that doctors can administer the inoculations “in good conscience.”

Dr. Ferenc Falus, Hungary’s former chief medical officer, said Mr. Orban’s push to acquire vaccines from as many sources as possible raised serious concern.

“The responsibility of the National Center for Public Health in this respect is huge,” Dr. Falus said, “especially concerning how they are evaluating the batches that have arrived in Hungary. We simply do not know the origins of these batches.”

He noted that the emergence of new virus variants complicates matters further. The variant that was first detected in Britain has surfaced in Hungary, Hungarian officials said.

“Hungary is moving against the E.U.,” Dr. Falus said, urging regulators to wait for the vaccines to be approved by the European Medicines Agency and cooperate with the European Union on procuring and distributing tested vaccines.

A livery cab driver waiting in a recovery area after getting his first vaccine dose in the Bronx last month.Credit…James Estrin/The New York Times

More than 34 million Americans have received Covid vaccines, but the much-touted system that the government designed to monitor any dangerous reactions won’t be capable of analyzing safety data for weeks or months, according to numerous federal health officials.

For now, federal regulators are counting on a patchwork of existing programs that they acknowledge are inadequate because of small sample sizes, missing critical data or other problems.

Clinical trials have shown both of the vaccines authorized in the United States — Pfizer-BioNTech’s and Moderna’s — to be highly protective against the coronavirus and safe. But even the best trials have limited ability to detect adverse reactions that are rare, that occur only in certain population groups or that happen beyond the trials’ three-month period.

In interviews, F.D.A. officials acknowledged that a promised monitoring system, formally called the Biologics Evaluation Safety Initiative but more widely known as BEST, is still in development. They expect it to start analyzing vaccine safety data soon, but probably not for another month or two.

The government is now relying mostly on a 30-year-old monitoring system that relies on self-reporting from patients and health care providers, known as the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS, and a smartphone app that people who get vaccinated can download and use to report problems.

So far, few serious problems have been reported through these channels and no deaths have conclusively been linked to the vaccines. There have been a few severe allergic reactions, but they are treatable and considered rare. To date, the rate at which the potentially fatal reaction called anaphylaxis has occurred — 4.7 cases in every million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, and 2.5 cases per million for Moderna’s — are in line with the rates of other widely used vaccines.

Bruising and bleeding caused by lowered platelet counts have also been reported, though that could be coincidental. In total, 9,000 adverse events were reported, with 979 serious and the rest classified as nonserious, according to the most recent C.D.C. report available.

In interviews, public health experts, including current and former officials at the F.D.A. and the C.D.C., said that funding shortages, turf wars and bureaucratic hurdles had slowed BEST’s progress.

But even BEST will suffer from a data problem that hinders existing systems. Because the vaccines are free, there is a dearth of health insurance claims to show who got which vaccine and when — information crucial to tracking vaccine safety.

Dining in plastic igloos outside an East Village restaurant in Manhattan in November. Indoor dining has been banned in New York City since mid-December.Credit…Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

Indoor dining is restarting in New York City at 25 percent capacity on Friday, more than a month after Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo banned it and just in time for Valentine’s Day weekend. (Outside the five boroughs, indoor dining is available at 50 percent capacity.)

Mr. Cuomo originally said the city’s restaurants could open their dining rooms on Sunday, but later bumped up the date by two days.

Statewide, restaurants are still required to close by 10 p.m.

New York is one of several states that are loosening restrictions aimed at containing the coronavirus. On Thursday, Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio lifted a statewide late-night curfew after the number of hospitalizations continued to decline.

The Ohio curfew, first declared in November, required people to stay home during late evening and overnight hours with exceptions for emergencies, grocery shopping and other essential activities.

Mr. DeWine cautioned that virus variants that are gaining a foothold across the United States could land Ohio “back in a situation of climbing cases” — and in that case the curfew could be reinstated.

Also on Thursday, Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington said that most areas in the state would be able to loosen virus-related restrictions starting next week, when limited indoor dining could resume.

Christian Smalls speaks to a group of protestors and media as he leads a workers strike at JFK8 Amazon Fulfillment Center on May Day last year.Credit…Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times

Amazon on Friday sued New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, in an attempt to stop her from bringing charges against the company over safety concerns at two of its warehouses in New York City.

The company also asked the court to force Ms. James to declare that she does not have authority to regulate workplace safety during the Covid-19 pandemic or to investigate allegations of retaliation against employees who protest their working conditions.

