Covid-19 and Vaccine News: Live Updates – The New York Times
July 29, 2021
Heres what you need to know:The Maricopa County constable inspected an apartment while serving an eviction order in Phoenix in September.Credit...John Moore/Getty Images
President Biden is pushing Congress for a second consecutive one-month extension of a moratorium on residential evictions, as the White House struggles to stand up a $47 billion rental relief program plagued by delays, confusion and red tape.
White House officials, under pressure from tenants rights groups, agreed to a one-month extension of the ban, which was issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, just before June 30, its previous expiration date. The freeze is now set to expire on Saturday.
Last month, the Supreme Court rejected a challenge by landlords, saying the moratorium could be extended to July 31 to give the Treasury Department and the states time to disburse cash to landlords to cover back rent that tenants did not pay during the pandemic. But Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh wrote in concurring with the majority decision that any future extension of the moratorium would require Congressional action.
On Thursday, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, cited the steep rise in coronavirus infections around the country and called on Congress to extend the freeze one more month to avoid a health and eviction crisis.
Given the recent spread of the Delta variant, including among those Americans both most likely to face evictions and lacking vaccinations, President Biden would have strongly supported a decision by the C.D.C. to further extend this eviction moratorium, she said in a statement. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has made clear that this option is no longer available.
Mr. Biden calls on Congress to extend the eviction moratorium to protect such vulnerable renters and their families without delay, she added.
It is not clear whether there are enough votes in the Senate, which is divided 50-50 on partisan lines with Vice President Kamala Harris acting as a tiebreaker, to pass another extension to the moratorium.
The Biden administrations effort to head off a crisis gained modest momentum in June, with 290,000 tenants receiving $1.5 billion in pandemic relief, according to Treasury Department statistics released last week.
But the flow of the cash, provided under two pandemic relief packages, remains sluggish and hampered by confusion at the state level, potentially endangering tenants who fell behind in their rent over the past year.
Ms. Psaki, in her statement, included a plea to local officials to accelerate their work.
There can be no excuse for any state or locality not to promptly deploy the resources that Congress appropriated to meet this critical need of so many Americans, she said.
Tenants groups have been urging Mr. Biden to extend the eviction moratorium, but White House lawyers argued that challenging the Supreme Courts conservative majority on the case could eventually result in new restrictions on federal action during future health crises.
The moratorium was initially imposed by the C.D.C. last fall, during the Trump administration, because of the danger of virus spread that could arise from a wave of evictions stemming from economic shutdowns and job losses during the pandemic.
Earlier this week, the countrys biggest trade group for residential landlords sued the federal government over the national moratorium, claiming that it had cost owners around $27 billion that was not covered by existing aid programs.
The suit by the group, the National Apartment Association, cited industry estimates showing that 10 million delinquent tenants owed $57 billion in back rent by the end of 2020, and that $17 billion more had gone unpaid since then.
President Biden will formally announce on Thursday that all civilian federal employees must be vaccinated against the coronavirus or be forced to submit to regular testing, social distancing, mask requirements and restrictions on most travel, two people familiar with the presidents plans said.
White House officials said the administration was still reviewing details of the policy, which the president is expected to announce in a speech from the White House. In a statement on Tuesday, Mr. Biden said his remarks would reveal the next steps in our effort to get more Americans vaccinated.
The presidents move is expected to be similar to an announcement on Wednesday by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, who said that tens of thousands of state employees would be required to show proof of vaccination or submit to weekly testing. Mr. Cuomo also said that patient facing health care workers at state-run hospitals would be required to be vaccinated as a condition of their employment.
Other governments around the country are beginning to put in place similar arrangements as well, as the highly contagious Delta variant has caused case numbers to balloon in recent weeks. New York City announced this week that it would require all 300,000 city employees to be vaccinated or submit to weekly testing. California also unveiled a plan to require vaccinations for state employees.
The federal plan is not expected to force employees to get a shot unless they work directly with patients at hospitals run by the Veterans Affairs Department. But public health officials are hoping that the prospect of extra burdens for the unvaccinated will help persuade more people to get inoculated.
People familiar with Mr. Bidens announcement said it was part of a longstanding discussion about how to bring most federal workers back to the office after nearly a year and a half in which hundreds of thousands of them worked from home because of the pandemic.
A team has been working on that plan for months, trying to juggle the concerns of employees and the need to keep the government functioning. One concern that officials confronted was how to require vaccinations without potentially prompting critical employees to quit, undermining the governments mission.
But the presidents announcement comes as the administration is under pressure to increase the rate of vaccinations in the country. About half of all Americans have been fully vaccinated, but the number of people getting shots has slowed significantly from the early months of the year.
