Tag: global

Categories
Health

Melinda Gates says we might attain world herd immunity someday in 2022

Melinda Gates says we could reach global herd immunity sometime in 2022

Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, speaks during a television interview by Bloomberg Technology in San Francisco, California on Tuesday, May 7, 2019.

Michael Short | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Billionaire philanthropist and former tech manager Melinda Gates told CNBC that global herd immunity to Covid-19 could be achieved sometime in 2022.

Covid vaccines, especially stand-alone vaccines like Johnson & Johnson’s, are unlikely to hit developing countries “en masse” until later this year, said Gates, who donated millions to coronavirus vaccine and treatment research as co-chair of the program on Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

“So it will be sometime in 2022 before we have full herd immunity,” she told CNBC’s Sara Eisen in an interview that aired on Closing Bell on Monday. “And boy, I think we’re all looking forward to it. There are a lot of people who are suffering, not just in the US but everywhere.”

Gates’ comments come as global leaders and public health officials around the world try to hand out doses of Covid-19 vaccines in hopes of ending the pandemic that has infected more than 117 million people worldwide, according to reports Johns Hopkins University has killed nearly 2.6 million people.

Medical experts said it could be months or even years before nations can vaccinate enough people to achieve herd immunity. The longer it takes to get there, the more time the virus will have to mutate into potentially dangerous new variants as it spreads to new hosts.

Infectious disease experts warn that there is a high likelihood of Covid-19 becoming an endemic disease, which means it will spread to society like the flu every year, albeit likely at a lower level than it is today. Officials must constantly look for new variants of the virus so scientists can make vaccines against them, experts say.

Last month, Bill Gates told CNBC that shooting in developing countries will “be the only way to end the pandemic”. World Health officials have been concerned that poorer nations will miss out on the vaccines as richer nations like the US, China and much of Europe buy out all of the supply.

Meanwhile, counties and states in the US are rapidly giving vaccinations, but the nation is still “far from” achieving herd immunity to Covid, Adam MacNeil, an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told an FDA advisory panel late last month.

Around 60 million of around 331 million Americans received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine at 6 a.m. CET on Monday, according to the CDC. And around 31.2 million of those people are fully vaccinated.

According to Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief medical officer, the goal is to vaccinate between 70% and 85% of the US population – or about 232 to 281 million people – to achieve herd immunity and quell the pandemic.

Earlier on Monday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published new guidelines that allow people who are fully vaccinated to see vaccinated and some unvaccinated indoors safely without wearing masks or staying 6 feet away.

During the CNBC interview, Gates praised Biden’s response to the pandemic, saying it was “night and day” compared to the Trump administration’s efforts.

“Is it perfect already? Absolutely not,” said Gates. “But is it a fundamental change? I mean, we deliver vaccines as a nation, you know. … 15% of the population is insured. So there is more to be done, but you are seeing more tests. You I see more hope because people see their loved ones who are vaccinated older. “

Categories
Business

‘I’ve By no means Seen Something Like This’: Chaos Strikes World Delivery

‘I’ve Never Seen Anything Like This’: Chaos Strikes Global Shipping

Off the coast of Los Angeles, more than two dozen container ships filled with exercise bikes, electronics, and other coveted imports have been idle for two weeks.

In Kansas City, farmers are struggling to supply soybeans to buyers in Asia. In China, furniture for North America is stacked on the factory floor.

Around the planet, the pandemic has severely disrupted trade, increased the cost of shipping goods and posed a new challenge to the global economic recovery. The virus has abandoned the choreography of moving cargo from one continent to another.

At the center of the storm is the shipping container, the workhorse of globalization.

Americans stuck in their homes have sparked a wave of orders from factories in China, much of which have been shipped across the Pacific in containers – the metal boxes that move goods in high piles on giant ships. With US households filling bedrooms with office furniture and cellars with treadmills, demand for ships has outpaced container availability in Asia, creating bottlenecks there, just as crates pile up in American ports.

Containers that transported millions of masks to African and South American countries at the start of the pandemic remain empty and uncollected as shipping lines have focused their ships on their most popular routes – those connecting North America and Europe with Asia.

And in ports where ships call and carry goods to be unloaded, they are often stuck in floating traffic jams for days. The pandemic and its restrictions have limited the availability of dock workers and truck drivers, and delayed the handling of cargo from Southern California to Singapore. Any container that cannot be unloaded in one place is a container that cannot be loaded in another place.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Lars Mikael Jensen, head of the Global Ocean Network at AP Moller-Maersk, the world’s largest shipping company. “All the links in the supply chain are tense. The ships, the trucks, the warehouses. “

Economies around the globe are absorbing the effects of the disruption on the seas. Higher cost of shipping American grain and soybeans across the Pacific threatens to raise food prices in Asia.

Empty containers are stacked in ports in Australia and New Zealand. Containers are scarce in the Indian port of Kolkata, forcing electronic parts manufacturers to move their goods more than 1,000 miles west to the port of Mumbai, where supplies are better.

Travel exporters in Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia are foregoing some deliveries to North America because it is impossible to secure containers.

The chaos on the seas has proven to be a gold mine for shipping companies like Maersk, which led record-high freight prices in February with pretax profits of more than $ 2.7 billion in the final three months of 2020.

Nobody knows how long the upheaval will take, although some experts believe containers will remain scarce by the end of the year as the factories where they – almost all of them in China – have to catch up with demand.

Since their first use in 1956, containers have revolutionized commerce by making it possible to pack goods in standard-sized containers and lift them onto rail vehicles and trucks using cranes – effectively shrinking the globe.

Containers describe how flat screens made in South Korea are relocated to factories in China where smartphones and laptops are assembled, and how these finished devices are shipped across the Pacific to the United States.

Every problem means delay and additional cost to someone. The pandemic disrupted every part of the trip.

“Everyone wants everything,” said Akhil Nair, vice president for global carrier management at SEKO Logistics in Hong Kong. “The infrastructure cannot keep up.”

More than a decade ago, during the global financial crisis, shipping companies saw their businesses hit.

When a mysterious virus emerged in China early last year, causing the government to shut down factories to curb its spread, the shipping industry prepared for a repeat. Transport companies ceased their services and left many of their ships idling.

But even amid the downturn, orders for protective equipment such as surgical masks and gowns, used by frontline medical workers and largely made in China, continued to grow. Chinese factories picked up speed and container ships transported their products to destinations around the world.

Unlike the financial crisis, when the economic recovery took years to gain strength, Chinese factories roared back in the second half of 2020, creating robust demand for shipping.

Updated

March 7, 2021, 11:45 a.m. ET

Since the shipping companies used every ship that could swim, they focused on routes with the greatest demand – especially from China to North America.

The pressure rose as Americans restructured their spending. With no vacations or restaurant meals, they bought video game consoles and mixers. They equipped their homes for remote working and distance learning.

According to an analysis by Sea-Intelligence, a Copenhagen-based research company, training equipment shipped by container from Asia to North America more than doubled between September and November compared to the same period last year. Deliveries of ovens, stoves and cooking appliances have almost doubled during this time. Disinfectants increased by more than 6,800 percent.

“Everything that has grown was basically triggered by a pandemic,” said Alan Murphy, the research group’s founder.

In general, the global trade volume in 2020 decreased by only 1 percent compared to the previous year. That doesn’t reflect the way the year went, however – with a drop of more than 12 percent in April and May, followed by an equally dramatic reversal. The system failed to adapt, left containers in the wrong places and pushed shipping prices to extraordinary heights.

Peter Baum’s New York company, Baum-Essex, has factories in China and Southeast Asia making umbrellas for Costco, cotton bags for Walmart, and ceramics for Bed Bath & Beyond. Six months ago, he paid about $ 2,500 to ship a 40-foot container to California.

“We just paid $ 6,000 to $ 7,000,” he said. “This is the highest freight rate I’ve seen in business in 45 years.”

At the beginning of September he waited 90 days to make room for a container with wicker chairs and tables on a ship.

Another U.S. importer, Highline United, which imports women’s shoes from China and Hong Kong for brands like Ash and Isaac Mizrahi, pays more than five times its usual shipping price.

“It’s a classic problem of supply and demand,” said Kim Bradley, chief operating officer for the Dedham, Massachusetts-based company.

In the twin ports of Los Angeles and nearby Long Beach, unloading has been slowed by a shortage of dock workers and truck drivers as the virus has made some sick and quarantined others.

“The volume congestion is expected to persist through midsummer,” said Port of Los Angeles director Gene Seroka at a recent board meeting.

The ships off Los Angeles have exhausted the available anchorages and are resorting to so-called drift boxes – zones in which they float freely, like planes circling over congested airports.

Major consumer brands – from sportswear maker Under Armor to Hasbro, the game and toy maker – have been addressing shipping bottlenecks.

Peloton points to port congestion as a factor in delays in delivering its high-end stationary bikes. To cut waiting times, Peloton outlined plans to invest $ 100 million in airship and expedited ocean freight.

But even in normal times, air freight is roughly eight times the cost of shipping. Most of the air freight is carried in the holds of passenger jets. Since air traffic is severely restricted, there are also cargo spaces available.

Some shippers have changed their flight schedules and stop in Oakland, California 400 miles north before continuing on to Los Angeles. However, containers are stacked on ships in configurations determined by their destinations. Suddenly changing plans means moving the piles around like a Jenga game.

And the Port of Oakland is grappling with its own pandemic problems. Dockers look after children who are out of school at home, said Bryan Brandes, the port’s sea director.

“In normal times, ships come straight to Oakland,” Brandes said. “At the moment there are between seven and eleven ships at anchor.”

The malfunction on the American west coast created problems thousands of miles away.

Scoular, one of the largest agricultural exporters in the United States, loads grain and soybeans into containers at terminals such as Chicago and Kansas City, then ships them by rail to Pacific ports en route to Asia.

Given the prices that containers fetch in Asia, California shipping companies increasingly unload and then immediately put empty boxes back on ships for the return voyage to Asia without waiting to load grain or other American exports. That got companies like Scoular to secure passage.

Delays in ports often encounter Scoular’s containers on different ships, forcing the company to redo its customs papers – another delay.

“It is schedule reliability that is an issue,” said Sean Healy, Scoular’s carrier relations manager. “It’s a global problem.”

In the past few weeks, freight forwarders have been aggressively relocating empty containers to Asia, increasing availability there. This is based on data from Container xChange, a consultant in Hamburg.

Some experts believe that as vaccinations increase and life normalizes, Americans will shift their spending – from merchandise back to experience – again to reduce the need for containers.

But even in this case, retailers will start building up inventory for the vacation shopping spree.

The stimulus spending schedule moving through Congress can create attitudes that could spark another wave of buying as previously unemployed people replace aging gadgets and expand their wardrobes.

“There could be a whole different subset of consumers who couldn’t consume,” said Michael Brown, container analyst at KBW in New York. “You may have been facing some bottlenecks for some time.”

Categories
World News

Covid-19 Information: Reside World Updates

President Biden touring a Pfizer manufacturing site on Friday in Kalamazoo, Mich.

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

The White House said on Tuesday that weekly shipments of coronavirus vaccines to the states would rise by one million doses to 14.5 million, as vaccine manufacturers continue to ramp up production.

The figure was provided to governors in a call with Jeffrey Zeints, the president’s coronavirus response coordinator, said Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, on Tuesday. With tens of millions of eligible Americans waiting to get shots, state officials have been clamoring for more vaccine, saying health practitioners could easily double or triple the number of shots they are administering.

Ms. Psaki said the increase was the fifth boost in distribution in five weeks, and said it came just short of doubling the vaccine shipments underway at the time Mr. Biden took office on Jan. 20.

Before snowstorms disrupted vaccine distribution last week, the average number of daily doses administered across the country had been steadily increasing as the two federally approved vaccine manufacturers, Pfizer and Moderna, get more efficient and expand production. While that acceleration was expected well before Mr. Biden assumed office, officials have been anxious to highlight every increase in shipments as evidence that the new administration is fiercely battling the pandemic. As of Tuesday, the seven-day average rate of doses administered across the country was 1.4 million a day, after peaking at about 1.7 million before the storms, according to a New York Times vaccine database.

Many vaccination appointments last week that were postponed by snowstorms and other disruptive weather are resuming this week. In Los Angeles, Mayor Eric Garcetti said vaccinations would start back up again on Tuesday at all of the city-run sites and indicated that people whose inoculations had been delayed by the weather would be given priority over those making new appointments.

At a congressional hearing Tuesday morning, top officials from Pfizer and Moderna reiterated previous supply commitments in front of lawmakers Both firms promised earlier this month to deliver a total of 400 million doses by the end of May, weeks ahead of schedule, and a total of 600 million by the end of July.

John Young, Pfizer’s chief business officer, testified that his firm will be able to ship more than 13 million doses per week by mid-March, compared to a weekly shipment of just four to five million at the start of this month. He cited a variety of reasons, including federal regulatory approval to count each vial as holding six doses instead of five, more efficient production processes and faster laboratory tests of the vaccine before it is shipped.

Dr. Stephen Hoge, president of Moderna, testified that his company expects to double its current shipments to more than 10 million per week by April.

More supply is expected to come from Johnson & Johnson, but not as quickly as federal officials initially had hoped. Federal regulators are widely expected to grant emergency use authorization for that vaccine by early next week.

Dr. Richard Nettles, a company vice president testified that the firm is prepared to deliver 20 million doses of its vaccine by the end of March. Of that, he said, nearly four million doses could be shipped as soon as the Food and Drug Administration gives the firm the green light. Unlike the other two authorized vaccines, Johnson & Johnson’s requires only one dose.

Dr. Nettles’s testimony was the first public indication by the company of how many doses it could supply before April.

His promise falls short of the 37 million doses that Johnson & Johnson’s federal contract called for it to deliver by the end of March. Asked what accounted for the gap, Dr. Nettles did not directly answer. But he implied that the company would catch up, saying the firm will deliver the entire 100 million doses it has promised by the end of June, as the contract requires.

Together with the deliveries from Moderna and Pfizer, which developed its vaccine with a German partner, BioNTech, the new supply from Johnson & Johnson would mean that the nation would have enough doses on hand by the end of next month to vaccinate about 130 million Americans. That would cover roughly half of all eligible adults and 40 percent of the total population.

Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs contributed reporting.

United States › United StatesOn Feb. 22 14-day change
New cases 59,462 –40%
New deaths 1,454 –28%
World › WorldOn Feb. 22 14-day change
New cases 287,166 –19%
New deaths 6,753 –25%

U.S. vaccinations ›

Where states are reporting vaccines given

Florida has largely left its population in the dark about which groups would be vaccinated after people 65 and older. Above, Peachie Tresvant, 68, getting her shot last month at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami.Credit…Wilfredo Lee/Associated Press

From the beginning, Florida’s vaccination effort has focused almost exclusively on people 65 and older. The only other people eligible for shots in the state have been those with certain underlying medical conditions, health care workers and paramedics — and not any of the other kinds of essential workers that many states have begun to vaccinate.

Nor would Florida say when their turns would come. As of last week, Florida was the only state that had not released a priority order for making more categories of people eligible, according to the Kaiser Permanente Foundation.

That changed on Tuesday when Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, said he wanted to add law enforcement officers and schoolteachers to the eligible pool if they are 50 or older. Mr. DeSantis said they could start getting vaccinated as soon as next week at mass vaccination sites that the Federal Emergency Management Agency plans to open in Miami, Orlando, Tampa and Jacksonville.

“I think that we’re going to have the ability to do that, between the federally supported sites and some of the new vaccine that may be coming online very, very soon,” Mr. DeSantis said at a news conference in Hialeah, near Miami.

Other states have continued to expand their eligibility requirements for vaccines as they race to immunize as many vulnerable people as possible before more contagious variants become dominant. But vaccine supply has not yet caught up with the demand, even as weekly supplies will increase for states.

