[ad_1]
Daily Covid Briefing
Aug. 8, 2021Updated
Aug. 9, 2021, 12:39 a.m. ET
Aug. 9, 2021, 12:39 a.m. ETCredit…Matthew Abbott for The New York Times
A federal judge on Sunday granted Norwegian Cruise Line’s request for a preliminary injunction, temporarily allowing the company to require proof of vaccination from passengers despite a Florida law that bans businesses from doing so.
The injunction, in a lawsuit that the company filed last month against Dr. Scott Rivkees, Florida’s surgeon general and the head of the Florida Department of Health, is the latest development in a continuing battle for the cruise line industry.
The preliminary injunction is likely to draw backlash from Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who in May signed a state law that set fines for businesses that require customers to provide proof of vaccination.
The governor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday night. Norwegian’s next cruise ship to sail from Florida is set for Aug. 15, out of Miami.
In a statement on Sunday, Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings said the ruling would allow it to “operate in the safest way possible.”
“We welcome today’s ruling that allows us to sail with 100 percent fully vaccinated guests and crew, which we believe is the safest and most prudent way to resume cruise operations amid this global pandemic,” said Frank Del Rio, the president and chief executive.
In the order, Judge Kathleen Williams of United States District Court listed several reasons for granting the request for a preliminary injunction. Among them, Judge Williams cited the potential for the cruise line to suffer financially if Norwegian is forced to cancel trips or reroute around Florida. She also noted that “scientific research shows that cruise lines are hotbeds for Covid-19 transmission.”
Judge Williams wrote that the “defendant fails to articulate or provide any evidence of harms that the state would suffer if an injunction was entered,” and added that Norwegian “has demonstrated that public health will be jeopardized if it is required to suspend its vaccination requirement.”
A preliminary injunction generally stays in effect until there is a final ruling in a lawsuit.
In a statement, Daniel S. Farkas, executive vice president and general counsel of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings, said litigation was “a strategic tool of last resort.”
“Our company has fought to do what we believe is right and in the best interest of the welfare of our guests, crew and communities we visit in an effort to do our part as responsible corporate citizens to minimize, to the greatest extent possible, further spread of Covid-19 as we gradually relaunch our vessels,” Mr. Farkas said.
The judge’s order came as coronavirus cases have risen sharply in Florida. Over the past two weeks, cases in the state have increased 84 percent and hospitalizations have risen 105 percent, according to New York Times data.
Read more
Credit…CBS
Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas said on Sunday that he had made a mistake in signing a law banning mask mandates in his state.
“It was an error to sign that law. I admit that,” Mr. Hutchinson, a Republican, said on the CBS program “Face the Nation.”
Arkansas, which has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country, has seen cases approach last winter’s surge counts. It now has a seven-day rolling average of 2,351 new daily cases.
“Facts change, and leaders have to adjust to the new facts and the reality of what you have to deal with,” Mr. Hutchinson said. “Whenever I signed that law, our cases were low, we were hoping that the whole thing was gone, in terms of the virus, but it roared back with the Delta variant.”
Mr. Hutchinson signed the bill banning mask mandates in April, and he had been working to modify it in the wake of rising case counts and outbreaks at schools. But the state legislature has declined to take up the new legislation. On Friday, a judge temporarily blocked the ban, allowing schools and other government entities in Arkansas to require masks.
Mr. Hutchinson said vaccination rates in the state were improving but noted that children under 12 are still ineligible for Covid shots. “We are pushing the vaccines out, but those under 12 cannot get vaccinated in the schools,” Mr. Hutchinson said. “So I realized that we needed to have more options for our local school districts to protect those children.”
In Marion, Ark., more than 800 people were in quarantine after dozens of teachers and students tested positive. “For those under 12, we want them to go to school and we need to have that flexibility because they do have some risk,” he said.
About 49 percent of Arkansans have received at least one shot, an improvement Mr. Hutchinson attributed to factors including community town halls and people’s proximity to risk.
“People see the hospitalizations up, they see the cases, they see what happens to their neighbors, they’re worried about it, and they’re going out and getting vaccinated.”
Read more
Credit…Cornell Watson for The New York Times
Randi Weingarten, the head of the powerful American Federation of Teachers, expressed her strongest support to date for mandatory vaccination of educators against Covid-19, saying on Sunday that she would urge her union’s leadership to reconsider its position against vaccine mandates.
“It’s not a new thing to have immunizations in schools,” Ms. Weingarten said on the NBC program “Meet the Press.” “And I think that on a personal matter, as a matter of personal conscience, I think that we need to be working with our employers, not opposing them, on vaccine mandates.”
She called the rising number of coronavirus cases in the United States a “public health crisis. And the politics are infecting it.”
She added that she felt the need “to bring people together and to stand up and say this as a matter of personal conscience.”
