CoronavirusCovid News: D.C. Eases Indoor Mask Restrictions

D.C. eases its indoor mask mandate, but still recommends masking up.

Image
Mayor Muriel Bowser visiting children who are getting vaccinations in Washington earlier this month. The mayor is easing the indoor mask mandate in the nation’s capital next week.Credit...Kenny Holston for The New York Times

Mayor Muriel Bowser of Washington said on Tuesday that an indoor mask mandate in the nation’s capital would be eased on Nov. 22, reflecting a shift away from mask requirements as coronavirus vaccination rates continue to rise and infections fueled by the Delta variant subside in the city.

About 88 percent of the District of Columbia’s adult residents have received at least one vaccine dose, according to city health officials.

Masks will still be required in certain circumstances, including on public transportation, inside school buildings and in congregate living facilities like nursing homes, college dormitories and jails.

Ms. Bowser said the easing of the mandate did not mean that people should stop wearing masks entirely. “It does mean that we’re shifting the government’s response to providing you this risk-based information, and recommending layering strategies, as the best way to protect yourself and the community,” she said during a news conference.

Washington imposed its current mask mandate in July after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised everyone, whether vaccinated or not, to resume wearing face coverings in indoor public spaces if they lived in an area where the virus was spreading rapidly. The agency defined those areas as places that reported more than 50 new infections for every 100,000 residents over the previous seven days, or where more than 8 percent of tests had come back positive over that period.

As of Tuesday, the District of Columbia was above that threshold, with 81 new Covid-19 cases per 100,000 residents over the past seven days, according to the C.D.C.

A correction was made on 
Nov. 17, 2021

A photo caption that had been included in an earlier version of this article misstated the mask policy at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. The museum has not changed its policy regarding the wearing of masks.

How we handle corrections

The F.D.A. plans to authorize Pfizer-BioNTech boosters for all adults as soon as Thursday.

Image
Booster shots of Pfizer-BioNTech’s coronavirus vaccine on offer in Chelsea, Mass., last week.Credit...Brian Snyder/Reuters

WASHINGTON — The Food and Drug Administration is aiming to authorize booster doses of Pfizer-BioNTech’s coronavirus vaccine for all adults as early as Thursday, a move that would expand the number of Americans eligible for additional shots by tens of millions, according to people familiar with the agency’s plans.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s independent committee of vaccine experts has scheduled a meeting for Friday to discuss data on the booster dose’s efficacy and safety. If both the F.D.A. and the C.D.C. sign off this week, they will have acted strikingly quickly — a little more than a week after Pfizer asked for authorization of boosters for everyone 18 and older.

Under that scenario, any adult who received a second dose of the vaccine at least six months earlier would be officially eligible to get a booster as soon as this weekend. The F.D.A. is expected to rule without consulting its own expert panel, which has met frequently during the pandemic to review vaccine data and make a recommendation ahead of a regulatory decision.

Moderna is expected to soon submit its own request for the F.D.A. to broaden eligibility for its booster. But for now, every adult could get the Pfizer booster, according to people familiar with the planning.

The broad booster authorization has been viewed as something of a fait accompli for weeks. Some state and local officials have begun rolling out similar policies ahead of F.D.A. action — responding to persistent virus case counts and the eagerness of many Americans to seek additional protection ahead of holiday gatherings.

New York City health officials on Monday encouraged all adults who want boosters to seek them out. Arkansas, California, Colorado and New Mexico have already moved to expand access.

Many Americans have taken the matter into their own hands and sought out extra doses even if they do not officially qualify yet.

The F.D.A. in September downsized Pfizer-BioNTech’s request to fully approve booster doses for all adults, instead signing off on a more limited population, including those 65 and older, as well as adults with underlying medical conditions or those at risk because of their jobs.

At least 30 to 40 percent of vaccinated adults are still excluded from booster eligibility, according to some estimates.

More than 30 million people have gotten additional shots, with the number often outpacing the number of first shots given each day around the country. Booster doses were also authorized in October for everyone who received the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine, and for vulnerable groups who received Moderna’s two-dose shot.

The C.D.C.’s gathering on Friday is scheduled to be briefer than recent meetings about Covid vaccines, just three hours, and is expected to be straightforward, one federal official familiar with the planning said, in part because of how far the nation’s booster campaign has come. That would suggest a significant softening of opposition among public health experts since President Biden announced in August that he hoped to offer booster doses to all adults.

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

FedEx, citing quarantine rules, will close its crew base in Hong Kong.

Image
FedEx said it would continue delivery services as usual in Hong Kong.Credit...Budrul Chukrut/SOPA Images, via Getty Images

FedEx said on Wednesday that it would close its Hong Kong crew base and relocate its pilots, citing an evolving global business environment and the strict pandemic requirements in the Asian financial hub.

FedEx said that it would continue delivery services as usual in Hong Kong, and did not specify where its crew would move. The South China Morning Post, citing a FedEx memo, reported that the routes would be flown by workers based in Oakland, Calif., where 180 Hong Kong-based pilots had relocated early this year.

Hong Kong has been successful at controlling the spread of the coronavirus, with just 213 deaths in a city of 7.5 million. But the tough restrictions on travel have grated on many and spurred criticism from some businesses that rely on the swift movement of goods and people.

New reported cases by day
Feb. 2020
Sept.
Apr. 2021
Nov.
Jun. 2022
Jan. 2023
20,000
40,000
60,000 cases
7-day average
0
Source: Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University. The daily average is calculated with data that was reported in the last seven days.

This week Hong Kong ordered 130 Cathay Pacific cargo pilots to undergo three weeks of quarantine because they had stayed at a hotel near Frankfurt where three crew members who tested positive for the coronavirus had also resided.

Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s chief executive, acknowledged on Tuesday that the quarantine orders put strains on freight companies and highlighted the city’s dependence on goods brought in from overseas and mainland China.

“If there are one or two more such incidents, our freight planes will have no pilots,” she said.

