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The New York Times

Brazil’s COVID Crisis Is a Warning to the Whole World, Scientists Say

RIO DE JANEIRO — COVID-19 has already left a trail of death and despair in Brazil, one of the worst in the world. Now, a year into the pandemic, the country is setting another wrenching record. No other nation that experienced such a major outbreak is still grappling with record-setting death tolls and a health care system on the brink of collapse. Many other hard-hit nations are, instead, taking tentative steps toward a semblance of normalcy. But Brazil is battling a more contagious variant that has trampled one major city and is spreading to others, even as Brazilians toss away precautionary measures that could keep them safe. Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times On Tuesday, Brazil recorded more than 1,700 COVID-19 deaths, the highest single-day toll of the pandemic. “The acceleration of the epidemic in various states is leading to the collapse of their public and private hospital systems, which may soon become the case in every region of Brazil,” the national association of health secretaries said in a statement. “Sadly, the anemic rollout of vaccines and the slow pace at which they’re becoming available still does not suggest that this scenario will be reversed in the short term.” And the news just got worse for Brazil — and possibly the world. Preliminary studies suggest that the variant that swept through the city of Manaus is not only more contagious, but it also appears able to infect some people who have already recovered from other versions of the virus. And the variant has slipped Brazil’s borders, showing up in two dozen other countries and in small numbers in the United States. Although trials of a number of vaccines indicate they can protect against severe illness even when they do not prevent infection with the variant, most of the world has not been inoculated. That means even people who had recovered and thought they were safe for now might still be at risk and that world leaders might, once again, be lifting restrictions too soon. “You need vaccines to get in the way of these things,” said William Hanage, a public health researcher at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, speaking of variants that might cause reinfections. “The immunity you get with your cemeteries running out of room, even that will not be enough to protect you.” That danger of new variants has not been lost on scientists around the world. Rochelle Walensky, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, pleaded with Americans this week not to let their guards down. “Please hear me clearly,” she said. “At this level of cases with variants spreading, we stand to completely lose the hard-earned ground we’ve gained.” Brazilians hoped they had seen the worst of the outbreak last year. Manaus, capital of the northern state of Amazonas, was hit so hard in April and May that scientists wondered if the city might have reached herd immunity. But then in September, cases in the state began rising again, perplexing health officials. An attempt by Amazonas Gov. Wilson Lima to impose a new quarantine ahead of the Christmas holiday was met with fierce resistance by business owners and prominent politicians close to President Jair Bolsonaro. By January, scientists had discovered that a new variant, which became known as P.1, had become dominant in the state. Within weeks, its danger became clear as hospitals in the city ran out of oxygen amid a crush of patients, leading scores to suffocate to death. Dr. Antonio Souza remains haunted by the horrified faces of his colleagues and relatives of patients when it became clear his Manaus hospital’s oxygen supply had been exhausted. He thinks about the patient he sedated, to spare her an agonizing death, when the oxygen ran out at another clinic. “Nobody should ever have to make that decision,” he said. “It’s too terrible.” Maria Glaudimar, a nurse in Manaus, said she felt trapped in a nightmare early this year with no end in sight. At work, patients and their relatives pleaded for oxygen, and all the intensive care beds were full. At home, her son caught tuberculosis after contracting COVID-19, and her husband shed 22 pounds as he fought the virus. “No one was prepared for this,” Glaudimar said. “It was a horror film.” Since then, the coronavirus crisis has eased somewhat in Amazonas but worsened in most of Brazil. Scientists have scrambled to learn more about the variant and to track its spread across the country. But limited resources for testing have kept them behind the curve as they try to determine what role it is playing. Anderson