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A dose of the Moderna vaccine being filled into a syringe in Mountain View, Calif., on Friday.Credit…Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Moderna’s vaccine is effective against new variants of the coronavirus that have emerged in Britain and South Africa, the company announced on Monday. But it appears to be less protective against the variant discovered in South Africa, and so the company is developing a new form of the vaccine that could be used as a booster shot.

“We’re doing it today to be ahead of the curve should we need to,” Dr. Tal Zaks, Moderna’s chief medical officer, said in an interview. “I think of it as an insurance policy.”

He added, “I don’t know if we need it, and I hope we don’t.”

Moderna reported findings from a study that used blood samples from eight people who had received two doses of the vaccine, and two monkeys that had also been immunized.

The variant found in Britain had no effect on the levels of neutralizing antibodies — the type that can disable the virus — produced after vaccination. But with the form from South Africa, there was a sixfold reduction in those levels.

Even so, the company said, those antibodies “remain above levels that are expected to be protective.”

Moderna collaborated on the study with the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health.

The results have not yet been published or peer-reviewed, but have been submitted to bioRxiv, which posts preliminary studies online.

The company’s action is part of a race to control a shape-shifting virus that has already created global havoc and now threatens to mutate in ways that will make it even harder to fight.

In other vaccine news:

• The pandemic has inflicted the greatest labor crisis since the Great Depression, Guy Ryder, the head of the United Nations International Labour Organization, said on Monday. Mr. Ryder said the coronavirus has caused a loss of working hours equivalent to some 255 million jobs last year. There is still massive uncertainty about when the global economy will return to pre-pandemic levels of employment, but it won’t be in 2021, the agency said. Its analysis also pointed to the unevenness of the pandemic’s impact, with growth in the finance and I.T. sectors, underscoring the need for a targeted response to the crisis.

• Australia on Monday approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for use among people 16 and older, the country’s first coronavirus vaccine approval. Vaccinations are expected to start late next month. The announcement came one year to the day after Australia reported its first coronavirus case.

• After delays, Turkey received 6.5 million more doses of a Chinese-produced coronavirus vaccine Monday morning, the state-run news agency, Anadolu, reported. Turkey was expecting to receive at least 10 million doses of the vaccine in December, and 20 million more in January. But the batches were delayed and the number of doses remained below expectations, an apparent blow to China’s vaccine diplomacy. Turkey has given more than 1. 2 million inoculations, according to Health Ministry data, using the CoronaVac shot from the Chinese company Sinovac. Almost 2.5 million people in Turkey are infected with the coronavirus and more than 25,000 people have died, government data shows.

Livia Albeck-Ripka contributed reporting.

United States ›	United StatesOn Jan. 24	14-day change
New cases	129,527	–33%
New deaths	1,815	–5%

World ›	WorldOn Jan. 24	14-day change
New cases	449,163	–20%
New deaths	8,808	+8%

Where cases per capita are
highest

Customers waiting in line to order food for take out at a restaurant in Salinas, Calif., on Sunday.Credit…Joel Angel Juarez for The New York Times

California officials announced on Monday morning that they were lifting severe coronavirus restrictions on huge swaths of the state, home to tens of millions of people. The decision would allow restaurants in those areas to reopen for outdoor dining, and would give hair salons and other personal care businesses the green light to resume limited operations.

However, local officials can still opt to keep restrictions in place, based on conditions in individual communities.

“Seven weeks ago, our hospitals and frontline medical workers were stretched to their limits,” Dr. Mark Ghaly, the state’s secretary of health and human services, said in a statement. “But Californians heard the urgent message to stay home when possible, and our surge after the December holidays did not overwhelm the health care system to the degree we had feared.”

Effective immediately, state officials said, they were ending regional stay-at-home orders, which banned gatherings of any size and required residents to stay home except for essential work. The orders came into force when hospital intensive-care units in the region were projected to become dangerously full.

Such orders had been in effect for Southern California, a huge region encompassing Los Angeles, Orange County and San Diego, as well as for the San Joaquin Valley and the Bay Area. Counties in those regions will now return to a tiered system of rules tied to the prevalence of the virus in each county.

The move is a victory for restaurateurs, who have been pushing the governor to ease what they have said are arbitrary and unnecessary rules.

But it is also a sign that Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration is struggling to keep a firm grip on a pandemic response that has been criticized as chaotic and piecemeal, undercutting what should be strong, clear public guidance.

The news came on the heels of a weekend of mixed signals from the state about its strategy to curb the rampant spread of the virus.

While California’s overall case numbers have been on the decline, hospitals in Southern California are still overwhelmed, and experts worry that new variants of the virus — including one that researchers recently found in more than half of test samples collected in Los Angeles — could threaten progress.

In the Bay Area, the amount of available intensive care unit capacity has risen to 23.4 percent, according to the state as of Sunday — well above the 15 percent threshold that triggered the stay-at-home order for the region. Yet the Sacramento area has just 11.9 percent intensive care unit capacity, and was allowed to exit the strict order more than a week ago.

Although The San Francisco Chronicle reported on Saturday that officials in the region were feeling hopeful that the order would be lifted soon, the state’s department of public health said on Sunday that the Bay Area wasn’t eligible to have restrictions loosened based on its projections.

Mr. Newsom has repeatedly said that the state’s reopening process would be guided by transparent data, but The Associated Press reported that Mr. Newsom’s administration has refused to disclose key data that officials are using to make decisions about restrictions.

And even after President Biden unveiled what experts have long said is a desperately needed national strategy for finally controlling the pandemic, there are still major hurdles in the vaccine rollout, which in California has contributed to continuing chaos, in which vaccine eligibility rules have been implemented differently county by county.

The state quietly rolled out a promised clearinghouse website to help people find vaccination appointments. But it’s still described as a pilot site.

The governor has been facing mounting political pressure from a recall effort. Experts have said that the vaccine rollout, as well as efforts to reopen, are key tests for his administration.

Credit…Tom Mihalek/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Merck announced on Monday that it was abandoning a pair of Covid-19 vaccines in clinical trials.

The news came as a disappointment at a time when the United States and other countries are struggling to accelerate their sluggish vaccination campaigns and new coronavirus variants threaten to bring surges over the next few months.

The two projects are the second and third vaccines to be abandoned in clinical trials. The University of Queensland in Australia abandoned its own effort in December. Sanofi and other vaccine makers have paused some projects after getting disappointing initial results but are now regrouping to move forward.

Merck was slower than other companies to get into the Covid-19 vaccine race. In June, it acquired the Austrian firm Themis Bioscience to develop a vaccine originally designed at Institut Pasteur, based on a weakened measles virus. Researchers began a Phase 1 trial in August. In a second effort, Merck partnered with IAVI, a nonprofit scientific organization that develops vaccines and treatments, on another vaccine. For that one, they used the same design that they successfully employed to make a vaccine for Ebola.

Merck and IAVI were awarded $38 million for their vaccine research, but neither of Merck’s projects earned the lavish support that Operation Warp Speed showered on other efforts from companies such as Moderna and Johnson & Johnson. In its announcement, Merck said that both vaccines looked safe in early clinical trials. But neither produced a strong response from the immune system. They decided that it was not worth going forward with large-scale trials that would demonstrate whether the vaccines protected people from Covid-19.

“We are grateful to our collaborators who worked with us on these vaccine candidates and to the volunteers in the trials,” Dr. Dean Y. Li, the president of Merck Research Laboratories, said in a statement.

Merck will instead focus its Covid-19 efforts on an experimental antiviral drug known as molnupiravir. Originally designed for influenza, it has shown promising effects in studies on animals and in early clinical trials. The trial is set to finish by May, although preliminary results could come out as early as March.

IAVI said it would continue searching for Covid-19 vaccines. “Our scientists will continue to evaluate other candidates to see if other routes of administration or changes to the construct could lead to improved immune response,” said Karie Youngdahl, senior director and head of global communications at IAVI.