Also on Wednesday, Tara Joseph, the president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong, said that she was stepping down, a decision that she partly attributed to the difficulties created by the city’s coronavirus control measures.

“I think the quarantine rules are a huge red line for many people, including myself,” said Ms. Joseph, who is currently in the United States. She said she planned to stay in her role until the chamber found a replacement.

Earlier this year, Alan Beebe and Ker Gibbs, the presidents of the American chambers of commerce in Beijing and Shanghai, said they were resigning from their roles.

Hong Kong’s quarantine rules have weighed on global companies with a presence in the city. The restrictions were making it hard to retain talent, Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, said this week during a short visit to the city. He was one of a small number of executives who have been granted a quarantine exemption.

New York’s governor urges a broader group of adults to get boosters based on risk.

Image
Cristina Licup received a Covid-19 booster shot at the Hebrew Home in the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx, where she works, in late September.Credit...Seth Wenig/Associated Press

Gov. Kathy Hochul urged New Yorkers on Tuesday to get a coronavirus vaccine booster if they believed they were at high risk or lived in a “high transmission area,” jumping ahead of a possible decision by federal regulators to authorize an additional shot for all adults.

Ms. Hochul went further than earlier comments, but still created some confusion by offering a vague definition of high risk. That may not be an issue for too long, as the Food and Drug Administration is aiming to authorize booster doses of Pfizer-BioNTech’s coronavirus vaccine for all adults as early as Thursday, according to people familiar with the agency’s plans.

That would expand the number of Americans eligible for additional shots by tens of millions. Some states, including Arkansas and Colorado, recently moved to allow all adults to get a booster instead of waiting for a decision by the federal government. On Monday, New York City urged everyone 18 and older to get a booster shot.

Covid patients in hospitals and I.C.U.s
Early data may be incomplete.
Mar. 2020
Oct.
May 2021
Dec.
Jul. 2022
Feb. 2023
5,000
10,000 hospitalized
Hospitalized
In I.C.U.s
0
Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The seven-day average is the average of a day and the previous six days of data. Currently hospitalized is the most recent number of patients with Covid-19 reported by hospitals in the state for the four days prior. Dips and spikes could be due to inconsistent reporting by hospitals. Hospitalization numbers early in the pandemic are undercounts due to incomplete reporting by hospitals to the federal government.

Ms. Hochul said at one point that people should get a booster if they lived in an area with a positivity rate above 4 percent or 5 percent. That includes the area around Albany, the capital, and the Finger Lakes region, according to state data; New York City is at about 1.5 percent.

“Anyone who lives in these areas and feels risk, that they’re at risk of catching this virus, they should go get a booster,” Ms. Hochul said during a briefing in Buffalo on Tuesday afternoon. “I want to be crystal clear on that.”

As of Tuesday afternoon, Ms. Hochul had not issued any formal guidance defining a high risk area. Her office later said that the governor did not want to set strict guidance in order to coax as many people to get a booster.

Indeed, Ms. Hochul suggested she was trying to avoid putting out statewide guidance for boosters, stressing that transmission rates varied widely by region and people’s personal circumstances were different. She said the metric for determining a high transmission area was flexible, adding that “what I’m not looking for is a broad brush statewide approach to treat every region in the state identically.”

Ms. Hochul, a Democrat, did not specify whether rates should be considered at a regional, county or citywide level, but she seemed to suggest that vast swaths of the state currently fell under her interpretation of high risk. Even so, she has framed the decision around boosters as one best left to individuals.

She said, for example, that people who live in more densely populated areas or interact with many people on a daily basis may feel more inclined to get a booster and should do so if they so desire.

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

The U.S. plans to buy enough of Pfizer’s Covid antiviral pills for 10 million people.

Image
The Pfizer Covid-19 pills in production. The pill is described by health officials as a powerful new weapon against Covid.Credit...Thomas Hansmann.Fotograf/Pfizer, via Associated Press

The Biden administration is planning to pay more than $5 billion for a stockpile of Pfizer’s new Covid-19 pill, enough for about 10 million courses of treatment, after the company gears up production next year, according to people familiar with the agreement.

Senior federal health officials describe the pill as a powerful new weapon against Covid. When given promptly to trial groups of high-risk unvaccinated people who developed symptoms of the disease, the drug sharply reduced the risk of hospitalization and death.

The action comes at a time of renewed hope among some senior Biden administration officials that the nation may have weathered the worst of the pandemic, even as the onset of winter threatens to spur the spread of infection.

More than 70 percent of the nation’s adults are now fully vaccinated. After exacting a horrific toll since midsummer, the virus has left a trail of death and disease but also more natural immunity in its wake, some public health experts say.

“I do think that these new oral antivirals will change the way that Covid is managed,” said Dr. David Dowdy, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “These will help reduce burden on hospitals and the death toll.”

“But even without these pills, those numbers are going down,” he added.

Pfizer on Tuesday asked the Food and Drug Administration to authorize its pill for high-risk people. A similar drug developed by Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics could be authorized as soon as early December.

Pfizer submitted data showing the effectiveness of the treatment only for unvaccinated people at high risk, although officials said the company could submit more data later as clinical trials progressed. The F.D.A. has final say on who will be eligible to receive the pill.

Both treatments are geared toward people who are older than 65 or who suffer from medical conditions that put them at higher risk of severe Covid. Among clinical trial volunteers, the Pfizer drug cut the risk of hospitalization or death by 89 percent when given within three days after the start of symptoms.

The Merck pill was about 50 percent effective when given within five days of the onset of symptoms, though the different designs and timing of the trials make comparisons imprecise.

Pfizer has said it expects to be able to produce enough pills for more than 180,000 people by the end of this year and for more than 21 million in the first half of next year. Merck, too, has said it plans to ramp up production over the next year.

The U.S. government had initially planned to order 1.7 million courses of Pfizer’s treatment, with an additional option for 3.3 million, for about $700 per course.

But the new supply of ten million courses is expected to cost significantly less per treatment. The treatment involves 30 pills taken over the course of five days.

