Live Updates on Covid-19 – The New York Times
California lifted most of its Covid-19 restrictions and officially reopened on Tuesday, marking the moment with state-subsidized vacation giveaways and $15 million in vaccine lottery prizes as it emerged from the pandemic politically divided but economically formidable.
One of the last U.S. states to reopen, many of its health restrictions had already been relaxed or will not be completely phased out until autumn. Still, the formal unwinding of pandemic rules in America’s most populous state was yet another signal of a national turn toward recovery. One out of every eight Americans lives in California, which generates 14.5 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product.
“There is no American recovery without California’s recovery,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in an interview Monday as merchants prepared to ditch the masks and occupancy constraints that have limited both commerce and the coronavirus. “The good news is the state’s economic recovery is well underway.”
The coronavirus has infected some 3.8 million Californians and killed more than 63,000 since the pandemic started — more deaths than any other state, because of the size of California’s population. At the same time, the state has been especially aggressive in combating the virus, occasionally walking a fine legal line in balancing civil liberties with public health needs.
In April, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down some of the state’s pandemic restrictions on religious gatherings. And Mr. Newsom’s pandemic policies have helped fuel a Republican-led recall campaign against him.
“The state erred on the side of caution, and that’s impinged on personal freedom in favor of public health,” said Dr. Christopher Longhurst, the chief information officer for the health system at the University of California San Diego. “But it saved lives.”
Two earlier attempts at relaxing health rules ended with surges in new cases, but the calculus has changed significantly with immunization.
With help from the Biden administration, California has invested heavily in vaccinations, offering more than $100 million in immunization incentives and opening clinics in a wide range of places, including farmworker communities, strip malls and sports arenas. For months, the state has had one of the nation’s highest vaccination rates and lowest positivity rates.
The governor was scheduled on Tuesday to preside over a vaccine lottery drawing, awarding 10 prizes of $1.5 million to Californians who had received at least one vaccine dose. Next week, the state will award an array of free California vacations to travelers who have been vaccinated, including a stay at Disneyland — which raised attendance limits and dropped mask requirements for vaccinated visitors starting Tuesday — and 10 weddings at a resort in the Napa Valley.
Californians responded to the reopening largely along political lines, much as they have to the movement to recall Mr. Newsom.
In liberal bulwarks such as San Francisco, officials said they would continue to exercise their option to impose tougher pandemic rules than the state’s, requiring proof of vaccination for employees in high-risk workplaces such as hospitals and skilled-nursing centers.
In Los Angeles, Roselma Samala, the co-owner of Genever, an Art Deco-inspired gin bar in the city’s Historic Filipinotown, said that despite the statewide reopening, she and her partners did not plan to resume indoor service until July 15.
“Just bringing in a dollar isn’t worth it to us if our staff’s health or our community’s health is going to be impacted,” Ms. Samala said.
In the more rural and conservative Central Valley, Jerry Dyer, the Republican mayor of Fresno, said his constituents largely felt that the health rules could and should have been lifted sooner, and that it was difficult to celebrate reopening without also thinking of the livelihoods that were crushed in the effort to save lives.
“People who have been laid off, who have had to stand in food lines for the first time, who were unemployed for the first time,” Mr. Dyer said, “for those people, it’s bittersweet.”
And in the red-tinged suburbs outside the state capital in Sacramento, small-business owners openly blamed Mr. Newsom.
Most counties had already lowered their case rates to a point that allowed public gatherings and indoor dining service, but the new approach effectively ends the entire color-coded system that set tiers of rules based on infection levels.
Large indoor events, such as N.B.A. games and concerts, will require a negative coronavirus test or proof of vaccination for entry. The state has strongly recommended similar requirements for admission to large outdoor venues such as Dodger Stadium.
Masks will continue to be required in crowded and high-risk areas — hospitals, long-term-care facilities, public transit, prisons, homeless shelters. But otherwise, the state generally will not mandate masks for people who have been vaccinated, and enforcement will largely be on the honor system.
Tariro Mzezewa contributed reporting from San Francisco.
All across the Asia-Pacific region, the countries that led the world in containing the coronavirus are languishing in the race to put it behind them.
While the United States, which suffered far more grievous outbreaks, is filling stadiums with vaccinated fans and cramming planes for summer vacations, the pandemic champions of the East are stuck in a cycle of uncertainty, restrictions and isolation.
In southern China, the spread of the Delta variant led to a sudden lockdown last week in Guangzhou, a major industrial capital. Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand and Australia have also clamped down after recent outbreaks, while Japan is dealing with a fourth round of infections.
Where they can, people are getting on with their lives, with social distancing and outings kept close to home. Economically, the region has weathered the pandemic relatively well because of how successfully most countries handled its first phase.
