Tag: global

Telesat constructing $5 billion Lightspeed international satellite tv for pc web

Post author By
Post date February 9, 2021

A representation of the broadband constellation in Telesat’s near-earth orbit

Telesat

Canadian telecommunications satellite operator Telesat announced Tuesday that Franco-Italian space hardware maker Thales Alenia Space will build its next-generation broadband satellite network called Lightspeed.

Lightspeed will focus on delivering high-speed fiber-like Internet to Telesat’s customers around the world. The network, known in the industry as the Constellation, will consist of 298 next-generation satellites orbiting the Earth at an altitude of approximately 1,000 kilometers, or just over twice the altitude of the International Space Station.

“We’re not a start-up. This is not a new business for us. It’s the same old customers and the same old markets, but with an architecture that is better and more disruptive,” said Dan Goldberg, CEO of Telesat, to CNBC.

The company is primarily focused on business-to-business customers and expects the Lightspeed constellation to cost $ 5 billion, including the cost of the satellites, the purchase of rocket launches, the construction of the ground infrastructure and development of software platforms for the operation of the network. The cost of the satellites makes up most of that figure, as Goldberg said the contract with Thales Alenia Space is worth about $ 3 billion.

In particular, Goldberg made it clear that Telesat’s Lightspeed constellation is not designed to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink or Amazon’s Kuiper direct-to-consumer networks.

“This is not a broadband game for consumers,” Goldberg said. “We’re one of the largest satellite operators in the world today, and we’ve been for 50 years. But we’ve always been a service provider to businesses … we know this customer base, we know this customer base. We worked with these customers when we imagined this opportunity and designed this constellation. “

The headquarters of the company.

Telesat

Goldberg stated that Telesat Lightspeed’s customers include cruise lines, airlines and rural communities. The network’s anchor customer, according to Goldberg, will be the Canadian government, which has committed to using Lightspeed to “create a capacity pool that is being sold at very attractive prices to local authorities and truly rural broadband providers.”

“It’s orders of magnitude better than what exists today and even what a lot of people are planning,” said Goldberg. “This is about delivering a low cost per bit to the market.”

Telesat plans to begin launching the first speed of light in 2023. The first satellites will be launched by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin on his New Glenn rocket. Goldberg said he has been “following” the development of New Glenn as the rocket is scheduled to launch next year, but is confident that “it will be ready” when Telesat launches in two years. Telesat will also “announce other launch providers in the coming months”.

Telesat has selected our powerful New Glenn rocket to launch Telesat’s innovative LEO satellite constellation into space.

Telesat

One of the key technologies that Goldberg says Lightspeed satellites will use is intersatellite links, which allow satellites to establish data links with one another rather than individually connecting to points on the ground.

“We are basically running a large space-based mesh IP network, which means that all of our satellites are always online and generating revenue and can be connected to a user,” said Goldberg.

Inter-satellite links are key to reducing the number of points on the ground that the satellite constellation must connect to, as well as increasing the overall speed of the global network. Goldberg said Telesat plans to deploy around 30 ground stations around the world “because we don’t need that many” and it will help “minimize capital investments and on-site expenses”.

Telesat also worked to reduce the reflectivity of its Lightspeed satellites after SpaceX’s Starlink was hit by a public outcry from astronomers that hundreds of satellites were appearing as bright streaks on images captured by telescopes. Goldberg noted that the Lightspeed satellites will be about twice the height of the Starlink satellites, while also being a fraction of the number in the overall constellation. Telesat’s Lightspeed satellites are also designed to last 10 to 12 years each, so the company doesn’t have to replace them too often.

“We have been using space for 50 years – we are a responsible industrial user of space. We were very careful to ensure that it did not have such negative externalities,” said Goldberg.

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Tags Billion, building, global, Internet, Lightspeed, satellite, Telesat

Health

Covid instances are falling, however unequal vaccine entry threatens world restoration, WHO says

Post author By
Post date February 7, 2021

Covid cases are falling, but unequal vaccine access threatens global recovery, WHO says

Worldwide Covid-19 cases are declining, but the uneven distribution of life-saving vaccines could prolong the global economic recovery and leave developing countries even further behind, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday.

In the week ending January 31, 3.7 million new global coronavirus cases were reported, a 13% decrease from the previous week. This emerges from the latest WHO situation report. Covid-19 deaths, which are a few weeks behind new cases, saw a slight 1% decrease over the week.

That’s good news when you consider that 5.5 million cases are injured each week worldwide, but more than 3 million new infections are “still a lot of people,” said Dr. Mike Ryan, Executive Director of the WHO Health Emergencies Program.

“The rain has subsided, but the sun isn’t shining yet,” Ryan said during a live Q&A session at the agency’s Geneva headquarters.

Health experts have warned that new, highly infectious variants of the virus, first identified in the UK, South Africa and Brazil, could already add fuel to furious outbreaks in countries around the world.

A faster transmitting virus could lead to more infections and would ultimately lead to more hospitalizations and deaths if it spreads uncontrollably. But even in areas where the variants have emerged, cases are declining, said Maria Van Kerkhove, director of the WHO’s Department of Emerging Diseases and Zoonosis.

In Great Britain, which identified variant B.1.1.7 in December, cases have decreased by 31% compared to the previous week, according to a WHO report. In South Africa, where a similar variant called B.1.351 was also discovered late last year, cases fell by 44%, the report said.

“This is important because people are scared when they hear mutations, mutants and variants,” said Kerkhove. “We can’t let go of our guard. We can’t let go.”

The emergence of new coronavirus variants did not surprise scientists, as it is normal for viruses to mutate as they spread. Experts fear that some of the strains, particularly variant B.1.351 found in South Africa, could pose a risk to the effectiveness of the vaccines and therapeutics currently available.

Drug makers have claimed that their shots should continue to work against the new variants, but health experts have stressed the importance of containing the spread of the virus to prevent further mutations while countries provide primary care with Covid-19 vaccines .

However, not all countries have had equal access to life-saving medicines.

Of the countries that have started dosed doses to their residents, most were in higher-income countries that claimed early delivery of vials through their own delivery agreements, warned WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

That’s a problem because the vaccines will eventually allow countries to reopen their economies without the risk of an increase in hospital stays and deaths from the virus, Ryan said Wednesday. WHO has voted for countries to sign up for COVAX, a global alliance they jointly lead and aim to deliver coronavirus vaccines to the world’s poorest countries.

The program hopes to deliver 2.3 billion cans by the end of this year. Earlier Wednesday, COVAX officials announced that they had so far provided at least 330 million doses to poorer countries, which are expected to be delivered in late February or early March. These early doses would be used to vaccinate the most vulnerable, such as healthcare workers.

Ryan said this would allow countries to reopen their economies without worrying about putting more strain on their hospital systems. However, this will only be possible if “we can deliver the minimum number of vaccine doses to all countries”.

“If we want our societies to be open, if we want to be on the path to normalizing and normalizing our way of life, we have to be fair in how we distribute the funds to live normally,” said Ryan. “Right now, the uneven distribution of vaccines means that not all societies have an equal chance to get back online, and that’s just not fair.”

– CNBC’s Holly Ellyatt and Reuters contributed to this report.

Tags Access, cases, Covid, falling, global, recovery, threatens, unequal, Vaccine

Health

EU’s vaccine export controls might harm world vaccine provide

Post author By
Post date February 2, 2021

EU's vaccine export controls could damage global vaccine supply

The decision of the EU to carry out export controls for coronavirus vaccines is “extremely problematic” according to experts. They warned that if other countries followed suit, this could lead to a collapse in global supply.

“There is a real risk that the EU making this decision could set off a cascade in other countries to introduce export bans (vaccines),” said Suerie Moon, co-director of the Graduate Institute of the Global Health Center in Geneva, on Monday opposite CNBC.

“There is a real risk that the cross-border movement of vaccines will collapse, just as it did a year ago when countries including the EU blocked exports of food and even masks and other essential medical supplies. This is catastrophic internationally.”

In the worst case, she said, “The greatest risk is that this will be an example that many other countries will follow and that will lead to a collapse in the global vaccine supply.”

Export controls

The people lining up outside the Belgrade Fair to receive the China-made Sinopharm Covid-19 vaccine became a vaccination center on January 25, 2021.

ANDREJ ISAKOVIC | AFP | Getty Images

While insisting that the measure is not an “export ban”, Member States can restrict exports of block-made coronavirus vaccines if they believe the vaccine maker has failed to respect existing contracts with the EU.

It contains exceptions for a large number of countries outside the EU but within Europe, such as Albania and Serbia, a number of countries in North Africa and one of the 92 low and middle income countries that fall under the COVAX initiative.

Moon said: “The EU has certainly put in some pressure valves to allow exports to certain countries in the world, but there are still many countries that rely heavily on EU production and are seriously injured.” . “

The bloc made the announcement amid heightened concerns and ugly public disputes with vaccine manufacturers over insufficient supplies to the bloc.

Vaccine maker Pfizer announced that it would temporarily cut production of its shot, developed with German biotechnology BioNTech, as it modernized manufacturing facilities in Belgium, while AstraZeneca dealt a blow to the EU by announcing it would deliver far fewer vaccine doses than that originally expected in the first quarter, citing problems in the Dutch and Belgian plants.

The delays put pressure on the European Commission, which has already been criticized for its lack of speed in ordering and approving vaccines and introducing vaccines.

The move to introduce export controls caused a stir, especially in the UK after a week of simmering tensions over shipments of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is also manufactured at two UK sites.

The EU had indicated that supplies were to be diverted from the UK plants to Europe, which sparked a dispute with the drug manufacturer and the UK government. It escalated to the point where the EU said it would override part of the Brexit deal to prevent EU-made vaccines from potentially entering the UK via Northern Ireland.

This decision was reversed shortly after a public outcry, including from the World Health Organization, warning of the dangers of “vaccine nationalism”. The EU assured the UK that it would receive vaccines from the block.

Pandora’s box

Simon J. Evenett, professor of international trade and economic development at the University of St. Gallen, said on Monday that the EU’s move was tantamount to opening the “Pandora’s box” and could have unforeseen consequences.

He said the restrictions could cause concern to foreign governments for a number of reasons, including the fact that the “standard for authorizing the export of Covid-19 vaccines is unclear” and that these decisions “can be arbitrary”. He also pointed out that it shouldn’t expire on March 31, 2021 as promised.

Evenett warned that the move “could spread down the supply chain for Covid-19 vaccines to include key ingredients needed to manufacture and distribute the vaccines,” and even to export restrictions on other essential goods such as food, energy and Energy could lead to other drugs.

CSL staff will be working in the laboratory on November 08, 2020 in Melbourne, Australia, where they will begin manufacturing the AstraZeneca-Oxford University’s COVID-19 vaccine.

Darrian Traynor | Getty Images

Such scenarios “would exacerbate the damage being done to both the EU public health systems and its multinationals,” he said.

“A disruption in vaccine supply chains will slow vaccine rates in the EU and elsewhere, leading to unnecessary deaths and an even slower economic recovery. If the European Commission realizes that it is going to open Pandora’s box, it may find an elegant way to pull it back of the export control regime for the Covid-19 regime, “he said.

“This would allow the EU to regain its reputation as a defender of multilateralism and the rules-based global trading system. This morning that reputation is in tatters.”

Tags controls, damage, EUs, export, global, supply, Vaccine

World News

World Covid-19 Reside Updates: Information on Vaccine, Variants, Stimulus and Circumstances

Post author By
Post date February 1, 2021

Emma Fields receiving a Covid-19 vaccination in Mound Bayou, Miss., on Saturday.

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Rory Doyle for The New York Times

Vaccinations in the United States are slowly picking up speed as the Biden administration pushes to accelerate inoculations and blunt the spread of more contagious virus variants.

The United States has administered about 30 million doses, and, as of Sunday, is averaging more than 1.3 million doses administered over the past seven days, compared with an average of less than one million per day two weeks earlier, according to a New York Times vaccine tracker.

President Biden, under pressure to speed up coronavirus vaccinations, has recently suggested the nation could soon reach an average of 1.5 million shots a day.

But just as there are signs of progress, another problem has taken root: the spread of the variants, which scientists warn must be contained before they become dominant. Several hundred cases of the more contagious variant discovered in Britain, which experts have said could be the dominant form in the United States by March, have already been confirmed.

The country has also recorded its first two cases of the variant spreading rapidly in South Africa, which has proved to reduce the effectiveness of vaccines.

“If we didn’t have these variants looming,” we would be in a good place, said Dr. Peter Hotez, a vaccine scientist and pediatrician at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. If those variants take over by spring, “as many of us are predicting,” he said, “it changes everything. Now, we really have to vaccinate the American population by late spring, early summer.”

Two key challenges in the weeks ahead are “increasing the supply of vaccines” and “speeding up the time it takes to administer them,” Andy Slavitt, a White House adviser, said in a news briefing on Friday. Many experts have pushed for bringing other vaccine options out and releasing the first doses more widely.

The most effective state programs, said Dr. Ashish Jha, the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, are “very simple, age-based, not a lot of complex rules. They focus on getting the vaccines out.”

Here is a snapshot of how five of the best-performing states are doing:

West Virginia has given at least one dose to 10.7 percent of its population, second only to Alaska, and leads the nation in the percentage of its population that has received two doses (3.7 percent). Early on, the state got a head start because it opted out of a federal program to vaccinate people in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities. While other states chose the federal plan, which teamed with Walgreens and CVS, officials decided the idea made little sense in West Virginia, where many communities are miles from the nearest chain store, and about half of pharmacies are independently owned. Instead the state created a network of pharmacies, pairing them with about 200 long-term care facilities.
According to health officials in Alaska, there are several reasons behind the state’s relatively high vaccination rate, The Anchorage Daily News has reported. Those factors include: the state’s having received a high number of doses through the Indian Health Service; the decision to receive doses monthly, versus weekly, as most states do; and declining virus caseloads, which has allowed health care workers to focus on inoculations. The state has vaccinated 13 percent of its population, according to a Times database.
North Dakota has used 91 percent of the vaccines distributed to the state, according to the Times vaccine tracker. It is the only state above 90 percent; more populous states like California (58 percent) and New York (64 percent) have used less, proportionally. North Dakota was among the first states to lower the minimum age eligible for vaccination, from 75 to 65.
In a recent interview with the American Medical Association, health officials in New Mexico attributed part of the state’s success to its “data-oriented and science-oriented” governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, and to an app that allowed easy registration and close coordination among hospitals and providers. The state has given 9.8 percent of residents at least one shot, and has used 83 percent of its doses.
Connecticut got mass vaccination sites up and running early, and uses an inventory system that allocates unused doses to places that need them. But older residents have complained about long waits.

United States ›	United StatesOn Jan. 31	14-day change
New cases	111,478	–32%
New deaths	1,875	–5%

World ›	WorldOn Jan. 31	14-day change
New cases	389,735	–21%
New deaths	8,093	+2%

U.S. vaccinations ›

Credit…Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times

PARIS — Public frustration with lockdowns is palpable across Europe, with pensioners protesting this weekend in Vienna, restaurateurs taking to the streets in Budapest and demonstrators clashing with the police in Belgium, prompting dozens of arrests. The Dutch authorities fined more than 10,000 people last week for violating the national curfew.

While none of the protests resulted in the kind of violence seen in the Netherlands in recent weeks, they reflect a growing impatience as political leaders extend restrictions to guard against a resurgence of the virus fueled by new variants.

In France, President Emmanuel Macron has resisted a full lockdown, making a calculated gamble that his government can tighten the rules just enough to avoid a new wave of infections.

Prime Minister Jean Castex appeared in front of television cameras for an unexpected statement on Friday night, announcing a handful of new curbs, including strict border closures.

“Even if the path is very narrow, we must take it,” Mr. Macron was reported to have said at a cabinet meeting last week, according to the Journal du Dimanche, pushing back against the advice of several senior aides. According to the newspaper, he added: “When you are French, you have all you need to get by, as long as you dare to try.”

Polls in France have shown weariness with restrictions, and grumbling about the rules is growing in some quarters.

France is still under a 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew, and places like cafes, museums and theaters are closed. Schools and shops are open.

After a widely publicized breach of the rules at a restaurant in the southern city of Nice last week and a call to “civil disobedience” by some restaurant owners, the French economy minister, Bruno Le Maire, warned on Monday that any establishments that flouted the rules would be cut off from coronavirus aid.

In the French Alps, protesters blocked roads on Monday to demand that ski lifts reopen.

Critics say that Mr. Macron’s approach may simply be delaying the inevitable and that he could be forced to change course if cases started to surge.

“It’s a risk, I’m hoping it was a calculated risk,” Karine Lacombe, an infectious-disease specialist, told the French news channel LCI on Sunday.

