Covid-19 Live Updates: Latest News

A government-sponsored clinical trial testing an antibody treatment made by the drug company Eli Lilly has been paused because of a “potential safety concern,” according to emails that government officials sent on Tuesday to researchers at testing sites, and confirmed by the company.

The news comes just a day after Johnson & Johnson announced the pause of its coronavirus vaccine trial because of a sick volunteer, and a month after AstraZeneca’s vaccine trial was halted over concerns about two participants who had fallen ill after getting the company’s vaccine.

The Eli Lilly trial was designed to test the benefits of the therapy on hundreds of people hospitalized with Covid-19, compared with a placebo. All study participants also received another experimental drug, remdesivir, which has become commonly used to treat patients with Covid-19. It is unclear how many volunteers were sick, or any details about their illness.

In large clinical trials, such pauses are not unusual, and illness in volunteers is not necessarily the result of the experimental drug or vaccine. Such halts are meant to allow an independent board of scientific experts to review the data and determine whether the event may have been related to the treatment, or occurred by chance.

Enrollment for the Eli Lilly trial, which was sponsored by several branches of the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Veterans Affairs, among others, had been ongoing. But emails sent Tuesday from multiple officials told researchers to stop adding volunteers to the study out of an “abundance of caution.”

In a statement sent over email, Molly McCully, a spokeswoman for Eli Lilly, confirmed the pause. “Safety is of the upmost importance to Lilly,” she said. “Lilly is supportive of the decision by the independent D.S.M.B. to cautiously ensure the safety of the patients participating in this study.”

The N.I.H. and the V.A. did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Eli Lilly is one of several companies pursuing experimental treatments for Covid-19 that use monoclonal antibodies — mass-produced mimics of immune molecules the human body produces in reaction to the virus.

Eli Lilly’s product is similar to a treatment designed by drug company Regeneron, which developed an antibody therapy given to President Trump after he was diagnosed with Covid-19 earlier this month. Mr. Trump has promoted the treatments, without evidence, as a “cure” for his condition, and has suggested that their approval and widespread distribution could be imminent. The week after the president was treated, both companies applied for emergency clearance for their products from the Food and Drug Administration.

Antibodies can block the coronavirus from infecting cells, and preliminary data from Eli Lilly and Regeneron have hinted they may be able to tamp down the amount of virus in an infected person’s body and reduce their symptoms.

Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia was discussed as a possible target by members of an anti-government group charged last week with plotting to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, the F.B.I. said on Tuesday.

During a hearing in Grand Rapids, Mich., Special Agent Richard J. Trask II of the F.B.I. said that Mr. Northam and other officials were targeted because of their aggressive lockdown orders to restrict the spread of the coronavirus.

Last week, 13 men accused of involvement in the alleged plot were charged with a variety of state and federal crimes including terrorism, conspiracy and weapons possession. They also talked of planning to storm the Michigan State Capitol and start a civil war, the authorities said.

During Tuesday’s hearing, the authorities revealed that the suspects also spoke about “taking” the Virginia governor “based” on coronavirus lockdown orders that restricted businesses.

Ms. Whitmer, a Democrat, issued a statewide stay-at-home order on March 24 that prohibited “in-person work that is not necessary to sustain or protect life,” as well as all gatherings of any number of people who did not live in the same household. Mr. Northam also a Democrat, issued a similar order on March 30, instructing residents to leave their homes only for work, medical appointments, family care, shopping for essentials and “outdoor activity with strict social distancing requirements.”

In April, President Trump had openly encouraged right-wing protests of social distancing restrictions in Virginia, Michigan and other states with stay-at-home orders, a day after his administration had announced guidelines for governors to set their own timetables for reopening. “LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment,” the president wrote on Twitter at the time. “It is under siege!”

Mr. Northam started reopening much of Virginia on May 15, but as cases rose again over the summer, he implemented restrictions on bars, restaurants and public gatherings.

Michigan lifted its order on June 1, but prohibited bars from offering indoor service in July, citing an increase in cases. Earlier this month, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that the law Ms. Whitmer had been using to issue her emergency orders was unconstitutional and invalidated the orders. Following the ruling, emergency orders were issued through the health department, which kept in place mask requirements as well as limits on gathering sizes and business capacities.