Brito, a Brazilian virus expert at Yale University, said his lab alone sequenced almost half as many coronavirus genomes as all of Brazil had. While the United States has done genetic sequencing on roughly one in 200 confirmed cases, Brazil sequences about one in 3,000. The variant spread quickly. By the end of January, a study by government researchers found it was present in 91% of samples sequenced in the state of Amazonas. By the end of February, health officials had reported cases of the P.1 variant in 21 of 26 Brazilian states, but without more testing it is hard to gauge its prevalence. Throughout the pandemic, researchers have said that COVID-19 reinfections appear to be extremely rare, which has allowed people who recover to presume they have immunity, at least for a while. But that was before P.1 appeared and doctors and nurses began to notice something strange. João Alho, a doctor in Santarém, a city in Pará, a state that borders Amazonas, said that several colleagues who recovered from COVID-19 months ago had fallen ill again and tested positive. Juliana Cunha, a nurse in Rio de Janeiro who has been working at COVID-19 testing centers, said she assumed she was safe after catching the virus in June. But in November, after experiencing mild symptoms, she tested positive again. “I couldn’t believe it,” Cunha, 23, said. “It must be the variants.” But there is no way to be sure what is happening to people who are reinfected, unless both their old and new samples are kept, genetically sequenced and compared. One way to tamp down the surge would be through vaccinations, but the rollout in Brazil, as in so many countries, has been slow. Brazil began vaccinating priority groups, including health care professionals and the elderly, in late January. But the government has failed to secure a large enough number of doses. Wealthier countries have snapped up most of the available supply, while Bolsonaro has been skeptical both of the disease’s impact and of vaccines. Just over 5.8 million Brazilians — roughly 2.6% of the population — had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine as of Tuesday, according to the health ministry. Only about 1.5 million had received both doses. The country is currently using the Chinese-made CoronaVac — which laboratory tests suggest is less effective against P.1 than against other variants — and the one made by British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca. Margareth Dalcolmo, a pulmonologist at Fiocruz, a prominent scientific research center, said Brazil’s failure to mount a robust vaccination campaign set the stage for the current crisis. “We should be vaccinating more than a million people per day,” she said. “That is the truth. We aren’t, not because we don’t know how to do it, but because we don’t have enough vaccines.” Other countries should take heed, said Ester Sabino, an infectious disease researcher at the University of São Paulo who is among the leading experts on the P.1 variant. “You can vaccinate your whole population and control the problem only for a short period if, in another place in the world, a new variant appears,” she said. “It will get there one day.” Health Minister Eduardo Pazuello, who called the variant a “new stage” of the pandemic, said last week that the government was ramping up its efforts and hopes to vaccinate roughly half of its population by June and the rest by the end of the year. But many Brazilians have little faith in a government led by a president who has sabotaged lockdowns, repeatedly downplayed the threat of the virus and promoted untested remedies long after scientists said they clearly did not work. Just last week, the president spoke dismissively of masks, which are among the best defenses to curb contagion, claiming that they are harmful to children, causing headaches and difficulty concentrating. Pazuello’s vaccine projections have also been met with skepticism. The government last week placed an order for 20 million doses of an Indian vaccine that has not completed clinical trials. That prompted a federal prosecutor to argue in a legal filing that the $286 million purchase “puts millions of lives at risk.” Even if it proves effective, it will be too late for many. Tony Maquiné, a 39-year-old marketing specialist in Manaus, lost a grandmother, an uncle, two aunts and a cousin in the span of a few weeks during the latest surge of cases. He said time has become a blur of frantic efforts to find hospitals with free beds for the living, while arranging funerals for the dead. “It was a nightmare,” Maquiné said. “I’m scared of what lies ahead.” This article originally appeared in The New York Times. © 2021 The New York Times Company

