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People line up early at the Jacob Javits Convention Center Covid-19 vaccination hub on March 4, 2021.Credit…Timothy A. Clary/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The average number of vaccine doses being administered across the United States per day topped two million for the first time on Wednesday, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A month ago, the average was about 1.3 million.

President Biden set a goal for the country shortly after taking office to administer more than 1.5 million doses a day, which the nation has now comfortably exceeded.

Mr. Biden has also promised to administer 100 million vaccines by his 100th day in office, which is April 30. As of Thursday, 54 million people have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine. Johnson & Johnson’s one-shot vaccine was authorized for emergency use on Saturday, but those doses do not appear yet in the C.D.C. data.

The milestone was yet another sign of momentum in the nation’s effort to vaccinate every willing adult, even as state and city governments face several challenges, from current supply to logistics to hesitancy, of getting all of those doses into people’s arms.

Mass vaccination sites across the country are opening up or increasing their capacity, in part to respond to the new influx of doses from Johnson & Johnson. In New York, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced on Thursday that three short-term mass vaccination sites will open in the state on Friday. Three other state-run sites, including one at Yankee Stadium, will begin administering shots around the clock. In Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp announced five new sites will open on March 17.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has recently helped open seven mega-sites in California, New York and Texas, that are staffed with active-duty troops. In Chicago, a vaccination site at the United Center will open next week, with a capacity of 6,000 shots a day. Many more such sites are planned.

There have been some hiccups in the massive logistical challenge of distributing millions of doses across the country, with special requirements for storage and handling. In Texas, more than 2,000 doses went to waste over the past two weeks, according to an analysis by The Houston Chronicle. A majority of those losses were blamed on blackouts that swept the state in February, leaving millions of homes and businesses without power, some for multiple days.

And Mr. Biden has made equity a major focus of his pandemic response, saying he wants pharmacies, mobile vaccination units and community clinics that help underserved communities to help increase the pace of vaccinations. Experts say that Black and Latino Americans are being vaccinated at lower rates because they face obstacles like language barriers and inadequate access to digital technology, medical facilities and transportation. But mistrust in government officials and doctors also plays a role and is fed by misinformation that is spread on social media. In cities across the country, wealthy white residents are lining up to be vaccinated in low-income Latino and Black communities.

The president said on Tuesday that the country would have enough doses available for every American adult by the end of May, though he said it would take longer to inoculate everyone and he urged people to remain vigilant by wearing masks.

The administration also announced it had brokered a deal in which the drug giant Merck & Co. will help manufacture the new Johnson & Johnson vaccine. The unusual agreement between two rivals in the pharmaceutical industry was “historic,” Mr. Biden said on Tuesday. “This is a type of collaboration between companies we saw in World War II.”

Mr. Biden was also going to invoke the Defense Production Act, a Korean War-era law, to give Johnson & Johnson access to supplies for manufacturing and packaging vaccines.

United States ›	United StatesOn March 3	14-day change
New cases	66,714	–17%
New deaths	2,369	–8%

World ›	WorldOn March 3	14-day change
New cases	419,698	+1%
New deaths	10,837	–19%

U.S. vaccinations ›

Austin, Texas, on Wednesday. The state has been affected deeply by the coronavirus pandemic, recording more than 44,000 deaths and nearly 2.7 million cases.Credit…Montinique Monroe/Getty Images

Some governors across the United States are taking widely diverging approaches to mask mandates, as federal officials, including President Biden, warn that despite a drop in coronavirus cases, it is too soon to stop wearing masks.

On Thursday, Gov. Kay Ivey of Alabama, a Republican, extended her state’s mask mandate for another month. Striking a different tone than those of her Republican peers in Mississippi and Texas, she said she wanted to keep what she called an effective policy to require masks for a bit longer, telling residents that masks would not be required in public beyond April 9 when other restrictions would also be lifted.

“There’s no question that wearing masks has been one of my greatest tools in combating the virus,” she said at a news conference.

In response to decisions this week to lift statewide mask mandates by Gov. Tate Reeves of Mississippi and Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, Mr. Biden said on Wednesday that those moves were a “big mistake.”

“The last thing we need is Neanderthal thinking that in the meantime, everything’s fine, take off your mask and forget it,” Mr. Biden told reporters at the White House. “It’s critical, critical, critical, critical that they follow the science.”

Even a fellow Republican, Gov. Jim Justice of West Virginia, said it was a bad idea to ignore the advice of the experts.

“I don’t know really what the big rush to get rid of the mask is, because these masks have saved a lot, a lot of lives,” Mr. Justice said Thursday on CNN, adding that he, too, looks forward to the day when he doesn’t have to wear a mask.

The governor issued a mask mandate over the summer instructing people to wear masks indoors when social distancing was not possible. In November, he extended the mandate to wearing a mask at all times except when eating or drinking, and in recent months has become a Biden ally, at least on the stimulus package.

“If we don’t watch out, we can make some mistakes,” Mr. Justice said.

Mr. Biden has asked that for his first 100 days in office, which ends in April, Americans fight the spread of the virus in a variety of ways, including wearing a mask, getting vaccinated and continuing to follow health precautions. He and his top health advisers have emphasized the benefit of wearing masks, and warned about the trajectory of cases nationwide and the detection of more cases of virus variants across the country.

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At the White House on Thursday, Jen Psaki, the press secretary, said the president’s comments about “Neanderthal thinking” was “a reflection of his frustration and exasperation” with the governors of Mississippi and Texas for undermining the message about the need to continue wearing masks.

“Our concern here is on the health, welfare and well being — and survival, frankly — of people across the country and in states where the recommendations from leadership is not following health and medical guidelines,” she said. “So we have concerns about the impact on the population.”

In Mississippi, Mr. Reeves was unrepentant after Mr. Biden’s admonishment.

“Mississippians don’t need handlers,” he said. “As numbers drop, they can assess their choices and listen to experts. I guess I just think we should trust Americans, not insult them.”

Mr. Reeves did, however, encourage his citizens to “do the right thing” and wear a mask.

So did Mr. Abbott this week in Texas, where vaccinations considerably trail the national average, more than 7,000 new cases are being reported a day and, in recent weeks, ominous variants of the virus have appeared.

On Tuesday, Mr. Abbott framed his decision as long-awaited relief after an exhausting stretch of isolation and hardship.

Kaitlyn Urenda-Culpepper, a Dallas resident whose mother died from Covid-19 in July, said there was no choice now but to hope that the governor had made a wise decision.

“I don’t want him to be wrong,” she said. “But, obviously, for the greater good of the people, I’m like, ‘Man, you better be right and not cost us tens of thousands more people.’”

Erin Coulehan contributed reporting.

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Alabama Governor Extends Statewide Mask Order Until April

Gov. Kay Ivey of Alabama on Thursday said she would keep a statewide mask order in place until April 9, breaking with Republican governors who planned to end mask mandates against the advice of health officials.

We need to get past Easter, and hopefully allow more Alabamians to get their first shot before we take a step that some of the states have taken to remove the mask order altogether and lift other restrictions. Folks, we’re not there yet, but goodness knows we’re getting closer. Our new modified order will include several changes that will ease up some of our current restrictions while keeping our mask order in place for another five weeks through April 9. But let me be abundantly clear, after April the 9th, I will not keep the mask order in effect. Now, there’s no question that wearing masks has been one of our greatest tools in combating the spread of the virus. That, along with practicing good hygiene and social distancing, has helped us keep more people from getting sick or worse, dying. And when we — even when we lift the mask order, I will continue to wear my mask while I’m around others and strongly urge my fellow citizens to use common sense and do the same thing. But at the — but at that time, it will become a matter of personal responsibility and not a government mandate.

Gov. Kay Ivey of Alabama on Thursday said she would keep a statewide mask order in place until April 9, breaking with Republican governors who planned to end mask mandates against the advice of health officials.CreditCredit…Jake Crandall/The Montgomery Advertiser, via Associated Press

Gov. Kay Ivey of Alabama on Thursday said she was extending the statewide mask order for another month, breaking with two other Republican governors who have announced plans to lift mandates in their states against the advice of federal health officials.