Airport security staff members checked passengers entering Charles de Gaulle Airport in Roissy, outside Paris, on Monday.Credit…Yoan Valat/EPA, via Shutterstock

The European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, recommended on Monday restricting nonessential travel in a bid to curb the spread of new more contagious variants of the coronavirus.

At the same time, the commission’s proposal aims to prevent blanket border closures, which would obstruct trade and the movement of cross-border workers. Traveling without restrictions would still be possible for family, work and health reasons, which are deemed essential.

“The situation in Europe with the new variants have led us to take difficult but necessary decisions,” Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the commission, wrote on Twitter. “We need to keep safe and discourage nonessential travel.”

The move came amid signs in Britain that Prime Minister Boris Johnson would announce an extension and tightening of lockdown rules in England. In the United States, President Biden has moved to restrict travel from Europe and South Africa over concerns about new variants. Also on Monday, Moderna announced that while its vaccine is effective against new variants, it appears to be less protective against the one that emerged in South Africa, raising further concern.

In the E.U. plan, countries and regions where the 14-day infection rate is more than 500 per 100,000 inhabitants would qualify as “dark red,” or high-risk zones, and moving between them should be limited to essential reasons, the commission said. At the same time, those coming in from outside the bloc, even for essential reasons, would have to undergo testing and quarantines. “The first recommendation is: don’t travel,” said Ylva Johansson, the bloc’s commissioner for home affairs.

The commission’s proposal is nonbinding and needs to be endorsed by national governments, who will discuss it Monday afternoon. It comes after last week’s meeting of the leaders of 27 European Union nations, who agreed in principle to selectively restrict nonessential travel, but did not decide on the details.

“There is currently a very high number of new infections across many member states,” said Didier Reynders, the bloc’s commissioner for justice. “There is an urgent need to reduce the risk of travel-related infections, to lessen the burden on overstretched health care systems.”

Freedom of movement is the cornerstone of the bloc, but travel restrictions remain the province of national governments and vary from country to country, creating a chaotic patchwork of measures. Belgium, for example, has announced a ban on nonessential travel coming into force this Wednesday, with fines for those who don’t comply.

Francisca Alves Xavier, 102, receiving China’s Sinovac vaccine in Brasília last week.Credit…Eraldo Peres/Associated Press

China’s coronavirus vaccines were supposed to deliver a geopolitical win that showcased the country’s scientific prowess and generosity. Instead, in some places, they have set off a backlash.

Officials in Brazil and Turkey have complained that Chinese companies have been slow to ship the doses and ingredients. Disclosures about the Chinese vaccines have been spotty. The few announcements that have trickled out suggest that China’s vaccines, while considered effective, cannot stop the virus as well as those developed by Pfizer and Moderna, the American drugmakers.

In the Philippines, some lawmakers have criticized the government’s decision to purchase a vaccine made by a Chinese company called Sinovac. Officials in Malaysia and Singapore, which ordered doses from Sinovac, have had to reassure their citizens that they would approve a vaccine only if it has been proven safe and effective.

At least 24 countries, most of them low and middle income, signed deals with the Chinese vaccine companies because they offered access at a time when richer nations had claimed most of the doses made by Pfizer and Moderna. But the delays in getting the Chinese vaccines and the fact that the vaccines are less effective mean that those countries may take longer to vanquish the virus.

Beijing officials who had hoped the vaccines would burnish China’s global reputation are now on the defensive. The state news media has started a misinformation campaign against the American vaccines and promoting the Chinese vaccines as a better alternative. They have also distributed online videos that have been shared by the anti-vaccine movement in the United States.

The vaccines are also meant to prove that China has become a scientific and diplomatic powerhouse. It remains on par with the United States in the number of vaccines approved for emergency use or in late-stage trials. Sinopharm, a state-owned vaccine maker, and Sinovac have said they can produce up to a combined two billion doses this year, making them essential to the global fight against the coronavirus.

Unlike the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, their doses can be kept at refrigerated temperatures and are more easily transported, making them appealing to the developing world.

China’s campaign has been plagued with doubts, however. A YouGov survey this month of roughly 19,000 people in 17 countries and regions showed that most were distrustful of a Covid-19 vaccine made in China. The misinformation campaign surrounding Western vaccines could further undermine its image.

A mass coronavirus vaccination site had been set to launch this week at Citi Field in Queens.Credit…Ryan Christopher Jones for The New York Times

Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City announced on Monday that the openings of planned mass coronavirus vaccination sites at Yankee Stadium and Citi Field would be postponed because of the low supply of doses available.

“We want to get those to be full blown, 24-hour operations,” Mr. de Blasio said at a news conference, “but we don’t have the vaccine.”

The site at Citi Field had been set to launch this week, while plans for the one in the Bronx were still being developed. Another site at the Empire Outlets on Staten Island was initially scheduled to open last week, but would also be postponed, the mayor said.

The city had a total of 19,032 first doses in inventory on Monday morning, Mr. de Blasio said, and expects to receive just under 108,000 doses this week. But he continued to warn that figure was not nearly enough to keep up with the pace at which New Yorkers are being inoculated: If the supply was greater, the mayor said New York City would be on pace to administer roughly 500,000 doses per week.

Instead, he said many inoculation appointments will continue to be canceled or rescheduled as they were last week.

Some public health experts have worried that the limited supply could undermine goals of state and city officials to prioritize communities hard hit by the virus — Black and Latino people and low-income New Yorkers — in the vaccine rollout.

The state has not released demographic information on the distribution, but Mr. de Blasio said on Monday that data would come “this week,” adding that “it’s part of making sure that we act to address the disparities that have pervaded the Covid experience.”

The mayor last week also sent a letter to President Biden requesting more doses, along with the “flexibility” to use second doses to increase the pace of vaccinations. He did not discuss any specific progress made on Monday, but appeared hopeful that an update could come soon.

“What is so clear now is the commitment of the Biden administration,” Mr. de Blasio said, “to finding every conceivable way to get us more vaccine quickly. We are waiting in the course of this week for more detailed information.”

But federal health officials and corporate executives agree that the immediate supply is unlikely to increase before April because of manufacturing constraints. Public health officials are also awaiting clinical trial results for the vaccine under development by Johnson & Johnson, which city officials said on Monday they hoped would also raise supply levels.

Still, the current vaccination effort has so far sown confusion and frustration across the country as other states similarly struggle with shortages.

And as small businesses across New York City continue to collapse during the pandemic, Mr. de Blasio said the city’s annual restaurant week started on Monday with a focus on takeout and delivery options.

“There’s a lot of things we need to keep doing to help our business in the meantime,” he said, “as they work to survive.”

Meghan Hayes, a teacher at John Hay Community Academy, teaching her class outside the school board president’s home earlier this month. Credit…Pat Nabong/Chicago Sun-Times, via Associated Press

With roughly 70,000 kindergarten through eighth grade students scheduled to return to public school classrooms in Chicago next week, the district and the teachers’ union remain locked in a battle over the reopening plan, with the union saying that a majority of its members voted to authorize a strike if the district seeks to force teachers back into buildings.

All staff working in kindergarten through eighth grade classrooms were originally supposed to report to buildings on Monday to prepare for students’ return next week. But late last week, the union asked its members to vote on a resolution calling on them to refuse to report in-person and to authorize a strike if the district locked them out of its electronic systems.

Over the weekend, the two sides jockeyed for leverage. The district sent a message to families and staff saying that it had agreed to a request from the union to postpone the date for staff to return to Wednesday. Shortly after, the union sent its own message denying that there had been any agreement and saying that its members had voted to continue working remotely indefinitely.

The district said that the union was making several requests that it disagreed with, including delaying reopening until all staff members had been able to receive at least one dose of the vaccine or until the citywide positivity rate fell below 3 percent. Over the last week, the citywide positivity rate has been 7.2 percent. The district has said it will begin vaccinating teachers in mid-February and that it hopes to vaccinate all employees in the coming months.

According to the district, the union was also requesting weekly surveillance testing of staff as well as regular testing of students in parts of the city with high positivity rates. Currently, the district is planning to test up to a quarter of staff each week and is not planning to do surveillance testing of students.

