Ahead of California’s full reopening on Tuesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom spoke optimistically about the importance of rebuilding California’s travel industry, which he said “had the sledgehammer taken to it” during the pandemic.
“This was a $145-billion-a-year industry,” he said in an interview on Monday, after announcing the state’s plans to reopen at a news conference at San Francisco’s Ferry Building. “No other state comes close, including Florida, so there’s no state that has more to gain in terms of fully reopening.”
Mr. Newsom said that, thanks to its high vaccine and low Covid positivity rate, on Tuesday most remaining rules about social distancing and all rules about capacity limits will be lifted. People who are fully vaccinated will no longer need to wear masks, with exceptions for public transit and other specialized settings.
In the interview, Mr. Newsom said that travel is central to the effort to get the state’s economy going again.
“The tourism industry is part of the spirit and pride of the state,” he said noting that travel and tourism represent a significant slice of the state’s jobs. “What makes California such a special place is the incredible diversification of options and opportunities for experiences for magical moments.”
The state has invested $95 million into expanding marketing campaigns created by its tourist board, Visit California, and it will also continue to support travel workers, many of whom lost jobs during the pandemic.
“This state is not turning its back on unemployment insurance as many of the red states have,” Mr. Newsom said. “The state has provided a sick leave, and has extended workers’ comp benefits to displaced workers.”
To encourage vaccination — and travel — California is offering incentives, including a special lottery with a $1.5 million prize, as part of what it is calling the Vax For The Win campaign. On July 1, Californians aged 18 and older who are at least partially vaccinated can enter a drawing for one of six “dream vacation” packages created in conjunction with Visit California. The packages include trips to Anaheim, Greater Palm Springs, Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco and are being paid for by various hospitality partners, though the state will provide $2,000 per vacation for travel expenses. Fifteen Californians will get prizes of $50,000 each. The state is also giving $50 gift cards to 2 million people who get vaccinated.
“We are certain that these vaccine incentives have worked and that’s we want to continue in that spirit,” Mr. Newsom said at the Ferry Building.
California lost nearly half of the 1.2 million jobs in its hospitality and tourism industries during the pandemic and Mr. Newsom hopes that some 300,000 jobs can be recovered within a year, a recovery that would normally take several years.
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England Extends Covid Restrictions, Delaying Opening One Month
The prime minister of Britain, Boris Johnson, announced Monday he would delay lifting coronavirus restrictions by four weeks in order to allow the National Health Service to administer more vaccinations.
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We can simply keep going with all of Step 4 on June the 21st, even though there is a real possibility that the virus will outrun the vaccines and that thousands more deaths would ensue that could otherwise have been avoided, or else we can give the N.H.S. a few more crucial weeks to get those remaining jabs into the arms of those who need them. And since today, I cannot say that we have met all our four tests for proceeding with Step 4 on June the 21st, I think it is sensible to wait just a little longer. And we will bring forward our target to give every adult in this country a first dose by the 19th of July. That is including young people over the age of 18 with 23 and 24-year-olds invited to book jabs from tomorrow. So we reduce the risk of transmission among the groups that mix the most. And to give the N.H.S. that extra time, we will hold off Step 4 openings until July the 29th.
LONDON — With a rapid and successful vaccine campaign on track, the path seemed clear not long ago for Prime Minister Boris Johnson to scrap all of England’s coronavirus rules on June 21, ending curbs that he resisted imposing in the first place.
But on Monday, Mr. Johnson postponed by four weeks the moment dubbed “freedom day” by the tabloids after a spike in cases of a highly transmissible new variant that may cause more serious disease than earlier variants. Restaurants and pubs in England, while open, will still have to observe social distancing rules indoors, limiting capacity, and nightclubs and theaters will remain firmly closed.
The decision, which will be reviewed in two weeks, sent a warning to the world that even well-vaccinated nations remain at risk and angered a noisy caucus of libertarian lawmakers within Mr. Johnson’s own party.
At present, overall new cases in Britain are averaging around 8,000 per day and are doubling every week in the worst affected areas. Hospital admissions have begun rising. And the impact of the Delta variant across the country has already incited alarm in other European countries including Germany, which has introduced a travel ban.
In Britain, around four-fifths of adults have received one dose and more than half have had a second shot. But people with only a single dose remain susceptible to cases of the Delta variant — more so than to earlier versions of the virus, scientists said. And an unabated surge of infections in younger, unvaccinated people could ignite a dangerous wave of hospitalizations.