Aside from her decision on the mask mandate, which will now be in place until April 9, Ms. Ivey said other virus related restrictions, including allowing restaurants and breweries to operate at full capacity, will also be lifted then.

“There’s no question that wearing masks has been one of my greatest tools in combating the virus,” she said at a news conference.

New coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths are down in the state, according to a New York Times database. About 14 percent of the residents in the state have received at least one dose of the vaccine. The state’s health officer, Dr. Scott Harris, said the state had already given more than a million vaccine shots.

“We need to get past Easter and hopefully allow more Alabamians to get their first shot before we take a step some other states have taken to remove the mask order altogether and lift some other restrictions,” Ms. Ivey said on Thursday. “Folks we’re not there yet, but goodness knows we’re getting closer.”

In recent days, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, has been pleading with state officials not to relax health precautions now, warning about the trajectory of cases nationwide and the detection of more cases of virus variants across the country.

“We are just on the verge of capitalizing on the culmination of a historic scientific success: the ability to vaccinate the country in just a matter of three or four more months,” Dr. Walensky said on Wednesday. “How this plays out is up to us. The next three months are pivotal.”

And President Biden on Wednesday criticized officials in several states, including Texas and Mississippi, for lifting mask mandates, describing their actions as “Neanderthal thinking” and insisting that it was a “big mistake” for people to stop wearing masks.

Ms. Ivey issued a statewide mask order last summer when the number of cases in the state soared less than three months after she eased restrictions at the end of April. The mask mandate has drawn criticism from members of her own party. She extended it in January when the state was seeing a second surge of cases.

On Thursday, she said she planned to wear her mask around others, even after the statewide over was lifted. She urged residents to “use common sense and do the same thing.”

A nurse prepared a dose of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine in Lyon, France, in February.Credit…Pool photo by Olivier Chassignole

Italy blocked a shipment of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine from being flown to Australia on Thursday, making good on the European Union’s recent threats to clamp down on exports of the shots and ratcheting up a global tug of war over vaccine supplies.

It was the first time that a member country used new E.U. regulations to keep vaccine from being exported. The shipment consisted of more than 250,000 doses.

Italy’s foreign ministry said that Italy acted because Australia is regarded as a “nonvulnerable” country under the new regulations; because vaccines are in short supply in Italy and the European Union generally; and because of delays in AstraZeneca’s vaccine deliveries to the bloc’s member countries.

The new regulations empower the E.U.’s members to keep any vaccine doses made within the bloc from being sent abroad if the manufacturer has not yet met its supply obligations to member countries. Pfizer and AstraZeneca are the two companies currently manufacturing vaccines within the bloc.

So far, the European Commission has approved 174 requests for export authorizations.

Australia has had fewer coronavirus cases, relative to its size, than almost any other large developed country, and has been recently averaging only nine new cases a day, according to a New York Times database. Italy, with less than three times the population of Australia, is averaging more than 18,000 new cases a day.

AstraZeneca applied on Feb. 24 for an authorization for the Australia shipment. Two days later, Italy told the European Commission it intended to deny the application, the foreign ministry said in statement Thursday night. After the commission offered no objection, the ministry said it notified AstraZeneca of the denial on Tuesday.

For earlier shipments, “Italy gave its authorization because they were small quantities aimed at activities of scientific research,” the foreign ministry said. “However, this time it was 250,700 doses.”

AstraZeneca declined to comment.

The company infuriated E.U. officials in January when it said it would significantly cut its planned February and March deliveries to member nations. They accused the company of sending doses to Britain that had been promised to the European Union, in breach of contractual obligations.

Valdis Dombrovskis, a top commission official, said in announcing the new export control regulations that the situation had “left us with no choice other than to act.”

The commission has maintained that the controls are about transparency, not vaccine nationalism. But with Europe’s sluggish vaccination campaigns lagging behind those of other developed nations and the bloc growing desperate for doses, member countries have signaled a willingness to use the rules for their own benefit.

Prime Minister Mario Draghi of Italy pressed fellow European leaders in a meeting last week to use all tools at hand to hold pharmaceutical companies accountable for delays in delivering doses.

Administering the Russian vaccine Sputnik V to a patient at Bacs-Kiskun County Training Hospital in Kecskemet, Hungary, in February.Credit…Sandor Ujvari/EPA, via Shutterstock

The European Union drug regulator announced on Thursday that it was beginning a rolling review of the Russian-developed Sputnik V vaccine, after one of the bloc’s members moved unilaterally to use the shots and another is about to do the same.

The announcement by the regulator, the European Medicines Agency, comes amid a slow and frustrating vaccine rollout in the European Union that has been dogged by supply disappointments as well as major logistical problems.

The review is the formal process the agency uses, in which scientists examine data on the shots’ efficacy and side effects — it is the fastest way to examine the vaccine as a whole, with a view to eventually granting it authorization for use in the European Union.

The agency said in a news statement that the Gamaleya Research Institute, which developed the vaccine, had applied for the rolling review through a Germany-based entity named R-Pharm Germany.

Hungary broke with the bloc and ordered its own share of Sputnik V vaccines this year, granting the shots authorization locally through its national regulator. As the supply woes in the European Union began to bite, the Czech Republic this month announced it would follow suit. A deal to acquire the Russian vaccine has also set off a political crisis in Slovakia.

Several other European governments were considering a similar move, despite the fact that Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, recently cast doubt on the Sputnik V vaccine.

“We still wonder why Russia is offering theoretically millions of millions of doses while not sufficiently progressing in vaccinating their own people,” Ms. von der Leyen said during a news conference last month.

“This is also a question I think that should be answered,” she added. “They have to submit the whole set of data, indeed go through the whole scrutiny process like any other vaccine.”

While the announcement of the review is an important step in the formal scientific scrutiny by the European regulator, there is no telling how long the process will take. The agency will require deep access to data underlying the vaccine’s performance, as well as site visits to its production facilities, before granting authorization.

A drive-through vaccination site at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles last week.Credit…Philip Cheung for The New York Times

Hoping to hasten its emergence from the coronavirus pandemic, California will begin channeling 40 percent of new vaccine doses to low-income communities pummeled by the coronavirus, officials in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration said late on Wednesday.

The strategy is an effort to make the vaccine rollout more equitable and to reduce the number of counties considered most at risk, as well as to speed California’s ability to reopen, officials said.

Once 400,000 more doses are administered in the target communities, the state will ease restrictions in high-risk counties, officials said, a threshold that could be reached in about two weeks.

The targeted communities are defined using a composite “health equity” index that assesses need based on income, education, transportation and housing availability. State data has indicated that when vaccination efforts are targeted at poorer Californians, wealthier people have gamed the system. Black and Latino residents have been inoculated in smaller numbers than their white neighbors.

Eligible only in some counties

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Eligible only in some counties

California faced a surge in infections in December and January, but cases have fallen 40 percent statewide — to late October levels — in the past two weeks, intensifying calls for the state government to relax restrictions.

Mr. Newsom, whose handling of the pandemic has helped fuel a Republican-led recall campaign against him, has crisscrossed the state, opening vaccination centers and assuring people that immunization is the “light at the end of the tunnel.” But he has also made clear that the virus and its variants remain lethal: At least 287 new coronavirus deaths and 4,316 new cases were reported in California on March 2.

When the governor of Texas announced this week that the state would lift its mask mandate, Mr. Newsom tweeted that the move was “absolutely reckless.”

Administration officials said California would keep in place its mask mandate. The vaccine blitz, they said, was aimed at quashing the further spread of Covid-19 so people could go back to work and businesses could reopen safely.

About 1.6 million vaccine doses have so far been delivered in low-income communities.

Once two million vaccines have been administered in those locations, officials said, the state will adjust its color-coded tier system to make it easier for counties to move into less restrictive categories, which will hasten the reopening of schools. When there are four million doses in the targeted areas, additional tiers will be adjusted to further ease reopenings.