The contract is still being finalized, but an announcement is expected this week, according to one official familiar with the deal.

The government has also ordered 3.1 million treatment courses, with options for 2 million more, of Merck’s pill, at about $700 per person.

Rebecca Robbins contributed reporting.

A correction was made on 
Nov. 18, 2021

Using information from Pfizer, an earlier version of this article incorrectly said that the company was seeking authorization for its Covid-19 treatment only for unvaccinated people. Pfizer’s application to the F.D.A. did not specify a vaccination status for the drug’s recipients. The error was repeated in the article summary.

How we handle corrections

Fully vaccinated people can spend New Year’s Eve in Times Square.

Image
A crowd celebrating in Times Square on Dec. 31, 2018.Credit...Christopher Lee for The New York Times

After a scaled-down celebration last year, the New Year’s Eve ball drop in Times Square will return at “full strength,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Tuesday. It will be Mr. de Blasio’s final act running New York City, after eight years in office, and serve as a prelude to his possible bid for governor next year.

“We want to welcome all those hundreds of thousands of folks, but everyone needs to be vaccinated,” Mr. de Blasio said. “Join the crowd, join the joy, join a historic moment as New York City provides further evidence to the world that we are 100 percent back.”

The New Year’s celebration will come four months after lightning cut short a star-studded “homecoming concert” that was also designed to signal the city’s comeback. Proof of vaccination was also required to attend that event, which drew thousands to Central Park.

Attendees who are unable to be vaccinated because of a disability will have to show proof that they had a negative coronavirus test within 72 hours of the event. Children younger than 5, who are not yet eligible for vaccines, will have to be accompanied by a vaccinated adult. Masks will be required for any attendees who are not vaccinated, said Tom Harris, the president of the Times Square Alliance.

Asked at a news conference why vaccination would be mandatory to attend the ball drop when it is not required for many other outdoor activities in New York, Mr. de Blasio said a crowded, hourslong event drawing people from around the country and the world required greater precautions.

“When you’re outdoors with a few hundred thousand people packed close together for hours on end, it’s a different reality,” he said. “You’re talking about a lot of people really close for long periods of time. It makes sense to protect everyone.”

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

Pfizer asks the F.D.A. to authorize its Covid antiviral pill.

Image
Manufacturing Pfizer’s antiviral pills in Freiburg, Germany, this month.Credit...Pfizer

Pfizer has applied to the Food and Drug Administration to authorize its antiviral pill to treat people with Covid-19 who are at high risk of becoming severely ill, the company said on Tuesday.

The drug, which will be sold under the brand name Paxlovid, could become available within weeks if authorization is granted. It is meant to be dispensed by pharmacies and taken at home.

Paxlovid is the second antiviral pill to show effectiveness against Covid, in a new class of treatments for the disease that are expected to reach far more patients than other drugs that are typically given by infusion.

In a key clinical trial, Paxlovid was found to sharply reduce the risk of hospitalization or death when given to high-risk unvaccinated volunteers soon after they started showing symptoms. It appears to be more effective than a similar offering from Merck, known as molnupiravir, that could be authorized as soon as early December.

Both pills are geared toward older people or people who have obesity or medical conditions that put them at elevated risk for getting severely ill from Covid.

Pfizer submitted data showing the effectiveness of the treatment only for unvaccinated people at high risk, although officials said the company could submit more data later as clinical trials progressed. The F.D.A. has final say on who will be eligible to receive the pill.

Merck, which applied for authorization for molnupiravir last month, said it would be up to the F.D.A. to decide whether to authorize its pill for use in vaccinated people in addition to unvaccinated people.

The F.D.A. has not yet said whether it would convene a meeting of expert advisers to recommend whether to authorize Pfizer’s treatment. A panel of experts that advises the agency on antimicrobial drugs is scheduled to meet at the end of this month to discuss Merck’s drug.

Supplies of Pfizer’s treatment, which is taken as a regimen of 30 pills over five days, will be very limited at first. Pfizer said it could produce enough of the pills by the end of the year to treat 180,000 people. The company expects to expand manufacturing to produce at least 50 million treatment courses next year, including 21 million or more by the end of June.

Australia and Britain have already locked up some of those supplies, and the United States plans to buy about 10 million courses of treatment, according to people familiar with the agreement.

Pfizer said on Tuesday that it had reached an agreement to allow other manufacturers to make and sell the pill inexpensively for use in 95 developing countries.

Pfizer’s drug is designed to stop the coronavirus from replicating by blocking the activity of a key enzyme that the coronavirus uses to replicate itself inside cells. Merck’s pill works differently, by inserting errors into the virus’s genetic code, a mechanism that has raised concerns among some scientists that Merck’s drug could trigger genetic mutations that cause reproductive harm. That difference could give Pfizer’s pill an advantage among doctors and patients, because it does not carry the same safety concerns as the Merck pill.

A correction was made on 
Nov. 18, 2021

Using information from Pfizer, an earlier version of this article incorrectly said that the company was seeking authorization for its Covid-19 treatment only for unvaccinated people. Pfizer’s application to the F.D.A. did not specify a vaccination status for the drug’s recipients. The error was repeated in the article summary. 

How we handle corrections

Amazon agrees to pay $500,000 in California over claims that it hid Covid-19 cases from workers.

Image
Rob Bonta, California’s attorney general, speaking outside an Amazon building in San Francisco last week. “No corporation is too big to follow the law,” he said on Monday.Credit...Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Amazon has agreed to pay $500,000 to help enforce California’s consumer protection laws after the company was accused of concealing Covid-19 case numbers from its workers, officials said on Monday.

The judgment, which is subject to court approval, is the first of its kind nationwide and is in line with a California “right to know” law that was designed to keep workers safe during the pandemic, according to a news release from the attorney general’s office.

