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A surge driven by the Delta variant is receding in the United States, but officials and experts say that increased transmission during the coming colder months remains a threat and that steady rates of vaccination are key to keeping the coronavirus at bay.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday that about 56 percent of the U.S. population was fully vaccinated. Providers are administering an average of about 949,000 doses per day, including first, second and additional doses, far below the April peak but higher than the recent Sept. 28 low point of about 625,000, according to a New York Times database.
Surveys from the Kaiser Family Foundation show that vaccine support has been rising out of fear of the Delta variant: Almost 40 percent of newly inoculated respondents said they had sought the vaccines because of the rise in cases, and more than a third said they had become alarmed by overcrowding in local hospitals and rising death rates.
The number of people eligible for vaccinations could also soon increase substantially: Pfizer and BioNTech asked federal regulators on Thursday to authorize emergency use of their coronavirus vaccine for children ages 5 to 11, a move that could help protect more than 28 million people in the United States.
The companies say they are submitting data supporting the change to the Food and Drug Administration. The agency has promised to move quickly on the request and has tentatively scheduled a meeting on Oct. 26 to consider it. An F.D.A. ruling is expected as early as the end of this month.
Rupali Limaye, a behavior scientist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who studies vaccine hesitancy, said that parents’ getting their children aged 5 to 11 vaccinated would be a “huge game changer” because they represent a large proportion of population.
Vaccine mandates have also been taking effect recently, with federal workers and contractors, teachers, health care providers and others compelled to get immunized or risk losing their jobs. Such a requirement for New York teachers spurred thousands of last-minute vaccinations. Tyson Foods reported a 91 percent vaccination rate ahead of a November deadline, compared with less than half before its mandate was announced in August.
President Biden appealed on Thursday for more companies to mandate Covid vaccinations for employees, asking them to take initiative because an effort that he announced last month to require 80 million American workers to get the shot undergoes a rule-making process and may not go into effect for weeks.
A report released by the White House on Thursday sought to show how vaccine mandates had helped persuade more people to receive their shots: Seventy-eight percent of eligible adults have had at least a first dose.
As the country nears colder temperatures that will push many indoors, Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Stanford, said that the next few months would be critical, but that the combination of increased vaccinations and natural immunity from infections could prevent another catastrophic wave like the one that struck last year.
“Most of us don’t think we’re going to see the terrible surge we saw last winter,” she said. “That was horrific. I hope we never have to live through something like that again.”
Credit…Peter Nicholls/Reuters
England has reduced to just seven the number of “red list” countries that it considers the highest coronavirus risk and from which it requires travelers to quarantine in government-designated hotels upon arrival.
The change, announced on Thursday, removes 47 countries and territories from the list, including Afghanistan, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa. Taking effect on Monday at 4 a.m. local time, it lifts a set of restrictions that have separated family members and thwarted business travel and vacations.
Residents and officials in restricted countries have in recent months called for the measures to be lifted as their infection numbers have fallen and vaccinations have risen. One online petition asking that Turkey be removed from the list gained nearly 49,000 signatures.
“We’re making it easier for families and loved ones to reunite, by significantly cutting the number of destinations on the red list, thanks in part to the increased vaccination efforts around the globe,” Grant Shapps, Britain’s transportation secretary, said in a statement.
The countries remaining on the list are all in Latin America or the Caribbean: Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Haiti, Panama, Peru and Venezuela.
Fully vaccinated people arriving from countries not on the red list will no longer be required to take a coronavirus test before traveling to England, although they must still pay for a test on the second day after their arrival.
Unvaccinated people traveling from these destinations will still have to take a pre-departure test, plus tests on their second and eighth days after arriving, and will still be required to isolate for 10 days.
The changes followed an announcement this week that England’s three-tiered traffic light-inspired system was being reduced to a single “red list.” Testing and quarantine requirements for fully vaccinated arrivals were also eased.
Sajid Javid, Britain’s health secretary, cited what he called the country’s “phenomenal progress” in vaccination. Seventy-three percent of people in Britain have received a single dose, and 67 percent are fully vaccinated, according to figures collated by Our World in Data.