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Brazil’s Covid Crisis Is a Warning to the Whole World, Scientists Say

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RIO DE JANEIRO — Covid-19 has already left a trail of death and despair in Brazil, one of the worst in the world. Now, a year into the pandemic, the country is setting another wrenching record.

No other nation that experienced such a major outbreak is still grappling with record-setting death tolls and a health care system on the brink of collapse. Many other hard-hit nations are, instead, taking tentative steps toward a semblance of normalcy.

But Brazil is battling a more contagious variant that has trampled one major city and is spreading to others, even as Brazilians toss away precautionary measures that could keep them safe.

On Tuesday, Brazil recorded more than 1,700 Covid-19 deaths, the highest single-day toll of the pandemic.

“The acceleration of the epidemic in various states is leading to the collapse of their public and private hospital systems, which may soon become the case in every region of Brazil,” the national association of health secretaries said in a statement. “Sadly, the anemic rollout of vaccines and the slow pace at which they’re becoming available still does not suggest that this scenario will be reversed in the short term.”

And the news just got worse for Brazil — and possibly the world.

Preliminary studies suggest that the variant that swept through the city of Manaus is not only more contagious, but it also appears able to infect some people who have already recovered from other versions of the virus. And the variant has slipped Brazil’s borders, showing up in two dozen other countries and in small numbers in the United States.

Although trials of a number of vaccines indicate they can protect against severe illness even when they do not prevent infection with the variant, most of the world has not been inoculated. That means even people who had recovered and thought they were safe for now might still be at risk, and that world leaders might, once again, be lifting restrictions too soon.

“You need vaccines to get in the way of these things,” said William Hanage, an epidemiologist at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, speaking of variants that might cause reinfections. “The immunity you get with your cemeteries running out of room, even that will not be enough to protect you.”

That danger of new variants has not been lost on scientists around the world. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, pleaded with Americans this week not to let their guards down. “Please hear me clearly,” she said. “At this level of cases with variants spreading, we stand to completely lose the hard-earned ground we’ve gained.”

Brazilians hoped they had seen the worst of the outbreak last year. Manaus, capital of the northern state of Amazonas, was hit so hard in April and May that scientists wondered if the city might have reached herd immunity.

But then in September, cases in the state began rising again, perplexing health officials. An attempt by Amazonas governor Wilson Lima to impose a new quarantine ahead of the Christmas holiday was met with fierce resistance by business owners and prominent politicians close to President Jair Bolsonaro.

By January, scientists had discovered that a new variant, which became known as P.1, had become dominant in the state. Within weeks, its danger became clear as hospitals in the city ran out of oxygen amid a crush of patients, leading scores to suffocate to death.

Doctor Antonio Souza remains haunted by the horrified faces of his colleagues and relatives of patients when it became clear his Manaus hospital’s oxygen supply had been exhausted. He thinks about the patient he sedated, to spare her an agonizing death, when the oxygen ran out at another clinic.

“Nobody should ever have to make that decision,” he said. “It’s too terrible.”

Maria Glaudimar, a nurse in Manaus, said she felt trapped in a nightmare early this year with no end in sight. At work, patients and their relatives pleaded for oxygen and all the intensive care beds were full. At home, her son caught tuberculosis after contracting Covid-19 and her husband shed 22 pounds as he fought the virus.

“No one was prepared for this,” Ms. Glaudimar said. “It was a horror film.”

Since then, the coronavirus crisis has eased somewhat in Amazonas, but worsened in most of Brazil.

Scientists have scrambled to learn more about the variant and to track its spread across the country. But limited resources for testing have kept them behind the curve as they try to determine what role it is playing.

Anderson Brito, a Brazilian virologist at Yale University, said his lab alone sequenced almost half as many coronavirus genomes as all of Brazil had. While the United States has done genetic sequencing on roughly one in 200 confirmed cases, Brazil sequences about one in 3,000.

The variant spread quickly. By the end of January, a study by government researchers found it was present in 91 percent of samples sequenced in the state of Amazonas. By the end of February, health officials had reported cases of the P.1 variant in 21 of 26 Brazilian states, but without more testing it is hard to gauge its prevalence.

Throughout the pandemic, researchers have said that Covid-19 reinfections appear to be extremely rare, which has allowed people who recover to presume they have immunity, at least for a while. But that was before P.1 appeared and doctors and nurses began to notice something strange.

João Alho, a doctor in Santarém, a city in Amazonas, said several colleagues who had recovered from Covid-19 months ago got ill again and tested positive.