Mr. Trask of the F.B.I. said that some of the suspects held a meeting in Dublin, Ohio, several months ago where they “discussed possible targets” for “taking a sitting governor.”

Mr. Trask also provided additional details about the alleged plans to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan. One of the suspects, Adam Fox, spoke about a plan to take Ms. Whitmer out on a boat in the middle of Lake Michigan, and leave her stranded with the engine disabled so that someone would have to “come rescue” her, Mr. Trask said.

Last week, the authorities said the men were affiliated with an extremist group called the Wolverine Watchmen, which court documents called “an anti-government, anti-law enforcement militia group.”

The group met many times for tactical and firearms training and practiced building explosives, the F.B.I. said, and spoke about attacking law enforcement officers.

Mr. Trask and the prosecutor mentioned several other men who they said were involved in the surveillance and the discussion of the plot, including one from Wisconsin, but who were not among those arrested.

The testimony also indicated that the participants were suspicious that government informants were monitoring or had infiltrated their group, changing encrypted messaging platforms and giving each other code names in hopes of escaping such surveillance.

At one point after a planning trip to case the governor’s vacation home and the surrounding area, Mr. Fox asked that all the participants be scanned with a device that is supposed to identify if anyone was wearing a transmission wire or a recording device.

The effort apparently failed, Mr. Trask said, with the group eventually infiltrated by four informants or undercover agents who continued to document what the group was planning.

Countries across Europe are desperately trying to hold at bay a fast-growing wave of new virus cases, employing targeted closures and travel restrictions to avoid the large-scale lockdowns that crippled economies in the spring.

The European Union on Tuesday adopted new guidelines aimed at coordinating members’ varying travel measures. The bloc will now use a single map with a color-coded system to denote the scale of outbreaks: green at the low end of risk, orange in the middle and red at the high end.

Other measures include unifying how quarantines and testing are done to smooth travel between E.U. countries, and ensuring ample warning when national travel advisories are about to change to ensure that travelers aren’t left stranded.

But the measures are not mandatory, and individual member states said they wanted to reserve the right to take unilateral action, including stepping up restrictions or changing the risk category for regions based on their own assessments.

The action came amid a flood of announcements of tightened policies and pointed warnings from national leaders. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany on Tuesday voiced concern about the rise in cases “in almost every part of Europe,” Reuters reported.

“We mustn’t throw away what we achieved via restrictions over the past months,” she said at a meeting of E.U. officials, according to the report.

“These restrictions haven’t been easy for any of us,” she added. “Many have lost their lives. And that makes it all the more important that we make sure that a further lockdown won’t be needed.”

Officials in the Netherlands announced a four-week partial lockdown on Tuesday. Bars, pubs and restaurants will close, but takeout will be allowed and hotels can stay open. The government is planning to make face masks mandatory in public places, including high schools and shops. Group sports for adults will also be prohibited, Prime Minister Mark Rutte said.

The Czech Republic, which has reported more cases per capita in the last seven days than most other European countries, announced that it will close schools on Wednesday. Dozens had already been forced to suspend classes after teachers and students fell ill.

“We only have one shot at this, and it has to be successful to make sure that our nation overcomes the pandemic this time as well,” Prime Minister Andrej Babis told the nation Monday night.

The country is also closing theaters, cinemas and zoos. Restaurants and bars will be restricted to takeout orders starting Wednesday, and will have to close at 8 p.m.

The health minister, Roman Prymula, said the new rules should reverse the rise in two to three weeks.

Neighboring Slovakia, which has seen a smaller increase in new cases, announced the closure of high schools on Monday. Most universities had already moved online.

Slovakia is also considering limiting travel to the Czech Republic, which would be an extraordinary development for the two countries, which until 1993 formed one nation, Czechoslovakia.

And in Poland, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki was in quarantine after being exposed to someone who tested positive for the virus. His office said he had not been experiencing any symptoms, and he urged Poles to act responsibly in a video message posted on Facebook on Tuesday.

The virus has also surged again in the countries that were hit hardest in the first wave. Italy announced on Tuesday that it would prohibit parties and recommended that indoor gatherings be limited to six people.