Credit…Joe White/Reuters
Tesla will move its headquarters from California to Austin, Texas, the company’s chief executive, Elon Musk, said on Thursday, a move that makes good on a threat that he issued more than a year ago when he was frustrated by coronavirus lockdown orders that forced Tesla to pause production at its factory in Fremont, Calif.
Mr. Musk was an outspoken early critic of pandemic restrictions, calling them “fascist” and predicting in March 2020 that there would be almost no new cases of virus infections by the end of April. In December, he said he had moved himself to Texas to be near the company’s new factory.
His other company, SpaceX, launches rockets from the state.
“There’s a limit to how big you can scale in the Bay Area,” Mr. Musk said at Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting on Thursday, adding that high housing prices there translated to long commutes for some employees.
The company’s Texas factory, which is near Austin and will manufacture Tesla’s Cybertruck, is minutes from downtown and from an airport, he said.
Tesla is one of several California companies to say they were moving to Texas in recent months. Hewlett Packard Enterprise said in December that it was moving to the Houston area, and Charles Schwab has moved to a suburb of Dallas and Fort Worth.
Tesla is on track to sell about a million cars this year and is planning a major expansion. In addition to the Austin factory, Tesla is building one near Berlin. Its headquarters have been in Palo Alto for more than a decade.
Credit…Ore Huiying for The New York Times
Singapore will soon open its borders to fully vaccinated people arriving from the United States and South Korea without those travelers needing to quarantine, officials said on Thursday, as the country begins to cautiously reopen.
Under the plan, known as Vaccinated Travel Lanes, fully vaccinated people traveling between Singapore and those countries will subject only to Covid-19 PCR tests instead of quarantining, according to the transportation ministry. Those travelers will also have no restrictions on their purpose of travel and will not be required to have a controlled itinerary or sponsorship, the ministry said.
The change regarding South Korea takes effect on Nov. 15, according to the ministry. The plan with the United States will begin before the end of the year, The Straits Times reported, citing a speech by Gan Kim Yong, Singapore’s trade minister, in Washington on Thursday.
Email messages to the ministry seeking comment were not immediately returned on Friday.
The Vaccinated Travel Lanes are one of the biggest reopening steps being taken by Singapore, a major economic and transportation hub, after early successes in thwarting the coronavirus and then a sharp setback in controlling its spread.
Singapore was widely considered a success story in its initial handling of the pandemic, closing its borders, testing and tracing aggressively, and ordering vaccines early.
Singapore has now fully inoculated 83 percent of its population, and a top politician told the public in August that an 80 percent vaccination rate was the criterion for a phased reopening.
But in September, with cases doubling every eight to 10 days, the government reinstated restrictions on gatherings. The United States said its citizens should reconsider travel to the country, emergency departments in several Singapore hospitals were crowded, and people were once again told to work from home.
The country’s experience has become a sobering case study for other nations pursuing reopening strategies without having had to deal with large outbreaks in the pandemic. For Singapore residents, there were nagging questions about what it would take to reopen if vaccines were not enough.
For many, the repeated tweaks to the restrictions have taken a toll. The number of suicides in 2020 was the highest since 2012, a trend that some mental health experts have attributed to the pandemic.
Credit…Yeshiel Panchia/EPA, via Shutterstock
While wealthier countries with higher coronavirus vaccination rates are increasingly reopening their borders and their economies, nations with more restricted vaccine access are having to make tougher moves.
In Mozambique, that has meant closing popular beaches this week over fears of spreading the virus, less than two weeks after they were cautiously reopened. The authorities fear that beaches along the Indian Ocean — which are at the center of the country’s tourism industry and its communal life — could become infection hot spots or encourage a lax attitude toward Covid-19 regulations.
Just 5 percent of Mozambique’s adult population is fully vaccinated against the virus, according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And the authorities have warned that life cannot yet return to normal, even as temperatures rise and summer approaches.
The Mozambican government announced the closure on Wednesday, immediately shuttering 18 beaches around the capital, Maputo, and in resort towns like Xai Xai and Tofo, for at least two weeks.
