Tag: Covid19

A Tablet to Deal with Covid-19? The U.S. Is Betting on It.

Post author By
Post date June 18, 2021

The U.S. government spent more than $ 18 billion last year funding drug manufacturers to produce a Covid vaccine, an effort that resulted in at least five highly effective vaccinations in record time. Now, more than $ 3 billion is pouring into a neglected area of research: developing pills to fight the virus at an early stage of infection that may save many lives in the years to come.

The new program, announced by the Ministry of Health on Thursday, will accelerate clinical trials of some promising drug candidates. If all goes well, some of those first pills could be ready by the end of the year. The Pandemic Antiviral Program will also support research into entirely new drugs – not just for the coronavirus, but for viruses that could cause future pandemics.

A number of other viruses, including influenza, HIV, and hepatitis C, can be treated with a simple pill. But despite more than a year of research, there isn’t a pill like this to treat someone with coronavirus infection before it wreaks havoc. Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s program to accelerate Covid-19 research, has invested far more money in vaccine development than in treatments, a void the new program will seek to fill.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases and a key supporter of the program, said he was looking forward to a time when Covid-19 patients could pick up antiviral pills from a pharmacy once they test positive for that Coronavirus or develop Covid-19 symptoms.

“I wake up in the morning, I don’t feel very well, my sense of smell and taste goes away, I get a sore throat,” said Dr. Fauci in an interview. “I call my doctor and say, ‘I have Covid and I need a prescription.'”

Dr. Fauci’s support for antiviral pill research stems from his own experience fighting AIDS three decades ago. In the 1990s, his institute conducted research that led to some of the first antiviral pills for HIV, “protease inhibitors,” which can block an essential viral protein and keep the virus in check for life.

In the early 2000s, researchers found that an antiviral agent called sofosbuvir could cure hepatitis C nearly 100 percent of the time. Tamiflu, an over-the-counter influenza pill, can reduce recovery time from infection and reduce the chance that a flu attack will bring someone to the hospital.

At the beginning of the pandemic, researchers began testing existing antivirals in people hospitalized with severe Covid-19. But many of these studies showed no benefit from the antiviral drugs. In hindsight, the decision to work in hospitals was a mistake. Scientists now know that the best time to try to block the coronavirus is in the early days of the illness, when the virus is multiplying rapidly and the immune system has not yet built a defense.

Many people fight their infection and recover, but others have immune systems failing and starting to damage tissues instead of viruses. It is this self-inflicted damage that sends many people with Covid-19 to the hospital as the replication of the coronavirus wears off. So a drug that blocks replication early in an infection could very well fail in a study in patients who have advanced into later stages of the disease.

So far, only one antiviral has shown clear benefit for people in hospitals: remdesivir. Originally studied as a potential cure for Ebola, the drug appears to shorten the course of Covid-19 when given intravenously to patients. In October, it became the first – and so far only – antiviral drug to receive full FDA approval for the treatment of the disease.

However, remdesivir’s performance has overwhelmed many researchers. In November, the World Health Organization recommended not using the drug.

Remdesivir could work more effectively if people could take it earlier as a pill in the course of Covid-19. But in its approved formulation, the compound does not act orally. It cannot survive the passage from the mouth via the stomach to the circulatory system.

Researchers around the world are testing other antivirals that are already known to work in tablet form. One such compound called molnupiravir was developed by researchers at Emory University in 2019 and tested against viruses such as influenza and the Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus.

Working with Miami-based Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, the Emory team conducted experiments on mice that were so impressive that Merck turned to them to help bring the drug into human clinical trials for Covid-19.

“We found this molecule really amazing,” said Daria Hazuda, vice president of infectious diseases and vaccine research at Merck.

However, in a study of hospitalized patients, molnupiravir did not appear to have any effect on the disease. In April, the companies announced that they would end the process.

“I see that and I say, ‘Yes, no,'” said Dr. Tim Sheahan, a virologist at the University of North Carolina. “I’m not surprised that these types of drugs would not dramatically improve the outcome of a person who has been sick for several days.”

The companies started a second study last fall, this time testing the drug on people recently diagnosed with Covid-19. This study is ongoing and Merck is recruiting volunteers at higher risk of infection, such as the elderly with obesity and diabetes. Dr. Hazuda said the study should produce clear results by October.

Last year, government funding for Covid-19 treatments focused on a handful of candidates such as monoclonal antibodies and remdesivir. Many other antiviral drug studies have been small and underfunded. In January, the new government of Biden began developing a new program of antiviral pills.

The first results of this planning could be seen last week. The Department of Health and Human Services announced that it will purchase 1.7 million doses of molnupiravir from Merck for $ 1.2 billion, provided the current study leads to Food and Drug Administration approval. According to Dr. David Kessler, the chief science officer of the Biden government’s Covid-19 response team, the government could seek similar deals for two other antivirals in clinical trials.

The hope “is that by the end of the fall we will have an antiviral that can help us close this chapter of the epidemic,” said Dr. Kessler in an interview.

One of the drugs the government is considering is AT-527, which was developed by Atea Pharmaceuticals. The compound has already been shown to be safe and effective for treating hepatitis C, and early studies suggested it could work against Covid-19 as well. Roche has partnered with Atea to test it in humans, and the companies are currently conducting a late-stage clinical trial.

The other drug on government radar was developed by scientists at Pfizer, adapted from a molecule originally developed as a potential drug for SARS in the early 2000s. This drug was on the shelf for years, but last spring scientists decided to change its structure so that it works against the protease of the new coronavirus. More than 200 Pfizer researchers have teamed up to develop the molecule, initially known as PF-07321332.

The drug was intended for intravenous use, but Pfizer researchers managed to modify its structure so that it works as a pill. When the drug was given orally to mice, it reached a concentration high enough in the body to block the coronavirus. Pfizer started a clinical trial in March to evaluate its safety in humans and expects to move to a later stage of testing next month.

Dr. Kessler acknowledged that there will be challenges in using such pills to reduce hospital stays and deaths from Covid-19. People need access to the drugs once they test positive. “Your testing programs need to be linked to your treatment,” he said.

And if the history of antiviral research is any clue, the first drugs for Covid-19 will likely offer only modest benefits against the disease, said Dr. Fauci. But that would be a good start.

“With all of these drugs we’ve looked at over the years, we’ve never landed a home run the first time,” said Dr. Fauci. “A line drive from the left field wall to the start would be really good.”

The government will also spend up to $ 1.2 billion on research centers where scientists will conduct early-stage studies on drugs that block the coronavirus in other ways. Some drugs can interfere with other essential virus proteins, while others make it impossible to copy the virus’ genes.

Even if the next generation of pills won’t hit the market for a few years, many scientists say research will be a good investment. “It could help with this pandemic and potentially be a first line of defense for the next,” said Mark Namchuk, director of therapeutic translation at Harvard Medical School.

The program will not only support research into pills that work against coronaviruses, but also against other high-risk pathogens like flaviviruses, which cause diseases like dengue and West Nile fever, and togaviruses, the mosquito-borne diseases like chikungunya cause and Eastern equine encephalitis.

“There will always be a threat,” said Dr. Fauci. “I think there will be a long-term need for drugs.”

Tags betting, Covid19, pill, Treat

World News

Covid-19 Stay Updates: The Newest on Circumstances, Vaccines and Variants

Post author By
Post date June 17, 2021

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The U.S. government will invest $3.2 billion to develop antiviral pills for Covid-19, the Department of Health and Human Services announced on Thursday. Such a treatment could keep people out of the hospital and potentially save many lives in the years to come, as the virus becomes a perennial threat despite the distribution of effective vaccines.

A number of other viruses, including influenza, H.I.V. and hepatitis C, can be treated with a simple pill. But despite more than a year of research, no such drug exists for the coronavirus. Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s program for accelerating Covid-19 research, invested far more money in the development of vaccines than of treatments, a gap that the new program will try to fill.

The new influx of money will speed up the clinical trials of a few promising drug candidates. If all goes well, some of those pills might become available by the end of this year. The Antiviral Program for Pandemics will also support research on entirely new drugs — not just for the coronavirus, but for viruses that could cause future pandemics.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a key backer of the program, said he looked forward to a time when Covid-19 patients could pick up antiviral pills from a pharmacy as soon as they tested positive for the coronavirus or develop Covid-19 symptoms. His support for research on antiviral pills stems from his own experience fighting AIDS three decades ago.

At the start of the pandemic, researchers began testing existing antivirals in people hospitalized with severe Covid-19. But many of those trials failed to show any benefit from the antivirals. In hindsight, the choice to work in hospitals was a mistake. Scientists now know that the best time to try to block the coronavirus is in the first few days of the disease, when the virus is replicating rapidly and the immune system has not yet mounted a defense.

Many people crush their infection and recuperate, but in others, the immune system misfires and starts damaging tissues instead of viruses. It’s this self-inflicted damage that sends many people with Covid-19 to the hospital, as the coronavirus replication is tapering off. So a drug that blocks replication early in an infection might very well fail in a trial on patients who have progressed to later stages of the disease.

So far, only one antiviral has demonstrated a clear benefit to people in hospitals: remdesivir. Originally investigated as a potential cure for Ebola, the drug seems to shorten the course of Covid-19 when given intravenously to patients. In October, it became the first — and so far, the only — antiviral drug to gain full F.D.A. approval to treat the disease.

Yet remdesivir’s performance has left many researchers underwhelmed. In November, the World Health Organization recommended against using the drug.

Remdesivir might work more effectively if people could take it earlier in the course of Covid-19 as a pill. But in its approved formulation, the compound doesn’t work orally. It can’t survive the passage from the mouth to the stomach to the circulatory system.

Researchers from around the world are testing other antivirals already known to work in pill form. One such compound, called molnupiravir, was developed in 2003 by researchers at Emory University and has been tested against viruses including influenza and dengue.

Credit…Prakash Mathema/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Sri Lanka is tapping Japan. Nepal has asked Denmark. Bangladesh has appealed to its diaspora in the United States.

South Asian countries are looking to the rest of the world to jump-start inoculation campaigns that have stalled since India halted vaccine exports to deal with its catastrophic second coronavirus wave this spring.

The ad hoc approach shows how the decision by India, the world’s biggest vaccine manufacturer, left poorer countries with few options for vaccines as richer countries hoarded much of the global supply. Even as the United States and other global powers pledge to donate a billion doses to poor nations, the World Health Organization says 11 billion doses are needed to defeat the pandemic.

Countries in South Asia and elsewhere — many battling outbreaks — continue to scramble for vaccines. Health officials say the vaccine pledge by the Group of 7 industrialized nations is too vague to incorporate into real planning, and does little to address the immediate needs of the millions of people awaiting doses.

India’s neighbors began vaccinations this year with a combination of doses donated by India and purchased from the Serum Institute of India, which is producing the vaccine developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca, branded locally as Covishield.

But as coronavirus cases rose sharply in India in March, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government blocked exports, forcing Serum to renege on bilateral agreements and commitments to Covax, the global program aimed at distributing vaccines to the world’s poorest countries.

In Nepal, about 1.4 million people age 65 and older have been awaiting a second shot after receiving a first AstraZeneca dose in March. Nepal’s government has appealed to diplomats in Britain, Denmark, South Korea and the United States for help.

“Efforts are on,” said Dr. Taranath Pokhrel, a director at the Nepalese Health Ministry, “but no substantive progress has been achieved so far.”

Of the first 25 million vaccine doses pledged as donations by the Biden administration, seven million are earmarked for Nepal and other countries in Asia, but in Kathmandu, the Nepalese capital, it’s not clear when, what kind or how many will arrive.

Even after a weekslong nationwide lockdown, nearly one in three of Nepal’s coronavirus tests has been coming back positive. Less than 1 percent of the Himalayan country’s 30 million people are fully vaccinated.

Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have all received donations from China of its Sinopharm vaccine. But Sri Lanka, like Nepal, is angling for more AstraZeneca shots to provide a second dose to tens of thousands of people, some of whom have been waiting for nearly four months.

Sri Lanka’s president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, met with Japan’s ambassador to appeal for 600,000 AstraZeneca doses, and officials said that the Japanese government was receptive.

Japan, which has announced plans to donate doses across Asia, has “given a bit of a green light” to Sri Lanka, Gen. Shavendra Silva, the head of a Sri Lankan Covid task force, told The New York Times.

Sri Lanka’s government plans to inoculate the rest of its population with the donated Sinopharm doses and Sputnik V shots it has purchased from Russia.

Bangladesh, where infections and deaths from a second wave of the coronavirus continue to rise, is counting on its U.S. diaspora to raise pressure on the Biden administration for help obtaining more AstraZeneca doses, said Shamsul Haque, secretary of the country’s Covid vaccine management committee.

“We are short roughly 1.5 million doses of AstraZeneca for second shots,” Mr. Haque said.

China has donated 1.1 million Sinopharm doses, and Bangladesh is negotiating bulk buys of more vaccines from China, and Sputnik V doses from Russia. Only about 4.2 million of Bangladesh’s 168 million people are fully vaccinated.

— Emily Schmall, Aanya Wipulasena, Bhadra Sharma and Julfikar Ali Manik

Credit…Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

The coronavirus pandemic has exposed economic and social fault lines around the globe, but Covid-19 vaccines have made the divides even starker: While some poor countries are pleading for doses to save their people, a few rich ones are awash in shots and lacking takers.

A handful of U.S. states, for example, have tried incentives to get more people vaccinated. But in Moscow, as Covid hospitalizations surged this week, the city government took a harder line, mandating vaccinations for many workers in public-facing jobs.

Some other governments have also attempted to require vaccines. A province in Pakistan has said it will stop paying the salaries of civil servants who are not inoculated, starting next month. And Britain, which is seeing a surge attributed to the spread of the Delta variant of the virus, is weighing whether to make shots obligatory for all health care workers.

The Moscow Times quoted the city’s mayor, Sergei S. Sobyanin, as saying on Wednesday, “When you go out and come into contact with other people, you are an accomplice of the epidemiological process — a chain in the link spreading this dangerous virus.” The mandate he announced focuses on the education, entertainment, health care, and hospitality sectors and will continue until at least 60 percent of employees have been vaccinated, the newspaper reported.

In Britain, officials said that requiring health care workers to be vaccinated would help stop the spread of the virus in hospitals. Nadhim Zahawi, the British vaccine minister, said that there was a precedent for such a requirement. “Obviously, surgeons get vaccinated for hepatitis B, so it’s something that we are absolutely thinking about,” he told Sky News last month.

Many universities in the United States now require at least some students and employees to be vaccinated, and federal officials have repeatedly made clear that most companies with at least 15 employees have the right to require that workers are inoculated.

But vaccine requirements continue to face resistance from some.

In 15 American states, not a single college had announced any type of vaccine requirement as of last month. Days ago, 178 employees of Houston Methodist Hospital who refused to get a coronavirus shot were suspended. And on Saturday, protesters are expected at the offices of the New York State Bar Association in Albany, where officials will be discussing a report that recommends mandating a coronavirus vaccine for all New Yorkers, unless they are exempted by doctors.

