LONDON — The day after Prime Minister Boris Johnson set England on course for “freedom day” next week, Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, on Tuesday outlined more cautious plans to relax coronavirus rules and said face masks would still be required for “some time to come.”
While England embarks on a wholesale lifting of its remaining restrictions on Monday, people in Scotland will still be urged to work from home, face restrictions on the size of gatherings and be obliged to wear face coverings in indoor spaces, including public transportation.
Throughout the pandemic Ms. Sturgeon has taken a more cautious approach than Mr. Johnson, prioritizing heath over the economy and invariably adopting tougher restrictions, and her announcement on Tuesday was no exception.
“A gradual approach stands the best chance of minimizing further health harm and loss of life,” Ms. Sturgeon told a virtual meeting of the Scottish Parliament, adding that “because a gradual approach stands the best chance of being a sustainable approach it will be better in the long term for the economy as well.”
The difference was most stark on the issue of face coverings which, she said, would remain mandatory in Scotland “not just now, but in all likelihood, for some time to come.”
On Monday Mr. Johnson said that rules requiring masks would be scrapped in England, but that the government would recommend their use in crowded indoor places such as public transportation. Even that was a change in tone from Mr. Johnson and some of his ministers who had previously appeared more enthusiastic about ending the use of face coverings. And tabloid newspapers have campaigned for the end of restrictions, a moment they have anticipated as “freedom day.”
In a thinly veiled attack on Mr. Johnson’s policy on masks, Ms. Sturgeon said that “if a government believes that measures like this matter — and this government does — we should say so, we should do what is necessary to ensure compliance and we should be prepared to take any resulting flak.”
She added, pointedly: “We shouldn’t lift important restrictions to make our lives easier and then expect the public to take responsibility for doing the right thing anyway.”
Despite the caveats, Ms. Sturgeon said that infections in Scotland were falling sufficiently to allow all Scottish regions to move to the lowest tier of restrictions, known as Level 0, from Monday. This means that all shops, pubs, restaurants and other venues can open, except for nightclubs and adult entertainment. However, some social distancing rules will remain and hospitality venues will have to close at midnight.
If the data continues to improve, a further relaxation of restrictions will be made in August.
Scotland recorded 2,529 daily cases according to the latest figures, a reduction in the numbers after a rapid rise at the beginning of the month.
Mr. Johnson believes the vaccine rollout is weakening the link between infections and hospital admissions, and Ms. Sturgeon expressed some relief that the National Health Service seemed to be under less strain than at other points during the pandemic. Still, she said that the system could face pressure if the case numbers were to rise. In Scotland, virtually all those over 60 years old have been fully vaccinated, including 96 percent of those aged 55 to 59, she said.
“Lifting all restrictions and mitigations right now would put all of us at greater risk,” Ms. Sturgeon added, “but in particular it would make it much more difficult for the most clinically vulnerable to go about their normal life.”
However Douglas Ross, leader of the Scottish Conservatives, Scotland’s opposition party, said that the sacrifices made by the public were not being fully rewarded and that “the balance has to tilt further in favor of moving forward.”
BAGHDAD — The death toll at a southern Iraqi hospital treating Covid patients rose to at least 92 people on Tuesday, as witnesses described chaotic scenes of volunteers desperately trying to pry open a padlocked front door, malfunctioning fire extinguishers, and fire trucks running out of water as the ward burned.
The fast-spreading blaze tore through the new isolation ward at the Imam Hussein Teaching Hospital in the city of Nasiriya late Monday night into early Tuesday. It was the second such tragedy in the country in less than three months, after a similar fire broke out in April in a Baghdad coronavirus hospital and killed at least 82 people.
“Most of the patients were breathing through ventilators and unable to move,” said Dr. Aws Adel, a health official for the province of Dhi Qar which includes Nasiriya. “Most of the hospital staff were able to escape.”
The lack of precautions at the hospital, the speed at which the fire spread, and the feeble ability to fight it reflected a country in deep crisis after years of corruption and government mismanagement have left basic government services barely functioning.