The decree, signed by Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, represents a second crackdown in less than a week as the second wave, which seemed to have hit Italy less violently than other European countries, is now gaining strength. The country registered 4,619 new cases on Monday.

Italy is still registering fewer new cases than Spain or France. And while the number of daily cases is similar to the spring, deaths and patients in intensive care units remain lower.

But the level of alert and the fear of a new lockdown both remain high.

“I would exclude a new lockdown,” Mr. Conte told reporters on Monday, “We specifically worked to prevent a new generalized lockdown.”

In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has also sought to avoid a lockdown, brushing aside advice from an influential group of scientists.

Their recommendation, contained in newly published minutes from the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, or SAGE, has intensified the debate in Britain over whether Mr. Johnson’s government is doing enough to avert a second wave.

On Monday, Mr. Johnson ordered pubs and gyms in the city of Liverpool to close, part of a new three-tiered system of restrictions targeting places hardest hit by the virus. But he has resisted pressure to impose a so-called “circuit breaker” lockdown — a brief national shutdown designed to stop the exponential increase in infections — saying it would come at too high an economic and social cost.

In the minutes of its Sept. 21 meeting, posted online late Monday night, SAGE recommended a brief lockdown as one of several measures to stop what it warned could be a “very large epidemic with catastrophic consequences.”

The Senate will vote to advance another scaled-down package to provide funding to a lapsed federal loan program when the full chamber returns later this month, although it is unlikely that such a package would secure the necessary Democratic support needed to clear the chamber.

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, announced on Tuesday that he planned to have the Senate vote “on targeted relief for American workers, including new funding” for the Paycheck Protection Program, a popular federal loan program for small businesses that has expired without congressional action.

Speaking at an event in his home state, Mr. McConnell said the legislation would also likely have funds for schools, hospitals and supplemental unemployment insurance benefits.

With negotiations over a broader stimulus package to infuse the economy with tens of billions of dollars again at an apparent impasse, Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, and Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, wrote to lawmakers on Sunday asking for action on a stand-alone bill that would provide additional funds for the program and allow small businesses to again apply for loans that will be forgiven if a certain number of workers are maintained.

But Democrats have so far resisted approving stand-alone bills and in the Senate prevented a proposal that would have provided $350 billion in new aid from advancing earlier this year because they deemed it insufficient to address the economic and health havoc caused across the country by the pandemic. Because of the 60-vote threshold needed to approve procedural votes, the legislation will not pass without some Democratic support.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and her top lieutenants spent the weekend criticizing the latest $1.8 trillion proposal Mr. Mnuchin put forward.

“Are you giving haircuts or are you just chopping off heads?” Ms. Pelosi said on a private call with Democrats of the administration’s push to cut down the cost of the bill, according to one person on the call, who disclosed details of the discussion on condition of anonymity.

“We really need to have an agreement, but we cannot have an agreement by just folding,” Ms. Pelosi added. “I don’t think our leverage has ever been greater than it is now.”

With Mr. Trump calling on Twitter on Tuesday for negotiators to “go big or go home!!!” on the stimulus, Ms. Pelosi pushed back on the suggestion that she should accept anything less than the $2.2 trillion proposal House Democrats approved earlier this month.

“I appreciate, shall we say, a couple people saying, Take it, take it, take it,” Ms. Pelosi said. “Take it? Take it? Even the president is saying, ‘Go big or go home.’”

But the $1.8 trillion offer also faced additional resistance among the majority of Senate Republicans, who lashed out at top administration officials on Saturday for putting forward a counteroffer that they felt to be too expensive and veering toward catering too much to Democratic priorities.

While Mr. McConnell did not release legislative text or offer additional details about what the Senate would vote on, it is likely to be much smaller than the $2.2 trillion stimulus package that House Democrats are pushing for and the $1.8 trillion framework Mr. Mnuchin has outlined.

He also took care to underscore priorities for Senate Republicans in the weeks ahead of the election, noting that “unless Democrats block this aid for workers, we will have time to pass it before we proceed as planned to the pending Supreme Court nomination as soon as it is reported by the Judiciary Committee.”

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci insisted Tuesday that there was no “rift” between him and President Trump, even as he stepped up his criticism of the Trump campaign for quoting him “out of context” in a television ad praising the administration’s coronavirus response.