But for the undecided who are open to persuasion, incentives to get the vaccine remain common: There are lotteries in California, college scholarships in New York State and free drinks in New Jersey.

The giveaways have spurred some to action. This week, both New York and California announced that they were lifting virtually all coronavirus restrictions on businesses and social gatherings.

Credit…Emilio Parra Doiztua for The New York Times

Warmer weather and low coronavirus case numbers are raising hope in some countries in Europe that vaccine rollouts could usher in a more normal summer after an erratic year of lockdowns.

France announced on Wednesday, sooner than expected, that it was ending a mandate on mask wearing outdoors and lifting a nighttime curfew that has lasted for months — an increasingly unpopular measure as days grew longer and cafes reopened.

“The health situation in our country is improving, and it is improving even faster than what we had hoped,” Jean Castex, the French prime minister, said in making the announcement, which some political opponents noted came a few days before regional elections.

In addition, tourists from the United States may be allowed back into European Union countries as early as Friday — a move crucial to lifting Europe’s battered economies. On Wednesday, ambassadors of the European Union indicated their support for adding the United States to a list of countries considered safe from an epidemiological point of view, a bloc official confirmed, though no official announcement is expected until Friday.

The traffic will be one-way, however, unless the United States lifts its ban on many European travelers, which was first announced over a year ago. The U.S. barred noncitizens coming from many countries around the globe, including those in the Schengen area of Europe, Britain and the Republic of Ireland.

In Europe, however, low infection numbers in many countries in recent weeks have been taken as an optimistic sign. But that is not the case everywhere. In Britain, officials are keeping watch for the Delta variant, which has spurred a rise in cases, and on Monday delayed by a month a much-anticipated reopening that had been heralded as “freedom day.”

And in Moscow, a surge of cases prompted a shutdown, leaving Russian officials pleading with residents to get vaccinated.

Still, the move to open up E.U. countries to tourists coming from the United States signaled a wider hope that the bloc was on a pathway to normalcy.

Health policy in the European Union is ultimately the province of member governments, so each country has the right to decide whether to reopen and how to tailor the travel measures further — by adding requirements for PCR tests or quarantines, for example.

Travel from outside the bloc was practically suspended last year to limit the spread of the coronavirus, with the exception of a handful of countries that fulfilled specific criteria, such as a low infection rate and their overall response to Covid-19. Until Wednesday, the list contained a relatively small number of nations, including Australia, Japan and South Korea, but more are coming, including Albania, Lebanon, North Macedonia and Serbia.

Some countries heavily dependent on tourism, like Spain and Greece, have already reopened to external travelers. Germany also lifted more restrictions this month, announcing it would remove a travel warning for locations with low infection rates from July 1.

The European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, recommended last month that all travelers from third countries who were fully vaccinated with shots approved by the European Medicines Agency or by the World Health Organization should be allowed to enter without restrictions.

The loosening of travel measures was enabled by the fast pace of vaccination in the United States and by the acceleration of the inoculation campaign in Europe, and bolstered by advanced talks between the authorities on how to make vaccine certificates acceptable as proof of immunity.

The European Union is also finalizing work on a Covid certificate system, which is supposed to be in place on July 1. Fifteen member countries already started issuing and accepting the certificate ahead of schedule this month. The document records whether people have been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, recovered from Covid or tested negative within the past 72 hours, and it would eventually allow those who meet one of the three criteria to move freely across the bloc’s 27 member countries.

Travelers coming from outside the bloc would have the opportunity to obtain a Covid certificate from an E.U. country, the European Commission said. That would facilitate travel between different countries inside the bloc, but would not be required for entering the European Union.

Credit…Money Sharma/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The majestic Taj Mahal in India reopened its doors to visitors this week, part of a broad easing of restrictions by local governments hoping to revive a battered tourism industry.

The move to open up the economy comes even as the country is still in the midst of a devastating outbreak that has killed hundreds of thousands. Vaccination continues at a slow pace and some health experts have warned that easing restrictions too quickly could have deadly consequences.

While the number of new cases across the nation has dropped steadily in recent weeks, — with 67,208 new infections reported on Wednesday, the lowest number in two months — health officials in some regions, including Mumbai, have warned that a new deadly wave could come soon as cases there rise.

Still, local governments across the country are continuing to open up.

In Delhi, the capital, the authorities are also moving to reopen attractions, including the popular Red Fort.

The Taj Mahal is in the city of Agra in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, where hundreds of dead bodies were buried on the banks of the Ganges as coronavirus deaths spiked in April and May.

The Taj Mahal, built in the 17th century by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan as a tomb for his wife, Mumtaz Mahal, is a major tourist attraction and is normally thronged by more than seven million visitors annually, or an average of about 20,000 people per day.

The authorities closed the monument on April 17, the first time that had happened since 1978, when a river snaking out of Agra flooded the area. It was previously closed during World War II in 1942, and when India and Pakistan were at war in 1971.

Officials in Agra said that visitors wanting to go to the Taj Mahal had to book tickets online and that tourists would be allowed to enter the premises only if they were wearing a mask.

“No one is allowed to touch the wall of the monuments,” said Vasant Kumar Swarnkar, an official with the Archaeological Survey of India, a government body, adding, “The monument is being sanitized three times a day.”

Kamlesh Tiwari, a guide at the Taj Mahal, said that most of those who had visited the monument since it had reopened were local tourists and that the crowds had been relatively modest so far.

“We don’t expect a major rush because foreign tourists are missing,” he said. “We are jobless since last April because there is no tourism.”

VideoMughal emperor Shah Jahan built a mausoleum in memory of his wife, Mumtaz, in Agra, India.CreditCredit…Jeremy Woodhouse/Getty ImagesCredit…Charly Triballeau/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The government in Japan said on Thursday that it would relax emergency measures in Tokyo and other areas as the country’s latest coronavirus outbreak recedes, and with the Olympic Games scheduled to begin in just over five weeks.

Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga made the announcement at a meeting of the government’s coronavirus task force, saying that new infections had declined over the past month and that the strain on the nation’s hospitals had eased.

On Sunday, the state of emergency will be lifted in nine prefectures, but some restrictions will remain in place in Tokyo and in six other areas until at least July 11, the government said. Emergency measures in Okinawa will remain in effect for three more weeks, officials said.

The announcement comes as new daily cases reported in Japan have fallen by 48 percent over the past two weeks, to an average of 1,625 a day, according to a New York Times database. More than 684,000 vaccine doses were administered on Wednesday, twice as many as a month ago, based on government data.

Still, Japan’s vaccination drive remains one of the slowest among richer nations: About 26 million vaccine doses have been administered, with 15 percent of the population having received at least one shot, Times data shows.

Tokyo has been under a state of emergency since late April, the third since the start of the pandemic. Under the rules that go into effect on Monday, alcohol sales will be allowed to resume, but only until 7 p.m., while dining establishments will still be asked to close by 8 p.m.

The chief medical adviser to Japan’s government, Shigeru Omi, said that officials must remain vigilant and “take strong measures without hesitation” if cases begin to rise again.

With the Games set to begin in Tokyo on July 23 — and officials reportedly considering allowing up to 10,000 domestic spectators at some events — experts warn that infections could resurge. But John Coates, a vice president of the International Olympic Committee who is currently visiting Japan and under quarantine, said at a news conference last month that the Games could go on even if another state of emergency were declared.

Credit…Amr Alfiky/The New York Times

New York City plans to move about 8,000 homeless people out of hotel rooms and back to barrackslike dorm shelters by the end of July so that the hotels can reopen to the general public, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Wednesday.

When the pandemic lockdown began last spring, New York City moved the people out of the shelters, where in some cases as many as 60 adults stayed in a single room, to safeguard them from the coronavirus. Now, with social distancing restrictions lifted and an economic recovery on the line, the city is raring to fill those hotel rooms with tourists.

“It is time to move homeless folks who were in hotels for a temporary period of time back to shelters where they can get the support they need,” Mr. de Blasio said at a morning news conference.

The mayor said the city would need the state’s approval to remove the homeless people from 60 hotels, but a spokesman for Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said that as long as all shelter residents — even vaccinated ones — wore masks, the state had no objections to the plan.

On Tuesday, Mr. Cuomo announced that the state was lifting nearly all remaining coronavirus restrictions and social distancing measures, after more than 70 percent of the state’s adults had received at least a first dose of a vaccine.

The hotels, many of them in densely populated parts of Manhattan, have been a source of friction with neighbors who have complained of noise, outdoor drug use and other nuisances and dangers from the hotel guests.

Wednesday’s announcement signals the end to a social experiment that many homeless people gave high marks to, saying that having a private hotel room was a vastly better experience than sleeping in a room with up to 20 other adults, many of them battling mental illness or substance abuse or both. Some people said they would sooner live in the street.

“I don’t want to go back — it’s like I’m going backward,” said Andrew Ward, 39, who has been staying at the Williams Hotel in Brownsville, Brooklyn, after nearly two years at a men’s shelter. “It’s not safe to go back there. You’ve got people bringing in knives.”

Credit…Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA, via Shutterstock

On the night of March 26, 2020, as the coronavirus was engulfing Britain and its leaders were struggling to fashion a response, Prime Minister Boris Johnson ridiculed his government’s health secretary, with a profanity, as totally “hopeless,” according to a text message posted by his former chief adviser.

The WhatsApp message, one of several texts shared on Wednesday by Mr. Johnson’s former aide, Dominic Cummings, reignited a debate over how Britain handled the early days of the pandemic — a period when Mr. Cummings said it lurched from one course to another and failed to set up an effective test-and-trace program.

In riveting testimony before Parliament last month, Mr. Cummings pinned much of the blame for the disarray on the health secretary, Matt Hancock, whom he accused of rank incompetence and serial lying. Mr. Hancock denied the accusations before lawmakers last week. He said it was “telling” that Mr. Cummings had not provided evidence to back up his most incendiary claims.

The WhatsApp messages, and an accompanying 7,000-word blog post, are the former aide’s attempt to do so. They depict a government under relentless stress, racing to secure ventilators and protective gear, scale up a testing program, and settle on the right strategy to prevent the nation’s hospitals from collapsing.

In the text exchange with Mr. Johnson on March 26, Mr. Cummings noted that the United States went from testing 2,200 people a day to 100,000 in two weeks. He said Mr. Hancock was “skeptical” about being able to test even 10,000 a day, despite having promised two days earlier to reach that goal within a few days.

The exchange prompted Mr. Johnson’s profane description of Mr. Hancock. Later, Mr. Johnson was severely ill with Covid-19 and hospitalized, forcing his foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, to lead in his absence. Mr. Cummings said Mr. Raab did a far better job leading the government’s response to the pandemic, than Mr. Johnson, with whom he helped elect but has since had a bitter falling out.

Credit…Katherine Taylor for The New York Times

The pandemic has put a spotlight on parosmia, a once little-known condition that distorts the senses of smell and taste, spurring research and a host of articles in medical journals.

Membership has swelled in existing support groups, and new ones have sprouted. A fast-growing British-based parosmia group on Facebook has more than 14,000 members. And parosmia-related ventures, including podcasts and smell training kits, are gaining followers.

A key question remains: How long does Covid-19-linked parosmia last? Scientists have no firm answers.

Parosmia is one of several Covid-related problems associated with smell and taste. The partial or complete loss of smell, or anosmia, is often the first symptom of the coronavirus. The loss of taste, or ageusia, can also be a symptom.

In 2020, parosmia became remarkably widespread, frequently affecting Covid-19 patients, who lost their sense of smell and then largely regained it, before a distorted sense of smell and taste began.

Credit…Illustration by Brian Rea

Last fall, as academics and public-health experts in the United States puzzled over how to make all schools safe for full-time, in-person learning, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was advising everyone to wear masks and remain six feet apart at all times.

But most schools could not maintain that kind of distance and still accommodate all their students and teachers. The C.D.C’s guidance also left many questions unanswered: How did masks and distancing and other strategies like opening windows fit together? Which were essential? Could some measures be skipped if others were followed faithfully?

The C.D.C. seemed incapable of answering these questions. From the pandemic’s earliest days, the agency had been subject to extreme politicization, and its advisories on mask-wearing, quarantine and ventilation had been confusing, inconsistent and occasionally wrong. While the agency has made clear improvements under the Biden administration and a new director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, its messaging is still deeply muddy and communities across the country — and school districts, especially — are still struggling with next steps.

As the rest of the nation is learning, the former president was not the C.D.C.’s only — or even its biggest — problem.

Tags cases, Covid19, latest, Live, Updates, vaccines, Variants

World News

Covid-19 Information: Reside Updates – The New York Occasions

Post author By
Post date June 17, 2021

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Amr Alfiky/The New York Times

When the pandemic lockdown began last spring, New York City moved people out of the shelters, where as many as two dozen adults stayed in a single room, to safeguard them from the coronavirus. Now, with social distancing restrictions lifted and an economic recovery on the line, the city is raring to fill those hotel rooms with tourists.

“It is time to move homeless folks who were in hotels for a temporary period of time back to shelters where they can get the support they need,” Mr. de Blasio said at a morning news conference.

The mayor said the city would need the state’s approval, but a spokesman for Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said that as long as all shelter residents — even vaccinated ones — wore masks, the state had no objections to the plan.

Credit…Luis Tejido/EPA, via Shutterstock

The German company CureVac delivered disappointing preliminary results on Wednesday from a clinical trial of its Covid-19 vaccine, dimming hopes that it could help fill the world’s great need.

The trial, which included 40,000 volunteers in Latin America and Europe, estimated that CureVac’s mRNA vaccine had an efficacy of just 47 percent, among the lowest reported so far from any Covid vaccine maker. The trial will continue as researchers monitor volunteers for new cases of Covid, with a final analysis expected in two to three weeks.

“We’re going to full speed for the final readout,” Franz-Werner Haas, CureVac’s chief executive, said in an interview. “We are still planning for filing for approval.”

CureVac plans to apply for approval initially to the European Medicines Agency. The European Union reached an agreement last year to purchase 405 million doses of the vaccine if the agency authorizes it.

Independent experts, however, said it would be difficult for CureVac to recover. Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at the University of Florida, said that the vaccine’s efficacy rate might improve somewhat by the end of the trial. But because most of the data is already in, it’s unlikely the vaccine will turn out to be highly protective. “It’s not going to change dramatically,” she said.

And with an efficacy rate that low — far less than the roughly 95 percent of competing mRNA vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna — the results do not bode well for CureVac’s shots getting adopted.

“This is pretty devastating for them,” said Jacob Kirkegaard, a vaccine supply expert at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a think tank in Washington.

The news was disappointing to experts who had hoped the company could provide vaccines for low- and middle-income countries that don’t have nearly enough. CureVac had some advantages over the other mRNA vaccines, such as keeping stable for months in a refrigerator. What’s more, compared with its competitors, CureVac’s vaccine used fewer mRNA molecules per jab, lowering its cost.

The trial results released on Wednesday were based on data from 135 volunteers who got sick with Covid. An independent panel compared the number of sick people who had received a placebo with those who had received the vaccine. Although the vaccine did seem to offer some protection, the statistical difference between the two groups was not stark, working out to an efficacy rate of 47 percent.