Juliana Cunha, a nurse in Rio de Janeiro who has been working at Covid-19 testing centers, said she assumed she was safe after catching the virus last June. But in November, after experiencing mild symptoms, she tested positive again.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Ms. Cunha, 23, said. “It must be the variants.”

But there is no way to be sure what is happening to people who are reinfected, unless both their old and new samples are kept, genetically sequenced and compared.

One way to tamp down the surge would be through vaccinations, but the rollout in Brazil, as in so many countries, has been slow.

Brazil began vaccinating priority groups, including health care professionals and the elderly, in late January. But the government has failed to secure a large enough number of doses. Wealthier countries have snapped up most of the available supply, while Mr. Bolsonaro has been skeptical both of the disease’s impact, and of vaccines.

Just over 5.8 million Brazilians — roughly 2.6 percent of the population — had received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine as of Tuesday, according to the health ministry. Only about 1.5 million had received both doses. The country is currently using the Chinese-made CoronaVac — which laboratory tests suggest is less effective against P.1 than against other variants — and the one made by the British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca.

Margareth Dalcolmo, a pulmonologist at Fiocruz, a prominent scientific research center, said Brazil’s failure to mount a robust vaccination campaign set the stage for the current crisis.

“We should be vaccinating more than a million people per day,” she said. “That is the truth. We aren’t, not because we don’t know how to do it, but because we don’t have enough vaccines.”

Other countries should take heed, said Ester Sabino, an infectious disease researcher at the University of São Paulo who is among the leading experts on the P.1 variant.

“You can vaccinate your whole population and control the problem only for a short period if, in another place in the world, a new variant appears,” she said. “It will get there one day.”

Health minister Eduardo Pazuello, who called the variant a “new stage” of the pandemic, said last week that the government was ramping up its efforts and hopes to vaccinate roughly half of its population by June and the rest by the end of the year.

But many Brazilians have little faith in a government led by a president who has sabotaged lockdowns, repeatedly downplayed the threat of the virus and promoted untested remedies long after scientists said they clearly did not work.

Just last week, the president spoke dismissively of masks, which are among the best defenses to curb contagion, claiming that they are harmful to children, causing headaches and difficulty concentrating.

Mr. Pazuello’s vaccine projections have also been met with skepticism. The government last week placed an order for 20 million doses of an Indian vaccine that has not completed clinical trials. That prompted a federal prosecutor to argue in a legal filing that the $286 million purchase “puts millions of lives at risk.”

Even if it proves effective, it will be too late for many.

Tony Maquiné, a 39-year-old marketing specialist in Manaus, lost a grandmother, an uncle, two aunts and a cousin, in the span of a few weeks during the latest surge of cases. He says time has become a blur of frantic efforts to find hospitals with free beds for the living, while arranging funerals for the dead.

“It was a nightmare,” Mr. Maquiné said. “I’m scared of what lies ahead.”

Manuela Andreoni and Ernesto Londoño reported from Rio de Janeiro and Letícia Casado from Brasília. Carl Zimmer contributed reporting from New Haven, Conn.

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US

New York Times: Third woman accuses Cuomo of unwanted advances in 2019 as crisis deepens

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The woman, Anna Ruch, told the Times that Cuomo approached her during a crowded wedding reception in New York in 2019. Ruch told the newspaper she thanked Cuomo for his toast to the newlyweds, and in response, she says he put his hand on her bare lower back, which the Times said was exposed in an open-back dress.

When Ruch removed his hand, Cuomo allegedly told her she seemed “aggressive” as he put his hands on her cheeks, she recalled to the Times. Cuomo then asked if he could kiss her, Ruch said, and she distanced herself as he came closer.

“I was so confused and shocked and embarrassed,” Ruch told the Times. “I turned my head away and didn’t have words in that moment.”

The newspaper also reported that Ruch says she was later told by a friend that Cuomo had kissed her cheek as she pulled away.