In some places, like Vietnam, Taiwan and Thailand, vaccinations are barely underway. Others, like China, Japan, South Korea and Australia, have seen a sharp rise in inoculations in recent weeks, while remaining far from offering vaccines to all.
With all American adults now eligible for Covid-19 vaccines, and businesses and international borders reopening, a fierce debate has kicked off across the United States over whether a digital health certificate — often and somewhat misleadingly called a “vaccine passport” — should be required to prove immunization status.
Currently, Americans are issued a white paper card as evidence of their shots, but these can easily be forged, and online scammers are selling false and stolen vaccine cards.
While the federal government has said that it will not issue a mandate for digital vaccine passports, a growing number of businesses say that they will require proof of vaccinations for entry or services. Hundreds of digital health pass initiatives are scrambling to develop apps that provide an electronic record of immunizations and negative coronavirus test results.
The drive has raised privacy and equity concerns. Some states, such as Florida and Texas, have banned businesses from requiring vaccination certificates.
A customer who argued about wearing a face mask at a supermarket in the U.S. state of Georgia shot and killed a cashier on Monday and wounded a deputy sheriff working off duty at the store, law enforcement officials said.
The gunman was shot by the deputy, and both are expected to survive, according to law enforcement officials.
A suspect, identified as Victor Lee Tucker Jr., 30, of Palmetto, Ga., was arrested by DeKalb County Police Department officers “as he was attempting to crawl out the front door of the supermarket,” according to a statement from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
The gunfire occurred inside a Big Bear supermarket in Decatur, Ga., about 10 miles east of downtown Atlanta, just after 1 p.m., officials said. Mr. Tucker was checking out and got into an argument with a cashier about his face mask, the bureau said in its statement. Mr. Tucker left the store without purchasing his items but immediately returned.
“Tucker walked directly back to the cashier, pulled out a handgun and shot her,” the bureau said. He then began shooting at the deputy, “who was attempting to intervene while working off-duty at the supermarket,” the bureau said.
Dr. Stephen M. Hahn, the Food and Drug Administration commissioner under President Donald J. Trump, has joined the health-focused venture capital firm Flagship Pioneering, which 11 years ago birthed Moderna, the biotechnology company that developed a highly effective coronavirus vaccine that the F.D.A. authorized last year while Dr. Hahn led the agency.
Dr. Hahn, an oncologist and former top executive at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, is starting this week as the chief medical officer of the firm’s “pre-emptive medicine and health security initiative,” a program that researches and develops new drugs and diagnostic tools.
“This is really about getting out ahead of things like pandemics, but also chronic diseases, obesity, diabetes, heart disease,” Dr. Hahn said in an interview Monday.
Christine Heenan, a senior partner at the firm, said Flagship was unlike a typical venture capital firm: It employs more than 50 scientists, files patents and has lab space in Cambridge, Mass., near Moderna’s headquarters.
As a former F.D.A. commissioner, Dr. Hahn is barred by federal rules from dealing with the agency on behalf of Flagship for a year, or from ever working with the agency on matters he was involved in while commissioner.
The rules are aimed at stemming the influence of connections between federal employees and their former colleagues who have moved to the private sector. Other recent top F.D.A. officials have accepted positions with companies subject to F.D.A. decisions, including Dr. Scott Gottlieb, another former F.D.A. commissioner under Mr. Trump. Dr. Gottlieb sits on the board of Pfizer, a coronavirus vaccine developer.
One of Flagship’s funds maintains 20 million shares of Moderna stock, Ms. Heenan said, and the two firms have close ties: The chief executive of Flagship, Noubar Afeyan, is Moderna’s co-founder and chairman, and Moderna’s chief executive, Stéphane Bancel, is a Flagship adviser.
Dr. Steven Joffe, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania, said Dr. Hahn would have to walk an ethical fine line in his new job.
“There are procedures in place, there are ethics officers, and there are clear-cut rules,” Dr. Joffe said of the federal regulations.
Five months into President Biden’s term, there is still no permanent successor to Dr. Hahn at the F.D.A. He said on Monday that President Biden should move quickly to nominate someone.
Dr. Hahn praised the acting commissioner, Dr. Janet Woodcock, a longtime drug regulator at the agency and a candidate for the nomination, but said a permanent commissioner would have more “legitimacy” and authority to shape the agency’s goals.
As commissioner during the pandemic, Dr. Hahn was regularly caught in a thicket of political controversy last year about the F.D.A.’s emergency authorizations, the subject of intense pressure from White House officials eager to claim victories with each new regulatory clearance for Covid-19 treatments and vaccines.