In California, 10 percent of the state’s first vaccine doses will be saved for teachers and school employees beginning on March 1. The state has already expanded access to residents with chronic health conditions and disabilities and has begun to vaccinate farmworkers, according to the Los Angeles Times. New York also expanded its vaccine eligibility requirements for people with chronic health conditions.

States have increasingly expanded eligibility to teachers, grocery workers, other essential workers and high-risk adults, according to a New York Times vaccine rollout tracker.

In Florida, the governor had initially resisted the Biden administration’s push for FEMA sites there. He changed his mind when he realized that they would bring tens of thousands of additional vaccine doses to the state.

Labor unions, workers and younger people in Florida have expressed frustration with the state government leaving them in the dark about which groups would be next to receive the vaccines. It remains unclear when people who are not police officers or teachers 50 and older could expect to get a shot. People younger than 65 with serious health conditions who are supposed to be eligible now have had trouble finding providers in the state who are willing to vaccinate them.

Florida has more than 4.4 million residents who are 65 or older; about 45 percent of them have received at least one dose of vaccine, Mr. DeSantis said on Tuesday, though the rate varies considerably from county to county. His administration indicated last week that it hoped to reach 50 percent before widening eligibility.

Mr. DeSantis also announced that CVS Health was expanding Covid-19 vaccinations at more than 80 pharmacy locations in 13 Florida counties, including at Navarro Discount Pharmacy and CVS pharmacy y más, which cater to Latinos.

Jackson Health System, a nonprofit medical complex in Miami-Dade County, expanded its vaccine appointments Tuesday to residents 55 to 64 years old who have one of 13 medical conditions, including several types of cancer, cardiomyopathy, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, congestive heart failure, end-stage renal disease, morbid obesity and more.

Last week, Mr. DeSantis faced criticism when he opened a pop-up vaccination site to people 65 and older in Lakewood Ranch, an affluent and mostly white community in Manatee County that was developed by a Republican political donor. The vaccinations there were limited to residents of the two wealthiest ZIP codes in the county at a time when Black communities lagged behind in vaccinations.

The Bradenton Herald, a local newspaper, reported that Vanessa Baugh, a county commissioner who helped organize the vaccination site, had created a V.I.P. list of vaccine recipients that included herself and the developer of Lakewood Ranch, Rex Jensen. The Herald also reported that the Manatee County sheriff is investigating whether Ms. Baugh broke state law.

Mr. DeSantis defended the pop-up site last week, saying, “If Manatee County does not like us doing this, we are totally fine with putting this in counties that want it.”

Later in the week, he opened another pop-up site in Pinellas Park, a largely white middle-income community near St. Petersburg.

A medical team intubated a Covid-19 patient at Marian Regional Medical Center in Santa Maria, Calif., this month.Credit…Daniel Dreifuss for The New York Times

A variant first discovered in California in December is more contagious than earlier forms of the coronavirus, two new studies have shown, fueling concerns that emerging mutants like this one could hamper the sharp decline in cases over all in the state and perhaps elsewhere.

In one of the new studies, researchers found that the variant has spread rapidly in a San Francisco neighborhood in the past couple of months. The other report confirmed that the variant has surged across the state, and revealed that it produces twice as many viral particles inside a person’s body as other variants do. That study also hinted that the variant may be better than others at evading the immune system — and vaccines.

“I wish I had better news to give you — that this variant is not significant at all,” said Dr. Charles Chiu, a virologist at the University of California, San Francisco. “But unfortunately, we just follow the science.”

Neither study has yet been published in a scientific journal. And experts don’t know how much of a public health threat this variant poses compared with others that are also spreading in California.

A variant called B.1.1.7 arrived in the United States from Britain, where it swiftly became the dominant form of the virus and overloaded hospitals there. Studies of British medical records suggest that B.1.1.7 is not only more transmissible, but more lethal than earlier variants.

Some experts said the new variant in California was concerning, but unlikely to create as much of a burden as B.1.1.7.

“I’m increasingly convinced that this one is transmitting more than others locally,” said William Hanage, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health who was not involved in the research. “But there’s not evidence to suggest that it’s in the same ballpark as B.1.1.7.”

Dr. Chiu first stumbled across the new variant by accident. In December, he and other researchers in California were worried about the discovery of B.1.1.7 in Britain. They began looking through their samples from positive coronavirus tests in California, sequencing viral genomes to see if B.1.1.7 had arrived in their state.

On New Year’s Eve, Dr. Chiu was shocked to find a previously unknown variant that made up one-quarter of the samples he and his colleagues had collected. “I thought that was crazy,” he said.

It turned out that researchers at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles separately discovered the same variant surging to high levels in Southern California. Dr. Chiu announced his initial finding, and the Cedars-Sinai team went public two days later.

Since then, researchers have been looking more closely at the new variant, known as B.1.427/B.1.429, to pinpoint its origin and track its spread. It has shown up in 45 states to date, and in several other countries, including Australia, Denmark, Mexico and Taiwan. But it has so far taken off only in California.

It was unclear at first whether the variant was inherently more transmissible than others, or whether it had surged in California because of gatherings that became superspreading events.

Pfizer and BioNTech asked for permission from the Food and Drug Administration to be able to store their vaccine at standard freezer temperatures instead of in ultra-cold conditions.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

Federal regulators have informed Pfizer and BioNTech that they plan to approve the companies’ request to store their vaccine at standard freezer temperatures instead of in ultra-cold conditions, potentially expanding the number of sites that could administer shots, according to two people familiar with the companies who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The Food and Drug Administration is expected to announce new guidance to providers as early as Tuesday, modifying documents related to the emergency use authorization that was previously granted for the vaccine, they said.

Pfizer and BioNTech, its German partner, said Friday that they had submitted new data to the F.D.A. showing their vaccine could be safely stored at -13 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit for up to two weeks. That could open up the possibility that smaller pharmacies and doctors’ offices could administer shots using their existing refrigerators or freezers.

Regulators had previously approved distribution only if the vaccine was stored in freezers that kept it between -112 and -76 degrees Fahrenheit. Pfizer ships its vials in specially designed containers that can be used as temporary storage for up to 30 days, then refilled with dry ice every five days. The vaccine can be refrigerated for up to five days in a standard refrigerator if it had not yet been diluted for use in patients.

Riding the subway in Manhattan on Monday. New York and New Jersey are adding cases at rates higher than every state except South Carolina.Credit…Jeenah Moon for The New York Times

New coronavirus cases and hospitalizations are on the downswing in the United States and around the world, but hot spots along the East Coast have been sticking around longer compared to the rest of the country.

In the current wave of regional outbreaks, eight states that border the Atlantic Ocean have seen upticks in the past few months and only recently have started to level off or decline.

South Carolina leads the nation with the highest rate of new virus cases, followed by New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, North Carolina, Florida, Delaware and Georgia.

It has become a familiar pattern across the country — cases go up in one region, and down in another — a sequence driven in some part by weather. A few months ago, the Upper Midwest, where it starts to get cold in the fall, was outpacing other regions in new infections. And before that, cases in the Sunbelt surged.

“It’s whack-a-mole,” said Leana Wen, an emergency physician and public health professor at George Washington University. “One part of the country sees a surge, and then another, and then it declines.”

In New York City on Tuesday, Mayor Bill de Blasio said that he believed the city’s case numbers and positive test rates had not declined more dramatically because of population density, a legacy of poverty and a high number of New Yorkers without health care.

“There’s challenges for sure,” Mr. de Blasio said at a news conference. “But I feel very good about our ability to turn it around with intensive vaccination — if we can get supply.”

According to health data, the city’s seven-day average positive test rate was 7.3 percent on Sunday, the latest day for which data was available, down from a recent peak of 9.7 percent from Jan. 2-4. (New York State, which compiles testing data and calculates statistics differently from the city, most recently reported the city’s seven-day average at 4.49 percent, down from 6.4 percent on Jan. 4-7.)

New cases have declined to half their peak globally, largely because of steady improvements in some of the same places that endured devastating outbreaks this winter. The global decline has been driven by six countries, led by the United States, which still leads the world in the number of new cases a day, based on a seven-day average, followed by Brazil and France.

Public health experts in the worst-hit countries attribute the progress to some combination of increased adherence to social distancing and mask wearing, the seasonality of the virus and a buildup of natural immunity among groups with high rates of existing infection.

“It’s a great moment of optimism, but it’s also very fragile in a lot of ways,” said Wafaa El-Sadr, an epidemiologist at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. “We see the light at the end of the tunnel, but it’s still a long tunnel.”

The emergence of new variants of the virus, however, has caused great concern, increasing the pressure to get people vaccinated as soon as possible. A variant first found in Britain is spreading rapidly in the United States, and it has been implicated in surges in Ireland, Portugal and Jordan. The variant first found in South Africa, which weakens the effectiveness of vaccines, has also surfaced in the United States.

Allison McCann, Lauren Leatherby and Josh Holder contributed reporting.

GLOBAL ROUNDUP

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon told the Scottish Parliament on Tuesday that the country would emerge from lockdown gradually over the next few months.Credit…Russell Cheyne/Reuters

Scotland will emerge from its lockdown in three-week stages over the next few months, beginning with reopening schools, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced on Tuesday.

Scotland’s schools, which began reopening on Monday, will resume in-person instruction in phases through March, Ms. Sturgeon said, and stay-at-home orders would begin to be relaxed on April 5, allowing communal worship and some businesses to reopen. Most businesses and activities would be allowed to resume after April 26, Ms. Sturgeon said.

About one-third of adults in Scotland have received at least the first dose of a Covid vaccine. The progress with vaccinations and the early data suggesting that vaccination significantly reduces the risk of hospitalization were “extremely welcome and encouraging news,” Ms. Sturgeon told lawmakers on Tuesday.

Much of Scotland has been locked down since early January because of the rapid spread of a new variant of the virus. The variant now accounts for more than 85 percent of new cases in Scotland, Ms. Sturgeon said on Tuesday. The country reported 655 new cases on Monday and 56 deaths from Covid-19.

The first studies of Britain’s mass inoculation program indicate that a single dose of either the Oxford-AstraZeneca or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine averts most coronavirus-related hospitalizations, researchers said on Monday, though they said it was too early to give precise estimates of the effect. Scotland is aiming to offer every adult a first dose of vaccine by the end of July.

Ms. Sturgeon said the timeline for relaxing restrictions would be contingent on data showing that the virus was being kept at bay. To that end, she said, contact tracing was vital, and travel restrictions would probably remain in force for some time. “Maximum suppression is important for our chances of getting back to normal,” she said.

“I know how hard all of this continues to be after 11 long months of this pandemic,” Ms. Sturgeon said, but “I think that we can be much more hopeful today than we have been able to be this entire pandemic.”

On Monday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson laid out a long-awaited plan for completely lifting restrictions in England by June 21. His plan also begins with schools, and would keep pubs and most other businesses shut for at least another month.

Ms. Sturgeon’s plan for Scotland is more limited in scope, at least so far; she said more details would be released in March.

Here’s what else is going on around the world:

  • Galicia, in northwestern Spain, on Tuesday became the country’s first region to approve fines for people who refuse to get vaccinated against Covid-19. The law, which was approved in Galicia’s regional parliament, sets fines of as much as 60,000 euros, or nearly $73,000, if a person’s decision to refuse vaccination is deemed to result in “a very serious risk or harm for the health of the population.” The law was approved by lawmakers of the conservative Popular Party, which governs Galicia, but fiercely criticized by opposition politicians as an attack on individual choice. The central government of Spain, which is led by the Socialist Party, also opposed the Galician law.

  • Ukraine said it had obtained its first vaccine supply on Tuesday, buying 500,000 doses of an Oxford-AstraZeneca version made in India. Ukraine, which has been reporting more than 5,000 cases a day, said the doses were earmarked for front-line medical workers. “We are grateful to our Indian partners,” President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine wrote on Twitter after the delivery on Tuesday.

  • In Japan, the pressures of the pandemic have been compounded for women. Many have lost their jobs, others live alone and some women have faced disparities in housework and child care. The rising psychological and physical toll of the pandemic has been accompanied by a worrisome spike in suicide among women. In Japan, 6,976 women died by suicide last year, nearly 15 percent more than in 2019. It was the first year-over-year increase in more than a decade.

  • Sixteen lawmakers in Lebanon received a vaccine inside the parliament building, violating regulations aimed at keeping the process fair and transparent and sparking controversy about jumping the vaccine line. On Tuesday, Adnan Daher, the parliamentary secretary, confirmed to reporters that 16 lawmakers had received shots. He said the lawmakers were all of the proper age and their turn to be vaccinated had come. But according to lists compiled by local news outlets, about half were younger than 75.

  • Lab monkeys, whose DNA resembles that of humans, are a tool for developing Covid-19 vaccines. But a global shortage, resulting from the unexpected demand caused by the pandemic, has been exacerbated by a recent ban on the sale of wildlife from China, the leading supplier of the lab animals. The latest shortage has revived talk about creating a strategic monkey reserve in the United States, an emergency stockpile similar to those maintained by the government for oil and grain.

A laboratory technician prepares a COVID-19 sample for testing. A recent sampling of coronavirus cases in New York City found that the more contagious B.1.1.7 variant made up 6.2 percent of new cases.Credit…John Minchillo/Associated Press

A recent sampling of coronavirus cases in New York City found that the more contagious B.1.1.7 variant first found in Britain made up about 6.2 percent of new cases earlier in February.

The 6.2 percent estimate, released Tuesday by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, offers the best sketch yet of the spread of the B.1.1.7 variant in New York City since the first city case was detected last month.

The B.1.1.7 variant has clearly taken hold in New York City. But so far it is not spreading as fast as some disease modelers predicted.

“It certainly is not in a dizzying ascent, or taking over,” said Dr. Ronald Scott Braithwaite, a professor at N.Y.U. Grossman School of Medicine who has been modeling New York City’s epidemic and is an adviser to the city. “Six percent is a ways away from becoming a majority strain.”

One study found that nationwide B.1.1.7 cases are doubling about every 10 days and the Centers for Disease Control has predicted the B.1.1.7 variant could become the dominant source of infection across the country in March.

The variant was first identified in Britain late last year and has caused a surge of cases in a number of countries. But its trajectory in New York is far from clear.

Across the city, the number of new coronavirus cases has been slowly declining since early January, although more than 20,000 new cases are still being detected weekly. The test positivity rate remains over 7 percent.

Until recently Professor Braithwaite’s modeling team had predicted that unless the current pace of vaccinations accelerated, the B.1.1.7 variant could lead to a third wave of cases in New York City and a surge in hospitalizations and deaths. The variant is more contagious and it is also likely deadlier.

But his model, which is watched by New York City health officials, now predicts that as B.1.1.7 becomes a larger share of infections it will cause a plateau in new cases, before cases continue their slow decline.

Dr. Braithwaite said he was more worried about the B.1.351 variant, first detected in South Africa, which has been found in New York State. Existing vaccines are not as effective against that variant.

Over the last month, New York City has taken steps to sequence and screen more and more coronavirus samples to detect variants. But surveillance remains spotty.

The 6.2 percent estimate comes from a recent sample of 724 cases, of which 45 were found to be caused by the B.1.1.7 variant. The sample was conducted at the Pandemic Response Laboratory in New York City, which does about 20,000 coronavirus tests daily. The laboratory has begun doing genomic sequencing of some of the positive cases.

An earlier sample of cases from January found that under 3 percent of cases were B.1.1.7. In the first week of February, there was a major jump to 7.4 percent. But in the most recent sample involving cases sequenced between Feb. 8 and Feb. 14, the percentage dropped to 6.2, according to the Health Department.

Palestinians take a selfie after receiving the coronavirus vaccine from an Israeli medical team at the Qalandia checkpoint between the West Bank city of Ramallah and Jerusalem on Tuesday.Credit…Oded Balilty/Associated Press

JERUSALEM — The Israeli government promised to send thousands of extra Covid-19 vaccines to friendly nations like the Czech Republic and Honduras, but critics have rekindled a debate about Israel’s responsibilities to vaccinate Palestinians living under Israeli occupation.