That has helped convince many epidemiologists that lifting restrictions now could, in a worst-case scenario, produce as many hospital cases as in the first wave of the pandemic, overwhelming the National Health Service just as it is trying to cope with a backlog of procedures that were postponed during the pandemic.
At a news conference at Downing Street, Mr. Johnson said it was sensible to wait “just a little longer” before lifting the curbs, noting that “even if the link between infection and hospitalization has been weakened, it has not been severed.”
Expressing confidence that he would be able to remove the remaining restrictions on July 19, Mr. Johnson added that “at a certain stage, we are going to have to learn to live with the virus and to manage it as best we can.”
Since first being sampled in Britain almost four months ago, the Delta variant, which was initially detected in India, has swept across the country, outcompeting even the dangerous Alpha variant that took hold earlier. Recent studies show that 96 percent of new cases now are from the Delta variant.
And the variant now appears to be outpacing other versions of the virus in parts of the United States and Canada, too, with some scientists saying that they expected that trend to continue.
Novavax, a small American company buoyed by lavish support from the U.S. government, announced on Monday the results of a clinical trial of its coronavirus vaccine in the United States and Mexico, finding that its two-shot inoculation provided potent protection against the coronavirus.
In the 29,960-person trial, the vaccine demonstrated an overall efficacy of 90.4 percent, on par with the vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, and higher than the one-shot vaccine from Johnson & Johnson. The Novavax vaccine showed an efficacy of 100 percent at preventing moderate or severe disease.
Despite the impressive results, the vaccine’s future in the United States is uncertain and it might be needed more in other countries. Novavax says it may not seek emergency authorization from the Food and Drug Administration until the end of September. And with a plentiful supply of three other authorized vaccines, it’s possible that the agency may tell Novavax to apply instead for a full license — a process that could require several extra months.
The company’s chief executive, Stanley Erck, acknowledged in an interview that Novavax would probably win its first authorization elsewhere. The company is also applying in Britain, the European Union, India and South Korea.
“I think the good news is that the data are so compelling that it gives everybody an incentive to pay attention to our filings,” Mr. Erck said.
By the time Novavax gets the green light from the U.S. government, it may be too late to contribute to the country’s first wave of vaccinations. But many vaccine experts expect that, with waning immunity and emerging variants, the country will need booster shots at some point. And the protein-based technology used in the Novavax vaccine may do a particularly good job at amplifying protection, even if people have previously been vaccinated with a different formulation.
“They may be really the right ones for boosters,” said Dr. Luciana Borio, who was the acting chief scientist at the F.D.A. from 2015 to 2017.
Last year, the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed program awarded Novavax a $1.6 billion contract for 100 million future doses. The company won this tremendous support despite not having brought a vaccine to market in over three decades.
In January, Novavax announced that its 15,000-person trial in Britain found that the vaccine had an efficacy of 96 percent against the original coronavirus. Against Alpha, a virus variant first identified in Britain, the efficacy fell slightly to 86 percent. In South Africa, where the Beta variant was dominant, Novavax ran a smaller trial on 2,900 people and found an efficacy of just 49 percent.
But the South Africa trial was complicated by the fact that a number of the volunteers had H.I.V., which is known to hamper vaccines. In addition, the study was so small that it was difficult to estimate how much protection the vaccine provided H.I.V.-negative volunteers.
With the support of Operation Warp Speed, Novavax drew up plans for an even larger late-stage trial in the United States and Mexico. But difficulties with manufacturing delayed its start until December.
By then, the United States had authorized the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines. In February, with the Novavax trial still underway, the government authorized Johnson & Johnson’s.
BANGKOK — For months, the government of Thailand assured citizens that a plan to dole out free, locally made coronavirus shots would start in early June. About 70 percent of the national population would be inoculated by the end of the year, health officials said.
Then the delays began, just as the country was struggling with its worst outbreak of the coronavirus since the start of the pandemic.
On Sunday night, nearly a week after the vaccination program was supposed to have kicked into high gear, hospitals in Bangkok announced that previously confirmed appointments had been canceled.
There was no word as to why or when they might be rescheduled.
The knock-on effect of what appears to be a mass shortage of Thai-made vaccines is also radiating to other parts of the region, where inoculation campaigns are far behind those of many Western countries. The governments of Malaysia, the Philippines and Taiwan have announced that they are scaling back their vaccine rollouts because of lower-than-expected shipments from Thailand. (Thailand disputed the claims that it was to blame.)