Prekindergarten students and some special education students returned to school buildings on Jan. 11, in the first wave of the district’s reopening. The district said on Friday that roughly 60 percent of the 5,352 students who were expected to attend in person actually did in the first week. Overall about a third of families in the district who have been given the option to have their students return in person have signed up to do so.

Chicago is not the only district where opposition from teachers’ unions is threatening reopening plans: Over the weekend, plans to reopen schools in Montclair, New Jersey, were postponed indefinitely after the superintendent said he did not have enough teachers to properly staff the schools.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico said he would continue to carry out his official duties.Credit…Marco Ugarte/Associated Press

Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, said Sunday that he had contracted the coronavirus and was undergoing “medical treatment” for what he described as mild symptoms.

Mr. López Obrador, writing on Twitter, said he would continue to carry out his official duties, including holding a call with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia that is set for Monday.

“As always, I am optimistic,” he said.

The Mexican leader has consistently played down the pandemic, questioning the value of wearing masks and refusing to wear one himself in most public appearances.

On Friday, he posted a photo of himself indoors, again without a mask, conducting a call with President Biden. He was accompanied by Marcelo Ebrard, the foreign minister, and Alfonso Romo, a former top aide — and neither was wearing a mask. And on Saturday, the president met with local business leaders in Monterrey.

Hours before disclosing that he had contracted the virus, Mr. López Obrador, who flies commercial on all official trips, sat in coach on a flight from San Luis Potosí to Mexico City, according to local media reports.

As late as June, Mr. López Obrador was still sounding dismissive. He said that having a clean conscience would help fight off the virus. “No lying, no stealing, no betraying, that helps a lot to not get coronavirus,” he told reporters.

And for months, the president has repeatedly insisted that the end of the pandemic’s devastation was just around the corner.

“The worst is ending,” he said this month, as deaths surged. “We are coming out of it.”

In the spring, The New York Times reported that the Mexican government had failed to record hundreds, possibly thousands, of deaths in Mexico City, dismissing officials who had tallied more than three times as many fatalities in the capital than the government had publicly acknowledged.

Then in December, federal officials, loath to damage the economy still further, reassured the public that Mexico City had not reached the level of contagion that would require a full lockdown. In fact, the government’s own numbers showed that the capital had surpassed that threshold, an analysis by The Times found.

Some public health experts said they were little surprised that Mr. López Obrador had become infected, given his preference for going mask free, even in situations where the risk of exposure was high.

“One even expected or assumed, because of his way of exposing himself to so many people and not wearing a mask, that he would have been infected earlier,” said Carlos Magis Rodríguez, professor of medicine at the National Autonomous University in Mexico. “In all the public appearances of López Obrador, except for when he went to visit Trump, we saw him without a face mask.”

He said there was reason for concern about the prognosis for Mr. López Obrador, who is 67 and had a heart attack in 2013. “He’s at greater risk than a young person,” Dr. Magis said.

Mr. López Obrador has told reporters that he will wait to get vaccinated with the rest of his age group, most likely in mid-March.

The news came as Mexico is confronting its worst moment since the pandemic began, with deaths hitting horrific highs. On Thursday, Mexico confirmed 1,803 new coronavirus deaths, surging past the previous record of more than 1,500 set days earlier.

And while the president is already being treated, many Mexicans are struggling to get medical care. The country’s hospitals are overrun, and close to 90 percent of beds in Mexico City, the epicenter of the national outbreak, are occupied.

Mexico has intentionally kept testing low throughout the pandemic, which has obscured the true extent of the virus’s reach across the country. But it is undeniable that Mr. López Obrador has presided over one of the worst outbreaks in the world.

To date, the country has recorded more than 1.7 million coronavirus infections and nearly 150,000 deaths, the fourth-highest global death toll.

Official numbers severely underestimate the true toll of the pandemic. As of December, the country had recorded 250,000 more deaths than expected, an excess mortality rate that suggests the pandemic has been far deadlier than official numbers suggest.

Kirk Semple and Elda Cantú contributed reporting.

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci with President Donald Trump during a White House coronavirus briefing in April.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

An adviser to seven presidents and the nation’s top infectious disease expert for decades, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci has weathered many crises.

But in 2020, as one of the most familiar, trusted faces of the nation’s public health community, Dr. Fauci, 80, faced a year like no other when the coronavirus pandemic unfolded in the final months of the Trump administration amid an extremely divisive election season.

In an hourlong conversation with The New York Times over the weekend, Dr. Fauci described some of the difficulties, and the toll, of working with President Donald J. Trump.

The Chicago Teachers Union said on Sunday that its members had voted to defy an order to return to the classroom before they were vaccinated against the coronavirus.Credit…Anthony Vazquez/Chicago Sun-Times, via Associated Press

In his first 48 hours in office, President Biden sought to project an optimistic message about returning the nation’s many homebound students to classrooms. “We can teach our children in safe schools,” he vowed in his inaugural address.

The following day, Mr. Biden signed an executive order promising to throw the strength of the federal government behind an effort to “reopen school doors as quickly as possible.”

But with about half of American students still learning virtually as the pandemic nears its first anniversary, the president’s push is far from certain to succeed. His plan is rolling out just as local battles over reopening have, if anything, become more pitched in recent weeks.

Teachers are uncertain about when they will be vaccinated. With alarming case counts across the country and new variants of the coronavirus emerging, unions are fighting efforts to return their members to crowded hallways.

The Chicago Teachers Union told members to defy orders to return to the classroom on Monday and to begin working remotely. The teachers say the district has not done enough to keep students and teachers safe during the pandemic. Students are supposed to come back to classrooms on Feb. 1.

Given the seemingly intractable health and labor challenges, some district officials have begun to say out loud what was previously unthinkable: that schools may not be operating normally for the 2021-22 school year. And some labor leaders are seeking to tamp down the expectations Mr. Biden’s words have raised.

“We don’t know whether a vaccine stops transmissibility,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s second-largest teachers union.

Some virus experts, however, have said there is reason to be optimistic on this question.

Ms. Weingarten said a key to returning teachers to classrooms in the coming months would be promises to allow those with health conditions, or whose family members have compromised immune systems, to continue to work remotely; the collection of centralized data on the number of coronavirus cases in specific schools; and assurances from districts that they would shut down schools when cases occur.

Fights over those very demands have slowed and complicated reopenings across the country.

Mr. Biden’s executive order directs federal agencies to create national school reopening guidelines, to support virus contact tracing in schools and to collect data measuring the impact of the pandemic on students. The White House is also pushing a stimulus package that would provide $130 billion to schools for costs such as virus testing, upgrading ventilation systems and hiring staff members.

Research has pointed to the potential to operate schools safely before teachers and students are vaccinated, as long as practices like mask wearing are adhered to, and especially when community transmission and hospitalization rates are controlled.

A parking lot of the State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz., which has been turned into a mass vaccination site.Credit…Juan Arredondo for The New York Times

An 8-year-old girl in Missouri is getting an earful from frustrated Arizonans who are trying to get inoculated against Covid-19 and mistakenly calling her instead.

Sophia Garcia of Sullivan, Mo., who used to live in Arizona, has been receiving dozens of calls from people in the state on her hand-me-down phone, whose Phoenix number is just one digit different from the Arizona health department’s vaccine help line.

“Every five minutes my phone keeps ringing,” she told Phoenix’s CBS affiliate, KPHO/KTVK. Callers have been complaining about scheduling difficulties and asking how to book an appointment, her family said. In response, Sophia has recorded a voice mail message directing callers to the appropriate number.

Her story offers a glimpse of the struggles and at times desperation of people seeking vaccination in Arizona and elsewhere. People across the United States have complained of their second dose appointments being canceled after vaccination sites ran out of supplies. And there are concerns that President Biden’s goal of 100 million shots in 100 days may not be ambitious enough.

Arizona, which has the worst infection rate in the country, is speeding up vaccinations after a slow start, with the Department of Health Services announcing on Sunday that more than 400,000 doses had been administered. Over 61,000 people have received both doses, the health department said. A New York Times tracker monitoring the vaccine rollout in each state places Arizona in the top 20 for doses administered.