The fire was sparked by an electrical short in a ventilator that resulted in oxygen canisters exploding, said Brig. Gen. Fouad Kareem Abdullah, a provincial police spokesman.
The Iraqi civil defense chief, Maj. Gen. Kathem Bohan, said the building that housed the three-month-old coronavirus isolation ward next to the main hospital had been constructed from flammable materials. The roof appeared to have melted along with sandwich board panels with foam cores that made up much of the construction. Other officials have said oxygen is stored haphazardly at almost all Iraqi hospitals.
Provincial health officials said that around 70 patients and at least as many of their relatives were in the ward when the fire broke out. While normal coronavirus precautions ban visitors from isolation wards, a lack of nursing and other hospital staff in Iraq mean that patients rely on family members to take care of them.
Iraq is in the midst of a third wave of coronavirus infections. Last week, the country reached a high of 9,000 new cases a day with more than 17,000 dead since the pandemic began, according to the Health Ministry. The infection and death rates are believed to be significantly undercounted because many people believe it is safer to be treated at home.
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‘Seriously Disappointing’: W.H.O. Criticizes Booster Vaccines
Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the W.H.O. director general, called on wealthy countries not to order Covid booster shots while most countries are still struggling to give their residents initial vaccines.
While many countries haven’t even started vaccinating, and another country has already vaccinated majority of its population, the two doses and now moving to a surplus, which is the booster. It’s really not only disappointing, it’s seriously disappointing. And high-income countries who are vaccinating their population significantly are starting to see Covid-19 pandemic as if it’s not their problem. That is dangerous. You have seen it and everybody is seeing it now. High-income countries are starting to say, we have managed to control it. It’s not our problem. And there will be two problems on this: One, I’m not sure if they are out of the woods, and I don’t think they’re in control. Instead of Moderna and Pfizer prioritizing the supply of vaccines as boosters to countries whose populations have relatively high coverage, we need them to go all out to channel supply to Covax, the Africa Vaccine Acquisition Task Team, and low- and middle-income countries, which have very little vaccine coverage.
Representatives of Pfizer met privately with senior U.S. scientists and regulators on Monday to press their case for swift authorization of coronavirus booster vaccines, amid growing public confusion about whether they will be needed and pushback from federal health officials who say the extra doses are not necessary now.
The high-level online meeting, which lasted an hour and involved Pfizer’s chief scientific officer briefing virtually every top doctor in the federal government, came on the same day that Israel started administering third doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to heart transplant patients and others with compromised immune systems. Officials said after the meeting that more data — and possibly several more months — would be needed before regulators could determine whether booster shots were necessary.
The twin developments underscored the intensifying debate about whether booster shots were needed in the United States, at what point and for whom. Many American experts, including Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser for the pandemic, have said that there is insufficient evidence yet that boosters are necessary. Some, though, say Israel’s move may foreshadow a government decision to at least recommend them for the vulnerable.
Pfizer is gathering information on antibody responses in those who receive a third dose, as well as data from Israel, and expects to submit at least some of that to the Food and Drug Administration in the coming weeks in a formal request to broaden the emergency authorization for its coronavirus vaccine.
But the final decision on booster shots, several officials said after the meeting, will also depend on real-world information gathered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about breakthrough infections — those occurring in vaccinated people — that cause serious disease or hospitalization.
And any recommendations about booster shots are likely to be calibrated, even within age groups, officials said. For example, if booster shots are recommended, they might go first to nursing home residents who received their vaccines in late 2020 or early 2021, while older people who received their first shots in the spring might have a longer wait. And then there is the question of what kind of booster: a third dose of the original vaccine, or perhaps a shot tailored to the highly infectious Delta variant, which is surging in the United States.
“It was an interesting meeting. They shared their data. There wasn’t anything resembling a decision,” Dr. Fauci said in a brief interview Monday evening, adding, “This is just one piece of a much bigger puzzle, and it’s one part of the data, so there isn’t a question of a convincing case one way or the other.”