Last year, Thailand was designated the regional hub for local production of the AstraZeneca shots. A contract was awarded to Siam Bioscience, a pharmaceutical firm with no prior experience in manufacturing vaccines. The company is controlled by the king of Thailand.
Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha of Thailand has warned that criticism of the company could be considered a criminal offense under the kingdom’s strict royal defamation laws. An opposition politician who questioned how Siam Bioscience got such a contract was charged with lèse-majesté — wronging the monarch — this year.
Although Thailand was the first country to record a coronavirus case outside of China, in January 2020, the country suppressed the virus’ rampant spread for most of that year. Late in 2020, the country had recorded fewer than 5,000 total cases of the coronavirus.
But Thailand is now dealing with thousands of new cases each day. As of Monday, only about 3 percent of the population had been fully inoculated.
Phatorn Chingduang, a shipping company employee, was supposed to get his first dose of AstraZeneca on June 12, along with about 15 others at his company. The day before the shots were to be administered, he was sent a text canceling the appointment.
“I don’t see the government doing enough,” Mr. Phatorn said. “This vaccine drama, it’s so bad.”
Recriminations are ricocheting. At least five Bangkok hospitals said on Monday that they did not have enough doses. All vaccines in Thailand are being distributed by the Ministry of Public Health.
The ministry countered by saying that it had sent out promised doses to the local authorities, who were responsible for specific hospital allocations. Vaccines for at least 50 million people have already been procured, said Opas Karnkawinpong, the director general of the department of disease control, on Monday.
The same day, Aswin Kwanmuang, the governor of Bangkok, alluded to “technical difficulties” and said that mass vaccinations in the capital would be suspended on June 15.
“Bangkok will stop the vaccinations and will resume the inoculations as soon as we receive the vaccines,” he said.
On Monday, as factories and prisons in the Bangkok area struggled with mounting outbreaks, officials said that parks and museums would reopen in the capital, loosening a monthslong lockdown.
Also open for business again? Tattoo parlors and foot massage salons.
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W.H.O. Warns of Virus Surges in Africa as Global Cases Decline
Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organization, said on Monday that while new Covid-19 cases have dropped globally, many countries, especially within Africa, were seeing increases.
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Globally, the number of new cases of Covid-19 reported to W.H.O. has now declined for seven weeks in a row, which is the longest sequence of weekly declines during the pandemic, so far. While weekly cases are at their lowest since February, deaths are not falling as quickly. The number of deaths reported last week was similar to the previous week, and the global decline masks a worrying increase in cases and deaths in many countries. The steep increase in Africa is especially concerning because it’s the region with the least access to vaccines, diagnostics and oxygen. Available evidence suggests new variants have substantially increased transmission globally. That means the risks have increased for people who are not protected, which is most of the world’s population. Right now, the virus is moving faster than the global distribution of vaccines. At the G7 summit on Saturday, I said that to end the pandemic, our shared goal must be to vaccinate at least 70 percent of the world’s population by the time the G7 meets again in Germany, next year. To do that, we need 11 billion doses. I welcome the announcement that G7 countries will donate 870 million vaccine doses primarily through Covax. This is a big help, but we need more, and we need them faster.
Even with promises of one billion additional Covid-19 vaccines from the Group of 7 nations, the World Health Organization’s leader warned Monday that those pledges were not enough to end the pandemic, and he singled out Africa as the most worrisome trouble spot.
“This is a big help, but we need more, and we need them faster,” Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the W.H.O., said at a news conference.
The doses will be distributed through Covax, the international vaccine-sharing initiative.
“There are enough doses of vaccines globally to drive down transmission and save many lives, if they are used in the right places, for the right people,” Dr. Tedros said.
Those most at risk and health care workers should be given priority, he added.
The W.Health.O. also noted on Monday that the number of new cases of Covid-19 reported to the agency had declined for seven consecutive weeks — the longest streak of weekly declines during the pandemic. Many experts, however, believe that some countries are significantly undercounting their virus tolls, and testing remains limited in many parts of the world.
Dr. Tedros warned against focusing on the declining weekly totals, and instead pointed to the increase in cases and deaths in many countries and singled out Africa as the most worrisome trouble spot.
“It is the region with the least access to vaccines, diagnostics and oxygen,” he said.
“Available evidence suggests new variants have substantially increased transmission globally. That means the risks have increased for people who are not protected, which is most of the world’s population,” he said. “Right now, the virus is moving faster than the global distribution of vaccines.”
The W.H.O. said last week that inoculation coverage was at about 2 percent continentwide — and about 1 percent in sub-Saharan Africa — even as some rich nations across the world have administered vaccines to a majority of their people.