Annual flu shots, by comparison, can reach 40 to 60 percent effectiveness. Both the World Health Organization and the Food and Drug Administration set a threshold of 50 percent efficacy to consider Covid vaccines for emergency authorization. If CureVac were to stay at 47 percent in the final analysis, it would fail to meet that standard.

The results caught scientists by surprise. CureVac’s shots yielded promising results in animal experiments and early clinical trials.

“This one’s a bit of a head-scratcher,” Dr. Dean said.

Dr. Haas blamed the disappointing results on the high number of virus variants in the countries where the vaccine was tested. Out of 124 of the Covid-19 cases that the company’s scientists genetically sequenced, only one was caused by the original version of the coronavirus.

More than half of the cases were caused by variants that have been shown to be more transmissible or able to blunt the effectiveness of vaccines. CureVac’s volunteers were also infected by variants that have yet to be studied carefully. Lambda, which has come to dominate Peru in recent weeks, accounted for 21 percent of the samples.

Dr. Haas said that the results should serve as a wake-up call for the threat that new variants can pose to the effectiveness of vaccines. “It’s a new Covid reality, that’s for sure,” he said.

Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech were tested last year before variants had emerged, which could partially account for their much higher efficacy rates. Even so, studies have found that their real-world effectiveness only drops moderately in the face of variants.

Dr. Kirkegaard predicted it would be a challenge for CureVac to compete with another Covid vaccine in development, made by Novavax. On Monday, Novavax reported that its vaccine, which doesn’t have to be kept frozen, reached an efficacy of 90 percent in a trial in the United States and Mexico.

“I suspect it will be difficult for them to really get a significant developing-country market,” Dr. Kirkegaard said.

Credit…Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA, via Shutterstock

Credit…Ann Wang/Reuters

This is the age of “vaccine diplomacy.” It is also the era of its bitter, mudslinging opposite.

For months, Taiwan has been unable to purchase doses of the BioNTech coronavirus vaccine, and the island’s leaders blame “Chinese intervention.” China, which regards Taiwan as its own territory, calls this accusation “fabricated out of nothing.”

It is unclear what steps, if any, the government in Beijing has taken to disrupt Taiwan’s dealings with BioNTech, the German drugmaker that developed the vaccine with Pfizer. BioNTech declined to comment.

But the crux of the problem is that a Chinese company claims the exclusive commercial rights to distribute BioNTech’s vaccine in Taiwan. And for many people in the self-governing democracy, buying shots from a mainland Chinese business is simply unpalatable.

Less than 5 percent of Taiwan’s 23.5 million people have been vaccinated so far, and the impasse is exacerbating Taiwan’s vaccine shortage as the island confronts its first major outbreak of Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic. It is a bleak illustration of how deeply entrenched the long-running conflict across the Taiwan Strait has become, with a degree of mutual distrust that not even a global medical emergency can allay.

Credit…Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

More than 600,000 people in the United States are known to have died of Covid-19 as of Wednesday, according to data compiled by The New York Times — a once-unthinkable number, 10 times the death toll that President Donald J. Trump once predicted. The milestone comes as the country’s fight against the coronavirus has made big gains but remains unfinished, with millions not yet vaccinated.

“It’s a tragedy,” said Stephen Morse, a professor of epidemiology at the Columbia University Medical Center. “A lot of that tragedy was avoidable, and it’s still happening.”

As many Americans celebrate the beginning of summer and states have relaxed restrictions, the virus is still killing hundreds of people daily, nearly all of them unvaccinated, experts say. Though the sheer number of total deaths in the United States is higher than anywhere else, the country’s toll is lower per capita than in many European and Latin American countries, including Peru, Brazil, Belgium and Italy.

Cook County

10,993 deaths

Wayne County

5,126 deaths

New York City

Five-borough total

33,359 deaths

Los Angeles County

24,434 deaths

Number of deaths by county

Maricopa County

10,162 deaths

Harris County

6,518 deaths

Miami-Dade County

6,472 deaths

Cook County

10,993 deaths

Wayne County

5,126 deaths

New York City

Five-borough total

33,359 deaths

Los Angeles County

24,434 deaths

Number of deaths by county

Maricopa County

10,162 deaths

Harris County

6,518 deaths

Miami-Dade County

6,472 deaths

Cook County

10,993 deaths

Wayne County

5,126 deaths

New York City

Five-borough total

33,359 deaths

Los Angeles County

24,434 deaths

Number of deaths by county

Maricopa County

10,162 deaths

Harris County

6,518 deaths

Miami-Dade County

6,472 deaths

Number of deaths by county

Cook County

10,993 deaths

Wayne County

5,126 deaths

New York City

Five-borough total

33,359 deaths

Los Angeles County

24,434 deaths

Miami-Dade County

6,472 deaths

Number of deaths by county

New York City

Five-borough

total

The first known Covid death in the United States occurred in February 2020. By the end of that May, 100,000 people had been confirmed dead, an average of more than 1,100 Covid deaths each day. The pace kept accelerating: It took close to four months for the nation to log another 100,000 Covid deaths; the next, about three months; the next, just five weeks. By late February 2021, just over a month later, half a million Americans had died with Covid.

The most recent 100,000 deaths came more slowly, over about four months. About half of all Americans are protected with at least one dose of a vaccine, and public health experts say that has played the central role in slowing the death rate.

The pace of deaths nationwide

to reach

100,000

U.S. deaths

Feb. 29:

First report of

a U.S. death

The pace of deaths

nationwide

to reach

100,000

U.S. deaths

Feb. 29:

First report of

a U.S. death

The pace of deaths nationwide

to reach

100,000

U.S. deaths

Feb. 29:

First report of

a U.S. death

Source: Reports from state and local health agencies.

President Biden, speaking at a news conference in Brussels on Monday, said that he felt for everyone who had lost a loved one to the virus.

“Please get vaccinated as soon as possible,” he said. “We’ve had enough pain.”

Since mid-April, the U.S. pace of inoculations has dropped sharply, despite Mr. Biden’s July 4 deadline to have 70 percent of U.S. adults at least partly vaccinated. It’s the remaining unvaccinated population that is driving the lingering deaths, experts say. And the virus is still raging in other countries, including India and in parts of South America.

“Until we have this under control across the world, it could come back and thwart all the progress we’ve made so far,” said Dr. Marcus Plescia, the chief medical officer for the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, which represents state health agencies. “I’m worried about the people who are not taking advantage of these vaccines. They’re the ones who are going to bear the brunt of the consequences.”

Deaths from Covid have declined by about 90 percent in the United States since their peak in January, according to provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But about half of Covid deaths at the end of May were of people aged 50 to 74, compared with only a third of those who died in December, according to a recent New York Times analysis. Older white people are driving the shifts in death patterns, and Black people across most age groups saw the smallest decrease in deaths compared with other large racial groups.

Cumulative vaccination rates among Black and Hispanic people continue to lag behind other groups.

In Wayne County, Mich., home to Detroit, vaccine hesitancy is a major problem, said Dr. Teena Chopra, the medical director of infection prevention and hospital epidemiology at the Detroit Medical Center. In May, all of her Covid-19 patients were either unvaccinated or had received only one vaccine dose. Several have died, she said, and patients with the virus were still being admitted.

“It makes me feel very frustrated and angry because getting people vaccinated is the only way to end the pandemic,” Dr. Chopra said.

Denise Lu, Daniel E. Slotnik, Julie Bosman and Mitch Smith contributed reporting.

Credit…Emilio Parra Doiztua for The New York Times

Warmer weather and low coronavirus case numbers are raising hope in some countries in Europe that vaccine rollouts could usher in a more normal summer after an erratic year of lockdowns.

France announced on Wednesday, sooner than expected, that it was ending a mandate on mask-wearing outdoors and lifting a nighttime curfew that has lasted for months — an increasingly unpopular measure as days grew longer and cafes reopened.

The traffic will be one-way, however, unless the United States lifts its ban on many European travelers, which was announced on Jan. 25 of this year, days after President Biden took office. The U.S. barred noncitizens coming from many countries around the globe, including the Schengen area of Europe, the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland.

And in Moscow, a surge of cases prompted a shutdown, leaving Russian officials pleading with residents to get vaccinated.

Still, the move to open up the European Union countries to U.S. tourists signaled a wider hope that the bloc is on a pathway to normality.

Health policy in the European Union is ultimately the province of member governments, so each country has the right to decide whether to reopen, and to tailor the travel measures further — adding requirements for P.C.R. tests and quarantines, for example.

Travel from outside the bloc was practically suspended last year to limit the spread of the coronavirus, with the exception of a handful of countries that fulfilled specific criteria, such as low infection rate, and their overall response to Covid-19. Until Wednesday, the list contained a relatively small number of nations, including Australia, Japan and South Korea, but more are coming, including Albania, Lebanon, North Macedonia and Serbia.

The European Commission recommended last month that all travelers from third countries who were fully vaccinated with shots approved by the European Medicines Agency or by the World Health Organization should be allowed to enter without restrictions.

The European Union is finalizing work on a Covid certificate system, which is supposed to be in place on July 1. Fifteen member countries already started issuing and accepting the certificate ahead of schedule this month. The document records whether people have been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, recovered from Covid or tested negative within the past 72 hours, and it would eventually allow those who meet one of the three criteria to move freely across the 27 member countries.

Credit…Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

The Biden administration, planning for the possibility that Americans could need booster shots of the coronavirus vaccine, has agreed to buy an additional 200 million doses from the drugmaker Moderna with the option to include any developed to fight variants as well as pediatric doses.

The purchase, with delivery expected to begin this fall and continue into next year, gives the administration the flexibility to administer booster shots if they prove necessary, and to inoculate children under 12 if the Food and Drug Administration authorizes vaccination for that age group, according to two administration officials not authorized to discuss it publicly.

Experts do not yet know whether, or when, booster shots might be necessary. The emergence of variants in recent months has accelerated research on boosters, and the current vaccines are considered effective against several variants, including the Alpha variant which was first identified in Britain and which became dominant in the United States.

And this week, U.S. health officials classified the Delta variant, which was first found in India, as a “variant of concern,” sounding the alarm because it spreads rapidly and may cause more serious illness in unvaccinated people. Concern over Delta prompted England to delay lifting restrictions imposed because of the pandemic.

Moderna, a company that had no products on the market until the F.D.A. granted its Covid vaccine emergency authorization last year, uses mRNA platform technology to make its vaccine — a so-called “plug and play” method that is especially adaptable to reformulation. Last month, the company announced preliminary data from a clinical trial of a booster vaccine matched to the Beta variant, first identified in South Africa; the study found an increased antibody response against Beta and Gamma, another variant of concern first identified in Brazil.

In announcing the purchase on Wednesday, Moderna said it expected to deliver 110 million of the new doses in the fourth quarter of this year, and 90 million in the first quarter of 2022. The option brings the total U.S. procurement of Moderna’s two-shot vaccine to 500 million doses.

“We appreciate the collaboration with the U.S. government for these additional doses of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine, which could be used for primary vaccination, including of children, or possibly as a booster if that becomes necessary to continue to defeat the pandemic,” Stéphane Bancel, Moderna’s chief executive officer, said in a statement.

“We remain focused on being proactive as the virus evolves by leveraging the flexibility of our mRNA platform to stay ahead of emerging variants,” he said.

Under its existing contract with Moderna, the federal government had until Tuesday to exercise the option to purchase doses for future vaccination needs at the same price it is currently paying — about $16.50 a dose. Similar conversations are underway with Pfizer-BioNTech, which also makes a two-dose mRNA vaccine, but no agreement has been reached, one of the officials said.

State health departments are also preparing for the necessity of “revaccination,” Dr. Nirav Shah, president of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials and Maine’s top health official, told reporters on Wednesday.

“It may be just a bit too early to tell with finality whether second doses, booster doses” will be needed in the fall, Dr. Shah said. “Certainly the better job we do now lowers the likelihood that variants could run loose.”

He added, “There is a direct link between what we do now and what we may need to do later.”

As of Wednesday, about 65 percent of U.S. adults had received at least one shot, according to federal data. But with vaccination rates slowing down, the administration is still focused on trying to meet President Biden’s goal of having at least 70 percent of adults get one shot by July 4, and also on addressing the global vaccine shortage.

“With the concerning Delta variant growing and millions more Americans to vaccinate, we are focused on our urgent and robust response to the pandemic,” Kevin Munoz, a White House spokesman, said in a statement Tuesday.

Last week, at the outset of his meeting with leaders of the Group of 7 nations, Mr. Biden announced that the United States would buy 500 million doses of Pfizer vaccine and donate them for use by about 100 low- and middle-income countries over the next year, describing it as America’s “humanitarian obligation to save as many lives as we can.”

One of the officials said Wednesday that if the Moderna purchase left the administration with surplus vaccine, the administration would donate those doses to other countries.

Credit…Christian Petersen/Getty Images

After leading the Phoenix Suns into the Western Conference finals, Chris Paul is in danger of missing at least part of the series after entering the N.B.A.’s coronavirus health and safety protocols.

How soon Paul can return to the Suns was not immediately known. The Suns announced Wednesday that Paul was “currently out” because of the protocols and that they would next provide an update about his status on Saturday.

Among the factors that will determine how long Paul, 36, will be away from the Suns are his vaccination status and whether he tested positive for the coronavirus. Players who test positive are typically placed in isolation for 10 to 14 days, but isolation time, depending on the circumstances, can be reduced if a player is vaccinated.

The team did not say why Paul was in the protocol. It could mean that he tested positive, but it also could just indicate that he was in close contact with someone who had. The N.B.A. announced Wednesday afternoon that one player had tested positive for the virus within the past week but, as is the usual practice, did not name the player. It’s not clear whether Paul has been vaccinated.

The prospect of Phoenix’s losing Paul after landing a spot in the conference finals on Sunday by completing a four-game sweep of the Denver Nuggets, was the latest blow to an N.B.A. postseason rocked by a string of health-related absences for star players.

Credit…Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA, via Shutterstock

Record profits warranted record bonuses. That was the recommendation in January by executives at the biotech firm Emergent BioSolutions. The board of directors agreed, signing off on nearly $8 million in cash and stock awards for five company leaders.

The bonuses arrived this spring even as Congress was investigating the company’s production of Covid-19 vaccines in Baltimore, where manufacturing mistakes have rendered 75 million doses unusable and forced a two-month-long shutdown of operations.

Emergent has nonetheless enjoyed the best financial year in its two-decade history, thanks largely to the government, for its largess and its decision to sidestep competitive bidding and other typical processes, according to interviews and previously undisclosed documents.

The lucrative agreement with Emergent reflects the early chaotic days of the pandemic, when the Trump administration was engaged in what one government official called “panic buying” with little outside scrutiny.

Emergent was in a good position to benefit. A review of the company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission shows that its entire contract manufacturing business had never brought in anything close to the amount the federal government paid in 2020. Those payments exceeded the revenue the company had earned from all of its contract manufacturing in the previous three years combined.