A security officer in Baghdad on Wednesday. The pope’s visit flies in the face of nearly all public health guidelines.Credit…Ahmed Jalil/EPA, via Shutterstock

A surge in coronavirus cases has prompted Iraqi officials to impose lockdowns. Shia authorities have suspended religious pilgrimages. And on Sunday, the Vatican’s ambassador contracted the virus and went into isolation.

For good measure, suicide bombings, rocket attacks and geopolitical tensions have increased, too.

But Pope Francis — to the bewilderment of many — is intent on going anyway.

After more than a year cooped up behind the Vatican walls, Francis is to fly to Baghdad on Friday at one of the most virulent moments of the entire pandemic, sending a message that flies in the face of nearly all public health guidelines.

“The day after tomorrow, God willing, I will go to Iraq for a three-day pilgrimage,” the pope said on Wednesday in his weekly address. “I ask that you accompany this apostolic trip with prayer so that it can occur in the best way possible, bear the hoped-for fruit. The Iraqi people await us.”

Francis was vaccinated in mid-January, and has called on wealthy countries to give vaccines to poorer ones, calling a refusal to vaccinate “suicidal.”

The pope’s entourage is also vaccinated, but there is anxiety among his supporters that a trip intended largely to bring encouragement to Iraq’s long-suffering Christians has the potential to be a superspreader event. The possibility of the 84-year-old pope’s inadvertently endangering an Iraqi population with practically no access to vaccines is not lost on his allies back in Rome.

“There is this concern that the pope’s visit not put the people’s health at risk, this is evident,” said Antonio Spadaro, a Jesuit priest and close ally of Francis. “There is an awareness of the problem.”

The Vatican insists the trip will be a safe, socially distanced and sober visit devoid of the usual fanfare and celebrations. And a Vatican spokesman played down the number of cases in Iraq when reporters asked how the pope could possibly justify not delaying a trip that could endanger so many.

Andrea Vicini, a medical doctor, Jesuit priest and professor of moral theology and bioethics at Boston College, said he admired the pope’s willingness to put his own skin in the game for peace when it came to promoting dialogue with Islam and protecting the persecuted and people at the margins.

“He wants to show that he is ready to risk,” Father Vicini said. “The problem is that others will be at risk.”

GLOBAL ROUNDUP

Closed restaurants in Vienna this week. Like most of the rest of the European Union, Austria has lagged behind some other wealthy nations — such as Britain, Israel and the United States — in its vaccine rollout. Credit…Lisi Niesner/Reuters

Austrian officials will carry out a mass vaccination drive in the western district of Schwaz in the hopes of stabilizing the alpine area, which has been battered by a surge in new coronavirus infections driven in part by the variant B.1.351, first identified in South Africa.

The pilot program in Austria is the first such inoculation drive in the European Union. Like most of the rest of the bloc, the country is lagging behind some other wealthy nations — such as Britain, Israel and the United States — in its vaccine rollout. Only 5 percent of residents in the alpine state of Tyrol, which includes Schwaz, have received at least one shot.

All residents above the age of 16 will be able to get free vaccinations when the drive begins next week. The European Union has allocated 100,000 extra doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for the area near the western Austrian city of Innsbruck, which is home to about 86,000 people.

Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said on Wednesday that the effort would be “our chance to eradicate the variant in the region of Schwaz.”

The infection rate in the broader Tyrol region has declined from its peak of about 800 cases per 100,000 people over a seven-day period in November to just over 100 per 100,000 in the past week. But the German government closed its side of the border with the area on Wednesday night when it became clear that a high percentage of those infections were caused by the B.1.351 variant.

On Thursday, Mr. Kurz traveled to Israel where, together with Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen of Denmark, he planned to speak with experts about collaborating on future vaccines.

In other news from around the world:

• Sinopharm of China, a state-owned company that is manufacturing two vaccines in the country, can make a maximum of three billion doses this year, its chairman told state news media on Wednesday. The number represents a tripling of the company’s previous target.

• The state of São Paulo, Brazil, will head into its toughest restrictions yet this weekend, Gov. João Doria told reporters on Wednesday, as cases surge in the region. All bars, restaurants and nonessential stores will close until at least March 19, according to The Associated Press. The restrictions come as the country grapples with a concerning new variant that has lashed the Amazonian city of Manaus, in the northwest, and is spreading to other places. Brazil recorded its highest single-day toll of the pandemic this week.

• Germany’s independent vaccine panel has said that the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine can be used on people 65 and over, reversing earlier guidance. Although the European drug regulator authorized use of the shots in January, the German panel had initially refused to recommend the vaccine because it had not been tested enough in that age group. Because Germany is still focusing its vaccination drive on those over 80, much of the AstraZeneca doses had lingered in storage.

• Hungary announced on Thursday that it would introduce a new round of restrictions next week, with some schools closed and nonessential stores shuttered, to combat a sharp rise in coronavirus cases. The announcement comes as a blow to Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who had been vocal about his hopes for the country to begin reopening this month.

• France on Thursday vowed to vaccinate at least 10 million people by mid-April as the government, still stopping short of a nationwide lockdown, extended restrictions on movements and gatherings to areas in the country where there have been surges in local cases. So far, only about 3.1 million people, or 4.7 percent of the country’s population, have received a first injection, and only 1.7 million people, or 2.5 percent of the population, have been fully vaccinated, which puts France behind other European countries in the vaccination rollout. Jean Castex, the prime minister, said at a news conference that starting in mid-April, all people ages 50 to 74 would be eligible for the vaccine, regardless of pre-existing health conditions.

Albee Zhang contributed research.

The Indian health minister, Harsh Vardhan, and his wife, Nutan Goel, received the Covaxin shots, developed by the Indian company Bharat Biotech, at a hospital in New Delhi on Tuesday.Credit…Altaf Qadri/Associated Press

India’s ambitious but troubled campaign to inoculate its vast population against Covid-19 — and, in the process, to burnish its reputation as a manufacturer and innovator — received a major lift after initial trial results showed a homegrown vaccine was safe and effective.

Bharat Biotech, the Indian drug company that developed the shots, said late Wednesday that early findings from clinical trials involving nearly 26,000 subjects showed that the vaccine, Covaxin, had an initial efficacy rate of 81 percent.

The results have yet to be peer reviewed, the company said, and it was unclear how effective Covaxin would prove to be in a final analysis.

Still, the results were met with relief in India. Covaxin was approved by government officials in January and administered to millions of people even though it had not yet been publicly proved. Many in the country, including frontline health care workers, had feared that Covaxin could be ineffective or worse, slowing down the national campaign to inoculate 1.3 billion people.

Officials in Brazil, where the government had bought doses of Covaxin, had recently questioned whether the vaccine worked.

The results this week could alleviate some of those concerns, said Dr. Anant Bhan, a health researcher at Melaka Manipal Medical College in southern India. Still, he said, questions will linger over Covaxin until the research is completed.

“This data will now need to be examined by the regulator in India and could then have an impact on the regulatory decisions with regards to the vaccine,” Dr. Bhan said.

If the results hold, they could also benefit Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, who has stressed his intention of making India self-reliant. An effective, Indian-developed vaccine could add credibility to that campaign.

India approved Covaxin for emergency use in early January along with the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, which is known in India as Covishield. When the vaccination drive started less than two weeks later, most people were not allowed to choose which shot they got.

The move to authorize Covaxin’s use came under sharp criticism from pharmaceutical bodies and health experts, who questioned the scientific logic behind approving a vaccine that was still in trials. Indian officials often denounced those doubts without explaining the rush. Instead, they portrayed the endorsement of Covaxin through a lens of nationalism, saying that it showed India’s emergence as a scientific power.

VideoAfter weeks of declining cases, a representative from the World Health Organization on Thursday warned the public of a resurgence of cases and a strain on hospitals across Europe.CreditCredit…Tobias Schwarz/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Central and Eastern Europe is experiencing a resurgence in coronavirus infections partly driven by new variants but also by the relaxing of restrictions, the World Health Organization’s top official in Europe said on Thursday.