Dr. Tedros told G7 leaders on Saturday that at least 70 percent of the world’s population should be inoculated by the time the G7 meets next year and that 11 billion doses were needed to end the pandemic.
In Germany, where infection rates have been steadily falling for weeks, masks are still obligatory nearly everywhere, including on downtown sidewalks and at many outdoor venues, such as farmers’ markets. Depending on the state, the rules are even more stringent for riding public transport, shopping or entering public buildings, with medical-grade face coverings often required.
But in an indication that masks may start coming off soon in Germany, the country’s health minister, Jens Spahn, said on Monday that states could start setting their own policies — at least for outdoor areas — as the average number of recorded infections drops under 1,000 per day.
“With the falling infection rates, we should proceed in stages: In a first step, the mask requirement outside can be dropped in general,” Mr. Spahn said in an interview with the Funke group of newspapers.
Germany has recently reopened restaurant terraces, beer gardens and outdoor dining, and most states have started opening indoor dining — but only for those who can show that they have been vaccinated or tested negative. Museums are also now open to visitors.
Although individual states make the final rules, governors look to Berlin — and each other — for guidance on coronavirus restrictions.
On Sunday, Germany registered 549 new cases; in December, before the country’s vaccination drive, cases had reached a daily average of more than 30,000. Currently, 48.4 percent of the population has received a first shot, and 26.2 percent are fully vaccinated.
In an interview on Sunday, Wolfgang Kubicki, a centrist lawmaker with the opposition Free Democratic Party, called for completely abandoning mask rules in areas where there were fewer than 35 new cases a week per 100,000 people. (Currently, Germany is averaging 16.6 cases per 100,000 in a week — and most regions would fall below the threshold of 35.)
But others have expressed more caution, warning that mask rules are still important.
“Completely dropping mask requirements just before millions are vaccinated is just one thing: electioneering on the backs of the health of the citizens,” the Social Democratic lawmaker Karl Lauterbach wrote on Twitter. Mr. Lauterbach, whose party is a member of the governing coalition, has a public health degree from Harvard and has become one of the country’s most prominent experts on the pandemic.
He added: “Of course, the mask requirement outdoors can be waived almost everywhere. There is no superspreading outdoors.”
Even as the pandemic recedes and cities reopen, local leaders across the United States face another crisis: a crime wave with no signs of ending.
Mayors are trying to quell a surge of homicides, assaults and carjackings that began during the pandemic and has cast a chill over the recovery. Homicide rates in large cities were up more than 30 percent on average last year, and up another 24 percent for the beginning of this year, according to criminologists.
Some city officials have touted progressive strategies focused on community policing in neighborhoods where trust between officers and residents has frayed. Others have deployed more traditional tactics like increasing surveillance cameras in troubled areas and enforcing curfews in city parks to clear out crowds, as the police did in Washington Square Park in Manhattan in recent days.
In Chicago, which fully reopened on Friday, Mayor Lori Lightfoot made clear that her focus was on reducing violence over the summer, and that her administration would focus resources on 15 high-crime pockets of the city as part of that effort.
“We owe it to all of our residents, in every neighborhood, to bring peace and vibrancy back,” Ms. Lightfoot said.
Homicides in Miami are 30 percent higher this year than the same period in 2020, according to data from the medical examiner’s office.
This month, the top prosecutor in Miami-Dade County and local police leaders turned to the issue of public safety, announcing efforts that include additional streetlights and surveillance cameras, prosecutors assigned to “hot spot” areas and a code enforcement crackdown on illegal party venues.
Vermont has at least partially vaccinated 80 percent of residents 12 or older, allowing it to lift all remaining state pandemic restrictions, Gov. Phil Scott announced on Monday.
Federal data confirmed that the state passed the 80 percent milestone first, while lagging vaccination rates elsewhere have imperiled President Biden’s national goal of getting shots into the arms of at least 70 percent of adults over 18 by July 4.
“I’m very proud to announce that Vermont has now become the first state in the nation to vaccinate over 80 percent of its 12-and-over population,” Mr. Scott said at a news conference on Monday.
Vermont has been very successful at handling the coronavirus. A New York Times database shows that the state has reported fewer cases and fewer deaths, relative to its population, than any state but Hawaii. Vermont has vaccinated 83 percent of its adult population, aged 18 or older; Hawaii and Massachusetts are the only other states so far that have exceeded 80 percent by that measure.