On Tuesday, the governments of the Czech Republic and Honduras confirmed that Israel had promised them each 5,000 vaccine doses manufactured by Moderna. The Israeli news media reported that Hungary and Guatemala would be sent a similar number, but the Hungarian and Israeli governments declined to comment, while the Guatemalan government did not respond to a request for comment.

The donations are the latest example of a new expression of soft power: vaccine diplomacy, in which countries rich in vaccines seek to reward or sway those that have little access to them.

Jockeying for influence in Asia, China and India have donated thousands of vaccine doses to their neighbors. The United Arab Emirates has done the same for allies like Egypt. And last week, Israel even promised to buy tens of thousands of doses on behalf of the Syrian government, a longtime foe, in exchange for the return of an Israeli civilian detained in Syria.

The vaccines allocated on Tuesday were given without conditions, but they tacitly reward recent gestures from the receiving countries that implicitly accept Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem, which both Israelis and Palestinians consider their capital.

Israel has given at least one shot of the two-dose, Pfizer-manufactured vaccine to just over half its own population of nine million — including to people living in Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories — making it the world leader in vaccine rollouts. That has left the Israeli government able to bolster its international relationships with its surplus supply of Moderna vaccines.

But the move has angered Palestinians because it suggests that Israel’s allies are of greater priority than the Palestinians living under Israeli control in the occupied territories, almost all of whom have yet to receive a vaccine.

Israel has pledged at least twice as many doses to faraway countries as it has so far promised to the nearly five million Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

People wait in line at a food distribution center in South Central Los Angeles earlier this month. Credit…Apu Gomes/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Governor Gavin Newsom of California signed a $7.6 billion stimulus package that will send $600 payments to about 5.7 million low-income Californians.

The relief package was “desperately needed to millions and millions of Californians,” Mr. Newsom said at a news conference on Tuesday.

In Washington, Democratic lawmakers are pressing forward with a much larger $1.9 trillion stimulus bill. The House is preparing for a final vote on the measure by the end of the week, as Democrats race to get it to President Biden’s desk before unemployment benefits begin to lapse in mid-March.

The California stimulus package provides $2.1 billion in funding for grants to small businesses struggling during the pandemic. It also includes fee waivers for bars, restaurants, barbershops and other hard-hit businesses.

The legislation comes as Mr. Newsom is facing blowback from small business owners angered over the state’s lockdowns. An effort to recall Mr. Newsom is gaining steam: since March, 1.5 million Californians have signed a petition to oust him.

“The backbone of our economy is small business. We recognize the stress, the strain that so many small businesses have been under and we recognize as well our responsibility to do more,” Mr. Newsom said on Tuesday.

In November, Mr. Newsom announced that the state would provide temporary tax relief and $500 million in grants for businesses impacted by the pandemic.

Although reported coronavirus cases in California have steadily declined in past weeks, a new variant spreading in the state could pose a fresh threat. Two new studies show that a variant first found in California is more contagious than earlier forms of the virus. Scientists have warned that new variants could set back the nation, even as new cases and hospitalizations drop.

Cars lining up to enter the vaccination site at Jones Beach in Long Island last month. Some people who got a shot there on Feb. 15 have to be revaccinated.Credit…Al Bello/Getty Images

Some Covid-19 vaccine doses administered on Feb. 15 at a drive-through inoculation site on Long Island were deemed ineffective and patients who received them must be revaccinated, New York State officials said on Tuesday.

The doses were made ineffective when a staff member, who was taking syringes to the site, saw that the temperature of one cooler was approaching a level that could be too low for the shots, said Jack Sterne, a spokesman for Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s office. The staff member then added a hand warmer to it, against protocol, to try to raise the temperature, as Newsday first reported.

Only 81 of the 1,379 vaccines administered that day were affected — and more than 3 million have been doled out across the state without similar issues, Mr. Sterne said.

Still, in response, Mr. Sterne said that officials would increase staff training around the handling of vaccines.

Those who received the ineffective doses faced no health risks, have all been notified and will receive priority for rescheduled appointments, Jill Montag, a spokeswoman for the state’s health department, added.

“New Yorkers’ health and safety is our top priority, and due to this vaccine’s very specific temperature sensitivity, we have a process in place to identify if any temperature excursions occur,” Ms. Montag said in a statement. “This process worked, allowing us to quickly pinpoint this issue, identify the extremely small number of individuals impacted, and immediately begin taking action.”

Parade grounds in Washington in October, with white flags representing the number of people who have died from Covid-19 in the United States.Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

The enormous scale of illness and death wrought by the coronavirus is traced in figures that have grown so far beyond the familiar yardsticks of daily life that they can sometimes be difficult to get a handle on.

The news on Monday that the United States had recorded 500,000 Covid-19-related deaths in just a year is just the latest example.

One way to put that in context is to compare it to other major causes of death in 2019, the year before the pandemic took hold in the country.

  • Three times the number of people who died in the U.S. in any kind of accident, including highway accidents, in 2019 (167,127).

  • More than eight times the number of deaths from influenza and pneumonia (59,120).

  • More than 10 times the number of suicides (48,344).

  • More than the number of deaths from strokes, diabetes, kidney disease, Alzheimer’s and related causes, combined (406,161).

  • Only heart disease (655,381) and cancer (599,274) caused more deaths.

When full data for 2020 is available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Covid-19 will certainly be one of the leading killers. But trying to project where it will rank may be complicated. A very large share of deaths from Covid-19 have been people who were medically vulnerable because of other significant health problems like cancer, lung or heart disease. Some number of them would probably have succumbed to those causes, and been counted in those categories, if their deaths had not been hastened by Covid-19.

Xavier Becerra, a former member of Congress who is now attorney general of California, took a deep interest in health policy while in Washington but lacks direct experience as a health professional.Credit…Sarah Silbiger/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

President Biden’s nominee for health secretary, Xavier Becerra, pledged Tuesday morning to work to “restore faith in public health institutions” and to “look to find common cause” with his critics, as Republicans sought to paint him as a liberal extremist who is unqualified for the job.

Appearing before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, Mr. Becerra, the attorney general of California, was grilled by Republicans who complained that he has no background in the health profession, and who targeted his support for the Affordable Care Act and for abortion rights.

“Basically, you’ve been against pro-life, on the record,” Senator Mike Braun, Republican of Indiana, said to Mr. Becerra. He asked whether Mr. Becerra would commit to not using taxpayer money for abortions, which is currently barred by federal law, except in instances where the life of the mother is at stake, or in incest or rape.

“I will commit to following the law,” Mr. Becerra replied — leaving himself some wiggle room should the law change.

Tuesday’s appearance was the first of two Senate confirmation hearings for Mr. Becerra; he is scheduled to appear before the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday. Despite the tough questions, Mr. Becerra appears headed for confirmation in a Senate evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, but with Vice President Kamala Harris available to break a tie.

If confirmed, Mr. Becerra will immediately face a daunting task in leading the department at a critical moment, during a pandemic that has claimed half a million lives and has taken a particularly devastating toll on people of color. He would be the first Latino to serve as secretary of the federal Department of Health and Human Services.

While Mr. Becerra, a former member of Congress, lacks direct experience as a health professional, he took a deep interest in health policy while in Washington and helped write the Affordable Care Act. He has more recently been at the forefront of legal efforts to defend it, leading 20 states and the District of Columbia in a campaign to protect the act from being dismantled by Republicans.

Republicans and their allies in the conservative and anti-abortion movements have seized on Mr. Becerra’s defense of the A.C.A. as well as his support for abortion rights.

The Conservative Action Project, an advocacy group, issued a statement on Monday signed by dozens of conservative leaders, including several former members of Congress, complaining that Mr. Becerra had a “troubling record” with respect to “policies relating to the sanctity of life, human dignity and religious liberty.”

They cited in particular his vote against banning “late-term abortion,” and accused him of using his role as attorney general “to tip the scales in favor of Planned Parenthood,” a group that advocates abortion rights. Asked by Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, about the late-term abortion vote, Mr. Becerra noted that his wife is an obstetrician-gynecologist, and said he would “work to find common ground” on the issue. Mr. Romney was not impressed. “It sounds like we’re not going to reach common ground there,” he replied.

Democrats are emphasizing Mr. Becerra’s experience leading one of the nation’s largest justice departments through an especially trying period, and his up-from-the-bootstraps biography. A son of immigrants from Mexico, he attended Stanford University as an undergraduate and for law school. He served 12 terms in Congress, representing Los Angeles, before becoming the attorney general of his home state in 2017.

Rhesus macaques are the primary species of monkey that are bred at the Tulane University National Primate Research Center in Covington, La.Credit…Bryan Tarnowski for The New York Times

The world needs monkeys, whose DNA closely resembles that of humans, to develop Covid-19 vaccines. But a global shortage, resulting from the unexpected demand caused by the pandemic, has been exacerbated by a recent ban on the sale of wildlife from China, the leading supplier of the lab animals.

The latest shortage has revived talk about creating a strategic monkey reserve in the United States, an emergency stockpile similar to those maintained by the government for oil and grain.

As new variants of the coronavirus threaten to make the current batch of vaccines obsolete, scientists are racing to find new sources of monkeys, and the United States is reassessing its reliance on China, a rival with its own biotech ambitions.

The pandemic has underscored how much China controls the supply of lifesaving goods, including masks and drugs, that the United States needs in a crisis.

American scientists have searched private and government-funded facilities in Southeast Asia as well as Mauritius, a tiny island nation off southeast Africa, for stocks of their preferred test subjects, rhesus macaques and cynomolgus macaques, also known as long-tailed macaques.

But no country can make up for what China previously supplied. Before the pandemic, China provided over 60 percent of the 33,818 primates, mostly cynomolgus macaques, imported into the United States in 2019, according to analyst estimates based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The United States has about 22,000 lab monkeys — predominantly pink-faced rhesus macaques — at its seven primate centers. About 600 to 800 of those animals have been subject to coronavirus research since the pandemic began.

Scientists say monkeys are the ideal specimens for researching coronavirus vaccines before they are tested on humans. The primates share more than 90 percent of our DNA, and their similar biology means they can be tested with nasal swabs and have their lungs scanned. Scientists say it is almost impossible to find a substitute to test Covid-19 vaccines in, although drugs such as dexamethasone, the steroid that was used to treat former President Donald J. Trump, have been tested in hamsters.

The United States once relied on India to supply rhesus macaques. But in 1978, India halted its exports after Indian news outlets reported that the monkeys were being used in military testing in the United States. Pharmaceutical companies searched for an alternative, and eventually landed on China.

But the pandemic upset what had been a decades-long relationship between American scientists and Chinese suppliers.

The I.C.U. at Marian Regional Medical Center in Santa Maria, Calif., this month. Almost three-quarters of the nation’s I.C.U. beds were occupied over the week ending Feb. 18.Credit…Daniel Dreifuss for The New York Times

Over the past year, hospital intensive care units have been overrun with critically ill Covid-19 patients, who develop severe pneumonia and other organ dysfunction. At times, the influx of coronavirus cases overwhelmed the resources in the units and the complexity of the care these patients required.

An interactive graphic by The New York Times explores how coronavirus surges affected I.C.U.s and their specialty medical staff.

New cases in the United States have fallen since their peak in early January, but almost three-quarters of the nation’s I.C.U. beds were occupied over the week ending Feb. 18.

The national average for adult I.C.U. occupancy was 67 percent in 2010, according to the Society of Critical Care Medicine, though this number and all hospitalization figures vary depending on the place, time of year and size of hospital.

When the coronavirus rips through a community, I.C.U.s fill up. Hospitals have been forced to improvise, expanding capacity by creating I.C.U.s in areas normally used for other purposes, like cardiac or neurological care, and even hallways or spare rooms.

Elective surgeries often get put on hold to keep beds available, and early in the pandemic, hospitals saw huge drops in people admitted for any reason other than Covid-19. I.C.U. staff members, regardless of specialty, often spent most or all of their time on Covid patients.

“We’re all exhausted,” said Dr. Nida Qadir, the co-director of the medical intensive care unit at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. “We’ve had to flex up quite a bit.”

Categories
World News

Covid-19 World Information: Dwell Updates on Variants, Instances and Deaths

Video player loading

Here’s what you need to know:

Video

transcript

Back

transcript

Boris Johnson Maps Out Plan to Lift Virus Lockdown

Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain outlined a plan to remove lockdown measures as a path toward “freedom” for the region.

We cannot escape the fact that lifting lockdown will result in more cases, more hospitalizations and sadly, more deaths, and this would happen whenever lockdown is lifted, whether now or in six or nine months, because there will always be some vulnerable people who are not protected by the vaccines. This roadmap should be cautious, but also irreversible. We’re setting out on what I hope and believe is a one-way road to freedom, and this journey is made possible by the pace of the vaccination program. In England, everyone in the top four priority groups were successfully offered a vaccine by the middle of February. The sequence will be driven by the evidence. So outdoor activity will be prioritized as the best way to restore freedoms while minimizing the risk. At every stage, our decisions will be led by data, not dates.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain outlined a plan to remove lockdown measures as a path toward “freedom” for the region.CreditCredit…Pool photo by Geoff Caddick

LONDON — Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain said Monday that schools in England would reopen on March 8 and that people would be allowed to socialize outdoors starting on March 29, the tentative first steps in a long-awaited plan to ease a nationwide lockdown prompted by a highly contagious variant of the coronavirus.

Mr. Johnson’s “road map” was intended to give an exhausted country a path back to normalcy after a dire period in which infections skyrocketed and hospitals overflowed with patients. At the same time, Britain rolled out a remarkably successful vaccination program, injecting 17 million people with their first doses.

That milestone, combined with a decline in new cases and hospital admissions, paved the way for Mr. Johnson’s announcement. But the prime minister emphasized repeatedly that he planned to move slowly in reopening the economy, saying that he wanted this lockdown to be the last the nation had to endure.

Under the government’s plan, pubs, restaurants, retail shops, and gyms in England will stay closed for at least another month — meaning that, as a practical matter, daily life will not change much for millions of people until the spring.

“We’re setting out on what I hope is a one-way journey to freedom,” Mr. Johnson said in a statement to the House of Commons. “This journey is made possible by the success of the vaccine program.”

The specific timetable, Mr. Johnson said, will hinge on four factors: the continued success of the vaccine rollout; evidence that vaccines are reducing hospital admissions and deaths; no new surge in cases that would tax the health service; and no sudden risk from new variants of the virus.

“At every stage,” the prime minister said, “our decisions will led by data, not dates.”

Mr. Johnson was scheduled to present the plan to the nation in an evening news conference, along with data that he said showed that the two main vaccines — from Pfizer and AstraZeneca — both reduced severe illness.

Mr. Johnson’s appearance in Parliament ended days of speculation about the government’s timetable. But it is likely to kindle a new round of debate about whether Mr. Johnson is easing restrictions fast enough.

With pubs and restaurants not allowed to offer indoor service until May, some members of Mr. Johnson’s Conservative Party are likely to revive their pressure campaign to lift the measures more quickly.

Mr. Johnson, however, appears determined to avoid a repeat of his messy reopening of the economy last May after the first phase of the pandemic.

Then, the government’s message was muddled — workers were urged to go back to their offices but avoid using public transportation — and some initiatives, like subsidizing restaurant meals to bolster the hospitality industry, looked reckless in hindsight.

Under Mr. Johnson’s plan, the current coronavirus restrictions would be lifted in four steps, with a gap of five weeks between steps. That way, the government would have four weeks to analyze the impact of each relaxation and another week’s notice of the changes to the public and businesses.

All the moves would be made throughout England, with no return to the regional differences in rules that applied last year, depending on local infection rates. The government warned that the dates specified are the earliest at which the restrictions would be lifted, and that the steps may happen later.

When students go back to school, they will be regularly tested for the virus while older pupils will be required to wear face masks. Those living in nursing homes will be allowed one regular visitor, but few other restrictions will be lifted.