Credit…Natacha Pisarenko/Associated Press

RIO DE JANEIRO — The World Health Organization is urging the wealthy nations that recently pledged to donate one billion Covid-19 vaccine doses to give priority to Latin American nations with high levels of virus transmission and mortality.

Nine of the ten countries with the most recent deaths in proportion to their populations are in South America or the Caribbean, where vaccination campaigns are mostly off to slow and chaotic starts.

Health care professionals in the region are reporting a surge of younger patients requiring hospitalization, and in several cities, intensive care units are full or nearly so, according to Dr. Carissa F. Etianne, director of the Pan American Health Organization, a part of the W.H.O.

About 1.1 million new coronavirus cases and more than 31,000 deaths were reported last week in the Americas, most of them in South American nations where transmission remains out of control.

Colombia set new records for reported deaths three days in a row this week, peaking on Tuesday with 599 deaths. Brazil is on track to reach the grim milestone of 500,000 total deaths in the next week or two, and is reporting more than 70,000 new cases a day on average. Though Chile has carried out one of the world’s most aggressive inoculation campaigns, it has not yet managed to rein in transmission.

Dr. Etianne urged leaders of the major industrial democracies to use epidemiological criteria to determine which countries will be first in line to receive the one billion vaccine doses that the Biden administration and allied nations pledged to distribute.

“While vaccines are needed everywhere, we hope G7 nations will prioritize doses for countries at greatest risk, especially those in Latin America that have not yet had access to enough vaccines to even protect the most vulnerable,” she said.

W.H.O. officials said that focusing on the countries where the crisis is worst — including Colombia, Brazil, Argentina and Chile — made sense from both a moral and a pragmatic standpoint. Large sustained outbreaks in those countries raise the potential for more dangerous virus variants to emerge and to cross borders.

“No region of the world is protected from new peaks of transmission,” said Dr. Sylvain Aldighieri, the Covid-19 incident manager at the Pan American Health Organization. “No country and no region will be safe until high vaccination coverage is reached.”

Credit…Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Japan’s leaders are racing to lift Covid-19 vaccination rates at home, but that hasn’t stopped them from donating doses in the Asia Pacific region as part of a wider geopolitical strategy.

Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi of Japan said this week that the country would send a million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to Vietnam on Wednesday. The shots are among the 120 million doses that Japan expects to obtain as part of a deal it struck with the British-Swedish manufacturer.

Japan also donated more than a million AstraZeneca shots to Taiwan this month, and Mr. Motegi said this week that it planned to donate vaccines to Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand.

Japan is donating vaccines to Taiwan and Vietnam directly rather than through Covax, the global vaccine-sharing program. That suggests geopolitics are a motivating factor, experts say.

China has been promoting its self-made vaccines in Southeast Asia and beyond in a charm offensive that has clear diplomatic overtones. Stephen Nagy, a political scientist at International Christian University in Tokyo, said that Japan appeared to see its own vaccine diplomacy as a counterweight.

“Watching what China has done, delivering a lot of Sinovac in particular countries, Japan does not want to fall behind,” he said, referring to the manufacturer of one of China’s main vaccines.

China has been asserting its geopolitical muscle in the region for years, flying warplanes over Taiwan and fortifying artificial islands in parts of the South China Sea that are also claimed by Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam. Japan has often found ways to gently push back.

In Vietnam, Japan has invested in large infrastructure projects and supplied the country’s navy with coast guard vessels for patrolling the South China Sea. After Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga of Japan took office last year, he made Vietnam his first overseas stop.

Vietnam could use more vaccines. It kept infections low until recently through rigorous quarantining and contact tracing, but is now experiencing its worst outbreak yet. Only about 1.5 percent of the country’s 97 million people have received even one shot, according to a New York Times tracker.

Japan’s health authorities have authorized the AstraZeneca vaccine for emergency use, and about 90 million of its 120 million doses will be manufactured domestically. But the government has held off administering that vaccine locally because of concerns over very rare complications involving blood clots.

Japan’s inoculation campaign has also been held up by strict rules that allow only doctors and nurses to administer shots, and by a requirement that vaccines be tested on people in Japan before being approved for use.

Only about 25 million vaccine doses have been administered in Japan and 15 percent of the population has received at least one shot. That percentage is about the same as in India, and far below that of most richer countries.

The government wants to speed up vaccines in part so that it can allow domestic spectators when the Tokyo Olympics begin in July. The news agency Kyodo reported on Tuesday that officials are considering allowing up to 10,000 fans or half of a venue’s capacity — whichever is smaller — at Olympic events.

For now, Tokyo and nine other prefectures remain under a state of emergency that has been in effect since late April. The order is scheduled to expire on June 20, barely a month before the Olympics start.

Credit…Maxim Shipenkov/EPA, via Shutterstock

In the United States, fireworks lit up the night sky in New York City on Tuesday, a celebration meant to demonstrate the end of coronavirus restrictions. California, the most populous state, has fully opened its economy. And President Biden said there would be a gathering at the White House on July 4, marking what America hopes will be freedom from the pandemic.

Yet on Wednesday the country’s death toll passed 600,000 — a staggering loss of life.

In Russia, officials frequently say that the country has handled the coronavirus crisis better than the West and that there have been no large-scale lockdowns since last summer.

But in the week that President Vladimir V. Putin met with Mr. Biden for a one-day summit, Russia has been gripped by a vicious new wave of Covid-19. Hours before the start of the summit on Wednesday, the city of Moscow announced that it would be mandating coronavirus vaccinations for workers in service and other industries.

“We simply must do all we can to carry out mass vaccination in the shortest possible time period and stop this terrible disease,” Sergey S. Sobyanin, the mayor of Moscow, said in a blog post. “We must stop the dying of thousands of people.”

It was a reversal from prior comments from Mr. Putin, who said on May 26 that “mandatory vaccination would be impractical and should not be done.”

Mr. Putin said on Saturday that 18 million people had been inoculated in the country — less than 13 percent of the population, even though Russia’s Sputnik V shots have been widely available for months.

The country’s official death toll is nearly 125,000, according to Our World in Data, and experts have said that such figures probably vastly underestimate the true tally.

While the robust United States vaccination campaign has sped the nation’s recovery, the virus has repeatedly confounded expectations. The inoculation campaign has also slowed in recent weeks.

Unlike many of the issues raised at Wednesday’s summit, and despite the scientific achievement that safe and effective vaccines represent, the virus follows its own logic — mutating and evolving — and continues to pose new and unexpected challenges for both leaders and the world at large.

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Covid-19 Reside Updates: The Newest Information

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Post date June 10, 2021

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Pool photo by Francisco Seco

Leaders of the European Union on Thursday joined the calls for a full investigation into the origins of Covid-19, with the European Council president declaring “support for all the efforts in order to get transparency and to know the truth.”

“The world has the right to know exactly what happened in order to be able to learn the lessons,” added the president, Charles Michel, who heads the European Council, the body that represents the bloc’s national leaders. He made the comments during a news conference preceding the Group of 7 summit, which starts on Friday and will be attended by President Biden.

The World Health Organization conducted an inquiry this year into the origins of the virus, which first appeared in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019. The study concluded that “introduction through a laboratory incident was considered to be an extremely unlikely pathway” but was widely seen as incomplete because of China’s limited cooperation. Governments, health experts and scientists have called for a more complete examination of the origins of the virus, which has killed more than 3.7 million people worldwide.

Late last month, Mr. Biden ordered American intelligence agencies to investigate the origins of the virus, an indication that his administration was taking seriously the possibility that the deadly virus had accidentally leaked from a lab, in addition to the prevailing theory that it was transmitted by an animal to humans outside a lab.

Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, the European Union’s executive arm, highlighted on Thursday that “investigators need complete access to the information and to the sites” to “develop the right tools to make sure that this will never happen again.”

In the draft conclusions of next week’s summit between the European Union and the United States, leaders will call for “progress on a transparent, evidence-based and expert-led W.H.O.-convened Phase 2 study on the origins of Covid-19, that is free from interference.”

Credit…Elijah Baylis for The New York Times

NASHVILLE — Public health departments have held vaccine clinics at churches. They have organized rides to clinics. Gone door to door. Even offered a spin around a NASCAR track for anyone willing to get a shot.

Still, the United States’ vaccination campaign is sputtering, especially in the South, where there are far more doses than people who will take them.

As reports of new Covid-19 cases and deaths nationwide plummet and many Americans venture out mask-free, experts fear the virus could eventually surge again in states like Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi, where fewer than half of adults have had a first shot.

“I don’t think people appreciate that if we let up on the vaccine efforts, we could be right back where we started,” said Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, the director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

A range of theories exist about why the South, which as of Wednesday was home to eight of the 10 states with the lowest vaccination rates, lags behind: hesitancy from conservative white people, concerns among some Black residents, longstanding challenges when it comes to health care access and transportation.

The answer, interviews across the region revealed, was all of the above.

“There’s no magic bullet. There’s no perfect solution,” said Dr. W. Mark Horne, president of the Mississippi State Medical Association.

Time is of the essence, both to prevent new infections and to use the doses already distributed to states. Coronavirus variants are spreading, especially the highly transmissible and increasingly prevalent Delta variant, first detected in India. And millions of Johnson & Johnson vaccine doses will expire nationwide this month, prompting some governors to issue urgent pleas that health providers use them soon.

From rural Appalachia to cities like Birmingham and Memphis, the slowdown has forced officials to refine their pitches to residents. Among the latest offerings: mobile clinics, Facebook Live forums and free soccer tickets for those who get vaccinated.

Credit…Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times

Moderna requested an emergency authorization on Thursday from the Food and Drug Administration for use of its coronavirus vaccine in 12- to 17-year-olds. If authorized, as expected, the vaccine would offer a second option for protecting adolescents from the coronavirus, and hasten a return to normalcy for middle- and high-school students.

The company has already filed for authorization with Health Canada and the European Medicines Agency, and plans to seek approval in other countries, the chief executive Stéphane Bancel said in a statement. Authorization by the F.D.A. typically takes three to four weeks.

Last month, the F.D.A. expanded emergency use authorization for the vaccine made by Pfizer and BioNTech for use in children ages 12 to 15 years. That vaccine was already available to anyone older than 16. About 7 million children under 18 have received at least one dose of the vaccine so far, and about 3.5 million are fully protected.

Moderna’s vaccine was authorized for use in adults in December. Its application to the F.D.A. for young teens is based on study results reported last month. That clinical trial enrolled 3,732 children ages 12 to 17 years, with 2,500 receiving two doses of the vaccine and the remaining a saltwater placebo.

The trial found no cases of symptomatic Covid-19 among fully vaccinated teens, which translates to an efficacy of 100 percent, the same figure that Pfizer and BioNTech reported for that age group. The trial also found that a single dose of the Moderna vaccine has an efficacy of 93 percent. Participants did not experience serious side effects beyond those seen in adults: pain at the site of the injection, headache, fatigue, muscle pain and chills.

An independent safety monitoring committee will follow all participants for 12 months after their second injection to assess long-term protection and safety.

Credit…Juan Ignacio Roncoroni/EPA, via Shutterstock

RIO DE JANEIRO — Officials at the World Health Organization on Wednesday repeated their calls for the world’s governments to accelerate plans to distribute coronavirus vaccines to hard-hit nations, warning that many countries in Latin America continued to see rising caseloads.

“Across our region, this year has been worse than last year,” said Dr. Carissa F. Etienne, the director of the Pan American Health Organization, which is part of the W.H.O. “In many places, infections are higher now than at any point in this pandemic.”

The comments came as President Biden prepared to announce that his administration would buy 500 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and donate them among about 100 countries over the next year, according to people familiar with the plan. Mr. Biden could announce the arrangement as early as Thursday, as he begins his first trip abroad as president.

It is not yet clear which countries the 500 million vaccine doses would be supplied to, but Latin America is among the regions where the need is urgent. Eight of the 10 countries with the highest rate of Covid deaths per capita are in Latin America and the Caribbean, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.

And even as hospitals in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and other nations where the virus continues to spread aggressively have created overflow facilities, health care systems in several nations in the region are struggling to cope, Dr. Etienne said during the W.H.O.’s virtual news conference on Wednesday morning.

“Despite the doubling or even the tripling of hospital beds throughout the region, I.C.U. beds are full, oxygen is running low and health workers are overwhelmed,” she said.

Most governments in Latin America are struggling to acquire enough doses to quickly inoculate their people, which will delay their ability to fully reopen economies, officials said.

Last week, Mr. Biden said that the United States would distribute 25 million doses this month to countries in the Caribbean and Latin America; South and Southeast Asia; Africa; and the Palestinian territories, Gaza and the West Bank. Those doses are the first of 80 million that Mr. Biden pledged to send abroad by the end of June.

Dr. Etienne said that only a more equitable distribution system would put an end to the pandemic in the foreseeable future.

“Today we’re seeing the emergence of two worlds, one quickly returning to normal and another where recovery remains a distant future,” Dr. Etienne said. “Unfortunately, vaccine supply is concentrated in a few nations while most of the world waits for doses to trickle down.”

She singled out the vaccine shortage in Central America, home to more than 44 million people, where just over two million have been inoculated. Fewer than three million people have been vaccinated in nations in the Caribbean, which has a population of just over 34 million.

Credit…Atul Loke for The New York Times

As it has with nearly every other major event of the past year, the pandemic looms large over this week’s Group of 7 summit, with world leaders already making commitments to do more to stop the coronavirus as they prepare for the three-day gathering that begins on Friday.

In recent months, wealthy nations with robust vaccination campaigns have quickly moved toward inoculating large swaths of their population. Now, they are pledging to help the rest of the world meet that goal, too.

In a statement released on Thursday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is playing host to the summit as Britain takes up the G7 presidency this year, said it was crucial to use the moment to act.

“The world needs this meeting,” he said. “We must be honest: International order and solidarity were badly shaken by Covid. Nations were reduced to beggar-my-neighbor tactics in the desperate search for P.P.E., for drugs — and, finally, for vaccines,” he added, referring to personal protective equipment.

He said now was the time to “put those days behind us.”

“This is the moment for the world’s greatest and most technologically advanced democracies to shoulder their responsibilities and to vaccinate the world, because no one can be properly protected until everyone has been protected,” he added.”

President Biden, under pressure to address the global coronavirus vaccine shortage, will announce on Thursday that his administration will buy 500 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and donate them among about 100 countries over the next year, the White House said.

“We have to end Covid-19, not just at home, which we’re doing, but everywhere,” Mr. Biden told United States troops at R.A.F. Mildenhall in Suffolk, England, on Wednesday evening. “There’s no wall high enough to keep us safe from this pandemic or the next biological threat we face, and there will be others. It requires coordinated multilateral action.”

Pfizer said in a statement announcing the deal on Thursday that the United States would pay for the doses at a “not for profit” price. The first 200 million doses will be distributed by the end of this year, followed by 300 million by next June, the company said. The doses will be distributed through Covax, the international vaccine-sharing initiative.