After earlier glitches and staff shortages, the state attributes the turnaround partly to round-the-clock use of the State Farm Stadium in Glendale, a suburb of Phoenix, as a site for inoculations in the past few weeks. “The success of our State Farm Stadium vaccination site has made it clear that Arizona can efficiently and effectively administer vaccine to large numbers,” Dr. Cara Christ, director of the Arizona Department of Health Services, said in a statement.

Another vaccination site at the Phoenix Municipal Stadium is set to open next week.

State officials said the federal government had denied a request for an additional 300,000 doses each week. “Now the federal government has to step up its game and provide additional vaccine to support Arizona’s proven momentum,” Dr. Christ said.

In the meantime, Arizonans who inadvertently call Sophia in Missouri will get this firm but encouraging message: “Hopefully, if you try carefully, you could get the right number.”

GLOBAL ROUNDUP

An official in the northeastern Chinese city of Tonghua, where residents are barred from leaving their homes amid a strict lockdown, apologized to residents who said they had not been receiving enough food.

Tonghua, an industrial city of about two million people in Jilin Province, went into lockdown on Jan. 20 after the number of recent cases grew to nearly 100. Since then the local outbreak has been largely brought under control, with just two new symptomatic cases reported on Saturday.

As China observes the one-year anniversary of the lockdown in Wuhan, the central city where the virus was first discovered, other parts of the country are confronting smaller outbreaks. The government has responded with mass testing and citywide lockdowns that at one point affected more than 28 million people, almost three times the size of the population that was initially locked down in Wuhan.

On Monday, China reported 124 new cases in the previous 24 hours, including 117 local cases and seven among travelers in quarantine after returning from overseas. That is an increase from 80 cases reported a day earlier, though still vastly lower than other large countries. Mainland China, which has a population of 1.4 billion people, has recorded a total of about 100,000 coronavirus cases and 4,635 deaths, according to a New York Times database.

In Tonghua, the tough restrictions on movement have led to widespread complaints, with residents taking to social media to vent and seek help. Jiang Haiyan, a deputy mayor, acknowledged the problems on Sunday, saying that a lack of personnel had hindered the distribution of supplies.

“At present, there are problems of untimely and inadequate distribution of household materials for citizens, which has caused great inconvenience to everyone’s lives,” Ms. Jiang said.

The city’s Communist Party committee and local government “express their sincere apologies to everyone,” she added.

The city had since recruited a large number of community workers and volunteers to ensure adequate supply distribution, Ms. Jiang said.

But on the social media accounts for The People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s main newspaper, some people continued to express dissatisfaction with the situation.

“Before the residents weren’t treated humanely, they didn’t tell us anything and in one night went from house to house sealing everything up,” read one popular reply. “Now grass-roots officials and volunteers are treated inhumanely, and in one night all the food must be distributed door to door.”

Lin Qiqing and Salman Masood contributed reporting.

In other developments around the world:

• Australia on Monday approved the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine for use among people 16 and older, the country’s first vaccine approval. Vaccinations are expected to start late next month. The announcement came one year to the day after Australia reported its first coronavirus case.

• Pakistan is likely to approve the Russian Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine for emergency use, officials said. It would be the third to get such approval, joining Oxford University’s AstraZeneca and the Chinese SinoPharm vaccines. Pakistan, which has an approximate population of 212 million, has yet to start its rollout. Dr. Faisal Sultan, the de facto health minister, said last week that one million dosages would be distributed in the first three months of 2021. Trials of the Chinese CanSino vaccine are currently being conducted in the country, and the results are expected in the first week of February, officials said.

• Officials in New Zealand confirmed on Monday a case of the South African variant of the coronavirus in a returned traveler a week after she left hotel quarantine. Officials have said the 56-year-old, who had tested negative twice before being allowed to return home, was probably infected by a fellow returned traveler while in quarantine. People who were at the same hotel have been urged to self-isolate immediately. It is the first case New Zealand has recorded outside quarantine since November. The government in Australia responded on Monday by suspending its travel bubble with New Zealand for at least 72 hours, saying all travelers from the country must quarantine on arrival.

• The presidential election in Portugal on Sunday was marked by record-low voter turnout amid a nationwide lockdown and the country’s highest one-day death toll from the coronavirus. Turnout was about 39 percent, according to the preliminary results, despite an easing of restrictions on movement and an increase in the number of polling stations. In the last presidential election in 2016, turnout was more than 48 percent. On Sunday, officials reported a record 275 coronavirus deaths, one day after reporting 15,333 cases, also a single-day record. Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, Portugal’s center-right president, was re-elected to a second five-year term with about 61 percent of the vote.

VideoVideo by City of New Orleans, courtesy of Crista RockCreditCredit…Crista Rock

With the snap of the snare drums, New Orleanians take joyous turns high-stepping and chicken strutting, dressed in the finery of their social clubs and krewes. The celebration, shown on a 30-second public service announcement, is one of numerous efforts around the country to persuade people to get inoculated against the coronavirus. But its homegrown approach, using neighborhood personas and invoking local Carnival culture, may make it particularly effective, say experts in vaccine hesitance and behavioral change.

“I’m getting the vaccine so we can have Mardi Gras, y’all!” shouts Jeremy Stevenson, a Monogram Hunter Mardi Gras Indian, also known as Second Chief Lil Pie, as he sways in a 12-foot tower of turquoise feathers and beading.

Other locals prance forth to offer their own reasons, concluding: “Sleeves Up, NOLA!”

“I teared up several times and also just laughed out loud with delight. The sense of community is contagious,” said Alison M. Buttenheim, the scientific director of the Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. “Vaccination is framed as a collective action that everyone can contribute to in order to bring back things the community values and cherishes.”

Although national vaccine hesitation rates are falling, surveys show that antipathy to the new shots is still widespread among some demographic groups. But there has been little consensus around ways to build confidence in the shot.

In November, New Orleans put together a coalition of public health doctors, clergy, leaders from Black, Latino and Vietnamese communities, and heads of the city’s large social clubs. The group identified cultural icons that would appeal widely to residents.

Rather than focusing messaging on the miseries wrought by the pandemic, it decided to emphasize an aspirational and inviting tone, a core insight derived from behavioral change research.

“I’m getting my shot so I can visit my 92-year-old mom and we can eat in our favorite restaurants,” says Julie Nalibov of the Krewe of Red Beans.

The spot will be shown on local TV stations and saturate social media. Photographs will adorn citywide billboards.

“I hope state and local health departments around the country can get resources to develop more hyperlocal campaigns,” Dr. Buttenheim said. “Imagine similar spots from Philly, or Boise, or Hawaii, or the Cherokee Nation.”

Protesters clashed with the police during a demonstration against coronavirus restrictions in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, on Sunday.Credit…Rob Engelaar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Prime Minister Mark Rutte of the Netherlands said on Monday that anyone involved in riots over the weekend protesting the country’s coronavirus measures had engaged in “criminal violence” and warned that perpetrators would be treated accordingly.

Hundreds of people were detained during unrest in Amsterdam, Eindhoven and at least eight other cities after the start of a 9 p.m. curfew on Saturday, the police said. Officers used tear gas, attack dogs and water cannons to disperse crowds in the southern city of Eindhoven, where shops were looted and cars set on fire. In Urk, a staunchly protestant fishing village young people burned down a Covid test facility.

“This has nothing to do with protest or fighting for freedom,” Mr. Rutte, told reporters on Monday. “This is criminal violence, and we will treat it as such.”

His caretaker government implemented harsh new lockdown measures last week, vetted by Parliament, to curb the spread of the coronavirus. Flights to Britain, South Africa and most of South America were halted on Saturday. It also implemented a nationwide curfew, the first since World War II.

The mayor of Eindhoven, John Jorritsma, was visibly upset when he spoke to reporters about the violence in the city. He called the rioters “scum of the earth” and said he feared the Netherlands, normally one of the quietest countries in the European Union, was “on a path of civil war.”