Starting on March 29, up to six people would be allowed to meet outdoors, including in gardens. Outdoor sports will be permitted and though people will be urged to stay in their areas, they will not be urged to remain in their homes.

Then, no earlier than April 12, retail shops will reopen, along with hairdressers, beauty salons, gyms, museums, and libraries, while people will be able to eat and drink outside in pub and restaurant gardens in small groups.

Starting on May 17, up to six people, and groups drawn from two households, will be able to meet indoors, including in pubs and restaurants. Hotels will also be able to reopen and spectators will be allowed into sporting events in limited numbers.

Restrictions on foreign travel could also be eased, though that will be addressed by one of several policy reviews being launched by the government. These will also focus on the possible use of vaccine passports to help open up the economy, and on guidance and rules on social distancing measures such as the use of face masks.

United States › United StatesOn Feb. 21 14-day change
New cases 55,195 –44%
New deaths 1,247 –32%
World › WorldOn Feb. 21 14-day change
New cases 292,003 –20%
New deaths 5,729 –25%

U.S. vaccinations ›

Where states are reporting vaccines given

When movie theaters reopen in New York City, masks will be mandatory, and theaters must assign seating to patrons to guarantee proper social distancing.Credit…Angela Weiss/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Movie theaters in New York City will be permitted to open for the first time in nearly a year on March 5, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced at a news conference on Monday.

The theaters will only be permitted to operate at 25 percent of their maximum capacity, with no more than 50 people per screening. Masks will be mandatory, and theaters must assign seating to patrons to guarantee proper social distancing. Tests for the virus will not be required.

Movie theaters were permitted to open with similar limits in the rest of the state in late October, but New York City was excluded out of concern that the city’s density would hasten the spread of the virus there.

The virus has battered the movie theater industry. In October, the owner of Regal Cinemas, the second-largest cinema chain in the United States, temporarily closed its theaters as Hollywood studios kept postponing releases and cautious audiences were hesitant to return to screenings. AMC, the world’s largest movie theater chain, has increasingly edged toward bankruptcy.

The economic effects of the pandemic have been particularly felt in New York City, one of the biggest movie markets in the United States. Theaters in the city closed in mid-March, as the region was becoming an epicenter of the pandemic in the country.

While other indoor businesses, including restaurants, bowling alleys and museums had been allowed to open in the city, Mr. Cuomo had kept movie theaters closed out of concern that people would be sitting indoors in poorly-ventilated theaters for hours, risking the further spread of the virus.

Theaters that open will be required to have enhanced air filtration systems. Public health experts say when considering indoor gatherings, the quality of ventilation is key because the virus is known to spread more easily indoors.

Mr. Cuomo’s announcement was applauded by the National Association of Theater Owners.

“New York City is a major market for moviegoing in the U.S.; reopening there gives confidence to film distributors in setting and holding their theatrical release dates, and is an important step in the recovery of the entire industry,” the association said in a statement.

The move came just days after Mr. Cuomo said that indoor family entertainment centers and places of amusement could reopen statewide, at 25 percent maximum capacity, on March 26. Outdoor amusement parks will be allowed to open with a 33 percent capacity limit in April.

The governor also said that the state was working on guidelines to allow pool and billiards halls to reopen after the state lost a lawsuit from pool hall operators. Those establishments will be allowed to reopen at 50 percent capacity with masks required, he said.

Cases in New York remain high despite climbing down from its January peak. Over the last seven days, the state averaged 38 cases per 100,000 residents each day, as of Sunday. That is the second-highest rate per capita of new cases in the last week in the country, after South Carolina.

Preparing a dose of the Moderna vaccine this month at a community center in the Bronx.Credit…James Estrin/The New York Times

The Food and Drug Administration said on Monday that vaccine developers would not need to conduct lengthy randomized controlled trials to evaluate vaccines that have been adapted to target concerning coronavirus variants.

The recommendations, which call for small trials more like what’s required for annual flu vaccines, would greatly accelerate the review process at a time when scientists are increasingly anxious about how the variants might slow or reverse progress made against the virus.

The guidance was part of a slate of new documents the agency released on Monday, including others addressing how antibody treatments and diagnostic tests might need to be retooled to respond to the virus variants. Together, they amounted to the federal government’s most detailed acknowledgment of the threat the variants pose to existing vaccines, treatments and tests for the coronavirus and come weeks after the F.D.A.’s acting commissioner, Dr. Janet Woodcock, said the agency was developing a plan.

“We want the American public to know that we are using every tool in our toolbox to fight this pandemic, including pivoting as the virus adapts,” Dr. Woodcock said in a statement Monday.

Most of the vaccine manufacturers with authorized vaccines or candidates in late-stage trials have already announced plans to adjust their products to address the vaccine variants. The Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines use mRNA technology that the companies have said can be used to alter the existing vaccines within six weeks, although testing and manufacturing would take longer.

Moderna has already begun developing a new version of its vaccine that could be used as a booster shot against a virus variant that originated in South Africa, known as B.1.351, which seems to dampen the effectiveness of the existing vaccines.

A fast-spreading coronavirus variant first observed in Britain has also gained a worrisome mutation that could make it harder to control with vaccines. That variant with the mutation was found in the United States last week.

Still, the guidance did not appear to be written with the assumption that new vaccines were imminent, or would be needed at all. Despite the recent indications that some variants — and particularly B.1.351 — make the currently authorized vaccines less effective, the shots still offer protection and appear to greatly reduce the severity of the disease, preventing hospitalizations and death.

An updated Covid-19 vaccine can skip the monthslong process of a randomized clinical trial that would compare it with a placebo, the agency said. But a tweaked vaccine will still need to go undergo some testing. In trials proposed by the F.D.A., researchers will draw blood from a relatively small group of volunteers who have been given the adapted vaccine. Scientists will then observe what percentage of volunteers’ samples produce an immune response to the variants in the lab, and how large that response is. The vaccines will be judged acceptable if they produce an immune response that is relatively close to what is prompted by the original vaccines.

The volunteers will also be monitored carefully for side effects. The agency said the testing can be done in a single age group and then extrapolated to other age groups.

The guidance also encouraged the use of animal studies to support the case for modified vaccines, in case immune response studies come up with ambiguous conclusions.

The F.D.A. acknowledged that many questions remain unanswered, such as what type of data would trigger the need for an adapted vaccine and who would make that decision. The agency also noted that scientists have not yet determined what level of antibodies in a vaccinated person’s blood would protect someone from the virus.

Some other vaccines are regularly updated in a similar way. Because the influenza virus evolves rapidly from one year to the next, vaccine developers have to come up with new recipes annually.

The newly tweaked Covid-19 vaccines would be authorized under an amendment to the emergency authorization granted to the original vaccine, regulators said.

Patricia Carrete, a nurse, during a night shift at a field hospital in Cranston, R.I., this month.Credit…David Goldman/Associated Press

The number of Americans hospitalized for Covid-19 is at its lowest since early November, just before the surge that went on to ravage the country for months.

There were 56,159 people hospitalized as of Feb. 21, according to the Covid Tracking Project. That’s the lowest since Nov. 7. It’s a striking decline for a nation that is approaching 500,000 total deaths and once had some of the world’s worst coronavirus hot spots.

On Monday evening, President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris plan to have a moment of silence for the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have died from Covid-19.

While deaths remain high, because it can take weeks for patients to die from Covid-19, the number of U.S. hospitalizations has steadily and rapidly declined since mid-January, when the seven-day average reached about 130,000, according to a New York Times database. Experts attributed that peak to crowds gathering indoors in colder weather, especially during the holidays, when more people traveled than at any other time during the pandemic.

Experts have pointed to a variety of explanations for why the country’s coronavirus metrics have been improving over the past few months: more widespread mask use and social distancing after people saw friends and relatives die, better knowledge about which restrictions work, more effective public health messaging, and, more recently, a growing number of people who have been vaccinated. The most vulnerable, like residents of nursing homes and other elderly people, were among the first to receive the vaccine.

While scientists hope the worst is behind us, some warn of another spike in cases in the coming weeks, or a “fourth wave,” if people become complacent about masks and distancing, states lift restrictions too quickly or the more contagious variants become dominant and are able to evade vaccines.

The change can be felt most tangibly in intensive care units: Heading into her night shift in the I.C.U. at Presbyterian Rust Medical Center in Rio Rancho, N.M., Dr. Denise A. Gonzales, the medical director, said she had seen a difference in her staff.

“People are smiling. They are optimistic,” she said. “They’re making plans for the future.” During the worst of the crisis, “working in such a highly intense environment where people are so sick and are on so much support and knowing that statistically very few are going to get better — that’s overwhelming.”

Though the winter wave that hit her hospital system was “twice as bad” as the summer surge, she said it seemed more manageable because hospitals had prepared to move patients around, staff had more knowledge about P.P.E. and treatment therapies, and facilities had better airflow.

At the CoxHealth hospital system in Springfield, Mo., there was a “moment of celebration” as staff emptied the emergency Covid-19 I.C.U. wing built last spring. “We have not defeated this disease,” said Steve Edwards, the system’s chief executive. “But the closing of this unit, at least for now, is a tremendous symbolic victory.”

Staff members wearing biohazard suits and heavy-duty masks were pictured in a rare occasion of relief and joy that Mr. Edwards shared on Twitter.

This is a moment of celebration as we vacated the emergency Covid ICU. Our number of Covid patients at Cox South has dropped to 43, and only 5 critical. We are mindful of future worries, but for now, HERE COMES THE SUN! pic.twitter.com/57t2TvWweB

— Steve Edwards (@SDECoxHealth) February 18, 2021

Dr. Kyan C. Safavi, the medical director of a group that tracks Covid-19 hospitalizations at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, said the number of newly admitted patients has dropped sharply. The hospital is admitting about 10 to 15 new patients daily, a decline of about 50 percent from early January, Dr. Safavi said.

“Everybody’s physically exhausted — and probably a little bit mentally exhausted — but incredibly hopeful,” Dr. Safavi said.

Preparing a dose of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine in Edinburgh this month.Credit…Pool Photo by Jane Barlow, via AFP–Getty Images

The first studies of Britain’s mass inoculation program showed strong evidence on Monday that the coronavirus vaccines were working as intended, offering among the clearest signs yet that the vaccines slash the rate of Covid-19 hospital admissions and may be reducing transmission of the virus.

A single dose of either the AstraZeneca vaccine or the one made by Pfizer could avert most coronavirus-related hospitalizations, the British studies found, though researchers said it was too early to give precise estimates of the effect.

The findings on the AstraZeneca shot, the first to emerge outside of clinical trials, represented the strongest signal yet of the effectiveness of a vaccine that much of the world is relying on to end the pandemic.

And separate studies of the Pfizer vaccine offered tantalizing new evidence that a single shot may be reducing the spread of the virus, showing that it prevents not only symptomatic cases of Covid-19 but also asymptomatic infections.

The findings reinforced and went beyond studies out of Israel, which has also reported that the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech offered significant protection from the virus in real-world settings, and not only in the clinical trials held last year. No other large nation is inoculating people as quickly as Britain, and it was the first country in the world to authorize and begin using both the Pfizer shot and the one developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford.

The studies released on Monday — two on the Pfizer shot and one on it and the AstraZeneca injection — showed both vaccines were effective against the more infectious coronavirus variant that has taken hold in Britain and spread around the world.

“Both of these are working spectacularly well,” said Aziz Sheikh, a professor at the University of Edinburgh who helped run a study of Scottish vaccinations.

Still, the findings contained some cautionary signs. And even as British lawmakers cited the strength of the vaccines in announcing a gradual loosening of lockdown restrictions, government scientists warned that many more people needed to be injected to prevent cases from spreading into vulnerable, vaccinated groups and occasionally causing serious disease and death.

A boom in gym memberships is likely as soon as people are sure it’s safe.Credit…Alyssa Schukar for The New York Times

The U.S. economy remains mired in a pandemic winter of shuttered storefronts, high unemployment and sluggish job growth. But attention is shifting to a potential post-Covid boom.

Forecasters have always expected the pandemic to be followed by a period of strong growth as businesses reopen and Americans resume their normal activities. But in recent weeks, economists have begun to talk of something stronger: a supercharged rebound that brings down unemployment, drives up wages and may foster years of stronger growth.

There are hints that the economy has turned a corner: Retail sales jumped last month as the latest round of government aid began showing up in consumers’ bank accounts. New unemployment claims have declined from early January, though they remain high. And measures of business investment have picked up.

Economists surveyed by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia this month predicted that U.S. output would increase 4.5 percent this year, which would make it the best year since 1999. Some expect an even stronger bounce: Economists at Goldman Sachs forecast that the economy would grow 6.8 percent this year and that the unemployment rate would drop to 4.1 percent by December, a level that took eight years to achieve after the last recession.

“We’re extremely likely to get a very high growth rate,” said Jan Hatzius, Goldman’s chief economist. “Whether it’s a boom or not, I do think it’s a V-shaped recovery,” he added, referring to a steep drop followed by a sharp rebound.

The growing optimism stems from several factors. Coronavirus cases are falling in the United States. The vaccine rollout is gaining steam. And largely because of trillions of dollars in federal help, the economy appears to have made it through last year with less structural damage than many people feared last spring.

Consumers are also sitting on a trillion-dollar mountain of cash, a result of months of lockdown-induced saving and rounds of stimulus payments.

“There will be this big boom as pent-up demand comes through and the economy is opening,” said Ellen Zentner, chief U.S. economist for Morgan Stanley. “There is an awful lot of buying power that we’ve transferred to households to fuel that pent-up demand.”

Even if there is a strong rebound, however, economists warn that not everyone will benefit.

Standard economic statistics like the unemployment rate and gross domestic product could mask persistent challenges facing many families, particularly the Black and Hispanic workers who have borne the brunt of the pandemic’s economic pain. That could lead Congress to pull back on aid when it is still needed.

Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey will allow 10 percent seating capacity at indoor sports and entertainment venues with 5,000 or more seats, and 15 percent at outdoor venues.Credit…Mike Stobe/Getty Images

New Jersey, home to several major league sports teams, will allow a limited number of fans to attend sports and entertainment events at venues with 5,000 or more seats as soon as next week, Gov. Philip D. Murphy said on Monday.

Indoor venues will be limited to 10 percent of their seating capacity, while outdoor venues will be limited to 15 percent capacity, Mr. Murphy said in a radio interview on WFAN. The events can begin next Monday at 6 a.m.

Mr. Murphy’s announcement comes two weeks after a similar decision by New York’s governor, Andrew M. Cuomo, whose plan allowed fans at venues with 10,000 or more seats starting this week, provided that seating is limited to 10 percent of the venue’s capacity.

Mr. Cuomo’s announcement covered several New York City-area sports franchises, like the Nets, Knicks, Rangers and Islanders, which can begin to have fans in the stands as soon as Tuesday. Attendees in New York have to show proof of a negative P.C.R. test for the coronavirus taken within 72 hours of the event.

Mr. Murphy said that New Jersey would not require test results, but people at the venues will be required to wear face coverings at games and remain socially distanced. Public health experts say when considering indoor gatherings, the quality of ventilation is key because the virus is known to spread more easily indoors.

Cases in New Jersey, while still high, are now on the decline, nearing levels reported in early November. Over the last seven days the state averaged 33 cases per 100,000 residents each day, as of Sunday. That was the third-highest rate per capita of new cases in the last week, after New York and South Carolina.

The governor’s announcement will allow his state’s pro hockey team, the Devils, to play home games starting next Tuesday, the team’s first home game after the change takes effect.

“This is a day toward which our entire staff has been planning, working, and looking forward to for the past 11 months,” said the team’s president, Jake Reynolds, in a statement.

The state also has two pro football teams, the Giants and the Jets; a Major League Soccer team, the Red Bulls; and a National Women’s Soccer League franchise, Sky Blue F.C. Mr. Murphy said he hoped those teams would still be able to have fans when their seasons began later this year.