The newspaper reported that her account of the episode was loud enough and could be heard by a friend standing nearby, who corroborated the exchange, along with photographs from the event and text messages at the time. The New York Times did not identify the friend in its reporting.

The Times published a single photo of the two together at the event, in which Cuomo appears to be placing his hands around Ruch’s face, but it is unclear what happened in that moment.

CNN has not verified Ruch’s allegations against New York’s governor.

Ruch did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

Ruch is the first woman to make an accusation against Cuomo who did not work for him. The other two women — Lindsey Boylan and Charlotte Bennett — who accused the governor of sexual harassment were both aides in the Cuomo administration.

A spokesperson for Cuomo did not directly address Ruch’s accusation to the Times but pointed to a statement Cuomo released Sunday evening in the face of backlash from Boylan and Bennett’s allegations of sexual harassment.

In the statement, Cuomo said, “To be clear I never inappropriately touched anybody and I never propositioned anybody and I never intended to make anyone feel uncomfortable, but these are allegations that New Yorkers deserve answers to.”

Cuomo also acknowledged that some of his previous comments “may have been insensitive or too personal” and said he was “truly sorry” to those who might have “misinterpreted (the remarks) as an unwanted flirtation.”

His comments came after an accusation of sexual harassment emerged Saturday evening in a separate Times article. Bennett, a 25-year-old former executive assistant and health policy adviser to Cuomo, told the newspaper that during one of several uncomfortable encounters, Cuomo asked her questions about her sex life during a conversation in his state Capitol office and said he was open to relationships with women in their 20s.

She told the Times that she interpreted the exchange — which she said took place in June, while the state was in the throes of fighting the pandemic — as what the newspaper called “clear overtures to a sexual relationship.”

Cuomo has denied her allegations, saying he believed he had been acting as a mentor and had “never made advances toward Ms. Bennett, nor did I ever intend to act in any way that was inappropriate.”

CNN’s calls to Bennett for comment have not been returned.

Boylan, also a former aide, has accused Cuomo of sexual harassment, including an unwanted kiss. In a Medium post last week, Boylan alleged that the Democratic governor kissed her on the lips following a one-on-one briefing in his New York City office in 2018.

“Telling my truth isn’t about seeking revenge. I was proud to work in the Cuomo Administration. For so long I had looked up to the Governor. But his abusive behavior needs to stop,” she wrote.

“I am speaking up because I have the privilege to do so when many others do not.”

Cuomo firmly denied the allegations in a press conference in December when Boylan first made them. CNN has not been able to corroborate the allegations, and when asked for further comment, Boylan replied that she was letting her Medium post speak for itself.

New York Attorney General Letitia James announced Monday she could move forward with an independent investigation into the accusations and said in a statement it is “not a responsibility we take lightly as allegations of sexual harassment should always be taken seriously.”

James rejected Cuomo’s proposal that she and New York’s chief judge jointly select an independent attorney to conduct “a thorough and independent review” of the claims against him. Instead, James demanded — and Cuomo, ultimately, agreed — that she alone would run the investigation by choosing an outside law firm that would be granted subpoena power.

She said the “findings will be disclosed in a public report.”

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US

‘Longest week of our lives’: Texas food banks in crisis as storm disrupts supplies | Texas

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Food banks in Texas have gone into disaster mode as they ramp up operations to tackle a surge in hunger after unprecedented freezing conditions disrupted almost every part of the food supply chain in the state.

Grocery stores are empty, school meal programs suspended, and deliveries disrupted by untreated treacherous roads that have left millions of Texans trapped in precarious living conditions with dwindling food supplies.

Even those who did stockpile before the Arctic conditions swept in have lost refrigerated groceries due to lengthy power cuts and cannot cook what food they do have without electricity or gas.

In the worst-affected areas, food banks and pantries were forced to close for several days this week as it was impossible for staff and vehicles to get to the distribution sites. Relief was limited to disaster boxes sent to people seeking refuge in warming shelters.

On Thursday, the disruption to energy and safe water supplies had food banks scrambling to procure large quantities of bottled water and ready meals and snacks that do not require cooking.