A spokesman for the Dutch police union said the group feared that the illegal protests and riots were just the start of the curfew-related unrest. “I hope it was a one-off, but I’m afraid it was a harbinger for the coming days and weeks,” the spokesman, Koen Simmers, said, according to the public broadcaster NOS. “We haven’t seen so much violence in 40 years,” he added.

The protesters also gathered last week in Amsterdam after calls on social media to “resist” the lockdown rules and the government’s policies overall. Mr. Rutte is one of the longest-serving European leaders. Elections in the Netherlands are scheduled for March.

Protests also erupted over the weekend in Denmark. Five people were arrested on Saturday during an anti-lockdown demonstration in Copenhagen, local news outlets reported. Around 1,000 protesters gathered to demonstrate against what they said were limitations of their freedoms, after a call for protest by a Facebook group. Protesters tied an effigy of Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen to a pole and burned it, Danish channel TV2 reported. A sign was hung around the effigy’s neck saying, “She must and should be killed.”

Outside a cafe in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Monday, the first day after lockdown restrictions were lifted.Credit…Gleb Garanich/Reuters

Ukraine reopened schools, restaurants and movie theaters on Monday after testing showed the coronavirus was spreading less rapidly after just one week of a strict lockdown.

The health minister, Maksym Stepanov, pointed to the improving statistics as a clear indication that a strict lockdown, even if brief, can tamp down numbers. The rate of new infections declined about a third after the first seven days of closures, he said.

The cumulative number of infections nationwide last week was just over 30,000, nearly 14,000 less than the week before, Mr. Stepanov said. “The statistics are relatively optimistic and point to an improvement in the situation,” he said, local media reported.

Mr. Stepanov also pointed to a decline in hospitalizations, which typically trail infections by several weeks, suggesting that the downward trend had begun before the lockdowns and that New Year celebrations had not shifted the dynamic.

President Volodymyr Zelensky quickly imposed lockdowns last spring before easing them over the summer. The country retained a system that can close businesses in cities or regions with flare-ups.

Though the government lifted some restrictions on Monday, not all businesses can open. Nightclubs and sports stadiums remain closed. Schools are not allowed convene large gatherings of students, such as for performances or schoolwide meetings.

Ukraine, which aspires to join the European Union but is not in the bloc, has struggled to find vaccines and may not be able to inoculate its population until well into the year, forcing it to rely on quarantines, lockdowns and other restrictions until then.

Google said it will make company buildings, parking lots and open spaces available to serve as temporary vaccination clinics in partnership with health care providers and public health officials.

In a blog post on Monday, Sundar Pichai, the chief executive of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, said the company will start by opening sites in Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City, with plans to expand to other sites nationwide.

The move is part of a series of measures to help accelerate vaccination efforts. Google also said it plans to contribute $100 million in ad credits to health organizations to educate people about the vaccine and $50 million for groups working on fair access to the vaccine.

It will also include more information in search results and maps to help people find vaccination locations with details about who is eligible and whether appointments are necessary. Google said it will provide local distribution information in search results in the coming week so people can determine whether they are eligible to receive a vaccine.

Here’s what you need to know:

Dr. Anthony Fauci, seen here in December, said the United States would re-engage at all levels with the World Health Organization. Credit…Hilary Swift for The New York Times

A day after President Biden reinstated American ties with the World Health Organization, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci told the organization that the United States was committed to working closely with other nations to implement a more effective global response to the pandemic.

“Given that a considerable amount of effort will be required by all of us,” Dr. Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, said via video link during a meeting of the group’s executive board, “the United States stands ready to work in partnership and solidarity to support the international Covid-19 response, mitigate its impact on the world, strengthen our institutions, advance epidemic preparedness for the future, and improve the health and well-being of all people throughout the world.”

Dr. Fauci said the United States would re-engage at all levels with the W.H.O. and intended to join Covax, a program set up by the agency to distribute vaccines to poorer nations.

His comments, which he said came exactly one year after the United States recorded its first Covid-19 case, underscored the alacrity with which the new administration is reversing both the substance and tone of the Trump administration’s approach.

“This is a good day for the W.H.O. and a good day for global health,” the agency’s leader, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said, thanking President Biden for honoring his pledge to resume W.H.O. membership and Dr. Fauci for his personal support to the body over many years as well as his leadership in America’s response to the pandemic.

On Thursday, Mr. Biden put forward national strategy that includes aggressive use of executive authority to protect workers, advance racial equity and ramp up the manufacturing of test kits, vaccines and supplies. The “National Strategy for the Covid-19 Response and Pandemic Preparedness” outlines the kind of muscular and highly coordinated federal response that Democrats have long demanded and that President Donald Trump rejected.

Since virtually the moment Mr. Biden was sworn into office, he announced a series of actions to try to blunt the pandemic, including restoring the National Security Council’s Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense, a group disbanded under Mr. Trump in 2018.

He is requiring social distancing and the wearing of masks by federal employees, contractors and others on federal property, and is starting a “100 days masking challenge” urging all Americans to wear masks and state and local officials to implement public measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

His moves come in stark contrast to the response of President Trump, who announced the United States would pull out of the W.H.O. in May last year, accusing the organization of kowtowing to China. Mr. Trump had sought to blame China for not doing enough to stop the spread of the disease, and he accused Beijing of hiding the true scope of infections from the W.H.O., targeting the agency in the process.

A panel established by the organization said in a damning report that there was much blame to go around. It criticized the slow response of governments and public health organizations. Investigators, who are still working on their final report, said they could not understand why a W.H.O. committee waited until Jan. 30 to declare an international health emergency. (The Chinese government had lobbied other governments against declaring such an emergency.) The investigators also said that despite years of warnings that a pandemic as inevitable, the agency was slow to make changes.

On Thursday, addressing “my dear friend” Dr. Tedros, Dr. Fauci thanked the W.H.O. for its leadership of the global response to the pandemic. “Under trying circumstances,” he said, “this organization has rallied the scientific and research and development community to accelerate vaccines, therapies and diagnostics; conducted regular, streamed press briefings that authoritatively track global developments; provided millions of vital supplies from lab reagents to protective gear to health care workers in dozens of countries; and relentlessly worked with nations in their fight against Covid-19.”

The United States, he said, would fulfill its financial obligations to the W.H.O., halt the previous administration’s moves to draw down American staff seconded to it and saw technical collaboration at all levels as a fundamental part of its relationship with the agency.

Dr. Fauci also set out broader aims for increasing global pandemic preparedness, including developing an improved early warning and rapid response mechanism for dealing with biological threats, and strengthening pandemic supply chains.

“We will work with partners around the world to build a system that leaves us better prepared for this pandemic and for the next one,” he said.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed reporting.

United States ›	United StatesOn Jan. 20	14-day change
New cases	184,754	–16%
New deaths	4,367	+14%

World ›	WorldOn Jan. 20	14-day change
New cases	693,073	–1%
New deaths	17,614	+23%

Where cases per capita are
highest

Seattle-Tacoma International Airport last February. America’s first known coronavirus patient had passed through the previous month, on his way home from Wuhan, China.Credit…Miles Fortune for The New York Times

One year ago today, health officials told Americans about a traveler who had just come home from Wuhan, China, sought treatment at an urgent-care clinic north of Seattle after falling ill — and set off alarm bells.

The man had the first confirmed coronavirus case in the United States.

In announcing the news, the officials struck a tone at once reassuring and worrisome. They said they believed the risk to the public was low. But they also cautioned that more cases were likely to come.

And come they did: The nation has now recorded more than 24 million cases and 400,000 deaths.

It began slowly.

In the first five weeks, American officials reported about 45 known cases and no known deaths from the virus.

But in the past five weeks, the country recorded over 7.4 million cases and close to 100,000 deaths. On Wednesday alone, officials recorded at least 184,237 new cases and at least 4,357 deaths. In terms of deaths, it was the second-worst day of the pandemic.

It was also a day on which a new president took office after ousting an incumbent widely derided for his handling of the pandemic — and vowed to do better.

The first known case, of the traveler from Wuhan, took place in Snohomish County, Wash., and it led to an extensive effort to isolate the patient and monitor the contacts he had encountered since returning from China.