“I have been a public servant, for five decades now and I have never either directly or indirectly endorsed any political candidate,” Dr. Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease specialist, said in an interview, reiterating comments he made on CNN over the weekend. “That ad clearly implies strongly that I’m endorsing a political candidate, and I have not given them my permission to do that. And in addition to that, the quote that they took is completely out of context.”

The Trump campaign released the new ad last week after the President was discharged from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center following treatment for Covid-19.

“President Trump tackled the virus head on, as leaders should,” the ad declares, before switching to an interview in which Dr. Fauci said, “I can’t imagine that… anybody could be doing more.”

Dr. Fauci said that comment was made “months and months ago” (in March, early on in the pandemic) in reference to the hard work of the White House coronavirus task force, when the group was “meeting literally seven days a week” and “knocking ourselves out.”

He said he blamed the campaign, not “the president as a person,” but conceded he has little power to get the ad off the air. He said he has not contacted either the president or the campaign — “and I don’t want to contact them.” But he also warned that the ad could backfire.

“I think if they keep doing that, and I make it clear that this is something that I’m not happy with, because I didn’t give permission, and that I would like them to stop, and they continue to do it,” he said, “they may turn off a lot of people.”

The Biden campaign released an ad on Monday mocking the Trump campaign for the way it repurposed Dr. Fauci’s quote. The ad featured an obviously pasted-together montage of the president’s speeches, a few words at a time, in which he is made to say, “I am failing at managing the coronavirus outbreak.”

In an interview with The Daily Beast, Dr. Fauci said the campaign was “in effect, harassing me” — a comment he told The New York Times he made “because I had heard that they were going to continue to do it with other ads, given that I have explicitly said I do not like that, and I don’t give them permission.”

On Monday, Dr. Fauci had warned that President Trump’s plan to resume a full schedule of rallies when the virus is surging in much of the country was “asking for trouble.”

He told CNN, “We’ve seen that when you have situations of congregate settings where there are a lot of people without masks, the data speak for themselves. It happens. And now is even more so a worse time to do that, because when you look at what’s going on in the United States, it’s really very troublesome.”

He noted that many states were now seeing increases in positive tests and suggested that Americans should be “doubling down” on precautions rather than casting them aside.

Most of the audience at Mr. Trumps packed rally near Orlando, Fla., Monday night was unmasked.

Cristiano Ronaldo, one of soccer’s biggest stars and among the world’s most famous athletes, has tested positive for the coronavirus, Portugal’s soccer federation announced Tuesday.

Ronaldo, 35, was removed from Portugal’s training camp in Lisbon and will miss his country’s Nations Cup game Wednesday against Sweden, the federation said. The team said Ronaldo was not displaying symptoms and was in isolation.

“Following the positive case, the remaining players underwent new tests Tuesday morning,” the federation said in a statement. “All tested negative.”

Ronaldo played in Portugal’s scoreless draw against France on Sunday, and posted a photo of himself dining on his social media accounts on Monday.

“United on and off the field,” the caption read.

Ronaldo is not the first soccer star to test positive this fall as Europe’s top leagues start new seasons and players journey home for national team duty. The Manchester United midfielder Paul Pogba was found to be positive when he turned up for a training camp with France’s national team in August. And weeks before, the Brazilian star Neymar and two of his teammates from the French club Paris St.-Germain tested positive after a postseason vacation in Spain.

While many of Europe’s top leagues were able to resume their seasons after pausing play for several months this spring, the coronavirus remains a significant threat because — and unlike in the restricted environments set up for this summer’s Champions League knockout rounds or the recently completed N.B.A. season — players are free to circulate in their communities.

For a long time, drug makers have been the most hated industry in America, blamed for gouging prices on lifesaving drugs and enriching themselves through the opioid crisis, among other sins.

Now, with pharmaceutical companies racing to find vaccines to end the coronavirus pandemic, the industry is hoping to redeem itself in the public’s mind.

The primary goal, of course, is to rescue the world from the grips of a vicious virus. But a big fringe benefit is to get public credit — and to use an improved image to fend off government efforts to more heavily regulate the industry.

Consider Johnson & Johnson.

