Covid-19 Live News: Updates on the Virus, Vaccines and Variants
States have continued steadily lifting restrictions, despite warnings from top federal health officials like Dr. Anthony S. Fauci that new coronavirus cases in the United States have plateaued at a very high level after their drastic drop has stalled, and that the country urgently needed to contain the spread of more transmissible variants.
Arizona, California and South Carolina joined a growing list Friday by loosening restrictions, to varying degrees. Arizona’s governor ended capacity limits on businesses, but said they must still require masks. South Carolina’s Republican governor lifted the state’s mask mandate in government buildings, while recommending restaurants continue requiring masking.
California will allow amusement parks and outdoor sports and live events at stadiums to restart on April 1, with reduced capacity and mandatory masks.
“We’ve just now recently experienced the worst surge,” Dr. Fauci said Friday during a White House coronavirus briefing, adding that the country had plateaued at between 60,000 and 70,000 new cases per day. “When you have that much of viral activity in a plateau, it almost invariably means that you are at risk for another spike.”
The seven-day average of new cases was about 61,000 day as of Friday, the lowest average since October, according to a New York Times database. But that number was still close to last summer’s highest peak.
Fatalities are falling, too, in part because of vaccinations at nursing homes. Yet the nation is still routinely reporting 2,000 deaths in a single day.
Dr. Fauci warned the United States could be following the same treacherous path that Europe has recently been on.
“They plateaued,” he said. “And now, over the past week, they saw an increase in cases by 9 percent, something we desperately want to avoid.”
He warned that the virus mutates as it replicates, a process that can be extended when immunocompromised people are infected. He said that maintaining masking, hand washing and social distancing was urgent.
The B.1.1.7 variant, first identified in Britain, is spreading so rapidly in the United States that data analysis suggest that, as of this week, it has most likely grown to account for 20 percent of new U.S. cases. And scientists in Oregon have identified a single case of a homegrown variant with the same spine as B.1.1.7 that carries a mutation that could blunt the effectiveness of vaccines.
Earlier this week, Texas and Mississippi, both Republican-led states, lifted mask mandates. President Biden denounced those moves as “a big mistake” that reflected “Neanderthal thinking,” saying it was critical for public officials to follow the guidance of doctors and public health leaders as the coronavirus vaccination campaign gains momentum.
Other Republicans have been more cautious. Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio said he would lift all public health measures aimed at curbing the virus crisis, but only once new cases there drop under a certain threshold. In Alabama, Gov. Kay Ivey said she would extend the state’s mask mandate through April 9.
In Arizona, Gov. Doug Ducey has taken what he calls a “measured approach” requiring schools to offer in-person learning no later than March 15, barring local leaders from enacting measures that shut down businesses and allowing major league sports to restart if they receive approval from the state’s Department of Health Services.
Among Democrats, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan said on Tuesday that she was easing restrictions on businesses and would allow family members who had tested negative for the coronavirus to visit nursing home residents. In California, the state’s public health department also loosened some restrictions Friday, saying that amusement parkscould reopen on a limited basis as soon as April 1.
In New York City, limited indoor dining has returned. And on Thursday, Connecticut’s governor said the state would end capacity limits later this month on restaurants, gyms and offices. Masks remain required in both places.
Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease and Prevention, has implored states not to relax their restrictions yet. A new report from the C.D.C. found that counties that allowed restaurants to open for in-person dining in the United States had a rise in daily infections weeks after. The study also said that counties that issued mask mandates reported a decrease in virus cases and deaths within weeks.
The teacups could soon be spinning again: Disneyland, which has been closed for a year, is poised to reopen this spring.
California officials announced on Friday that theme parks in the state could reopen on a limited basis as soon as April 1. Eligibility, however, will depend on coronavirus transmission statistics in individual counties.
For instance, theme parks in counties where the virus threat remains the most severe (in the purple tier under the state’s system) must remain closed. But parks in areas where the threat of infection has eased somewhat (red tier) will be allowed to reopen at 15 percent capacity. Even less threat (orange tier) will allow for 25 percent capacity.
Attendance will be limited to in-state visitors.
Disneyland is in Orange County, which is in the purple tier. But if coronavirus cases continue to decline in Southern California at the current pace, the county could fall within the orange tier by late April. The Walt Disney Company said last year that reopening a park at less than 25 percent capacity would not make economic sense. A Disney spokeswoman declined to comment on a specific reopening timeline on Friday.
“We are encouraged that theme parks now have a path toward reopening this spring, getting thousands of people back to work,” Ken Potrock, Disneyland’s president, said in a statement.
Disney has said it would take at least four weeks to rehire employees and train them on new coronavirus safety procedures. Before the pandemic, roughly 32,000 people worked at the 486-acre Disneyland Resort, which includes two separately ticketed theme parks, three Disney-owned hotels and an outdoor shopping mall. Most of the Anaheim complex has been closed for a year.
Disney had hoped to reopen its California attractions in July. But unions representing Disneyland employees criticized that timetable as too fast and pressured Gov. Gavin Newsom to withhold approval. He sided with the unions, prompting fans to attack him online. (“Open Disney, or we are taking away your hair gel.”)
In contrast, Florida allowed Disney to reopen its Orlando parks in July. The company endured withering criticism for doing so, but stringent safety procedures, including mandatory masks, resulted in a safer-than-expected environment.