A spokeswoman for Pfizer said in a statement: “We had a productive meeting with U.S. public health officials on the elements of our research program and the preliminary booster data.”
With less than half of the U.S. population fully vaccinated, some experts said that the country needed to remain focused on getting all Americans their first dose. The Food and Drug Administration’s most important task, they said, is to increase public confidence by granting full approval to the coronavirus vaccines in use, which for now are authorized on an emergency basis.
“At this point, the most important booster we need is to get people vaccinated,” said Dr. Carlos del Rio, an infectious disease expert at Emory University in Atlanta.
Within the Biden administration, some fear that if Americans are convinced that coronavirus vaccines provide only short-lived immunity before requiring a booster, they will be less likely to accept a shot. But those concerns could fall by the wayside if data from Israel, expected in the next several weeks, shows conclusively that immunity wanes after six to eight months, significantly raising the risks for older people or other vulnerable populations.
The administration convened Monday’s session in response to last week’s announcement by Pfizer and its German partner, BioNTech, that they were developing a version of their vaccine that targets the Delta variant, and reporting promising results from studies of people who received a third dose of the original vaccine six months after the second.
The new data is not yet published or peer-reviewed, but when the companies announced that they would submit data to the Food and Drug Administration for authorization of booster shots, it caught the Biden White House by surprise.
In an unusual joint statement Thursday evening, hours after the Pfizer-BioNTech announcement, the F.D.A. and the C.D.C. pushed back.
As South Korea endures its worst wave of the coronavirus yet, government officials rolled out a plan for Seoul on Monday that would limit social gatherings and close nightclubs, some of the routine steps that health officials around the world have taken to limit the spread of the virus.
It also included some not-so-routine restrictions.
Under the regulations, which are in effect through July 25, gyms can remain open, but the treadmills must run no higher than 3.7 miles per hour. And the music played at the gyms must be no faster than 120 beats per minute, roughly the speed of “Call Me Maybe” by Carly Rae Jepsen.
Health officials said the measures were to prevent people from breathing too hard or sweating on other people. But gym-goers, epidemiologists and other observers were confused by the specific guidelines.
Dr. Kim Woo-joo, an infectious disease specialist at Korea University Guro Hospital in Seoul, said the gym policies were “absurd” and “ineffective.”
“I wish people would listen to the experts,” Dr. Kim said.
Other songs around 120 beats per minute include “Born in the U.S.A.” by Bruce Springsteen, “Bad Romance” by Lady Gaga, “Respect” by Aretha Franklin and, appropriately, “The New Workout Plan” by Kanye West. (In K-pop terms, “Boombayah” by Blackpink comes in just over the line at 123 beats per minute, while the BTS hit “Boy With Luv” is barely permissible at 120.)
A standard walking pace is a bit more than three miles per hour, putting 3.7 at roughly the speed one might move if someone else were holding a door open ahead.
The restrictions are meant to battle a wave of virus cases that has alarmed many in South Korea, which had succeeded at maintaining low levels of infections throughout the pandemic but is now contending with the Delta variant and a flagging vaccination drive. Just 11 percent of the population is fully vaccinated, with 30 percent having had one dose, and appointments have been halted because of a lack of vaccine supply.
NASHVILLE — Across the United States, public health officials have left their jobs, strained by a pandemic unlike anything they had confronted before, then tested further as the coronavirus and vaccines became entangled in politics and disinformation.
In Tennessee, the state’s top immunization official, Michelle Fiscus, said this week that she was forced from her job after writing a memo describing a 34-year-old legal doctrine that suggested that some teenagers might get vaccines without their parents’ permission. Dr. Fiscus’s memo came as conservative lawmakers in the state were lashing out at efforts by her agency to raise awareness of vaccines among teenagers.
One Republican lawmaker, Scott Cepicky, accused the agency of employing “peer pressure” to prod young people into getting immunized.
In a lengthy and searing statement describing her departure, Dr. Fiscus said that the actions of lawmakers have gravely endangered the public by undermining confidence in the vaccines even as virus cases are rising in Tennessee and as concerns about the Delta variant are emerging in parts of the country.
