Covid-19 Vaccine, Variants and Cases: Live Updates – The New York Times

Heres what you need to know:The Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad, India, last month.Credit...Danish Siddiqui/Reuters

As plumes of smoke rose from cremation grounds, where bodies were arriving faster than they could be burned, teams of professional cricket players squared off under the lights of a cavernous stadium named for Indias prime minister, Narendra Modi.

The jarring scenes unfolded on Thursday in Ahmedabad, the capital of Mr. Modis home state of Gujarat and a hot spot in Indias spiraling coronavirus outbreak, which is claiming an average of nearly 3,000 lives a day nationwide.

For decades, cricket and its charismatic stars have commanded exalted status in India, where the once-genteel colonial game attracts its biggest and most passionate fan base. Now, public anger is growing at the sports marquee international product, the Indian Premier League, which is playing matches in a bio-bubble without spectators that has drawn criticism for diverting resources from the countrys wider coronavirus fight.

There is a lack of empathy for dead bodies lying in crematoriums surrounding your stadium, said Rahul Verma, a lawyer and die-hard cricket fan who said he had been a devoted follower of the cricket league since it started in 2008. This game, a gentlemans game, never was so grotesque.

India set another global record on Friday with nearly 383,000 new infections, the health ministry reported, pushing the global coronavirus case count to more than 150 million.

In India, with one in five tests coming back positive, experts fear the true toll is much higher. As the U.S. Air Force delivered the first shipments of oxygen cylinders, test kits, masks and other emergency supplies promised to India by the Biden administration, several Indian states said they could not fulfill the governments directive to expand vaccinations to all adults beginning on Saturday because they lacked vaccine doses.

As hospitals face shortages of intensive-care beds, relatives of the sick broadcast desperate pleas on social media for oxygen, medicine and other scarce supplies. Many Indians say they do not know if they are infected with the coronavirus because overwhelmed labs have stopped processing tests.

But one group that seems unaffected is the wealthy and powerful Board of Control for Cricket in India, the regulatory body that oversees the Indian Premier League, which was modeled on soccers Premier League in England and features players from around the world.

The board has kept ambulances fitted with mobile intensive-care beds on standby outside stadiums where matches are being played in case a player falls sick. It is testing players every two days and has created a travel bubble between stadiums in the six states hosting matches, including dedicated airport check-in counters for cricketers.

Meanwhile, some Indians say they cannot cross state lines to find hospital beds for Covid-19 patients.

Hemang Amin, the boards chief operating officer, said in a letter released this week that the health and safety of players and staff members were of paramount importance, and added that the matches, which conclude on May 30, were a needed distraction in a difficult time.

When you all walk out onto the field, you are bringing hope to millions of people who have tuned in, he wrote.

But the leagues safety protocols have only highlighted the gap between its star players who have said little publicly in the face of criticism and the rest of the country.

That ambulance outside that stadium could have saved at least ten lives a day, said Ishan Singh, a cricket fan in Delhi. These players are thieves. Given a chance, they will rob wood from the cremations and sell it in the market.

The New Indian Express, a daily newspaper, said in an editorial this week that it would suspend coverage of the cricket league until a semblance of normalcy is restored in the country.

This is commercialism gone crass, the newspaper wrote. The problem is not with the game but its timing.

The vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford brought in $275 million in sales from about 68 million doses delivered in the first three months of this year, AstraZeneca reported on Friday.

AstraZeneca disclosed the figure, most of which came from sales in Europe, as it reported its first-quarter financial results. It offers the clearest view to date of how much money is being brought in by one of the leading Covid vaccines.

AstraZeneca, which has pledged not to profit on its vaccine during the pandemic, has been selling the shot to governments for several dollars per dose, less expensive than the other leading vaccines. The vaccine has won authorization in at least 78 countries since December but is not approved for use in the United States.

The vaccine represented just under 4 percent of AstraZenecas revenue for the quarter; it was nowhere near the companys biggest revenue generator. By comparison, the companys best-selling product, the cancer drug Tagrisso, brought in more than $1.1 billion in sales in the quarter.

AstraZeneca has said it is planning to seek emergency authorization for its vaccine to be used in the United States, even as it has become clear that the doses are not needed. The Biden administration said this week that it would make available to the rest of the world up to 60 million doses of its supply of AstraZeneca shots, pending a review of their quality.

If the company does win authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, it could help shore up confidence in a vaccine whose reputation been hit by concerns about a rare but serious side effect involving blood clotting. The F.D.A.s evaluation process is considered the gold standard globally.

Johnson & Johnson, whose vaccine was authorized for emergency use at the end of February, reported last week that its vaccine generated $100 million in sales in the United States in the first three months of the year. The federal government is paying the company $10 a dose. Like AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson has pledged to sell its vaccine at cost meaning it wont profit on the sales during the pandemic.

Vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna cost more, and neither company has said that it will forego profits. Pfizer has said that it expects its vaccine to bring in about $15 billion in revenue this year; Moderna said it anticipates $18.4 billion in sales.

Both companies are scheduled to report their first-quarter results next week.

Executives of Emergent BioSolutions, the vaccine manufacturer that was forced to discard up to 15 million doses because of possible contamination, reported a shake-up in leadership on Thursday and offered the most fulsome defense yet of the companys performance.

While announcing the high-level personnel changes and taking responsibility for the ruined doses, executives nonetheless forecast record revenues this year of nearly $2 billion.

Robert Kramer, the chief executive, speaking on a call with investors, said that one senior vice president overseeing manufacturing would depart the company while another executive would go on leave. A third official, Mary Oates, who recently joined Emergent after a long tenure at Pfizer, is now leading the companys response to a recent federal inspection that found serious flaws at the Baltimore facility that produced the vaccines.

The call on Thursday came at a tumultuous time for Emergent, a once-obscure federal contractor that has built a lucrative business selling biodefense products to the government. Production at the companys Baltimore plant was suspended this month after the discovery that workers had potentially contaminated millions of doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

Addressing these setbacks, Mr. Kramer offered a vigorous defense of the company on Thursday.

He took full responsibility for the manufacturing problems, acknowledging that the loss of a batch for a viral contamination is extremely serious, and we treated it as such, but he also said that Emergent had taken on a herculean task in a crisis.

GREENVILLE, TENN. This community and its surroundings in northern Tennessee are rural, overwhelmingly Republican, deeply Christian and 95 percent white. Polls show that resistance to the vaccine is most entrenched in such areas.

While campaigns aimed at convincing Black and Latino urban communities to set aside their vaccine mistrust have made striking gains, towns like Greenville will also have to be convinced, if the country is to achieve widespread immunity.

But a week here in Greene County reveals a more nuanced, layered hesitancy than surveys suggest. People say that politics isnt the leading driver of their vaccine attitudes. The most common reason for their apprehension is fear that the vaccine was developed in haste, that long-term side effects are unknown. Their decisions are also entangled in a web of views about bodily autonomy, science and authority, plus a powerful regional, somewhat romanticized self-image: We dont like outsiders messing in our business.

Still, conversations here show that for many people, resistance is not firm. Roiled by internet fallacies, many hunger for straightforward information from people they trust. Others have practical needs, like paid time off to recover from side effects, which the Biden administration has urged employers to offer, or the opportunity to get the shot from their own doctor.

GLOBAL ROUNDUP

Thousands of people letting loose on a nightclub dance floor. Hundreds of suited-up people gathering for a business conference. And none of them wearing masks.

As Britain slowly emerges from a lengthy lockdown, a flashback to life before the pandemic is taking place in Liverpool as part of a series of government-led experiments.

Liverpool on Wednesday hosted Britains first business conference since March 2020 and the northwestern English city will on Friday kick off a two-day nightclub event, the first in Britain in more than a year, and an outdoor music festival will take place on Sunday.

The events are part of a British government research project to see how mass gatherings can happen safely. Participants are asked to take a coronavirus test before events and are required to produce a negative result. Once they are inside the venues, social distancing and face coverings are not required.

The pilot events are taking place across England this month and next month, closely monitored by the health authorities. Some sports competitions with audiences have already been part of the program and thousands of people will gather in London next month for the Brit Awards music show, and soccers F.A. Cup final.

Every attendee will be asked to undergo a virus test after the event and the research gathered will shape the governments policy on bringing back large events.

England has set a provisional date of June 21 for all of its virus restrictions to be dropped, including those on mass gatherings, and scientists are hoping that the events that they are monitoring will provide insights into how to reduce the risk of the virus spreading.

Britain has in recent days reported its lowest number of infections since September and has given a first dose of a coronavirus vaccine to more than half its population.

In other updates from around the world:

Authorities at tollbooths and ports in Greece on Friday have turned back hundreds of people attempting to defy virus restrictions on travel between regions ahead of Orthodox Easter, the most important date in the religious calendar. Although cases have stabilized in recent weeks, deaths and hospitalizations remain high. Greece has gradually lifted restrictions in recent weeks, including ending quarantine requirements for visitors from dozens of countries, as it prepares to fully reopen its tourism sector next month.

While Spain is expected to lift its nationwide state of emergency on May 9, allowing for the return of tourists in June, some regional administrations are preparing to extend their own lockdown measures for longer. Cases are down, and more people are getting vaccinated. Reopening tourism is key to the economy, which contracted in the first quarter, the government said on Friday. Tourism arrivals dropped to 19 million last year, after seven years of growth, from 84 million in 2019.