Under the arrangement, Amazon must also tell its warehouse workers within a day about the exact number of new Covid-19 cases in their workplaces, ensure that notifications adequately inform workers of the company’s disinfection and safety plans, tell health officials about new cases and submit to monitoring by the attorney general’s office regarding its Covid-19 notifications.

“We’re glad to have this resolved,” Barbara Agrait, a spokeswoman for Amazon, said in an emailed statement. She said the attorney general’s office “found no substantive issues with the safety measures in our buildings,” only with technical aspects of how the company communicated broadly with its workers.

“We’ve worked hard from the beginning of the pandemic to keep our employees safe and deliver for our customers — incurring more than $15 billion in costs to date — and we’ll keep doing that in months and years ahead,” Ms. Agrait said.

A complaint filed in Superior Court in Sacramento maintained that Amazon’s actions had prevented employees and the public from gaining full access to information regarding Covid-19 cases.

The state’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, said that such information was crucial for workers making difficult decisions regarding their health in the pandemic.

“Amazon’s practices led to workers not knowing if they had been potentially exposed to two, 20 or even 200 cases of Covid-19,” he said at a news conference on Monday. “This left many workers understandably terrified and powerless to make informed decisions to protect themselves and to protect their loved ones.”

“No corporation is too big to follow the law,” Mr. Bonta said. “This is a huge win for the safety and health of Amazon’s tens of thousands of warehouse workers, their families and our communities throughout this state.”

He said that the judgment sent a clear message that businesses must comply with the law, and that it was particularly important as the busy holiday season approached.

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

The Florida legislature kicks off a special session to pass bills curtailing federal Covid mandates.

Image
Representative Anna Eskamani, Democrat of Florida, and other Democratic lawmakers and invited speakers spoke of their opposition to a special legislative session targeting vaccine mandates, in Tallahassee on Monday.Credit...Rebecca Blackwell/Associated Press

At the request of Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican who has used his opposition to coronavirus vaccine and mask mandates to build up his national political profile, Florida lawmakers kicked off a special legislative session on Monday to take up legislation aimed at restricting such measures.

Mr. DeSantis, who is seen as a possible presidential candidate in 2024, has cast the session as a high-profile effort to counter the vaccination rules set by the Biden administration.

The Biden administration has ordered federal employees and contractors to be vaccinated, as well as employees of health care companies that receive Medicare and Medicaid. The federal government also plans to put in place workplace-safety rules in January mandating that all businesses with 100 or more employees require them to be vaccinated or be tested frequently.

Several states with conservative governors, including Florida, have already challenged those federal mandates in court. To also pass laws curtailing them would put Florida at the forefront of what has become a highly politicized fight between Republican-led states and the White House.

“Nobody should be losing their jobs because of these jabs,” Mr. DeSantis, who has taken to calling the vaccinations “jabs” or “injections,” said last week.

Covid patients in hospitals and I.C.U.s
Early data may be incomplete.
Mar. 2020
Oct.
May 2021
Dec.
Jul. 2022
Feb. 2023
5,000
10,000
15,000 hospitalized
Hospitalized
In I.C.U.s
0
Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The seven-day average is the average of a day and the previous six days of data. Currently hospitalized is the most recent number of patients with Covid-19 reported by hospitals in the state for the four days prior. Dips and spikes could be due to inconsistent reporting by hospitals. Hospitalization numbers early in the pandemic are undercounts due to incomplete reporting by hospitals to the federal government.

About 60,700 people have died of Covid-19 in Florida. The state was hit hard by the virus this summer, when the Delta variant filled hospitals in much of the state with more patients than at any time during the pandemic. That wave has burned itself out, and in recent days new cases and hospitalizations have fallen to some of the lowest levels in the country. Just over 60 percent of Florida’s population is vaccinated, according to federal data.

Critics of the governor have said that his fight against mandates resulted in needless deaths. Florida experienced its worst daily death tolls during the summer surge, when vaccines were already widely available.

As cases surged, Mr. DeSantis fought local school districts and governments that required masks or vaccines, withholding funds, fining them or taking them to court. (Most school districts have now loosened their mask restrictions, in light of the falling virus levels.)

The special session is intended to carry the state Republican Party’s opposition to mandates even further.

Business leaders, however, have expressed fears that any new Florida laws might force them to face conflicting state and federal mandates.

Democrats have decried the move as mere political theater. “This entire special session is a political stunt,” Representative Fentrice Driskell, a Tampa Democrat, said on Monday.

But the governor, who formally announced his 2022 re-election last week, is too popular among conservatives in the Republican base for his wishes to be ignored. “We don’t believe that the federal government should be in a position to force vaccines,” Speaker Chris Sprowls of the House said in the State Capitol on Monday.

None of the four proposed bills under consideration would ban employee vaccine mandates outright. Private employers would be able to require vaccinations, but they would also have to allow for exemptions for medical issues or pregnancy, and religious reasons. Employees willing to be periodically tested or wear protective equipment could also opt out. Employers would have to pay for the tests or provide protective equipment, like masks.

Public school districts and local governments would be prohibited from requiring vaccinations. Lawmakers would also give parents the sole discretion over whether students should get vaccinated or wear masks.

Over 10,000 Australians seek compensation over vaccines, despite low reports of adverse effects.

Image
Administering a coronavirus vaccination at a hub in Sydney, Australia, in October.Credit...Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images

More than 10,000 Australians have registered for compensation claims linked to complications from coronavirus vaccinations, a situation that could leave the government paying out tens of millions of dollars in public money for rare occurrences of serious problems.

A government program will offer no-fault payouts for factors including extended periods of missed work, and the minimum amount for such claims is 5,000 Australian dollars ($3,670). Applicants will be expected to provide medical bills and other evidence, and the registration surge has already occurred a month before an online portal launches.

In a country where nearly 85 percent of residents over 16 have been fully vaccinated against the virus, Australia’s main medical regulator has recorded 78,880 adverse events said to be linked to Covid vaccination. That amounts to just 0.21 percent of the nearly 38 million doses given to over 18 million people in the country by early November.