“Fair and equitable distribution has been our North Star since Day One, and we are proud to do our part to help vaccinate the world, a massive but an achievable undertaking,” Albert Bourla, Pfizer’s chief executive, said in a statement.

global round up

Credit…Feline Lim/Getty Images

The Singaporean government said on Thursday that it would ease some social restrictions after nearly a month of tough measures to contain a coronavirus outbreak fueled in part by the Delta variant, first detected in India.

The city-state also said that it would expand its vaccination campaign, allowing Singaporeans ages 12 and older to register for shots beginning on Friday and extending eligibility to the rest of the population in the coming months.

The announcement came a day after the nation of 5.7 million recorded just two new coronavirus cases, the lowest number in months. In mid-May, after an outbreak at Singapore’s international airport led to dozens of infections, the government banned dining in restaurants and gatherings of more than two people.

“We have slowed down the chains of transmission and reduced the number of community cases, and are now in a position to ease the tightened measures,” the Health Ministry said in a statement on Thursday.

Beginning on Monday, people will be allowed to gather in groups of up to five, and restaurants and gyms will be permitted to reopen to customers the following week if cases remain low, the ministry said.

About a third of Singaporeans are fully vaccinated, one of the highest rates in Asia, but the country has kept cases low by requiring masks, strictly tracing contacts and eliminating most overseas travel. Officials have said that lifting further restrictions will depend on many more people getting vaccinated.

In other news around the globe:

Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, will restrict access to shopping malls, restaurants, cafes and other public places to those who have been vaccinated against the coronavirus or who have recently tested negative, starting on Tuesday, Reuters reported. The new rules were announced late on Wednesday and come as the United Arab Emirates has seen daily cases rise during the past three weeks. The restrictions will also apply to gyms, hotels, public parks, beaches, swimming pools, entertainment centers, cinemas, and museums, Abu Dhabi’s media office said.
Germany’s vaccination confirmation app was introduced on Thursday, nearly half a year after inoculations started there. The app, called CovPass, will present a simple QR code confirming that the owner is fully vaccinated. Starting on Monday, doctors and pharmacies will be able to transcribe the usually handwritten entries from paper vaccine booklets into the digital app.
After accusations of fraud at its rapid virus-testing centers, the Health Ministry in Germany announced tougher licensing rules and more spot checks. Public sector health insurers are being tasked with keeping a close eye on the number of tests claimed and carrying out spot checks if the numbers seem off. The government’s per-test payout will also be significantly reduced, to a maximum of 12.50 euros, or about $15, from €18.
David Hasselhoff called for people to roll up their sleeves for the vaccine in an advertisement for Germany’s inoculation campaign. “I’ve found freedom in vaccination,” the former “Baywatch” star said in the clip, a reference to his 1989 version of the song “Looking for Freedom,” which became a smash success in Germany as the Berlin Wall fell and which he performed atop the Wall on New Year’s Eve that year. German health authorities believe that as much as 75 percent of the population will eventually get vaccinated.

Christopher F. Schuetze contributed reporting.

Credit…Janice Wei/National Park Service, via Associated Press

An overcrowded jail in Hawaii that had avoided Covid-19 outbreaks during the first 15 months of the pandemic has been overwhelmed by the virus — with more than one-third of its inmates infected — just as the state is more fully reopening to tourists.

The outbreak corresponds with a significant rise in Covid-19 cases in Hawaii County, or the Big Island, where the jail is situated: There has been a 141 percent increase in infections during the past two weeks, according to a New York Times database.

The National Guard is helping with testing and security to control the outbreak at the Hawaii Community Correctional Center in Hilo, the Big Island’s largest city, where inmates started fires last week as part of a protest, advocacy groups for inmates said.

Public health officials have warned for months that the nation’s correctional facilities will continue to suffer from large numbers of coronavirus infections until the vast majority of inmates and staff are vaccinated.

And because the average person stays in jail for only about 10 days, the virus has been able to spread rapidly between the community and jails during the course of the pandemic.

The reluctance among inmates and staff in the nation’s prisons and jails to get inoculated has complicated vaccination efforts, including in Hawaii.

At the Hilo jail, there are no precise figures available for vaccinations, but as few as 25 percent of inmates and 50 percent of staff have consented to be vaccinated, Lt. Gov. Josh Green, who is also an emergency room physician, said in an interview. The result, he said, is potential community spread through both inmates and staff.

“If there was a continuous simmering outbreak of Covid in the one place where very few people are getting vaccinated, it can break back into the community,” Mr. Green said.

The jail outbreak has led to some uncertainty about reopening. For much of the pandemic, travelers have been required to quarantine for at least 10 days upon arrival.

But arriving tourists can now skip quarantine by showing proof of a negative coronavirus test taken within 72 hours of their arrival. Beginning next Tuesday, people will no longer have to show negative tests to travel from one of the state’s islands to another. Demand for hotel rooms has increased more than 800 percent, according to state tourism data from April, the latest available.

As of Wednesday morning, 138 inmates and 18 staff have been infected in the Hilo jail, officials said.

There are currently about 340 inmates at the jail — about 120 more than its capacity. Inmates routinely must sleep on floors.

“This is scary because what’s happening — I don’t think it’s just going to be contained to that one place, because it’s going to leak out into the community where the guards live,” said Kat Brady, the coordinator of an advocacy group, the Community Alliance on Prisons.

Dr. Green said the state is considering prohibiting unvaccinated guards from having contact with prisoners in the future.

He said correctional institutions were among the “last pockets of risk” for coronavirus outbreaks, and that the lack of priority in reducing crowding and increasing vaccination rates was shortsighted.

“People are more inclined to spend money on ‘good citizens’ versus those who have lost their way,” he said. “But outbreaks will affect us all.”

— Ann Hinga Klein and Maura Turcotte

Credit…Danish Siddiqui/Reuters

NEW DELHI — India’s coronavirus death toll shot up on Thursday after an audit unearthed thousands of uncounted fatalities in the northern state of Bihar, one of the largest and poorest states in the country.

The audit in Bihar showed that more than 9,000 people had died from Covid-related complications since March 2020, significantly higher than the 5,500 deaths originally reported.

The audit was ordered after a hearing on May 17 in the Bihar High Court in Patna, the state capital, in which a district commissioner reported that a single cremation ground had handled 789 bodies in a 13-day period in May. That number clashed sharply with the seven deaths in the whole of May that Tripurari Sharan, a top state-level official, had reported for that entire district.

The revised figures underline the doubts about the accuracy of the Indian government’s official coronavirus statistics. Even in normal times, only about one in five deaths in India is medically certified, experts say.

Opposition political parties in Bihar have accused the state’s top elected official, Nitish Kumar, and his administration of hiding the true death toll to mask failures to mitigate the deadly second wave that has battered India.

The high court in Bihar has been monitoring the state government’s pandemic response since early May after taking up a petition filed by an activist that complained of mismanagement.

But Bihar’s health minister, Mangal Pandey, told The New York Times that the updated numbers reflected a good-faith effort to uncover families eligible for monetary support from the government.

“The intention is to help everyone, not to hide the real death toll,” Mr. Pandey said. “We will leave no death unaccounted for.”

Elsewhere in India, such as in the western state of Gujarat, observers have reported a wide discrepancy between official coronavirus death numbers and the actual figures. While some states have issued revised numbers, no update comes close to Bihar’s. Still, experts say they believe that India’s total number, which because of the audit in Bihar rose by 6,148 deaths on Thursday to 359,676, is a vast undercount.

Emily Schmall reported from New Delhi, and Sameer Yasir from Srinagar, Kashmir.

Credit…Isadora Kosofsky for The New York Times

Deaths from Covid-19 have dropped 90 percent in the United States since their peak in January, according to provisional federal data, but the virus continues to kill hundreds daily. By late May, there were still nearly 2,500 weekly deaths attributed to Covid-19.

With more than half of the U.S. population having received at least one vaccine dose, experts say that the unvaccinated population is driving the lingering deaths.

After seniors were given priority when the first vaccines were authorized for emergency use in December, the proportion of those dying who were 75 or older started dropping immediately.

Younger populations began to make up higher shares of the deaths compared with their percentages at the peak of the pandemic — a trend that continued when all adults became eligible for the shots. While the number of deaths has dropped across all age groups, about half now occur in people aged 50 to 74, compared with only a third in December.

More than 80 percent of those 65 and older have received at least one vaccine dose, compared with about half of those 25 to 64.

“I still think the narrative, unfortunately, is out there with younger people that they can’t suffer the adverse events related to Covid,” which is not the case, said Krutika Kuppalli, an infectious-diseases expert at the Medical University of South Carolina.

Still, those 50 and older make up the bulk of Covid-19 deaths. Among that cohort, white Americans are driving the shifts in death patterns. At the height of the pandemic, those who were white and aged 75 and older accounted for more than half of all Covid-19 deaths. Now, they account for less than a third.

Middle-age populations of all racial groups are making up a higher proportion of Covid-19 deaths than they did in December.

The extent of the drop in deaths, however, is not uniform, and cumulative vaccination rates among Black and Hispanic populations continue to lag behind those of Asian and white populations, according to demographic data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The data shows that more work is needed to reach and vaccinate “rural populations, ethnic and racial minority populations, homeless populations, people who don’t access medical care,” Dr. Kuppalli said.

Credit…Brendan Mcdermid/Reuters

Goldman Sachs wants to know how many of its employees have gotten a Covid-19 shot. The bank sent a memo this week informing employees in the United States that they must report their vaccination status by noon on Thursday.

“Registering your vaccination status allows us to plan for a safer return to the office for all of our people as we continue to abide by local public health measures,” said a section of the memo, which was sent to employees who have not yet reported their status and was obtained by the DealBook newsletter.

Disclosing vaccination status had been optional at the bank. In May, Goldman told employees that they could go maskless in the Manhattan office if they reported their vaccination status.

Now, all Goldman employees in the United States, regardless of whether they choose to wear a mask while in the office, will need to log their status in the bank’s system. They do not need to show proof of vaccination, but will be asked to record the date they received their shots and the maker of the vaccine.

The bank has roughly 20,000 employees based in the firm’s New York headquarters as well as other U.S. cities, including San Francisco and Dallas.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission made clear this month that asking employees for their vaccination status was legal, as long as the data was kept confidential.

Companies are trying to find out how many workers are vaccinated ahead of full office reopenings. They’re doing it by conducting surveys, giving out cash rewards upon proof of vaccination or making reporting compulsory, as with Goldman. That data can inform the need for new incentives to get more people vaccinated or potentially to impose a mandate. (Goldman, for its part, said in the memo it “strongly encourages” vaccination, though the choice “is a personal one.”) The Wall Street firm, which began to bring more workers back to the office this month, has been offering employees paid time off to get the shots.

Credit…Lucy Nicholson/Reuters

A Nevada man accused of stealing more than 500 blank Covid-19 vaccine cards from the Los Angeles vaccination site where he worked was charged on Wednesday with one felony count of grand theft, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office.

The man, Muhammad Rauf Ahmed, 46 of Las Vegas, had been arrested in April, but the charge was delayed as the police and prosecutors sought to determine the value of the cards, which was eventually judged to be “at least $15 apiece if illegally sold.”

Around the country, many bars, restaurants and businesses that operate under limited capacity have loosened restrictions for people who can prove that they have gotten the vaccine, creating an underground market for doctored or fraudulent vaccine cards.

In January, fake vaccine cards were being sold on eBay, Etsy, Facebook and Twitter, ranging in price from $20 to $60. In May, a California bar owner was arrested on charges that he sold fake vaccine cards for $20 a piece.

Mr. Ahmed was a nonclinical contract employee hired to work at the vaccination site at the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds, where nearly 4,000 vaccines are administered daily, the La Verne Police Department, in eastern Los Angeles County, said in a statement on Tuesday.

La Verne Detectives recover over 500 blank COVID-19 vaccine cards stolen from Fairplex Mega-POD.

Muhammad Raud Ahmed, 45 of Las Vegas NV, a non-clinical contracted employee of the location has been arrested.#arrest #COVID19 #vaccine pic.twitter.com/HlzJpSONEU

— La Verne Police Dept (@LaVernePD) June 8, 2021

On April 27, the department was contacted after a security guard at the site spotted Mr. Ahmed leaving with a batch of the distinctive cards in his hand, Detective Sgt. Cory Leeper said in an interview on Wednesday.

Eventually, two staff members from the vaccination site confronted Mr. Ahmed at his car, the detective sergeant said. Mr. Ahmed told them that he liked to go to his car on his break and on that day, sought to “pre-fill” the cards with information that went to every recipient in order to get ahead of his workload, the detective sergeant said.

Officials recovered 128 cards from Mr. Ahmed’s vehicle, according to the police, and when questioned further, Mr. Ahmed acknowledged that he may have taken additional cards. The police found 400 blank cards in the hotel room where he was staying. Mr. Ahmed was arrested. Efforts to reach him by telephone on Wednesday were not successful.

“Selling fraudulent and stolen vaccine cards is illegal, immoral and puts the public at risk of exposure to a deadly virus,” George Gascón, the district attorney in Los Angeles, said in a statement on Wednesday.

Credit…Fabrizio Villa/Getty Images

Back in April, Italy, acting on a report by Europe’s drug regulator of a “possible link” between the AstraZeneca vaccine and rare blood clots, recommended not giving the shots to people under 60.

But in the ensuing months, as the country put its inoculation campaign into overdrive, AstraZeneca vaccines became the featured attraction of “open days” or “open nights,” which offered shots to younger people weeks ahead of where they would have fallen in the priority schedule. The events — some featuring D.J.s and group selfies — were praised as a great success. But they also raised concerns that Italy seemed to be promoting the AstraZeneca vaccine to younger people despite the regulator’s recommendations.

On Wednesday, the government muddled matters further by publicly mulling whether to introduce stricter limitations on the use of the AstraZeneca shots that would effectively prohibit such events for younger people in the future.

“I think new indications would be appropriate,” Pierpaolo Sileri, an undersecretary at the Italian Health Ministry, told the Italian news website Fanpage, adding that the government would consider a block on administering the vaccine to people under the age of 30 or 40.

Other countries have also struggled to chart a clear policy on the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Though the regulator, the European Medicines Agency, deemed the vaccine safe, the risk of very rare blood clots has led some nations to adapt their approaches. In Britain, where the vaccine was created, more than 35 million doses have been given, but the country has acknowledged the risk by offering younger people an alternative when possible. France only distributes the shots to people who are 55 and older, Belgium to those who are 41 and older.

Germany stopped using the AstraZeneca shots altogether for a few days, before later recommending that they should not be used in people under 60. Now, like Italy, Germany has made the AstraZeneca vaccine available to anyone over 18, as long as they acknowledge the risk.

On Wednesday, a new study published in the journal Nature Medicine showed that people receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine had a slightly increased risk of a bleeding disorder and possibly of other rare blood problems.

Andrea Costa, another undersecretary at the Italian Health Ministry, said on Italian radio on Wednesday that the country was able to rely on “many other vaccines” and that any further limitation “will not hamper the vaccination campaign.”

But some doctors in Italy said they feared that yet another change in direction could prompt more skepticism toward the AstraZeneca vaccine.