“I’ll be shocked if we’re not at a higher level of capacity for Jets, Giants, Rutgers football, you name it, as we get into the summer and fall,” Mr. Murphy said.

Several other states have already permitted sports fans inside venues during the pandemic, especially at outdoor stadiums for football and baseball. But Mr. Cuomo and Mr. Murphy had resisted until December, when Mr. Cuomo worked with the N.F.L. to allow a limited number of fans at a Buffalo Bills playoff game in their open-air stadium.

Mr. Murphy also said that New Jersey would start to allow parents and guardians to watch their children play both indoor and outdoor college sports, provided venues meet capacity limits, on Monday. The state reopened high school sports to parents earlier this month, with indoor attendance limited to 35 percent or 150 people.

New Jersey will also allow houses of worship and religious services to operate at 50 percent capacity effective Monday, the governor said. The limit is an increase from the previous cap of 35 percent maximum capacity up to 150 people.

Alison Saldanha contributed reporting.

Bernard Gonzalez, a regional official, announced new restrictions for the French Riviera on Monday. The area has the country’s highest infection rate.Credit…Valery Hache/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The French Riviera, the famed strip along the Mediterranean coast that includes jet-setting hot spots like Saint-Tropez and Cannes, will be locked down over the next two weekends in an attempt to fight back a sharp spike in coronavirus infections.

France has been under a nighttime curfew since mid-January and restaurants, cafes and museums remain closed, but the government of President Emmanuel Macron has resisted putting a third national lockdown in place.

It has been a calculated gamble, with Mr. Macron hoping that he could tighten restrictions just enough to stave off a new surge of infections without resorting to the more severe rules in place in many other European countries.

The strategy has largely worked, but infection rates remain at a stubbornly high level of about 20,000 new cases per day. Officials have made it clear that the existing national restrictions would not be loosened and that more local lockdowns could be enforced in the coming days.

The French Riviera, which includes the city of Nice, has the country’s highest infection rate, and officials have grown increasingly alarmed as they surged to 600 cases per week per 100,000 residents — about three times the national rate.

“The epidemic situation has sharply deteriorated,” Bernard Gonzalez, a regional official for the Alpes-Maritimes area, said on Monday as he announced the lockdown, which will affect the coastal area between the cities of Menton and Théoule-sur-Mer.

Officials said that controls at the border with Italy, in airports and on roads would be toughened and that the police would carry out random coronavirus tests. New measures also include a closure of all larger shops and an acceleration of the vaccination campaign.

Infection rates surged as many French people flocked to the coast, attracted by the temperate Mediterranean weather as they sought to escape gloomy cities like Paris.

“We will be happy to receive lots of tourists this summer, once we win this battle,” Christian Estrosi, the mayor of Nice, said last week. “But it is better to have a period while we say ‘Do not come here, this is not the moment.’”

President John Magufuli of Tanzania in 2016. Having cast doubt on coronavirus vaccines and other measures to curb the spread of the pandemic, he is now changing course.Credit…Thomas Mukoya/Reuters

NAIROBI, Kenya — Officially, Tanzania has not reported a single coronavirus case since April 2020. According to government data, the country has had only 509 positive cases and 21 deaths since the start of the pandemic.

Almost no one believes those numbers to be credible. But they fit with President John Magufuli’s declaration that the pandemic was “finished.”

Now, facing criticism from the World Health Organization and skepticism from the public as Tanzanians take to social media to voice concern about a growing number of “pneumonia” cases, Mr. Magufuli is changing course and asking people to take precautions against the coronavirus and wear masks.

Speaking during a church service in the port city of Dar es Salaam, the president asked congregants to continue praying for the disease to go away but also urged them to follow “advice from health experts.”

In a statement released by his office, Mr. Magufuli said his government had never barred people from wearing masks but urged them to use only those made in Tanzania.

“The masks imported from outside the country are suspected of being unsafe,” the statement said.

Mr. Magufuli’s comments come a day after the director-general of the World Health Organization urged the country to start reporting coronavirus cases and share data.

Mr. Magufuli, 61, who was re-elected last October, has derided social distancing, publicized unproven treatments as a cure for the virus, questioned the efficacy of coronavirus testing kits supplied by the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and said that “vaccines don’t work.”

Yet health experts, religious entities and foreign embassies have issued warnings about the rising number of cases — and as deaths follow, the reality is harder to dismiss.

The vice president of the semiautonomous island of Zanzibar, Seif Sharif Hamad, died last week after contracting the virus, according to his political party. The United States Embassy in Tanzania also said in a statement it was “aware of a significant increase in the number of Covid-19 cases” since January.

Lawmakers are increasingly asking the health authorities to explain why so many people were dying from respiratory problems.

Speaking on Friday at the funeral of a government official, however, Mr. Magufuli said that citizens should put God first and not be instilled with fear about the virus.

“It is possible that we wronged God somewhere,” he said. “So let’s stand with God, my fellow Tanzanians.”

In his statement, the W.H.O. chief, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said he had spoken to “several authorities” in the country about their plans to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus but had yet to receive any response.

“This situation remains very concerning,” he said.

The Biden inauguration’s memorial for the 400,000 lives lost to the coronavirus in the United States. On the day after his inauguration, President Biden said that the memorial would not be the country’s last and projected that “the death toll will likely top 500,000” in February.Credit…Todd Heisler/The New York Times

President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris plan to have a moment of silence during a candle lighting ceremony at the White House this evening to remember the nearly 500,000 people in the country who have died from Covid-19. They will ask Americans to join them.

Mr. Biden will also call for lowering federal flags to half-staff for the next five days, when the number of deaths is expected to pass the somber milestone. About 100,000 of these deaths have occurred since Jan. 18.

“Tonight’s events, including the president’s remarks, will highlight the magnitude of loss at this milestone marked for the American people and so many families across the country,” Jennifer Psaki, the White House press secretary, said during a briefing Monday afternoon. “It will also speak to the power of the American people to turn the tide on this pandemic by working together, following public health guidelines and getting in line to be vaccinated as soon as they are eligible.”

Even as the number of deaths each day remains high, there are signs of improvement across the country. Since mid-January, the number of U.S. hospitalizations has steadily and swiftly declined. And the number of new cases has decreased more than 40 percent over the past two weeks and is down 70 percent since its high point on Jan. 8, according to a New York Times database.

Experts credit the declines, in part, to widespread mask-wearing, social distancing and vaccinations. About 12 percent of people in the country have received at least one vaccine dose, and about 5 percent are fully vaccinated.

Originally from Lebanon, Tarek Wazzan is against any vaccines. He is the owner of Lebanese Eatery, a restaurant in Port Richmond. Before the pandemic, Wazzan refused to vaccinate his children and subsequently was not able to send them to school so they are home-schooled.Credit…Kirsten Luce for The New York Times

Around the United States, the vaccine rollout has reflected the same troubling inequalities as the pandemic’s death toll, leaving Black, Latino and poorer people at a disadvantage. In New York City, home to more than three million immigrants from all over the world, data released last week suggests that vaccination rates in immigrant enclaves scattered across the five boroughs are among the city’s lowest.

This month, The New York Times interviewed 115 people living in predominantly immigrant neighborhoods about the rollout and their attitudes toward the vaccines.

Only eight people said they had received a shot. The interviews revealed language and technology roadblocks: Some believed there were no vaccine sites nearby. Others described mistrust in government officials and the health care system. Many expressed fears about vaccine safety fomented by news reports and social media.

The broader public may find it difficult to understand why people in communities ravaged by the coronavirus would be reluctant to line up to get vaccinated, said Marcella J. Tillett, the vice president of programs and partnerships at the Brooklyn Community Foundation.

“This is where there has been a lot of illness and death,” said Ms. Tillett, whose foundation is distributing funds to social service organizations for vaccine education and outreach. “The idea that people are just going to step out and trust a system that has harmed them is nonsensical.”

To be sure, thousands of immigrant New Yorkers have gotten vaccinated, navigating the system with patience, if not ease. Others have relied on social service organizations. BronxWorks recently held a five-day vaccine pop-up on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, administering hundreds of shots each day.

To increase participation in immigrant enclaves and communities of color, the city has opened vaccine mega-sites at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx and Citi Field in Queens, which offer vaccinations to eligible residents of each borough. (There have been reports of suburbanites coming in to claim doses.)

The state is holding online “fireside chats” in several languages, opening new sites in Brooklyn and Queens, and continuing to bring pop-up sites to neighborhood organizations.

On Monday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority would boost bus service to the two new vaccine sites from public housing projects and community centers in Brooklyn and Queens to better serve Black, Latino and poorer New Yorkers who are most vulnerable to the virus.

Still, obstacles remain.

Bottles of disinfectant sit on a table at Hickory Hills Elementary School in Marietta, Ga.Credit…Audra Melton for The New York Times

Coronavirus clusters at six elementary schools in Georgia resulted from poor social distancing and, to a lesser extent, inadequate mask use by students, public health officials reported on Monday.

Teachers played a role in transmitting the virus in all but one of the clusters, and two of the clusters probably involved teacher-to-teacher transmission that was followed by teacher to student transmission, the study found.

Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention examined nine clusters of three or more linked infections involving teachers and students in Cobb County, Ga., between Dec. 1 and Jan. 22, a period when the county, in suburban Atlanta, was experiencing a surge in cases.

Some 2,600 elementary school students — about 80 percent of the district’s total — were going to school in person at the time, and some 700 staff members were working in person.

The researchers identified transmission clusters involving 13 educators and 32 students at six schools in the county; some schools had more than one cluster.

In four of the nine clusters, an educator was identified as the index patient, or original source of infection. One cluster had a student as the index patient, and the researchers could not determine who the index patient was in the rest.

The study was limited in many ways, the investigators conceded. They said it was “challenging” to try to distinguish between infections acquired at school and those that were acquired in the community.

Some clusters may have been missed, they said, because almost half the people who were identified through contact tracing as having possibly been exposed refused to be tested.

Because infected adults are more likely to have symptoms and be tested, teachers may have been identified more frequently than students as index cases, the researchers said, while instances of student-to-student or student-to-teacher transmission may have gone undetected.

Even so, the authors said, their findings were consistent with studies in other countries. One in Britain found that transmission at schools happened most often from teacher to teacher; a German study found that in-school transmission rates were three times as high when the cluster began with an educator, rather than a student.

The C.D.C. investigators urged teachers to follow precautions to prevent coronavirus infection when they are not in school, and to limit their interactions with colleagues at meetings and over lunch.

They also called for teachers to be vaccinated. “Although not a requirement for reopening schools, adding Covid-19 vaccination for educators as an additional mitigation measure, when available, might serve several important functions, including protecting educators at risk for severe Covid-19 associated illness, potentially reducing in school SARS-CoV-2 transmission and minimizing interruption to in-person learning,” the researchers said.

People waiting to receive the Moderna vaccine in San Diego last month.Credit…Ariana Drehsler for The New York Times

A coronavirus testing campaign in San Francisco has found more evidence that a variant first observed in California may be more contagious.

Looking at more than 600 cases in one of the city’s predominantly Latino communities, scientists found that the proportion of virus samples carrying this variant greatly increased from late November to late January.

Although the study was relatively small, and no one knows whether the variant affects the effectiveness of vaccines, “this is not the time to let down the guard,” said Joe DeRisi, the co-president of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub and one of the scientists involved in the new study. A more contagious variant could threaten to reverse the decline in cases seen over the past couple of months in California and elsewhere.

The results were announced on Monday by the University of California at San Francisco, which carried out the research in collaboration with the ​Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and the ​Latino Task Force for Covid-19. The data have not yet been published.

The variant first came to light on Jan. 17, when the California Department of Public Health reported that it had become noticeably common in several communities across the state. The variant, which has gone by several names, is now known as B.1.429.

The variant might have become common in one of two ways. It might be more contagious, or it might simply have gone through a superspreading event, fueling its spread. “Just by random chance, a bad wedding or choir practice can create a large frequency difference,” Dr. DeRisi said.

Soon after the announcement, researchers at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles reported that B.1.429 was rapidly becoming more common around that city. But those findings were based on a limited sample of just 185 coronavirus genomes that had been fully sequenced.

To get more samples, Dr. DeRisi and his colleagues focused their efforts on the predominantly Latino community in the Mission District neighborhood. There they have been running a community testing program since last April, called Unidos en Salud​.

Looking at their samples from late November, the researchers found that 16 percent of the coronaviruses belonged to B.1.429. By January, after sequencing 630 genomes, the team found 53 percent were B.1.429.

Because the researchers were running their tests in a community, they could investigate how the B.1.429 variant spread from person to person. In some cases, entire families came to get tested. In other cases, the researchers followed up on positive tests to ask if they could test other people in the same household. The researchers studied the spread of B.1.429 and other variants in 326 households.

The researchers found that B.1.429 was more likely to spread among people living in the same house than other variants were. People had a 35 percent chance of getting infected if someone else in their home was infected with the B.1.429 variant. If the person was infected with another variant, the rate was only 26 percent.

“What we see is a modest, but meaningful difference,” Dr. DeRisi said.

A vaccination center in Sofia, Bulgaria, on Monday. Officials said they had set a goal of administering 10,000 shots a day.Credit…Vassil Donev/EPA, via Shutterstock

When vaccines arrived this winter in Bulgaria, which had one of the highest excess mortality rates in Europe, the authorities hoped people would clamor for a shot.

Instead, they were greeted by many with a shrug and skepticism.

Just 1.4 percent of the nation’s seven million people have been inoculated with the first dose, according to the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control.

The rollout of mass vaccination programs has been slow in many parts of Europe, but Bulgaria is lagging even further behind.

In an effort to speed up progress, Prime Minister Boiko Borisov called for “green corridors” allowing anyone who wanted a vaccination to get one, regardless of whether they were in a priority group under the country’s vaccination plan.

The goal was to administer around 10,000 shots per day, he said. The reaction appears to be better than expected: The lines evoked the period of communist rule, when people would spend hours waiting to get basic supplies like oil or meat.

Since Friday, 30,000 people received their first vaccination, according to data provided by the health ministry.

In comparison, around 120,000 total doses have been administered since vaccination campaign began in December.

Apostol Dyankov, a 38-year-old environmental expert in Sofia, received his shot on Sunday.

“I spent the weekend, browsing Twitter to figure out where this was for real,” he said. “The news was so unexpected that I couldn’t believe it’s actually happening. The lines I saw on the news reminded me of socialist times, when a store would receive a shipment of bananas.”

Donka Popopa, an owner of a construction business, described a chaotic scene at a vaccination site in Plovdiv, the country’s second-largest city, where medical workers were vaccinating all comers.

“We waited for several hours, even though we were told to come in the morning,” she said, adding that it had been difficult to figure out whether and when her employees were eligible for vaccination.

The health minister, Kostadin Angelov, told reporters in Sofia on Sunday that the turnout was a triumph.

“I would like to thank all the people who believed in science,” he said. “To those who have not been vaccinated, I would like to say something loud and clear: Bulgarians, hope is in your hands, the decision is yours. Please, trust the science, trust the doctors.”

Officials acknowledge, however, that maintaining the early burst of enthusiasm will be a challenge.

Categories
Business

Porsche CEO warns of ‘very severe’ international chip scarcity

Porsche CEO warns of 'very serious' global chip shortage

The CEO of Porsche warned on Monday that the daily operations of the German luxury car maker could be affected by a “very serious” global semiconductor shortage in the coming months.

“The semiconductor issue is very serious, as the entire industry is affected by the great demand for consumer electronics and the faster return of the automotive sector,” said Oliver Blume, CEO of Porsche, on Monday to CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe”.

“We could be affected every day, so we will be watching very closely over the next few days and months what we can do. We have to relax in the short term and look for long-term measures.”

His comments come after a sudden surge in global auto sales late last year that coincided with a lack of essential chip components. The delivery bottlenecks brought the assembly lines of the chip-dependent automotive industry to a standstill and stopped the production of hundreds of thousands of vehicles worldwide.