Mr. Macron’s plan is rooted partly in the relative stability of the pandemic in France. The number of new daily cases has inched up only slowly and while hospitalizations remain high, there has been no sudden surge. More contagious variants of the virus have been registered in the country, but the authorities say they believe that their spread, so far, is under control.

“Everything suggests that a new wave could occur because of the variant,” Olivier Véran, the French health minister, told the Journal du Dimanche. “But perhaps we can avoid it thanks to the measures that we decided early and that the French people are respecting.”

Aurelien Breeden reported from Paris, and Marc Santora from London.

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N.Y.C. Snowstorm Delays Vaccinations

On Monday, Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York postponed coronavirus vaccinations to prevent older residents from traveling to appointments in blizzard-like conditions.

The storm is disrupting our vaccination effort, and we need to keep people safe. We don’t want folks, especially seniors, going out in unsafe conditions to get vaccinated. We know we can reschedule appointments very quickly because, of course, we have supply. We’re going to use the supply we have. Our problem is lack of supply. So we can take the supply we have and distribute it very quickly in the days to come, and make sure everyone gets the appointments. But it’s not safe out there today. So vaccinations are canceled today. They’re also going to be canceled tomorrow. Based on what we are seeing right now, we believe that tomorrow, getting around the city will be difficult, it’ll be icy, it’ll be treacherous. We do not want seniors, especially, out in those conditions. So we’re going to have vaccinations off for today and tomorrow, come back strong on Wednesday. We’ll be able to catch up quickly because, again, we have a vast amount of capacity. We don’t have enough vaccine. So we’ll simply use the days later in the week. Crank up those schedules, get people rescheduled into those days.

On Monday, Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York postponed coronavirus vaccinations to prevent older residents from traveling to appointments in blizzard-like conditions.CreditCredit…James Estrin/The New York Times

Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York said on Monday that coronavirus vaccinations scheduled for Tuesday would be postponed because of the winter storm, the second day in a row that they have been delayed.

Heavy snow was also complicating vaccination efforts in Washington, Philadelphia, New Jersey and elsewhere.

At a news conference on Monday, Mr. de Blasio of New York City said he did not want older residents traveling to vaccine appointments amid blizzard-like conditions with gusty winds.

“Based on what we are seeing right now, we believe tomorrow, getting around the city will be difficult,” Mr. de Blasio said. “It will be icy, it will be treacherous.”

He said he believed the city could quickly make up the appointments later in the week.

“We have a vast amount of capacity; we don’t have enough vaccine,” he said. “We’ll simply use the days later in the week, crank up those schedules, get people rescheduled into those days.”

The storm will temporarily derail a vaccine rollout that has been plagued by inadequate supply, buggy sign-up systems and confusion over the New York State’s strict eligibility guidelines. The vaccine is available to residents 65 and older as well as a wide range of workers designated “essential.”

About 800,000 doses have been administered so far in the city, Mr. de Blasio said.

Vaccine appointments originally scheduled for Monday at several sites in the region — the Javits Center in Manhattan, the Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens, a drive-through site at Jones Beach in Long Island, SUNY Stony Brook and the Westchester County Center — would be rescheduled for this week, according to a statement from Melissa DeRosa, a top aide to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. “We ask all New Yorkers to monitor the weather and stay off the roads tomorrow so our crews and first responders can safely do their jobs,” she said.

Mr. Cuomo said at a news conference on Monday that New York’s seven-day average positive test rate was 4.8 percent, the 24th straight day it had declined.

Mr. Cuomo added that the state had administered about 1.96 million doses of the vaccine.

In the Philadelphia area, city-run testing and vaccine sites were closed on Monday. Connecticut, New Jersey, Rhode Island and parts of the Washington, D.C., area were following suit. Some areas away from the center of the storm were expected to remain open for vaccinations, including parts of Massachusetts and upstate New York.

Credit…Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times

The past few weeks in the United States have been the deadliest of the coronavirus pandemic, and residents in a majority of counties remain at an extremely high risk of contracting the virus. At the same time, transmission seems to be slowing throughout the country, with the number of new average cases 40 percent lower on Jan. 29 than at the U.S. peak three weeks earlier.

Other indicators reinforce the current downward trend in cases. Hospitalizations are down significantly from record highs in early January. The number of tests per day has also decreased, which can obscure the virus’s true toll, but the positivity rate of those tests has also gone down, indicating that the slowed spread is real.

Still, the average reported daily death rate over the past seven days remains above 3,000, compared with less than 1,000 per day in September and October.

Experts say the decrease could mark a turning point in the outbreak after months of ever-higher caseloads. But new, more contagious variants threaten to upend progress and could even send case rates to a new high if they take hold, especially if the national vaccine rollout faces hurdles.

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Biden to Discuss Pandemic Relief Package With Republicans

President Biden will meet with 10 Republican senators on Monday who have proposed a much smaller Covid-19 relief package. Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, told reporters that the Mr. Biden’s biggest concern is releasing a package that is too small.

The president has been clear since long before he came into office that he’s open to engaging with both Democrats and Republicans in Congress about their ideas. And this is an example of doing exactly that. So as we said in our statement last night, it’s an exchange of ideas, an opportunity to do that. This group obviously sent a letter with some outline, some top lines of their concerns and their priorities, and he’s happy to have a conversation with them. What this meeting is not, is a forum for the president to make or accept an offer. His view — it remains — what was stated in the statement last night, but also what he said on Friday, which is that the risk is not that it is too big, this package, the risk is that it is too small. And that remains his view, and it’s one he’ll certainly express today. But it’s important to him that he hears this group out on their concerns, on their ideas. He’s always open to making this package stronger. And he also, as was noted in our statement last night, remains in close touch with Speaker Pelosi with Leader Schumer, and he will continue that engagement throughout the day, and in the days ahead.

President Biden will meet with 10 Republican senators on Monday who have proposed a much smaller Covid-19 relief package. Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, told reporters that the Mr. Biden’s biggest concern is releasing a package that is too small.CreditCredit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

White House officials offered a pointed, if polite, warning to 10 Senate Republicans planning to pitch a scaled-back coronavirus relief package to President Biden at the White House on Monday evening: Think bigger.

Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, played down expectations of the meeting, a critical first test of Mr. Biden’s dueling commitments to bipartisanship and speeding pandemic aid, saying no deal would be done without further negotiations — a statement aimed at reassuring Democrats leery of a fast, weak deal.

“What this meeting is not is a forum for the president to make or accept an offer,” Ms. Psaki told reporters on Monday afternoon, repeating the president’s determination to push through a $1.9 trillion stimulus bill.

“The risk is not that it is too big, this package,” Ms. Psaki added. “The risk is that it is too small. That remains his view.”

A coalition of center-right Republican senators, led by Susan Collins of Maine, on Monday outlined a more limited $618 billion stimulus plan, which they are billing as a way for Mr. Biden to pass a pandemic aid bill with bipartisan support and make good on his inauguration pledge to unite the country.

With 10 Republicans on board, joining the Senate’s 50 Democrats, a bipartisan bill could overcome the chamber’s 60-vote filibuster rule. But Democrats have shown little enthusiasm for a measure that amounts to less than one third of what the president says is needed.

Still, after receiving a letter from the senators on Sunday requesting a meeting, Mr. Biden called Ms. Collins and invited her and the other signers to the White House. He also spoke with Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader.

The Republican proposal is likely to be met with resistance from congressional Democrats, who are preparing this week to begin laying the groundwork for passing Mr. Biden’s plan through a process known as budget reconciliation, which would allow it to bypass a filibuster and pass solely with Democratic votes.

The proposal would include $160 billion for vaccine distribution and development, coronavirus testing and the production of personal protective equipment; $20 billion toward helping schools reopen; more relief for small businesses; and additional aid to individuals. The package would also extend enhanced unemployment benefits of $300 a week — currently slated to lapse in March — until June 30.

“We recognize your calls for unity and want to work in good faith with your administration,” wrote the Republican group, which includes Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Mitt Romney of Utah.

The measure omits a federal minimum wage increase that Mr. Biden included in his plan. It would also whittle down his proposal to send $1,400 checks to many Americans, and limit it to lower-income earners.

The proposal calls for checks of up to $1,000 for individuals making $50,000 a year or less and families with a combined income of up to $100,000, with individuals earning less than $40,000 — and families earning less than $80,000 — receiving the full amount.

Previous rounds of direct payments were targeted to Americans earning less than $99,000 annually, with those earning less than $75,000 receiving the full amount.

Congress approved more than $4 trillion through a series of bills last year to address the coronavirus crisis and its economic fallout. Most recently, in December, lawmakers passed a $900 billion stimulus plan that included $600 direct checks to many Americans.

Mr. Biden received an important boost on Monday ahead of his meeting with the senators: Gov. Jim Justice of West Virginia, a close ally of former President Trump, said he supported a bigger relief package than the one that the center-right Republicans are proposing.

“If we actually throw away some money right now, so what?” said Mr. Justice, a former Democrat who switched parties to support Mr. Trump in 2017, told CNN.

Credit…Kendrick Brinson for The New York Times

The American economy will return to its pre-pandemic size by the middle of this year, even if Congress does not approve any more federal aid for the recovery, but it will be years before everyone thrown off the job by the pandemic is able to return to work, the Congressional Budget Office projected on Monday.

The new projections from the office, which is nonpartisan and issues regular budgetary and economic forecasts, are an improvement from the office’s forecasts last summer. Officials told reporters on Monday that the brightening outlook was a result of large sectors of the economy adapting better and more rapidly to the pandemic than originally expected.

They also reflect increased growth from a $900 billion economic aid package that Congress passed in December, which included $600 direct checks to individuals and more generous unemployment benefits.

The budget office now expects the unemployment rate to fall to 5.3 percent at the end of the year, down from an 8.4 percent projection last July. The economy is expected to grow 3.7 percent for the year, after recording a much smaller contraction in 2020 than the budget office initially expected.

The rosier projections are likely to inject even more debate into the discussions over whether to pass President Biden’s $1.9 trillion economic rescue package. It could embolden Republicans who have pushed Mr. Biden to scale back the plan significantly, saying the economy does not need so much additional federal support and that another big package could “overheat” the economy.

But the report shows little risk of that happening. The economy is projected to remain below potential levels until 2025 on its current path. And big economic risks remain. The number of employed Americans will not return to its pre-pandemic levels until 2024, officials predicted, reflecting the prolonged difficulties of shaking off the virus and returning to full levels of economic activity.

The Federal Reserve chair, Jerome H. Powell, warned last week that the economy was “a long way from a full recovery” with millions still out of work and many small businesses facing pressure.

Budget officials said the rebound in growth and employment could be significantly accelerated if public health authorities were able to more rapidly deploy coronavirus vaccines across the population.

As it stands, the budget office sees little evidence of growth running hot enough in the years to come to spur a rapid increase in inflation. It forecast inflation levels below the Federal Reserve’s target of 2 percent for years to come, even with the Fed holding interest rates near zero.

Other independent forecasts, including one from the Brookings Institution last week, have projected that another dose of economic aid — like the $1.9 trillion package Mr. Biden has proposed — would help the economy grow more rapidly, topping its pre-pandemic path by year’s end.

Credit…Verónica G. Cárdenas for The New York Times

During January, the pandemic’s deadliest month, Laredo, Texas, held the bleak distinction of having one of the most severe outbreaks of any city in the United States. The death toll in the overwhelmingly Latino city of 277,000 now stands at more than 630 — including at least 126 in January alone.

When the virus made its way to the borderlands almost a year ago, Dr. Ricardo Cigarroa could have just hunkered down. He could have focused on his profitable cardiology practice, which has 80 employees. He could have kept quiet.

Instead, Dr. Cigarroa has become a top crusader and the de facto authority on the pandemic along this stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border.

On regional television stations, he calmly explains, in both English and Spanish, how the virus is evolving. Known for making Covid-19 house calls around Laredo in his old Toyota Tacoma pickup, he is interviewed so often that Texas Monthly called him “The Dr. Fauci of South Texas,” comparing him to Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert — though Dr. Cigarroa holds no official government portfolio.

Lately, Dr. Cigarroa has been losing his patience.

Looking exhausted in a video posted on Facebook, he blasted political leaders for allowing the virus to rampage through this part of South Texas. Dr. Cigarroa singled out Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, for refusing to allow Laredo to impose stricter mitigation measures.

“To the governor: It’s OK to swallow your pride,” Dr. Cigarroa said, stunning some viewers with a warning that the virus could kill 1 in 250 Laredoans by midyear. “It’s OK to say that you’re not going to do it, and then do it to save lives.”

Pleading with the people of Laredo to consider civil disobedience in the form of staying home from work if politicians fail to act, he added, “The only thing that will save lives at this point will be staying home and shutting down the city.”

Credit…Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

Even as more districts reopen their buildings and President Biden joins the chorus of those saying schools can safely resume in-person education, hundreds of thousands of Black parents say they are not ready to send their children back. That reflects both the disproportionately harsh consequences the coronavirus has visited on nonwhite Americans and the profound lack of trust that Black families have in school districts, a longstanding phenomenon exacerbated by the pandemic.

It also points to a major dilemma: School closures have hit the mental health and academic achievement of nonwhite children the hardest, but many of the families that education leaders have said need in-person education the most are most wary of returning.

That is shifting the reopening debate in real time. In Chicago, only about a third of Black families have indicated they are willing to return to classrooms, compared with 67 percent of white families, and the city’s teachers’ union, which is hurtling toward a strike, has made the disparity a core part of its argument against in-person classes.

In New York City, about 12,000 more white children have returned to classrooms than Black students, though Black children make up a larger share of the overall district. In Oakland, Calif., just about a third of Black parents said they would consider in-person learning, compared with more than half of white families. And Black families in Washington, Nashville, Dallas and other districts also indicated they would keep their children learning at home at higher rates than white families.

Education experts and Black parents say decades of racism, institutionalized segregation and mistreatment of Black children have left Black communities to doubt that school districts are being upfront about the risks.

“For generations, these public schools have failed us and prepared us for prison, and now it’s like they’re preparing us to pass away,” said Sarah Carpenter, the executive director of Memphis Lift, a parent advocacy group in Tennessee. “We know that our kids have lost a lot, but we’d rather our kids to be out of school than dead.”

In many cities and districts, Latino and Asian-American families are also less likely than white families to send their children back. Asian-Americans have opted out of in-person classes at the highest rates of any ethnic group in New York City. Latino families in Chicago were most likely to say they would keep their children at home when schools reopened.

Still, the pattern is most consistent and pronounced with Black families, which have been particularly affected by decades of underinvestment. By one estimate, a $23 billion gap, or $2,226 per pupil, separates funding for predominantly white districts and nonwhite districts, and Jessica Calarco, a sociologist at Indiana University Bloomington who has studied reopening, said the pandemic had amplified that inequity.

“If you know your school doesn’t have hot running water, how would you feel about sending your child to that school knowing they can’t fully wash their hands before they eat lunch?” she asked.

GLOBAL ROUNDUP

Credit…Elmond Jiyane for GCIS, via Reuters

A million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine arrived in South Africa on Monday, paving the way for the country to begin vaccinating its population of nearly 60 million. Health care workers will be the first to be offered the shots, officials said.

The country has reported by far the most cases and deaths from the coronavirus on the African continent. It has participated in clinical trials of several vaccines.

The plane delivering the eagerly awaited doses from the Serum Institute of India, which produced them, was met at the airport by President Cyril Ramaphosa. The president has come under criticism over the country’s lagging start to widespread vaccination, with many countries in Asia and the West able to start immunizing their populations weeks before South Africa could secure a supply.

South Africa experienced a surge in new cases around the turn of the year, fueled by the more transmissible variant of the virus that was first detected in the country. But the surge has begun to ease in recent weeks. Information has not yet been released on the AstraZeneca vaccine’s effectiveness against the variant, which is now predominant in the country.

Over the course of the pandemic, South Africa has reported about 1.45 million cases, and has lately been averaging about 5,800 new cases a day, according to a New York Times database.

In other developments around the world:

Seeking a better understanding of the pandemic’s origins, a team of 15 World Health Organization experts is visiting some of the places first hit by the coronavirus in the Chinese city of Wuhan, including a live animal market, a hospital and a disease control center. The inquiry is expected to take months to complete. Scientists initially believed the outbreak began at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, but many experts now doubt that theory.
The European Union will get 75 million additional doses of vaccine in the next few months, the German pharmaceutical company BioNTech announced on Monday. The vaccine jointly developed by the company and Pfizer was the first to be authorized for use in the E.U., but supplies have been limited by production issues in the early going, and several countries, including Germany, are off to slower than expected starts in vaccinating their populations.
The police in China said they had broken up a criminal ring that manufactured and sold more than 3,000 fake coronavirus vaccine doses, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported on Monday. More than 80 people were arrested, the agency said. According to Xinhua, the police said that since September, the main suspect had been selling vials of “vaccine” that was really just saline solution.