In the case, filed with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, Amazon said Ms. James’s office had been investigating pandemic safety concerns raised by employees at its large fulfillment center on Staten Island and at a delivery depot in Queens. It said Ms. James “threatened to sue” Amazon if it did not agree to her demands, including subsidizing bus service, reducing worker productivity requirements, disgorging profits and reinstating Christian Smalls, an worker Amazon fired in the spring.

Mr. Smalls has said he was retaliated against for leading a protest at the Staten Island warehouse. Amazon has said he was fired for coming to the work site for the protest even though he was on paid quarantine leave after he had been exposed to a colleague who tested positive for Covid-19.

Mr. Smalls became the most visible case in the clashes between workers and Amazon, which faced a surge of orders from consumers hunkering down. As the pandemic spread across the country, many Amazon workers said the company missed early opportunities to provide better protection against Covid-19.

Amazon has strongly defended its safety measures and has gone on the offensive against its critics. In its 64-page complaint, Amazon said its safety measures “far exceed what is required under the law,” and it argued that federal law, not the state law enforced by the New York attorney general, has primary oversight for workplace safety concerns.

Amazon declined to comment beyond the filing.

Ms. James, in a statement, said the suit was “nothing more than a sad attempt to distract from the facts and shirk accountability for its failures to protect hardworking employees from a deadly virus.”

She said her office was reviewing their legal options. “Let me be clear: We will not be intimidated by anyone, especially corporate bullies that put profits over the health and safety of working people,” she said.

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Los Angeles Temporarily Closes 5 Coronavirus Vaccination Sites

Mayor Eric Garcetti said on Wednesday the city would close five of its Covid-19 vaccination sites, including Dodger Stadium, because of a supply shortage.

We’re vaccinating people faster then new vials are arriving, here in Los Angeles, and I’m very concerned right now. I’m concerned as your mayor that our vaccine supply is uneven, it’s unpredictable and too often, inequitable. By tomorrow, the city will have exhausted its current supply of the Moderna vaccine for first-dose appointments. This is an enormous hurdle in our race to vaccinate Angelenos, and unfortunately, it means that we will have to temporarily close Dodger Stadium and the other four non-mobile vaccination sites for two days on Friday and Saturday. As soon as we receive more supply, and I hope that we get — I’d love a call tonight or tomorrow from some source at the state or national level, saying we found some more, but most likely, hopefully Tuesday or Wednesday, we will reopen and start the business up again.

Mayor Eric Garcetti said on Wednesday the city would close five of its Covid-19 vaccination sites, including Dodger Stadium, because of a supply shortage.CreditCredit…Philip Cheung for The New York Times

Facing a shortage of coronavirus vaccine doses, Los Angeles will temporarily close five of its inoculation sites, including one of the country’s largest, at Dodger Stadium, raising new questions about the federal government’s handling of supplies and distribution.

By Thursday, the city will have exhausted its supply of the Moderna vaccine for first-dose appointments, Mayor Eric Garcetti said at a news conference. The centers will be closed on Friday and Saturday with plans to reopen by Tuesday or Wednesday of next week, he said.

“We’re vaccinating people faster than new vials are arriving here in Los Angeles,” Mr. Garcetti said. “I’m concerned as your mayor that our vaccine supply is uneven, it’s unpredictable and too often inequitable.”

The United States has struggled to mount a mass vaccination campaign in the face of limited supply and logistical hurdles. President Biden has promised to administer 100 million vaccines by his 100th day in office, which falls on April 30.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Wednesday that about 33.8 million people have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, including about 10.5 million people who have been fully vaccinated.

The federal government has delivered about 66 million doses to states, territories and federal agencies, with many kept in reserve for second doses. State and federal officials have come under fire for their handling of vaccines, as demand far outpaces supply and health care providers struggle to predict how many doses they might receive.

About 10 percent of Californians have received a vaccine, according to C.D.C. data.

The city-run Dodger Stadium site opened on Jan. 15 and vaccinated more than 85,000 people in its first two weeks, despite waits that could sometimes last hours. Administrators have reduced wait times, and the site was averaging more than 6,000 shots a day last week, far more than the city’s other sites.