Ms. Weingarten, who recently traveled to Missouri and Florida, both of which are reporting surges in Covid cases among the unvaccinated, said her change of heart was motivated by the rapid spread of the highly contagious Delta variant, the need to return children to the classroom, and her particular concern for the health of children under the age of 12, who do not have the option of getting vaccinated.
“I do think that the circumstances have changed and that vaccination is a community responsibility,” she said.
Her comments were the latest signal of a shift for the nation’s most powerful teachers’ union. On Thursday, she told The New York Times: “Things have changed with Delta raging, and with the proximity of the full approval of the vaccines. Because of those two facts, we are considering all alternatives, including looking at vaccine mandates.”
Her opinion, she said, is that vaccines are the most important tool available to combat the pandemic, and she came out swinging against Fox News, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, for what she called a “terrible” campaign of “disinformation” that is “hurting people in terms of their public health.” (She praised Sean Hannity, a Fox host, for expressing his support for vaccines.)
The nation’s top infectious disease doctor, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, said on Sunday that vaccine mandates were needed to give children who cannot get vaccinated a “shield of vaccinated people.”
“You’ve got to protect the children,” he said on “Meet the Press.”
Some people may be persuaded to get inoculated after the vaccines, now authorized for emergency use, receive full Food and Drug Administration approval, he said, “but for those who do not want, I believe mandates at the local level need to be done.”
Dr. Fauci added that he was hopeful the F.D.A. approval would come by the end of this month.
Read more
Credit…Emily Kask for The New York Times
As the pandemic upended life in the United States, more than one million children who had been expected to enroll in public schools did not show up, either in person or online. The missing students were concentrated in the younger grades, with the steepest drop in kindergarten — more than 340,000 students, according to government data.
Now, the first analysis of enrollment at 70,000 public schools across 33 states offers a detailed portrait of these kindergartners. It shows that just as the pandemic lay bare vast disparities in health care and income, it also hardened inequities in education, setting back some of the most vulnerable students before they spent even one day in a classroom.
The analysis by The New York Times in conjunction with Stanford University shows that in those 33 states, 10,000 local public schools lost at least 20 percent of their kindergartners. In 2019 and in 2018, only 4,000 or so schools experienced such steep drops.
The months of closed classrooms took a toll on nearly all students, and families of all levels of income and education scrambled to help their children make up for the gaps. But the most startling declines were in neighborhoods below and just above the poverty line, where the average household income for a family of four was $35,000 or less. The drop was 28 percent larger in schools in those communities than in the rest of the country.
While kindergarten is optional in many states, educators say there is no great substitute for quality, in-person kindergarten. For many students, it’s their introduction to school. They are taught to cooperate and to identify numbers and letters. They learn early phonics and number sense — the concept of bigger and smaller quantities.
Yet in the country’s poorest neighborhoods, tens of thousands of 6-year-olds will begin first grade having missed out on a traditional kindergarten experience.
“We have to be deeply concerned,” said Thomas S. Dee, a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, who worked with The Times on the analysis.
Read more
Credit…Maddie Malhotra for The New York Times
Will Grogan stared blankly at his ninth-grade biology assignment. It was work he had mastered in class the day before, but now it looked utterly unfamiliar.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he blurted to his teacher and classmates, who reminded him how adeptly he’d answered questions about the topic the previous class. “I’ve never seen this before,” he insisted, becoming so distressed that the teacher excused him to visit the school nurse.
The episode, earlier this year, is one of numerous cognitive mix-ups that have plagued Will, 15, since he contracted Covid-19 in October, along with issues like fatigue, aching legs and dizziness. As young people across the United States prepare to return to school, many are struggling to recover from lingering post-Covid neurological, physical or psychiatric symptoms.
Often called “long Covid,” the symptoms and their duration vary from patient to patient, as does the severity. Studies estimate long Covid may affect 10 percent to 30 percent of adults infected with the coronavirus. Estimates from the handful of studies of children so far range widely.
Pediatric Covid cases have risen sharply, driven by the highly contagious Delta variant and the fact that well under half of 12- to 17-year-olds are vaccinated and children under 12 are still ineligible.
Doctors say even children with mild or asymptomatic initial infections may experience long Covid: confounding, sometimes debilitating issues that disrupt their schooling, sleep, extracurricular activities and overall life.
“The potential impact is huge,” said Dr. Avindra Nath, chief of infections of the nervous system at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. “I mean, they’re in their formative years. Once you start falling behind, it’s very hard because the kids lose their own self-confidence too. It’s a downward spiral.”
Read more
Credit…Tamir Kalifa/Getty Images
The authorities in Austin, Texas, warned the public on Saturday that the city’s Covid-19 situation had grown desperate, as a surge in cases driven by the Delta variant swamped hospitals while city officials were prevented from issuing mandates for masks and vaccinations by order of the state’s governor, Greg Abbott.