“This is a disaster. We are doing rapid needs assessments so we can get appropriate food to those people quickly. When everything thaws, we’re preparing for a massive spike in demand,” said Valerie Hawthorne, director of government relations at the North Texas Food Bank, based in Dallas. “This has been the longest week of all our lives.”

A woman carries bottled water she received from a warming center and shelter in Galveston. Photograph: Adrees Latif/Reuters

Before the big freeze, this food bank ran two drive-through food distribution sites every day, serving between 300 and 1,500 families at each pop-up location. This week they were all were cancelled, though one is planned for Saturday, leaving thousands of families without enough food or reliant on relatives, neighbors, and mutual aid groups.

In addition to the regulars, advocates expect a rise in low-paid service industry workers – who are often just one or two paychecks away from hunger and will not be paid this week as many restaurants and bars were forced to close.

Hunger was a serious problem in Texas even before the pandemic and the latest weather disaster, with about 4.3 million Texans struggling with hunger in 2019, including one in every five children.

Covid triggered an economic crisis that led to a demand for food aid doubling in many parts of Texas amid record unemployment and underemployment levels.

The extraordinary freeze has once again exposed existing deep inequalities that will make it much harder for low-income households to recover, according to Brian Greene, CEO of the Houston Food Bank. “The aftermath of every disaster is much harder on low-income families, who are going to be in more trouble even after the power and water comes back on,” he said.

Almost two-fifths of Americans do not have enough cash or savings to cope with an unexpected $400 expense such as burst pipes or a collapsed roof, according to research by the Federal Reserve,

Empty shelves are seen at a store in Austin. Photograph: Kolby Lee/Reuters

In rural Brazoria county, south of Houston, the pantry reopened on Thursday and served 140 families in just two hours – compared with 170 families usually seen over the course of an ordinary week. About 75% were first-timers desperate for food and water and were given enough for three days, as that’s all the pantry had available.

“It’s crazy. People are out of options. They’ve gone into survival mode to get what they can,” said Terri Willis, executive director of the Brazoria County Dream Center, which operates the pantry. “We are all in disaster mode.”

Long lines extend outside grocery stores with empty shelves, and water supplies have been disrupted by boil advisories and burst pipes; electricity is needed for those in rural areas with private wells.

Willis is particularly concerned about the district’s vulnerable children, as her organization usually provides a backpack of weekend meals for 620 kids who would otherwise go hungry. The schools are closed, so those children will go without. “It’s heart-wrenching. I’ve been one of those kids who goes hungry over the weekend. I’m praying that their parents can get here,” Willis said.

In Dallas, youngsters are also a huge concern: citywide, 87% of school children live in low-income households. Thousands depend on free school meals, with some receiving four meals a day – breakfast, lunch, a snack and dinner – but many schools were unable to offer any this week due to power cuts, burst pipes, water advisories and shortages.

Advocates are also worried about the city’s senior residents who rely on food aid to get enough to eat and may have been cut off from all services for several days. “It’s the elderly that have kept most of us up this week. They truly are the most vulnerable population, and we just don’t know how many have been unable to ask for help,” said Hawthorne.

At the other end of the food chain, fruit and vegetable crops in the Rio Grande Valley have been ruined by the extreme cold, while dairy farmers across the state are pouring millions of dollars of milk down the drain because they cannot get it to dairies. The drop in production could have short- and medium-term consequences on availability and prices.

Scientists have long warned that global heating is causing extreme weather events to become more frequent and intense – and to strike in places unaccustomed to and ill-equipped to deal with extreme heat or freezing temperatures.

The disruption to food supplies in Texas shows how poorly prepared the US is to deal with the climate crisis, according to Molly Anderson, director of the food studies program at Middlebury College in Vermont.

“What we see in Texas demonstrates a lack of planning for resilience and a failure to recognize that climate weirding is here and that it’s already impacting the food chain,” she said.