Most of those adverse events involved mild side effects like headache, nausea and sore arms. The regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration, has received 288 reports of heart inflammation among people who received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, as well as 160 reported instances of a rare clotting complication linked to the AstraZeneca vaccine.

The regulator noted in a report last week that new illnesses or deaths within a few days or weeks of inoculation were “often coincidental, rather than being caused by the vaccine.” Nine deaths have been linked to Australia’s inoculation program, nearly all of them among people age 65 or older.

It is unclear how a few hundred recorded cases of adverse effects have led to 10,000 registrations of interest in the compensation program. For the most part, Australia’s vaccination program has been a slow and then rapid success: After initial setbacks, an outbreak of the Delta variant pushed the country to move quickly to vaccinate its population.

The country’s two largest cities, Sydney and Melbourne, recently emerged from lengthy lockdowns, and case numbers have been declining nationwide to fewer than 1,500 per day.

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

The Basque region restricts gatherings as cases rise again in parts of Spain.

Image
A sunny day at Zurriola beach in the Basque region of northern Spain last month.Credit...Juan Herrero/EPA, via Shutterstock

Spain’s Basque region on Tuesday announced new restrictions on gatherings to control its latest coronavirus wave, after months in which Spain stood out as a country that had largely reined in the pandemic, in particular thanks to a high vaccination rate.

The virus has spread unevenly in Spain in recent weeks, and the infection rates in the Basque region and neighboring Navarra are now more than twice the national average. Lawmakers in the worst-hit regions are leading a nationwide debate over whether Spain should reintroduce more restrictions to prevent a serious Covid-19 resurgence this winter.

The Basque regional government said that all areas in which the infection rate exceeds 150 cases per 100,000 inhabitants should suspend mass events and other gatherings, in particular those where food and drinks were served and where social distancing could not be guaranteed. The region’s 14-day average infection rate climbed just above 180 per 100,000 inhabitants this weekend, compared with a nationwide rate on Monday of 82 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, according to Spain’s health ministry.

New reported cases by day
Feb. 2020
Sept.
Apr. 2021
Nov.
Jun. 2022
Jan. 2023
50,000
100,000 cases
7-day average
1,013
Source: Data for Spain comes from the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. Population data from the National Statistics Institute of Spain. The daily average is calculated with data that was reported in the last seven days.  ∙  Because of a change in reporting methods in March 2022, case data for Spain now only includes reported cases in people 60 years old and older.

The regional government said it would also ask the Basque judiciary to mandate proof of Covid-19 vaccination for people seeking to enter restaurants and nightclubs.

“We are not doing well,” Gotzone Sagardui, the regional health minister, told a news conference, adding that the virus was again spreading “with a worrying speed of growth.”

Spain’s health regulators lowered the country’s status to “low risk” in October after a plunge in the nationwide infection rate from a summer peak of over 700 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in late July. That improvement was largely attributed to a successful vaccination campaign, and 79 percent of the population is now fully vaccinated.

Booster shots are now being given to people who are over 70 or living in nursing homes, and Spain’s government is expected to soon offer vaccinations to children under 12.

At the same time, however, the country’s pandemic response has recently involved a patchwork of restrictions put in place by regional governments, which are responsible for health care.

Iñigo Urkullu, the Basque region’s leader, has led a push to require vaccination in certain business sectors — as has happened sweepingly in Italy and some other countries — and has urged Spain’s central government to set nationwide rules.

Ximo Puig, the leader of the eastern region of Valencia, also said recently that his government was considering whether to require vaccination passes for entry into some venues.

Hong Kong exempts JPMorgan Chase’s chief from its lengthy quarantine.

Image
Jamie Dimon in Paris in June. He visited Hong Kong this week after receiving a quarantine exemption. Credit...Pool photo by Michel Euler

Hong Kong has granted Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, an exemption from one of the toughest pandemic quarantines in the world.

Mr. Dimon this week became the first head of a Wall Street bank to visit the city since the beginning of the pandemic. He was in town on Monday and Tuesday to meet with employees and regulators.

Even as other places loosen travel restrictions, Hong Kong has stuck with its lengthy quarantine mandates for most visitors, leaving little room for exceptions. The last public figure to be granted an exemption in Hong Kong was Nicole Kidman, whose visit to film a television series about rich expatriates prompted outcries, including debate in Hong Kong’s Legislature.

Mr. Dimon’s exemption was “justified to facilitate a short visit” of about 30 hours, a government spokesman said in an emailed statement, adding that Mr. Dimon’s trip was “considered to be in the interest of Hong Kong’s economic development.”

JPMorgan declined to comment.

New reported cases by day
Feb. 2020
Sept.
Apr. 2021
Nov.
Jun. 2022
Jan. 2023
20,000
40,000
60,000 cases
7-day average
0
Source: Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University. The daily average is calculated with data that was reported in the last seven days.

Hong Kong has remained largely closed to the rest of the world and requires overseas visitors from “high-risk” countries, including the United States, to quarantine in a hotel for 21 days. Other visitors from overseas must quarantine in a hotel for at least 14 days. People coming from mainland China are the only visitors who can skip the quarantine.

Earlier this year, officials carved out exemptions for top bankers and other executives whose work they said was in Hong Kong’s economic interest. Those exemptions were mostly abandoned last month when Hong Kong’s top leader said the government needed to align itself with mainland China’s goal of complete elimination of the virus.

Hong Kong has made opening its border with mainland China a priority over opening its borders to overseas travel. It has reported just two local transmitted cases in more than five months.

During his visit, Mr. Dimon said Hong Kong’s quarantine rules were making it difficult to retain employees in the city, according to Bloomberg News.

His brief comments echoed those from the Asia Securities Industry and Financial Market, a top lobbying group for financial firms, which publicly urged Hong Kong to loosen rules and warned that the restrictions were threatening the city’s status as an international business hub.

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

Pfizer will allow its Covid pill to be made and sold cheaply in poor countries.