Credit…J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press

The scattered reports from around the country can play like a cruel irony: Someone tests positive for the coronavirus even though they have already received one or both doses of a Covid-19 vaccine.

Notable examples

It’s happened to at least three members of Congress recently:

But it’s been reported in people in other walks of life too, including Rick Pitino, a Hall of Fame basketball coach, and a nurse in California.

How can that happen?

Experts say cases like these are not surprising and do not indicate that there was something wrong with the vaccines or how they were administered. Here is why.

Vaccines don’t work instantly. It takes a few weeks for the body to build up immunity after receiving a dose. And the vaccines now in use in the U.S., from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, both require a second shot a few weeks after the first to reach full effectiveness.
Nor do they work retroactively. You can already be infected and not know it when you get the vaccine — even if you recently tested negative. That infection can continue to develop after you get the shot but before its protection fully takes hold, and then show up in a positive test result.
The vaccines prevent illness, but maybe not infection. Covid vaccines are being authorized based on how well they keep you from getting sick, needing hospitalization and dying. Scientists don’t know yet how effective the vaccines are at preventing the coronavirus from infecting you to begin with, or at keeping you from passing it on to others. (That’s why vaccinated people should keep wearing masks and maintaining social distance.)
Even the best vaccines aren’t perfect. The efficacy rates for Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines are extremely high, but they are not 100 percent. With the virus still spreading out of control in the U.S., some of the millions of recently vaccinated people were bound to get infected in any case.

Credit…Pool photo by Mary Altaffer

The deputy commissioner for public health at the New York State Health Department resigned in late summer. Soon after, the director of its bureau of communicable disease control also stepped down. So did the medical director for epidemiology. Last month, the state epidemiologist said she, too, would be leaving.

The high-level departures came as morale plunged in the Health Department and senior health officials expressed alarm to one another over being sidelined and treated disrespectfully, according to five people with direct experience inside the department.

Their concern had an almost singular focus: Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.

Even as the pandemic continues to rage and New York struggles to vaccinate a large and anxious population, Mr. Cuomo has all but declared war on his own public health bureaucracy. The departures have underscored the extent to which pandemic policy has been set by the governor, who with his aides designed a vaccination program hampered by early delays.

The troubled rollout came after Mr. Cuomo declined to use the longstanding vaccination plans that the State Department of Health had developed in recent years in coordination with local health departments. Mr. Cuomo instead adopted an approach that relied on large hospital systems to coordinate vaccinations.

In recent weeks, the governor has repeatedly made it clear that he believed he had no choice but to seize more control over pandemic policy from state and local public health officials, who he said had no understanding of how to conduct a real-world, large-scale operation like vaccinations. After early problems, in which relatively few doses were being administered, the pace of vaccinations has picked up and New York is now roughly 20th in the nation in percentage of residents who have received at least one vaccine dose.

“When I say ‘experts’ in air quotes, it sounds like I’m saying I don’t really trust the experts,” Mr. Cuomo said at a news conference on Friday, referring to scientific expertise at all levels of government during the pandemic. “Because I don’t. Because I don’t.”

His comments reflected a rift between the state’s top elected official and its career health experts of the sort that has occurred across different levels of government during the pandemic.

In Albany, tensions worsened in recent months as state health officials said they often found out about major changes in pandemic policy only after Mr. Cuomo announced them at news conferences — and then asked them to match their health guidance to the announcements.

That was what happened with the vaccine plan, when state health officials were blindsided by the news that the rollout would be coordinated locally by hospitals.

At least nine senior state health officials have left the department, resigned or retired in recent months. They include Dr. Elizabeth Dufort, the medical director in the division of epidemiology; and Dr. Jill Taylor, the head of the renowned Wadsworth laboratory — which has been central to the state’s efforts to detect virus variants — and the executive in charge of health data, according to state records.

Tags cases, Covid19, global, Live, News, stimulus, Updates, Vaccine, Variants

World News

Covid-19 World Reside Updates: AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson Vaccines

Post author By
Post date January 29, 2021

Here’s what you need to know:

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Fauci Warns New Virus Mutations Are a ‘Wake-Up Call’

On Friday, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci warned that new virus variants, despite the global vaccine distribution, should offer a wake-up call to the continuing dangers of the pandemic.

We’re all aware of the variance that we knew dominated — the U.K. B.1.1.7 , the B.1.351 in South Africa and other variants, such as the P.1. in Brazil. When these variants were first recognized, it became clear that we had to look at, in vitro, in the test tube, whether the antibodies that were induced by the vaccines that we had available would actually neutralize these new mutants. Antigenic variation, i.e. mutations that lead to different lineage do have clinical consequences because as you can see, even though the long-range effect in the sense of severe disease is still handled reasonably well by the vaccines, this is a wake-up call to all of us that we will be dealing as the virus uses its devices to evade pressure, particularly immunological pressure, that we will continue to see the evolution of mutants. So that means that we as a government, the companies, all of us that are in this together, will have to be nimble to be able to just adjust readily to make versions of the vaccine that actually are specifically directed towards whatever mutation is actually prevalent at any given time.

On Friday, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci warned that new virus variants, despite the global vaccine distribution, should offer a wake-up call to the continuing dangers of the pandemic.CreditCredit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci warned Friday that new clinical trial results from Johnson & Johnson, showing that its vaccine is less effective against a highly infectious variant of the coronavirus circulating in South Africa, were a “wake up call.” He said the virus will continue to mutate, and vaccine manufacturers will have to be “nimble to be able to adjust readily” to reformulating the vaccines if needed.

Dr. Fauci’s warning, at the White House briefing on the virus, comes amid increasing concern about new and more infectious variants of the virus that are emerging overseas and turning up in the United States. This week, officials in South Carolina reported identifying two cases of the variant circulating in South Africa, and officials in Minnesota announced they had found a case of the variant that was first detected in Brazil.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who was also at the briefing, said another variant, first identified in Britain, has now been confirmed in 379 cases in 29 states. She said officials remained concerned about the variants and were “rapidly ramping up surveillance and sequencing activities” to closely monitor them. Unlike Britain, the United States has been conducting little of the genomic sequencing necessary to track the spread of the variants.

Dr. Walensky also issued a plea to Americans to continue wearing masks and practice social distancing, and to avoid travel. Earlier this month, the C.D.C. warned that the variant circulating in Britain could become the dominant source of infection in the United States and would likely lead to a surge in cases and deaths that could overwhelm hospitals. And given the speed at which the variant swept through that country, it is conceivable that by April it could make up a large fraction of infections in the United States.

“By the time someone has symptoms, gets a test, has a positive result and we get the sequence, our opportunity for doing real case control and contact tracing is largely gone,” she said. “We should be treating every case as if it’s a variant during this pandemic right now.”

Friday’s briefing, the second in what the Biden White House has promised will be thrice-weekly updates on the pandemic, came just hours after Johnson & Johnson reported that while its vaccine was 72 percent effective in the United States, the efficacy rate was just 57 percent in South Africa, where a variant has been spreading.

Public health officials including Dr. Fauci and Dr. Walensky say the emergence of these variants is heightening the urgency of vaccinations. Dr. Fauci also said Friday that children under 16, who are not currently eligible for the vaccine, will likely start getting vaccinated “by late spring or early summer” if small-scale clinical trials show that it is safe and effective to do so.

He noted that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is 85 percent effective against severe disease, and called the results “very encouraging,” even though the vaccine is not as effective as those by Pfizer and Moderna, which have emergency approval from the Food and Drug Administration. Johnson & Johnson will now seek its own emergency approval.

“This really tells us that we have now a value-added additional vaccine candidate,” he said.

But Dr. Walensky offered a far more sobering observation. While the daily number of new virus cases has been declining, the figures were still much higher than a period last summer, and deaths currently remain worrisome.

According to data compiled by The New York Times, new virus cases have averaged about 160,000 a day in recent days, compared to about 40,000 new cases a day around early September. As of Thursday, the seven-day average of new deaths was more than 3,200 a day, still near peak levels. The daily death toll has topped 4,000 deaths six times in the United States, including twice this week.

At Wednesday’s briefing by the Biden virus team, Jeffrey D. Zients, Mr. Biden’s coronavirus response coordinator, said the United States is lagging far behind other countries in sequencing the genomes of the new variants — a delay he called “totally unacceptable.” Dr. Walensky said she is working to change that.

“We have scaled up surveillance dramatically just in the last ten days, in fact, but our plans are more than what we’ve done so far,” Dr. Walensky said, adding that the C.D.C. is now asking every state to track for worrisome variants and sequence at least 750 samples from patients per week. In addition, she said, the agency has seven collaborations with universities to scale up surveillance to cover thousands of samples per week.

United States ›	United StatesOn Jan. 28	14-day change
New cases	165,264	–34%
New deaths	3,868	–2%

World ›	WorldOn Jan. 28	14-day change
New cases	603,392	–22%
New deaths	16,817	+4%

U.S. vaccinations ›

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E.U. Plans to Halt Vaccine Exports Until Supply Contracts Are Met

The European Union announced a plan that would effectively stop AstraZeneca from shipping Covid-19 vaccine doses manufactured in the bloc to other countries until its E.U. supply contracts are met.

The commission has adopted a strictly targeted measure that will allow us to gather accurate information about the production of vaccines and where manufacturers intend to ship them. The measure is time-limited and specifically applies to those Covid-19 vaccines that were agreed by advance purchase agreements. The measure is intended to run until the end of March. The aim is to provide us immediately with full transparency, transparency that until now has been lacking, and what Europeans expect. And if needed, it also will provide us with a tool to ensure vaccine deliveries.

The European Union announced a plan that would effectively stop AstraZeneca from shipping Covid-19 vaccine doses manufactured in the bloc to other countries until its E.U. supply contracts are met.CreditCredit…Dinuka Liyanawatte/Reuters

BRUSSELS — The European Union on Friday announced plans to effectively halt any attempt by AstraZeneca to move vaccine doses manufactured in the bloc to other countries unless it first meets its supply obligations to the bloc’s 27 member states.

The move, the latest escalation in a dispute between the bloc and the pharmaceutical company over reduced supplies, came as the European Union’s drug regulator authorized AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine for use across its member states.

AstraZeneca said this month that it would significantly cut its promised delivery supply of the jab to the European Union as of mid-February. That pitted the bloc against Britain, a former member, which has been receiving a steady flow of vaccine doses from AstraZeneca since approving it well ahead of the E.U., in early December.

The AstraZeneca vaccine was developed in cooperation with Britain’s University of Oxford. The European Union accused the pharmaceutical company of using its promised doses to serve Britain, despite having paid the company about $400 million in October to help it scale up its capabilities and produce doses ahead of authorization.

The policy announced by the European Commission on Friday, presented as a “transparency tool,” will ask all pharmaceutical companies manufacturing coronavirus vaccines in factories within the bloc — currently Pfizer and AstraZeneca — to submit paperwork alerting the European authorities of any intention to move their products to non-E.U. countries. It will be in place until the end of March and will not apply to exports to poorer countries.

The Commission said it reserved the right to block such exports if it determined that the pharmaceutical companies were not meeting their contractual obligations with the E.U. first.

The measure could theoretically also affect Pfizer clients, but the Commission has said it is happy with how that company has handled a supply disruption in its Belgian factory that is setting back deliveries. The company has spread the pain among its clients, which include the E.U., Britain and Canada.

The Commission said that AstraZeneca’s decision to maintain delivery volumes to Britain while slashing its deliveries to the E.U., after a problem arose in a Belgium-based plant, was in bad faith and breach of the company’s contractual obligations.

The company’s chief executive responded that he regretted the situation, but that his company had not committed to a specific schedule, but rather to a vow to make its “best effort.”

The Commission dismissed the claim, and published a heavily redacted version of the contract with AstraZeneca. The contract affords the company many standard protections in case it fails to deliver, but includes some clauses that could be seen as favoring the E.U. interpretation that AstraZeneca is obligated to turn to other factories, including in Britain, to fulfill its delivery promises.

The matter is further complicated by regulation issues: The European drug regulator, the European Medicines Association, received an application for authorization from AstraZeneca on Jan. 12, nearly two weeks after the company received emergency authorization in Britain. The E.U. agency was expected to announce approval of use of the vaccine later on Friday.

The dispute with AstraZeneca is occurring against a backdrop of severe shortages of doses at vaccination centers across Europe. French and German regions have reported that they are nearly running out, and the Madrid region of Spain has suspended its rollout for at least two weeks until fresh deliveries arrive.

The E.U. regulator stopped short of imposing an age cap on the use of the vaccine, despite concerns about a paucity of data on the vaccine’s efficacy in people age 65 and older.

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N.Y.C. Indoor Dining to Reopen on Valentine’s Day

On Friday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced that indoor dining in New York City could resume at up to 25 percent capacity starting on Valentine’s Day.

New York City restaurants, on our current trajectory, we can reopen indoor dining at 25 percent on Valentine’s Day. The restaurants want a period of time so they can notify workers. They can get up to speed for indoor dining, order supplies, etc. So we’re saying indoor dining. 25 percent on Valentine’s Day. Going forward, we are very excited about the possibility of reopening venues with testing. Restaurants are opened on Valentine’s Day. You could make a reservation now or plan dinner on Valentine’s Day, you propose on Valentine’s Day. And then you can have the wedding ceremony March 15, up to 150 people. People will actually come to your wedding because you can tell them with the testing, it will be safe. Everybody there will be tested, and everybody will be safe.

On Friday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced that indoor dining in New York City could resume at up to 25 percent capacity starting on Valentine’s Day.CreditCredit…Clay Williams for The New York Times

Indoor dining will resume with limited capacity in New York City restaurants next month, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced on Friday, more than a month after he had banned it to combat a second wave of the coronavirus.

Starting on Feb. 14, the city’s restaurants can seat customers indoors at 25 percent maximum capacity, he said.

The announcement was a source of hope for the restaurant industry, an important driver of the city’s economic engine, which has been decimated by ever-changing virus-induced restrictions that have forced many restaurants and bars to go out of business and caused thousands of workers to lose their jobs.

After shutting down restaurants in March, Mr. Cuomo allowed the city’s indoor dining to restart in late September. He prohibited it again in mid-December as holiday travel threatened to increase transmission of the virus and overwhelm hospitals.

Restaurants and bars that have stayed afloat have relied on takeout and delivery, as well as outdoor dining, an increasingly untenable option as the frigid winter advances.

Starting March 15, wedding receptions with up to 150 attendees will be allowed in the state, the governor said, as long as the venues are at no more than 50 percent capacity. The gatherings would have to be approved in advance by a local health department, and all attendees will have to be tested.

“We want to use testing as the key to reopening events,” Mr. Cuomo said.

The governor’s decisions come at an incredibly precarious phase in the state’s battle against the virus, which has killed more than 42,500 people in New York State, a one-time center of the pandemic.

Yankee Stadium will open its doors as a mass vaccination site, Mr. Cuomo said, pointing to high positivity rates in the Bronx. He did not specify a time frame.

Credit…Joao Silva/The New York Times

Johnson & Johnson said on Friday that its one-dose coronavirus vaccine provided strong protection against Covid-19, offering the United States a third powerful tool in a race against a worldwide rise in virus mutations.

But the results came with a significant cautionary note: The vaccine’s efficacy rate dropped from 72 percent in the United States to 57 percent in South Africa, where a highly contagious variant is driving most cases. Studies suggest that this variant also blunts the effectiveness of Covid vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Novavax.

The variant has spread to at least 31 countries, including two cases documented in the United States this week.

Johnson & Johnson said it planned to apply for emergency authorization of its vaccine from the Food and Drug Administration as soon as next week, putting it on track to receive clearance later in February.

“This is the pandemic vaccine that can make a difference with a single dose,” said Dr. Paul Stoffels, the company’s chief scientific officer.

The company’s announcement comes as the Biden administration is pushing to immunize Americans faster even as vaccine supplies tighten. White House officials have been counting on Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine to ease the shortfall. But the company may have as few as seven million doses ready when the vaccine is authorized, according to federal health officials familiar with its production, and no more than 32 million doses by early April.

The variant from South Africa, known as B.1.351, could make the vaccine push tougher. Given the speed at which the variant swept through that country, it is conceivable that it could make up a large fraction of infections in the United States by April and therefore undermine the effectiveness of available vaccines.

The two vaccines approved by the U.S. government have been found to be less effective against the B.1.351 variant in clinical trials, a development that has unsettled federal officials and vaccine experts.