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World

A ‘Masculinity Crisis’? China Says the Boys Are Not All Right

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HONG KONG — Government officials in China believe that boys are getting more effeminate and want to toughen them up.

In the latest attempt to tackle what academics and news outlets call a “masculinity crisis,” the Education Ministry has proposed emphasizing the “spirit of yang,” or male attributes, by hiring more sports instructors and redesigning physical education classes in elementary and secondary schools.

The plan, a response to a top official’s call to “prevent the feminization of male youths,” was released last week. It included no timeline and few other details, but it prompted an outcry online and is still stirring fierce debate on social media. One hashtag has been viewed 1.5 billion times on Weibo, a popular microblogging platform.

Some social media users expressed support for the proposal, with one writing, “It’s hard to imagine such effeminate boys can defend their country when an outside invasion looms.” But others saw evidence of sexual discrimination and the perpetuation of gender stereotypes.

Even state news media seemed to question the ministry’s proposal. CCTV, the state broadcaster, wrote on its Weibo account Saturday: “Education is not simply about cultivating ‘men’ and ‘women.’ It’s more important to develop a willingness to take responsibility.”

The broadcaster also offered a loose interpretation of yang, writing, “Men show ‘the spirit of yang’ in bearing, spirit and physique, which is a kind of beauty, but ‘the spirit of yang’ does not simply mean ‘masculine behavior.’”

In recent years, as the country has sought to bolster its military and reckon with pampered children, mostly boys, born under its one-child policy, a more stringent idea of masculinity has emerged. Television censors have blurred the pierced ears of male pop stars. Well-groomed actors have been publicly derided as “little fresh meat,” and parents have enrolled boys in boot camps, hoping they will become “real men.”

The Education Ministry’s plan is in response to a proposal made in May by Si Zefu, a top delegate of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Standing Committee. Called a “Proposal to Prevent the Feminization of Male Youths,” Mr. Si’s proposal said that “many, many more” men should be hired as physical education teachers to exert a “masculine influence” in schools.

In a statement, Mr. Si said the prevalence of female teachers in kindergartens and elementary schools and the popularity of “pretty boys” in pop culture had made boys “weak, inferior and timid.” He also lamented that boys no longer wanted to become war heroes, warning that such a trend could endanger the Chinese people.

Last year, Xinhua, a state-run news agency, reported on the gender imbalance of physical education teachers and the difficulties of luring men into the low-paying profession, which is currently dominated by women. In the past, state news media has also blamed video games, masturbation and a lack of exercise for making many young men unfit for the military.

Mark Ma, an 18-year-old high school student in Shenzhen, said that he welcomed an overhaul of physical education but didn’t think it would have a huge effect in shaping masculinity.

“Physical education at the junior high level definitely needs to be improved because a lot of people don’t care about this. They only care about academics,” he said. “I remember a lot of classmates sitting on the sidelines during P.E. lessons, doing their homework.”

He added that he did not believe that “physical education teachers are highly valued in schools; these new policies and better benefits may attract more people to this field.”

As for engendering “the spirit of yang” in boys, he said, “I think the main focus of this is about increasing physical strength, and what they mean by ‘masculinity’ is unclear.” He added: “I think it’s more important to come from one’s upbringing and daily habits. I personally don’t think using this label will have much effect on physical education habits.”

While the Education Ministry’s new plan did not explicitly propose different treatment for boys and girls, educators like Liu Wenli, a professor at Beijing Normal University and an expert in health and sex education, see some perils. Ms. Liu said that even the reference to “feminization of male youths” could lead to more bullying of students because of their gender expression, identity or sexual orientation.

“Educators cannot call for the prevention of bullying in schools while nurturing the soil for bullying in schools,” she wrote on Weibo.

While some Chinese high schools separate students based on physical ability and others allow them to choose their sports classes, most physical education classes at the elementary level are mixed. But fitness classes are increasingly seen by officials as a solution to the perceived problem of weak boys.