“This poor vaccine,” said Dr. Patrick Franzoni, who spearheads the inoculation campaign in the northern region of Trentino-Alto Adige. “With this Ping-Pong of information, we risk completely boycotting it.”

In the past weeks, Dr. Franzoni said that he had helped organize open nights, complete with D.J.s, during which 22,000 younger people, who would otherwise have had to wait weeks for a shot, received the AstraZeneca vaccine.

“When older people saw they had AstraZeneca on their slot they did not book the vaccine,” Dr. Franzoni said, “so we did these open nights” to use up the supply.

“And we had a great response,” he added.

Other Italian regions introduced similar initiatives. In Lazio, which includes Rome, about 200,000 people of all ages got their AstraZeneca shot during open days. And Liguria, in the northwest, offered more than 40,000 doses at similar events.

But when reports spread about an 18-year-old girl who was hospitalized with a cerebral thrombosis after attending an open day in Liguria, many canceled their appointments.

Some doctors in Italy have urged the government to stop distributing the AstraZeneca vaccine to younger people. “With a low circulation of the virus, the risks of AstraZeneca can outweigh the benefits in people below the age of 30,” Nino Cartabellotta, a prominent public health researcher, tweeted.

The Italian government is now discussing possible new and more restrictive recommendations, a spokesman for the Health Ministry said.

Christopher F. Schuetze, Monika Pronczuk and Constant Méheut contributed reporting.

Tags Covid19, latest, Live, News, Updates

Health

We’ll In all probability Want Booster Photographs for Covid-19. However When? And Which Ones?

Post author By
Post date June 6, 2021

As the nation moves closer to President Biden’s goal of 70 percent vaccination rates, many people wonder how long their protection will last.

Right now, scientists are asking a lot of questions about Covid-19 booster vaccinations, but they don’t have many answers yet. The National Institutes of Health recently announced that they have started a new clinical trial of fully vaccinated people – with an approved vaccine – to see if a booster of the Moderna syringe increases their antibodies and protects against infection with the virus extended.

Although many scientists estimate that the US-approved vaccines Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson will last at least a year, no one knows exactly. It is also unclear whether emerging variants of the coronavirus will change our vaccination needs.

“We’re breaking new ground here when it comes to boosters,” said Dr. Edward Belongia, a physician and epidemiologist at the Marshfield Clinic Research Institute in Marshfield, Wisconsin.

Why do we need to get the flu vaccine every year, but two measles vaccinations in childhood can protect us for a lifetime?

Different pathogens affect our immune system in different ways. With some diseases, such as measles, a one-time illness leads to lifelong protection against further infection. But with other pathogens, our immune defense declines over time.

In some important ways, vaccines mimic natural infections – without actually getting sick. Measles vaccines can induce lifelong immunity. Tetanus vaccines, on the other hand, create defenses that fade year after year. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends getting a tetanus booster once every decade.

And sometimes the virus can change itself, so a booster is needed to create a new, bespoke defense. Influenza viruses are so changeable that they need a new vaccine every year.

How do Covid-19 vaccines perform in terms of protection against others?

The short answer is that we can’t be sure yet because people were vaccinated in large numbers just a few months ago.

“Even in the studies, we don’t know what the immune response is like a year later,” said Dr. Kirsten Lyke, vaccine expert at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and director of the NIH booster study.

But the first signs are encouraging. In vaccine trials, researchers have drawn blood from volunteers and measured their levels of antibodies and immune cells that target the coronavirus. The levels are going down, but gradually. It is possible that with this slow decline, vaccination protection will remain strong for a long time. People who were previously infected and then received the vaccine can enjoy even more permanent protection.

“I think there is a real possibility that immunity to the original strain could last for years,” said Dr. Belongia.

If this possibility is confirmed, Covid-19 boosters may not be required for years. But that’s a big if.

Will some Covid vaccines last longer than others?

Possibly. Scientists have already established that vaccines with different technologies can vary in their effectiveness. The most powerful vaccines include Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, both of which are based on RNA molecules. Inactivated virus-based vaccines, such as those from Sinopharm in China and Bharat Biotech in India, have proven to be slightly less effective.

It’s not entirely clear why that is, said Scott Hensley, an immunologist at the University of Pennsylvania. RNA vaccines are relatively new and so the immunity they induce has not been thoroughly studied. In his own research on mice given different types of flu vaccines – some with RNA and others with inactivated viruses – Dr. Hensley made a similar difference. The amount of antibodies produced by the two vaccines was “grossly different,” he said.

It is possible that protection from the less effective Covid-19 vaccines may wear off faster. Sinopharm’s vaccine may already show signs of this decline. Clinical studies show an effectiveness of 78 percent. But the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain are already offering boosters to people who have received the Sinopharm vaccine to boost their declining immunity.

How will we know when our vaccines will lose their effectiveness?

Scientists are looking for biological markers that could show when protection from a vaccine is no longer sufficient to hold back the coronavirus. It is possible that a certain level of antibody marks a threshold: if your blood is above this level you are in good shape, but if you are below you are at greater risk of infection.

Some preliminary studies suggest that these markers – known as correlates of protection – exist for Covid-19 vaccines. Research is being carried out to find them.

Updated

June 6, 2021, 2:38 p.m. ET

“That will teach us a lot,” says Dr. H. Clifford Lane, Associate Director, Clinical Research and Special Projects, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

What about the variants?

We may need boosters to block variants, but that’s not yet clear.

The emergence of variants in recent months has accelerated research on boosters. Some variants have mutations that caused them to spread quickly. Others carry mutations that could affect the effectiveness of approved vaccines. But at this point in time, scientists have little evidence of how existing vaccines work against different variants.

Last month, for example, researchers in Qatar published a study of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine, which was given to over a quarter of a million of the country’s residents between December and March.

Clinical studies showed that the vaccine was 95 percent effective against the original version of the coronavirus. But a variant called Alpha, which was first identified in the UK, cut its effectiveness to 89.5 percent. A variant first identified in South Africa, known as Beta, further reduced the vaccine’s effectiveness to 75 percent. However, against both variants, the vaccine was 100 percent effective in preventing serious, critical, or fatal illnesses.

Just because a variant can bypass existing vaccines doesn’t mean it becomes a widespread problem. Beta, for example, has remained rare in countries with strong vaccine programs like Israel, the UK, and the United States. If beta stays infrequent, it doesn’t pose a serious threat.

But evolution still has a lot of leeway to play with the coronavirus. Scientists cannot rule out the possibility that new variants will emerge in the coming months that will spread quickly and resist vaccines.

“It is clear that variants are inevitable,” said Dr. Grace Lee, Associate Chief Medical Officer, Practice Innovation and Infectious Disease Doctor at Stanford Children’s Health. “I think the question is how effective are they going to be?”

Do we need a special booster that is tailored to a specific variant?

Its not clear yet. Some scientists suspect that a high immune response to the original version of the coronavirus also provides adequate protection against variants. But it is also possible that a vaccine that specifically thwarted one variant might be more effective.

Pfizer has made an attempt to test both options. Some volunteers who have already received two doses of their vaccine will be given a third dose of the same vaccination as a booster. In the same study, the researchers will give other volunteers an experimental booster designed to protect against the beta variant.

“Based on what we’ve learned so far, we currently think that until we see a decrease in SARS-CoV-2 circulation and Covid-19 disease, we think it likely that a third dose, a Increasing our vaccine, within 12 months of vaccine administration, will likely be needed to protect against Covid-19, “said Jerica Pitts, director of global media relations at Pfizer.

Can I change my brand of vaccine if I get a booster shot?

Possibly. In fact, much research on other diseases suggests that switching vaccines may increase the booster dose. “This is a proven concept from before Covid,” said Dr. Lyke.

Dr. Lyke and her colleagues are testing this mix-and-match option for boosters as part of their new study. They are recruiting volunteers who have been fully vaccinated with any of three US approved vaccines – Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, and Pfizer-BioNTech.

All volunteers receive a Moderna booster. The researchers will then observe how strong an immune response it creates.

It is possible that other vaccines that are still in clinical trials may work even better as Covid boosters. For example, Novavax and Sanofi are both conducting clinical trials of vaccines made from viral proteins in the United States. Dr. Lyke and her colleagues designed their study so that they could add more such vaccines later.

“We are working behind the scenes on other contracts so we can bring additional boosters into the study,” she said. These additional boosters can also include those tailored to variants, such as the one developed by Pfizer-BioNTech.

Other mixed booster studies are also ongoing. In the UK, scientists are giving volunteers vaccines from AstraZeneca, CureVac, Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, Novavax, Pfizer-BioNTech and Valneva as boosters. ImmunityBio is testing its vaccine in South Africa as a booster for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, while Sanofi prepares to test its vaccine as a booster for those of several other companies.

The NIH study could start delivering results as early as the next few weeks. If fading vaccines and rising variants lead to an outbreak of new infections this winter, Dr. Lyke have data to share with policy makers.

“It was vital for us to get a response as soon as possible,” she said. “We just don’t have this luxury of time.”

What about all the people who haven’t got their first doses?

Dr. Hensley says it is wise to prepare for the possibility that boosters will be needed. But he hoped they didn’t detract from the urgent need to give billions of people around the world first doses.

“If more people are protected immediately, the virus will have fewer hosts to infect and fewer opportunities to develop into new variants,” he said.

“I want these vaccines to go global because I want to protect people all over the world,” added Dr. Hensley added. “But even if you only take care of yourself, you should also stand behind these efforts, because this is the only way to end the pandemic and limit the development of variants.”

Noah Weiland contributed the reporting.

Tags booster, Covid19, shots

Health

When a Surgeon Grew to become a Covid-19 Affected person: ‘I Had By no means Confronted the Actuality of Demise’

Post author By
Post date June 3, 2021

“He brought his culture of innovation,” Dr. Emond said. “And his personal capability, his ability to work for long hours, never quitting, never giving up, no matter how difficult the situation, carrying out operations that many would deem impossible.”

In his first year at Columbia, Dr. Kato and his team operated successfully on a 7-year-old girl, Heather McNamara, whose family had been told by several other hospitals that her abdominal cancer was inoperable. The surgery, which involved removing six organs and then putting them back in, took 23 hours.

More and more patients from around the country, and around the world, began seeking out Dr. Kato for operations that other hospitals could not or would not perform. He had also begun making trips to Venezuela to perform liver transplants for children and teach the procedure to local surgeons, and he created a foundation to help support the work there as well as in other Latin American countries.

As Dr. Kato’s colleagues struggled to save him, a waiting list of surgical patients clung to hopes that he would soon be able to save them.

Gradually, Dr. Pereira said, there were signs of recovery.

“You come in early in the morning to see him,” he said. “The hospital hallways are empty and everybody’s looking at each other, scared and anxious. You go into the intensive care unit dreading bad news, and the team is giving you a sort of hopeful thumbs-up that maybe he’s looking better.”

Dr. Kato spent about a month on a ventilator, and a week on ECMO. Like many people with severe Covid, he was tormented by frightening and vivid hallucinations and delusions. In one, he was arrested at the Battle of Waterloo. In another, he had been deliberately infected with anthrax; only a hospital in Antwerp could save him, but he could not get there. He saw the white light that some people describe after near-death experiences. “I felt like I died,” he said.

He had spent much of his adult life in hospitals, but never as a patient.

“I never got sick,” he said. “I had never faced the reality of death.”

Tags Covid19, Death, faced, Patient, Reality, surgeon

Health

DOJ expenses 14 folks for alleged health-care fraud associated to Covid-19

Post author By
Post date May 26, 2021

Paul Hennessy | LightRocket | Getty Images

The federal prosecutor has indicted 14 people in multiple fraud programs that allegedly charged consumers and insurers with $ 143 million, the Justice Department said on Wednesday.

In addition to those charged by the DOJ, more than 50 medical providers are facing administrative actions by the Center for Program Integrity and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services for participating in healthcare fraud programs related to Covid-19.

The DOJ’s fraud division, which heads the Medicare Fraud Strike Force, announced that it is pursuing cases in the following counties: Western District of Arkansas, Northern District of California, Middle District of Louisiana, Central District of California, Southern District of Florida, Borough of New Jersey and the eastern borough of New York.

“These health professionals, executives and others have allegedly taken advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to fill their own pockets instead of providing the health services they need in our country at this unprecedented time,” said Assistant Attorney General Lisa Monaco. “We are determined to hold those who use such programs accountable to the fullest extent of the law.”

FBI Director Christopher Wray also said the agency is determined to fight healthcare fraud related to Covid-19.

The DOJ’s announcement also found that the profits from the fraudulent operations were allegedly laundered by Shell companies and used to purchase exotic cars and luxury homes.

After Covid-19 was recognized as a national emergency, telehealth regulations were expanded to allow Medicare beneficiaries better access to a wider range of services to avoid risky trips to health locations. The defendant allegedly used these extensions to bring fraudulent claims to Medicare over telemedicine encounters that the DOJ said never took place.

In Arkansas, a man who owns two testing laboratories was charged with more than $ 88 million in healthcare fraud in connection with an alleged fraud program against the United States. The man allegedly used access to beneficiary and medical provider information from previous laboratory test assignments to file hundreds of fraudulent claims for urine, drug and other tests. Some of the falsely submitted claims concerned deceased beneficiaries.

A doctor in New Jersey allegedly ordered expensive and medically unnecessary cancer genetic testing for Medicare beneficiaries attending a Covid-19 testing promotional event he attended. The man also reportedly billed Medicare for services to beneficiaries he never performed, totaling around $ 19 million in healthcare fraud systems.

Another man in the state who was a partner in a diagnostic testing lab allegedly offered setbacks in exchange for breath tests that were not properly bundled with Covid tests and billed to Medicare. The man reportedly paid and received bribes totaling $ 5.4 million.

In New York, charges were brought against two people who owned several pharmacies and bogus pharmacy wholesalers for allegedly guilty of healthcare fraud, wire fraud and money laundering totaling $ 45 million. The two and their co-conspirators have reportedly acquired billing privileges for several pharmacies. They also allegedly filed fraudulent claims with Medicare by abusing the Covid-19 emergency rules to avoid otherwise imposed restrictions on refilling expensive drugs.

The report alleges that the defendants “allegedly used an ingenious network of international money laundering activities to hide and disguise the proceeds of the system.”

“Medical providers have been the unsung heroes … It’s disheartening that some have abused their agencies,” Wray said.

Tags alleged, charges, Covid19, DOJ, Fraud, healthcare, people, Related

Health

CDC is Investigating Coronary heart Issues in a Few Younger Covid-19 Vaccine Recipients

Post author By
Post date May 23, 2021

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is investigating reports that a very small number of teenagers and young adults vaccinated against the coronavirus may have had heart problems, according to the agency’s vaccine safety group.

The group’s statement was sparse in detail, saying only that there were “relatively few” cases and that they may be completely independent of vaccination. The condition known as myocarditis is inflammation of the heart muscle and can occur after certain infections.

The CDC’s review of the reports is in the early stages, and the agency has yet to determine if there is evidence that the vaccines caused the heart disease. The agency has published guidelines on its website urging doctors and clinicians to look out for unusual heart symptoms in young people who have just received their scans.