In Portugal, Prime Minister Antnio Costa announced late Thursday that the countrys only land border with Spain would reopen on Saturday, having remained shut since January. Portugal is also fast-tracking the removal of lockdown restrictions after reducing significantly its coronavirus infection rate.

Raphael Minder and Niki Kitsantonis contributed reporting.

Before the pandemic, Googles sprawling campus of airy, open offices and whimsical common spaces set a standard for what an innovative workplace was supposed to look like.

Now, the company is creating a workplace for the Covid era, with a concept perhaps best described as Ikea meets Lego.

Instead of rows of desks next to cookie-cutter meeting rooms, Google is designing Team Pods. Chairs, desks, whiteboards and storage units on casters can be wheeled into various arrangements, and in some cases rearranged in a matter of hours. It is building outdoor work areas to respond to concerns about the coronavirus.

At its Silicon Valley headquarters, it has converted a parking lot and lawn area into a camp, with clusters of tables and chairs under open-air tents. The area is a fenced-in mix of grass and wooden deck flooring about the size of four tennis courts with Wi-Fi throughout.

David Radcliffe, Googles vice president for real estate and workplace services, said that while moving more than 100,000 employees to virtual work last year was daunting, now it seems even more daunting to figure out how to bring them back safely.

With vaccinations mounting in some of the worlds wealthiest countries and people envisioning life after the pandemic, the crisis in Latin America is taking an alarming turn for the worse, potentially threatening the progress made well beyond its borders.

Last week, Latin America accounted for 35 percent of all coronavirus deaths in the world, despite having just 8 percent of the global population, according to data compiled by The New York Times.

The length of the regions epidemic makes it even harder to fight. It has already endured some of the strictest lockdowns, longest schools closures and largest economic contractions in the world.

And if Latin America fails to contain the virus or if the world fails to step in to help it new, more dangerous variants may emerge, said Dr. Jarbas Barbosa of the Pan-American Health Organization.

This could cost us all that the world is doing to fight the pandemic, he said.

After being closed for more than a year, Disneyland reopens on Friday to California residents only. Travel advisers around the country said tickets sold out quickly, and people have been waiting online for hours to get a reservation to the Anaheim, Calif., theme park.

As more people across the United States are vaccinated and as summer approaches, theme park bookings are picking up, even though children are still not eligible for coronavirus vaccines. Greg Antonelle, the chief executive of MickeyTravels, a travel agency that helps plan Disney trips, said that if bookings keep up at the current pace, this will be the companys strongest year.

Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla., opened in July and is operating at 35 percent capacity. At Disneyland, capacity is now capped at 25 percent, and officials have not said when restrictions would be eased or bookings would be opened to out-of-state visitors.

Getting in requires both a ticket and a reservation to the park. Park rules state that masks must be worn at all times, except when swimming or eating, even by those who have been vaccinated. The parades, fireworks, and nighttime spectaculars that are typical of the Disney park experience are still suspended, and character interactions are socially distanced.

But for Bethany Millar, an administrator at a medical school in St. Louis who visited Walt Disney World in April, it was worth it: Disneys staff did everything in their power to make you feel like you were having a safe Covid experience, she said.

A daughter holding her mothers hand. A son overcome that his 95-year-old mother had survived the pandemic. A stoic family patriarch, suddenly in tears.

After a year of excruciating lockdowns, these were the scenes at nursing homes and other long-term care facilities as they began to open up this spring. Before the arrival of vaccines, one in three coronavirus deaths in the United States had ties to nursing homes or similar facilities.

The New York Times sent photographers across the country to document reunions. For many family members, it was the first time they were able to be together, hold hands and hug in more than a year.

In interviews, which have been edited and condensed for clarity, families recalled a deep fear that they would never see their loved ones again. When the time finally came, they were flooded with a years worth of emotion in a single instant: joy, relief, love and grief for all the time that had been lost.

Con Yan Muy, 93, has been a resident at the San Francisco Campus for Jewish Living nursing home since 2019. Anita Li, 24, grew up with her grandmother and previously visited daily. For a year during the pandemic, she saw her grandmother only a handful of times through a window or at a distance. Even now, her visits remain limited, as is the case at many facilities.

ANITA LI: I was hiding in the bathroom when she came in. It was a surprise. She didnt recognize me initially because I had my mask on. I am going to be honest, I was kind of sad. I am one of the most involved persons in her life, and she couldnt recognize me. I immediately just started patting her legs and her arms for better blood circulation. I had brought some dumplings and also brought her some sesame balls that she really enjoys. We made a video for the rest of the family for her to say hi.

Its like a sigh of relief that we could finally be together, but also knowing that this was a one-time thing, and not really sure what the future holds. Am I going to see her every week face to face? Can I eventually take her out on walks where she can get some sun? What is the new normal, and how much can we be involved in her life postquarantine?

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Covid-19 Vaccine, Variants and Cases: Live Updates - The New York Times