Mr. Garcetti said Los Angeles had received only 16,000 new doses of the vaccine this week.Starting in December, California faced a dramatic spike in virus cases concentrated in the southern part of the state and in its main agricultural region, the Central Valley, as well as the spread of a new local strain that may be more transmissible.

California now leads the nation in cases and deaths. Infections peaked around the holidays and have declined since mid-January, but deaths remain at record highs.

Mr. Garcetti said that hospitalizations in Los Angeles were down to about 3,700 on Wednesday, the lowest number in months.

Despite shortage concerns, the city will continue its mobile vaccination program, Mr. Garcetti said. “We can’t afford to see the outbreaks and, quite frankly, the unequal deaths that we’re seeing in communities of color,” he said.

U.S. vaccinations ›

A dose of vaccine manufactured in India being administered in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in January.Credit…Dinuka Liyanawatte/Reuters

It’s one of the world’s most in-demand commodities and has become a new currency for international diplomacy: Countries with the means or the know-how are using coronavirus vaccines to curry favor or thaw frosty relations.

India, the unmatched vaccine manufacturing power, is giving away millions of doses to neighbors friendly and estranged. It is trying to counter China, which has made doling out shots a central plank of its foreign relations. And the United Arab Emirates, drawing on its oil riches, is buying shots on behalf of its allies.

But the strategy carries risks.

India and China have vast populations of their own that they need to inoculate. Although there are few signs of grumbling in either country, that could change as the public watches doses be sold or donated abroad.

“Indians are dying. Indians are still getting the disease,” said Manoj Joshi, a distinguished fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, a New Delhi think tank. “I could understand if our needs had been fulfilled and then you had given away the stuff. But I think there is a false moral superiority that you are trying to put across where you say we are giving away our stuff even before we use it ourselves.”

For India, its soft-power vaccine drive has given it a rejoinder to China after years of watching the Chinese make political gains in its own backyard — in Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Nepal and elsewhere. Beijing offered deep pockets and swift answers when it came to big investments that India, with a layered bureaucracy and slowing economy, has struggled to match.

So India has sent vaccine doses to Nepal, a country that has fallen increasingly under China’s influence. And Sri Lanka, in the midst of a diplomatic tug of war between New Delhi and Beijing, is getting doses from both.

The donating countries are making their offerings at a time when the United States and other rich nations are scooping up the world’s supplies. Poorer countries are frantically trying to get their own, a disparity that the World Health Organization recently warned has put the world “on the brink of a catastrophic moral failure.”

With their health systems tested as never before, many countries are eager to take what they are offered — and the donors could reap some political good will in reward.

“Instead of securing a country by sending troops, you can secure the country by saving lives, by saving their economy, by helping with their vaccination,” said Dania Thafer, the executive director of the Gulf International Forum, a Washington-based think tank.

Still, efforts to use vaccines to win hearts and minds aren’t always successful.

The United Arab Emirates, which is rolling out vaccines faster than any country except Israel, has begun donating Chinese-made Sinopharm vaccine doses that it purchased to countries where it has strategic or commercial interests.

But in Egypt some doctors balked at using them, because they said they did not trust the data the U.A.E. and the vaccine’s Chinese maker had released about trials.

And the government of Malaysia, one of the Emirates’ biggest trading partners, declined an offer of 500,000 doses, saying that regulators would have to independently approve the Sinopharm vaccine. After regulatory approval, Malaysia bought vaccines instead from Pfizer of the United States, the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine and one made by another Chinese company, Sinovac.

A seizure of counterfeit masks at a port warehouse in El Paso, Texas.Credit…U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, via Associated Press

Many were clever fakes.

They were stamped with the 3M logo and shipped in boxes that read, “Made in the U.S.A.”

But these supposed N95 masks were not produced by 3M and weren’t made in the United States, federal investigators said on Wednesday.

They were counterfeits, and millions were bought by hospitals, medical institutions and government agencies in at least five states, the federal authorities said as they announced an investigation.

Homeland Security Investigations, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, said the masks were dangerous because they might not offer the same level of protection against the coronavirus as genuine N95s.

“We don’t know if they meet the standards,” said Brian Weinhaus, a special agent with Homeland Security Investigations.

Cassie Sauer, the president and chief executive of the Washington State Hospital Association, said that about two million counterfeit masks might have made it into the state. They were “really good fakes,” she said.

“They look, they feel, they fit and they breathe like a 3M mask,” Ms. Sauer said.