“It may just be a coincidence that some people develop myocarditis after vaccination,” said Dr. Celine Gounder, an infectious disease specialist at Bellevue Hospital Center in New York. “It’s more likely that something like this happened by accident because so many people are being vaccinated.”

The cases appear to have occurred predominantly in adolescents and young adults about four days after the second dose of one of the mRNA vaccines manufactured by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech. And the cases were more common in men than women.

“Most of the cases appear to be mild and the case follow-up is ongoing,” the vaccine safety group said. The CDC strongly recommends Covid vaccines for Americans 12 and older.

“We look forward to more data on these cases so that we can better understand whether they are vaccine-related or if they are accidental,” said Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, Chair of the Infectious Diseases Committee of the American Academy of Pediatrics. “In the meantime, it is important for pediatricians and other clinicians to report any health concerns that arise after vaccination.”

Experts pointed out that the potentially rare side effect of myocarditis pale in comparison to the potential risks of Covid, including the persistent syndrome called “Long Covid”. Acute Covid itself can cause myocarditis.

As of May 13, the coronavirus had infected more than 3.9 million children and sent more than 16,000 to hospitals, more than were hospitalized for flu in an average year. This is evident from data collected by the AAP. Approximately 300 children have died from Covid-19 in the United States, making it one of the top 10 causes of child death since the pandemic began.

“And that is related to all mitigation measures that have been taken,” said Dr. Jeremy Faust, emergency doctor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

Updated

May 23, 2021 at 12:06 p.m. ET

In the general population, about 10 to 20 in 100,000 people develop myocarditis each year, with symptoms ranging from fatigue and chest pain to arrhythmias and cardiac arrest. Many others are likely to have mild symptoms and, according to researchers, never get diagnosed.

Currently, the number of post-vaccination reported cases of myocarditis does not appear to be any higher than is common among young people, according to the CDC. However, the agency’s vaccine safety group members felt that information on reports of myocarditis should be provided to providers, ”the report said.

The agency did not disclose the age of the affected patients. The Pfizer BioNTech vaccine has been approved for ages 16 and over since December. Earlier this month, the Food and Drug Administration extended this approval to children ages 12-15.

On May 14, the CDC alerted doctors to the possible link between myocarditis and vaccines. On May 17, the task force reviewed the Department of Defense’s data on myocarditis, reports submitted to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, and others.

State health departments in Washington, Oregon, and California have alerted emergency providers and cardiologists to the potential problem, and a report of seven cases has been submitted to Pediatrics magazine for review.

Dr. Liam Yore, former president of the Washington State Chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians, said in an interview that he recently saw a teenager with myocarditis after the vaccination.

The patient was treated for a slight inflammation of the lining of the heart and then sent home. But the teenager later returned to care, with a decrease in cardiac output. Still, Dr. Yore, he’s seen worse results in teens with Covid, including a 9-year-old who arrived at the hospital after suffering cardiac arrest last winter.

“The relative risk is very favorable to receiving the vaccine, especially considering how many doses of the vaccine have been given,” he said.

More than 161 million people in the United States have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine. About 4.5 million of them were between 12 and 18 years old.

Tags CDC, Covid19, Heart, investigating, Problems, recipients, Vaccine, young

World News

Covid-19 Information: Stay Updates on Circumstances and Vaccines

Post author By
Post date May 21, 2021

Digging graves for coronavirus victims at a cemetery in São Paulo, Brazil, on Wednesday.

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Mario Tama/Getty Images

GENEVA — Deaths from Covid-19 and Covid-related causes are likely to be two to three times the number that countries have recorded in their official data, the World Health Organization said on Friday.

Some six to eight million people may have now died from Covid-19 or its effects since the start of the pandemic, compared with 3.4 million deaths recorded in countries’ official reporting, Dr. Samira Asma, assistant director of the W.H.O.’s data division, told reporters.

The W.H.O. also estimates that at least three million people may have died from Covid-19 in 2020, compared with 1.8 million recorded in official data, the W.H.O. reported in annual statistics released on Friday.

The W.H.O. based its assessment on a statistical model that estimates the excess deaths attributable to Covid-19. The technique involves taking the total number of officially recorded deaths and then subtracting the number of deaths that would have been expected on the basis of previous mortality trends if the pandemic had not occurred.

On that basis, the W.H.O. said it estimated that 1.1 million to 1.3 million people in 53 European countries died from Covid-19 in 2020, roughly double the number recorded in official data. The organization also calculates that, over the same period, 1.3 million to 1.5 million people died in 35 countries in the Americas, compared with the 900,000 deaths officially recorded.

The huge discrepancy between the W.H.O.’s estimates and official data underscores the limited capacity of many countries to test their populations for the coronavirus and other weaknesses in official health data. For example, some Covid victims had died before being tested and their deaths did not appear in official reporting, William Msemburi, a W.H.O. data analyst said.

The W.H.O. will present its statistics to the annual meeting of its policymaking assembly in Geneva next week. The numbers will help make the case for countries to invest urgently in bolstering data systems and their capacity to monitor and report health developments.

“We can only be better prepared with better data,” Dr. Asma said.

United States ›	United StatesOn May 20	14-day change
New cases	29,701	–36%
New deaths	654	–14%

World ›	WorldOn May 20	14-day change
New cases	636,014	–23%
New deaths	12,828	–6%

U.S. vaccinations ›

Credit…Brian Inganga/Associated Press

When the pandemic began, global health officials feared that the vulnerabilities of Africa would lead to devastation. More than a year later, the rates of illness and death from Covid in Africa appear to be lower than in the rest of the world, upending scientists’ expectations.

But if the virus begins to spread more rapidly on the continent, as it has in other regions, new findings suggest that the death toll could worsen.

People in Africa who become critically ill from Covid-19 are more likely to die than patients in other parts of the world, according to a report published on Thursday in the medical journal The Lancet.

The report, based on data from 64 hospitals in 10 countries, is the first broad look at what happens to critically ill Covid patients in Africa, the authors say. The increased risk of death applies only to those who become severely ill.

Among 3,077 critically ill patients admitted to the African hospitals, 48.2 percent died within 30 days, compared with a global average of 31.5 percent, the Lancet study found.

The study was observational, meaning that the researchers followed the patients’ progress, but did not experiment with treatments.

For Africa as a whole, the death rate among severely ill Covid patients may be even higher than it was in the study, the researchers said, because much of their information came from relatively well-equipped hospitals, and 36 percent of those facilities were in South Africa and Egypt, which have better resources than many other African countries. In addition, the patients in the study, with an average age of 56, were younger than many other critically ill Covid patients, indicating that death rates outside the study could be higher.

Reliable data on a country’s deaths and their causes have been hard to come by. As the coronavirus pandemic swept across the world in 2020, it has became increasingly evident that in a majority of countries on the African continent, most deaths are never formally registered.

The other eight countries in the study were Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Libya, Malawi, Mozambique, Niger and Nigeria. Leaders of 16 other African nations had also agreed to participate, but ultimately did not.

Reasons for the higher death rates include a lack of resources such as surge capacity in intensive care units, equipment to measure patients’ oxygen levels, dialysis machines and so-called ECMO devices to pump oxygen into the bloodstream of patients whose lungs become so impaired that even a ventilator is not enough to keep them alive.

But there was also an apparent failure to use resources that were available, the authors of the study suggested. Proning — turning patients onto their stomachs to help them breathe — was underused, performed for only about a sixth of the patients who needed it.

The slow introduction of vaccines across the continent has underscored global problems of vaccine inequality. Just over 24 million vaccines have been administered in Africa, according to the Africa C.D.C., with just 1.42 percent of the population fully vaccinated. In the United States, about 126.6 million people are fully vaccinated and more than 60 percent of adults have received at least one shot.

Facing a resurgent coronavirus and plagued by delays with vaccine supply, South Africa began the second phase of its public vaccination campaign on Monday, opening appointments for people aged 60 or older. The country has a 14.5 percent positivity rate, according to the Africa C.D.C.

Credit…Kyodo News, via Associated Press

Japan on Friday approved the Moderna and AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccines for use in adults, giving the country much-needed new options as it tries to speed up an inoculation campaign that has been one of the slowest in the developed world.

Previously, only the Pfizer vaccine had been authorized for use in Japan, where just 4.1 percent of the population has received a first shot. Vaccinations have been held up by strict rules that allow only doctors and nurses to administer shots, and by a requirement that vaccines be tested on people in Japan before they are approved for use.

Japan is in the midst of a fourth wave of coronavirus infections, just two months before the Summer Olympics in Tokyo are set to begin. Tokyo and eight other prefectures are under a state of emergency that will last at least until the end of this month, and Okinawa is expected to be added to that list. Japan has been reporting about 5,500 cases a day, compared to 1,000 in early March.

A Health Ministry panel recommended on Thursday night that the government approve the Moderna and AstraZeneca vaccines. The health minister, Norihisa Tamura, said that the Moderna shots would be used at mass inoculation sites scheduled to open on Monday in Tokyo and Osaka, which will be staffed mainly by military doctors and nurses.

The government has not said when the AstraZeneca vaccine would be deployed. NHK, the public broadcaster, reported that despite the green light from the government, the use of AstraZeneca might be delayed over concerns that it could be linked to very rare cases of blood clotting.

Credit…Alen Thien/Alamy

Scientists have discovered a new canine coronavirus in a child who was hospitalized with pneumonia in Malaysia in 2018. If the virus is confirmed to be a human pathogen, it would be the eighth coronavirus, and the first canine coronavirus, known to cause disease in humans.

It is not yet clear whether this specific virus poses a serious threat to humans, the researchers stress. The study does not prove that the pneumonia was caused by the virus, which may not be capable of spreading between people. But the finding, which was published on Thursday in Clinical Infectious Diseases, highlights the need to more proactively search for viruses that could jump from animals into humans, the scientists said.

“I think the key message here is that these things are probably happening all over the world, where people come in contact with animals, especially intense contact, and we’re not picking them up,” said Gregory Gray, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Duke University who is one of the study’s authors. “We should be looking for these things. If we can catch them early and find out that these viruses are successful in the human host, then we can mitigate them before they become a pandemic virus.”

Seven coronaviruses are currently known to infect humans. In addition to SARS-CoV-2, which is the causes of Covid-19, there are coronaviruses that cause SARS, MERS and the common cold. Many of these viruses are believed to have originated in bats, but can jump from bats to humans, either directly or after a stopover in another animal host.

Scientists have known for decades that coronaviruses can cause disease in dogs, and recent studies have shown that the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 can infect both cats and dogs. But there has not been any evidence that dogs transmit it, or any other coronavirus, to humans.

global roundup

Credit…Natacha Pisarenko/Associated Press

President Alberto Fernández of Argentina ordered a nine-day lockdown in the worst-affected parts of the country to help curb the spread of the coronavirus as the nation struggled to contain a second wave of the outbreak.

In a speech broadcast nationally on all radio and TV stations, Mr. Fernández ordered a lockdown that starts on Saturday and ends on May 30 in those regions. That will be followed by another nine days of restrictions, the severity of which will be determined by how much the country is able to control the spread of the virus.

“We are living the worst moment since the start of the pandemic,” Mr. Fernández said. “If we follow the guidelines, we will reduce the impact of this second wave. It is imperative that every local jurisdiction strictly apply these guidelines. There is no space for speculation and there is no time for delay.”

Argentina, like many of its neighbors in Latin America, saw an alarming spike in cases in April that has shown little respite as the region struggles to vaccinate people quickly enough to slow the spread. In the last seven days, the country’s daily average of new cases soared to become the fourth-highest in the world, and deaths rose to be the fifth-highest.

On Thursday, Argentina recorded 39,652 new cases and 494 new deaths. So far, 18 percent of the population has received at least one dose of a vaccine and 4.7 percent are fully vaccinated, according to the Our World in Data project at the University of Oxford. Neighboring Chile has fully vaccinated 40 percent of its population.

In other developments around the globe:

Thailand has detected its first 15 domestically transmitted cases of the highly infectious coronavirus variant first found in India, Reuters reported. The cases were discovered among construction workers in Bangkok, the Thai coronavirus task force said on Friday.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of Spain announced on Friday that visitors from Britain, Japan, China and a handful of countries would be allowed back into the country from Monday, while Americans and other people who have been vaccinated will be able to visit Spain from June 7. The return of British tourists, who form the largest contingent of holiday makers in many Spanish resorts, was seen as essential to help guarantee the recovery of the Spanish tourism sector. “Spain will be very happy to welcome British tourists,” Mr. Sánchez said, during a tourism conference in Madrid. “They are welcome into our country without restrictions.”
While the government of Britain still advises against international cruises, a ship embarked on a domestic journey on Thursday night, the first time any such vessel had set sail from the country for more than a year. Passengers for the four-night cruise around the British Isles had to test negative for the virus before boarding and social distancing and masks are still required in public areas
Norway plans to ease some virus restrictions beginning May 27, Reuters reported. Larger groups of people will be allowed to meet and alcohol will be allowed to be served until midnight, Prime Minister Erna Solberg said on Friday. In some places, though, local restrictions will remain tougher than the national rules to prevent regional flare-ups of the virus.

Raphael Minder and Anna Schaverien contributed reporting.

ParisAndrea Mantovani for The New York Times
AthensLouisa Gouliamaki/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
BerlinLena Mucha for The New York Times
LondonLeon Neal/Getty Images
MadridEmilio Parra Doiztua for The New York Times
Krakow, PolandOmar Marques/Getty Images
Florence, ItalySusan Wright for The New York Times

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After 14 months of lockdowns — some light, some draconian — many in Europe are again allowed to grab a coffee at a cafe or a pint in a pub, and to stay at a hotel or at a bed-and-breakfast.

Lockdown rules intended to prevent the spread of the coronavirus have been eased in England, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands and Poland, among other places — with many of the restrictions falling away this week.

The virus has killed more than 3.4 million people and sickened more than 165 million. But in Europe, with vaccinations rising, normalcy is once again at hand. After a rough start, 33 percent of people in the European Union have gotten at least one vaccine shot, according to Our World in Data, a University of Oxford tracking site. In Britain, 37 million people have received one dose of the vaccine and 21 million are fully vaccinated.

On Wednesday in Paris, where cafe terraces were once again open, Saïd Belkhiati, a 27-year-old account manager was dressed in a suit and having a drink with a friend.

“It really changes everything,” he said. “For a year, I felt like I was imprisoned, in an open-air jail. Now we are free. I’m enjoying this first breath of freedom. I took a day off to enjoy the reopening. Having a drink here, it’s so nice. Terraces are what make the charm of Paris!”

Noëlle Roche, a 75-year-old retiree, ventured out in the rain in Paris to catch up on a beloved pastime, going to the movies.

“I just watched the movie ‘DNA,’” she said. “I’m happy to be able to go to the movies again,”

“I missed it so much,” she added. “I usually go to the movies several times a week.”

In England, where indoor dining was allowed to restart and movie theaters and museums reopened, there was a note of caution because a variant of the virus that is circulating in India has also been found in Britain.