After six successive weeks of declining infection numbers across Europe, the continent experienced a 9 percent rise in coronavirus cases in the past week, Hans Kluge, the W.H.O.’s regional director told reporters. More than half of the 53 countries in the European region had recorded an increase in infections, he said, including some in Western Europe.

“Over a year into the pandemic, our health systems should not be in this situation,” Mr. Kluge said. “We need to get back to basics.”

The increase came as 43 European countries reported cases of the B.1.1.7 variant first identified in Britain, which has much higher transmissability, he said, adding that 26 countries had found cases of the B.1.351 variant first discovered in South Africa and that 15 had reported cases of the P.1 variant first discovered in Brazil.

The B.1.1.7 variant already accounts for more than half of the new cases of infection in several countries, including Britain and Denmark, and is expected to soon pass that level in Germany.

But W.H.O. officials stressed that new variants were only part of the problem, calling for a gradual lifting of restrictions and travel bans when there was evidence to support it and for an accelerated rollout of shots.

Vaccinations have started in 45 European countries, Mr. Kluge said, but only around a quarter of health workers in 20 European countries have completed vaccination against Covid-19.

Frustration at the slow introduction of vaccines in Europe has driven several governments to bypass the European Union’s purchase program in favor of bilateral supply deals, but the W.H.O. underscored that countries could not rely solely on vaccines to curb infections.

Catherine Smallwood, health emergencies expert for the W.H.O. in Europe, said, “We are not going to take the heat out of transmission immediately” through inoculations. “It’s going to take a long time,” she noted, “so we will have to be patient and we need to use all of the other measures we have at our disposal.”

An Israeli medical worker administering the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to Palestinians at a checkpoint between the West Bank city of Ramallah and Jerusalem on Feb. 23.Credit…Oded Balilty/Associated Press

Most Palestinians living in the occupied territories have yet to be vaccinated against the coronavirus, setting off a rancorous debate about whether Israel has a duty to vaccinate Palestinians living under Israeli occupation.

But among Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, questions are now being asked of their own leadership, which has been accused of siphoning some of the few doses allocated for Palestinians and distributing them to the senior ranks of the governing party, allies in the news media and even to family members of top dignitaries.

Like many governments worldwide, the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited control over parts of the occupied territories, has officially prioritized its senior administrative leadership and frontline health workers, as well as people who come into regular contact with the authority’s president and prime minister.

But in secret, the authority has diverted some of the thousands of vaccines it has received to some senior members of the ruling party in the West Bank who have no formal role in government, according to two senior Palestinian officials and a senior official from the party, Fatah, who all spoke on condition of anonymity.

Vaccines have also been secretly given to top figures at major news outlets run by the authority, according to one of the senior Palestinian officials and two employees at those outlets. Family members of certain government officials and Fatah leaders were also given the vaccines, the senior official and a former government official said.

Already frustrated at their exclusion from Israel’s world-leading vaccination program, ordinary Palestinians now accuse their leaders of hoarding some of the relatively few vaccines that the authority has obtained, even amid a surge in infections and tightened restrictions.

“Of course it’s understandable and acceptable that the president, prime minister and ministers take the vaccination before others — this is the case everywhere in the world,” said Hasan Ayoub, the chairman of the political science department at An Najah University in Nablus. “But there’s absolutely no justification for giving the very small number of vaccines we have to other people close to power at the expense of those who most need them.”

Several government officials did not respond to requests for comment on the accusations.

In public statements, the Health Ministry did not admit to any wrongdoing. It has acknowledged receiving 12,000 vaccines — 10,000 from Russia and 2,000 from Israel. Of those, it says that 2,000 were sent to the Gaza Strip, which is under the de facto authority of Hamas, the militant group, and 200 to the royal court in Jordan, where some Palestinian leaders live. And of the remaining 9,800, 90 percent were given to frontline health workers, the ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.

The ministry said that the remainder had been given to officials in the presidency and prime ministry, election officials, some international embassies, members of the national soccer team and roughly 100 students who needed the vaccine to travel.

Ivermectin is typically used to treat parasitic worms in both people and animals. Credit…Luis Robayo/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Ivermectin, an anti-parasitic drug that has been touted as a potential Covid-19 treatment, does not speed recovery in people with mild cases of the disease, according to a randomized controlled trial published in the journal JAMA today.

Ivermectin is typically used to treat parasitic worms in both people and animals. Scientists have previously reported that the drug can prevent some viruses from replicating in cells. Last year, researchers in Australia found that high doses of ivermectin suppressed SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, in cell cultures.

The finding raised hopes that the drug might prove effective against Covid-19, and it has been widely used during the pandemic, especially in Latin America.

But rigorous data on the drug’s effectiveness in people has been lacking, and some scientists suspect that effectively inhibiting the coronavirus may require extremely high, potentially unsafe doses of the drug. The Covid-19 treatment guidelines from the National Institutes of Health note that there is not enough evidence “to recommend either for or against” using the drug in Covid-19 patients.

In the new study, a team of researchers in Colombia randomly assigned more than 400 people who had recently developed mild Covid-19 symptoms to receive a five-day course of either ivermectin or a placebo. They found that Covid-19 symptoms lasted about 10 days, on average, among people who received the drug, compared to 12 days among those who received the placebo, a statistically insignificant difference.

The new trial adds much-needed clinical data to the debate over using the drug to treat Covid-19, said Dr. Regina Rabinovich, a global health researcher at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who was not involved in the study.

But she noted that the trial was relatively small and that it did not answer the most pressing clinical question, which is whether ivermectin can prevent severe disease or death. “Duration of symptoms may not be the most important either clinical or public health parameter to look at,” she said.

Bigger trials, some of which are currently underway, could help provide more definitive answers, said Dr. Rabinovich, who noted that she was “totally neutral” on ivermectin’s potential usefulness. “I just want data because there’s such chaos in the field.”

Some gorillas in a troop at the San Diego Zoo tested positive for the coronavirus in January. Zoo officials have been using an experimental vaccine on other apes, like orangutans and bonobos. Credit…Ken Bohn/San Diego Zoo Global, via, via Reuters

The San Diego Zoo has given nine apes an experimental coronavirus vaccine developed by Zoetis, a major veterinary pharmaceuticals company.

In January, a troop of gorillas at the zoo’s Safari Park tested positive for the virus. All are recovering, but even so, the zoo requested help from Zoetis in vaccinating other apes. The company provided an experimental vaccine that was initially developed for pets and is now being tested in mink.

Nadine Lamberski, a conservation and wildlife health officer at San Diego Zoo Global, said the zoo vaccinated four orangutans and five bonobos with the experimental vaccine, which is not designed for use in humans.

She said one gorilla at the zoo was also scheduled to be vaccinated, but the gorillas at the wildlife park were a lower priority because they had already tested positive for infection and had recovered. Dr. Lamberski said she would vaccinate the gorillas at the wildlife park if the zoo received more doses of the vaccine.

Mahesh Kumar, senior vice president of global biologics for Zoetis, said the company is increasing production, primarily for its pursuit of a license for a mink vaccine, and will provide more doses to the San Diego and other zoos when possible. “We have already received a number of requests,” he said.

Infection of apes is a major concern for zoos and conservationists. They easily fall prey to human respiratory infections, and common cold viruses have caused deadly outbreaks in chimpanzees in Africa. Genome research has suggested that chimpanzees, gorillas and other apes will be susceptible to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that has caused the pandemic. Lab researchers are using some monkeys, like macaques, to test drugs and vaccines and develop new treatments for the virus.

Scientists are worrying not just about the danger the virus poses to great apes and other animals, but also about the potential for the virus to gain a foothold in a wild animal population that could become a permanent reservoir and emerge at a later date to reinfect humans.

Infections in farmed mink have produced the biggest scare so far. When Danish mink farms were devastated by the virus, which can kill mink just as it kills people, a mutated form of the virus emerged from the mink and reinfected humans. That variant showed resistance to some antibodies in laboratory studies, raising suspicion that vaccines might be less effective against it.