Many researchers say it is imperative to vaccinate people as quickly as possible. Lowering the rate of infection could thwart the more contagious variants while they are still rare.

“If ever there was reason to vaccinate as many people as expeditiously as we possibly can with the vaccine that we have right now, now is the time,” said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert. “Because the less people that get infected, the less chance you’re going to give this particular mutant a chance to become dominant.”

Credit…Jack Guez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The World Health Organization on Friday changed its guidance for pregnant women considering a Covid-19 vaccine, abandoning opposition to immunization for most expectant mothers unless they were at high risk.

The change followed an outcry to the W.H.O.’s previous stance, which stated that the organization did “not recommend the vaccination of pregnant women” with the vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.

Several experts had expressed disappointment on Thursday with the W.H.O.’s earlier position. The experts noted that it was inconsistent with guidance on the same issue from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and would confuse pregnant women looking for clear advice.

The vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, while they have not been tested in pregnant women, have not shown any harmful effects in animal studies. And the technology used in the vaccines is generally known to be safe, experts said.

The W.H.O.’s new phrasing reflects this information:

“Based on what we know about this kind of vaccine, we don’t have any specific reason to believe there will be specific risks that would outweigh the benefits of vaccination for pregnant women.” The recommendation is now closely aligned with the C.D.C.’s stance.

Experts praised the shift, welcoming agreement between the world’s leading public health organizations on this important issue.

“I was very pleased to see that W.H.O. changed their guidance regarding offering the Covid-19 vaccine to pregnant women,” said Dr. Denise Jamieson, an obstetrician at Emory University and a member of the Covid expert group with the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology. The association was among the many women’s health organizations that had urged Pfizer and Moderna to speed up vaccine tests in pregnant women.

“The more permissive W.H.O. language provides an important opportunity for pregnant women to get vaccinated and protect themselves from the severe risks of Covid-19,” Dr. Jamieson said. “This impressively rapid revision by W.H.O. is good news for pregnant women and their babies.”

Pregnant women have traditionally been excluded from clinical trials, leaving a dearth of scientific data on the safety of drugs and vaccines in women and their unborn children. Vaccines are generally considered to be safe, and pregnant women have been urged to be immunized for influenza and other diseases since the 1960s, even in the absence of rigorous clinical trials to test them.

Pfizer will test its vaccine in pregnant women over the next few months, according to a spokeswoman for the company. And Moderna plans to establish a registry to observe side effects in women who were immunized with its vaccine.

Credit…Thomas Lohnes/Getty Images

Germany on Friday announced its plans to restrict incoming travel from a handful of countries, including Britain and Ireland, in an attempt to curb the spread of infectious coronavirus variants, going beyond the measures recommended by the European Union.

“It’s about stopping the entry of a highly infectious virus,” Horst Seehofer, Germany’s interior minister, said on Thursday, a day before the federal cabinet approved the restrictions.

Under the new travel ban — which also applies to passengers coming from Portugal, Brazil, South Africa, Lesotho and Eswatini (formerly known as Swaziland) — German residents will be able to return home, but non-German residents from the areas in question will be refused entry, even with a negative coronavirus test.

While multiple known infectious variants have been found in Germany, including the B.1.1.7 variant at a hospital in Berlin, which then had to go into lockdown, health authorities believe they can still prevent variants from spreading and driving new infections.

The change will go into effect over the weekend and will be in place until at least Feb. 17. It follows a temporary halt in travel for all passengers coming from the United Kingdom and South Africa, which was lifted a few days after it was enacted. All nonessential travel remains discouraged.

After more than six weeks of a strict lockdown — during which restaurants, bars, nonessential shops and most schools have been shuttered — Germany is starting to show slight improvement in its daily case numbers. On Thursday, health authorities reported 14,022 infections in a 24-hour period, nearly 4,000 less than the amount registered one week earlier.

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Canadian Airlines Suspend Flights to the Caribbean and Mexico

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada announced on Friday that major airlines have agreed to suspend flights to sunny vacation spots as new coronavirus quarantine measures are put into place.

The government and Canada’s main airlines have agreed to suspend service to some destinations right away. Air Canada, WestJet, Sunwing and Air Transat are canceling air service to all Caribbean destinations and Mexico starting this Sunday up until April 30. Starting next week, all international passenger flights must land only at the following four airports: Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto and Montreal. In addition to the pre-boarding test we already require, as soon as possible in the coming weeks, we will be introducing mandatory P.C.R. testing at the airport for people returning to Canada. Travelers will then have to wait for up to three days at an approved hotel for their test results, at their own expense, which is expected to be more than $2,000. We will also, in the coming weeks, be requiring non-essential travelers to show a negative test before entry at the land border with the U.S. And we’re working to stand up additional testing requirements for land travel.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada announced on Friday that major airlines have agreed to suspend flights to sunny vacation spots as new coronavirus quarantine measures are put into place.CreditCredit…Blair Gable/Reuters

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada announced Friday that flights between the country and several sunny vacation spots will be suspended, as new testing and quarantining measures are put in place for most air travelers entering Canada.

After previously requiring that air travelers coming to Canada for nonessential purposes show evidence of a negative coronavirus test result from within 72 hours before being allowed on planes, Mr. Trudeau said that they will now also be tested when they land upon their return to Canada. Travelers will have to wait for the results of that second test for three days in a government hotel at their own expense under the new measures.

“Now is just not the time to be flying,” Mr. Trudeau said at an outdoor news conference. “By putting in place these tough measures now, we can look forward to a better time when we can all plan those vacations.”

During most of the pandemic, international flights leaving and entering Canada have been limited to four airports. The flights that are canceled under the new order mainly service resort areas in Mexico and the Caribbean. Airlines are making arrangements to return Canadians who are already in those areas, Mr. Trudeau said.

In December, Canada temporarily stopped air travel to and from the United Kingdom following the appearance there of a new variant of the coronavirus.

Mr. Trudeau estimated that the mandatory three-day stay would cost travelers about 2,000 Canadian dollars, or about $1,570. Travelers with a negative test result will then need to quarantine for 11 more days at their homes. Those with positive test results will be sent to government facilities.

Travelers entering Canada on nonessential trips at land border crossings will also soon be tested, Mr. Trudeau said. They have long been required to quarantine for two weeks.

The premiers of Ontario and Quebec, the country’s two most populous provinces, have been pressuring Mr. Trudeau to introduce testing upon arrival at airports and introduce further flight restrictions. Several Canadian politicians and officials have also come under severe criticism and, in some cases, resigned their positions for traveling outside of the country for vacation.

Mr. Trudeau acknowledged that the percentage of Covid-19 cases in Canada linked to foreign travel is “extremely low.” But he said that the new restrictions should limit the risk posed by new variants of the virus.

“These variations represent a very real challenge,” Mr. Trudeau said.

Credit…Mark Lennihan/Associated Press

Over 1,100 undergraduate and graduate students at Columbia University have pledged to withhold their tuition for the spring semester to demand a discount for what they see as a lost spring term.

While some universities have brought students back to campus, Columbia has mostly offered online instruction for students and allowed only a sliver of them to live on campus or attend in-person classes.

In response, students are asking the university to reduce their total costs — including tuition, fees, and room and board — by at least 10 percent, following suit of several schools including Georgetown University, Princeton University and Williams College. Columbia College, the university’s undergraduate school, can cost more than $80,000 a year for students not receiving financial aid.

Strike organizers said that both graduate and undergraduate students were participating; the university has more than 31,000 students.

“It’s a reasonable demand,” said Matthew Gamero, 19, a sophomore who is one of the strike organizers. “This is about the university providing an education of its worth, and to have it online is certainly not what we’re paying for.”

“This is a moment when an active reappraisal of the status quo is understandable, and we expect nothing less from our students,” the university said in a statement. “Their voices are heard by Columbia’s leadership, and their views on strengthening the University are welcomed.”

A tuition discount is only one of a series of demands made by strikers. They have also called on the university to reduce funding for campus policing, improve working conditions for graduate students and provide aid for the surrounding West Harlem community.

The tuition strike was officially kicked off after the spring term bill was due last Friday. For undergraduates, the university could impose a $150 late fee and prevent them from registering for summer or fall classes. The university could also penalize seniors by withholding their diplomas until their balance is paid.

Credit…Michel Euler/Associated Press

France said on Friday that it would close its borders to non-European Union countries as cases rise and the government struggles to avoid a new lockdown.

Jean Castex, the French prime minister, said that all travel between France and nations outside of the E.U. would be banned starting on Sunday, with exceptions made only for urgent matters. All travelers from E.U. countries, except for cross-border workers, will have to present a negative coronavirus test to enter the country, Mr. Castex added.

Speculation about new restrictions had been growing in France over the past week, with a flurry of conflicting and often confusing information from officials, and many were expecting President Emmanuel Macron to replace the current 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew with a new lockdown.

Speaking after a special cabinet meeting in Paris, Mr. Castex acknowledged France faced a “strong risk of acceleration of the epidemic” because of the more contagious British and South African variants of the virus, and said debates over a new nationwide lockdown were “legitimate.”

“But we all know the very heavy toll it has on the French, on all counts,” he said of a lockdown. “This evening, we consider that in view of the numbers over the past few days, we can still give ourselves a chance to avoid one.”

The variants that emerged in Britain and South Africa have both been detected in France, and the country’s vaccination campaign has slowed amid disruptions in the E.U. supply chain. The number of new cases has continued to rise in France over the past few weeks, with nearly 23,000 new cases reported on Friday, though they have not skyrocketed like they have for some of France’s neighbors.

Britain, which has faced record numbers of cases and deaths, tightened its travel restrictions on Wednesday, requiring British citizens arriving from 22 high-risk countries to quarantine in hotels for 10 days at their own expense. England entered its latest lockdown at the start of January.

The European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, recommended on Monday restricting nonessential travel in a bid to prevent blanket border closures, which can obstruct trade and the movement of cross-border workers.

“We need to keep safe and discourage nonessential travel,” Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the commission, wrote on Twitter, citing the danger of new variants circulating.

Mr. Castex also announced the closure of the country’s largest malls that do not sell groceries, starting on Sunday, and increased police checks on curfew violations and establishments like restaurants that open illegally. Companies will be further encouraged to have their employees work from home, he said.

“Our goal is to do everything to avoid a new lockdown, and the next few days will be decisive,” Mr. Castex said.

Credit…Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

Fourteen students at the University of Michigan have contracted a highly contagious variant of the coronavirus, leading health authorities to issue a stay-at-home recommendation for students living on and off campus.

Students were advised to not leave their residences until Feb. 7, except to attend classes, seek medical treatment or run essential errands.

The outbreak of the variant, first detected in Britain and known as B.1.1.7, appears to have started with a student who traveled to the United Kingdom over the winter break, according to Susan Ringler-Cerniglia, a spokeswoman for the Washtenaw County Department of Health.

The first case on the university’s campus was identified on Jan. 16 after the student tested positive and notified officials that he or she had traveled to an area where the variant was prevalent. That prompted additional sequencing that identified the student was infected with the variant, Ms. Ringler-Cerniglia said.

Since then an additional 13 students who are positive with the same variant have been identified. One of them had visited a local indoor mall and a grocery store before testing positive, leading authorities to issue a public notice to people who had visited those locations, asking them to seek testing.

Rick Fitzgerald, a spokesman for the university, said that all the infected students were in isolation with mild symptoms.

The stay-at-home recommendation announced by the Washtenaw County Health Department this week applies to the Ann Arbor campus but not to the broader community.

“More stringent, mandatory actions may be imposed if this outbreak continues to grow and additional variant clusters are identified,” the health department said in a memo to university officials on Wednesday.

Michigan athletics also imposed a two-week pause in competitions and practice, citing the emergence of the variant as the reason. Five of the cases involved individuals connected to the athletic program.

The variant is regarded as 50 percent more transmissible than the standard form of the virus but it isn’t more dangerous, and the vaccines that are currently on the market appear to be effective against it.

Since Michigan’s winter session began Jan. 19, the university has identified a total of 175 coronavirus cases, including the 14 cases of the variant.

Credit…Kathy Willens/Associated Press

Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, the leader of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, was in quarantine on Friday after he interacted last week with a person who later tested positive for the coronavirus, according to a spokesman.

In a statement, the archdiocese said the cardinal “has not tested positive, feels fine, and has no symptoms.” Joseph Zwilling, a spokesman for the archdiocese, said the cardinal is tested regularly, had tested negative since the interaction, and would be tested again “in a few days.” He did not specify what kind of tests were used nor the timing of when he cardinal was tested after the interaction.

Tests taken too soon after exposure may return false negative results, because the virus has not yet had time to build up to detectable levels. People are thought to carry the largest quantity of virus around the time their symptoms appear, if they experience symptoms at all.

The cardinal’s quarantine had not previously been announced by the archdiocese. Mr. Zwilling said the cardinal had been in quarantine since Wednesday but that no announcement had been made because the infected individual had not received the results of their coronavirus test until Thursday.

“He did not have any public events, and all of his meetings were via Zoom, etc.,” Mr. Zwilling said in an email, referring to the cardinal. “We are announcing today because the exposure was confirmed, and the first public events — Mass tomorrow evening and Sunday morning — were coming up, and he will obviously not be present for those events.”

The cardinal will “continue to follow health and safety protocols as instructed by medical professionals, as will others on his staff who also had close contact with this individual,” the statement said.

Cardinal Dolan is one of the most influential figures in American Catholicism, and the Archdiocese of New York is the second-most populous in the United States, with more than 2.8 adherents living in a territory that stretches from Staten Island into the Hudson Valley.

He had celebrated Mass last Sunday at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral and interacted with other priests and parish personnel, all wearing masks, at that time, according to online video of the service.

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W.H.O. Delivers Update on China Visit

On Friday, the World Health Organization reviewed the details of its investigation into the origin of the coronavirus in China, and what it hopes to learn from the visit.

There is a very long list of site visits planned and face-to-face meetings continue. The — the visits will include the Wuhan Institute of Virology, other labs, the Wuhan markets, early responders, hospitals in which the first clusters of cases occurred. We continue to be hopeful that all of the data and all of the meetings that they need will be had. And and just to reconfirm that all hypotheses are on the table, and we’re looking forward, hopefully, to a successful conclusion of the mission. Success in the case of animal human interface investigations is not measured necessarily in absolutely finding a source on the first mission. This is a complicated business, what we need to do is gather all of the data, all of the information, summarize all of these discussions and come to an assessment as to how much more we know about the origins of the disease, and what further studies may be needed for the release of.

On Friday, the World Health Organization reviewed the details of its investigation into the origin of the coronavirus in China, and what it hopes to learn from the visit.CreditCredit…Hector Retamal/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

After months of delays, a team of World Health Organization scientists tracing the pandemic’s origin began its field work on Friday in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the coronavirus was first detected.

The W.H.O. said its team of 15 experts planned to visit hospitals, laboratories and a live animal market over the next several weeks in Wuhan, a city of 11 million, where the virus was detected in late 2019.

“As members start their field visits on Friday, they should receive the support, access and the data they need,” the W.H.O. said on Twitter. “All hypotheses are on the table as the team follows the science in their work to understand the origins of the #COVID19 virus.”

The Chinese government had repeatedly sought to delay the inquiry, apparently out of concern that the experts would draw attention to the government’s early missteps in handling the outbreak. But it relented under mounting global pressure.

The W.H.O. experts were first asked to undergo 14 days of quarantine in Wuhan, which ended on Thursday.

They plan to speak with some of the first patients to show symptoms of Covid-19, as well as with medical workers and Chinese scientists, according to the W.H.O. Their fieldwork will include a visit the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, where some of the first cases were detected.

They will also visit the Wuhan Institute of Virology and a laboratory operated by Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

The question of the pandemic’s origin has caused friction between China and the United States, with officials in each country at times blaming the other for unleashing the virus on the world.

Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said on Wednesday that the United States hoped for a “robust and clear” international investigation.

Chinese officials, in response, defended the country’s handling of the inquiry.

“We hope the U.S. side will work with China, take on a responsible attitude and respect facts, science and the diligent work of W.H.O. experts,” Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry, said at a news conference in Beijing on Thursday.