“We must be humble in the face of this virus,” the health secretary, Matt Hancock, told Parliament on Monday, adding that the variant, with a higher transmission rate, “poses a real risk.” While the overall case numbers remain low, they have been multiplying rapidly.

In Berlin, terraces, beer gardens and outdoor seating at restaurants opened on Friday. Despite some clouds and rain, owners and staff had been preparing all week, taking chairs and tables out of storage, and setting up the kind of tent-like structures that will allow customers nearly all the comforts of indoor dining while staying in line with the current coronavirus guidelines.

Those enjoying the outdoor services will have to present either a vaccination documentation, proof of an old Covid infection or a negative antigen test, which can be taken in one of hundreds of free test stations that the government has funded.

Other attractions, like museums, memorials and some outdoor theaters and cinemas, were opening on Friday under a reservation-only system, under the same testing-vaccine rules as the restaurants.

“It’s just grand — we are so happy that we can open up again and that we can have tourists sitting on our terrace,” said Jan Bubinger, 36, one of the managers at the Ständige Vertretung, a pub and restaurant on the Spree River right in the middle of Berlin’s tourist district.

Mr. Bubinger, who has had to shutter his restaurant for seven months, added that he would make antigen tests available to those without documents so that they don’t have to go to a test center before being served.

Volker Pradel, 61, said, “We are very happy of course,” after welcoming his first guest to the Schleusenkrug, a beer garden close to the Berlin Zoo on the west side of the city. Mr. Pradel, the manager of the eatery, noted, however, that it was difficult finding servers because most people in that profession now work at test or vaccination centers.

Credit…Rebecca Conway/Getty Images

India’s federal health ministry raised an alarm on Thursday, asking state governments to immediately report all cases of a potentially deadly fungal infection that appears to be spreading quickly among Covid-19 patients.

The rare condition, mucormycosis, commonly known as black fungus, was present in India before the pandemic, but it is affecting those with Covid or those who have recently recovered.

Many health experts blame the spread on a central coronavirus treatment, steroids. These drugs can limit inflammation of the lungs, but they also dull the response of the immune system, which can allow infections like the black fungus to take hold.

More broadly, Covid patients with weakened immune systems and underlying conditions, particularly diabetes, are especially vulnerable to black fungus, which has a high mortality rate.

Making matters worse, a shortage of antifungal drugs, like amphotericin B, has made it hard to fight the infection once it attacks. Relatives of the sick have been desperately sending messages over social media seeking the drug.

Courts are pressuring local governments to make antifungal drugs available and pushing for stepped up investigations to stop black-market drugs from being distributed.

Before the pandemic, a vial of amphotericin B would cost around $80, but some relatives of sick people say they have paid as much as $500 on the black market.

Video of a woman saying she would jump off the roof of a hospital if it failed to arrange injections of the medication for her husband spread widely on social media early this week.

The woman, in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, said, “If I don’t get the injection today, then I will jump off the roof of the hospital and commit suicide. I have no other option left.” She added that the hospital had none of the medication and said of her husband, “Where should I take him in this condition?”

In the western state of Maharashtra, which includes the commercial hub of Mumbai, the authorities said at least 90 people had died of fungal infections and more than 1,500 patients were being treated in hospitals.

Rajesh Topai, the health minister of Maharashtra, told reporters on Wednesday that the state was desperate for more supplies of the medicine and begged the federal government, “do anything, but give more vials to Maharashtra.”

In Delhi, the capital, badly hit by the pandemic, hospitals have recorded 185 fungal infection cases and the local government is setting up three dedicated centers inside government-run hospitals to treat the condition.

M.V. Padma Srivastava, a professor and head of neurology department at All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, said the number of black fungus cases was increasing every day and the condition was appearing across the country like never before.

She said hospitals received few cases during the first wave of the pandemic but certainly not the numbers they are registering now, amid a virulent second wave.

Of the medication for the disease she said: “It is not one of the common over-the-counter medications. This is a toxic medication by itself. It can’t be given by all and sundry. It is not something which you can take at home. It needs strict monitoring of body parameters because it is a toxic drug.”

The federal government directive requiring state governments to immediately disclose cases follows those of many Indian states that had already required hospitals to report cases of mucormycosis.

Credit…Patrick T. Fallon/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Los Angeles is taking its vaccination efforts on the road.

The city is gradually winding down its mass vaccination sites and will be fully mobile starting Aug. 1, marking what one deputy mayor called “the end of an era.”

“It’s a natural evolution,” said Jeffrey Gorell, the deputy mayor for public safety, who is overseeing vaccine efforts in the city. “Rather than having fixed sites where we ask community members to come to us, the natural progression is for us to move into more of a mobile approach where we can go to the populations where we need to be for areas with the lowest vaccination rates.”

With mobile sites, “we believe we can get to the most challenged areas,” he said.

Mobile vaccine units have been a part of the city’s vaccine program. But as the city’s 10 mass vaccination sites close over the coming weeks, the city will up its mobile units from 10 to 14. The city stopped offering vaccines at Dodgers Stadium on Thursday but other mass sites remain open.

Specially outfitted vans and trailers will give the city “tactical vaccination capabilities” so they can get into communities that may be underserved, hesitant or simply don’t have the time because of work requirements, Mr. Gorell said, adding that mobile teams will be able to extend evening and weekend hours.

“Rather than hunker down at a fixed site waiting for them to come to us, we can be in their neighborhood and available,” Mr. Gorell said. “We’re going to be a truly mobile presence in the city.”

The mobile units will offer all three federally authorized vaccines — the two-dose Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, and the single-shot Johnson & Johnson — and will be able to travel to multiple neighborhoods a day or stay for an entire week. Mr. Gorell said they also plan to target community events, grocery stores, street fairs and other highly trafficked areas. Appointments will not be necessary.

As of Thursday, 54 percent of California residents have received at least one shot and 40 percent are fully vaccinated according to a New York Times database. In Los Angeles County, 40 percent of eligible residents are fully vaccinated.

“With a growing number of residents getting inoculated, we are putting our resources where they will do the most good — delivering doses directly to undervaccinated communities, engaging and educating vulnerable populations, and eliminating barriers to this life-saving vaccine,” Mayor Eric Garcetti said in a statement.

Los Angeles joins a growing fleet of mobile Covid-19 vaccine clinics that are rolling up to neighborhoods in Delaware, Minnesota and Washington State to reach people who have been unable to travel to vaccination centers.

The city is working with community based organizations to help residents understand the science of the vaccine and access the mobile sites.

For Denise Villamil, the director of youth development services at Alma Family Services in East Los Angeles, outreach has been both personal and professional. Ms. Villamil lost her aunt to Covid-19 in December, just a month before vaccines started becoming available in the United States.

“Every person I can get through the line, every person I can get through the registration is one more person who is luckier than those who didn’t in the pandemic,” Ms. Villamil said. “Fear spreads, so does hope. So we’ve seen that in the communities and that’s been the beautiful part of this process. We’ve been able to give hope and see the ripple effect.”

Credit…Patrick Siebert

It’s not every day that an American governor appears alongside a man dressed as a lottery ball.

But that’s exactly what happened on Thursday as Gov. Larry Hogan announced that Maryland would partner with the state’s lottery to provide $2 million in prize money for residents who get vaccinated.

“Our mission is to ensure that no arm is left behind and we’re committed to leaving no stone unturned and using every resource at our disposal to achieve that goal,” Mr. Hogan said.

Beginning May 25, the Maryland lottery will randomly select and award $40,000 to a vaccinated Marylander every day through July 4, when a final drawing will be held for a grand prize of $400,000. Any Maryland resident who has been vaccinated in the state will be automatically enrolled in drawings.

“The sooner you get your shot, the more lottery drawings you will be eligible for,” he said, adding, “There’s no better time than now and there should be no more excuses.”

The state has administered about 5.7 million vaccines, and 44 percent of the state is fully vaccinated, according to a New York Times database. But like other states across the country, vaccination rates have tapered off. States have turned to an array of incentives — including beer, money, transit cards and joints — to get shots into the arms of more Americans.

“Promotions like this are just one more way that we’re reinforcing the importance of getting every single Marylander we can vaccinated against Covid-19,” Mr. Hogan said. All funding will be provided from Maryland’s lottery marketing fund.

“Get your shot for a shot to win,” he said, adding, “that’s a good line.”

Maryland isn’t alone in trying to lure residents with the chance of big winnings. This month, Ohio’s governor, Mike DeWine, offered a $1 million lottery prize for five people who get vaccinated. That effort would be paid for by federal coronavirus relief funds, Mr. DeWine said during a statewide televised address.

And in New York, the state will hand out free scratch-off tickets for the “Mega Multiplier” lottery to those 18 and older who get their shot at 10 state mass vaccination sites next week, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said on Thursday. The pilot program lasts from next Monday to Friday. The tickets could yield prizes from $20 to the $5 million jackpot, he said.

Credit…Emily Elconin/Reuters

As vaccinated Americans return to many parts of their prepandemic lives this summer, one group will be left out: children under 12, who cannot yet be vaccinated. So what should families with young children do when everyone else starts socializing again?

We asked experts as part of an informal New York Times survey. The group of 828 who responded included epidemiologists, who study public health, and pediatric infectious disease physicians, who research and treat children sick with diseases like Covid-19.

They noted that this phase was temporary. Pfizer has said vaccines for children ages 2 and up could come as soon as September. Of the survey respondents with young children, 92 percent said they would vaccinate their own children as soon as a shot was approved.

In the meantime, families with young children may need to retain more precautions, like masking and distancing, than their childless friends do. But they said some minimally risky activities could help counteract the mental health effects of pandemic living.

“Kids need to be able to be kids,” said Mac McCullough, an associate professor at Arizona State. “Outdoor activity isn’t perfectly safe, but its benefits are likely to outweigh its risks across an entire population.”

Credit…Susan Wright for The New York Times

ROME — As Dr. Mario Sorlini sits patients down in a vaccination center near the badly affected Italian town of Bergamo, he explains a potential complication of the coronavirus vaccine.

The second dose, he tells patients with terror-stricken faces, will fall on a date during the summer holidays.

“‘But I’ll be in Sardinia then,’” he said that some had responded with distress. Others moan about hotel rooms they’ve already booked. Some, he said, get up and leave.

For months, Italians have hungered for the vaccines that would give them safety, freedom from lockdown and a taste of normal life. After initial pitfalls and hurdles, the vaccination campaign is finally speeding up, but it is heading smack into the summer holidays that are sacred for many Italians and prompting fears among officials that a significant number would rather get away than get vaccinated.

“I am certain that many, after such a hard year, will risk delaying the vaccine” until after the summer holidays, said Renata Tosi, the mayor of Riccione, a beach town that is so identified with summer flings that it lent its name to a recent vacation anthem. That could create a significant danger next autumn, Ms. Tosi wrote in an open letter to the region’s president.

“The Second Shot Blocks Vacation,” read a headline in Messaggero Veneto, a newspaper in northeastern Italy, echoing concerns in papers, websites and social media accounts across the country.

An estimated 20 million Italians — mostly 40- and 50-somethings — face the prospect of getting their second shots in the middle of July or worse, in the riptide that is the Italian August, which pulls people out of cities and into swelling seaside towns.

This year, people have sought vacations with such a vengeance that tourism operators have started using the term “revenge travel” to describe the way Italians are trying to get even with the cruel months of lockdown. Surfing the web for holiday homes has become the new doom scrolling.

Tags cases, Covid19, Live, News, Updates, vaccines

Health

Singapore rejects Delhi chief’s claims about new Covid-19 variant

Post author By
Post date May 20, 2021

Singapore's Covid situation may start to improve in weeks: Professor

People take their lunch break in the Raffles Place financial district in Singapore on May 5, 2021.

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SINGAPORE – Singapore has ordered Facebook, Twitter, and a local publisher to correct a false statement that implies a new variant of coronavirus from the city-state that is at risk of spreading to India.

Singapore Health Minister Ong Ye Kung instructed the two social media giants and SPH magazines to provide a correction notice to their users in Singapore. SPH Magazines has a popular forum called HardwareZone.

“There is no new” Singapore “variant of Covid-19. There is also no evidence of a Covid-19 variant that is” extremely dangerous “for children,” said the Singapore Ministry of Health.

“The strain that prevails in many of the Covid-19 cases discovered in Singapore in recent weeks is variant B.1.617.2, native to India,” he added. “The existence and distribution of variant B.1.617.2 in India goes back to the discovery of the variant in Singapore. This was publicly known and reported by various media on May 5, 2021.”

The Covid variant B.1.617 was detected for the first time in India last year. The World Health Organization recently named the B.1.617 a “worrying variant”, indicating that it has become a global health threat.

What happened?

The move from Singapore came after unsubstantiated comments by an Indian politician sparked a diplomatic incident between the two countries earlier this week.

The chief minister of Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal, tweeted on Tuesday that a new coronavirus variant in Singapore is said to be extremely dangerous for children and could lead to a third wave in India. He has provided no evidence to support his claims.

What was the reaction like?

Kejriwal was publicly reprimanded by the foreign ministers of both countries.

“Politicians should stick to the facts! There is no such thing as a ‘Singapore variant’,” said Vivian Balakrishnan, Singapore’s foreign minister, in a tweet in response to Kejriwal’s claim.

The Singapore Foreign Ministry said Wednesday it regretted Kejriwal’s “unsubstantiated claims”.

“MFA is disappointed that a prominent political figure did not establish the facts before making such allegations. MFA met with Indian High Commissioner P Kumaran this morning to express those concerns,” the State Department said.

India’s Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said the two countries are “solid partners” in the fight against the pandemic.

“Irresponsible comments from those who should know better, however, can harm long-term partnerships. Let me be clear – Delhi CM doesn’t speak for India,” he said on Twitter. Jaishankar was previously India’s High Commissioner in Singapore.

Indian Minister of Civil Aviation Hardeep Singh Puri responded to Kejriwal’s comments on Twitter, noting that international flights to India have been suspended since March 2020.

He also pointed out that India and Singapore have no air travel bubble and that New Delhi only operates return flights from the city-state to bring back stranded Indians.

“Even so, we are keeping an eye on the situation. Every precaution is being taken,” Puri said, according to a CNBC translation of his remarks in Hindi.

Covid in India and Singapore

There was recently a surge in locally submitted cases in Singapore, prompting the government to tighten social restrictions again.

While a number of children in the city-state were recently infected with Covid-19, Education Minister Chan Chun Sing said on Sunday that none of them are seriously ill, but the situation is still worrying, according to the Straits Times.

Nonetheless, Singapore announced on Tuesday that children between the ages of 12 and 15 could be vaccinated.

So far, Singapore has reported more than 61,600 cases and 31 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.

India is the second worst infected country in the world after the US and is facing a devastating second wave. To date, India has reported more than 25 million cases and over 287,000 deaths, but experts believe the numbers have been severely under counted.

Delhi was one of the hardest hit regions in the country, with hospitals facing shortages of hospital beds, oxygen supplies and drugs to treat Covid-19 patients.

Tags Chiefs, Claims, Covid19, Delhi, rejects, Singapore, Variant