Image
Greenacres Hospital in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, was beyond capacity with Covid patients a year ago.Credit...Samantha Reinders for The New York Times

Pfizer announced a deal on Tuesday to allow its promising Covid-19 treatment to be made and sold inexpensively in 95 poorer nations that are home to more than half of the world’s population.

The agreement follows a similar arrangement negotiated by Merck last month, and together the deals have the potential to vastly expand global production of two simple antiviral pills that could alter the course of the pandemic by preventing severe illness from the coronavirus.

Under the agreement, Pfizer will grant a royalty-free license for the pill to the Medicines Patent Pool, a nonprofit backed by the United Nations, in a deal that will allow manufacturers to take out a sublicense. They will receive Pfizer’s formula for the drug and will be able to sell it for use in 95 developing countries, mostly in Africa and Asia, once regulators authorize the drug in those places.

Yet like the Merck deal, the Pfizer agreement excludes several poorer countries that have been hit hard by the virus. Brazil, which has one of the world’s worst pandemic death tolls, as well as Cuba, Iraq, Libya and Jamaica, will have to buy pills directly from Pfizer, most likely at higher prices compared with what the generics manufacturers will charge. (Those five nations are included in the Merck deal.)

China and Russia — middle-income countries that are home to a combined 1.5 billion people — are excluded from both deals.

Still, Pfizer’s approach on its drug is markedly different from the way it has handled its Covid vaccine. The company has shipped more than two billion doses globally but sent only about 167 million of those to the developing countries that are home to about four billion people.

It has not provided any manufacturers a license to make its Covid vaccine, from which it is on track to bring in $36 billion in revenue this year.

What’s the worst of both worlds? Zooming from the office.

Image
Employees at CommonBond SoHo office in Manhattan last week.Credit...Jeenah Moon for The New York Times

At one point, fall was billed across corporate America as the Great Office Reopening. But the Delta variant of the coronavirus intervened, and mandatory return-to-office plans turned optional.

Still, many people chose to report back to their desks. The share of employed people who worked remotely at some point during the month because of Covid-19 dropped in October to 11 percent, the lowest point since the pandemic began, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

A closer look at the New York work force, from a November survey of 188 major employers, showed that 8 percent of Manhattan office workers are back in the office full time, 54 percent are fully remote and everyone else — nearly 40 percent — is hybrid.

Few are finding it a smooth transition period. Some companies used their tentative return-to-office dates as a way to avoid questions about how to balance the needs of their remote and in-person employees, according to Edward Sullivan, an executive coach.

That has resulted in a mushy middle ground: video calls where remote workers have trouble hearing, a sense that people at home are missing out on perks (teammates), while those in the office are, too (pajamas).

At stake isn’t just who is getting talked over in meetings. It’s also about whether flexibility is sustainable, even with all the benefits it confers.

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

The pandemic worsened a Bronx housing crisis.

Image
Livia Fernandez, with daughters Clara Pazmino, left, and Marta Pazmino, is facing eviction from her Bronx apartment.Credit...Jose A. Alvarado Jr. for The New York Times

The pandemic has left millions of people across the United States jobless and on the brink of losing their homes. Few places better illustrate the escalating housing crisis than the Bronx, where working-class residents have long struggled to afford New York’s rising cost of living.

Before the pandemic, more than one-third of households in the Bronx spent at least half their income on rent. And since the pandemic began, more than 26,000 renters in the borough have been sued by their landlord, the highest concentration of eviction cases in New York State and more than in large cities, like Cincinnati, Philadelphia and St. Louis, according to the Eviction Lab at Princeton University.

A state moratorium on evictions — one of the strongest in the nation — has helped keep the number of cases from being even higher. They are far below prepandemic levels. But while many lawsuits do not lead to actual evictions, the mere filing of a case can land a renter on a so-called tenant blacklist, making it much more difficult to find and qualify for another apartment.

Many residents remain out of work and unable to pay rent. The 12.4 percent unemployment rate in the Bronx in September was almost triple the national figure.

More than $248 million in pandemic rent relief has been distributed in the borough, according to the most recent data, more than in the entire states of Indiana, Arizona and Connecticut combined. New York has been so overwhelmed with requests for aid that it has stopped accepting most new applications.

A video of decontamination workers clubbing a pet corgi stirs anger in China.

Image
Corgis in Beijing in March. China has no law against animal cruelty, despite the growing popularity of pet ownership.Credit...Ng Han Guan/Associated Press

A local government in eastern China said it had reassigned decontamination workers and called on them to apologize after they entered a quarantined resident’s apartment and beat a pet corgi with a metal rod, triggering anger online.

Video of the incident, from a home security camera, circulated widely on Chinese social media on Saturday. It showed two workers in white hazmat suits pursuing the dog in an unoccupied apartment. It yelps as one worker swings at it with a metal bar. Then it is briefly caught in the legs of a table as it flees to another room off camera.

The dog’s death was not shown, but state media reports later said it had been culled. The vague wording of the Xinzhou district government’s statement Saturday, which said workers had “decontaminated” the animal though there was no indication it had been infected with the coronavirus, helped fuel the outcry.

New reported cases by day
Feb. 2020
Sept.
Apr. 2021
Nov.
Jun. 2022
Jan. 2023
20,000
40,000
60,000 cases
7-day average
0

These are days with a reporting anomaly.

Source: Data for China comes from the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. Population data from the National Bureau of Statistics of China. Data does not include Hong Kong, Macau or Taiwan. The daily average is calculated with data that was reported in the last seven days.

The pet’s owner or owners could not be reached for comment. According to an account on the Twitter-like platform Weibo that first shared the video, the owners had been sent to hotel quarantine along with other residents of their neighborhood in the city of Shangrao, in Jiangxi Province. Jiangxi is experiencing a small-scale coronavirus outbreak, with more than 70 cases reported since the end of last month.

Quarantined residents were asked to leave their apartments so local government workers could disinfect them. But unlike in other Chinese cities, which allowed owners to take pets into quarantine or even arranged boarding, no preparations for animals appear to have been made.