Karine Jean-Pierre, the deputy White House press secretary, declined on Wednesday to provide details of the presidents speech, but said that the general approach would be to give employees a choice that would hopefully encourage them to get vaccinated.
The plan, she told reporters, is aimed at confirming vaccination status or abiding by stringent Covid-19 protocols, like mandatory mask wearing, even in communities not with high or subsequent substantial spread, and regular testing.
The 27 member states of the European Union altogether have now administered more coronavirus vaccine doses per 100 people than the United States, in another sign that inoculations across the bloc have maintained some speed throughout the summer, while they have stagnated for weeks in the United States.
E.U. countries had administered 102.66 doses per 100 people as of Tuesday, while the United States had administered 102.44, according to the latest vaccination figures compiled by Our World in Data. This month, the European Union also overtook the United States in first injections; currently, 58 percent of people across the bloc have received a dose, compared with 56.5 percent in the United States.
The latest figures provide a stark contrast with the early stages of the vaccination campaigns this year, when E.U. countries, facing a shortage of doses and delayed deliveries, looked in envy at the initially more successful efforts in the United States, Britain and Israel.
But the European Union is now vaccinating its populations at a faster pace than most developed countries. More than 70 percent of adults in the bloc have now received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine.
Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said the achievement put E.U. countries among the world leaders.
The catch-up process has been very successful, she said in a statement on Tuesday.
As inoculation campaigns in many American states have been marred by widespread anti-vaccine sentiment, E.U. countries have been able to immunize their populations with less pushback.
Around 75 percent of residents in the bloc agree that vaccines are the only way to end the coronavirus pandemic, according to a public survey conducted across the European Union in May.
Furthermore, 79 percent said they intended to get vaccinated sometime this year.
Yet the spread of the Delta variant has added new urgency. Cases have soared in countries such as the Netherlands and Portugal, and hospitalizations have increased in France and Spain, among others, driving officials to try to speed up vaccination campaigns that have slightly slowed in recent weeks.
Countries have tried in the first half of the year to stretch the interval between the first and the second doses, but now they have to reduce it to the minimum, with the shortest possible interval, Andrea Ammon, director of the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, said this month.
The center said last week that the Delta variant was now dominant in a majority of countries in the bloc.
Countries including France and Italy have announced new vaccine requirements to try to speed up inoculations, with proof of vaccination or a negative test set to be required to gain access to most public indoor venues. The goal, President Emmanuel Macron of France said in announcing the measures this month, is to put restrictions on the unvaccinated rather than on everyone.
As campaigns have slightly decreased or plateaued in some E.U. countries, health officials have also urged younger age groups to get vaccinated.
We have focused a lot on the elderly, and its left a very strong perception among younger people that theyre not at risk, or that if they are, its very mild, said Heidi Larson, an anthropologist and founder of the London-based Vaccine Confidence Project, which tracks opinions about immunization across the world.
Vittoria Colliza, a Paris-based epidemiologist at Inserm, the French public-health research center, said that vaccine saturation levels were high among many populations, but that large pockets had yet to even receive one dose.
She added that new lockdown restrictions may have to be reimposed to stem the spread of the Delta variant if immunization fails to keep up.
Theyre increasing already, Dr. Colliza said about inoculations, especially among younger people. But the fear is that the Delta variant will begin to fully impact our lives by the end of August.
Mayor Muriel Bowser of Washington said on Thursday that an indoor mask mandate would be reimposed in the nations capital on Saturday, becoming the latest jurisdiction to change public health protocols after new federal guidance advised even vaccinated people in coronavirus hot spots to resume wearing face coverings in indoor public spaces.
The announcement from Washington came as some states and municipalities were quick to update their own mask rules, while others expressed outrage, another example of the political tensions that have often accompanied public health precautions during the pandemic.
The new federal guidance also suggested masks for all children, staff members and visitors in schools, regardless of their vaccination status and community transmission of the virus.
The mayors of Atlanta and Kansas City, Mo., both Democrats, reinstated mask mandates; Atlantas took effect immediately and Kansas Citys will start on Aug. 2. Gov. Steve Sisolak of Nevada, a Democrat, ordered that residents in counties with high rates of transmission including Clark County, home to Las Vegas wear masks in public indoor spaces starting on Friday. In Minnesota, health and education officials urged all students, staff and visitors to wear masks in schools, but held off making the guidance a state requirement.
Gov. Laura Kelly of Kansas, a Democrat, announced a mask requirement for state employees and visitors in public areas of state government buildings, starting on Aug. 2. She also recommended masks for all residents in counties with high transmission rates, while acknowledging the frustrations of vaccinated people.
I take no pleasure in asking you to put a mask on again, she said at a news conference on Wednesday, the same day a mask requirement went into effect in a central Kansas school district.
On Wednesday, at least six Republican governors, Greg Abbott of Texas, Doug Ducey of Arizona, Brian Kemp of Georgia, Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, Kristi Noem of South Dakota, and Ron DeSantis of Florida, signaled their opposition to the recommendation.
Its very important that we say unequivocally, no to lockdowns, no to school closures, no to restrictions, and no mandates, Mr. DeSantis said in a speech at a gathering held by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative lobbying group.
Nine states Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Montana, North Dakota, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas had already banned or limited face mask mandates, leaving cities and counties with few options to fight the virus spread.
Some municipalities in states that have resisted mandates faced headwinds even before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released its new guidance. On Monday St. Louis County, Mo., reinstated a mask mandate, only to face a lawsuit hours later from Eric Schmitt, the states Republican attorney general.
Major employers are also struggling with how best to interpret the new mask recommendations. Apple announced that it would require masks for customers and employees in more than half of its U.S. stores and in some corporate offices, and MGM Resorts International, the casino and hotel giant, said it would require all guests and visitors to wear masks indoors in public areas.
Other companies have pushed back their return-to-office dates, while some that have already relaxed mask restrictions, like WalMart and Kroger, had not indicated their plans as of Wednesday.
Lauren Hirsch and Jack Nicas contributed reporting.
Federal regulators have approved the reopening of a troubled Baltimore vaccine-making plant that has been closed for more than three months over contamination concerns that delayed the delivery of about 170 million doses of coronavirus vaccine.
The turnabout came after a two-day inspection at the plant this week by the Food and Drug Administration and weeks of effort by Johnson & Johnson and its subcontractor, Emergent BioSolutions, to bring the site up to standard.
The F.D.A. had brought production at the factory to a halt after the discovery in late March that workers had accidentally contaminated a batch of Johnson & Johnsons vaccine with a key ingredient used in AstraZenecas, then made at the same site. The federal government also stripped Emergent of the responsibility to manufacture AstraZenecas vaccine and instructed Johnson & Johnson to assert greater control over Emergents operation.
The American people should have high expectations of the partners its government chooses to help prepare them for disaster, and we have even higher expectations of ourselves, Robert Kramer, the chief executive of Emergent, said in a statement on Thursday.
We have fallen short of those lofty ambitions over the past few months but resumption of manufacturing is a key milestone, and we are grateful for the opportunity to help bring this global pandemic to an end, he added.
The development, reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal, is welcome news for Johnson & Johnson. Because of Emergents failures to meet manufacturing standards, Johnson & Johnson has fallen behind on its contractual pledges to deliver vaccine to the United States government and to Europe.
Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, the two other developers whose vaccines have been cleared for emergency distribution by the American authorities, have supplied most of the shots distributed in the United States. The federal government has more than enough doses of those vaccines to meet the countrys needs. It is unclear whether it will also try to deploy more doses from Johnson & Johnson or export them.
Before it halted operations, Emergent said that the plant had the capacity to produce about a billion doses of vaccine a year. Production will need to gear up in stages, officials said.
The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday agreed to allow Johnson & Johnson to extend the shelf life of its coronavirus vaccine to six months.
The F.D.A.s decision came as state health officials in the United States were growing increasingly concerned that doses of the vaccine would expire and go to waste. The vaccines were previously set to expire after four and a half months.
In a letter, the F.D.A. said its decision was applicable to batches that might have expired prior to the issuance of this concurrence letter and had been stored at the proper temperature, 2-8 degrees Celsius, or 35.6-46.4 Fahrenheit.
The single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine can be stored in normal refrigeration, which has helped states reach more isolated communities where it may be difficult to manage a two-dose vaccine like those made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. Both of those must be stored at much lower temperatures.
As of Wednesday, more than 13 million Americans had received the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has been the most widely administered in the United States, with more than 87 million Americans fully vaccinated with it. More than 63 million people in the United States have been fully vaccinated with the Moderna formula.
JERUSALEM Israel will begin administering a third dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine those 60 and older, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett announced on Thursday, citing the rising risk of a virus surge fueled by the Delta variant.
The health ministry has instructed the countrys four main health care providers to begin giving on Sunday a booster shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to Israelis in that age group who received a second dose more than five months ago. President Isaac Herzog, 60, will be the first to get a booster shot on Friday, Mr. Bennett said.
The battle against Covid is a global effort, Mr. Bennett said.
Whether booster shots are needed by older citizens is an issue that is far from settled among scientists. Most studies indicate that immunity resulting from the mRNA vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna is long-lasting, and researchers are still trying to interpret recent Israeli data suggesting a decline in efficacy of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine months after inoculation.
Pfizer on Wednesday offered up its own study showing a marginal decline in efficacy against symptomatic infection with the coronavirus months after immunization, although the vaccine remained powerfully effective against severe disease and death. The company has begun making a case for booster shots in the United States, as well.
The latest government decision in Israel, an early leader in administering vaccines, follows an analysis by the health ministry that estimated that the effectiveness of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in preventing serious illness remained higher than 90 percent but that its ability to stop infection had fallen over time.
Some experts have pushed back against a rush to approve a booster in Israel. The data are too uncertain, they say, to estimate of how much efficacy has waned. For example, the Delta-driven outbreak hit parts of the country with high vaccination rates first and has been hitting other regions later.
Since June, there has been a steady rise in Israels daily rate of new virus cases, and the seven-day average is 1,670 a day. The figure exceeded 2,300 one day this week, a spike that health experts have attributed to the spread of the more contagious Delta variant.
The daily rate is still far lower than at the height of Israels third wave of infections in January, when number of new daily cases rose briefly above 11,000. But it is far higher than in mid-June, when the figure fell to single digits and the government eased almost all antivirus restrictions to allow daily life to return to normal.
The number of coronavirus patients in hospitals nevertheless remains relatively low; a total of 159 people were hospitalized on Thursday, much less than the figure of more than 2,000 at the height of the third wave in January.
In the United States, Biden administration health officials increasingly think that vulnerable populations may need additional shots even as research continues into how long the coronavirus vaccines remain effective.
There is growing consensus among scientists, for example, that people with compromised immune systems may need more than the prescribed two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines. Earlier this month, Israel began administering a third shot of the Pfizer vaccine to people with compromised immune systems. The country has already given 2,000 of those people a third dose with no severe adverse events, Mr. Bennett said Thursday.
Though Israels vaccination rate has dwindled in recent months, it was an early leader in the race to vaccinate against the virus, allowing the country to return to ordinary life faster than most other places.
Nearly 60 percent of Israelis are fully vaccinated, mostly with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, and the country is seen as a test case for a post-vaccine world.
Israeli health care leaders welcomed the decision to administer an extra shot to older citizens, while emphasizing that the original two doses still remained protective against serious illness and death.
Gadi Segal, the head of a virus ward at Sheba Medical Center in central Israel, told Kan radio that vaccinated patients admitted to the hospitals were much less likely to need ventilators.
Prof. Segal said: There is no doubt the number of ill is rising. The vaccines ability to prevent infection is less, but it is very effective in preventing patients from reaching the point of respiratory failure.
He added: Im under 60, and when I am offered a third dose, I will take it happily.
Israel has faced scrutiny for its initial reluctance to offer vaccinations to significant numbers of Palestinians living under differing levels of Israeli control in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Israel initially said the diplomatic agreements signed in the 1990s with the Palestinian leadership, known as the Oslo Accords, gave the Palestinian health authorities responsibility to procure their own vaccines. Rights campaigners said other clauses of the accords, as well as the Fourth Geneva Convention, gave Israel a legal duty to assist.
But when Israel offered about a million vaccines in June to the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited autonomy in parts of the West Bank, the authority pulled out of the deal because it said the vaccines would have expired before officials would have had time to administer them. Some of the excess vaccines were later given to South Korea.
Sharon LaFraniere and Carl Zimmer contributed reporting.
AstraZeneca has released one billion coronavirus vaccine doses to 170 nations this year, the company said on Thursday, an important milestone despite the many challenges that its low-cost vaccine has faced including legal fights with the European Union, slashed deliveries and hesitancy in many countries.
The AstraZeneca vaccine, which was developed with Oxford University, was once earmarked for broad use throughout Europe and other continents, including Africa.
But the vaccine has been held back by various problems. AstraZeneca has been embroiled in a legal dispute with the European Union after the company said this year that it could deliver only a third of the 300 million doses it was expected to provide to the bloc.
Several European countries, as well as Australia and Canada, stopped using the AstraZeneca vaccine for young people after reports of extremely rare but serious blood clots. Denmark and Spain have stopped using it altogether because of the blood clot risk. South Africa stopped using the vaccine after it was found to be ineffective on a variant there. And the United States has not authorized its use. (AstraZeneca said on Thursday that in the second half of the year, it would seek full approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, a process that can take many months to complete.)
Experts say they fear that the negative publicity the vaccine has received in some countries President Emmanuel Macron of France called the vaccine quasi-ineffective among those over 65 may have also affected others that are in critical need of doses.
We are definitely seeing that hesitancy in high-income countries can affect low-income countries, Andrew Pollard, a professor of pediatric infection and immunity who leads the group at Oxford University that developed the vaccine with AstraZeneca, said on the BBC on Thursday.
Dr. Pollard added that he believed most people across the world were desperate to receive the vaccines and that the main issue remained the inequitable distribution of doses.
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Covid-19 and Vaccine News: Live Updates - The New York Times