News of the investigation came the same day the Homeland Security Department’s intelligence branch warned law enforcement agencies that criminals have been selling counterfeit coronavirus vaccines online for “hundreds of dollars per dose.”

A mass vaccination site at Fenway Park in Boston.Credit…Charles Krupa/Associated Press

In a bid to get more residents age 75 and older vaccinated, Massachusetts officials say they will also inoculate the people accompanying them, regardless of age, to mass vaccination sites, which can be confusing to navigate.

“The idea for a mass vaccination site can seem a bit daunting,” Marylou Sudders, the secretary for health and human services in Massachusetts, said at a news conference on Wednesday.

The knowledge that the person accompanying them to the vaccination site will also be inoculated, Ms. Sudders said, may “bring an extra level of comfort to those who may be hesitant or don’t want to bother their caregiver or loved one or a good friend to book an appointment.”

Massachusetts has administered almost a million vaccine doses at nearly 130 sites statewide, said Gov. Charlie Baker. About 10 percent of residents have received at least one dose of the vaccine, and 2.8 percent have received two doses, according to a New York Times tracker.

Starting on Thursday, companions can schedule their vaccine along with that of the older resident.

Joan Hatem-Roy, the chief executive of Elder Services of Merrimack Valley, a nonprofit group in northeastern Massachusetts, called the idea “a game changer.”

“I get nervous going to a Patriots game at Gillette, so I can imagine a senior trying to think about going to Gillette Stadium,” one of the vaccination sites, Ms. Hatem-Roy said.

Some expressed concern that younger people who are less susceptible to serious illness from the virus might be vaccinated before people who are 65 or older or who have chronic health conditions. But Mr. Baker said the immediate goal was to make sure people 75 and older are vaccinated.

“Those communities are far more likely to lose their life and get hospitalized as a result of Covid,” he said. “We want to make sure that we make it as easy as we possibly can for folks who fall into that over-75 category to get vaccinated and to get vaccinated early in this process.”

The state’s decision to vaccinate companions came as a surprise to Dr. Ashish Jha, the dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health, who said Massachusetts had not moved as quickly as he had expected on vaccinations. He said he would rather see more vulnerable groups be deemed eligible for the vaccination first and for any transportation issues to be resolved without companions getting shots.

“I do know that the governor is feeling a lot of pressure to improve the performance in the state,” Dr. Jha said. “That may be part of the motivation for doing this, because it will certainly bump up those numbers.”

He did not expect other states to follow suit — at least not right away. But Dr. Jha said it might be different in April or May, when the vaccine supply may outweigh the demand.

In some places, a similar model has been tried on a smaller scale.

In Albemarle County, Va., 70 caregivers and family care providers for people with intellectual disabilities were vaccinated, according to local affiliate NBC29. In Texas, older and disabled residents said they wanted their home health workers to be vaccinated, but many workers were declining the inoculation, according to The Texas Tribune.

With fraud already popping up in vaccines, tests and stimulus checks, Dr. Jha worried that scammers might try to use the new Massachusetts program to take advantage of older residents.

“I don’t know how you carefully police that,” he said. “There are bad actors who may try to manipulate this.”

Ms. Sudders offered her own warning on Wednesday, urging older residents’ not to accept offers from strangers to be their vaccine companions.

A woman walking near Anichkov bridge in St. Petersburg, Russia.Credit…Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

The coronavirus has been used as an excuse to restrict free speech in dozens of countries, according to a report released Thursday by Human Rights Watch, a New York-based advocacy organization.

Pointing to cases of censorship, arbitrary arrest and physical assault, the report found that at least 83 governments around the world have used the pandemic to justify silencing critics or preventing peaceful assembly.

It found that in at least 18 countries, military or police forces assaulted journalists, bloggers or critics of the government’s response to the pandemic, and that in at least 10 countries, officials used social distancing concerns to prevent or disband protests, even while allowing other large gatherings.

The findings expose a tension at the heart of coronavirus restrictions: Some of the same tools officials have used to save lives and slow the spread of Covid-19 — such as restricting large gatherings, countering misinformation or instituting lockdowns — can also be used by authoritarian governments as a pretext to monitor citizens or quash dissent.

China, Cuba, India, Egypt and Russia are among the countries where the restrictions on free speech have been felt most broadly, according to Human Rights Watch.