Other travelers also ended up testing positive, and genomic sequencing showed that a different branch of the virus took root independently on the East Coast of the United States.

Although the Seattle area became the epicenter of an early outbreak at the end of February, researchers are not sure if the man who returned to the Seattle area set it off.

Genomic sequencing suggested that the man, who is now 36, was part of a virus branch that spread across the region. But researchers looking at timing and genetic variations across the region believe the outbreak may have begun with another, unknown person.

Washington’s early outbreak led the state to record 37 of the nation’s first 50 coronavirus deaths. But the state has since fared far better than the nation as a whole. If the United States had maintained a death rate comparable to Washington’s, there would be some 220,000 fewer coronavirus deaths.

A vaccination in Atlanta.Credit…Nicole Craine for The New York Times

That Covid-19 vaccine appointment may not just be hard to get — it may not even be all that secure.

Thousands of people across the country learned that their appointments had been abruptly canceled in the last few days, after vaccine shipments to local health departments and other distributors fell short of what was expected.

The health department in Erie County, N.Y., which includes Buffalo, canceled seven days of appointments this week, affecting 8,010 people, saying the state had sent far fewer doses than the county ordered. All future appointments should be considered “tentative, and are subject to vaccine availability,” the department said in a statement on Wednesday.

“We made appointments based on our hope and expectation that we would be able to fill those,” said Kara Kane, a department spokeswoman. “There’s a lot of confusion, a lot of questions, a lot of concern.”

Dianne Bennett, 78, lost a first-dose appointment at the Erie County Medical Center because of the cancellations, as did her husband. They were told to try again later, but Ms. Bennett said they had no idea when another appointment would be available.

“It’s such a lottery,” she said. “I just think it’s outrageous.”

Similar issues have cropped up across the country, as demand far outpaces supply and vaccine providers struggle to predict how many doses will arrive.

At Beaufort Memorial Hospital in South Carolina, hospital officials canceled 6,000 scheduled appointments through March 30 after they were notified that thousands of vaccine doses they expected were not coming.

San Francisco’s public health department expects to run out of vaccine on Thursday, The Los Angeles Times reported, because the city’s allocation dropped sharply from a week ago and the state did not replace doses that had to be discarded.

Local health officials throughout California say they have trouble scheduling appointments because they are unsure how much vaccine they will receive from week to week, the paper said.

In New York City, 23,000 vaccination appointments scheduled for Thursday and Friday were postponed because of a shipping delay, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Wednesday, a day after warning that the city’s supply would soon be exhausted.

“We already were feeling the stress of a shortage of vaccine,” the mayor said at a news conference. “Now the situation has been made even worse.”

Recent moves to open up eligibility have aggravated the situation.

After the state of Georgia announced that anyone 65 or older could get the vaccine, the 10-county Northwest Health District was swamped with more than 10,000 appointment requests in one weekend — far more than it could satisfy with the supply it had on hand. So it shut down its scheduling website, and told people to call their local health department to arrange an appointment instead, frustrating many people who thought they had already secured a slot.

“We’re having to schedule appointments at least a week out, based on anticipated delivery, but we don’t know what will show up on a daily basis,” said Logan Boss, the spokesman for the health district. “It’s difficult to explain that to the public.”

Global Roundup

A police cordon on a street near Renji Hospital following a suspected Covid-19 infection in Shanghai, China, on Thursday.Credit…China Daily, via Reuters

Three locally transmitted coronavirus cases were confirmed on Thursday in Shanghai, China’s largest city, as fears rose over another large-scale outbreak in the country where the virus was first detected.

The three cases, the first in the city in about two months, were connected to prominent hospitals in the city, China’s business capital. Two of the infected individuals worked at the hospitals, one at Fudan University Shanghai Cancer Center and the other at Renji Hospital. They lived in the same residential complex. The third person was a close contact.

The infections were found during routine nucleic tests for hospital employees. The positive results led to closures at the outpatient sections of both hospitals and a citywide campaign to test all hospital employees.

Shanghai is the latest Chinese city to experience a recent outbreak, the worst since the pandemic first emerged in late 2019.

Beijing, the capital, and the provinces of Hebei, Heilongjiang, Jilin, Shanxi and Shandong have all recently reported new infections. This week alone, China reported more than 400 local infections, a steep and sudden increase.

Beijing has implemented new rules restricting the number of passengers allowed on public transportation, and extended the quarantine period for travelers returning from overseas.

Schools have been closed and the authorities on Wednesday announced that travelers returning to rural areas for the Chinese New Year holiday, the largest annual human migration in the world, must test negative for the virus and quarantine at home for 14 days.

Ma Xiaowei, the National Health Commission minister, has blamed the recent outbreak on travelers returning from overseas and on workers handling imported food.

The authorities said on Wednesday that two cases recently found in Beijing were of the more contagious B.1.1.7 variant, first found in Britain.

Here are other developments from around the world:

• Five people were killed in a fire on Thursday that roared through an unfinished plant at the Serum Institute of India, which is producing millions of doses of the AstraZeneca and Oxford University coronavirus vaccine. Adar Poonawalla, the chief executive of Serum, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, said in a tweet that the destruction would not disrupt production of the vaccine, labeled Covishield in India. Covishield and a locally developed vaccine were rolled out as part of India’s massive inoculation drive this week, and Serum has promised 200 million doses to Covax, an international health group that has negotiated vaccine purchases for less wealthy countries, as soon as the end of January.

• A senior member of South Africa’s government, Jackson Mthembu, died on Thursday from complications related to Covid-19, the office of President Cyril Ramaphosa said. Mr. Mthembu, 62, was a minister in the office of the presidency and a prominent figure in the governing African National Congress, who led media briefings on the government’s Covid-19 response. “Minister Mthembu was an exemplary leader, an activist and lifelong champion of freedom and democracy,” Mr. Ramaphosa said in a statement. It was unclear whether Mr. Ramaphosa had come into recent contact with Mr. Mthembu, who said he had tested positive on Jan. 11. But a spokesman for Mr. Ramaphosa, Tyrone Seale, said that the president was not in quarantine and that much of the government’s work had been carried out remotely.

• Glastonbury Festival, Britain’s largest music event, has been canceled for a second year because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the organizers said on Thursday. The summer music festival has in recent years seen headline performances from Adele, The Killers and Kanye West, and usually attracts around 200,000 attendees. With Britain now under its third lockdown, Glastonbury’s organizers Michael and Emily Eavis said in a statement that it had “become clear that we will simply not be able to make the festival happen this year.” Those who paid deposits for tickets last year would now have spaces reserved in 2022, they said, when “we are very confident that we can deliver something really special.”

President Biden signed several executive orders on Wednesday, including a mask mandate.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

President Biden planned to use Thursday, his first full day in office, to go on the offensive against the coronavirus, with a national strategy that includes aggressive use of executive authority to protect workers, advance racial equity and ramp up the manufacturing of test kits, vaccines and supplies.

The “National Strategy for the Covid-19 Response and Pandemic Preparedness,” previewed Wednesday evening by Mr. Biden’s advisers, outlines the kind of muscular and highly coordinated federal response that Democrats have long demanded and that President Donald J. Trump rejected. Mr. Trump insisted that state governments take the lead.

Mr. Biden intends to make expansive use of his authority to sign a dozen executive orders or actions related to Covid-19 — including one requiring mask-wearing “in airports, on certain modes of public transportation, including many trains, airplanes, maritime vessels, and intercity buses,” according to a fact sheet issued by his administration.

With its nominees for top health positions not yet confirmed by Congress, the Biden team has asked Mr. Trump’s surgeon general, Dr. Jerome Adams, to stay on as an adviser and to help with the transition. But Mr. Biden’s advisers were not shy about taking aim at the former president, whose vaccine rollout has been the object of intense criticism.

Biden advisers said they were stunned by the vaccination plan — or the lack of one — that it inherited from the Trump administration, and said the Trump team failed to share crucial information about supplies and vaccine availability.