“It has been a success story,” Julee Jerkovich, a United Food & Commercial Workers official, said in October. “As a union rep, I do not say that lightly.”
In addition to Disneyland, theme parks in California include Universal Studios Hollywood, Six Flags Magic Mountain, Knott’s Berry Farm and the Santa Cruz Boardwalk.
Gov. Kay Ivey of Alabama has proved, in her four years in office, to be a reliably conformist Southern Republican, with a record of defending former President Donald J. Trump, the Second Amendment and monuments to the Confederacy.
But this week, Ms. Ivey, a 76-year-old veteran of Southern politics, demonstrated a pronounced maverick streak on the emotionally charged matter of mask-wearing during the coronavirus pandemic. Bucking pressure from fellow Alabama Republicans, Ms. Ivey declared on Thursday that she would extend the state’s mask mandate until April 9, even as Republican governors in Texas and Mississippi lifted such requirements in the name of personal freedom.
“We need to get past Easter and hopefully allow more Alabamians to get their first shot before we take a step some other states have taken to remove the mask order altogether and lift other restrictions,” Ms. Ivey said at a news conference. “Folks, we are not there yet, but goodness knows we’re getting closer.”
Ms. Ivey’s supporters say the move is rooted in her practical-minded approach to governing, though they also acknowledge that it could create primary vulnerabilities for her if she runs for re-election next year in a profoundly conservative state, particularly since President Biden has amped up the partisanship on the matter, blasting governors of Texas and Mississippi for their “Neanderthal thinking.”
None of this has seemed to faze the governor since she first issued the mask mandate in July, and she has insisted that her moves are based in a thoughtful, science-based analysis of a pandemic that has claimed more than 10,000 lives in Alabama.
“Now y’all, I’m not trying to be Governor Meemaw, as some on social media have called me,” Ms. Ivey said when she extended the order in December. “I’m simply trying to urge you to use the common sense the Good Lord gave each of us to be smart and considerate of others.”
Brazilians are dying in record numbers from Covid-19. Intensive care units in a growing number of cities are full or near capacity as more contagious variants drive up cases. Elderly people have begun sleeping outside vaccination centers hoping to get a shot from the country’s limited supply.
But this is no time for new restrictions on businesses and transit, President Jair Bolsonaro said defiantly this week. Instead, his government is placing tremendous hope in an experimental nasal spray, under development in Israel to treat severely ill Covid-19 patients, that the president has called a “miraculous product.”
On Saturday, Foreign Minister Ernesto Araújo is scheduled to travel to Israel to meet the scientists who are developing the spray, which has undergone only preliminary tests and is not being used in routine patient care. Mr. Bolsonaro’s government says it intends to test it on gravely sick patients in Brazil, where more than 260,000 people have died from the virus and where daily deaths hit a record 1,910 on Thursday.
Health experts see the government’s pursuit of an unproven remedy as the latest in a jarring series of missteps that have turned Brazil into a pandemic cautionary tale and a breeding ground for more contagious variants.
Brazil’s Covid-19 vaccination campaign is off to a slow and chaotic start because the government was late to start negotiating access to vaccines, whose safety and efficacy Mr. Bolsonaro has called into question.
On Wednesday, the president sought to reassure Brazilians that help was on the way by announcing that his administration intended to sign a memorandum of understanding in Israel to test the nasal spray, which he said could emerge as “the real solution to treating Covid.”
The Israeli scientists who are developing the nasal spray say it’s too early to tell whether it will prove to be a pandemic game changer.
The drug, called EXO-CD24, aims to prevent “cytokine storms,” which are overwhelming immune-system responses to Covid-19 that can cause serious inflammation of the lungs, organ failure and sometimes death.
Brazil’s outbreak, among the worst in the world, has become a source of global concern as new, more contagious variants have become dominant in much of the country. Scientists say there is worrisome evidence that the variants can make re-infections more likely and they are urgently studying whether these variants reduce the efficacy of vaccines.
On Friday, officials at the World Health Organization called the surge of cases in Brazil deeply troubling and warned that it could wreak havoc well beyond the country’s borders.
what we learned
The United States hit a big milestone this week a year into the coronavirus pandemic: the average number of vaccine doses being administered across the country topped two million doses per day, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A month ago, the average was about 1.3 million.
Mass vaccination sites across the country are opening up or increasing their capacity, in part to respond to the new influx of doses from Johnson & Johnson, which only needs one done and doesn’t require refrigeration systems in sub-Arctic temperatures, making it easier to store at non-medical facilities like stadiums and convention centers. Two sites in New York City — Yankee Stadium and the Javits Convention Center — will be stocked with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and will be open around the clock.
But even as more people get vaccinated, it’s still not clear how easily vaccinated people may spread the virus. The answer to that question maybe coming soon but until then, scientists urge people to keep wearing their masks.
Here’s what else we learned this week:
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A New York Times analysis found that the vaccination rate for Black Americans is half that of white people, and the gap for Latinos is even larger. Public health experts have said that obstacles to vaccine access deserve much of the blame for vaccination disparities.
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A panel of experts in Canada recommended letting four months pass between doses for the three vaccines available there. The interval has been three to four weeks for the vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca. At least three provinces — British Columbia on the Pacific Coast and Labrador and Newfoundland on the Atlantic Coast — had already made plans to accelerate the vaccine rollout by extending the interval between doses.