Demand for these chips or semiconductors has increased during the coronavirus pandemic as consumers bought game consoles, laptops and televisions in an era of limited mobility.

Many of these products – including certain Chromebook laptops and next-generation consoles like the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 – are either sold out or have long lead times.

Supply chains

According to analysts, the chip shortage has hit the automotive industry particularly hard because of the industry’s “just-in-time” supply chain that the automotive industry has relied on for decades to save capital.

When asked whether Porsche could be forced to rethink this supply chain model, Blume replied: “Yes. This is very important for the future in order to think about the supply chain.”

“We have to think about which storage we really need for all these stocks. We have to be more flexible and plan the immediate capacities more precisely.”

The Porsche shares listed in the German Xetra Dax index have risen by 15% since the beginning of the year. The share price has barely changed in the past 12 months.

– CNBC’s Sam Shead contributed to this report.

Categories
Health

Biden to pledge billions towards world efforts

Biden to pledge billions toward global efforts

A health worker applies a Sinovac CoronaVac Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) vaccine to an elderly Citzen on February 18, 2021 in Sao Goncalo, near Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Ricardo Moraes | Reuters

President Joe Biden is expected to announce Friday that the US will be spending $ 4 billion on international Covid vaccination efforts, White House officials said.

During his first virtual meeting as president with G7 leaders, Biden will also encourage other nations to pledge more money for the global fight against the pandemic, officials told reporters in a conference call on Thursday afternoon.

“This pandemic will not end if we don’t end it globally,” said an official, while noting that vaccinating Americans remains the government’s “top priority”.

“But pandemics travel,” the official said, “and the more diseases there are, the more likely we are to see additional mutations and variants.”

The funds were provided by Congress under the Covid Relief Act, which was incorporated into law in late December with overwhelming support from both parties, despite former President Donald Trump describing the package as a “disgrace”.

The Biden government plans to donate half of that $ 4 billion “almost immediately” to the Gavi nonprofit global vaccination alliance, an official said.

Gavi is the co-head of COVAX, an international initiative aimed at improving access to Covid vaccines. The initial $ 2 billion shipment from the United States aims to improve access to Covid vaccines for 92 low and middle income economies supported by COVAX’s Advance Market Commitment.

The government plans to spend the remaining $ 2 billion gradually through 2022, officials said, with the aim of encouraging other donors to increase their contributions.

“We basically want to turn this into a way to convert $ 2 billion into billions of dollars,” an official said in the call, setting a target of at least $ 15 billion for “what is likely.” is required to actually increase the delivery of the vaccine around the world. “

The government stressed that the global funding will have no impact on the US domestic vaccination program. Officials said if Congress passes Covid’s additional bill, pushed by Biden lawmakers and the Democrats, they expect to ensure adequate vaccine supplies to meet their schedule goals.

“If we have adequate supplies, we may want to consider donating excess vaccines,” said an overseas official.

When asked the importance of supporting global vaccination efforts, one official said, “In addition to saving many lives … it is the right thing to do to help everyone in America from a national security and economic perspective.”

Categories
Health

U.S. and Novavax Will Assist World Vaccination Marketing campaign

U.S. and Novavax Will Aid Global Vaccination Campaign

WASHINGTON – An international effort to expedite the manufacture and distribution of coronavirus vaccines around the world was fueled on Thursday on two fronts: White House officials said the Biden administration would keep a U.S. pledge over two years To donate $ 4 billion to the campaign and drug company Novavax pledged to sell 1.1 billion doses of its vaccine.

President Biden will make his announcement on Friday during a virtual meeting with fellow Group of Seven leaders where he is expected to urge other countries to step up their contributions. The $ 4 billion was approved by a Democrat-run house and Republican-run Senate last year when President Donald J. Trump was in office.

Public health experts often say that if everyone is not vaccinated, no one will be vaccinated. One of the officials, who spoke anonymously to preview the president’s announcement, said it was also in the interests of international security for the United States to help in efforts overseas to lessen the impact of the pandemic.

Countries like India and China are already using the coronavirus vaccine as a diplomatic tool. Both are giving doses to other nations to build their global influence. National security experts said the United States should consider the same thing.

“We could use the vaccine internationally to strengthen our relationships with allies, to potentially build positive relationships with China, and to solve humanitarian problems in less developed parts of the world,” said Richard J. Danzig, Secretary of the Navy to President Bill Clinton said in an interview late last year that he lamented the Trump administration’s indifference to the idea. Such an effort, he said, “could bring us a very significant national security benefit.”

The White House in Biden seems to be heading in that direction. After taking office, Mr. Biden directed federal agencies to “establish a framework for the donation of surplus vaccines to countries in need as soon as there is adequate supply in the US,” including under the international program.

Updated

Apr. 18, 2021, 8:01 p.m. ET

But an official said Thursday the United States will not share vaccines now while the domestic vaccination campaign expands.

The government received 600 million emergency-cleared doses of the two vaccines, enough for 300 million Americans. Those doses are expected to be in hand by the end of summer, and Mr Biden said this week that vaccines would be available to every American by the end of July. If additional vaccines were most likely approved, it would add to the United States supply.

The international vaccination effort, known as Covax, was led by the public-private health partnership called Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, and the World Health Organization. The aim is to distribute vaccines that have been identified as safe and effective by the WHO, with a focus on low and middle income countries.

White House officials said the money would be delivered in multiple installments: an initial donation of $ 500 million, followed by another $ 1.5 billion. The remaining $ 2 billion will be delivered by the end of 2022.

The president’s commitment to the global fight against the pandemic is in stark contrast to the approach taken by Mr Trump, who withdrew from the World Health Organization, despised foreign aid and pursued a foreign policy he called “America First”. Mr Biden rejoined the World Health Organization immediately after taking office in January.

One of the officials said Mr. Biden would urge other nations to make significant pledges to Covax.

So far, the United States has pledged more than any other nation, according to the White House; The official said the goal is to convert the second tranche of $ 2 billion into up to $ 15 billion – the amount the government deems necessary to increase and distribute vaccine supplies worldwide.

Those who led the Covax effort welcomed the Novavax announcement with enthusiasm. Dr. Seth Berkley, Gavi’s chief executive officer, said in a statement that the donation would help the campaign “move closer to our goal of delivering two billion cans by 2021”. He said it would also expand the range of vaccines it could rely on to “build a portfolio that is suitable for all settings and contexts”.

Categories
Business

Russia, China search to spice up world affect

Russia, China seek to boost global influence

Workers unload the cargo from a Hungarian Airbus 330 plane after transporting the first doses of the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine against the coronavirus (Covid-19) at Budapest Ferenc Liszt International Airport on February 16, 2021.

ZOLTAN MATH | AFP | Getty Images

LONDON – International diplomacy is likely to determine who gets access to coronavirus vaccines in the coming months, analysts told CNBC. Countries like Russia and China use one of the most sought-after commodities in the world to advance their own interests abroad.

It is hoped that the introduction of Covid-19 vaccines could help end the pandemic. While many countries have not yet started vaccination programs, even high-income countries face a supply shortage as manufacturers struggle to stimulate production.

Russia and China made the distribution of face masks and protective equipment to hard-hit countries a central principle of diplomatic relations last year. Now both countries are taking a transactional approach to the delivery of vaccines.

Agathe Demarais, Global Forecasting Director at the Economist Intelligence Unit, told CNBC over the phone that Russia, China and, to a lesser extent, India are betting on providing Covid vaccines to emerging or low-income countries to advance their interests.

“Russia and China have been doing this for a long, long time … especially in emerging markets because they feel that traditional Western powers have withdrawn from those countries,” Demarais said.

“In the past we have seen China launch the Belt and Road Initiative, when in fact it still does. We have seen Russia do a number of things, especially in the Middle Eastern countries with nuclear power plants has undertaken, and vaccine diplomacy is new brick all over the building in its attempt to build its global reputation. “

Vaccination timeline

That strategy is likely to lead Russia and China to cement long-term presence in countries around the world, Demarais said, noting that the fundamental importance of vaccines to the population will make it “super, super difficult” for countries in the future to withstand diplomatic pressure.

The problem for Moscow and Beijing, however, is that “there is a big, big chance” that they both promise too much and deliver too little, she added.

Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine and China’s Sinopharm and Sinovac vaccines have already started rolling out globally. A total of 26 countries, including Argentina, Hungary, Tunisia and Turkmenistan, have approved the Russian Covid vaccine. China’s customers include Brazil, Indonesia, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates.

A health worker receives the Sputnik V vaccine at the Centenario Hospital in Rosario, Santa Fe Province, when the vaccination campaign against the novel coronavirus Covid-19 began in Argentina on December 29, 2020.

STR | AFP | Getty Images

According to analysts, both Russia and China have typically signed supply contracts that strengthen existing political alliances. However, production problems with western-made vaccines could be an incentive for some non-traditional allies to look to Moscow and Beijing.

Russia and China are currently unable to meet their respective home markets’ vaccine needs and continue to export to countries around the world. Production is the main hurdle to this challenge, while many high-income countries have pre-ordered more cans than they need.

We don’t currently have a system at international level to ensure, for example, that you can adjust the effectiveness of the vaccine to the variant in which a variant is in circulation.

Suerie Moon

Co-Director of GHC at the Graduate Institute Geneva

A report released last month by the Economist Intelligence Unit forecast that most of the adult populations in advanced economies would be vaccinated by the middle of next year. In contrast, this period extends to early 2023 for many middle-income countries and even until 2024 for some low-income countries.

It highlights the global mismatch between supply and demand and the wide gap between high and low income countries when it comes to access to vaccines.

Last month, the World Health Organization’s top official warned that the world was on the verge of “catastrophic moral failure” because of unequal Covid vaccination policies.

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Jan. 18 that it was clear that, even though some countries and companies speak the language of fair access to vaccines, they are still prioritizing bilateral deals, bypassing COVAX, raising prices and trying to jump up the line . “

“That’s wrong,” he added.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO), speaks after Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases, during the 148th session of the Executive Board on the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Geneva, Switzerland, January 21, 2021.

Christopher Black | WHO | via Reuters

Tedros condemned what he called the “me-first” approach from high-income countries, saying it was self-destructive and endangered the world’s poorest and most vulnerable. Almost all high-income countries have prioritized the distribution of vaccines to their own populations.

When asked if there is any prospect of countries changing their so-called me-first approach following the WHO warning about vaccine diplomacy, Demarais replied, “No. It won’t happen. I’m following it very closely and it’s all very depressing . “

“The Big Challenge”

COVAX is one of the three pillars of the so-called Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator, which was introduced last April by the WHO, the European Commission and France. It focuses on equitable access of Covid diagnostics, treatments and vaccines to help less affluent countries.

Analysts have long been skeptical about how efficiently COVAX can deliver supplies of Covid vaccines to middle and low income countries around the world, despite several heads of state calling for global solidarity at the start of the pandemic.

The international aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres has described what we are seeing today in terms of global access to vaccines as “far from an image of justice”.

“The big challenge is that every time a country signs a bilateral agreement, it becomes all the more difficult to put vaccines into the multilateral pot via COVAX,” said Suerie Moon, co-director of the Global Health Center at the Graduate Institute in Geneva. said CNBC by phone.

Adding to this concern, Moon said, “We currently have no system at the international level to ensure, for example, that you can reconcile the effectiveness of the vaccine with the variant of a circulating variant.”

She cited South Africa as an impressive example. Earlier this month, South Africa suspended the launch of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine after a study raised questions about its effectiveness against a highly infectious variant first discovered in the country.

“In a rational and ethical world, South Africa would suddenly have access to vaccines that are effective against its variant, and the AstraZeneca vaccines could be sent to another part of the world that does not have that variant. That would be the rational way you do it, but we just haven’t made arrangements for this type of transaction, “said Moon.

“Ideally, something like this happens when you have strong international collaboration, but I think the reality is that it will be a mess,” she continued.

“We’re going to have vaccines that expire in some countries if they could be used elsewhere. We’re going to have vaccines effective in one place, but they’re not in the right place (and) we’re going to have excess vaccines as a security.” measure, while in another country people have nothing. “

Categories
Business

China box-office file reveals international pent-up demand for films

China box-office record reveals global pent-up demand for movies

Imax broke its box office records over the weekend of the New Year celebrations in China and the results predict what will happen when more US theaters resume operations this summer, CEO Rich Gelfond told CNBC on Tuesday.

The company, which produces immersive movie experiences, said it grossed $ 25 million between Friday and Sunday, up 45% from its pre-pandemic record.

“It tells you [that] If it’s safe to go outside and people want to go, run to the movies, “said Gelfond, who appeared on Closing Bell after the deal on Wall Street ended.

Detective Chinatown 3, a comedy adventure postponed from the release of Lunar New Year last year, captured a large portion of Imax ticket sales during the three-day period. The film grossed $ 23.5 million, the best results Imax has ever seen for a Chinese film. The action films “A Writer’s Odyssey” and “New Gods: Nezha Reborn” have also helped Imax hit both gross admissions and gross sales highs.

Coming from the news, Imax shares rose more than 6% on Tuesday, the best day since November. The stock closed at $ 19.85, up more than 5% after hours.

Imax took in more than 1 million people in cinemas in China on Friday, the best one-day attendance ever recorded. The results come despite capacity constraints that persist in entertainment businesses in China. The $ 25 million Imax brought in at the box office was better than the comparable opening week of 2019 that preceded the coronavirus pandemic.

Most theaters in China have a 75% capacity limit, while parts of the country with higher broadcasts of Covid-19 are limited to 50%. US theater restrictions vary by state. Limitations range from 25% capacity in Minnesota to 50% in Indiana to 100% in Alaska. This is based on data held by the National Association of Theater Owners.

The seven-day New Year holiday ends on Wednesday. Theaters in China closed around this time last year when the country shut down in response to the fast-spreading virus discovered in Wuhan city, Hubei province in late 2019.

The movie frenzy was fueled by China’s traditional travel season, which has largely been suspended due to coronavirus restrictions. Millions of time spent in the cinema with scrapped travel plans.

Gelfond said Imax expected strong participation in China over the weekend.

“I think the only thing you can say is the pent-up demand that people just get tired of sitting on their couches and watching streaming or whatever else they’ve been doing,” he said. “I think they are just happy to get out and I think that gives the rest of the world a guess.”

In the midst of the pandemic, Imax’s 2020 sales fell 74% from the first three quarters of last year through September. The company is expected to report fourth quarter and full year 2020 performance next month.

Gelfond said in December that the release of US films in 2021, including a number of films postponed from first releases last year, would be an “embarrassment of fortune” for Imax if the country’s theaters closed Should be opened at the beginning of the year.

According to the online ticketing platform Maoyan Entertainment, mainland China posted holiday week sales of 6.77 billion yuan, or $ 1.05 billion, on Tuesday. That figure surpassed the record 5.9 billion yuan in the same period of 2019.

Since the theaters reopened in June, box office revenues have increased. Coronavirus cases have declined sharply in countries like China, Australia and South Korea, and movie ticket sales have increased.

Global movie ticket sales decreased 70% year over year in 2020. Ticket sales in the Asia-Pacific region accounted for approximately 51% of global sales, up from 41% in 2019, based on information from Comscore and Gower Street. The US and Canadian box office sales accounted for just 18% of sales in 2020, compared to 30% in 2019.

– Reuters contributed to this report.

Categories
World News

Stay World Covid-19 Pandemic and Vaccine Updates

Video player loading

Here’s what you need to know:

Video

transcript

Back

transcript

C.D.C. Says Layering and Improving Mask Fit Increases Protection

Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said wearing more tightly fitting masks or layering masks increases effectiveness in preventing Covid-19.