“What we’re inheriting is so much worse than we could have imagined,” said Jeff Zients, the new White House Covid-19 response coordinator, adding, “The cooperation or lack of cooperation from the Trump administration has been an impediment. We don’t have the visibility that we would hope to have into supply and allocations.”

The Biden team said it had identified 12 “immediate supply shortfalls” that were critical to the pandemic response, including N95 surgical masks and isolation gowns, as well as swabs, reagents and pipettes used in testing — deficiencies that have dogged the nation for nearly a year. Jen Psaki, the new White House press secretary, told reporters on Wednesday evening that Mr. Biden “absolutely remains committed” to invoking the Defense Production Act, a Korean War-era law, to bolster supplies.

Local officials have expressed hope that the Biden administration would step up vaccine production enough to make second doses available for an expanded pool of eligible people.

Production of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines authorized in the U.S. are running flat, and it is not clear whether the administration could significantly expand the overall supply any time soon.

Though Mr. Biden has indicated his administration would release more doses as they became available and keep fewer in reserve, he said on Friday that he would not change the recommended timing for second doses: 21 days after the first dose for Pfizer’s vaccine, and 28 days for Moderna’s.

“We believe it’s critical that everyone should get two doses within the F.D.A.-recommended time frame,” Mr. Biden said while discussing his vaccine distribution plans.

Passengers wearing protective face masks in Berlin. Requirements on public transportation tightened this week.Credit…Stefanie Loos/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

As European countries brace for a potential surge of coronavirus cases linked to the new variants, countries have reimposed strict lockdown measures, and some have made “medical” grade masks mandatory in some areas.

Starting this week in Germany, N95 or surgical-grade masks are compulsory for people on public transportation, in office spaces and in shops. Such masks are also set to become mandatory in public transport and in shops in Austria next week, and France could soon follow. The French authorities are considering whether they should implement a recommendation from the country’s health advisory council that people drop homemade masks, and wear surgical or highly protective fabric masks instead.

Chancellor Angela Merkel said concerns about the new variants had driven the decision on masks.

“We have to slow the spread of this variant. That means we cannot wait until the danger is palpable,” the chancellor told reporters on Thursday, in explaining the decision to further tighten restrictions. “There is still some time to ward off the danger posed by this virus. All of the measures that we have agreed to are preventive.”

Effectively, the German authorities are trying to buy time by slowing the spread of the new variant long enough for the weather to warm and for the number of people vaccinated to increase, Ms. Merkel said. Her government has been criticized for weeks for failing to acquire enough doses of the vaccine to inoculate everyone who wants one.

The chancellor pushed back against the charge on Thursday, saying that everyone in Germany would have the opportunity to be vaccinated “by the end of the summer,” or Sept. 21. “But I cannot guarantee how many people will get themselves vaccinated,” she added.

The more contagious variant discovered in Britain has been found in 60 countries, according to the World Health Organization, but how it spreads, and whether it has already contributed to countries’ surges, remains unclear. Other variants have been detected in South Africa and in Brazil, and while none is known to be more deadly or to cause more severe disease, the authorities in some European countries have scrambled to impose measures like new mask rules or tightened lockdowns to limit their spread.

In Germany, people now have to wear N95, FFP2 or FFP3 masks, or generic surgical ones — the disposable masks that are usually blue — in some public spaces. Cloth masks and other face coverings such, like face shields, are not considered sufficient and are no longer accepted in highly trafficked areas, including stores and public transportation.

The new rules imposed in Germany are tougher than guidelines from the World Health Organization, which recommends medical masks only for health care workers, people with Covid-19 symptoms and those over 60 years old or who have underlying conditions. Wearing what it calls a nonmedical mask both indoors and outdoors is enough for the general public, according to the organization.

There is widespread evidence that masks limit the risk of infection, but not all masks provide the same level of protection. A study that compared transmission rates in 16 countries and was published in The Lancet in June found that while face masks contributed to a large reduction in risk of infection, the risks were even lower when people wore a N95 mask or a similar model compared with disposable surgical masks.

N95 masks are more expensive, raising concerns that the new rules will be discriminatory for low-income families. The Austrian government has promised free masks for people on low incomes and those over 65, and Germany is making masks available to those who are vulnerable, or 60 and older.

In France, the recommendations from the country’s health advisory council are not compulsory, but the authorities could decide to make them so. At the beginning of the pandemic, French officials stumbled over recommendations on masks, and the country later faced a widespread shortage that threatened the safety of health care workers and pushed people to make their own masks. Wearing a mask in public spaces, whether indoors or outdoors, has been compulsory for months.

Neither Germany nor Britain, which in recent weeks has faced a resurgence of cases and its highest numbers of daily deaths since the beginning of the pandemic, require people to wear masks outdoors.

A Covid-19 patient receiving treatment on Wednesday at a hospital in Milton Keynes, England. Deaths in Britain are at their highest levels of the pandemic.Credit…Toby Melville/Reuters

When Britain’s tally of deaths from Covid-19 passed 1,000 last March, a senior health official said that it would be “a good result” to keep the eventual total below 20,000.

After two consecutive days of record death reports, the figure now stands at 93,290, the highest in Europe and the fifth highest worldwide. Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, when 1,820 deaths were reported, Prime Minister Boris Johnson described recent numbers as “appalling.”

Mr. Johnson also warned of “more to come,” as a wave of cases that began late last year, many of them from the more transmissible coronavirus variant, continues to push Britain to new extremes.

Britain has relied on national lockdown measures, implemented in early January after Mr. Johnson was forced to roll back plans for a Christmas easing of restrictions, to reduce the pressure on its National Health Service. It’s also seeking to vaccinate widely and rapidly, concentrating on first doses in a program that has so far reached 4.6 million people, about 7 percent of the population.

Though case figures have shown declines in recent days, the latest interim results from one of the country’s largest studies into coronavirus infections, released on Thursday, brought less encouraging news. Scientists said infections in England had “plateaued” at the highest levels their study had recorded so far.

“We’re not seeing the decline that we really need to see given the pressure on the N.H.S. from the current very high levels of the virus in the population,” Prof. Paul Elliott of Imperial College London, who leads the research program, told the BBC.

Looking at infections in England from Jan. 6 to 15, the report warned of a “worrying” potential uptick in cases, though it cautioned that the results do not yet reflect the impact of the latest lockdown.

“If prevalence continues at the high rate we are seeing then hospitals will continue to be put under immense pressure, and more and more lives will be lost,” Professor Elliott said in a summary of the report.

Laura Lima watching the inauguration at Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Hospital in South Los Angeles.Credit…Isadora Kosofsky for The New York Times

There is no shortage of screens in the intensive-care units treating Covid-19 patients, but at one I.C.U. in Los Angeles on Wednesday, some of the screens showed not blood pressure and oxygen levels but images of the 46th president of the United States being sworn in.

“I just wanted to see and listen,” said Laura Lima, a nurse watching the inauguration on an iPhone propped on her work station. “It’s important stuff.”

Ms. Lima works at Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Hospital in South Los Angeles, and as she watched President Biden address the nation, a monitor beeped. She put on an isolation gown and gloves and entered the room of one of her patients, a man in his early 60s on a ventilator whose intravenous line needed to be adjusted.

Ms. Lima took note of the new president’s statements about hastening the rollout of vaccines.

“I think this community should be prioritized,” she said.

The neighborhood around the hospital, filled with low-income workers who often have poor access to health care, has been one of the hardest hit in Southern California’s surge.

Mario Torres Hernandez, a 63-year-old being treated with oxygen for Covid-19, had his television tuned to Telemundo during Mr. Biden’s visit to Arlington cemetery. “I hope he does more for us,” he said.

But it was another busy day at the I.C.U., and so the vast majority of its staff members were not watching the proceedings in Washington. One respiratory therapist said he had forgotten the inauguration was happening.

Some did think it was a day of hope.

“I’m so tired of zipping black body bags,” another nurse, Amanda Hamilton, said as the ceremony continued. “It’s exciting we have a president who actually cares and might do something about it.”