“The obligation of governments to protect the public from this deadly pandemic is not a carte blanche for placing a chokehold on information and suppressing dissent,” Gerry Simpson, associate crisis and conflict director at the organization, said in a news release.

The report relied on research from Human Rights Watch as well as data and reports from other nongovernmental organizations including the United Nations.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. addressing a rally against coronavirus-related restrictions in Berlin last year.Credit…Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Instagram took down the account of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the political scion and prominent anti-vaccine activist, on Wednesday over false information related to the coronavirus.

“We removed this account for repeatedly sharing debunked claims about the coronavirus or vaccines,” Facebook, which owns Instagram, said in a statement.

Mr. Kennedy, the son of the former senator and U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, worked for decades as an environmental lawyer but is now better known as an anti-vaccine crusader. A 2019 study found that two groups including his nonprofit, now called Children’s Health Defense, had funded more than half of Facebook advertisements spreading misinformation about vaccines.

He has found an even broader audience during the pandemic on platforms like Instagram, where he had 800,000 followers. Though Mr. Kennedy has said he is not opposed to vaccines as long as they are safe, he regularly endorses discredited links between vaccines and autism and has argued that it is safer to contract the coronavirus than to be inoculated against it.

Facebook is becoming more aggressive in its efforts to stamp out vaccine misinformation, saying this week that it would remove posts with erroneous claims about the coronavirus, coronavirus vaccines and vaccines in general, whether they are paid advertisements or user-generated posts. In addition to Mr. Kennedy’s Instagram account, the company said it had removed multiple other Instagram accounts and Facebook pages on Wednesday under its updated policies.

They did not include Mr. Kennedy’s Facebook page, which was still active as of early Thursday and makes many of the same baseless claims to more than 300,000 followers. The company said it did not automatically disable accounts across its platforms and that there were no plans to take down Mr. Kennedy’s Facebook account “at this time.”

Children’s Health Defense did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Members of Mr. Kennedy’s family have spoken out against his anti-vaccine efforts, including a brother, sister and niece who accused him of spreading “dangerous misinformation” in a column they wrote for Politico in 2019. Another niece, Kerry Kennedy Meltzer, a doctor at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, wrote an opinion essay in The New York Times in December challenging his claims.

“I love my uncle Bobby,” she wrote. “I admire him for many reasons, chief among them his decades-long fight for a cleaner environment. But when it comes to vaccines, he is wrong.”

Dr. Hasan Gokal in his home in Sugar Land, Texas, on Tuesday.Credit…Brandon Thibodeaux for The New York Times

A Texas doctor with only six hours to administer expiring doses of a Covid-19 vaccine inoculated 10 people, but the move got him fired and charged with stealing the doses.

The doctor, Hasan Gokal, had scrambled in December by making house calls and directing people to his home outside Houston. Some were acquaintances; others, strangers. A bed-bound nonagenarian. A woman in her 80s with dementia. A mother with a child who uses a ventilator.

After midnight, and with just minutes before the vaccine became unusable, Dr. Gokal gave the last dose to his wife, who has a pulmonary disease that leaves her short of breath.

For his actions, Dr. Gokal was fired from his government job and then charged with stealing 10 vaccine doses worth a total of $135 — a misdemeanor that sent his name and mug shot rocketing around the globe.

“It was my world coming down,” he said in a telephone interview on Friday. “To have everything collapse on you. God, it was the lowest moment in my life.”

The matter is playing out as pandemic-weary Americans scour websites and cross state lines chasing rumors in pursuit of a medicine in short supply.

Late last month, a judge dismissed the charge as groundless, but the local district attorney vowed to present the matter to a grand jury. And while prosecutors portray the doctor as a cold opportunist, his lawyer says he acted responsibly — even heroically.

“Everybody was looking at this guy and saying, ‘I got my mother waiting for a vaccine, my grandfather waiting for a vaccine,’” the lawyer, Paul Doyle, said. “They were thinking, ‘This guy is a villain.’”

Global Roundup

Sister André, who is Europe’s oldest known person, became infected with the coronavirus last month as it swept through her nursing home in France.Credit…Nicolas Tucat/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Sister André has lived through the 1918 flu pandemic, two World Wars and “many sad events,” she once said. As Europe’s oldest known person, she turns 117 on Thursday and has now accomplished another feat: defeating the coronavirus, with barely any complication.