Research has demonstrated that Covid-19 infections and deaths have decreased when policies that require everyone to wear a mask have been implemented. So with cases, hospitalizations and deaths still very high, now is not the time to roll back mask requirements. I have also seen very many well-meaning people wearing masks that do not fit well or fit incorrectly. In fact, recent survey data from Porter Novelli found that among adults who reported wearing masks in the past week, half said they wore their masks incorrectly in public. New data released from C.D.C. today underscore the importance of wearing a mask correctly and making sure it fits closely and snugly over your nose and mouth. The C.D.C. is updating the mask information for the public on the C.D.C. website to provide new options on how to improve mask fit. This includes wearing a mask with a moldable nose wire, knotting the ear loops on your mask or wearing a cloth mask over a procedure or disposable mask. There are also new options available to consumers called mask fitters, small reusable devices that cinch a cloth or medical mask, and that can create a tighter fit against the face, and thus improve mask performance. The bottom line is this: Masks work and they work best when they have a good fit, and are worn correctly.

Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said wearing more tightly fitting masks or layering masks increases effectiveness in preventing Covid-19.CreditCredit…Philip Cheung for The New York Times

Wearing a mask — any mask — reduces the risk of infection with the coronavirus, but wearing a more tightly fitted surgical mask, or layering a cloth mask atop a surgical mask, can vastly increase protections to the wearer and others, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Wednesday.

New research by the agency shows that transmission of the virus can be reduced by up to 96.5 percent if both an infected individual and an uninfected individual wear tightly fitted surgical masks or a cloth-and-surgical-mask combination.

Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, director of the C.D.C., announced the findings during Wednesday’s White House coronavirus briefing, and coupled them with a plea for Americans to wear “a well-fitting mask” that has two or more layers. President Biden has challenged Americans to wear masks for the first 100 days of his presidency, and Dr. Walensky said that masks were especially crucial given the concern about new variants circulating.

“With cases hospitalizations and deaths still very high, now is not the time to roll back mask requirements,” she said, adding, “The bottom line is this: Masks work, and they work when they have a good fit and are worn correctly.”

Virus-related deaths, which resurged sharply in the United States in November and still remain high, appear to be in a steady decline; new virus cases and hospitalizations began to drop last month. But researchers warn that a more contagious virus variant first found in Britain is doubling roughly every 10 days in the United States. The C.D.C. cautioned last month that it could become the dominant variant in the nation by March.

As of Feb. 1, 14 states and the District of Columbia had implemented universal masking mandates; masking is now mandatory on federal property and on domestic and international transportation. But while masks are known to both reduce respiratory droplets and aerosols exhaled by infected wearers and to protect the uninfected wearer, their effectiveness varies widely because of air leaking around the edges of the mask.

“Any mask is better than none,” said Dr. John Brooks, lead author of the new C.D.C. study. “There are substantial and compelling data that wearing a mask reduces spread, and in communities that adopt mask wearing, new infections go down.”

But, he added, the new research shows how to enhance the protection. The agency’s new laboratory experiments are based on the ideas put forth by Linsey Marr, an expert in aerosol transmission at Virginia Tech, and Dr. Monica Gandhi, who studies infectious diseases at the University of California, San Francisco.

One option for reducing transmission is to wear a cloth mask over a surgical mask, the agency said. The alternative is to fit the surgical mask more tightly on the face by “knotting and tucking” — that is, knotting the two strands of the ear loops together where they attach to the edge of the mask, then folding and flattening the extra fabric at the mask’s edge and tucking it in for a tighter seal.

Dr. Brooks cautioned that the new study was based on laboratory experiments, and it’s unclear how these masking recommendations will perform in the real world (the experiments used three-ply surgical and cloth masks). “But it’s very clear evidence that the more of us who wear masks and the better the mask fits, the more each of us benefit individually.”

Other effective options that improve the fit include using a mask-fitter — a frame contoured to the face — over a mask, or wearing a sleeve of sheer nylon hosiery material around the neck and pulled up over a cloth or surgical mask, the C.D.C. said.

Even as vaccines are being slowly rolled out across the country, the emergence of the new variants, which may respond differently to treatments or dodge the immune system to some degree, has prompted public health officials to emphasize that Americans should continue to take protective measures like masking.

United States › United StatesOn Feb. 9 14-day change
New cases 96,488 –35%
New deaths 3,170 –20%
World › WorldOn Feb. 9 14-day change
New cases 398,538 –26%
New deaths 14,751 –13%

U.S. vaccinations ›

Where states are reporting vaccines given

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

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

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

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

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

Companions should be able to schedule their vaccine along with that of the older resident, the governor said, and effective Thursday, they now can.

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

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

Some expressed concern that younger people who are less susceptible to serious illness from the virus might get a vaccine before people who are 65 or older or who have chronic health conditions.

But Governor Baker said the immediate goal was to make sure people 75 and older are vaccinated.

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

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

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

He does not expect other states to follow suit — at least, not right away.

But Dr. Jha said it might be different in April or May, when the supply of vaccine may outweigh the demand.

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

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

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

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

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

A vaccination site at Citi Field in Queens on Wednesday.Credit…Kena Betancur/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York said that large arenas and stadiums across the state would be able to open for events with spectators, at very limited capacity, as soon as Feb. 23. Attendees will be required to provide a negative coronavirus test result.

Venues that hold 10,000 people or more would be allowed to host 10 percent of their normal capacity, if they are approved by the state’s Department of Health.

Attendees will have to provide a negative P.C.R. test, taken within 72 hours of the event, before they can enter. Socially distanced assigned seating will be mandatory, as will face coverings and temperature checks.

While controlling the spread of the coronavirus, the state has to simultaneously “get this economy open intelligently,” Mr. Cuomo said, adding that “this hits the balance of safe reopening, and again a P.C.R. test is as safe as you can get.”

The governor cited the success of a recent Buffalo Bills’ playoff game, attended by about 6,700 people who had to provide a negative coronavirus test before they could enter, as the inspiration for his decision. A negative test result is a snapshot in time of whether the virus can be detected if a person is infected, and may miss individuals who are infected but do not yet carry enough of the virus for the test to come back positive.

“The testing is the key,” Mr. Cuomo said at a news conference on Wednesday.

Mr. Cuomo said that the Barclays Center in Brooklyn would reopen on Feb. 23, for a Brooklyn Nets game against the Sacramento Kings.

But the Bills’ stadium is open air, unlike the Barclays Center. Public health experts say the quality of ventilation is crucial when considering indoor gatherings because the virus is known to spread more easily indoors.

At his news conference, Mr. Cuomo did not offer details on ventilation, but a release from his office later said that in order to reopen venues to professional sports, sites had to “meet enhanced air filtration, ventilation and purification standards.”

Attending an indoor event is risky even with ample ventilation and other precautions, said Saskia Popescu, an epidemiologist at George Mason University.

“Bringing thousands of people indoors for an event that elicits screaming and socializing is not ideal right now,” Dr. Popescu said in an email.

As for playing games at venues like Citi Field or Yankee Stadium, which are being used as vaccination sites, the governor joked that “between innings, people will do vaccines.”

Gareth Rhodes, a member of the governor’s Covid-19 task force, said the state planned to work with teams so the vaccinations could continue.

The Citi Field vaccination site, which serves eligible Queens residents and taxi drivers and food service workers from all five boroughs, opened Wednesday. It will have 200 appointments a day available during its first week of operation and will offer 24-hour service starting next Wednesday, officials said. The site will be able to administer 4,000 doses of the vaccine a week by next week, Mayor Bill de Blasio said at an appearance outside the stadium. It could provide 5,000 doses a day if the city had more supply, he added.

“This site is the beginning of something very big,” Mr. de Blasio said. “The Mets are doing something crucial today for the people of Queens.”

The site was supposed to open the week of Jan. 25, but it was postponed because of vaccine shortages.

The mayor also said that mass vaccination sites were still planned at Empire Outlets in Staten Island and at the Barclays Center, though he did not specify dates when they will open.

The AstraZeneca vaccine being administered in Brazil on Tuesday.Credit…Bruno Kelly/Reuters

A World Health Organization panel of experts on Wednesday recommended that the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford be used in countries where concerning new variants of the coronavirus are circulating.

The recommendation came days after a decision by South Africa to halt at least temporarily plans to roll out AstraZeneca’s vaccine.

The decision was announced after a small clinical trial indicated that the vaccine might not protect against mild and moderate cases caused by avariant of the virus first seen in that country. Researchers were unable to draw a conclusion about the impact of the variant, known as B.1.351, on the vaccine’s ability to prevent severe disease.

Despite recommending the AstraZeneca vaccine for use everywhere, W.H.O. scientists conceded that each country should take into account the state of the virus and the type of variants spreading there.

The W.H.O. has not yet granted an emergency-use listing for the AstraZeneca vaccine, a step that would set into motion the rollout of the vaccine in many lower- and middle-income countries.

The W.H.O. will separately consider the vaccine’s two manufacturers: AstraZeneca and the Serum Institute, the Indian producer that will supply many doses for the Covax initiative to bring vaccines to poorer parts of the world. The W.H.O. will weigh those decisions in the next week, with decisions expected around the middle of this month.

The W.H.O. at the end of last year approved Pfizer’s vaccine. Its decision on AstraZeneca’s vaccine is highly anticipated, because countries around the world are counting on the cheap and easy-to-store product.

Countries are expected to begin receiving their first tranches of the AstraZeneca vaccine from Covax later in February.

The W.H.O.’s decisions come as concern is rising about whether certain variants may reduce the effectiveness of Covid-19 vaccines and treatments. The B.1.351 variant has so far generated the most worry. The AstraZeneca vaccine and other leading vaccines still appear to provide strong protection against another, more contagious coronavirus variant first identified in Britain, known as B.1.1.7.

But scientists have cautioned against drawing firm conclusions from preliminary data.

“We are so in the early stages of understanding what any specific change in the virus means for the performance of one or another of the vaccines or the vaccines as a whole,” said Katherine O’Brien, the W.H.O.’s director of immunization, vaccines and biologicals, at Wednesday’s news conference.

For now, South Africa is planning to inoculate health workers starting next week with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which prevented hospitalizations and deaths in clinical trials in the country. The vaccine is not yet authorized there, but officials said they would use it as part of an ongoing clinical trial.

As for the AstraZeneca vaccine, South African health officials indicated on Wednesday that they were considering selling or swapping their million doses of the vaccine for different shots. W.H.O. scientists said that they were open to discussing such plans as part of the Covax initiative.

The W.H.O. panel that issued recommendations on Wednesday, known as the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization, also advised that the AstraZeneca vaccine be given to adults regardless of their ages, breaking with a number of European countries that have opted to restrict the use of the vaccine to younger people.

The W.H.O. panel also recommended that the two doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine be given between four and 12 weeks apart. The guidance follows the release of a paper last week that found that the vaccine appears to work better when second doses are delayed. Britain and other countries have opted to delay second doses of the vaccine in an effort to get more first doses into their populations.

The University of California campus  in Berkeley.Credit…Jeff Chiu/Associated Press

At the Berkeley campus of the University of California, this was to be the month that academic life began inching back toward normal. Some students who had been sent home last year returned to their dorms in January. The first handful of in-person classes since the pandemic began had been set to resume on Feb. 1.

Instead, a wave of coronavirus infections has sent the campus into an unprecedented lockdown.

Since the beginning of the month, some 2,000 students have been confined to their rooms around the clock, unable even to visit floor-mates. The students are allowed out to go to the bathroom, get food and take twice-weekly coronavirus tests. (There are also exceptions for rare medical needs or emergencies.)

Classes are being held remotely for the foreseeable future.

Confined students are barred even from going outside to sunbathe or exercise, although the university is talking with city health officials about relaxing that prohibition.

“It’s been a little bit of a struggle,” Veronica Roseborough, a freshman quarantined in one eight-story residence hall, said on Wednesday, “but the university is doing what it can to keep cases low.”

The lockdown was ordered after the university reported 44 new infections among its staff and 43,000-plus students on Jan. 30. Since then, 183 more cases have been found, bringing the total since Sept. 9 to 724.

The number of new infections has declined since the quarantine began, officials said, but the lockdown will not end until Feb. 15.

The quarantine is not the only one on a college campus. (Last year, the University of Wisconsin-Madison shuttered 2,000 students in two dorms, and schools nationwide are struggling to control outbreaks.) But it might be the most rigid.

Security has been increased in residence halls to spot rule breakers and unwanted visitors. A cellphone-based “badge” (green for already tested, yellow for a missed test, orange and red for quarantined and Covid-19-positive) is subject to checking by so-called health ambassadors.

Flouting the rules can be costly. Violators can be suspended from classes, and student organizations can be deregistered.

But some students remain undeterred by the penalties.

“Some may disagree with me,” said one student who claimed to slip out regularly to socialize with friends (“I make sure they have a test”).

“My mental health is very important,” the student said.

A hospital worker put a warning label on a body bag holding a deceased patient at Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in Los Angeles last month.Credit…Jae C. Hong/Associated Press

Coronavirus-related deaths, which rose sharply in the United States beginning in November and remain high, appear to be in a steady decline, following in the tracks of new virus cases and hospitalizations, which began to drop last month.

The country has reported about 2,800 deaths a day recently, an average that excludes one anomalous day last week when Indiana announced a large number of backlogged death reports. That national average remains far above the level of early November, before the country’s recent surge, when roughly 825 deaths were being reported daily. But it is down significantly from the peak just a few weeks ago, when the average was more than 3,300 a day.

New coronavirus cases are a leading indicator for deaths, and that statistic has been improving markedly for a month. On Tuesday, the country reported 96,400 new cases, the third day in a row of having fewer than 100,000 new recorded cases, a level not seen since early November.

The seven-day average of new cases, a more reliable indicator of the pandemic’s direction, has fallen more than 50 percent since it peaked on Jan. 8.

Whether that will continue remains in doubt. Researchers warn that a more contagious virus variant first found in Britain is doubling roughly every 10 days in the United States. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cautioned last month that it could become the dominant variant in the nation by March.

Deaths tend to lag behind new cases by several weeks, and the day-to-day statistics can be prone to reporting vagaries. For a while, it was hard to discern clear signs that deaths had begun to decline. But the national trend now is unmistakable: The daily average has dropped about 18 percent since Jan. 12.

Although deaths are still rising in some states, including Alabama and South Carolina, far more are reporting sustained declines. Over the past two weeks, reports of virus deaths have dropped more than 40 percent in New Mexico and more than 30 percent in Arkansas, Colorado and Connecticut.

The declines are heartening but are not a reason for people to let down their guard, said Bill Hanage, an epidemiologist and associate professor at Harvard.

Dr. Hanage said the surges in new cases and deaths in December and early January had probably stemmed from the increase in gatherings over the holidays and from the onset of winter. Influenza and most kinds of coronavirus infections peak during winter, and there is little reason to think that Covid-19 is any different. (Influenza is not a coronavirus infection, as an earlier post suggested.)

The more infectious nature of the Covid-19 virus, and the appearance of variants that may spread even more easily, remain a significant cause for caution, he said.

“If in response to these dropping numbers people relax, then it is entirely possible and expected that we will see that decline start to bottom out and even start to increase again,” he said.

A New York Times analysis found that about half of the country’s roughly 465,000 Covid-19 deaths have occurred since the brutal surge began in November.

Maggie Owens and her children, Louise and August, playing in their Chicago home. The city’s teachers approved a deal early Wednesday that would send students, including Louise, back to classrooms.Credit…Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times

After a two-week pause of in-person instruction, the Chicago Teachers Union said early Wednesday that its members had approved an agreement to reopen classrooms in the country’s third-largest public school system.

More than 20,000 ballots were cast, with 13,681 members voting in favor and 6,585 voting against, the union said.

Under the agreement, prekindergarten and some special education students will return to classrooms on Thursday. Staff in kindergarten through fifth-grade classrooms will return on Feb. 22, and students in those grades will return on March 1. Staff members in sixth- through eighth-grade classrooms will return March 1, and students on March 8.

The Daily Poster

Listen to ‘The Daily’: What Will It Take to Reopen Schools?