“I am not a political operative, I am a physician who was, until today, charged with protecting the people of Tennessee, including its children, against preventable diseases like Covid-19,” Dr. Fiscus wrote. Her firing was reported by The Tennessean.
A spokesman for the Tennessee Department of Health declined on Tuesday to comment on the dismissal of Dr. Fiscus, the agency’s medical director for vaccine-preventable diseases and immunization programs, saying the agency could not discuss personnel matters.
Tennessee is among the states where the virus has gained ground as vaccination efforts have sputtered, leaving public health officials to grapple with the political resistance and false information about the safety of the shots.
In her statement, Dr. Fiscus, who had been a pediatrician with a practice in the Nashville suburbs before joining the health department, said that her dismissal reflected the challenging climate for public health officials, who typically had low profiles before the pandemic but were suddenly thrust into the spotlight of a complicated and politically rancorous situation.
Thousands of subway trips in New York City have been canceled in recent weeks because the pandemic and a related hiring freeze have battered the work force and left a shortage of train operators, conductors and workers.
And with fewer trains, many passengers on the largest transit system in North America have seen their commutes become less reliable and take noticeably longer. Nearly 11,000 trips were eliminated last month alone.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which operates the city’s subway and buses, expanded an existing hiring freeze in the early days of the pandemic to include operations workers like train operators. The agency made the move as it faced financial calamity, after more than 90 percent of subway riders disappeared and critical revenue vanished.
It was the first time the agency had included such workers in a hiring freeze. Since then, the work force has been whittled down by scores of retirements prompted in part by worries over the coronavirus, job changes and the deadly outbreak, which has killed at least 168 workers.
Though the hiring freeze was lifted for operations workers in February, after $14.5 billion in expected federal pandemic relief stabilized the agency’s finances, officials said it would take time to hire and train new workers, including up to nine months for train operators.
Until then, canceled train trips will likely continue. That will mean longer waits for trains for months to come, even as public schools fully reopen after Labor Day and many companies welcome back office workers for the first time since the pandemic shut down the city last March.
Jill Biden, the first lady, will travel to Japan next week to attend the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympics in Tokyo, scheduled for July 23, her office said on Tuesday.
It will be the first solo trip abroad for Dr. Biden, whose traveling schedule currently outpaces her husband’s. Dr. Biden has been a frequent traveler in service of promoting the Biden administration’s coronavirus vaccine efforts domestically, and her appearance in Tokyo comes as the host city extended a state of emergency in response to a spike in coronavirus cases.
Officials have barred spectators from most of the events and urged residents to watch the proceedings on television at home. The declaration of the state of emergency disrupted carefully laid plans to revive the Games, which have already been delayed a year because of the pandemic.
Mr. Biden will not attend the Games, but he has voiced his support for them to the country’s prime minister, Yoshihide Suga. During an April visit to the White House, Mr. Suga told reporters that Mr. Biden “once again expressed his support” to host the events.
Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, told reporters last month that the White House would send a delegation from the United States, “but we will continue to also convey the public health guidelines and guidance that we’ve been delivering out there about only essential travel.”
The East Wing did not have further information about what the first lady would be doing while in Tokyo, and administration officials said the White House was still in negotiations with the Japanese over how much access she and her delegation would have to the Games.
Last summer, as Major League Baseball reeled from coronavirus outbreaks and canceled games, its analog in South Korea became a poster child of how to successfully hold spectator sports in a pandemic.
Now the roles are reversed. As M.L.B. prepared to hold its All-Star Game, canceled last year, in front of a capacity crowd in Denver, the Korea Baseball Organization suspended its season on Monday after five players tested positive for the coronavirus.
The news from South Korea is another sign of backsliding in the Asia Pacific region, where vaccination rates are relatively low, the Delta variant is surging and several countries are reimposing lockdowns.