In an alert sent via text, phone call, email, social media and other channels to people in the area on Saturday, the city authorities said: “The Covid-19 situation in Austin is dire. Healthcare facilities are open but resources are limited due to a surge in cases.”
Bryce Bencivengo, a spokesman for the city’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, said that Friday had been one of the worst days for Austin’s hospitals since the pandemic started. More than 100 new Covid patients were admitted that day, he said, and intensive care units were near capacity, with Covid patients occupying more than 180 I.C.U. beds and 102 of those patients on ventilators.
“We are in the single digits of I.C.U. beds available,” Mr. Bencivengo said, adding that patients in emergency rooms were being forced to wait for space in the I.C.U.s to open up.
Austin’s mayor, Steve Adler, said in an interview on Saturday that the crisis could have been avoided if Mr. Abbott had not barred local government officials from issuing mandates on masking. He said the city’s authorities wanted to avoid suing Mr. Abbott, but that “ultimately we’re going to need to do what is necessary to fight for the safety of our community.”
“Our hospitals are just beyond strained,” he said.
Alison Alter, a City Council member, was more blunt. “The governor is preventing the city from keeping kids and adults safe,” she said in an interview. “He’s going to have a lot of deaths on his hands here. This is a matter of life and death for our community.”
An executive order Mr. Abbott issued in May prevents counties, cities, public health authorities and local government officials from requiring people to wear masks, and warns that violators could be fined $1,000. Mr. Abbott signed a more far-reaching executive order on July 29 barring both mask and vaccination mandates, and prohibiting public agencies and any private entities that take public funds, including grants and loans, from requiring proof of vaccination.
In a statement on Friday, three Austin-area hospitals said the vast majority of the Covid patients they were admitting were unvaccinated or partly vaccinated.
“We urge the community to get vaccinated to protect themselves and their loved ones — and to lessen the burden on our frontline workers who have been fighting this virus for the last year and a half,” said the statement, issued by Ascension Seton, Baylor Scott & White Health and St. David’s HealthCare.
The hospitalizations in Austin are at the tip of a surge in the area, hitting heights last seen before vaccinations became widely available, according to a New York Times database. Travis County, where Austin is, reported more than 3,400 active coronavirus cases on Friday, including 467 new infections. Its daily average of new cases rose 189 percent over the last two weeks.
Scores of the state’s counties have reported caseloads that have more than doubled over two weeks, and some are seeing even larger surges than Austin. Bexar County, where San Antonio is, has seen its daily average shoot up more than 300 percent, to nearly 1,500 cases.
With 76 percent of the state’s most vulnerable population — those over 65 — fully vaccinated, deaths have risen far more slowly. But some of the counties seeing huge surges lag behind the state’s overall vaccination average of 44 percent. Some counties fall below 30 percent.
Sophie Kasakove contributed reporting.
Read more
Credit…Kathleen Flynn/Reuters
The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival has been canceled, officials said Sunday, citing the “exponential growth of new Covid cases in New Orleans and the region.”
The festival, normally held in the spring, had been rescheduled for Oct. 8 to 17 in the hope that vaccinations would make the event possible. Ticket holders will receive emails soon outlining refund options.
Coronavirus infections hit a record high this month in Louisiana, with the state reporting an average of 4,600 new cases a day in the past week, according to a New York Times database. Hospitalizations are up 140 percent to a daily average of 2,037, and deaths have risen 193 percent to an average of 30 a day.
Louisiana reinstated indoor mask mandates this month to try to help contain infections that have been fueled by the state’s low vaccination rate and the highly contagious Delta variant of the virus. Only 37 percent of the state’s population, including children under 12 who are not yet eligible for inoculation, has been fully vaccinated, according to New York Times data.
Many employers have canceled or modified return-to-office plans and schools are debating mask mandates, but Jazz Fest was one of the first major events to be canceled amid a wave of infections that Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has called the “pandemic of the unvaccinated.”
Read more
Credit…Mohamed Messara/Epa
This obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here.
Jacob Desvarieux, the guitarist and singer who led Kassav’, an internationally popular band from the French Antilles, died on July 30 in a hospital in Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe, the island where he lived. He was 65.
The cause was Covid-19, Agence France-Presse reported.
Mr. Desvarieux and the founder of Kassav’, the bassist Pierre-Edouard Décimus, created a style called zouk by fusing Afro-Caribbean traditions of the French Antilles with sleek electronic dance music.
Kassav’ made nearly two dozen official studio albums, and the band recorded an additional two dozen studio albums credited to individual members, along with extensive live recordings.
Kassav’ toured worldwide and sold in the millions, particularly in France and in French-speaking Caribbean and African countries. Mr. Desvarieux shaped a vast majority of the band’s songs as guitarist, songwriter, arranger or producer, and his amiably gruff voice often shared the band’s lead vocals, with lyrics in French Antillean Creole.
Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, paid tribute on Twitter: “Sacred zouk monster. Outstanding guitarist. Emblematic voice of the Antilles. Jacob Desvarieux was all of these at the same time.”
Read more
Credit…Siegfried Modola/Getty Images
Protests around the world are growing once again, with hundreds of thousands of people in Europe, Asia and South America taking to the streets over the weekend to oppose their governments’ handling of the pandemic.
Demonstrators turned out in cities across France and Italy to protest new measures requiring proof of vaccination or a negative coronavirus test to carry out many daily activities.
In the fourth consecutive weekend of protests in France, the turnout swelled to its largest in the past month as more than 230,000 people across the country demonstrated against a new law, set to be enforced starting Monday, that makes health passes mandatory for many indoor venues, including cafes and restaurants.
Protesters throughout Italy voiced their opposition on Saturday to a similar pass that was introduced in the country the day before, arguing that the measure infringes on their freedom.
While rallies in some countries have been prompted by new restrictions, protesters in other nations are blaming governments for failing to act forcefully enough in the face of coronavirus outbreaks.
In Thailand, demonstrators clashed with the police on Saturday, gathering outside the prime minister’s office to express anger that an outbreak that began in April has not been contained and has instead propelled the country’s caseload to its highest level in the past 17 months, while vaccines remain scarce.
In Argentina, tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Buenos Aires on Saturday to highlight the growing number of people who are falling below the poverty line as the struggles brought on by the pandemic inflict further damage on the country’s beleaguered economy. The government relaxed some of its Covid-related restrictions on Friday and President Alberto Fernández said he expects the economy to grow 7 percent this year after a recession that has lasted three years.
Read more
Credit…Ricardo Nagaoka for The New York Times
In the early months of the pandemic, an estimated 400,000 New Yorkers left the city. Many have since returned, but among those who moved permanently, many have found the transition to be emotionally fraught. This is certainly true for longtime New Yorkers, whose identities are intertwined with the city’s energy, diversity and culture.
“Finding the right place to live is often like finding the right spouse,” said Katherine Loflin, a consultant who studies emotional and sociological attachments to place. “Just like you can date or marry a place, you can divorce one.”
Ms. Loflin called pandemic relocation a “forced divorce.”
It’s perhaps not surprising, then, that many New Yorkers who moved out of the city are looking for an approximation of what they left behind — albeit with backyards and extra bedrooms.
Samantha Allen, 28, a home editor at Forbes Advisor, moved to Denver from Park Slope last November. She still walks faster than her friends and often wears all black, which is not common in Colorado.
She has actively sought out fellow New York transplants. When moving, she turned to a Facebook Group called I Moved to Denver. “It was a safety net for me, knowing that so many New Yorkers were coming here,” Ms. Allen said. Whenever she met fellow former New Yorkers, they “bonded immediately.”
The Facebook group was created by Laura Young, a New York expat who also runs New Denizen, a blog that covers Denver life “from a New Yorker’s perspective.” To Ms. Young, 40, this means having “strong and discerning opinions” when it comes to food, culture and the arts. She said that “when ex-New Yorkers in Denver talk to each other, the highest compliment would be, ‘This place could easily make it in New York City.’”
Read more
Credit…Ernesto Benavides/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Americans over 65, the age group that is most vulnerable to the effects of the coronavirus, got an early start on Covid-19 vaccination and have the highest rate in the country — more than 80 percent are fully inoculated.
But with infections increasing once more, and hospitalization rising among older adults, a large-scale new study in the Journals of Gerontology provides a timely warning: Covid can look different in older patients.
“People expect fever, cough, shortness of breath,” said Allison Marziliano, lead author of the study. But when the researchers combed through the electronic health records of nearly 5,000 people, all over the age of 65, who were hospitalized for Covid-19 at a dozen hospitals in March and April of 2020, they found that one-third had arrived with other symptoms, unexpected ones.
The team, searching through records using language software, found that about one-quarter of older patients reported a functional decline. “This was falls, fatigue, weakness, difficulty walking or getting out of bed,” said Dr. Marziliano, a social and health psychologist at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research, part of the large Northwell Health system across New York State.
Eleven percent experienced altered mental status — “confusion, agitation, forgetfulness, lethargy,” she said. About half the group with atypical symptoms also suffered from at least one of the classic Covid problems — fever, trouble breathing, coughing.
“Clinicians should know, older adults should know, their caregivers should know: If you see certain atypical symptoms, it could be Covid,” Dr. Marziliano said.
The rate of atypical symptoms rose significantly with age, affecting about 31 percent of those ages 65 to 74, but more than 44 percent of those over 85. These symptoms occurred more commonly in women, in Black patients (but not in Hispanics) and in those who had other chronic diseases, particularly diabetes or dementia.
Read more
[ad_2]