In recent years, its reputation has been battered by accusations that products like its artificial hips and talcum powder have harmed customers. In 2019, an Oklahoma judge ordered the company to pay $572 million for contributing to the opioid epidemic.

This spring, Johnson & Johnson jumped into the hunt for a Covid-19 vaccine; its candidate is in the final stage of clinical trials, though that trial has been paused, the company said on Monday night, after a participant got sick.

Regardless of whether the vaccine ever comes to market, the company is looking to create a surge of positive publicity from its work. Its chief executive, Alex Gorsky, went on the “Today” show this spring and called Johnson & Johnson’s lab workers heroes.

For an industry demonized by consumers and politicians, the hunt for a vaccine “offers a path to redemption,” said J. Stephen Morrison, a senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank in Washington.

Last fall, a Gallup poll found that drug makers had the worst reputation of any American industry.

The pandemic — and the high hopes for a fast, safe, effective vaccine — appears to be changing that perception. This spring, other opinion polls showed that Americans’ views of the industry were improving.

When Gallup released the results of this year’s annual survey, conducted in the first half of August, the results confirmed that the pharmaceutical industry’s reputation had gotten a bit better. Now, it is second-to-last, having inched past the U.S. government.

NEW YORK ROUNDUP

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s book on his own handling of the coronavirus crisis debuted on Tuesday, amid a series of hot-spot outbreaks in New York and criticism that it may be too soon for such reflections.

The book, “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic,” is largely drawn from the governor’s streak of daily press briefings given from March to mid-June, during which time tens of thousands of New Yorkers died related to the virus.

Mr. Cuomo, a third-term Democrat, describes the early days of the discovery of the virus in his state as a wake-up call for both state and federal governments. “I knew the country wasn’t prepared,” he writes.

Published by Crown, the book, which is Mr. Cuomo’s second memoir, speaks in detail about his decision-making as well as what he describes as a way of “reintroducing myself to the people of the state.”

“Yes, they knew me, but today everything was different. We were going to a new and different place,” he writes. “Today, I was not just the governor; I was the governor in a historic crisis.”

Mr. Cuomo’s critics have noted that the book coincides with a surging number of new cases and hospitalizations because of clusters of infections in New York City and its suburbs, something that health officials worry may signal a second wave in the city and state.

On Monday morning on the “Today” show, Willie Geist pressed Mr. Cuomo on this issue, asking whether “celebrating the things that you did right feels off and strange” while the virus continues to kill hundreds of Americans a day.

“It’s not a celebration at all,” Mr. Cuomo responded. “The game isn’t over. It is halftime.”

He added, “We had some success. But we are also making a lot of mistakes,” saying the nation had to be ready for “the second half.”

The governor was also asked about his handling of the virus in nursing homes, in particular. More than 6,000 New Yorkers have died in such facilities and a late March memo from his health department — directing homes to take in patients who had tested positive — has been the subject of scrutiny.

He demurred on that question, saying instead that the death toll in the state was the result of failed federal policy. “The reason New York’s numbers were so high was because the virus was coming here for months, undetected,” he said.

In August, Mr. Cuomo declined to discuss his advance for the book, saying “you’ll see it on my financial disclosure.” He said he would make a contribution “to a Covid-related entity,” adding “a lot of it depends on whether or not the book sells.” On Tuesday afternoon, it ranked 160th on Amazon’s best-sellers list.

Elsewhere in the New York area:

• In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Tuesday that he hoped to know soon whether newly imposed restrictions on parts of the city where the virus positivity rate has spiked could soon be relaxed. “By the end of this week I think we’re going to have a clear sense of whether this is working and whether we’re in range to relax these restrictions after about two weeks,” the shortest amount of time the new rules could be kept in place, he said. “Obviously, that’s a decision we’ll make with the state.” Over the weekend, city agents had issued more than 100 summonses and more than $150,000 in fines, according to Mr. de Blasio. As of Oct. 11, the most recent date for which data was available, the citywide seven-day average positivity rate was 1.48 percent.

• The state comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli, warned in a report released on Tuesday that if the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the subway, buses and two commuter rails, does not receive federal aid it will be forced to slash service, raise fares and borrow billions of dollars — causing damage that would affect the region’s transportation system for decades. “Without additional help from Washington, the agency is approaching a cliff,” Mr. DiNapoli told reporters Tuesday morning. If the federal government does not provide aid, “it would mark the end of regional transportation as we know it,” he said.