A year ago, American baseball fans and broadcasters looked to Asia, where the virus was largely under control, to fill a programming void. As dozens of M.L.B. players and staff members were infected and its season delayed by nearly four months, K.B.O. opened its season last May, with live coverage on ESPN, cardboard cutouts in the stands and actual cheerleaders dancing to K-pop anthems. Pro baseball leagues in Taiwan and Japan also started their seasons.
K.B.O. teams played most of last season in empty stadiums, but this year they have been allowed to welcome back some fans. In and around Seoul, the percentage of fans allowed back started at 10 percent and rose to 30 percent last month.
As late as November, no major outbreaks had been traced to K.B.O. stadiums in South Korea, the league’s secretary general, Ryu Dae Hwan, told Bloomberg News at the time. But the league would be vulnerable, he warned, if the national caseload rose.
Now, cases in South Korea have surged to their highest levels of the pandemic. On Tuesday, the country recorded more than 1,000 new infections for the seventh straight day. More than 40 percent of them were in the Seoul area, and health officials estimated that about a quarter were driven by the Delta variant.
Health officials have warned that, by mid-August, the daily infection rate could double from its current level. The rate — 2.1 infections per 100,000 people — is about a third of what the United States is recording, according to a New York Times database. But because only about 11 percent of South Korea’s population has been fully vaccinated, compared with 48 percent in the U.S., people there are more vulnerable to severe infection and hospitalization.
The rise in cases has prompted a scramble for shots. On Tuesday, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency said that it had paused vaccination appointments for more than 1.6 million people ages 55 to 59 for one week because available doses had been exhausted, Reuters reported.
After calling off two games last week, K.B.O. suspended its season indefinitely on Monday, just as the government tightened movement and gathering restrictions in Seoul and nearby regions to their severest levels yet. The season will be on hold until at least Aug. 9. Only a week of games has been officially canceled so far because the league had always planned to take a three-week break for the Summer Olympics.
Fans in South Korea expressed exasperation with the league’s decision. Others criticized the two teams that reported the infections, the NC Dinos of Changwon and the Doosan Bears of Seoul. (The former beat the latter last fall, live on ESPN, to win last year’s K.B.O. championship.)
The league has a 44-page manual of Covid protocols, including requirements that players must sanitize their hands before and after taking the field or entering a locker room. They are also advised to sit in a zigzag pattern if they eat at restaurants as a way of limiting airborne transmission of the virus.
In a statement, the Doosan Bears apologized to its fans and league officials for the cases among its players, and promised to be “even more thorough in the future.”
global roundup
More than 1.3 million people in France were reported to have booked appointments for coronavirus shots within hours of President Emmanuel Macron’s announcement of new vaccination requirements as the authorities scrambled to fend off a rise in infections driven by the Delta variant.
The surge in registrations, reflected in data provided by Doctolib, a widely-used private online booking platform, represents nearly 2 percent of France’s population. It comes after Mr. Macron said on Monday that inoculation would be made mandatory for health care workers and that proof of immunization or a recent negative test would soon be required to enter restaurants and cultural venues.
With the fast-spreading Delta variant taking hold, however, it was uncertain whether the measures would be enough to avoid a fourth wave of the virus in France. Delta already accounts for about half of new infections in the country.
Mr. Macron’s announcement came just three days after nightclubs reopened for the first time in 16 months, which many believed had symbolically signaled the completion of France’s protracted efforts to emerge from the pandemic. But the new measures dashed hopes of a return to a prepandemic normal and of a smooth summer vacation season.
In his televised address, Mr. Macron spoke of “a strong resurgence of the epidemic” that would require France to redouble use of “a key asset”: vaccines.
He announced that he wanted to pass a law that would require all health workers to get vaccinated by Sept. 15 and that the goal was now to “put restrictions on the unvaccinated rather than on everyone.”
The law is likely to pass this summer as most political parties are in favor of mandatory vaccinations for health care workers.
After Mr. Macron’s announcement, the French health minister, Olivier Véran, said on television, “Starting Sept. 15, if you are a health care worker and you’re not vaccinated, you won’t be able to work and you won’t be paid.”