Chinese officials said on Friday that several passengers traveling to China from the United States had falsified coronavirus test results so they could gain entry to the country. The Chinese consulate in San Francisco said the passengers had “changed their test results from positive to negative” and that other travelers had lied about test results. The consulate did not provide details about the passengers or the punishments they might face. China maintains strict border control rules, including a requirement that travelers present results from antibody and nucleic acid tests before they fly. The consulate said the passengers had violated public health laws. “The way they put others at risk is odious,” the statement said.
Vietnam recorded nine more coronavirus cases on Friday, including one in the capital, Hanoi, as a new outbreak spread beyond the two northern provinces where infections had first been detected a day earlier. Officials put the number of cases from the latest outbreak at 93 as of Friday afternoon but said that it could reach 30,000, nearly 20 times the number of cases that Vietnam detected during the entire first year of the pandemic. Vietnam has been among the most successful countries in containing the virus, with strict border controls, mask-wearing, contact tracing and isolation of infected people. The latest outbreak comes as officials from the governing Communist Party meet to select the country’s new leaders, an event held once every five years.
Hungary’s medicine authority has approved the coronavirus vaccine developed by the Chinese company Sinopharm. “This means that in addition to Pfizer, Moderna, Sputnik and AstraZeneca, we can also count on Sinopharm,” said Dr. Cecilia Muller, the country’s chief medical officer. “We trust that these vaccines will be readily available in large quantities and the immunization process will be completed in larger numbers in less time.” The country’s foreign minister later announced that it had purchased five million doses of the vaccine. Regarding the options, Prime Minister Viktor Orban expressed enthusiasm for the Chinese vaccine on Friday. “I will wait for the Chinese vaccine,” he said. “I trust that one the most.”
Spain’s first case of the South African variant of Covid-19 was detected in the port city of Vigo, in the northwestern region of Galicia. Health authorities in Galicia said a 30-year old man who works in the shipping industry returned from a recent work trip to South Africa and tested positive for the variant earlier this month. He had light symptoms and was not hospitalized, they said.

Credit…Sarahbeth Maney for The New York Times

The unions representing the nation’s health care workers have emerged as increasingly powerful voices during the still-raging pandemic.

With more than 100,000 Americans hospitalized and many among their ranks infected, nurses and other health workers remain in a precarious frontline against the coronavirus and have turned again and again to unions for help.

Nurses across the country from various unions are participating in dozens of strikes and protests. National Nurses United, the country’s largest union of registered nurses, held a “day of action” on Wednesday with demonstrations in more than a dozen states and Washington, D.C., as it starts negotiations at hospitals owned by big systems like HCA, Sutter Health and CommonSpirit Health.

“It’s so overwhelming. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen before,” said Erin McIntosh, a nurse at Riverside Community Hospital in Southern California, a part of the country that has been among the hardest hit by a surge in cases. “Every day I’m waist-deep in death and dying.”

Hospitals said the unions are playing politics during a public health emergency and say they have no choice but to ask more of their workers.

But health care workers say they have been bitterly disappointed by their employers’ and government agencies’ response to the pandemic. Dire staff shortages, inadequate and persistent supplies of protective equipment, limited testing for the virus and pressure to work even if they might be sick have left many workers turning to the unions as their only ally. The virus has claimed the lives of more than 3,300 health care workers nationwide, according to one count.

Credit…Joshua Lott/Reuters

“We wouldn’t be alive today if we didn’t have the union,” said Elizabeth Lalasz, a Chicago public hospital nurse and steward for National Nurses United.

Despite the decades-long decline in the labor movement and the small numbers of unionized nurses, labor officials have seized on the pandemic fallout to organize new chapters and pursue contract talks for better conditions and benefits. National Nurses organized seven new bargaining units last year, compared to four in 2019. The Service Employees International Union, which represents Mrs. McIntosh, also says it has seen an uptick in interest.

Credit…Frederic J. Brown/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

With the pandemic exposing racial disparities in the United States — Black people have died of Covid-19 at nearly three times the rate of white people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — health officials have been working to promote vaccinations in Black communities, and to combat doubt.

So doctors in Atlanta turned to Tyler Perry — a popular and prolific actor, director and studio head — to spread the word to Black audiences that the vaccine was harmless. He agreed to interview the experts, turning it into a TV special that aired Thursday night on BET. On the show, he peppered doctors from Grady Health System with questions about the safety of the vaccine, how it was developed, how it was tested and how it works.

At the end of the interview, with his sleeve pulled up, Perry got the jab as cameras rolled.

Perry is one of the most powerful people in the entertainment industry. He built his fortune portraying the character of Madea, a tart-tongued and irreverent matriarch, onstage and onscreen, before retiring her in 2019 to concentrate on other projects, which include running his 330-acre studios in Georgia.

Skepticism about the Covid-19 vaccine among Black people has been deeply concerning to health officials. A recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that one in three Black people was hesitant about vaccine. A recent CNN analysis found that Black and Latino Americans were getting the vaccine at significantly lower rates than white people — rates attributed to, among other factors, lack of access to health care for many Black people, but also to an entrenched mistrust about the medical establishment.

On the BET special, Perry spoke of episodes in history that have led to a lack of faith in the medical establishment and the government, among them the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, in which doctors allowed syphilis to progress in Black men by withholding treatment from them, and the case of Henrietta Lacks, a Black woman who died of cervical cancer in 1951, whose cells were used in research without her knowledge or consent.

“We as Black people have healthy hesitation when it comes to vaccinations and so on and so forth, and even disease,” he said.

Perry said he didn’t want people getting vaccinated just because he had. “What I want to do is give you the information, the facts,” he said. “There’s a lot of misinformation out there.”

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New York City Sets ‘Aggressive Goal’ of 5 Million Vaccinations by June

Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city is aiming to vaccinate 5 million New Yorkers against Covid-19 by June. He also announced plans to bring city workers back to offices in May and reopen schools for all students in September.

We’re going for an aggressive goal, five million New Yorkers vaccinated by June. I am absolutely certain we can do it so long as we have the vaccine. And I am more and more confident because the actions the Biden administration, because the Johnson Johnson vaccine is coming, more and more confident that we will have what we need. I’m going to push hard on the federal government to get every pharmaceutical company in America into this work because they’re not right now. The federal government needs to ensure that they are required to produce vaccine, whether they’re the originator of the vaccine or not. So long as we have the supply, we can reach five million new Yorkers in June, get to a point of community immunity. And we’re going to bring back our city workforce in May and after, because obviously so many are on the job right now. But the folks who work in our offices and do so much important work, we want them back. We want to send a signal to this whole city. We’re moving forward. We want to see the private sector bring workforces back. We are going to have an entirely different situation as we proceed into the spring. By the end of the spring, I think you’re going to see something very different. And we’re going to a great group of folks out there, our vaccine for all core leading the way. Now, a lot of different pieces matter, and one of the most crucial ones that matters to us for today, for our parents, for our families, for our future, tomorrow — our schools, one of the things that says most clearly, we are back is our schools. And so in September, our schools come back fully. We focus on helping kids overcome that Covid achievement gap. Our 2021 student achievement plan focuses on the academic side, but also the emotional side, the mental health needs of our kids after everything they’ve been through.

Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city is aiming to vaccinate 5 million New Yorkers against Covid-19 by June. He also announced plans to bring city workers back to offices in May and reopen schools for all students in September.CreditCredit…James Estrin/The New York Times

In his final State of the City address, Mayor Bill de Blasio offered a sprawling vision of New York City’s recovery from a pandemic that has taken tens of thousands of lives and destroyed the city’s economy.

The mayor committed to accelerating the city’s vaccination efforts and set a goal of inoculating five million New Yorkers by June.

“We’re going for an aggressive goal,” Mr. de Blasio said at a news conference on Friday morning, adding that “I am absolutely certain we can do it, so long as we have the vaccine.”

On Friday, Mr. de Blasio said that, given an adequate supply of the vaccine, the city could vaccinate half a million people per week, and that he planned to reopen vaccination sites that had closed as more vaccine became available.

Johnson & Johnson announced on Friday that their vaccine was very effective at preventing the virus, but that its efficacy dropped steeply against a more contagious variant in South Africa. White House officials have been counting on Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine, to ease the shortfall of vaccine supply. Unlike the federally authorized vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna, Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine is effective after only one dose. But the company may only have about seven million doses ready when the F.D.A. decides whether to authorize it, according to federal health officials familiar with its production, and about 30 million doses by early April.

Mr. de Blasio also noted on Friday that the citywide seven-day average rate of positive test results was 8.63 percent, and city data show that in more than 30 city ZIP codes the rate is above 10 percent.

During the State of the City address, the mayor also said he would begin in May to bring back to offices the thousands of city employees who have been working remotely, and would safely reopen schools for all students in September.

“New York City’s vaccination effort is the foundation of a recovery for all of us,” the mayor’s 18-page recovery plan says. “With every vaccine shot, New York City moves closer and closer to fully reopening our economy, restoring the jobs we lost and ensuring equality in our comeback.”

If the federal government provides enough stimulus dollars to the city, Mr. de Blasio said, he will create a City Cleanup Corps of 10,000 temporary workers to focus on beautifying the city — an idea he compared to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression.

Mr. de Blasio also proposed two plans to help small businesses: a $50 million “recovery tax credit” program for businesses that have faced hardships from the pandemic, and a $100 million “recovery loan” program to help shops stay open. The city will provide low-interest loans of up to $100,000 to roughly 2,000 small businesses, according to the mayor’s plan.

But Mr. de Blasio has also warned that the city is facing major budget cuts and layoffs. He recently announced that the city’s property tax revenues are projected to decline by $2.5 billion next year, driven by a drop in the value of office buildings and hotel properties that have emptied out during the pandemic.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced on Friday that restaurants in New York City, major drivers of its economy that have struggled under pandemic restrictions, could reopen for indoor dining at 25 percent capacity starting on Feb. 14. Mr. Cuomo closed them last month as virus numbers ticked up.

Mr. de Blasio and Mr. Cuomo have expressed optimism that President Biden, along with a Democratic-led Congress, will bring substantial assistance to the city. Mr. de Blasio also called for higher taxes on wealthy New Yorkers in his speech — a policy he has pushed for years, but that Mr. Cuomo has opposed.

Mr. de Blasio noted that more than 100 billionaires in the state increased their net worth by billions of dollars during the pandemic and called again for a redistribution of wealth.

“There is clearly enough money in New York to invest in a fair and fast recovery — it’s just in the wrong hands,” he said.

Credit…David Zalubowski/Associated Press

The federal occupational safety agency on Friday posted new guidance for employers on reducing the spread of Covid-19 in the workplace, just over one week after President Biden signed an executive order directing it to do so.

The move by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, part of the Labor Department, includes only recommendations, not requirements. But the agency said it was exploring a rule mandating certain protective measures.

The agency declined to issue such a rule, known as an emergency temporary standard, during the Trump administration. But Mr. Biden indicated support for a standard during the campaign.

The new guidance makes fewer distinctions than the Trump administration’s version based on the exposure risk of different workers. “Everyone should be protected, not some more protected than others,” Ann Rosenthal, a senior adviser to the agency, said on a video call with reporters.

The document issued on Friday also uses less equivocal language than the agency did under President Donald J. Trump. For example, it says the most effective prevention programs “ensure that absence policies are nonpunitive.” During the Trump administration, the agency advised employers to “ensure that sick leave policies are flexible and consistent with public health guidance.”

Meatpacking and meat processing have been a particular source of concern, accounting for an outsized portion of Covid-19 infections nationally.

In late December, a state judge in California issued a temporary restraining order in a lawsuit involving workers at a local poultry plant, requiring a variety of safety protocols such as providing masks and requiring workers to wear them, as well as face shields, where social distancing isn’t possible.

The court announced Friday that it would issue a preliminary injunction to the same effect, giving workers an ongoing ability to force compliance if the company backs off the protocols. It cited evidence submitted by the plaintiffs that “regulatory agencies are overwhelmed by the issues raised by the Covid-19 pandemic and are unable to inspect with the same regularity as was the practice prior to the pandemic.”

Tags AstraZeneca, Covid19, global, Johnson, Live, Updates, vaccines

Health

Pfizer to provide as much as 40 million Covid vaccine doses to Covax international program

Post author By
Post date January 23, 2021

Pfizer to supply up to 40 million Covid vaccine doses to Covax global program

A nurse prepares the Pfizer BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine on January 10, 2021 at a vaccination center in Sarcelles near Paris.

ALAIN JOCARD | AFP | Getty Images

Pfizer will deliver up to 40 million doses of its coronavirus vaccine to a global alliance that aims to provide coronavirus vaccines to poor nations, the head of the World Health Organization said on Friday.

The agreement will enable Covax – together with the WHO – to deliver vaccine doses to the participating countries from February, said WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus during a press conference. Tedros added that until an emergency is approved, the program expects 150 million doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccine to be available for distribution in the first quarter of this year.

The Covax program aims to provide 2 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines to participating countries, which include low- to middle-income countries, by the end of this year. The Pfizer BioNTech vaccine requires two vaccinations spaced weeks apart, suggesting the deal would only cover 20 million people.

Tedros said the deal would allow other countries with supplies of Pfizer’s vaccine to donate them to the program. The WHO chief criticized wealthy nations for signing supply agreements with drug manufacturers for their starting doses of Covid-19 vaccines to stockpile supplies from poorer nations.

“This is not only important for COVAX, it is also an important step forward for equitable access to vaccines and an essential part of the global effort to fight this pandemic. We will only be safe everywhere if we are safe everywhere,” so Dr. Seth Berkley, CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, said in a statement.

Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer, said during the press conference that the company will make the vaccine doses available to Covax and poorer countries for a fee. Pfizer was the first company to receive a global list of emergency uses for its vaccine from the WHO, allowing other countries to expedite their regulatory approval processes to begin administering the vaccine.

Bourla said the company will help ship the cans, which require ultra-cold storage and special handling, to low-income countries. UNICEF, which is helping with the dispensing of the cans, previously warned that some of the world’s poorest countries could face the challenge of storing and managing the shots upon arrival.

The program’s contract with Pfizer increases supply agreements to a total of just over 2 billion doses, but negotiations for an additional supply continue. The goal, according to Covax, is to immunize healthcare and other frontline workers as well as some high-risk individuals from the first quarter of this year.

The agreement follows the United States’ decision to remain a member of WHO under President Joe Biden. The new administration will also join the Covax program, a move the Trump administration opposed last year.

“I couldn’t escape the temptation to say that I’m very happy that this press conference is taking place on the day the United States rejoins the WHO organization. I think it’s a symbolic, great day for us,” Pfizer boss Bourla said at the meeting.

Tags Covax, Covid, Doses, global, million, Pfizer, program, supply, Vaccine

Business

World Enterprise Information: Dwell Market Updates

Post author By
Post date January 14, 2021

A closed restaurant in Santa Barbara, Calif.

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Bryan Denton for The New York Times

New claims for state unemployment benefits sharply increased last week as the resurgent coronavirus pandemic continued to batter the economy.

A total of 1.15 million workers filed initial claims for state unemployment benefits during the first full week of the new year, the Labor Department said. Another 284,000 claims were filed for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, an emergency federal program for freelancers, part-time workers and others normally ineligible for state jobless benefits. Neither figure is seasonally adjusted. On a seasonally adjusted basis, new state claims totaled 965,000.

Economists had been bracing for a fresh wave of claims as the virus batters the service industry. The government reported last week that the economy shed 140,000 jobs in December, the first drop in employment since last spring’s steep losses, with restaurants, bars and hotels recording steep losses.

“We know that the pandemic is worsening, and with the jobs report last Friday, we can see that we’re in a deep economic hole and digging in the wrong direction,” said Daniel Zhao, senior economist with the career site Glassdoor.

The labor market has rebounded somewhat since the initial coronavirus wave in the spring. But of the 22 million jobs that disappeared, nearly 10 million remain lost.

“Compared to then, we are doing better,” said AnnElizabeth Konkel, an economist at the career site Indeed, referring to the spring. “But compared to the pre-Covid era, we still have so far to go.”

Still, economists and analysts see better times ahead. As more people are vaccinated, cases will begin to fall, which will ease restrictions on businesses and could lead to a resurgence in consumer activity, helping to revive the service industry.

Perhaps more immediately, President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. has pledged to put forward a stimulus package that would provide relief to individuals, small businesses, students, schools and local governments.

Credit…Steve Dykes/Getty Images

Charles Schwab will shut down its political action committee, perhaps the most significant move among companies rethinking their political donations after last week’s violence in the Capitol.

Schwab said it found the current “hyperpartisan” environment too complex to navigate without risk of distraction. “We believe a clear and apolitical position is in the best interest of our clients, employees, stockholders and the communities in which we operate,” the company said on Wednesday.

The company’s PAC will no longer take contributions from employees or make financial contributions to lawmakers. It will donate the leftover funds to Boys & Girls Clubs of America and to historically Black colleges and universities, organizations that Charles Schwab has supported in the past.

The Lincoln Project, a group of anti-Trump conservatives, had featured Charles Schwab in a recent campaign highlighting companies that donated to President Trump or to Republicans in Congress who voted against certifying President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.