That virus variant has not been found in humans since November, according to the World Health Organization. But other variants have emerged in people in several countries, proving that the virus can become more contagious and in some cases can diminish the effectiveness of some vaccines.

Denmark ended up killing as many as 17 million mink — effectively wiping out its mink farming industry. In the United States, thousands of mink have died, and one wild mink has tested positive for the virus.

Although many animals, including dogs, domestic cats, and big cats in zoos, have become infected by the virus through natural spread, and others have been infected in laboratory experiments, scientists say that widespread testing has yet to find the virus in any animal in the wild other than the one mink.

National Geographic first reported the vaccination of the apes at the San Diego Zoo.

Offloading boxes of Oxford-AstraZeneca shots in Accra, Ghana, last month. The doses were among the first deliveries of a global initiative called Covax, created to ensure that poorer countries could obtain vaccines.Credit…Francis Kokoroko/Reuters

When 600,000 doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine arrived in Ghana last week, Owusu Akoto, chief executive of a logistics company, was there alongside health officials to receive them.

Mr. Akoto’s company, FreezeLink, has a fleet of temperature-controlled trucks and was one of a few private companies helping the government to keep vaccines cooled before distribution. He is also partnering with a drone operator to reach some rural communities.

A former management consultant, Mr. Akoto founded his company in the hope of addressing food waste in Ghana, but he said that being involved in vaccine distribution had brought both pride and a sense of relief.

“It’s emotional. It feels a bit raw,” Mr. Akoto said in an interview from the Ghanaian capital, Accra. He said that his cousin had recently died after contracting the coronavirus. “The vaccine could have saved his life.”

The doses were the first delivery in a global initiative called Covax, created to ensure that poorer countries that would struggle to buy coronavirus shots on the open market could still receive them. Officials hope to deliver two billion vaccines worldwide through the initiative this year, though they say that the program faces a funding gap of billions of dollars.

By Thursday, about 10 million doses had been delivered to 11 countries in Africa through the Covax program, according to the World Health Organization.

Some vaccines, like those of Pfizer and Moderna, must be kept at deep-freeze temperatures for much of their time in storage and during delivery, a requirement that has long been a concern for distributors in areas with less infrastructure. But the AstraZeneca vaccine only needs to be stored at a temperature of 2 to 8 degrees Celsius, or about 35 to 46 degrees Fahrenheit, which makes it easier to handle by regular cold-storage companies.

Mr. Akoto said that a priority so far had been in areas with a surge in new infections. His company is also working with Zipline, a drone company, that is helping to deliver vaccines to more rural parts of Ghana that are harder to reach by road. Zipline said it was providing “on-demand, last-mile delivery” of the vaccine.

Mr. Akoto acknowledged that Ghana had a long way to go to inoculate the entire population of about 30 million, and he said he was concerned about vaccine skepticism.

“But the journey of a million miles just became that much shorter,” he said.

Here’s what you need to know:

President Biden at the White House on Tuesday.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

President Biden’s call on Tuesday to have every school employee receive at least one vaccine shot by the end of this month has elevated his push to reopen schools even before the nation is fully inoculated. At the White House’s direction, vaccinations will be available at local pharmacies through a federal program. But with the states setting priorities for eligibility otherwise, there remains a limit on actually getting shots in arms.

To amplify Mr. Biden’s push, the first lady, Jill Biden, and the newly confirmed education secretary, Miguel Cardona, traveled on Wednesday to the secretary’s home state, Connecticut, to tour an elementary school and a middle school in Meriden, where he grew up. Mr. Cardona left his job as the state’s education commissioner to join Mr. Biden’s cabinet. They will then travel to Waterford, Pa., to meet with parents.

Parents across the country are frustrated with the pace of reopening, and in some cases, are starting to rebel. Nationally, fewer than half of students are attending public schools that offer traditional in-person instruction full time. And many teachers have rejected plans to return to the classroom without being vaccinated.

Even so, most schools are already operating at least partially in person, and evidence suggests that they are doing so relatively safely. Research shows in-school virus spread can be mitigated with simple safety measures like masking, distancing, hand-washing and open windows.

“Let’s treat in-person learning like an essential service that it is,” Mr. Biden said on Tuesday, even as he noted that not every school employee would be able to get a vaccine next week. “And that means getting essential workers who provide that service — educators, school staff, child care workers — get them vaccinated immediately.”

Educators will be able to sign up to receive a vaccine through a local drug store as part of a federal program in which shots are delivered directly to pharmacies, Mr. Biden said.

At least 34 states and the District of Columbia are already vaccinating school workers to some extent, according to a New York Times database. Others were quick to fall in line after Mr. Biden announced his plan. On Tuesday, Washington State added educators and licensed child care workers to its top tier for priority, accelerating its plan by a few weeks.

In guidelines issued last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urged that elementary and secondary schools be reopened as soon as possible, and offered a step-by-step plan to get students back in classrooms. While the agency recommended giving teachers priority, it said that vaccination should “nevertheless not be considered a condition for reopening schools for in-person instruction.”

Many schools are already fully open in areas with substantial or high community transmission, where the agency suggests schools be open only in hybrid mode or in distance-learning mode. The agency says those schools can remain open if mitigation strategies are consistently implemented, students and staff are masked, and monitoring of cases in school suggests limited transmission.

The agency’s guidelines say that six feet of distancing between individuals is required at substantial and high levels of community transmission. Many school buildings cannot accommodate that, which may lead some districts to stick with a hybrid instruction model when they might otherwise have gone to full in-person instruction.

Many local teachers’ unions remain adamantly opposed to restarting in-person learning now, saying that school districts do not have the resources or the inclination to follow C.D.C. guidance on coronavirus safety. Without vaccinations, the unions say, adults in schools would remain vulnerable to serious illness or death from Covid-19 because children, while much less prone to illness, can nevertheless readily carry the virus. Studies suggest that children under 10 transmit the virus about half as efficiently as adults do, but older children may be much like adults.

The unions have a ready ear in the White House. Ms. Biden, a community college professor, is a member of the National Education Association, and the president has a long history with the unions. Ms. Biden and Mr. Cardona were scheduled to meet with Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, in Connecticut, and with Becky Pringle, the N.E.A. president, in Pennsylvania.

Epidemiological models have shown that vaccinating teachers could greatly reduce infections in schools. “It should be an absolute priority,” said Carl Bergstrom, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Still, requiring that teachers be vaccinated could greatly slow the pace of school reopenings, he and other experts acknowledged.

Teachers’ unions want not just vaccination, but also that districts improve ventilation and ensure six feet of distancing — two measures that have been shown to reduce the spread of the virus. (The C.D.C. guidelines emphasize six feet of distance only when prevalence of the virus is high, and nodded only briefly to the need for ventilation.) The unions have also insisted that schools not open until the infection rates in their communities are very low.

Katie Rogers contributed reporting.

United States ›	United StatesOn March 2	14-day change
New cases	57,789	–19%
New deaths	1,306*	–9%

*Ohio removed deaths

World ›	WorldOn March 2	14-day change
New cases	288,926	+1%
New deaths	9,291	–18%

U.S. vaccinations ›

Tracy Davie, left, and Renee Thevenot, both wearing masks, shopping in Austin, Texas, in January.Credit…Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times

Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas said on Tuesday that he was ending his statewide mask mandate, effective March 10, and that all businesses in the state could then operate with no capacity limits.

“I just announced Texas is OPEN 100%” he tweeted on Tuesday afternoon. “EVERYTHING.”

Mr. Abbott took the action after federal health officials warned governors not to ease restrictions yet because progress across the country in reducing coronavirus cases appears to have stalled in the last week.

“To be clear, Covid has not, like, suddenly disappeared,” Mr. Abbott said. “Covid still exists in Texas and the United States and across the globe.”

Even so, he said, “state mandates are no longer needed” because advanced treatments are now available for people with Covid-19, the state is able to test large numbers of people for the virus each day and 5.7 million vaccine shots have already been given to Texans.

