The summer began with the promise that vaccinated Americans could largely go maskless, and travel swelled over the Fourth of July weekend to prepandemic levels. But the celebrations has turned out to be short-lived as the Delta variant of the coronavirus surges across the United States and momentum gains for mandating Covid-19 vaccines and, once again, masks.
The United States is averaging more than 124,000 new virus cases each day, more than double the levels of two weeks ago and the highest rate since early February, according to a New York Times database. Hospitals in hot spots around the country are approaching capacity.
With all of this at play, President Biden has urged the private sector and state and local governments to ramp up pressure on the nearly one-third of eligible people in the country who remain unvaccinated. He has also ordered all civilian federal employees to be vaccinated or submit to regular testing and other restrictions.
And on Monday, the Pentagon said that it would require the country’s 1.3 million active-duty military troops to be vaccinated “no later” than next month. About 64 percent of active-duty service members are fully vaccinated — a rate that is low enough to have national security implications, because it could make it difficult to deploy troops to countries with strict requirements.
Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III said in a memo that he would seek to speed up the mandate if the Food and Drug Administration grants full approval to the Pfizer vaccine before mid-September, which the agency aims to do. More mandates in the private sector are also expected after the F.D.A. approval.
New requirements are also being brought in at the state and local level.
In Washington State, Gov. Jay Inslee said that most state employees and all health care workers must be fully vaccinated against the virus by Oct. 18 or risk losing their jobs. California and Hawaii have announced similar mandates.
And even as several Republican-led states have barred businesses from requiring consumers to provide proof of vaccination, about a quarter of all U.S. hospitals are requiring staff members to be vaccinated, a spokesman for the American Hospital Association told CNN. Hospitalizations are soaring in areas with low vaccination rates.
Inoculations have picked up again in the country, but public health experts note that it takes weeks for the vaccines’ full effect to kick in. They say that more immediate measures, like mask mandates, are needed.
Ethan Hauser and
In June, as the United States made headway in its vaccination campaign, European Union leaders recommended that member countries reopen their borders to Americans, a gesture meant to signal what they hoped would be the beginning of the pandemic’s end. They expected to be repaid in kind.
But nearly two months later, even as Europe has overtaken the United States in vaccinations, the United States’ borders remain closed to most European travelers, even those who are vaccinated.
Likewise, when Canada said last month that it would welcome back fully vaccinated U.S. residents beginning on Monday, U.S. officials made clear that they would not immediately reciprocate.
That the United States remains largely closed has dismayed people in the European Union and frustrated their leaders.
“We insist comparable rules be applied to arrivals in both directions,” Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, said last week at a news conference. Officials with the bloc have even suggested reimposing travel restrictions against U.S. travelers.
For some families, the continued ban has compounded one of the deepest sorrows of the pandemic — separation — as loved ones become ill across closed borders and family elders fear that they may never see their loved ones again.
Unmarried partners with different passports have struggled to keep relationships afloat, giving rise to the popular Twitter hashtag #loveisnottourism. And people offered jobs in the United States don’t know whether to accept them.
The White House has offered little explanation on why the restrictions remain, even though some countries with higher infection and lower vaccination rates don’t face a similar ban. At a news conference last week, Jen Psaki, the White House spokeswoman, cited the advice of medical experts and continued concerns about the Delta variant.
Yet if that posture has frustrated Canadians, they have not said so, at least publicly.
“Every country gets to set its own rules about how it will keep its citizens safe,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said.
In March, Andy Slavitt, then a top pandemic adviser for President Biden, called Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice president for global affairs, and delivered an ominous warning.
For many weeks, Mr. Slavitt and other White House officials had been meeting with Facebook to urge the company to stop the spread of misinformation about coronavirus vaccines.
Many Americans who declined to get vaccinated were citing false articles that they had read on Facebook, including theories that the shots could lead to infertility, stillborn babies and autism.
“In eight weeks’ time,” Mr. Slavitt told Mr. Clegg, “Facebook will be the No. 1 story of the pandemic.”
Mr. Slavitt’s prediction was not far off. Roughly three months later, with cases from the Delta variant surging, Mr. Biden said Facebook was “killing people.”
Mr. Biden’s comment, which he later walked back slightly, was the culmination of increasingly combative meetings with the company about the spread of misinformation.
The meetings have involved the top ranks on both sides. In March, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, called Ron Klain, the White House chief of staff, and discussed health misinformation. The White House grew so frustrated by Facebook’s answers in the internal meetings that at one point it demanded to hear from the data scientists at the company instead of lobbyists.
Talks between the White House and Facebook continue. But the rift has complicated an already tumultuous relationship just as Mr. Biden faces a setback on tackling the virus. The White House missed its goal of having 70 percent of American adults with at least one vaccination shot by July 4, and the highly contagious Delta variant has fueled a rise in cases since then.
Facebook has pushed back strongly against the White House’s criticism, accusing the administration in public of scapegoating the company for the administration’s failure to reach its vaccination goals. Andy Stone, a spokesman for Facebook, said the White House hadn’t given the company enough credit for promoting the vaccines.
The recent rise in U.S. coronavirus cases has led local leaders to defy Republican governors who have banned mask mandates in states like Florida and Texas, where the virus is surging.
Starting on Tuesday, the Dallas public school district will require everyone on school property, including students, employees and visitors, to wear masks. The rule comes as Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas remains one of the most strident opponents of mask mandates: His office said in a statement on Monday that he “has been clear that we must rely on personal responsibility, not government mandates.”