It was unclear why the dog was killed. In other parts of China, a small number of animals have been killed as part of the pandemic response, including three cats that were euthanized in the northern city of Harbin in September after they were found to be infected with the coronavirus. Before the pandemic, some Chinese cities carried out large-scale campaigns to cull unregistered dogs and cats.

The online anger over the corgi’s treatment touched on broader concerns about draconian enforcement of China’s “zero Covid” policy, which has led to repeated lockdowns in some cities, and about the abuse of animals. China has no law against animal cruelty, despite the growing popularity of pet ownership.

“This kind of behavior is really chilling,” Zhang Junyang, a film director, wrote on Weibo.

“In the current epidemic situation, the grass roots personnel are indeed working very hard,” he added. “But why can’t we have a little warmth when dealing with domestic pets? Why can’t it be more humane?”

State media outlets sought to assuage anger over the episode, calling it an isolated mistake that should not reflect poorly on the national pandemic response.

“Observers admit the imperfect behavior of the anti-epidemic staffer, but they have also called for more understanding toward the front-line workers who are working tirelessly to curb the epidemic,” read one report in the Global Times newspaper, which is owned by the ruling Communist Party.

Cao Li contributed research.

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

As India limits syringe exports, a supply crunch has buyers looking elsewhere.

Image
Workers checking syringes at Hindustan Syringes and Medical Devices, one of the world’s largest syringe makers.Credit...Rebecca Conway for The New York Times

NEW DELHI — Rajiv Nath’s factories were cranking out more than 7,600 syringes a minute when India decided to limit their export last month to shore up its own vaccination campaign.

The products were meant for clients around the world as nations scramble to inoculate their people and bring the pandemic to an end, but instead Mr. Nath’s warehouses were left with stocks of more than 45 million syringes that he had largely promised to UNICEF and the Pan American Health Organization.

And with India’s export restrictions on syringes in place through the end of this year, experts say the world could experience a shortfall of two billion to four billion needles through the end of next year. The shortages are expected to hit African countries the hardest.

“That will be truly disappointing,” said Prashant Yadav — a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, a Washington research organization, and an expert on health care supply chains — “that after having waited for over a year to get a reasonable quantity of vaccines, when they do obtain the vaccines, they don’t have syringes to administer them.”

Although India is a small player in overall global exports, it is a major producer of the type of syringe that is being used globally for coronavirus vaccinations. The syringes break on second use to prevent the spreading of disease through reuse.

Covax, the vaccine-sharing initiative, is seeking the syringes from manufacturers around the world, and India was expected to meet at least 15 percent of the global demand for use with Covid vaccines and other inoculations.

The situation became so acute last month that the World Health Organization and PAHO asked India to allow Mr. Nath’s company, Hindustan Syringes and Medical Devices, one of the world’s largest syringe makers, to ship the orders it had agreed to before the restrictions were announced. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government subsequently increased the export quota for the health organizations but did not allow a blanket exemption.

The World Health Organization and UNICEF have warned that the syringe shortage could have “dire consequences” for the global vaccination effort.

In India, more than half of the 1.4 billion-strong population has received at least one shot of a Covid vaccine, but only 28 percent of people are fully vaccinated, according to a New York Times database. And new inoculations have slowed recently.

Unlike vaccine doses, syringes are bulky and are typically transported by sea. The shortage comes amid large disruptions in the global supply chain of shipped goods, and experts say that a Covax-like initiative is needed, with nations coming together to better supply syringes to poorer countries.

UNICEF, a major buyer of syringes for Covax, said in a statement on Wednesday that “syringe nationalism” could be addressed if big producers and wealthy countries “influence global markets in a way that unlocks access for other countries in the global south.”

The agency also said it was considering expanding use of another type of syringe approved by the W.H.O. that also prevents reuse.

Dozens of Indian syringe makers spent millions of dollars to scale up manufacturing last year, but buyers are increasingly relying on manufacturers in China.

ProcureNet, a Hong Kong-based supplier of pharmaceutical products, said this week that it would invest $20 million in Anhui Tiankang Medical, a Chinese manufacturer, to produce 750 million syringes for PAHO and other buyers.

“We continue to spend billions on the vaccine,” said Gurbaksh Chahal, ProcureNet’s chief executive, “but what good is the vaccine if we don’t have the tools to deliver the vaccine to the people?”

The U.S. aims to lift Covid vaccine manufacturing to create a billion doses a year.

Video
bars
0:00/1:52
-0:00

transcript

White House Plans to Bolster Vaccine Manufacturing

Jeffrey D. Zients, President Biden’s coronavirus response coordinator, said the administration would partner with companies to increase U.S. manufacturing capacity in order to expand global access and prepare for potential future pandemics.

From the start, President Biden has been clear that the only way to defeat Covid is to defeat the virus here at home and around the world. That’s why we’ve committed to donating 1.2 billion doses to the world. For every one shot we’ve administered here in the United States, we’re donating about three doses to people around the world. Today, we will hit a major milestone in our effort to deliver on this commitment: 250 million doses delivered to 110 countries. Today, we’re taking another major step to bolster vaccine manufacturing, both for this pandemic and to prepare for any future threats. H.H.S. is soliciting interest from companies that have experienced manufacturing mRNA vaccines to identify opportunities to scale up their production capacity. Importantly, initial production could provide more mRNA Covid vaccines for the world. The goal of this program is to expand existing capacity by an additional billion doses per year, with production starting by the second half of 2022. This program would also help us produce doses within six to nine months of identification of a future pathogen, and ensure enough vaccines for all Americans. It would combine the expertise of the U.S. government in basic scientific research with the robust ability of pharmaceutical companies to manufacture mRNA vaccines. We hope companies step up and act quickly to take us up on this opportunity to expand production of mRNA vaccines for the current pandemic, and set us up to react quickly to any future pandemic threats.