“It is a sad byproduct of the current political climate that some now resort to using questionable tactics and misleading claims to attack companies like ours,” the statement said, an apparent reference to the campaign. “It is unfair to knowingly blur the lines between the actions of a publicly held corporation and those of individuals who work or have worked for the company.”

The company’s billionaire chairman, Charles R. Schwab, has personally given millions to pro-Trump and Republican groups, far more than the company’s PAC. “Every individual in our firm has a right to their own, individual political beliefs and we respect that right,” the company said in its statement.

After the riot at the Capitol, a number of companies, including Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, paused corporate giving. Others, such as Walmart and Marriott, have said they will halt donations only to the 147 Republicans in Congress who objected to certifying the presidential election result. In a survey of 40 C.E.O.s from major corporations at a meeting on Wednesday held by Yale’s Jeffrey Sonnenfeld yesterday, nearly 60 percent said that companies shouldn’t stop all political donations.

Charles Schwab said in its statement that it was confident its “voice will still be heard in Washington” even without a PAC, noting that it is a “major employer in a dozen metropolitan centers.” Other companies that do not have a PAC, like IBM, have said they do not think a lack of one puts them at a political disadvantage.

Credit…Benoit Tessier/Reuters

The French carmaker Renault, saying it does not expect auto sales to bounce back quickly from the pandemic, announced a plan on Thursday to survive and make money while selling fewer cars and shifting emphasis to electric vehicles.

The plan presented by Luca de Meo, who took over as Renault’s chief executive in July, is a sharp departure from the strategy pursued by Carlos Ghosn, the former chief executive of Renault’s alliance with Japanese automakers Nissan and Mitsubishi.

Mr. de Meo implicitly criticized Mr. Ghosn during an online briefing for journalists and analysts on Thursday, saying that Renault had “too many layers, too many silos, too many shared responsibilities. All that mattered were size and volumes.”

Under the new plan, Renault will cut production capacity, reduce the number of models it offers and simplify manufacturing by increasing the number of parts shared among vehicles. For example, all gasoline vehicles will use the same basic engine.

Mr. de Meo said his aim was to avoid job cuts beyond those already planned. The French government is a big shareholder in the company, and has resisted job cuts in the past.

“We are also here to protect the work of people,” Mr. de Meo told reporters during a conference call. “We have so many opportunities to get rid of other costs.”

During a brutal period for the auto industry, Renault was among the hardest hit. The company said Tuesday that sales fell more than 20 percent in 2020, to less than three million vehicles.

“We are not betting on a strong recovery,” Clotilde Delbos, the Renault chief financial officer, said during the presentation. “Cost reduction will be the strongest lever for our improvement.”

Electric cars are among Renault’s few bright spots. Sales of the Zoe, a two-door battery powered hatchback, doubled in 2020 despite the pandemic. The Zoe displaced the Tesla Model 3 as the best-selling electric car in Europe. However, at around 20,000 euros after subsidies, or $24,000, the Zoe costs half as much as the Model 3 and is likely to be less profitable.

Mr. de Meo mentioned Renault’s troubled but essential alliance with Japanese carmakers Nissan and Mitsubishi only in passing. But at the end of the video presentation, Makoto Uchida, the chief executive of Nissan, made an appearance to say that he endorsed the Renault plan.

“I’m happy to see Renault back on the path to profitability,” Mr. Uchida said.

Wall Street was poised for a small gain on Thursday and shares in Europe were modestly higher as investors anticipated President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s announcement of a multitrillion-dollar spending plan to counter the coronavirus’s impact on the U.S. economy.
Mr. Biden’s plan is expected to have an initial focus on expanding the country’s vaccination program and virus testing capacity, Jim Tankersley reports.
Mr. Biden is to provide details in a speech Thursday evening in Delaware, hours after the latest tally of weekly unemployment claims showed a sharp rise in newly unemployed workers in the United States. Hiring remains dreadful in the U.S. economy, with employers recording a net loss of 140,000 jobs in December. Last spring, as the pandemic arrived in the United States, 22 million jobs disappeared. Nearly 10 million remain lost.
European markets were gaining, with the benchmark Stoxx Europe 600 up 0.5 percent in late-morning trading. The CAC 40 in France was 0.3 percent higher and the DAX in Germany gained 0.5 percent.
The latest data from China shows a humming economy. Exports rose 18 percent in December from a year earlier, reflecting global demand for work-from-home devices. Imports also increased, 6.5 percent from a year earlier, a sign of a strengthening consumer economy inside the country.
China will probably be the only major economy to have grown in 2020. Germany’s economy, usually regarded as Europe’s strongest, reported a 5 percent contraction in 2020.

Credit…Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times

Hong Kong Broadband Network said in a statement on Thursday that it had taken steps to block access to a website that featured the personal information of police officers, the first full website censorship under Hong Kong’s expansive national security law.

The site, which featured personal information about the police and pro-establishment figures in the Chinese city, first faced partial blocks in Hong Kong on Jan. 6. A technical analysis by The New York Times showed the territory’s internet service providers appeared to be interfering with access to the site.

Hong Kong Broadband, one of the city’s largest internet service providers, said it cut access to the site on Jan. 13 “in compliance with the requirement issued under the national security law.”

In the past, Hong Kong’s government had a separate process, which included issuing court orders, to go after content deemed illegal online. But the purge of the website happened without any warning or official legal notification, according to Naomi Chan, the 18-year-old high-school student who created the site.

The disruption raises the prospect that Hong Kong, long a bastion of internet freedom on the border with China’s closely censored internet, could fall under the shadow of the mainland’s Great Firewall, which blocks foreign internet sites like Google and Facebook.

Since the national security law was put in place over the summer, the police have turned to harsh digital investigative tactics reminiscent of those used by security forces in China, including hanging cameras outside the doors of politicians and forcing arrestees to give them access to smartphones.

The law was prompted by sometimes violent antigovernment protests in 2019, which alarmed Communist Party leaders in Beijing. The Chinese government has since used the law to tighten its grip on the former British colony, which operates under its own laws and has long enjoyed some degree of autonomy, including freedom of speech.

Airlines, workplaces and sports stadiums may soon require people to show their coronavirus vaccination status on their smartphones before they can enter.

A coalition of leading technology companies, health organizations and nonprofit groups — including Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce, Cerner, Epic Systems and the Mayo Clinic — announced on Thursday morning that they were developing technology standards to enable consumers to obtain and share their immunization records through health passport apps.

“For some period of time, most all of us are going to have to demonstrate either negative Covid-19 testing or an up-to-date vaccination status to go about the normal routines of our lives,” said Dr. Brad Perkins, the chief medical officer at the Commons Project Foundation, a nonprofit organization in Geneva that is a member of the vaccine credential initiative.

That will happen, Dr. Perkins added, “whether it’s getting on an airplane and going to a different country, whether it’s going to work, to school, to the grocery store, to live concerts or sporting events.”

Vaccine passport apps could fill a significant need for airlines, employers and other businesses.

In the United States, the federal government has developed paper cards that remind people who receive coronavirus vaccinations of their vaccine manufacturer, batch number and date of inoculation. But there is no federal system that consumers can use to get easy access to their immunization records online and establish their vaccination status for work or travel.

A few airlines, including United Airlines and JetBlue, are already trying out Common Pass, a health passport app from the Commons Project. The app enables passengers to retrieve their coronavirus test results from their health providers and then gives them a confirmation code allowing them to board certain international flights. The vaccination credentialing system would work similarly.

Credit…Mohamed Sadek for The New York Times

After giving small lenders a head start, the Paycheck Protection Program will open for all applicants on Tuesday, the Treasury Department said on Wednesday.

The stimulus package passed last month included $284 billion in funding to restart the small-business relief effort, which made $523 billion in loans last year to 5.2 million recipients. The new funding will be available both to first-time applicants and to some returning borrowers.

Borrowers seeking a second loan will need to demonstrate a 25 percent drop in gross receipts between comparable quarters in 2019 and 2020. Second loans will also be limited to companies with 300 or fewer workers, and the amounts will be capped at $2 million.

First- and second-time applicants can borrow up to 2.5 times their monthly payroll. (Those in the lodging and food service business who are seeking a second loan can borrow 3.5 times their payroll, a concession to the devastation those industries have faced.) The loans — which are made by banks but backed by the federal government — can be forgiven if borrowers spend least 60 percent of the money paying workers and use the rest on other allowable expenses.

Starting Tuesday, loans will be available from thousands of lenders, including national banks like Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo; most regional banks; and financial technology companies like PayPal.

Some smaller lenders have already gotten started. Community Development Financial Institutions, Minority Depository Institutions and Certified Development Companies — specially designated lenders that focus on underserved populations, including Black- and minority-owned businesses — were allowed to start taking loan applications this week. And on Friday, lenders with $1 billion or less in assets will be allowed to start submitting applications.

The Small Business Administration, which manages the program, has not said how many applications it has already received. Unlike the first round, when the agency approved loans instantaneously, approvals will now take at least a day because of new fraud safeguards the agency has adopted.

Brian Brooks, who warned that requiring customers to wear masks during the pandemic could lead to more bank robberies, is stepping down as the country’s top bank regulator, according to an announcement on Wednesday.

Mr. Brooks has served as acting comptroller of the currency since late May. As of Thursday night, Blake Paulson, a career employee of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, will take over.

“It has been an honor to serve the United States as acting comptroller,” Mr. Brooks said in a statement. “I am extremely proud of what we have accomplished.”

In the months after he took over the agency following the departure of Joseph Otting, Mr. Brooks rushed to enact a number of changes, including one that would prohibit banks from cutting off credit to the fossil fuel industry and another establishing guidelines for how banks could measure their activities in low-income and minority neighborhoods as required under an anti-redlining law.

Until recently, Mr. Brooks was in line for his job to be made permanent. Despite having already lost the 2020 election, President Trump said on Nov. 17 that he intended to nominate Mr. Brooks to become the comptroller for a five-year term.

But the chances for Mr. Brooks to be confirmed during the lame-duck period of Mr. Trump’s presidency were low, and the Georgia runoff elections have given Democrats control of both chambers of Congress.

Advisers to President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. had already begun vetting candidates to replace him after Mr. Biden takes over next week.

Credit…Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York has picked two European giants, Norway’s Equinor and BP, to supply the state with clean electricity from wind turbines planted on two large tracts in the Atlantic.

Offshore wind developers are attracted to the East Coast of the United States because of the availability of shallow water sites suitable for wind farms and the proximity of major electric power consuming centers like New York and Boston.

Until recently, offshore wind was largely a European industry but it has gained interest elsewhere as larger turbines and other innovations have brought down costs.

The deal will bring investment of nearly $9 billion, according to a news release from the state government. One of the sites is 20 miles off the south shore of Long Island, and the other is about the same distance south of Nantucket. The projects are expected to produce power late in this decade.

Equinor had already reached a $3 billion offshore power deal with New York in 2019. That wind farm plus the two just announced will have generating capacity sufficient to power 1.8 million homes.

For European oil companies like Equinor, the former Statoil, offshore wind projects provide opportunities to invest billions of dollars to advance their agenda of shifting away from oil and gas toward cleaner energy. Equinor moved early to acquire rights to ocean acreage off the United States and last year agreed to sell a 50 percent stake in its U.S. business to BP for $1.1 billion.

Equinor, other companies and the state will invest $644 million in a port in South Brooklyn and other facilities for constructing and servicing the wind farms, according to the news release.

Tags business, global, Live, market, News, Updates

World News

Covid-19 Vaccine, Instances Reside Updates: The Newest International Information

Post author By
Post date January 12, 2021

James Ivialiotis received his second dose of a Covid-19 vaccine at a nursing home on Staten Island, N.Y., on Monday.

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Christopher Occhicone for The New York Times

The Trump administration, in a major policy shift aimed at accelerating lagging distribution of the coronavirus vaccine, announced on Tuesday that it would release all available doses and instructed states to immediately begin vaccinating every American 65 and older, as well as tens of millions of adults with health conditions that put them at higher risk of dying from the virus.

The announcement, by Health Secretary Alex M. Azar II and other top federal health officials, came amid continuing complaints about the pace of the vaccine rollout. Mr. Azar warned that states will lose their allocations if they don’t use up doses quickly, and that starting in two weeks, how many each state receives will be based on the size of its population of people 65 and older.

Precisely how that will work is unclear; in two weeks, President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. will already have been sworn in as president. Mr. Azar said the incoming Biden administration would be briefed on the changes, though he added that Americans “operate with one government at a time, and this is the approach that we believe best fulfills the mission.”

The new distribution plan, first reported Tuesday morning by Axios, is a reversal for the administration, which had been holding back roughly half of its vaccine supply — millions of vials — to guarantee that second doses would be available. Mr. Azar said the administration always expected to make the shift when it was confident in the supply chain. Both vaccines authorized in the United States so far require two doses: 21 days apart for the one developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, and 28 days apart for the one from Moderna.

“This next phase reflects the urgency of the situation we face,” he said.

Just days ago, Mr. Azar and officials from Operation Warp Speed, the administration’s fast-track vaccine initiative, criticized aides to Mr. Biden for announcing a similar plan. Mr. Azar said at the time that releasing nearly all of the doses, as the Biden team proposed, would jeopardize the “system that manages the flow, to maximize the number of first doses, but knowing there will be a second dose available.”

He called any proposed changes an “untenable position.”

Health officials also recommend that the vaccines be given to all adults with pre-existing conditions that make them more likely to develop serious illness from the virus, such as diabetes, chronic lung or heart disease, high blood pressure and cancer. Before the change, the vaccines were largely being distributed to people in the highest-risk categories, including frontline health care workers and older people in nursing homes.

In addition to the eligibility changes, health officials are also adding more community centers and pharmacies to the list of places where people can be vaccinated.

Mr. Azar’s new directive threatens to create more confusion in states that had already articulated different plans for who should receive the vaccine next. As of Monday, about 9 million people have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, far short of the federal government’s original goals. At least 151,000 people in the United States have been fully vaccinated, as of Jan. 8, according to a New York Times survey of all 50 states. More than 375,000 people have died related to the virus and in recent days, the number of daily deaths in the country has topped 4,000.

Instead of holding back vaccine doses all existing doses will be now sent to states to provide initial inoculations. Second doses are to be provided by new waves of manufacturing.

The idea of using existing vaccine supplies for first doses has raised objections from some health workers and researchers, who worry that frontloading shots will raise the risk that second injections will be delayed. Clinical studies testing the vaccines showed the shots were effective when administered in two-dose regimens on a strict schedule. And while some protection appears to kick in after the first shot, experts remain unsure of the extent of that protection, or how long it might last without the second dose to boost its effects.

But others have vocally advocated for explicit dose delays, arguing that more widely distributing the partial protection afforded by a single shot will save more lives in the meantime.

The new recommendations come after some states have already begun vaccinating people 65 and older, leading to long lines and confusion over how to get a shot. Health experts and officials have faced difficult choices as they decided which groups would be prioritized in the vaccine rollout. While the elderly have died of the virus at the highest rates, essential workers have borne the greatest risk of infection, and the category includes many poor people and people of color, who have suffered disproportionately high rates of infection and death.

Despite the bumpy rollout, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who prioritized people 65 and older from the start, said he believed making all older people eligible was always the right thing to do.

The initial guidelines “would have allowed a 20-year-old healthy worker to get a vaccine before a 74-year-old grandmother,” he said on Tuesday at a news conference in the sprawling retirement community of The Villages. “That does not recognize how this virus has affected elderly people.”

In New York, which began vaccinating people 75 and older and more essential workers this week, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said that the state will accept the new federal guidance to prioritize those 65 and older, though he criticized the administration for not clearly defining who should be considered “immunocompromised.”

The new guidance will make more than 7 million New Yorkers eligible for the vaccine, Mr. Cuomo said, though the state only receives 300,000 doses a week.

“The federal government didn’t give us an additional allocation,” he said. “At 300,000 per week, how do you effectively serve 7 million people, all of whom are now eligible, without any priority?”

New Yorkers 65 and older are immediately able to schedule appointments on the state’s website, according to Melissa DeRosa, a top Cuomo aide, who added that the state was working with the C.D.C. on who is considered immunocompromised.

New guidelines released on Monday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now note that while people should get their second shots “as close to the recommended 3-week or 1-month interval as possible,” there is “no maximum interval between the first and second doses for either vaccine.”

The update perplexed experts, who said that while other, previously licensed vaccines that involve multiple doses can be administered months or even years apart, no evidence yet exists to clearly support this strategy for Covid-19. “They will need to back this up with data,” said Marion Pepper, an immunologist at the University of Washington.

Dr. Leana Wen, an emergency physician at the George Washington School of Public Health, echoed the call for an explanation. With skepticism of vaccines already hindering the rollout of some shots, “the last thing we want to do is give the impression that there are shortcuts being taken in the approval process.”