Eighteen members of Tunisia’s Parliament have tested positive for the virus, the body’s doctor, Maher Ayadi, announced on Tuesday.

Several cases among lawmakers were reported following a full parliamentary session on Oct. 2, one of only two such meetings held such July. A number of lawmakers had announced that they tested positive on Facebook.

Tunisia has seen a sharp spike in virus cases in recent days. Of the 32,556 cases reported since the start of the outbreak, more than 10,000 were reported in the last seven days, according to a Times database.

The country had been an exception in the region, reporting very few cases at the start of the pandemic. Tunisia quickly imposed a strict lockdown, including a nationwide curfew and the closure of international borders for almost two months.

But after reopening the borders in June, the country began to report new cases linked to international travel. The authorities imposed a two-week nightly curfew in several cities last week to halt the uptick.

Only a few hundred intensive care beds are available throughout the country, and doctors have expressed concern that the health care system is at risk of being overloaded.

Jesse Katayama had planned to end a journey around the world 8,000 feet above sea level at Machu Picchu, the sprawling 15th-century Inca citadel high in the Andes Mountains.

Then the coronavirus happened, stranding Mr. Katayama, a 26-year-old Japanese citizen, in Peru and shutting down tourism sites as a lockdown was imposed across the country.

On Sunday, after a wait of seven months, Mr. Katayama finally got to visit the UNESCO world heritage site. And aside from a few guides, he got it all to himself.

“After the lockdown, the first man to visit Machu Picchu is meeeeeee,” he wrote in a post on Instagram that included photos of him with a park representative.

Alejandro Neyra, Peru’s culture minister, said in a virtual news conference on Monday that Mr. Katayama had been granted special access to the site in recognition of his patience.

“He had come to Peru with the dream of being able to enter,” Mr. Neyra said. “The Japanese citizen has entered together with our head of the park so that he can do this before returning to his country.”

Before the pandemic, Machu Picchu welcomed thousands of visitors a day. Tourists typically have to apply months in advance for permits to enter an Inca trail that leads to the ancient fortress.

Major news organizations have become increasingly wary of sending journalists to travel with President Trump to White House events and campaign rallies, as the president and his aides continue to shun safety protocols after an outbreak of the virus within their ranks.

The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post are among the major outlets that have declined to assign reporters to travel with Mr. Trump as he returns to the trail this week, saying they do not have assurance that basic precautions will be taken to protect reporters’ health.

Foremost among the flouters is Mr. Trump himself, who, despite recently contracting the virus and spending three nights in the hospital, has shown little willingness to change his habits: On Saturday, he said the virus would soon “disappear,” and on the way to a rally in Florida on Monday, he boarded Air Force One — where reporters were seated in the cabin — without wearing a mask.

At least three White House correspondents have tested positive for the coronavirus in the past two weeks, including a Times reporter who had traveled on Air Force One, Michael D. Shear.

Safety concerns may also complicate Mr. Trump’s tentative NBC town hall on Thursday. NBC executives have asked the White House for proof that their employees will not face undue risks at the event, according to two people familiar with discussions.

Among the concerns raised by reporters: Many flight attendants and Secret Service agents on Air Force One have not worn masks; White House aides who tested positive for the coronavirus, or were potentially exposed, are returning to work before the end of a two-week quarantine; and the campaign has instituted few restrictions at the raucous rallies that Mr. Trump is now pledging to hold.

The White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany — who briefed reporters last weekend without wearing a mask, shortly before she tested positive for the virus — said on Monday that the Trump campaign would distribute masks but would not require attendees to wear them.

When the coronavirus pandemic closed offices around the United States in March, many companies told their employees that it would be a short hiatus.

Workers, they said, would be back in cubicles within a matter of weeks. Weeks turned into September. Then September turned into January. And now, with the virus still surging in some parts of the country, a growing number of employers are delaying return-to-office dates once again, to the summer of 2021.