Chunxiao Li, a university researcher who studies inclusive physical education, said by telephone on Thursday that it was important to create an inclusive environment. “Overly emphasizing masculinity, femininity or physical disabilities is actually detrimental to society’s diversity and inclusivity,” he said. “It can create a label or a stereotype.”

Dr. Li said that, in the end, physical education teachers should instead focus on developing a well-rounded student.

Elsie Chen contributed reporting.

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World

Italy Looks to Mario Draghi to Solve Crisis, to Delight of Pro-E.U. Politicians

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Mr. Salvini, and other right-wing popular leaders, have argued that the demise of Mr. Conte, and the lack of a broad political consensus, should lead to new and early elections, which polls show they would likely win.

But while Mr. Salvini maintained his now rote calls for early elections, the country’s most politically attuned populist was also careful not to seem overly critical of Mr. Draghi. He said his party, the League, would make proposals on Mr. Draghi’s eventual agenda, which he said, should be “filled with content, things to do.”

Mr. Mattarella’s decision to summon Mr. Draghi followed a meeting Tuesday evening with the speaker of the lower house, Roberto Fico, who had been tasked last week to determine whether Italy’s bickering government could overcome a vast array of political differences that had led to the collapse last month of Mr. Conte’s 17-month-old government.

Mr. Fico advised Italy’s president Tuesday evening that he had failed.

Mr. Conte had failed as well in weeks of desperate attempts to cobble together enough support from a loose assortment of lawmakers to stay in power.

On Tuesday night, Mr. Conte, whom Five Star had plucked from obscurity only two years ago to lead the country, already seemed to fade away.

“Beyond all the arguments, of who won and lost, the substance of the situation is that in the most difficult and dramatic situation we can imagine, we pass from the hands of Conte to those of Draghi,” Mario Calabresi, who edited two of Italy’s leading papers, wrote on Twitter. “I’m going to sleep soundly. You?”

Elisabetta Povoledo, Gaia Pianigiani and Emma Bubola contributed reporting.

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World

Italy’s Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte quits amid political crisis

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Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte holds a press conference on July 7, 2020 in Rome, Italy.

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LONDON — Italy is facing more political turmoil after Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte resigned on Tuesday, at a time when the country faces a severe health and economic crisis.

Italy has been embroiled in political uncertainty over the past three weeks after a small party, Italia Viva, decided to exit the coalition government led by Conte. The rupture in the executive came after a dispute over EU pandemic recovery funds, and how they are disbursed, which has plunged the nation into instability.

Earlier on Tuesday, Conte, who has no political affiliation, told his ministers that he is resigning. He then handed in his official resignation to President Sergio Mattarella. The president has reportedly asked Conte to remain in a caretaker role while consultations take place over the formation of a new government.

However, the resignation is seen as an attempt to avoid a parliamentary defeat at a Senate vote later this week.

He narrowly survived a vote of confidence last week, but his government has been stripped off a working majority with the departure of Italia Viva — making it difficult to pass any major laws for the remainder of his mandate.

“Having failed in his desperate efforts to broaden his majority, Conte and his government were set to be defeated in a new Senate vote that is currently scheduled for 27 January,” Wolfango Piccoli, co-president of the consultancy firm Teneo, said in a note.

He said Conte’s resignation was an attempt “to ensure his own political survival.”

Italy’s President Sergio Mattarella will have to decide whether to give Conte the chance to negotiate with lawmakers again, looking for a majority that will allow him to govern.

“Conte’s calculation is that by moving early, and thereby avoiding a humiliating defeat in the Senate later this week, he would increase his chances of securing a mandate from Mattarella to form a new government,” Piccoli said, while warning that “it is currently unclear whether Conte can succeed in such an effort.”

If Italian lawmakers do not reach an agreement over a new coalition government, with or without Conte as prime minister, then voters might have to head to the polls sooner rather than later.

“The bottom line is that Italy will continue to be governed by an executive that is not apt for the tough job ahead, just like it has been the case since the last election,” Piccoli said.

This is a breaking news story and it is being updated.

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