Starting July 21, anyone entering a cultural venue or an amusement park will also need to show proof of vaccination or a recent negative test for the virus. The requirement will be extended in August to restaurants, shopping centers, hospitals, retirement homes and long-distance transportation.
France will also start charging money for some virus tests, which until now were free, “to encourage vaccination rather than increased testing,” Mr. Macron said.
The new restrictions could tarnish vacation plans for teenagers who have only been eligible for vaccination since mid-June, but who will also be subjected to the new rules in restaurants and other venues. Gabriel Attal, the government’s spokesman said the authorities would seek to make the restrictions flexible. “It is out of the question to impose a hellish summer” on young people, he said on Tuesday.
The government aims to get two-thirds of people fully protected by the end of August, but public demand has dwindled in recent weeks because of vaccine hesitancy and a growing sense among many people that the virus is no longer a threat.
On Monday, Mr. Macron stopped short of making vaccinations obligatory but added that such an option may be considered, “depending on the evolution of the situation.”
In other news from around the world:
Doctors in Britain have warned that Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s plan to lift almost all of England’s coronavirus-related restrictions starting July 19 could have “potentially devastating consequences” as the Delta variant spreads. Dr. Chaand Nagpaul, a senior figure in the British Medical Association, said that the government’s decision was “irresponsible” and would lead to increased infection rates and hospitalizations. And a special envoy on Covid-19 for the World Health Organization, Dr. David Nabarro, told the BBC on Tuesday that the pandemic was “advancing ferociously around the world” and that it was “too early to be talking about massive relaxation or freedom.”
Léontine Gallois contributed reporting.
Australians have lashed out at the government after the release of a graphic advertising video that depicts a woman with severe symptoms of Covid-19, arguing that it unfairly blames younger people, most of whom are ineligible for vaccination.
The campaign, released on Sunday and aimed at encouraging Australians to get vaccinated, depicts a sweating woman lying in a hospital bed gasping for air. Her eyes are desperate. She claws at the breathing tube in her nose. “Covid-19 can affect anyone,” reads the text that follows. “Stay home. Get tested. Book your vaccination.”
The advertisement first aired in Sydney, a city of more than five million people that is battling a ballooning outbreak of the Delta variant of the coronavirus. On Tuesday, the authorities reported 89 new cases and Australia’s second death from the virus this year as concerns continue over a slow vaccine rollout.
Only about 9 percent of Australia’s population is fully inoculated, according to New York Times data, and those younger than 40 can only receive the AstraZeneca shot after getting clearance from a doctor. The majority are not eligible for the Pfizer vaccine, the only other vaccine authorized for use in Australia.
“Is the new Covid ad satire?” tweeted Emma Husar, a former member of Australia’s opposition Labor party, adding that the government had given Australians conflicted advice and failed to order sufficient doses.
Dan Ilic, an Australian comedian, parodied the ad by adding a voice-over suggesting that the woman in the video was 39, and therefore months away from being eligible for a Pfizer vaccine. “Turn 40 sooner,” he said.
Australian officials defended the campaign, which they said was intended to be shocking. “It is quite graphic, and it’s meant to be graphic,” the country’s chief medical officer, Paul Kelly, told reporters on Sunday.
“It is meant to really push that message home that this is important.”
Johnson & Johnson’s beleaguered Covid-19 vaccine may be associated with a small increased risk of Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rare but potentially serious neurological condition, federal officials said on Monday. The Food and Drug Administration has added a warning about the potential side effect to its fact sheets about the vaccine.
The risk appears to be very small. So far, there have been 100 reports of the syndrome in the nearly 13 million people who have received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in the United States.
Here are answers to some common questions about the syndrome and its connection to vaccination.
What is Guillain-Barré syndrome?
Guillain-Barré is a rare condition in which the body’s immune system attacks nerve cells. It can cause muscle weakness and paralysis. Although the symptoms often pass within weeks, in some cases, the condition can cause permanent nerve damage. In the United States, there are typically 3,000 to 6,000 cases of the syndrome per year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It is most common in adults over 50.