Health officials in Britain are now allowing intervals between the first and second doses of Pfizer’s vaccines of up to 12 weeks. Last week, the World Health Organization said the injections could be given up to six weeks apart. The agency’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization “considers the administration of both doses within 21 to 28 days to be necessary for optimal protection,” said Saad Omer, a vaccine expert at Yale University who helped draft the WHO’s position on the matter.

In response to queries about dose delays, representatives from Pfizer and Moderna have repeatedly pointed to the company’s clinical trials, which tested dosing regimens of two shots, separated by 21 days for Pfizer, and 28 days for Moderna.

“Two doses of the vaccine are required to provide the maximum protection against the disease, a vaccine efficacy of 95 percent,” Steven Danehy, a spokesman for Pfizer, said earlier this month. “There are no data to demonstrate that protection after the first dose is sustained after 21 days.”

United States ›	United StatesOn Jan. 11	14-day change
New cases	222,902	+37%
New deaths	2,048	+48%

World ›	WorldOn Jan. 11	14-day change
New cases	625,815	+32%
New deaths	10,307	+28%

Where cases per capita are
highest

Credit…Philip Cheung for The New York Times

California is trying to speed up its vaccination efforts, which have lagged amid the state’s struggle with a weekslong deluge of coronavirus cases that has led to some of the most dire consequences in the country.

Emergency rooms have had to shut their doors to ambulances for hours at a time. Nearly one in 10 people has tested positive for the virus in Los Angeles County, the nation’s most populous. And a surge of hospitalizations has caused problems for the oxygen delivery and supply system used by medical facilities.

Over the past week, an average of 480 people daily have died of Covid-19 in the state, according to a New York Times database.

Gov. Gavin Newsom said on Monday that California would employ an “all-hands-on-deck approach” to ramp up vaccinations.

The approach includes transforming Dodger Stadium from one of the nation’s biggest and most visible Covid-19 testing sites into a mass vaccination center. Petco Park, where the San Diego Padres play, and the state fairgrounds in Sacramento are also being set up as vaccination sites, the governor said.

The Orange County board of supervisors said on Monday that the county’s first of five planned “super” vaccination sites would open this week at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, which has been closed for much of the pandemic. Vaccinations will be available by appointment to everyone in “Phase 1a,” which includes frontline health care workers, paramedics, dentists and pharmacists.

Los Angeles County opened vaccine eligibility to a wider group of health care workers on Monday, allowing workers in facilities like primary care clinics, Covid-19 testing centers, laboratories, pharmacies and dental offices, as well as those who work with people who are homeless, to be vaccinated.

Previously, workers in hospitals and long-term-care facilities were prioritized. But as The Los Angeles Times reported, large numbers of health care workers in Los Angeles and Riverside Counties were declining to be inoculated.

And relatively few people in California have gotten vaccine doses, compared with other places: Only 2 percent of the state’s population has received a vaccine, according to a New York Times database; 782,638 doses out of the more than 2.8 million that the state has received have been administered.

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Newsom Broadens Who Can Administer Vaccines

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California described an “all-hands-on-deck approach” that will allow a wider range of health care workers, including pharmacists and dentists, to administer the coronavirus vaccine.

We are sending an urgent call across the spectrum, our health care partners, our legislative partners, as well as labor and business partners up and down the state, this notion of an all-hands-on-deck approach to accelerate the equitable and safe distribution of vaccines. Again, we’re not losing sight of the issue of equity. We’re not losing sight of the imperative to prioritize the most vulnerable and the most essential. So that’s why we talk about our special efforts to vaccinate the vaccinators as part of an all hands on deck — the slide that represents the number of categories of individuals and groups that can currently vaccinate. And you can see the myriad of different registered nurses, physician assistants and the like. But we recognize more folks need to have that ability. And that’s why you recall a week or so ago, we talked about our efforts on pharmacists and pharm techs. We’re seeing more and more paramedics partnering with the counties. Local health officers are encouraging this and we are very supportive of EMTs as this local option for additional vaccinators to help administer these vaccines faster.

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California described an “all-hands-on-deck approach” that will allow a wider range of health care workers, including pharmacists and dentists, to administer the coronavirus vaccine.CreditCredit…Alex Welsh for The New York Times

Dr. Mark Ghaly, California’s secretary of health and human services, said at a news conference on Monday that the state was working to distribute vaccines to those who need them and want them — without allowing wealthy people to cut the line.

Mr. Newsom said the state was allowing a broader range of workers to administer vaccines, including pharmacists and dentists, and was rolling out a public awareness campaign in 18 languages.

“People have said, ‘Well, what about sending in the National Guard?’” he said of the groups administering vaccines. “Well, we have the National Guard out there.”

He also said there were urgent efforts to “vaccinate the vaccinators.”

Credit…Samuel Corum/Getty Images

Three Democratic members of Congress have tested positive for the coronavirus, and say they believe their infections are linked to their time spent in a secure location with colleagues who did not wear masks during last week’s siege of the U.S. Capitol.

Representative Brad Schneider, Democrat of Illinois, said he received a positive test result Tuesday morning after driving home to Illinois, and that he did not have symptoms. Like Representatives Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey and Pramila Jayapal of Washington, two Democrats who had announced positive tests on Monday, he directly blamed a group of House Republicans who refused to wear masks while sheltering in a secure location during the Capitol siege.

“Today, I am now in strict isolation, worried that I have risked my wife’s health and angry at the selfishness and arrogance of the anti-maskers who put their own contempt and disregard for decency ahead of the health and safety of their colleagues and our staff,” Mr. Schneider said.

He called for lawmakers who ignore public health guidance to be sanctioned “and immediately removed from the House floor by the Sergeant-at-arms for their reckless endangerment of their colleagues.”

Capitol Hill has long struggled to contain the spread of the virus, and within hours of the beginning of the 117th Congress on Jan. 3, lawmakers began announcing positive test results.

Now lawmakers, aides, police officers and reporters who fled to secure locations during the siege have been warned that they might have been exposed to the virus while sheltering from the mob.

On Sunday, Representative Chuck Fleischmann, Republican of Tennessee, who was also in protective isolation at the Capitol during the siege, said that he had tested positive for the virus after being exposed to his roommate, Representative Gus Bilirakis of Florida, also a Republican.

Mr. Fleischmann told the local news station WRCB that he was notified Wednesday that Mr. Bilirakis had tested positive, but did not receive the notification amid the riot. He said he did not know how many other lawmakers he had come in contact with.

Democrats, already frustrated by resistance from their Republican colleagues to wearing masks, accused maskless Republicans in the secure House location of reckless indifference.

“It angers me when they refuse to adhere to the directions about keeping their masks on,” Ms. Watson Coleman said in an interview. “It comes off to me as arrogance and defiance. And you can be both, but not at the expense of someone else.”

Ms. Jayapal said on Twitter that she had tested positive “after being locked down in a secured room at the Capitol where several Republicans not only cruelly refused to wear a mask but recklessly mocked colleagues and staff who offered them one.”

Ms. Jayapal, who said she had begun quarantining immediately after the siege on the Capitol, also said that any member of Congress who did not wear a mask should be removed from the floor by the sergeant-at-arms and fined.

“This is not a joke,” she said in a statement. “Our lives and our livelihoods are at risk, and anyone who refuses to wear a mask should be fully held accountable for endangering our lives because of their selfish idiocy.”

Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

This year’s Masters tournament in April will be attended by a limited number of spectators, the Augusta National Golf Club announced Tuesday. The club, which prohibited fans from the event two months ago, did not specify how many fans would be allowed in 2021, adding that spectators would be permitted if “it can be done safely.”

The 2020 Masters was postponed from its usual April date to November because of the coronavirus pandemic and was contested with protocols that included virus testing before the event for all players, caddies, club members, staff and other personnel, including a reduced number of media members.

Fred Ridley, the club chairman, said in a statement issued Tuesday that similar health standards would be instituted for this year’s tournament, which is scheduled to be contested from April 8 to 11. The club, based in Augusta, Ga., made the announcement as the state reported 16 new coronavirus deaths and 7,957 new cases on Jan. 11. Over the past week, there has been an average of 9,604 cases per day, an increase of 55 percent from the average two weeks earlier.

“Following the successful conduct of the Masters Tournament last November with only essential personnel, we are confident in our ability to responsibly invite a limited number of patrons to Augusta National in April,” Ridley said. “As with the November Masters, we will implement practices and policies that will protect the health and safety of everyone in attendance.”

The Augusta National statement said the club was in the process of communicating with all ticket holders and that refunds will be issued to those patrons not selected to attend.

Credit…Noriko Hayashi for The New York Times

Another new coronavirus variant has been detected in four people who traveled to Japan from Brazil.

Japan’s health ministry said that the people who arrived this month at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport had tested positive for the coronavirus and that it was a separate variant with similarities to those detected in Britain and South Africa. It is also distinct from another variant recently identified in Brazil, according to experts who have analyzed the data.

Makoto Shimoaraiso, an official with Japan’s Cabinet Secretariat and Office for Covid-19 Preparedness and Response, said on Tuesday that the country was consulting with the World Health Organization.

It is not unusual for viruses to accumulate mutations or for new variants to emerge. But scientists are calling for greater surveillance of variants, particularly after those from Britain and South Africa proved to be more contagious.

Mr. Shimoaraiso said epidemiologists were not sure whether the variant identified in Japan was more infectious or likely to cause more severe illness.

According to Japan’s health ministry, one of the passengers infected with the new variant, a man in his 40s, was admitted to a hospital after having breathing difficulties. Of the other cases, a woman in her 30s and a teenage boy are experiencing sore throats and fever, and a teenage girl is asymptomatic.

Credit…Andrew Testa for The New York Times

In recent weeks, scientists have raised concerns about a coronavirus variant first detected in December in South Africa, noting that this version of the virus may spread more quickly than its cousins, and perhaps be harder to quash with current vaccines.

Their worries are compounded by skyrocketing Covid-19 cases in the United States and another highly infectious new variant that is driving a surge in Britain.

Scientists still have a lot to learn about these variants, but experts are concerned enough to warn people to be extra-vigilant in masking and social distancing. Here’s what you need to know:

The British variant has been found in about 50 countries, including the United States, where dozens of cases have been identified. The South African variant has spread to about 10 countries but has yet to be detected in the United States.
Both variants carry genetic changes in the virus’s spike protein — the molecule used to unlock and enter human cells — that could make it easier to establish an infection. Researchers estimate that the British variant is about 50 percent more transmissible than its predecessors. Julian Tang, a virologist at the University of Leicester, said that researchers didn’t yet have a good estimate for how much more contagious the South African variant is.
There is no evidence that any of the new variants are more deadly on their own, but an uptick in the spread of any virus creates ripple effects as more people become infected and ill. That can strain already overstretched health care systems and undoubtedly lead to more deaths.
It is unlikely that either variant will completely evade the protective effects of the new Covid vaccines. A recent study, not yet published in a scientific journal, found that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is still effective against a virus carrying a mutation common to both new variants.

The South African variant does carry genetic changes that could make vaccines less effective: One mutation appears to make it harder for antibodies produced by the immune system to recognize the coronavirus, which means they may be less effective at stopping the variant. But it is “important to note that doesn’t mean vaccines won’t be functionally protective,” said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist affiliated with Georgetown University.

Vaccines use multifaceted immune responses, and while some antibodies may be confused by the variant, others probably won’t be. In addition, antibodies are only one sliver of the complex cavalry of immune cells and molecules that battle infectious invaders.

Also, if the virus accumulates more genetic changes, many of the authorized vaccines, including Pfizer’s and Moderna’s, can be adjusted fairly quickly.

Credit…Lucy Nicholson/Reuters

America’s greenhouse gas emissions from energy and industry plummeted more than 10 percent last year, reaching their lowest levels in at least three decades as the pandemic slammed the brakes on the nation’s economy, according to an estimate published Tuesday by the Rhodium Group.

The steep drop was the result of extraordinary circumstances, however, and experts say the United States still faces enormous challenges in getting its planet-warming pollution under control.

“The most significant reductions last year were around transportation, which remains heavily dependent on fossil fuels,” said Kate Larsen, a director at Rhodium Group, a research and consulting firm. “But as vaccines become more prevalent, and depending on how quickly people feel comfortable enough to drive and fly again, we’d expect emissions to rebound unless there are major policy changes put in place.”

Transportation, the nation’s largest source of greenhouse gases, saw a 14.7 percent decline in emissions in 2020 as millions of people stopped driving to work and airlines canceled flights. Although travel started picking up again in the second half of the year as states relaxed lockdowns, Americans drove 15 percent fewer miles last year than in 2019.

Over all, the fall in emissions nationwide was the largest one-year decline since at least World War II, the Rhodium Group said. It put the United States within striking distance of one of the major goals of the Paris climate agreement, a global pact by nearly 200 governments to address climate change.

As part of that agreement, President Barack Obama had pledged that U.S. emissions would fall 17 percent below 2005 levels by last year. President Trump withdrew the country from the Paris accord, and before last year, it appeared that the United States would miss the emissions target. But America’s industrial emissions are now roughly 21.5 percent below 2005 levels.

Scientists say that even a big one-year drop is not enough to stop climate change. Until humanity’s emissions are essentially zeroed out and nations are no longer adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, the planet will continue to heat up. As if to underscore that warning, European researchers announced last week that 2020 was probably tied with 2016 as the hottest year on record.

Global roundup

Credit…Fazry Ismail/EPA, via Shutterstock

Malaysia’s king declared a national state of emergency on Tuesday to stem a surge in coronavirus cases, suspending Parliament, closing nonessential businesses and locking down several states and territories, including the largest city, Kuala Lumpur.

The emergency declaration could last until Aug. 1, and some critics said the main beneficiary would be the prime minister, Muhyiddin Yassin, the head of an unelected government who for months has barely maintained his hold on power.

Mr. Muhyiddin, who asked the king to issue the declaration, went on television to assert that the emergency measure was necessary to contain the virus — and that it was not about extending his political career.

“Let me assure you, the civilian government will continue to function,” he said. “The emergency proclaimed by the king is not a military coup.”

Mr. Muhyiddin promised to hold a general election after the virus was brought under control.

Malaysia was mostly successful in containing the virus for much of last year, but the number of infections began rising in October and reached a daily peak of more than 3,000 new cases on Thursday. The surge was caused in part by an election campaign in the state of Sabah and by an outbreak among migrant workers. The government reported a total of more than 141,000 cases and 559 deaths as of Tuesday.

Mr. Muhyiddin came to power in March after the previous government collapsed. He formed a new coalition and the king appointed him prime minister without a parliamentary vote. Opponents have since questioned whether he has the support of a majority of Parliament’s 222 members.

Now, the king’s declaration means that no parliamentary vote or general election can be held for more than six months, as long as the virus persists.

James Chin, professor of Asian studies at the University of Tasmania, said the declaration gave Mr. Muhyiddin extraordinary powers, including the authority to pass laws that override existing ones and to use the military for police work.

“Politically he will benefit the most from this Covid emergency,” he said. “This will give him what he wants without any scrutiny from Parliament.”

Other global developments:

Taiwan on Tuesday reported two locally transmitted coronavirus infections: a doctor and a nurse at a hospital in the northern part of the island that treats coronavirus patients. They are Taiwan’s first locally transmitted cases since Dec. 22, when it reported the first such case since April.
The European Union’s top drug regulator said it would assess the coronavirus vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University “under an accelerated timeline,” after receiving an application for emergency authorization of the drug.
The leader of the German state of Bavaria has urged health care workers to do their “civic duty” by getting vaccinated, and called on the government to consider making coronavirus vaccinations for medical personnel mandatory in some cases. And about half of the staff at Charité, Germany’s largest research hospital, has refused to receive vaccine shots, according to Dr. Andrej Trampuz, a department head at the facility.
Because of high infection numbers, Berlin residents will be restricted from traveling more than about 9 miles outside the city, under new rules agreed to by German lawmakers. The distance of travel within Berlin is not being limited.
A couple who were out walking on Saturday night in Sherbrooke, Quebec, told the police that they were in compliance with a new overnight curfew because the wife was walking her crawling husband on a leash like a dog, CTV News reported. People walking their dogs are excluded from the province’s curfew, which is in effect from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m., as are essential workers and those seeking medical care. The pair were fined 1,500 Canadian dollars each. The province’s leader, François Legault, said on Monday that 740 people were fined over the weekend for violating the curfew, the first of its kind in Canada.

Credit…Hilary Swift for The New York Times

Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, chief of the infectious diseases division at Massachusetts General Hospital and a professor at Harvard, has been nominated by President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. to be director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In a column for The New York Times Opinion section, excerpted here, she writes about her plans for the agency.