Speaking to reporters at a Chamber of Commerce event in Lubbock on Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Abbott, a Republican, said that most of the mandates issued during the peak of the pandemic in the state would be lifted; he did not specify which mandates would remain. He said top elected officials in each county could still impose certain restrictions locally if hospitals in their region became dangerously full, but could not jail anyone for violating them.

“People and businesses don’t need the state telling them how to operate,” he said.

Target and Macy’s said on Tuesday that they would continue requiring customers and employees to wear masks, Reuters reported. General Motors and Toyota said their employees in the state would also still be required to wear masks.

Democratic leaders in the state reacted swiftly and harshly to the announcement. “What Abbott is doing is extraordinarily dangerous,” Gilberto Hinojosa, the state party chairman, said in a statement, adding, “This will kill Texans. Our country’s infectious-disease specialists have warned that we should not put our guard down, even as we make progress towards vaccinations. Abbott doesn’t care.”

In states like Florida and South Dakota, schools and businesses have been widely open for months, and many local and state officials across the country have been easing restrictions since last summer. Still, the pace of reopenings has quickened considerably in the past few days.

In Chicago, tens of thousands of children returned to public school this week, while snow-covered parks and playgrounds around the city that have been shuttered since last March were opened. Restaurants in Massachusetts were allowed to operate without capacity limits, and South Carolina erased its limits on large gatherings.

The Biden administration has warned states not to relax restrictions too soon, despite the recent decline in cases. “We stand to completely lose the hard-earned ground we have gained,” the director of the C.D.C., Dr. Rochelle Walensky, said at a White House virus briefing on Monday.

The nation as a whole has been averaging more than 67,000 new cases a day lately, more than at any time during the spring and summer waves of cases, according to a New York Times database.

Texas was among the first states to ease restrictions after the first wave, a move that epidemiologists believe was premature and led to the summer surge across the Sunbelt.

Though conditions in the state and the nation have improved from a huge surge over the holidays, the coronavirus is still spreading rapidly in Texas. The state has been averaging about 7,600 new cases a day recently, rebounding from a drop in February when a severe storm disrupted testing. Texas is among the top 10 states in recent spread, averaging 27 cases for every 100,000 people.

And Texans are still dying of Covid-19 in significant numbers: The state reported an average of 227 Covid-19 deaths a day over the past week, more than any other state except California.

Mayor Sylvester Turner of Houston and the top elected official in Harris County, Lina Hidalgo, both Democrats, wrote to Mr. Abbott on Tuesday before his announcement, asking the governor not to end the mask mandate and calling such a move “premature and harmful.”

“We must continue the proven public health interventions most responsible for our positive case trends, and not allow overconfidence to endanger our own successes,” they wrote.

Mr. Abbott made his reopening announcement in a Mexican restaurant, on the anniversary of Texas’ declaration of independence from Mexico in 1836.

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this item misspelled Lina Hidalgo’s given name.

Justina Roberta Santos, 84, received a coronavirus vaccine during a campaign to inoculate older people with mobility issues, in Rocinha, Brazil, last month.Credit…Dado Galdieri for The New York Times

Covid-19 has already left a trail of death and despair in Brazil, one of the worst in the world. And now, the country is battling a more contagious variant, even as Brazilians toss away precautionary measures that could keep them safe.

On Tuesday, Brazil recorded more than 1,700 Covid-19 deaths, its highest single-day toll of the pandemic.

Preliminary studies suggest that the variant that swept through the city of Manaus appears able to infect some people who have already recovered from other versions of the virus. And the variant has slipped Brazil’s borders, showing up in small numbers in the United States and other countries.

Although trials of a number of vaccines indicate that they can protect against severe illness even when they do not prevent infection with the variant, most of the world has not been inoculated. That means even people who had recovered and thought they were safe for now might still be at risk, and that world leaders might, once again, be lifting restrictions too soon.

“You need vaccines to get in the way of these things,” said William Hanage, an epidemiologist at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, speaking of variants that might cause reinfections.

Brazilians hoped that they had seen the worst of the outbreak last year. Manaus, capital of the northern state of Amazonas, was hit so hard in April and May that scientists believed the city may have reached herd immunity.

But then in September, cases in the state began rising again. By January, scientists had discovered that a new variant, which became known as P.1, had become dominant in the state. Within weeks, its danger became clear as hospitals in the city ran out of oxygen amid a crush of patients, leading scores to suffocate to death.

Throughout the pandemic, researchers have said that Covid-19 reinfections appear to be extremely rare, which has allowed people who recover to presume they have immunity, at least for a while. But that was before P.1 appeared.

One way to tamp down the surge would be through vaccinations, but the rollout in Brazil has been slow.

Brazil began vaccinating health care professionals and older adults in late January. But the government has failed to secure a large enough number of doses. Wealthier countries have snapped up most of the supply, while President Jair Bolsonaro has been skeptical both of the disease’s impact and of vaccines.

Margareth Dalcolmo, a pulmonologist at Fiocruz, a prominent scientific research center, said that Brazil’s failure to mount a robust inoculation campaign had set the stage for the current crisis.

“We should be vaccinating more than a million people per day,” she said. “We aren’t, not because we don’t know how to do it, but because we don’t have enough vaccines.”

Other countries should take heed, said Ester Sabino, an infectious-disease researcher at the University of São Paulo who is among the leading experts on the P.1 variant.

“You can vaccinate your whole population and control the problem only for a short period if, in another place in the world, a new variant appears,” she said. “It will get there one day.”

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Dolly Parton Receives Coronavirus Vaccine and Urges Fans to Follow

On Tuesday, the country singer Dolly Parton received “a dose of her own medicine,” a shot of the Moderna vaccine, which she helped fund when she donated $1 million to Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

I’m finally going to get my vaccine. I’m so excited. I’ve been waiting a while. I’m old enough to get it. And I’m smart enough to get it. So I’m very happy that I’m going to get my Moderna shot today. And I want to tell everybody that you should get out there and do it, too. I haven’t changed one of my songs to fit the occasion. It goes vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine. I’m begging of you, please don’t hesitate. Well, it didn’t take this long to film “9 to 5.” I’m still waiting while I’ve been waiting since December. I’ve been alone herein line. All right. Think you got it? I got it. OK, that didn’t hurt just a little bit, but that was from the alcohol pad, I think. Yeah. OK. All right.

On Tuesday, the country singer Dolly Parton received “a dose of her own medicine,” a shot of the Moderna vaccine, which she helped fund when she donated $1 million to Vanderbilt University Medical Center.CreditCredit…@Dollyparton, via Reuters

The country music star Dolly Parton has another new gig: Singing the praises of coronavirus shots and getting vaccinated on camera.

Last year, Ms. Parton donated $1 million to Vanderbilt University Medical Center, which worked with the drug maker Moderna to develop one of the first coronavirus vaccines to be authorized in the United States. The federal government eventually invested $1 billion in the creation and testing of the vaccine, but the leader of the research effort, Dr. Mark Denison, said that the singer’s donation had funded its critical early stages.

On Tuesday, Ms. Parton, 75, received a Moderna shot at Vanderbilt Health in Tennessee. “Dolly gets a dose of her own medicine,” she wrote on Twitter.

“Well, hey, it’s me,” she says to her fans in an accompanying video, a minute before a doctor arrives to inoculate her. “I’m finally gonna get my vaccine.”

“I’m so excited,” she added in the video, which racked up more than a million views within about four hours. “I’ve been waiting a while. I’m old enough to get it, and I’m smart enough to get it.”

She also broke into song (naturally), replacing the word “Jolene” in one of her best-known choruses with “vaccine.”

“Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine,” she sang, embellishing the last one with her trademark Tennessee lilt. “I’m begging of you please don’t hesitate.”

“Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine,” she added, “because once you’re dead, then that’s a bit too late.”

Just before the doctor arrived to inoculate her — or “pop me in my arm,” as she put it — she doubled down on her message.

“I know I’m trying to be funny now, but I’m dead serious about the vaccine,” she said. “I think we all want to get back to normal — whatever that is — and that would be a great shot in the arm, wouldn’t it?”