“She’s recovered, along with all the residents here,” said David Tavella, the spokesman at the Ste. Catherine Labouré nursing home in Toulon, a city in southeastern France, where Sister André lives. “She is calm, very radiant and she is quite looking forward to celebrating her 117th birthday,” he said, adding that the home’s most famous resident was resting on Wednesday and needed a break from interviews.

The coronavirus swept through the nursing home last month, just as nurses began consulting residents about vaccinations; 81 of its 88 residents became infected, including Sister André, and 11 eventually died.

Mr. Tavella said that until last month no case had been detected in the nursing home since the beginning of the pandemic. Still, the outbreak was a stark reminder that the virus has been devastating in places where the most vulnerable reside, even with stringent restrictions that have turned many care homes into fortresses.

Sister André remained isolated for weeks and felt a bit “patraque,” or off color, Mr. Tavella said, but she blamed the virus and not her age. She slept more than usual, but she prayed and remained asymptomatic. This week, she became the oldest known person to have survived Covid-19.

“She kept telling me, ‘I’m not afraid of Covid because I’m not afraid of dying, so give my vaccine doses to those who need them,’” Mr. Tavella said.

Sister André’s story has made headlines in France, providing some uplifting news in a country where thousands of nursing home residents have died.

France began vaccinating health care workers this week, but the authorities have faced criticism for a sluggish rollout as France continues to struggle with a rising number of infections, and no end to restrictions in sight. As of Wednesday, 2.2 million people had been vaccinated, less than 3 percent of the population.

In other developments around the world:

• The coronavirus variant first detected in Britain is going “to sweep the world, in all probability,” the director of the country’s genetic surveillance program, Sharon Peacock, told the BBC on Thursday. The variant, known as B.1.1.7., has been detected in 75 countries, including the United States.

• Mexico authorized China’s Sinovac vaccine for emergency use, said Hugo Lopez-Gatell, the deputy health minister, Reuters reported. This month the country also authorized the Russian coronavirus vaccine, Sputnik V, for use.

A closed restaurant at Grand Central Market in Los Angeles. Workers in leisure and hospitality industries have been hit especially hard by job losses during the pandemic.Credit…Philip Cheung for The New York Times

Even as layoffs in the United States remain extraordinarily high by historical standards, unemployment claims continue to decline as coronavirus cases and restrictions on activity recede.

New claims for unemployment benefits declined last week for the fourth week in a row, the Labor Department reported Thursday morning.

Last week brought 813,000 new claims for state benefits, compared with 850,000 the previous week. Adjusted for seasonal variations, last week’s figure was 793,000, a decrease of 19,000.

There were 335,000 new claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, a federally funded program for part-time workers, the self-employed and others ordinarily ineligible for jobless benefits. That total, which was not seasonally adjusted, was down from 369,000 the week before.

New coronavirus cases have fallen by a third from the level two weeks ago, prompting states like California and New York to relax restrictions on indoor dining and other activities.

“We’re stuck at this very high level of claims, but activity is picking up,” said Julia Pollak, a labor economist with ZipRecruiter, an online employment marketplace. Indeed, job postings at ZipRecruiter stand at 11.3 million, close to the 11.4 million level before the pandemic hit.

The improving pandemic situation has eased the strain on dining establishments, Ms. Pollak added. More generally, however, the leisure and hospitality industry is still under pressure.

Plenty of other signs of weakness remain. On Friday, the Labor Department reported that employers added just 49,000 jobs in January, underscoring the challenges for the nearly 10 million unemployed.

President Biden cited the weak showing to press for approval of his $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package. It would send $1,400 to many Americans, provide aid to states and cities, and extend unemployment benefits that are due to expire for millions in mid-March.

Ms. Pollak said postings by employers at ZipRecruiter in recent days offered hope. “We’ve seen employers smash all of our expectations and show a great deal of exuberance,” she said.

Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith is the chairwoman of President Biden’s Covid-19 equity task force.Credit…Yale University, via Associated Press

President Biden wants racial equity to be at the essence of a fair national coronavirus response. And Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, a Yale epidemiologist who grew up in the U.S. Virgin Islands, is in charge of the effort.

Dr. Nunez-Smith, the chairwoman of Mr. Biden’s Covid-19 equity task force, spoke to The New York Times about the challenges ahead in her role.