On Jan. 20, I will begin leading the C.D.C., which was founded in 1946 to meet precisely the kinds of challenges posed by this pandemic. I agreed to serve as C.D.C. director because I believe in the agency’s mission and commitment to knowledge, statistics and guidance. I will do so by leading with facts, science and integrity — and being accountable for them, as the C.D.C. has done since its founding 75 years ago.

I acknowledge that our team of scientists will have to work very hard to restore public trust in the C.D.C., at home and abroad, because it has been undermined over the last year. In that time, numerous reports stated that White House officials interfered with official guidance issued by the C.D.C.

As chief of the infectious diseases division at Massachusetts General Hospital, I and many others found these reports to be extremely disturbing. The C.D.C.’s science — the gold standard for the nation’s public health — has been tarnished. Hospitals, doctors, state health officials and others rely on the guidance of the C.D.C., not just for Covid-19 policies around quarantine, isolation, testing and vaccination, but also for staying healthy while traveling, strategies to prevent obesity, information on food safety and more.

Restoring the public’s trust in the C.D.C. is crucial. Hospitals and health care providers are beyond tired, beyond stretched. I know because I have stood among them, on the front lines of the Covid-19 response in Massachusetts. We also face the need for the largest public health operation in a century, vaccinating the population — twice — to protect ourselves and each other from a surging pandemic. Because the impact of Covid-19 does not fall equally on everyone, we must redouble our efforts to reach every corner of the U.S. population.

The research and guidance provided by the civil servants at the C.D.C. should continue regardless of what political party is in power. Novel scientific breakthroughs do not follow four-year terms. As I start my new duties, I will tell the president, Congress and the public what we know when we know it, and I will do so even when the news is bleak, or when the information may not be what those in the administration want to hear.

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Gorillas Test Positive for Coronavirus at San Diego Zoo

Officials at the zoo’s Safari Park said that several gorillas had tested positive for the virus and that they believed an asymptomatic staff member infected the animals.

They’re doing OK, they’re experiencing some mild symptoms. And we continue to observe them. But they’re drinking, they’re eating and they’re interacting with one another. So we suspect that the gorillas got this virus from an asymptomatic team member. And that’s despite all of the precautions that we take. We follow C.D.C. guidelines. We follow San Diego County health guidelines. The team wears P.P.E. around all of our wildlife. And so even with all those precautions, we still have an exposure that we think happened with that team member. This virus has been very, very tricky. We’ve done everything we can to respond to it and make sure that we’re taking all the precautions and following all the guidelines that we can. But as we see it evolving everywhere around the world right now, we know that it is, it is, it’s evolving. It’s changing. And the best that we can do for humans and wildlife is just to ensure that we stay up to date on any protocols, that we remain nimble so that we can respond accordingly and make sure that we’re doing the very best we can to protect both our team, our guests and wildlife.

Officials at the zoo’s Safari Park said that several gorillas had tested positive for the virus and that they believed an asymptomatic staff member infected the animals.CreditCredit…Ken Bohn/San Diego Zoo Global/Via Reuters

Several gorillas at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park have tested positive for the coronavirus, becoming what federal officials say are the first known apes in the United States to be infected.

Zoo officials said on Monday that they believed the gorillas were infected by an asymptomatic staff member who had been following safety recommendations, including wearing personal protective equipment when near animals.

Veterinarians are closely monitoring the troop, which is made up of eight western lowland gorillas. The infected animals are expected to make a full recovery, officials said.

“Aside from some congestion and coughing, the gorillas are doing well,” Lisa Peterson, the Safari Park’s executive director, said in a statement.

Three animals are exhibiting symptoms, officials said. And because gorillas live together in troops, “we have to assume,” the zoo said, “that all members of the family group have been exposed.”

The total number of western lowland gorillas, which can be found in central Africa, has declined more than 60 percent over the past two decades, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

Zoo officials learned that at least two gorillas had been infected with the coronavirus after the animals were observed on Wednesday “coughing and showing other mild symptoms,” the zoo said in the statement.

The zoo’s Safari Park has been closed since Dec. 6 amid a lockdown, and the primate habitat where the gorillas are housed poses “no public health risk,” officials said. Last year, as the pandemic spread across the country, the zoo installed additional barriers to ensure that more than six feet of space separated visitors from “susceptible species,” officials said.

The gorillas are among the latest animals in the country to become infected with the coronavirus. In April, the first case of human-to-cat transmission was detected in a tiger at the Bronx Zoo in New York City. In August, minks on two farms in Utah tested positive. In December, a coronavirus infection in a snow leopard was detected at the Louisville Zoo in Kentucky.

VideoMayor Bill de Blasio of New York City announced on Tuesday that CitiField, the Mets’ home stadium in Queens, will be a “24/7 mega-vaccination site” starting the week of Jan. 25.CreditCredit…Ryan Christopher Jones for The New York Times

Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City announced on Tuesday that CitiField, the Mets’ home stadium in Queens, will be a mass vaccination site starting the week of Jan. 25. The site will operate around the clock, seven days a week, with the capacity to vaccinate 5,000 to 7,000 people a day, Mr. de Blasio said. The location is ideal, the mayor said, because it is right next to a subway and railroad station and has plenty of parking.

“It’s going to be big, and it’s going to be a game changer,” Mr. de Blasio said at a news conference on Tuesday.

Large sports venues across the country have been used as sites for mass coronavirus testing, and more recently for vaccination, including the home stadiums of the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres baseball teams, the Arizona Cardinals of the N.F.L. and the San Antonio Spurs of the N.B.A. Testing and vaccination efforts at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami were temporarily suspended on Monday to allow the college football championship game between Alabama and Ohio State to be played there.

The pool of people eligible for the vaccine in New York has recently expanded to include teachers and a range of other essential workers, as well as any resident who is 65 or older. At first, the vaccine was limited to frontline health care workers and nursing home residents.

The CitiField location is part of New York City’s initiative to establish mass inoculation sites in each of the city’s five boroughs. Vaccination centers opened in Brooklyn and the Bronx this week; locations in Manhattan and Staten Island have not yet been announced.

More than 26,000 vaccine doses were administered in the city on Monday, according to Mr. de Blasio, who is trying step up the pace of inoculations. The mayor has said his goal is to have one million doses administered by the end of January.

Mr. Cuomo, a third-term Democrat, said on Tuesday that the state intended to set up a series of rapid testing sites in areas where restrictions have closed indoor dining and arts events, and closed offices. Some of these sites would be located in vacant retail spaces or shuttered businesses, he said, promising hundreds of “pop-up” testing sites.

At the same time, Mr. Cuomo wants to reopen office buildings — a major element of New York City’s economy, both for their tenants and developers — saying he had received assurances from their owners that they could ramp up testing for workers. “Bringing workers back safely will boost ridership on our mass transit, bring customers back to restaurants and stores, and return life to our streets,” he said.

Credit…Alex Welsh for The New York Times

How well a country has responded to Covid-19 is not explained by the country’s economic power or scientific capacity, but by how its people relate to one another and their government, according to preliminary findings of a research study.

“Countries with traditions of acting in concert against social problems, and countries with histories of deference to public authorities, fared better on compliance than countries lacking either or both,” the researchers wrote.

Investigators compared characteristics of 23 countries on six continents, considering outcomes related to disease burden, economic impact and disparities. In the United States, rated as one of the poorest-performing countries, “the virus ‘exploited’ pre-existing weaknesses” in public health, the economy and politics.

Before the pandemic, numerous reports and congressional testimony “recognized vulnerabilities that became apparent during Covid-19,” another study found, including threats of viruses emerging from animals, economic disruption, inadequate stockpiles and vulnerability to global supply shortages. For that study, researchers compiled more than 1,200 pre-pandemic records in an expanding online library that was introduced on Tuesday — Health Security Net — in the hopes that it will “inform future planning and response efforts.”

Another team, studying five countries in Africa, found that national leaders there had quickly recognized the threat from the virus and imposed measures to limit its importation and spread. “That managed to at least curtail the outbreak,” said Wilmot James, a Columbia University research scholar who was one of the study’s principal investigators, “but the impacts on the economies were quite devastating.”

The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a four-year-old institution modeled in part on its U.S. counterpart, was unique in providing technical assistance for an entire continent.

The research reports were released Tuesday in conjunction with a two-day symposium, the Futures Forum on Preparedness, supported by Schmidt Futures and the Social Science Research Council.

Tags cases, Covid19, global, latest, Live, News, Updates, Vaccine

Business

Asia dominates world field workplace, reveals U.S. has a path to restoration

Post author By
Post date January 10, 2021

Asia dominates global box office, shows U.S. has a path to recovery

Moviegoers wear face masks in a projection hall of a movie theater almost six months after they closed due to a coronavirus pandemic on July 24, 2020 in Beijing, China.

China News Service | China News Service | Getty Images

In a year marked by a deadly global pandemic, Japan’s box office set a new record.

An animated film based on a popular manga called “Demon Slayer” became the top grossing film in the country’s history, beating the record for Hayao Miyazaki’s “Spirited Away” in 2001. It has ticket sales of more than US $ 322 million Dollars earned.

Japan, an island nation in East Asia of more than 126 million people, has had fewer than 300,000 coronavirus cases and only saw box office revenues drop by 46% in 2020 to $ 1.27 billion.

By comparison, the domestic box office slumped 80% to $ 2.28 billion as U.S. coronavirus cases have topped 21.6 million since the pandemic began. Canada, a box office employee, has seen fewer than 645,000 cases, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Japan is just one of many countries in the Asia-Pacific region that have managed to manage the coronavirus pandemic in such a way that case numbers have remained low and consumer confidence has remained high.

In countries like China, Australia and South Korea, where cases of Covid have dropped significantly, analysts and operators are seeing box offices rebound and thrive.

In fact, its market share in the Asia-Pacific region increased in 2020. While the global box office was significantly lower last year – about 70% of its 2019 value, or about $ 12.4 billion – the Asia-Pacific region accounts for 51% of the Ticket sales. In 2019, these countries accounted for 41%, according to data from Comscore and analysis from Gower Street.

By comparison, in 2019 the US and Canadian box offices accounted for 30% of global ticket sales. In 2020 this market share fell to just 18%.

The Asia-Pacific region has gone to great lengths to fight the coronavirus, including breaking travel, setting up extensive testing and tracing of contacts, hiring masks, and implementing strict social distancing rules. Regardless of the approach taken by each country, its ability to reduce coronavirus cases and reopen their economies shows that if the US is able to do the same, similar results can be achieved.

So far, the response to coronavirus in America has been slow, and cases continue to climb to historic levels, with hospital stays and deaths increasing too.

As of August, when the majority of the world’s theaters reopened, the Asia-Pacific region has nearly 78% of the world’s total box office.

Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore, said these countries have bounced back after widespread theater closings.

First, these countries have been able to control their outbreaks by banning their outbreaks, introducing contact tracing and enforcing mask mandates. The reduction in the number of cases and strict preventive measures have increased the confidence of potential moviegoers.

Second, these countries had new non-Hollywood films to release. Domestically, the box office stalled because there was no new product for the audience to see. Even when theaters reopened with limited capacity, most of the films were legacy titles such as Star Wars, Jaws, and Goonies.

In the Asia-Pacific region, there was always new content in the studios to get people off their couches. And moviegoers turned out in droves.

In China, two films have generated more than $ 400 million at the local box office: “The Eight Hundred,” a war drama from the 1930s, and “My People, My Homeland,” a comedy film made up of five short stories . Both films were released in the second half of the year.

By comparison, the top grossing film in the US and Canada in 2020 was Sony’s “Bad Boys for Life”. The action film, starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, is the third in the Bad Boys franchise and was released in January before the virus spread to the United States. It raised $ 204 million during its theatrical release.

No film released domestically in the second half of the year reached nearly $ 100 million.

Universal’s family animated film “The Croods: A New Age” and Warner Bros.’s superhero sequel “Wonder Woman 1984” both made less than $ 30 million domestically. Another Warner Bros title, Tenet, was released on Labor Day weekend and did not exceed $ 60 million in its theatrical release.

“There is no doubt that going back to a normal big screen market will take a lot of time and patience,” said Dergarabedian. “However, the lessons of the example of countries that have rallied strongly in recent months show that a well-managed Covid response and engaging new films can work together to spark box office prosperity now and in the future kindle. “

Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC. “The Croods: A New Age” is an NBCUniversal film.

Tags Asia, Box, dominates, global, Office, Path, recovery, Shows

Business

Alden World Bids for Management of Tribune

Post author By
Post date January 3, 2021

Alden Global Bids for Control of Tribune

In August, when most newspaper workers had been working remotely for months, Tribune announced that The Daily News’ physical newsroom will be permanently closed. That announcement was quickly followed by the closure of The Morning Call newsrooms in Allentown, Pennsylvania; The Orlando Sentinel; The Carroll County Times in Westminster, Md .; and The Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Md. In December, the newsroom of another Tribune daily newspaper, The Hartford Courant, which has been operating since 1764, went dark.

In the proposal letter to the Tribune Board, Mr. Smith von Alden said his company had held discussions with Stewart Bainum Jr., a Maryland chief executive and former politician, to gauge his “interest in certain Tribune assets”.

Mason Slaine, a former CEO of Thomson Financial, who owns around 7 percent of the Tribune’s shares, has publicly proposed to Tribune that they sell individual newspapers. Mr. Slaine, who has a home in Boca Raton, Florida, has expressed an interest in purchasing a grandstand newspaper, The Sun Sentinel of South Florida.

Revenue for the local news industry has declined over the past 15 years as readers increasingly preferred to get the news on screens rather than in print newspapers. Alden and other hedge funds have nonetheless managed to generate profits from newspaper chains through strict management practices, and the financial sector has sparked a wave of consolidation in the news media business.

In 2019, Gannett, the editor of USA Today, was acquired by New Media Investment Group, the parent company of GateHouse Media, to create a giant (named Gannett) that publishes roughly one in five daily newspapers in the country. The supersize version of Gannett was created thanks to nearly $ 2 billion in funding from Apollo Global Management, a private equity firm.

In 2020, the last of the big family-owned chains, McClatchy, emerged from bankruptcy as the property of Chatham Asset Management, a New Jersey hedge fund. Chatham also has a controlling interest in Postmedia, one of Canada’s largest newspaper publishers. Since taking over the Canadian media company, 1,600 employees have been laid off and more than 30 publications have been discontinued.

Tags Alden, Bids, control, global, Tribune

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Pandora’s box

Here’s what you need to know:

U.S. vaccinations ›

N.Y.C. Snowstorm Delays Vaccinations

On Monday, Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York postponed coronavirus vaccinations to prevent older residents from traveling to appointments in blizzard-like conditions.

Biden to Discuss Pandemic Relief Package With Republicans

President Biden will meet with 10 Republican senators on Monday who have proposed a much smaller Covid-19 relief package. Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, told reporters that the Mr. Biden’s biggest concern is releasing a package that is too small.

Notable examples

How can that happen?

Here’s what you need to know:

Fauci Warns New Virus Mutations Are a ‘Wake-Up Call’

On Friday, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci warned that new virus variants, despite the global vaccine distribution, should offer a wake-up call to the continuing dangers of the pandemic.

U.S. vaccinations ›

E.U. Plans to Halt Vaccine Exports Until Supply Contracts Are Met

The European Union announced a plan that would effectively stop AstraZeneca from shipping Covid-19 vaccine doses manufactured in the bloc to other countries until its E.U. supply contracts are met.

N.Y.C. Indoor Dining to Reopen on Valentine’s Day

On Friday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced that indoor dining in New York City could resume at up to 25 percent capacity starting on Valentine’s Day.

Canadian Airlines Suspend Flights to the Caribbean and Mexico

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada announced on Friday that major airlines have agreed to suspend flights to sunny vacation spots as new coronavirus quarantine measures are put into place.

W.H.O. Delivers Update on China Visit

On Friday, the World Health Organization reviewed the details of its investigation into the origin of the coronavirus in China, and what it hopes to learn from the visit.

New York City Sets ‘Aggressive Goal’ of 5 Million Vaccinations by June

Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city is aiming to vaccinate 5 million New Yorkers against Covid-19 by June. He also announced plans to bring city workers back to offices in May and reopen schools for all students in September.

Here’s what you need to know:

Here’s what you need to know:

Where cases per capita are highest

Newsom Broadens Who Can Administer Vaccines

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California described an “all-hands-on-deck approach” that will allow a wider range of health care workers, including pharmacists and dentists, to administer the coronavirus vaccine.

Gorillas Test Positive for Coronavirus at San Diego Zoo

Officials at the zoo’s Safari Park said that several gorillas had tested positive for the virus and that they believed an asymptomatic staff member infected the animals.

Where cases per capita are
highest