The cause of the syndrome is unknown. It has also been reported in people with Covid-19.
What does it have to do with vaccination?
This is not the first vaccine that has been linked to Guillain-Barré, although the risk appears to be tiny. A large swine flu vaccination campaign in 1976 led to a small uptick; the vaccine caused roughly one extra case of Guillain-Barré for every 100,000 people vaccinated. The seasonal flu shot is associated with roughly one to two additional cases for every million vaccines administered.
The shingles vaccine Shingrix may also increase the risk of the condition.
What do we know about its connection to the Covid-19 vaccines?
Of the 100 reports of the syndrome after vaccination, 95 cases resulted in hospitalization, and one was fatal.
The syndrome was generally reported about two weeks after vaccination, primarily in men, many of whom were 50 or older, officials said. There is not yet enough evidence to establish that the vaccine causes the condition, but the F.D.A. will continue to monitor the situation.
There is not yet any data to suggest a link between the condition and Covid-19 vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech or by Moderna, both of which rely upon a different technology.
What signs and symptoms should I look out for?
The syndrome is most likely to appear within 42 days of vaccination, the F.D.A. says. You should consult with a doctor if you begin to experience weakness or tingling in your arms and legs, double vision or difficulty walking, speaking, chewing, swallowing or controlling your bladder or bowels.
Should I still get a Covid-19 vaccine?
If the link between the vaccine and Guillain-Barré is real, it appears to be far outweighed by the risks of Covid-19, experts said. In the United States, almost all hospitalizations and deaths from Covid-19 are happening in those who are unvaccinated, the C.D.C. said in a statement. The agency recommends that everyone who is 12 or older be vaccinated.
GARH MUKTESHWAR, India — When a devastating second wave of Covid-19 infections reached India’s countryside this spring, the village of Khilwai took immediate action. Two testing centers were set up, and 30 positive cases were isolated. The outbreak was contained with just three deaths.
It was a different story in the two villages on either side of Khilwai. Testing remained limited. The local health center in one village had been closed, its staff sent away to a larger hospital. The coronavirus spread, and at least 30 people in each village died with Covid-19 symptoms.
But even as the three villages in India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, diverged in their handling of the coronavirus, they have been united in another way: a vaccine hesitancy that is prevalent throughout India and threatens to prolong the country’s crisis.
The combination of an uneven virus response — a reflection of huge inequality in resources and the vagaries of local attitudes — and a struggling vaccination campaign has left officials warning of a third wave of infections when the second has at best only leveled off. Any sense of rapid relief like the one now prevailing in the United States is unlikely anytime soon.
Just 5 percent of India’s 1.4 billion people are fully vaccinated, while about 20 percent have had a first dose. That gives the country insufficient protection against the highly contagious Delta variant of the virus, which first surfaced in India.
At the same time, the country continues to report tens of thousands of new infections and close to 1,000 deaths each day, numbers that are almost certainly an undercounting. Resigned talk of a third wave is indicative of how virus fatigue, and the catastrophic toll of hundreds of thousands of people in the last wave, have resulted in a new definition of acceptable loss.
Back in December, before the queen of England and the president-elect of the United States had their turns, the media mogul Rupert Murdoch received a dose of a Covid-19 vaccine. Afterward, he urged everyone else to get it, too.
Since then, a different message has been a repeated refrain on the prime-time shows hosted by Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham on Mr. Murdoch’s Fox News Channel — a message at odds with the recommendations of health experts, even as the virus’s Delta variant and other mutations fuel outbreaks in areas where vaccination rates are below the national average.
Mr. Carlson, Ms. Ingraham and guests on their programs have said on the air that the vaccines could be dangerous; that people are justified in refusing them; and that public authorities have overstepped in their attempts to deliver them.
Mr. Carlson and Ms. Ingraham last week criticized a plan by the Biden administration to increase vaccinations by having health care workers and volunteers go door to door to try to persuade the reluctant to get shots.