“I just want to say to all of you cowards out there: Don’t be such a chicken squat,” she added. “Get out there and get your shot.”

Global Roundup

In Berlin last week. Medical experts have warned that Germany is at the beginning of a third wave of the pandemic.Credit…Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and governors of the country’s states were to meet on Tuesday to talk about what an extension to the nation’s 11-week lockdown could look like. Some governors and federal lawmakers have been calling for an easing of measures. The current restrictions are set to expire next week.

But medical experts have warned that Germany is at the beginning of a third wave of the pandemic, driven in part by more infectious variants, and that continued restrictions are likely.

Christian Drosten, the chief virologist at the Charité hospital in Berlin and a government adviser, said during a podcast on Tuesday, “We are walking into a situation with our eyes closed.”

While some schools in Germany have reopened, most students are not on full schedules. Nonessential businesses are closed nationwide and restaurants have been shuttered since November, when the government first began a “lockdown light,” which proved ineffective in halting growing cases. Restrictions were tightened in December.

Despite the measures, there has been a slight increase in new infections. On Tuesday, the German health authorities registered about 9,000 new cases, about 1,000 more than the same day the week before. A New York Times database puts the seven-day average at 8,172; two weeks ago, it was 6,121.

After meeting with governors on Tuesday afternoon, Ms. Merkel is expected to announce an extension of the lockdown until at least March 28, though businesses like bookstores and flower stores are expected to join hairdressers in being able to open under strict distancing guidelines.

In other news from around the world:

• In the Netherlands, a pipe bomb exploded at a coronavirus testing center on Wednesday, causing damage but no injuries, the public broadcaster NOS reported. The blast at the center in the town of Bovenkarspel was caused by a “metal pipe that exploded,” Erwin Sintenie, a police spokesman, said. The lone security guard present when the device was detonated was unhurt, though windows were broken, the police said. There have been multiple, and at times violent, protests in the Netherlands against coronavirus restrictions. In January, a testing center in the town of Urk was set alight after the government imposed a curfew.

• North Korea is expected to receive about 1.7 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca shots by the end of May, according to a report released on Tuesday by Covax, an international body established to promote global access to coronavirus vaccines. The AstraZeneca doses are among about 237 million that Covax says it expects to distribute worldwide over the same period. The North’s state news media has long insisted that the country has no confirmed Covid-19 cases, but outside experts are skeptical.

• Pelé, the Brazilian former soccer star, said in an Instagram post that he had received a coronavirus vaccine. He noted that the pandemic was “not over yet,” and urged his nearly six million followers to continue wearing masks and taking other safety precautions. “This will pass if we can think of others and help each other,” he wrote. Brazil has reported more than 10.5 million cases and 257,000 deaths, some of the highest tallies in the world.

• Bharat Biotech, an Indian pharmaceutical company, said on Wednesday that its vaccine, Covaxin, had shown 81 percent efficacy in interim trials. The announcement came two months after Indian regulators approved the shots for emergency use despite a lack of published data showing that they were safe and effective.

People waited in line Sunday with the hope of receiving leftover Covid-19 vaccine doses that would otherwise expire and be tossed out each day at the Kedren Community Health Center on in Los Angeles.Credit…Mario Tama/Getty Images

After weeks of waiting, Judy Franke’s vaccine breakthrough came when her phone rang at 8 p.m. one freezing February night. There were rumors of extra doses at the Minneapolis Convention Center. Ms. Franke, 73, had an hour to get there. No guarantees.

“I called my daughter and she said, ‘I’m putting my boots on right now,’” said Ms. Franke, a retired teacher with a weakened immune system.

Judy Franke of Roseville, Minn., was able to get vaccinated by finding an extra dose through the online community.Credit…Jenn Ackerman for The New York Times

The clamor for hard-to-get vaccines has created armies of anxious Americans who haunt pharmacies at the end of the day in search of an extra, expiring dose and drive from clinic to clinic hoping that someone was a no-show to their appointment.

Some pharmacists have even given them a nickname: Vaccine lurkers.

Even with inoculation rates accelerating and new vaccines entering the market, finding a shot remains out of reach for many, nearly three months into the country’s vaccination campaign. Websites crash. Appointments are scarce.

The leftover shots exist because the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines have a limited life span once they are thawed and mixed. When no-shows or miscalculations leave pharmacies and clinics with extras, they have mere hours to use the vaccines or risk having to throw them away.

And so, tens of thousands of people have banded together on social-media groups. They trade tips about which Walmarts have extra doses. They report on whether besieged pharmacies are even answering the phone. They speculate about whether a looming blizzard might keep enough people home to free up a slot.

“It’s like buying Bruce Springsteen tickets,” said Maura Caldwell, who started a Facebook page called Minneapolis Vaccine Hunters to help people navigate the search for appointments. The group has about 20,000 members.

Health experts said the scavenger hunt for leftovers highlighted the persistent disparities in the U.S. vaccination rollout, where access to lifesaving medicine can hinge on computer savvy, personal connections and the ability to drop everything to snag an expiring dose.

In Minnesota, when Ms. Franke arrived at the convention center, there were about 20 other people already milling around in the lobby, she said, and a health worker quickly emerged to inform them that there were no leftovers.

But many in the crowd stuck around, and after a half-hour, the vaccination team allowed people 65 and older, teachers and emergency responders to get their shots. Ms. Franke lined up and said she cried with relief on the car ride home to the suburbs.

Medical staff checking an empty ward reserved for Covid patients at a hospital in Bucharest, Romania, last week.Credit…Vadim Ghirda/Associated Press

As vaccination programs continue to be rolled out around the world, many countries are now turning their attention to the pent-up demand for non-Covid-19 health care, which fell by the wayside during months of crisis response.

In Romania, there is a deep concern about an overwhelmed health care system as many people suffering from other health issues have been without care, or missing regular medical appointments, over the past year. That includes cancer patients and those with HIV.

Victor Cauni, interim manager of one of the largest hospitals in the capital, Bucharest, said that the urology ward had gone from performing 400 to 500 medical interventions a month in recent years to barely 50 in total in the past year.

“Whether we like it or not, we have more patients with many other illnesses compared to Covid patients,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press last week. “We need to open for them at least partially. We’re discriminating against patients with serious conditions.”

Health care scandals in Romania in recent years have also left many people cautious about seeking treatment at hospitals, an issue exacerbated by the pandemic. Since November, fires in two hospitals treating coronavirus patients have left more than 20 people dead.

Romania’s spending on its health care system is among the lowest in the European Union, with just 5.2 percent of its G.D.P. allocated toward it. The average in the bloc is around 10 percent.

The Romanian Health Ministry organized a call last month with hospital administrators about the need to evaluate infrastructure and potentially create separate channels for coronavirus patients so that other patients could receive treatment. The ministry is also assessing the ability to use some hospitals solely for the treatment of patients with severe cases of the virus, and return others to handling only patients being treated for other conditions.

“I think it’s only in the second half of this year that we’re going to really understand what happened last year in terms of access to health care,” said Vlad Voiculescu, the Romanian health minister.

Mr. Voiculescu noted that access to treatment had been limited for some patients, especially those in rural and smaller urban areas where hospitals of 300 or 400 beds had been transformed into coronavirus support hospitals.

“This cannot go on,” he said, adding that some hospitals were already set to return to more general usage.

Romania has largely kept the spread of the coronavirus in check, putting in place tight restrictions early on that limited the number of infections. Still, there have been more than 800,000 confirmed cases and more than 20,500 deaths in the country, which has a population of around 19 million.

Like the rest of the world, Romania is bracing for another potential wave in cases, with concerning variants of the virus on the rise.

“We have the vaccination campaign,” Mr. Voiculescu said, adding, “We do have the mechanisms in place for more precautionary measures if there’s going to be another wave.”

Jacori Owens-Shuler, an industrial designer, back at work in the Vivint Innovation Center in Lehi, Utah, last month.Credit…Kim Raff for The New York Times

Corporate executives around the United States are wrestling with how to reopen offices as the pandemic starts to loosen its grip. Businesses — and many employees — are eager to return to some kind of normal work life: going back to the office, grabbing lunch at their favorite restaurant or stopping for drinks after work.