Google was one of the first to announce that July 2021 was its return date. Uber, Slack and Airbnb soon followed. In the past week, Microsoft, Target, Ford Motor and The New York Times said they, too, had postponed the return of in-person work to next summer and acknowledged the inevitable: The pandemic isn’t going away anytime soon.

Many more companies are expected to delay their return-to-office dates to keep workers safe. And workers said they were in no rush to go back, with 73 percent of U.S. employees fearing that being in their workplace could pose a risk to their personal health and safety, according to a study by Wakefield Research commissioned by Envoy, a workplace technology company.

More companies are also saying that they will institute permanent work-from-home policies.

In May, Facebook was one of the first to announce that it would allow many employees to work remotely even after the pandemic. Twitter, Coinbase, Shopify and Microsoft have also said they would do so.

The postponement of return dates is a “psychological blow for those who expected this to be a transition phase,” said Tsedal Neeley, a Harvard Business School professor who studies remote work. “The reality is hitting that, ‘There won’t be a vaccine as I expected very quickly. This is going to be my life, and I’d better learn how to do this.’”

Tourism is undergoing a downturn all over the world, but several factors make Iceland particularly vulnerable to the industry’s crash: geographic isolation, a small domestic population, strict border measures and an economy that — after an extraordinary, decade-long tourism boom — had come to depend heavily on foreign tourists. A recent surge in coronavirus cases has added to Iceland’s challenges.

But while visitor numbers are low, Iceland is positioning itself for a major tourism rebound after the pandemic. The government is investing more than $12 million in tourism infrastructure, while improving roads and harbors across the country.

To keep the tourism industry afloat in the short term, the government is also investing more than $9 million in a program that distributes free travel vouchers to Icelandic citizens and residents. A marketing campaign targeting domestic tourists was rolled out in the late spring; an international version will be unveiled as soon as travel restrictions are lifted.

The voucher campaign helped to jump-start demand for hotels, restaurants and attractions. So far, Icelanders have used more than $1.2 million worth of their free travel vouchers, which are valid through the end of the year.

The summer was “pretty good, considering everything,” said Bjarnheidur Hallsdottir, the chairwoman of the board of the Icelandic Travel Industry Association and the chief executive of two tourism companies. “And then suddenly out of nowhere, the government decided to change the rules at the borders. Since then, everyone is crying.”

Under the new rules, which took effect in August, arriving passengers may choose either to submit to two screening tests for the virus, separated by five days’ self-quarantine, or to skip border screening and self-quarantine for 14 days after arrival.

The United States may be within months of a profound turning point in the country’s fight against the coronavirus: the first working vaccine.

Demonstrating that a new vaccine is safe and effective in less than a year would shatter the record for speed, the result of seven-day workweeks for scientists and billions of dollars of investment by the government.

The path has not been without bumps. Johnson & Johnson announced Monday night that it was halting its Phase 3 trial after a volunteer got sick. And AstraZeneca also paused its trial, last month, after two participants became ill.

Still, it’s tempting to look at the first vaccine as President Trump does: an on-off switch that will bring back life as we know it. “As soon as it’s given the go-ahead, we will get it out, defeat the virus,” he said at a September news conference.

Instead, vaccine experts say, we should prepare for a perplexing, frustrating year.

The first vaccines may provide only moderate protection, low enough to make it prudent to keep wearing a mask. By next spring or summer, there may be several of these so-so vaccines.

Because of this array of options, makers of a superior vaccine in early stages of development may struggle to finish clinical testing. And some vaccines may be abruptly withdrawn from the market because they turn out not to be safe.

“It has not yet dawned on hardly anybody the amount of complexity and chaos and confusion that will happen in a few short months,” said Dr. Gregory Poland, the director of the Vaccine Research Group at the Mayo Clinic.

United States ›	On Oct. 12	14-day change	Trend
New cases	45,927	+19%
New deaths	351	–5%

Where cases are
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Johnson & Johnson has paused the large late-stage clinical trial of its coronavirus vaccine because of an “unexplained illness” in one of the volunteers, the company said on Monday.

The company did not say whether the sick participant had received the experimental vaccine or a placebo. The pause was first reported by the health news website Stat. On Tuesday morning, shares of Johnson & Johnson fell about 2 percent on the S&P 500.