Health workers tending to a Covid-19 patient in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, in November.Credit…Samantha Reinders for The New York Times

Confirmed coronavirus cases from new variants found first in Britain, then in South Africa, Brazil and the United States have people worried about whether vaccines can protect against altered versions of the virus. Experts said in interviews that so far vaccines are capable of providing that protection.

But two small new studies, posted online Tuesday night, suggest that some variants may pose unexpected challenges to the immune system, even in those who have been vaccinated — a development that most scientists had not anticipated seeing for months, even years.

The findings result from laboratory experiments with blood samples from groups of patients, not observations of the virus spreading in the real world. The studies have not yet been peer-reviewed.

But experts who reviewed the papers agreed that the findings raised two possibilities. People who had survived mild cases may still be vulnerable to infection from a new variant; and the vaccines may be less effective against the variants.

Existing vaccines will still prevent serious illness, and people should continue getting them, said Dr. Michel C. Nussenzweig, an immunologist at Rockefeller University in New York, who led one of the studies: “If your goal is to keep people out of the hospital, then this is going to work just fine.”

But the vaccines may not prevent people from becoming mild or asymptomatic infections with the variants, he said. “They may not even know that they were infected,” Dr. Nussenzweig added. If the infected can still transmit the virus to others who are not immunized, it will continue to claim lives.

The studies published Tuesday night show that the variant identified in South Africa is less susceptible to antibodies created by natural infection and by vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.

Neither the South African variant nor a similar mutant virus in Brazil has yet been detected in the United States. The more contagious variant that has blazed through Britain does not contain these mutations and seems to be susceptible to vaccines.

Workers preparing for the reopening of Bandaranaike International Airport in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on Wednesday.Credit…Chamila Karunarathne/EPA, via Shutterstock

Sri Lanka reopened its airports to foreign arrivals on Thursday for the first time in 10 months amid a surge in new coronavirus cases, including that of a minister photographed drinking a shaman’s tonic that some in the island nation believe protects against the disease.

Thousands of people defied Covid-19 restrictions in central Sri Lanka for a shot of the tonic touted by the holy man Dhammika Bandara as lifelong protection against the virus.

Mr. Bandara said the recipe for the tonic, which includes honey and nutmeg, came to him in a trance from the Hindu goddess Kali. TV networks that support the government of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa have given Mr. Bandara airtime to promote the tonic.

Sri Lanka’s health ministry is conducting clinical trials into its potential benefits, according to Chatura Kumaratunga, the commissioner of Ayurveda, an ancient form of alternative medicine rooted in the Indian subcontinent.

In the meantime several lawmakers have become ill even after drinking the tonic. “The minister who had the tonic had only one dose,” Mr. Bandara told The New York Times, adding that it had to be taken twice a day for two days to work.

Coronavirus cases in Sri Lanka have surged from about 3,300 in October to more than 55,000. At least one case of the more contagious variant of the virus first found in Britain has been reported.

Dr. Haritha Aluthge of the Government Medical Officers’ Association said the surge was partly a result of the throngs who visited the central district of Kegalle for Mr. Bandara’s tonic.

“There were no local cases in Kegalle before this incident,” he said.

But general complacency and greater movement across the island were also driving up numbers, he said.

After a trial run with a group of about 1,500 Ukrainian tourists last month, Sri Lanka decided to welcome back all foreign tourists, hoping for a much-needed boost to its tourism-dependent economy. Tourists, however, have to show negative PCR tests, are limited to 55 hotels across the country and must be accompanied by government officials for the first two weeks of their trips.

Teresa Bautista, a student at the High School for Environmental Studies in Manhattan, collecting goose dropping samples at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx.Credit…Christine Marizzi/BioBus

Over the next few months, New York area high school students will gather samples from the city’s birds as a part of the Virus Hunters program, hosted by the nonprofit science outreach organization BioBus. Their goal is to catalog the flu viruses that often lurk in urban fowl, some of which might have the potential to someday hop into humans.

The surveillance program, which was developed in partnership with virologists at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, is one of several outreach efforts that have emerged in recent years to equip young scientists with hands-on experience in outbreak preparedness — a quest that has only gained urgency since the new coronavirus started its tear across the globe.

For many months to come, Covid-19 will continue to shutter schools and thwart efforts to gather. The changes have forced educators and researchers to change their teaching tactics. But several groups have met the challenge head on, not merely weathering the pandemic’s inconveniences but transforming them into opportunities for scientific growth.

Flu viruses are fairly cosmopolitan pathogens that are capable of jumping into a wide range of animals, including birds, and changing their genetic material along the way. Only some of these viruses pose a possible threat to people, experts said. But which ones? Researchers won’t know unless they check.

Doses of the Moderna vaccine, which must be kept cold, had to be discarded in Ohio after SpecialtyRX found that it had not properly monitored or recorded storage temperatures.Credit…Jae C. Hong/Associated Press

A pharmacy services company responsible for vaccinating residents at eight Ohio nursing homes allowed 890 doses of the Moderna vaccine — more than half its supply — to become spoiled by failing to make sure they were kept cold enough, state officials said.

The episode is being investigated by Ohio’s state Board of Pharmacy, and the state Department of Health has cut the company off from any more allocations of vaccine.

Before the new year, the company, SpecialtyRx, was given 1,500 doses to vaccinate residents at the eight facilities. After administering a first round of shots, the company found that it had not properly monitored or recorded the temperatures in its refrigerators and freezers where the remaining doses were stored.

State investigators determined that the 890 stored doses were no longer viable, the Department of Health said in a statement. The nursing home residents are still awaiting their second shots, and the facilities will have to arrange with another provider to obtain them.

The Moderna vaccine can be stored for up to 30 days if it is kept between 36 and 46 degrees Fahrenheit. Officials with SpecialtyRx could not be immediately reached for comment.

Like many other states, Ohio has gotten off to a slow start with its vaccination program. About 456,100 Ohioans — less than 4 percent of the population — had received first doses as of Wednesday, according to The Cincinnati Enquirer.

Gov. Mike DeWine said at a news conference on Tuesday that most of the state’s frontline health care workers and nursing-home residents had received a dose. “We are trying to juggle a lot of things and do a lot of things with not enough vaccines,” Mr. DeWine said.

The state plans to open up eligibility next week to all residents 75 years and older, as well as to younger people with certain severe illnesses and disorders.

The number of new cases reported in Ohio has been declining over the past week, but death reports have remained high after jumping upward after Christmas.

Patty Sakal, an American Sign Language interpreter who translated updates about the coronavirus for deaf Hawaiians.Credit…via Sakal family

Patty Sakal, an American Sign Language interpreter who translated updates about the coronavirus for deaf Hawaiians, died on Friday of complications related to Covid-19. She was 62.

Ms. Sakal, who lived in Honolulu, died at Alvarado Hospital Medical Center in San Diego, where she had gone last month to visit one of her daughters, according to Ms. Sakal’s sister, Lorna Mouton Riff.

Ms. Sakal, who worked as an A.S.L. interpreter for nearly four decades in a variety of settings, had become a mainstay in coronavirus news briefings in Hawaii, working with both the former mayor of Honolulu, Kirk Caldwell, and the state’s governor, David Y. Ige, to interpret news for the deaf community.

In a statement, Isle Interpret, an organization of interpreters to which Ms. Sakal belonged, called Ms. Sakal “Hawaii interpreter ‘royalty.’”

This was in part because Ms. Sakal understood Hawaiian Sign Language, a version of American Sign Language developed by deaf elders to which she had been exposed while growing up.

“She was highly utilized and highly desired by the deaf in the community because they could understand her so well and she could understand them,” said Tamar Lani, the president of Isle Interpret.

In an interview with Hawaii News Now, Mr. Caldwell, whose second term as mayor of Honolulu ended this month, praised Ms. Sakal for “truly putting herself on the frontline.”

“Here it was, a pandemic and it was not safe to go, yet she went out and she helped do a job that was critical to people who needed this information,” Mr. Caldwell told Hawaii News Now. Neither he nor Mr. Ige could immediately be reached for comment on Wednesday.