Video player loading
Jeffrey D. Zients, President Biden’s coronavirus response coordinator, said the administration would partner with companies to increase U.S. manufacturing capacity in order to expand global access and prepare for potential future pandemics.CreditCredit...Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

The White House, under pressure to increase the supply of coronavirus vaccines to poor nations, plans to invest billions of dollars to expand U.S. manufacturing capacity, with the goal of producing at least one billion doses a year beginning in the second half of 2022, two top advisers to President Biden said in an interview on Tuesday.

The investment is the first step in a new plan, announced on Wednesday, for the government to partner with industry to address immediate vaccine needs overseas and domestically and to prepare for future pandemics, said Dr. David Kessler, who oversees vaccine distribution for the administration, and Jeff Zients, Mr. Biden’s coronavirus response coordinator.

“This is about assuring expanded capacity against Covid variants and also preparing for the next pandemic,” Dr. Kessler said. “The goal, in the case of a future pandemic, a future virus, is to have vaccine capability within six to nine months of identification of that pandemic pathogen, and to have enough vaccines for all Americans.”

The move comes as the Biden administration also plans to buy enough of Pfizer’s new Covid-19 pill for about 10 million courses of treatment to be delivered in the next 10 months, paying over $5 billion, according to people familiar with the agreement. The government has also pledged $3 billion for rapid over-the-counter tests, which are needed to detect the virus early for the Pfizer drug to work.

Taken together, the investments amount to an aggressive effort to vanquish a pandemic that is heading into its third year. When given promptly to trial groups of high-risk unvaccinated people who developed symptoms of the disease, the Pfizer drug sharply reduced the risk of hospitalization and death. Pfizer applied on Tuesday for federal authorization of the drug on an emergency basis.

The antiviral drugs have helped inspire hope among senior administration officials that the United States will be able to curb the devastating toll from the virus. Their promise depends in part on access to testing, because the pills have proved to work in five days or less after symptoms develop.

But the tests are pricey. While federal regulators have cleared a dozen of them, a test typically costs about $12 and not everyone can easily obtain one. One of the newest rapid tests costs $7, though, and by the end of the year the overall supply is projected to be nearly 10 times what it was in August, federal officials said.

The idea for the new public-private vaccine partnership is still in its early stages, and the price tag is uncertain. Dr. Kessler, who has been working on the proposal for months, estimated it at “several billion.” The money has been set aside as part of the American Rescue Plan, the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package that Mr. Biden signed into law in March.

The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency intends to issue a “request for information” to solicit ideas from companies that have experience manufacturing vaccines using mRNA technology. Mr. Zients said that officials wanted responses “in a very short period of time, 30 days, to understand how most efficiently, effectively and reliably we can increase manufacturing.”

Activists, many of them veterans of the AIDS epidemic, have been demanding for months that Mr. Biden do more to scale up global vaccine manufacturing capacity. Some, furious with what they regard as the administration’s slow progress, turned up at the home of Ron Klain, Mr. Biden’s chief of staff, in September and deposited a fake mountain of bones on the sidewalk in protest.

At the same time, the administration is offering booster shots to millions of vaccinated Americans, despite criticism from World Health Organization officials and other experts who say the doses should go to low- and lower-middle-income countries first. The Food and Drug Administration is aiming to authorize booster doses of Pfizer-BioNTech’s Covid vaccine for all adults as early as Thursday, according to people familiar with the agency’s plans.

Whether the new Biden plan will satisfy the administration’s critics is unclear. Many activists have demanded that the administration build up manufacturing capacity overseas, particularly in Africa, but the Biden plan is focused on building capacity among domestic vaccine makers. “This effort is specifically aimed at building U.S. domestic capacity,” Dr. Kessler said. “But that capacity is important not only for the U.S. supply, but for global supply.”

James Krellenstein, a founder of Prep4All, an AIDS advocacy group, called the Biden plan “a step in the right direction,” but suggested the government build its own vaccine production facility, so as not to depend on the private sector, and hire a contract manufacturer to run it.

“It’s the only way you can leverage the unique skills of the private sector while protecting the taxpayer investment,” he said.

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

Officials expect U.S. travel for Thanksgiving to approach prepandemic levels.

Image
The T.S.A. security checkpoint at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport during a busy period in August ahead of Hurricane Ida.Credit...Scott Olson/Getty Images

Airline travel this Thanksgiving season is expected to approach prepandemic levels, Transportation Security Administration officials said on Wednesday. The agency is preparing to handle about 20 million air passengers.

“We are staffed and prepared for the holiday travelers,” David Pekoske, the T.S.A. administrator, said in a statement.

The large volume of travelers expected comes as inoculation rates across the United States have risen, allowing many families to gather safely for the first time since 2019, when T.S.A. screened 26 million people. The uptick also signals a willingness by people to resume customary holiday travel.

“I recommend that travelers pay attention to the guidance that the T.S.A. officers are providing at the checkpoint,” Mr. Pekoske said. “They may be directing you to a shorter line or guiding you around someone who is moving slowly, and they may be giving you some advice that will lessen the likelihood that you’ll need a pat-down.”

Coronavirus cases in the United States by region

This chart shows how reported cases per capita have changed in different parts of the country. The state with the highest recent cases per capita is shown.

The busiest days during the Thanksgiving travel period are usually the Tuesday and Wednesday before Thanksgiving and the Sunday afterward, the T.S.A. statement said. While the travel volume this year is not expected to reach 2019 levels, the agency said it could be higher in the time leading up to Thanksgiving.

The increase comes as airlines deal with an uptick in cases of unruly passengers. The Federal Aviation Administration has issued fines, and the president of the Association of Flight Attendants union, Sara Nelson, has attributed the rising tensions to the politically charged atmosphere over health protocols.

In an interview with “CBS Mornings,” Mr. Pekoske said the number of such reports were higher than he can recall ever having seen.

“We’re working very closely with the carriers, the flight attendants, the flight deck crews, the air force and the F.A.A., to do everything that we can to message how dangerous this behavior is,” he said.

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT