As vaccination rates continue to increase throughout the country, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is updating its guidance to allow people who are fully vaccinated to be in outdoor transportation settings — including airports and train stations — without masks.
Meanwhile, the country is confronted with an ever-growing surplus of coronavirus vaccine, looming expiration dates and stubbornly lagging demand at a time when the developing world is clamoring for doses to stem a rise in infections.
We’re updating this page with the latest news about the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on the Seattle area, the U.S. and the world. Click here to see previous days’ live updates and all our other coronavirus coverage, and here to see how we track the daily spread across Washington and the world.
China, US diplomats clash over human rights, pandemic origin
BEIJING (AP) — Top U.S. and Chinese diplomats appear to have had another sharply worded exchange, with Beijing saying it told the U.S. to cease interfering in its internal affairs and accusing Washington of politicizing the search for the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Senior Chinese foreign policy adviser Yang Jiechi and Secretary of State Antony Blinken held a phone call Friday that revealed wide divisions in a number of contentious areas, including the curtailing of freedoms in Hong Kong and the mass detention of Muslims in the northwestern Xinjiang region.
Calls for a more thorough investigation into the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 are particularly sensitive for China because of suggestions that it might have have escaped from a laboratory in the central city of Wuhan, where cases were first discovered.
Yang said China was “gravely concerned” over what he called “absurd” stories that the virus escaped from the Wuhan lab.
They’re growing up in a pandemic. Here are their stories
Seattle Times reporters Hannah Furfaro and Dahlia Bazzaz and engagement editor Jenn Smith worked with teachers around the region to develop a class assignment that asked youth of all ages to reflect on what they learned about themselves, what challenged them, and what activities, objects or people helped them cope during a school year unlike any other.
The nine students profiled here were among dozens who responded to those questions. Reporters visited these students’ schools, and photographers Erika Schultz and Amanda Snyder worked with them to capture their portraits and images of artifacts that represent their interests and passions. In interviews, students spoke with video journalists Lauren Frohne and Ramon Dompor about finding power in independence, learning to talk through their feelings and connecting more deeply with family.
Their responses help give shape to how our youngest generation struggled through school and the real world over the past year. Their reflections are also a reminder of how resilience and growth are born from loss and hardship.
These businesses found a way around the worker shortage: A big boost in wages
Across the country, businesses in sectors such as food service and manufacturing that are trying to staff up have been reporting an obstacle to their success — a scarcity of workers interested in applying for low-wage positions.
The issue has raised concerns about the strength of the country’s recovery as coronavirus cases abate, with the economy still down more than 7.5 million jobs compared with before the pandemic.
Republicans have blamed enhanced unemployment benefits for the shortage; Democrats and most labor economists say the issue is the result of a complicated mix of factors, including many schools having yet to fully reopen, lingering concerns about workplace safety and other ways the workforce has shifted during the pandemic.
The experience of 12 business operators interviewed by The Washington Post who raised their minimum wage in the last year points to another element of the equation: the central role that pay — specifically a $15-an-hour minimum starting wage — plays in attracting or dissuading workers right now.
As virus cases wane, governors weigh ending emergency orders
New coronavirus infections and deaths in the U.S. are down dramatically from earlier highs, though more contagious variants are spreading. Most people are now are at least partially vaccinated, yet lingering hesitancy has slowed the pace and even caused some doses to go to waste.
So is the COVID-19 emergency over, or is it continuing?
That’s the question facing residents and business owners in many states as governors decide whether to end or extend emergency declarations that have allowed them to restrict public gatherings and businesses, mandate masks, sidestep normal purchasing rules and deploy National Guard troops to help administer vaccines.
In many states, those emergency declarations have been routinely extended by governors every few weeks or months since the pandemic began. But those decisions are getting harder to make — and the extensions harder to justify — as circumstances improve and state lawmakers press to restore a balance of power.
Between a pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests, 2020 changed the life trajectories of many college students
As James Innocent watched a mob of thousands storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, he said he felt a “call to action” to do something different with his life.
“It just made it very clear that I’m in a country that doesn’t want me here. Whether or not that’s how people feel, that was definitely the message that I felt,” said Innocent, who is biracial. “I think it really forced me to be like, ‘Do I want to be a cog in the machine right now? Do I want to continue doing this? Or do I at least try to make a difference?’”
Innocent said a career change had been on his mind for a while, but the culmination of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown, the Black Lives Matter movement and the Capitol insurrection pushed him past his breaking point. At age 30, he’s decided to leave his career as a project manager at a technology company and go back to school to earn his master’s degree in psychology.
The verdict is in: No one pandemics like Seattle
The long trial isn’t quite over yet, but one verdict is already in: Nobody knows how to pandemic like Seattle.
Whether it’s our rule-following nature, the demographics of the city, the Seattle “freeze,” our outdoorsiness, our tech culture, our wealth, or maybe just biological or geographic luck, it’s now apparent that something about Seattle made this place an almost perfect redoubt against a once-in-a-lifetime invader.
The news this past week that Seattle has become the “most vaccinated city” — the first of the 30 largest U.S. metros to reach 70% fully vaxxed — is just the capper to a curious 16-month odyssey. We started out as Ground Zero for an infectious disease outbreak, but then watched as it took off and slammed everywhere else much harder than it ever did here.
“It would not have been possible without our residents’ commitment to protecting themselves,” Mayor Jenny Durkan said this past week, about the vaccination news.
Was it something about us? I imagine people in other places also would like to protect themselves. But the story here really is an outlier, even extraordinary, and needs further study.
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