Johnson & Johnson, which just began the so-called Phase 3 trial of its vaccine last month, was behind several of its competitors in the vaccine race, but its vaccine had some advantages over others. It does not need to be frozen, and it could need just one dose instead of two. It would also be the largest trial, with a goal of enrolling 60,000 volunteers.

“Adverse events — illnesses, accidents, etc. — even those that are serious, are an expected part of any clinical study, especially large studies,” the company said in a statement. “We’re also learning more about this participant’s illness, and it’s important to have all the facts before we share additional information.”

Trial pauses are often lifted quickly after the illness is investigated and deemed not to be a serious safety risk.

“It’s actually a good thing that these companies are pausing these trials when these things come up,” said Dr. Phyllis Tien, an infectious disease physician at the University of California, San Francisco, a trial site for Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca. “We just need to let the sponsor and the safety board do their review and let us know their findings.”

“It doesn’t mean that the adverse event is related to the vaccine, but it needs to be investigated thoroughly,” said Dr. Luciana Borio, who oversaw public health preparedness for the National Security Council under President Trump and was acting chief scientist at the Food and Drug Administration under former President Barack Obama. Depending on the findings, she said, additional data may be collected, trial rules may be modified, or other steps may be taken to ensure safety.

Johnson & Johnson’s is not the first trial to be paused because of safety concerns. Two participants in AstraZeneca’s trial became seriously ill after getting its vaccine. That trial was halted twice — most recently last month — and has still not resumed in the United States, though locations abroad swiftly broke the pause.

Both Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca developed their vaccines using adenovirus vectors, modified viruses engineered to carry coronavirus genes into human cells. AstraZeneca’s vaccine used an adenovirus that causes common colds in chimpanzees. Johnson & Johnson’s used another adenovirus, called Ad26, which has also been used in its approved vaccine for Ebola.

Experts say safety issues must be investigated and are one reason late-stage trials cannot be rushed — even for a president who has repeatedly claimed that a vaccine will be ready before the U.S. election on Nov. 3. “This kind of event epitomizes why vaccine development can’t be influenced by artificial timelines such as an election,” said John Moore, a virologist at Weill Cornell Medicine.

President Trump, eager to prove he is healthy and energetic despite his recent hospitalization for Covid-19, returned to the campaign trail on Monday night in Florida, telling supporters he was fully recovered and therefore immune to the coronavirus — a claim for which there is no conclusive scientific backing.

Onstage at a hangar at the Orlando Sanford International Airport, Mr. Trump said he felt “so powerful” and offered to wade into the crowd.

“I’ll kiss everyone in that audience,” he said. “I’ll kiss the guys and the beautiful women. Just give you a big fat kiss.”

The president spoke for about an hour. Many supporters in the crowd did not wear masks, including some of those chosen to stand behind the president’s lectern and within the camera shot.

Mr. Trump claimed that vaccines against the virus “are going to be distributed very shortly,” although the Food and Drug Administration has not yet approved one. The president also implied without evidence that the agency was deliberately holding back on vaccine approvals to hurt his chances of re-election. (Read a fact check of Mr. Trump’s claims on Monday here.)

“Frankly, it’s a big political deal going on where they don’t want it to be before the election,” the president said.

Mr. Trump, whose response to a pandemic that has killed more than 214,000 Americans remains the biggest threat to his re-election, also claimed without evidence that his Democratic rival, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., would delay the vaccine and “prolong the pandemic.”

Mr. Trump’s arrival in Florida took place only hours after the White House physician, Dr. Sean P. Conley, said the president had tested negative “on consecutive days” using a rapid coronavirus test not intended for that purpose.

Experts cautioned that the test’s accuracy has not yet been investigated enough to be sure that the president is virus-free or, as his doctor claimed, “not infectious to others.”

With three weeks left in the race, Mr. Trump is running behind Mr. Biden. His polling numbers with seniors, a crucial constituency that has been disproportionately harmed by the coronavirus, have been flagging.

Hours before Monday’s rally, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, warned that holding large rallies was “asking for trouble” with cases of the virus surging in many states.

Dr. Fauci, in an interview with CNN, said that Americans needed to be more cautious in the fall and winter months, and warned that rising rates of infections in a number of states suggested Americans should be “doubling down” on precautions rather than casting them aside.