She is charged with advising the president on how to allocate resources and reach out to underserved populations to fight a pandemic that has taken a devastating toll on people of color. Black and Latino people have been nearly twice as likely as white people to die from Covid-19.

“Make no mistake about it — beating this pandemic is hard work,” Dr. Nunez-Smith told reporters on Wednesday, after the White House named the members of the task force. “And beating this pandemic while making sure that everyone in every community has a fair chance to stay safe or to regain their health, well, that’s the hard work and the right work.”

Q. You’ve been in office just a few weeks. What have you learned?

A. What’s great about this is being public facing. I hear from everyday Americans every day. People write all the time with their own experiences.

Obviously you cannot cure racial disparities in health care overnight, so what are you aiming for, at least in the near term? And then in the long term?

We’re charged with rapid response recommendations and then paving the way for equity in the recovery. We talk a lot about vaccines, but we can’t forget about everything else. We think about frontline essential workers and others who still have challenges in terms of having inadequate protection in the workplace. Access to testing is also uneven.

It’s exciting to see new technologies emerge, but we also have to make sure that everybody can benefit from all of the scientific discoveries.

Cougars are among several types of cats known to have contracted the coronavirus.Credit…Martin Mejia/Associated Press

A cougar has tested positive for the coronavirus, the first such instance in the United States. And a tiger at the same Texas facility that exhibits wild animals also tested positive, the Department of Agriculture said on Wednesday.

After several cats at the facility, which the department did not name, began coughing and wheezing, the facility took samples for testing.

The National Veterinary Services Laboratory confirmed the infection in the two cats. While several tigers in the United States have caught the virus, along with lions, snow leopards and many domestic cats, this was the first report of a cougar.

The animals have mild symptoms and are expected to recover, according to the announcement, as have other zoo cats that have been infected with the virus.

Dogs, mink and gorillas have also caught the coronavirus in the United States. The Agriculture department keeps a list, updated weekly, of all confirmed tests.

Farmed mink infected with the virus have passed it to humans in some cases, which caused Denmark to cull its entire farmed mink population, about 17 million. There is no evidence of domestic or zoo animals passing the virus to humans, and advice from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention largely concerns how people who have Covid-19 should avoid infecting their pets.

Credit…John Moore/Getty Images

Officials in Michigan have confirmed the presence of a highly contagious coronavirus variant in one of its state prisons, the first such case documented in an American correctional facility — and a potential harbinger of even wider dispersion of the virus in prisons, public health officials said.

Michigan prison and health officials said Wednesday that an employee at the Bellamy Creek Correctional Facility, in Ionia, Mich., was found to have been infected with the B.1.1.7 variant. That strain was first detected in December in the United Kingdom. It has been found to spread more easily than other coronavirus variants.

The variant’s potential to disseminate rapidly in prisons and jails, which are typically overcrowded, unsanitary and have poor ventilation, has alarmed public health experts.

“When we see increased levels of contagiousness in spaces that are overcrowded that really do not lend themselves to social distancing, what we know is going to happen is that there will just be really an explosion of cases,” said Lauren Brinkley-Rubenstein, an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. “And so it just means more cases, more rapid transmission, and more devastation for incarcerated people and staff that work in jails and prisons.”

Correctional facilities and detention centers have already been devastated by Covid-19, with more than 600,000 infections and 2,700 dead among inmates and correctional officers, according to a New York Times database tracking infections in prisons, jails and detention centers.

Michigan prison officials said that once they had confirmed the presence of the variant, they ordered daily testing of all inmates and staff members in the prison, which has more than 1,600 inmates. As of Thursday, about 500 inmates and 100 correctional officers at the facility had been infected with the coronavirus, and one inmate had died.

As of Thursday morning, it was not clear whether anyone at the prison — aside from the staff member — had been infected by the new variant.

But prison authorities have expressed concern about the possible diffusion of the variant because inmates had been transferred from the Bellamy Creek Correctional Facility to two other prisons, the Duane Waters Health Center and the Macomb Correctional Facility, before officials were aware that the staff member had been sickened.

The Duane Waters facility, in Jackson, is reserved for some of the state prison system’s most severely ill inmates.

The prison system “will be taking extra steps to identify where this variant is present amongst staff and the prisoner population and we will continue to do everything we can to keep the prisoners, our staff and the community safe,” Heidi Washington, director of the Michigan prison system, said in a news release.

— Maura Turcotte and Ann Hinga Klein