“Not only do we lead the United States, but Vermont is now a global leader in vaccinations to defeat Covid-19,” Mr. Scott said. “Our state has shown the world what’s possible when you have a group of people with the right attitude following the data and trusting medical science.”
The number of new positive tests reported daily across the country seems to be leveling off after having fallen steadily for months. Experts are worried that states with low rates of vaccination, particularly in the South, could incubate new outbreaks.
Mr. Scott, a Republican, lifted his state’s mask mandate and capacity restrictions for vaccinated people on May 14. He said that Vermont’s state of emergency would end on Tuesday.
“It’s really very simple: There are no longer any state Covid-19 restrictions,” he said.
People in Vermont still have to abide by federal pandemic regulations, and businesses will be allowed to take safety measures like requiring masks if their owners choose to do so, he said.
“This is something that businesses have to decide for themselves,” Mr. Scott said.
Many states have relaxed or removed most of their pandemic restrictions, including some with far lower vaccination rates than Vermont’s.
Mr. Scott praised public health officials for his state’s testing program and vaccine rollout. But he noted that Vermont’s work was far from done.
“We’ll continue to vaccinate as many Vermonters as possible, because every shot given today, tomorrow and in the weeks to come is just as important as the ones we administered yesterday,” he said.
Amy Schoenfeld Walker contributed reporting.
To a growing chorus of American politicians and scientists, she is the key to whether the world will ever learn if the virus behind the devastating Covid-19 pandemic escaped from a Chinese lab. To the Chinese government and public, she is a hero of the country’s success in curbing the epidemic and a victim of malicious conspiracy theories.
Shi Zhengli, a top Chinese virologist, is once again at the center of clashing narratives about her research on coronaviruses at a state lab in Wuhan, the city where the pandemic first emerged.
The idea that the virus may have escaped from a lab had long been widely dismissed by scientists as implausible, and has been shunned by others for its connection with former President Donald J. Trump. But fresh scrutiny from the Biden administration, and calls from prominent scientists for greater candor on China’s part, have brought the theory back to the fore.
Scientists generally agree that there is still no direct evidence to support the lab leak hypothesis. But more of them now say that the idea was dismissed too hastily without a thorough investigation, and they point to a range of unsettling questions.
Some scientists say Dr. Shi conducted risky experiments with bat coronaviruses in labs that were not safe enough for such work. Others want clarity on reports, citing American intelligence, suggesting that there were early infections of Covid-19 among employees of the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Dr. Shi has denied these accusations, and now finds herself defending the reputation of her lab and, by extension, that of her country
The speculation boils down to one central question: Did Dr. Shi’s lab hold any source of the new coronavirus before the pandemic erupted? Dr. Shi’s answer is an emphatic no.
But China’s refusal to allow an independent investigation into her lab, or to share data on its research, makes it difficult to validate Dr. Shi’s claims, and has fueled nagging suspicions about whether it could be mere coincidence that the first place the pandemic took hold was a city that hosts an institute known for its work on bat coronaviruses.
On her first day as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in January, Dr. Rochelle Walensky ordered a review of all Covid-related guidance on the agency’s website. Some of its advice had been twisted by the Trump administration, and her message was clear: The C.D.C. would no longer bend to political meddling.
Four months later, Dr. Walensky announced that vaccinated people could stop wearing masks in most settings. The recommendation startled not just the White House but also state and local leaders, prompting criticism that she had failed to prepare Americans for the agency’s latest about-face during the pandemic.
The two announcements captured the challenge that will define Dr. Walensky’s tenure at the C.D.C.: restoring an agency once renowned as the world leader in public health but whose reputation has been battered by political interference, even as the country transitions out of a pandemic that has left nearly 600,000 Americans dead.
President Biden had promised that the C.D.C. director he chose would be free to make scientifically grounded decisions without interference from politicians. Dr. Walensky, a widely respected infectious disease expert known for her battles with drug companies over prohibitive prices, seemed ideally suited.
Dr. Walensky’s appointment instantly made her one of the most influential women in the nation, and was greeted with enthusiasm by public health experts and C.D.C. staff members. But that enthusiasm has been tempered by occasional missteps in communications, an aspect of the job that is more important and challenging than it has ever been.
“Rochelle at baseline is an excellent communicator, but I think in a situation this fraught — politically, operationally and how quickly the science moves — you’re going to make mistakes,” said Dr. Celine Gounder, a former adviser to Mr. Biden’s team on Covid-19. “The question is, how does she acknowledge those and learn from those and move forward from there?”
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