While coronavirus cases are declining and vaccinations are rising, many companies have not committed to a time and strategy for bringing employees back. The most important variable, many executives said, is how long it will take for most workers to be vaccinated.

Another major consideration revolves around the children of employees. Companies say they can’t make firm decisions until they know when local schools will reopen for in-person learning.

Then there is a larger question: Does it make sense to go back to the way things were before the pandemic, given that people have become accustomed to the rhythms of remote work?

More than 55 percent of people surveyed by the consulting firm PwC late last year said that they would prefer to work remotely at least three days a week after the pandemic recedes. But their bosses appear to have somewhat different preferences — 68 percent of employers said that they believed employees needed to be in the office at least three days a week to maintain corporate culture.

Some companies that have begun trying to get workers back to the office — like Vivint, a home-security business based in Provo, Utah, that has more than 10,000 employees across the United States — say they are doing so on a voluntary basis.

Vivint is allowing 40 percent of its 4,000 employees in Utah to return, though only about 20 percent have chosen to do so regularly.

To accommodate social distancing, Vivint has restricted access to each building to a single entrance, where employees have their temperature taken. Signs remind employees to wear masks at all times, and the company has limited capacity in conference rooms.

Vivint also has an on-site clinic that has been offering 15-minute rapid virus tests to employees and their families.

The company hopes to use the clinic to distribute coronavirus vaccines to its workers when Utah allows it to do so.

“We’ve never faced a worker shortage like this in my 40 years,” said Peter Hall at his orchard in Shepparton, Australia. “I suspect for each lot of crop, we’ll just not get there in time.”Credit…Asanka Brendon Ratnayake for The New York Times

The pandemic has exposed the unstable foundation of Australia’s agriculture industry, a $54 billion-a-year goliath that has long been underpinned by the work of young, transient foreigners.

Border closures and other measures to keep the coronavirus out of the country have left Australia with a deficit of 26,000 farmworkers, according to the nation’s top agriculture association. As a result, tens of millions of dollars in crops have gone to waste from coast to coast.

“We’ve never faced a worker shortage like this in my 40 years,” said Peter Hall, who owns an orchard in southeastern Australia. “I suspect for each lot of crop, we’ll just not get there in time.”

This enormous crop destruction has fueled rising calls for Australia to rethink how it secures farm labor, with many pushing for an immigration overhaul that would give agricultural workers a pathway to permanent residency.

Since 2005, the government has steered young travelers to farms by offering extensions of working holiday visas from one year to two for those who have completed three months of work in agriculture. Backpackers can earn extensions by working in other industries like construction or mining, but 90 percent do so through farm work.

In a normal year, more than 200,000 backpackers would come to Australia, making up 80 percent of the country’s harvest work force, according to industry groups.

Now, there are just 45,000 in the country, according to government data, and attempts to fill the labor shortage with unemployed Australians have been largely unsuccessful.

The federal government has flown in workers from nearby Pacific islands, which have largely avoided the pandemic. But with border restrictions in place, the arrangements have sometimes been convoluted.

Nationwide, only about 2,400 workers have been flown into the country since the borders were shut, according to the National Farmers’ Federation.

President Biden gave updates on the pandemic at the White House on Tuesday. He said his government had provided support to Johnson & Johnson to enable the company and its partners to make vaccines around the clock.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

President Biden said on Tuesday that the United States was “on track” to have enough supply of coronavirus vaccines “for every adult in America by the end of May,” accelerating his effort to deliver the nation from the worst public health crisis in a century.

In a brief speech at the White House, Mr. Biden said his administration had provided support to Johnson & Johnson that would enable the company and its partners to make vaccines around the clock. The administration had also brokered a deal in which the pharmaceutical giant Merck would help manufacture the new Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine.

Merck is the world’s second-largest vaccine manufacturer, though its own attempt at a coronavirus vaccine was unsuccessful. Officials described the partnership between the two competitors as historic and said it harked back to Mr. Biden’s vision of a wartime effort to fight the coronavirus, similar to the manufacturing campaigns when Franklin D. Roosevelt was president.

Originally, Johnson & Johnson’s $1 billion contract, negotiated last year when Donald J. Trump was president, called for the company to deliver enough doses for 87 million Americans by the end of May. Added to pledges from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech to deliver enough doses to cover a total of 200 million Americans by that date, the contract would have given the country enough vaccine for all adults 18 and older.

But Johnson & Johnson and its partners fell behind in their manufacturing. Although the company was supposed to deliver its first 37 million doses by the end of March, it said that it would be able to deliver only 20 million doses by that date, which made Biden aides nervous.

In late January, Jeffrey D. Zients, Mr. Biden’s coronavirus response coordinator, and Dr. David Kessler, who is managing vaccine distribution for the White House, reached out to top officials at the company, including Alex Gorsky, its chief executive, with a blunt message: This is unacceptable.

That led to a series of negotiations in February in which administration officials repeatedly pressured Johnson & Johnson to accept that they needed help, while urging Merck to be part of the solution, according to two administration officials who participated in the discussions.

In a statement on Tuesday, Merck said that the federal government would pay it up to $269 million to adapt and make available its existing facilities to produce coronavirus vaccines.

One federal official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said other steps that the administration took would move up Johnson & Johnson’s manufacturing timeline.

Those steps, said Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, included providing a team of experts to monitor manufacturing and logistical support from the Defense Department. In addition, the president will invoke the Defense Production Act, a Korean War-era law, to give Johnson & Johnson access to supplies necessary to make and package vaccines.

“This is a type of collaboration between companies we saw in World War II,” Mr. Biden said at the White House. He thanked Merck and Johnson & Johnson for “stepping up and being good corporate citizens during this crisis.”

Noah Weiland contributed reporting.

Offices in Manhattan. Property taxes can make up 30 percent or more of the money that cities and towns take in and use to fund schools, police forces and other public services.Credit…Timothy A. Clary/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Dormant offices, malls and restaurants have turned cities around the country into ghost towns. They foreshadow a fiscal time bomb for municipal budgets, which are heavily reliant on property taxes and are facing real-estate revenue losses of as much as 10 percent in 2021, according to government finance officials.

While many states had stronger-than-expected revenue in 2020, a sharp decline in the value of commercial properties is expected to take a big bite out of city budgets when those empty buildings are assessed in the coming months. For states, property taxes account for just about 1 percent of tax revenue, but they can make up 30 percent or more of the taxes that cities and towns take in and use to fund local schools, police forces and other public services.

The coming fiscal strain has local officials from both parties pleading with the Biden administration and members of Congress to quickly approve relief for local governments.

Lawmakers in Washington are negotiating over a stimulus package that could provide as much as $350 billion to states and cities. The aid would come after a year of clashes between Democrats and Republicans over whether assistance for local governments is warranted or if it’s simply a bailout for poorly managed states.

On Saturday, the House passed a $1.9 trillion bill that would provide aid to cities and states and garnered no Republican support. The Senate is expected to take up the bill this week with a vote that is likely to break down along similar party lines. Republicans have continued to object to significant aid for states, saying most are in decent financial shape and cherry-picking data to support their argument, such as revised budget estimates that show improvement because of previous rounds of federal stimulus, including generous unemployment benefits.

For local officials from both parties, however, the help cannot come soon enough and they have been making their concerns known to Treasury officials and members of Congress.

The pandemic has upended America’s commercial property sector. In cities across the country, skyscrapers are dark, shopping centers are shuttered and restaurants have been relegated to takeout service. Social-distancing measures have redefined workplaces and accelerated the trend of telecommuting.

American cities are facing red ink for a broad swath of reasons but the pain is unevenly distributed. In some cases, a rise in residential real-estate values will make up for the commercial property downturn, and some segments, such as warehouses, have been doing well as online shopping lifts demand for distribution centers. States that do not have income taxes, such as Florida and Texas, are more vulnerable to fluctuations in real-estate values.