In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis is threatening to withhold the salaries of local superintendents and school board members who enact them, even though just half of people in the state are vaccinated, and the Delta variant is driving a surge that has made the state one of the worst-hit in the nation. Forty-three percent of the state’s adult intensive-care beds are filled with coronavirus patients, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Mr. DeSantis signed an executive order last month that blocked local officials from enacting mask mandates. But several local officials and community leaders are preparing to defy him.
Schools in Leon County, Alachua County and Duval County have decided in recent weeks to require masks for students, although some schools are allowing students to opt out or are mandating them only for certain grades.
The Broward County School District, one of the largest in Florida, also voted last month to require its students to wear masks, although in light of the governor’s recent executive order, the district said in a statement that it was “awaiting further guidance before rendering a decision on the mask mandate for the upcoming school year.”
Other opponents of the bans are turning to the courts.
Lawsuits have been filed against Mr. DeSantis’s order in Florida. In Texas, the top elected official in Dallas County sued Mr. Abbott on Monday evening, arguing that his ban on mask mandates violates state law.
The latest wave of coronavirus infections in several South Asian nations has been complicated by a surge in dengue, a mosquito-transmitted virus that spreads during monsoon season.
The rise in cases of dengue — which can have symptoms similar to those of the coronavirus, such as fever, headaches and body aches — is adding to the load of hospitals that are already overwhelmed.
Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are experiencing some of the worst surges in dengue. Sri Lanka has reported more than 17,000 cases this year, including nearly 3,300 in July. Bangladesh has recorded about 4,500 cases of hospitalization for dengue this year, nearly half of them in July.
“The health system is already overburdened by Covid-19 patients,” said Dr. Himali Herath, a consultant physician at Sri Lanka’s National Dengue Control Unit. “Caring for dengue patients is labor-intensive. Therefore it will be very difficult.”
The World Health Organization estimates that there are hundreds of millions of dengue infections every year, and nearly two-thirds occur in Asia. There is no specific treatment for the virus, and severe cases can lead to death if not detected early and if patients do not receive adequate medical care.
“Due to the heavy stream of Covid-19 patients, we are turning dengue patients to other hospitals,” said Brig. Gen. Nazmul Haque, the director of the Dhaka Medical College Hospital in Bangladesh. “We are only treating the patients who are infected with both coronavirus and dengue.”
Dengue outbreaks also remain endemic in India, Nepal and Pakistan. In Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital, officials said the main hospital that treated dengue patients in previous years had been turned into a Covid hospital amid the country’s second wave of infections.
The government laboratory where all suspected dengue cases would usually be referred to for testing has also been overwhelmed with coronavirus tests, they said.
Aanya Wipulasena and
As the number of reported coronavirus cases in Ohio rises, some judges have attached a condition for people being released on probation: Get vaccinated or face possible prison time.
When Brandon Rutherford was convicted on drug offenses last week, Judge Christopher A. Wagner of the Court of Common Pleas in Hamilton County told him that as part of his probation he had to get vaccinated against Covid within 60 days.
“I’m just a judge, not a doctor, but I think the vaccine’s a lot safer than fentanyl, which is what you had in your pocket,” the judge told Mr. Rutherford, 21, according to a transcript provided by the judge’s office.
And when Sylvaun Latham pleaded guilty to drugs and firearms offenses in June, another Court of Common Pleas judge, Richard A. Frye in Franklin County, gave him 30 days to get vaccinated, according to court records. If Mr. Latham violated that condition and others, he could go to prison for 36 months.
The judges’ decisions underscore how personal freedoms are being examined through the lens of public health in a pandemic.
“Judges do have a lot of leeway in imposing conditions on behavior while on probation,” said David J. Carey, the deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio. “But that leeway is not unlimited. They still need to establish it has a clear connection to a person’s individual case.”
Michael Benza, a senior instructor at Case Western’s School of Law, said he understood that judges in other states were setting similar conditions for probation, but he was not certain that it is a broad practice across the United States.
Mr. Latham agreed to be inoculated, but Mr. Rutherford told WCPO 9 News after his court case that he did not want to be vaccinated.
“I don’t plan on getting it. I don’t want it,” Mr. Rutherford said.
Global Roundup
Thousands of people flocked to inoculation sites in Manila, the Philippine capital, on Tuesday as reports emerged that unvaccinated people would miss out on welfare payments from the government.
People were also afraid of being barred from leaving their homes if they remained unvaccinated.
President Rodrigo Duterte, famous for his brash, autocratic style of leadership, had earlier ordered police and village enforcers to ensure that unvaccinated people quarantine at home as part of efforts to prevent the spread the Delta variant.
On Monday night, he said the government would begin giving cash payments to low-income people across Manila — aside from in one area, as a punishment for overcrowding and disorder at vaccination sites.
Referring to one part of the city, he said: “I saw on TV the disorder and the chaos prevailing.”
On Tuesday, long lines of people withstood a heavy downpour as they waited to be inoculated at a university in southern Manila that had been designated as a vaccination site.
Other news from around the world:
Sydney, Australia’s biggest city, reported its biggest daily rise in case numbers in the pandemic on Tuesday, and a Delta variant outbreak shows no signs of slowing. The city, which is in its seventh week of lockdown, recorded 356 new coronavirus cases and three deaths. The state’s leader, Gladys Berejiklian, rejected the idea of imposing tougher measures to restrict movement, saying that it would not deter a “small handful of people” who are not complying with health orders. The Instagram-famous coastal town Byron Bay was also plunged into a one-week lockdown on Monday after an infected man traveled there from Sydney.