It’s a stark contrast with neighboring South Africa, which has the continent’s highest number of Covid-19 infections but has eased restrictions and kept its beaches open as vaccination rates climb steadily. Other popular Indian Ocean tourist destinations, like the islands of Mauritius and the Seychelles, have welcomed the return of tourists after successful vaccination campaigns.
Mozambique has recorded an average of just 30 daily coronavirus cases in the last seven days and no new Covid deaths, according to the World Health Organization. Still, the country, which has recorded 150,899 cases since the start of the pandemic, has enforced strict measures to keep infections low.
The authorities reopened the beaches on Sept. 23 as the country emerged from a third wave of infections, although the reopening came with a warning that the easing of restrictions did not mean the end of the pandemic. Officials continued to impose strict regulations on beaches in particular, banning the consumption of alcohol, gatherings and games, and imposing a 5 p.m. closing time.
Beachgoers were warned that flouting the rules would lead to swift action. And that came this week as a government spokesman, Filimão Suazi, announced the closing of some of Mozambique’s most popular beaches, blaming “bad behavior.”
Mozambique entered its third wave of infections earlier this year, with over 4,400 new cases reported in the first week of July. With only three doctors per 100,000 people, according to the U.S. Embassy in Mozambique, the country’s health facilities were strained. The authorities moved quickly to close schools, limit shopping times at markets and impose an overnight curfew.
Credit…Jim Wilson/The New York Times
San Francisco plans to ease face-mask requirements in limited settings, health officials said on Thursday. The change, set to take effect on Oct. 15, is dependent on coronavirus cases and hospitalization rates remaining stable or declining.
In settings such as offices, gyms, fitness centers, religious gatherings and college classes, people will be permitted to remove their mask if everyone present is vaccinated and their status has been verified. The new rule applies only to gatherings that do not exceed 100 people.
The employer or host is also required to ensure proper ventilation, verify that there have been no recent Covid-19 outbreaks and make sure that no children under 12 are present, among other safety measures.
California is among the states with the lowest number of newly reported coronavirus cases per 100,000 residents, according to a New York Times database. In San Francisco County, 74 percent of residents age 12 and older are fully vaccinated.
“I’m excited that we’re once again at a place where we can begin easing the mask requirements, which is the direct result of the fact that we have one of the highest vaccination rates in the country, our cases have fallen, and our residents have done their part to keep themselves and those around them safe,” said Mayor London Breed.
Ms. Breed called the eased restrictions “yet another milestone in our recovery” and said that “the City feels like it is coming alive again” on Twitter.
Indoor mask mandates remain in place for most other public settings, including retail stores and other common areas like building elevators, lobbies and restrooms, and masks continue to be required at bars and restaurants except when patrons are eating or drinking.
Proof of vaccination or a negative Covid-19 test has been required to go indoors at bars, restaurants, clubs, gyms and large indoor events in San Francisco since late August.
“Vaccines continue to be our path out of the pandemic, but masks have blunted the Delta-driven surge and protected our vital hospital capacity, while allowing businesses to remain open and children to return to school,” said Dr. Susan Philip, the city and county’s health officer.
Credit…Tristan Spinski for The New York Times
For many college students, the pandemic’s arrival did more than disrupt their studies, threaten their health and shut down campus life. It also closed off the usual paths that lead from the classroom to jobs after graduation. Campus recruiting visits were abandoned, and the coronavirus-induced recession made companies pull back from hiring.
But this year seniors and recent graduates are in great demand as white-collar employers staff up, with some job-seekers receiving multiple offers.
The demand for college students at this stage of the pandemic — when overall U.S. employment remains more than five million jobs below the level in early 2020 — underscores the longstanding economic premium for people with a college education over holders of just a high school diploma.
The unemployment rate for all workers with a college degree stood at 2.8 percent in August, compared with 6 percent for high school graduates with no college.
What’s more, the spread of the Delta variant of the coronavirus has been a one-two punch for those lacking a college degree, hitting the sectors they depend on the most, like restaurants and bars, hotels and retail businesses.
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