“Going door-to-door?” Ms. Ingraham said. “This is creepy stuff.”
Mr. Carlson, the highest-rated Fox News host, with an average of 2.9 million viewers, said the Biden plan was an attempt to “force people to take medicine they don’t want or need.” He called the initiative “the greatest scandal in my lifetime, by far.”
Served up to an audience that is more likely than the general population to be wary of Covid vaccines, the remarks by Mr. Carlson and Ms. Ingraham echoed a now-common conservative talking point — that the government-led effort to raise vaccination rates amounted to a violation of civil liberties and a waste of taxpayer dollars.
The comments by the Fox News hosts and their guests may have also helped cement vaccine skepticism in the conservative mainstream, even as the Biden administration’s campaign to inoculate the public is running into resistance in many parts of the country.
Public health experts have said that a strong vaccination effort is critical for the United States to outrun the virus, which has killed more than four million people worldwide and continues to mutate.
From the moment U.S. coronavirus cases emerged in the Seattle area and then devastated New York City last spring, sweeping predictions followed about the future of city life.
Density was done for. An exodus to the suburbs and small towns would ensue. The appeal of a yard and a home office would trump demand for bustling urban spaces. And Zoom would replace the in-person connections that give cities their economic might.
But now city sidewalks are returning to life, pandemic migration patterns have become clearer, and researchers have dispelled early fears that density is a primary driver of Covid-19.
What was so alluring, then, about the End of Cities?
Prophecies about the demise of urban life have morphed to match the moment: Surely disease will kill cities, or congestion will, or corruption, or suburbanization, or fiscal crises, or technology, or crime, or terrorism, or this pandemic (unlike all the pandemics before).
Inevitably, the city survives. And yet so does the belief that it will fall next time.
That ideological strand goes back to Thomas Jefferson. U.S. cities have been associated with corruption and inseparable from stereotypes about immigrants and African Americans. They’ve been viewed as unhealthy places to live, particularly for families.
The pandemic struck as this ideological disdain for cities was again becoming a central theme of partisan politics in the United States, with Donald J. Trump and other conservative politicians and commentators seeming to delight in any sign of urban struggles.
It is true that some cities lost residents during the pandemic. Residents moved away at higher rates from New York City, but it appears that many relocated to smaller towns on the region’s periphery.
That is not so much a story of population or power redistributing away from New York as a superstar region, but one of a metro area that is growing even larger.
Israel’s Ministry of Health on Monday issued guidelines for administering a third shot of the two-dose Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine to people with compromised immune systems, citing the rising infection rate in recent weeks as well as growing evidence that such people do not develop sufficient antibodies after two doses.
The ministry released a list of those now eligible for a third shot, prioritizing heart, lung and kidney transplant recipients followed by others with weak immune systems including cancer patients.
Sheba Medical Center near Tel Aviv began giving third Pfizer shots to dozens of heart transplant recipients on Monday afternoon, an hour after receiving a green light from the Ministry of Health.
“It’s really urgent to do it now,” Prof. Galia Rahav, the head of the Infectious Disease Unit and Laboratories at the Sheba Medical Center, said in a video statement, citing the rise of the Delta variant. The hospital said it would be testing and tracking the recipients of the third shot for research purposes.
Israel initially led the world with a rapid vaccination campaign and 57 percent of its population is fully vaccinated. But the arrival of the highly contagious Delta variant has brought a rise in daily infections, up from single digits a month ago to an average of 452 cases per day. About 58 percent of the 81 Israeli Covid-19 patients currently hospitalized are vaccinated, according to Israeli Ministry of Health data. Studies suggest that vaccines remain effective against the Delta variant.
Health care providers in France have been giving a third dose of a two-dose vaccine to people with certain immune conditions since April.
The number of organ transplant recipients who had antibodies increased to 68 percent four weeks after the third dose, up from 40 percent after the second dose, one team of French researchers recently reported. In the United States, there has been no concerted effort by federal agencies or vaccine manufacturers to test this approach so far.