The Biden administration is determined to restart in-person learning quickly. But there are some major hurdles.

As part of the agreement, the city committed to offering 2,000 coronavirus vaccine doses this week to staff members in classrooms that were set to reopen on Thursday and any other employees who live with people who were at high risk from the virus. It would then provide 1,500 doses a week to school staff in the weeks after that.

Teachers who have no students attending in-person classes could continue to teach remotely, and unvaccinated teachers could take unpaid leaves of absence for the next quarter instead of teaching in person. The agreement also set thresholds for what would lead the district, as well as individual schools or classrooms, to temporarily revert to distance learning.

“This plan is not what any of us deserve,” Jesse Sharkey, the president of the Chicago Teachers Union, said in a statement. “This agreement represents where we should have started months ago, not where this has landed.”

“We will protect ourselves by using the school safety committees created under this agreement to organize and see that C.P.S. meets safety standards and mitigation protocols,” Mr. Sharkey said. “Safety Committees will enforce this agreement, have access to information and the ability to change unsafe practices in their school.”

Ms. Sharkey criticized Mayor Lori Lightfoot over her handling of the situation and said that union delegates had passed a vote of no confidence in the mayor and school leadership on Monday night.

Ms. Lightfoot and the chief executive of the district, Janice K. Jackson, said in a statement, “This vote reaffirms the strength and fairness of our plan, which provides families and employees certainty about returning to schools and guarantees the best possible health and safety protocols.”

Ms. Lightfoot, a Democrat, and the union have been locked in one of the most intense disagreements over reopening anywhere in the country. The mayor has argued that the city’s most vulnerable students need the opportunity to return to school in person, while the union condemned the city’s reopening plan as unsafe.

Jill Biden and Doug Emhoff hosted a series of phone calls on Wednesday with nurses’ unions.Credit…Chandler West/White House Photo Office

Jill Biden, the first lady, and Doug Emhoff, the second gentleman, held a series of phone calls on Wednesday with nurses’ unions, including one representing several rural areas around the country that have struggled to keep up with the coronavirus surge, according to an administration official.

In one call, nurses in Huntington, W.Va., shared concerns about dozens of colleagues they said had contracted the virus at a local hospital. In Columbus, Ohio, nurses told stories of health workers’ having to share and reuse N95 masks and fearful that their ranks will be strained by infection.

Nurses are at particularly high risk to contract the virus, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nurses, along with doctors and other workers on the front lines, have also reported high rates of depression, trauma and burnout during the pandemic.

And shortages of protective gear remain a chronic issue.

On the calls, Dr. Biden and Mr. Emhoff “told them that this administration is fighting for them,” according to a spokesman for the first lady. But mostly they listened to the nurses and promised to share what they had learned with President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

In the calls, each of which lasted 10 to 20 minutes, the nurses said they were thankful for the administration’s work, but they reiterated the need for more protective gear and more vaccine doses. The conversations turned emotional at times, the spokesman said.

The calls came as Dr. Biden’s broader platform began to emerge during her husband’s first weeks in office.

The first lady has made a point of publicly praising emergency workers. After the Bidens moved into the White House, one of her first official acts was to film a video to thank them, along with members of the military, for ensuring that the inauguration went safely. (When she made the video, she was still wearing her inauguration dress.)

Every four years, we celebrate the beginning of a new administration. It’s the start of a bright new chapter. A time for us all to come together. I’m so grateful to all who worked to create an incredible day – especially in this uniquely difficult year. pic.twitter.com/P3L7OYoANR

— Jill Biden (@FLOTUS) January 21, 2021

Dr. Biden’s other efforts have included a videotaped message with her husband that aired at the Super Bowl last weekend.

“We wanted to thank all the frontline health care heroes, both at the game and watching across the country,” the first lady said. “You and your families carried us through this year with courage, compassion and kindness.”

DemeTech, in Miami, Fla., and other businesses that have jumped into making masks must overcome the ingrained purchasing habits of hospitals, medical supply distributors and state governments.Credit…Scott McIntyre for The New York Times

A year into the pandemic, the disposable, virus-filtering N95 mask remains a coveted piece of protective gear. Continuing shortages have forced doctors and nurses to reuse their N95s, and ordinary Americans have scoured the internet — mostly in vain — to get them.

But Luis Arguello Jr. has plenty of N95s for sale — 30 million of them, in fact, which his family-run business, DemeTech, manufactured in its factories in Miami. He simply can’t seem to find buyers.

After the pandemic exposed a huge need for protective equipment, and China closed its inventory to the world, DemeTech, a medical suture maker, dived into the mask business. The company invested tens of millions of dollars in new machinery and then navigated a nine-month federal approval process that allows them to market the masks.

But demand is so slack that Mr. Arguello is preparing to lay off some of the 1,300 workers he had hired to ramp up production.

“It’s insane that we can’t get these masks to the people who desperately need them,” he said.

In one of the more confounding disconnects between the laws of supply and demand, many of the nearly two dozen small American companies that recently jumped into the business of making N95s are facing the abyss — unable to crack the market, despite vows from both former President Donald Trump and President Biden to “buy American” and buoy domestic production of essential medical gear.

These businesses must overcome the ingrained purchasing habits of hospital systems, medical supply distributors and state governments. Many buyers are loath to try the new crop of American-made masks, which are often more expensive than those produced in China. Another obstacle comes from companies like Amazon, Facebook and Google, which banned the sale and advertising of N95 masks in an effort to thwart profiteers from diverting vital medical gear needed by frontline medical workers.

What’s required, public health experts and industry executives say, is an ambitious strategy that includes federal loans, subsidies and government purchasing directives to ensure the long-term viability of a domestic industry vital to the national interest.

“The government needs to call the outsourcing of America’s mask supply what it is: a national security problem,” said Mike Bowen, the owner of Prestige Ameritech, a Texas mask producer who has testified before Congress about the need to support domestic manufacturers.

Residents waited in their cars to get the Pfizer vaccine at Ratliff Stadium in Odessa, Texas, in January.Credit…Eli Hartman/Odessa American, via Associated Press

The White House, attempting to ramp up its mass coronavirus vaccination effort, is standing up five new inoculation centers, including three in Texas and two in New York that are specifically aimed at vaccinating people of color, officials said Wednesday.

President Biden has said repeatedly that racial equity will be at the core of his coronavirus response, but there are stark racial disparities in the vaccination campaign. In some cities, wealthy white people have been flocking to clinics that primarily serve Black people and Latinos, using up scarce supplies of vaccine.

And the administration’s effort to gather race and ethnicity data on vaccine recipients is faltering.

“This is a perfect example of our equity work coming to life, and this is a model for the potential we have to do this well around the country,” Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, the chair of Mr. Biden’s Covid-19 Equity Task Force, said Wednesday during a news conference with Governor Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, referring to the new centers.

“It’s a bold step that we should take as a sign of hope,” Mr. Cuomo said.

On his first day in office, the president directed the Federal Emergency Management Agency to begin establishing federally supported community vaccination centers, with the goal of having 100 centers in operation within a month. On Tuesday, the administration announced that it intends to start shipping one million doses of vaccine per week to federally supported community health centers in underserved neighborhoods.

On Sunday, Mr. Biden told Norah O’Donnell of CBS News that Roger Goodell, the commissioner of the National Football League, had extended an offer for the administration to use all 30 league stadiums to distribute Covid-19 vaccines.

People in underserved neighborhoods face a variety of obstacles in getting vaccinated, experts say, including registration phone lines and websites that can take hours to navigate, and a lack of transportation or time off from jobs to get to appointments. And people of color, particularly Black people, are more likely to be hesitant about getting vaccinated, in light of the history of unethical medical research in the United States.

But Mr. Cuomo said he rejected the term “vaccine hesitancy,” adding, “Let’s call it what it is. It’s a lack of trust — for understandable reasons.”

The New York centers will be located at York College in Queens and Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, Mr. Cuomo said, and will be capable of vaccinating 3,000 people a day. The federal government will provide a special dosage allocation for the sites, and they will be staffed jointly by the federal government, military personnel and members of the National Guard.

Last week, the administration announced that it was building two mass vaccination clinics in California, one in Los Angeles and the other in Oakland. The Texas clinics will be located in Arlington, Dallas and Houston, White House officials said.

Dr. Evan Saulino, a family physician in Portland, Ore., called for multiple strategies to distribute vaccines.Credit…Tojo Andrianarivo for The New York Times

Primary care doctors have grown increasingly frustrated with their exclusion from the nation’s vaccine rollout, unable to find reliable supplies for even their eldest patients and lacking basic information about distribution planning for the shots.

“The centerpiece should be primary care,” said Dr. Wayne Altman, the chairman of family medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine, who also sees patients in Arlington, Mass. State officials there are using Fenway Park and Gillette Stadium as mass vaccination sites, rather than ensuring practices like his can inoculate patients who are at high risk from the coronavirus.

“If you distribute the vaccine to all these practices and let them go at their pace, it would accelerate this rollout dramatically,” Dr. Altman said.

There are roughly 500,000 primary care doctors in the United States, who have traditionally administered nearly half of all adult vaccinations, inoculating their patients against pneumonia, flu and other infectious diseases. While most physician offices can’t handle storage for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine because of its need for special freezers, doctors say they could easily administer the Moderna vaccine with adequate storage measures as well as some of the others likely to become available soon.

“We’re ready,” said Dr. Elizabeth Kozak, an internist in Grand Rapids, Mich. She was approved in early January to deliver the Moderna vaccine. “We haven’t seen a thing, but we’re ready.”

While some physicians say they have received small amounts of the vaccine, many say they are still waiting for any indication about when they might get doses and how they fit into the long-range timetable for broader distribution.

Doctors say they are critical to reaching people who would not otherwise get a vaccine because they are unable or unwilling to go to mass vaccination sites or even their local pharmacy.

“We can’t have one or two strategies for vaccine distribution,” said Dr. Evan Saulino, a family physician in Portland, Ore., who has talked to patients, including those who are Black or Spanish-speaking, who are not sure they want the vaccine. Some of his patients are distrustful of the government and may not want to get a shot from someone in uniform. One person he spoke with would not go to the drugstore but might consider being inoculated at his clinic.

Dr. Kozak, the internist from Michigan, agreed, saying doctors like her could focus their attention on people who can’t easily navigate the current set up. “We might not be able to do the numbers but we are able to do the more fragile and vulnerable populations,” she said.

Global Roundup

Travelers at Heathrow airport in London last month.Credit…Hollie Adams/Getty Images

Vacationing abroad may not be possible for residents of Britain until all adults in the country have been vaccinated, a government official said on Wednesday, raising questions about how the tourism industry might cope with such restrictions and dashing hopes of many who hoped that a relatively successful vaccine rollout in Britain could let them enjoy trips abroad this summer.

The transportation secretary, Grant Shapps, said on British television that international travel would depend on “everybody having their vaccinations” in Britain, and that restrictions could remain as long as other countries have not made significant progress in vaccinations.

“We’ll need to wait for other countries to catch up as well, in order to do that wider international unlock,” Mr. Shapps said.

As of Wednesday, Britain had administered more than 12.5 million vaccine doses, equivalent to about 18 percent of its population, one of the highest rates in the world. At the current pace, the country is on track to give the first shot of a two-dose coronavirus vaccine to its entire population by the end of June.

The authorities have reported a sharp drop in the number of infections in recent days, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson is expected to announce a potential loosening of restrictions this month.

But on Wednesday, Mr. Shapps urged caution about travel plans for this year and advised people not to book vacations either within Britain or abroad. “I’m afraid I can’t give you a definitive ‘will there or will there not be’ the opportunity to take holidays,” he told Sky News.

Mr. Shapps’s warning came a day after the authorities announced new travel restrictions, including prison sentences of up to 10 years for anyone traveling to Britain who lies about where they’ve been.

Mr. Shapps called the measures, including the jail sentence, “appropriate.” Under other restrictions that are set to come into force on Monday, British residents arriving in England from more than 30 countries where coronavirus variants are believed to be widespread, will have to pay up to 1,750 pounds ($2,410) for a 10-day quarantine in government-managed hotel rooms.

Britain has reported 114,000 deaths from the coronavirus, the world’s fifth-highest known death toll.

In other developments around the world.

  • Mexico authorized China’s Sinovac Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use, said Hugo Lopez-Gatell, the deputy health minister, Reuters reported. Earlier this month, the country also authorized the Russian coronavirus vaccine, Sputnik V, for use.

  • Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga of Japan said on Wednesday that the country would begin its vaccination program next week, starting with medical workers.

  • The leaders of the World Health Organization and the United Nations agency for children, Unicef, warned in a joint statement that the vast chasm of inequality in the global vaccine rollout will “cost lives and livelihoods, give the virus further opportunity to mutate and evade vaccines and will undermine a global economic recovery.” Of the 128 million vaccine doses administered globally, more than three quarters were in just 10 countries, while nearly 130 other countries are yet to administer a single dose, the statement said.

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

Many were clever fakes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Berlin and the rest of Germany have been in lockdown since before Christmas with nonessential stores and schools closed.Credit…Lena Mucha for The New York Times

Germany will remain in lockdown for at least another month because of the danger of more infectious variants of the virus, Chancellor Angela Merkel and governors decided on Wednesday.

“We know that this mutation is a reality now and we know it will increase,” said Ms. Merkel after meeting with governors from the 16 German states. “The question is how quickly will it increase.”

Although a sharp drop in new daily infections shows that a nearly two-month lockdown is having an effect, the authorities worry about the spread of more infectious variants. Nearly 6 percent of the positive coronavirus cases in Germany were found to be caused by more contagious variants, with the variant that has been found in Britain dominating.

The lockdown extension is designed to prevent the contagious variants from gaining steam.

Most shops, museums and services will remain closed until the number of new infections reaches an average of 35 cases per 100,000 people over a week, a rate that should be reached by March if the current trend holds. Over the past week, there has been an average of 68 cases per 100,000 people. The reopening of schools and day care centers, which the government has prioritized, will be overseen by the states and will most likely happen sooner. Hair salons are allowed to open on March 1 under strict safety rules. The opening of other businesses, such as gyms, bars and restaurants, will be discussed at a future meeting, Ms. Merkel said.

Over the past week, there has been an average of 8,887 new cases per day in Germany, far fewer than the nearly 25,000 a day around Christmas, according to a New York Times database.

The lockdown rules are in effect until March 7. Ms. Merkel and state governors will meet again on March 3, to decide on future measures.

Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, addressing lawmakers in Brussels on Wednesday.Credit…Johanna Geron/Reuters

A top European Union official said on Wednesday that the bloc was “not where we want to be” in handling the pandemic, after missteps in lining up vaccine supplies left it lagging behind other countries.

“We were late to authorize,” the official, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, told lawmakers in Brussels.

“We were too optimistic when it came to massive production, and perhaps too confident that what we ordered would actually be delivered on time,” she said. “We need to ask ourselves why that is the case.”

She stood by the view that buying vaccine doses as a bloc had been the right decision, however.

“I cannot even imagine what would have happened if just a handful of big players — big member states — had rushed to it and everybody else would have been left empty-handed,” she said, adding that it would have been “the end of our community.”

Her comments came as criticism has mounted over Ms. Von der Leyen’s handling of negotiations with pharmaceutical companies to secure vaccines for the 450 million people living in the bloc’s 27 member states.

Whereas Britain and United States have surged ahead in rolling out vaccines, the European Union has been more cautious and price-conscious, leading to a crisis after vaccine producers said there were delays in filing orders.

Its tensions with Britain, which left the bloc’s authority at the end of last year, were magnified after the Commission reversed an attempt last month to restrict vaccine exports into the country via Northern Ireland.

“The bottom line is that mistakes were made in the process leading up to the decision,” Ms. von der Leyen said on Wednesday. “And I deeply regret that. But in the end, we got it right.”

Over 17 million people, or about 4 percent of people living in the bloc, have received at least one vaccine dose, she said.