U.S. Mulls Requiring Negative Coronavirus Test for Domestic Air Travel

Video

transcript

Back

transcript

Officials Discuss Possible Coronavirus Tests for Domestic Travelers

On Monday, members of the White House’s coronavirus response team discussed whether federal officials should require airline passengers to have a negative coronavirus test before boarding domestic flights.

“I haven’t heard Secretary Buttigieg’s comment, but I would say, and Dr. Walensky may want to comment, is that with regard to domestic travel, I think in the words of Dr. Walensky and the C.D.C., now is not the time to be traveling, if at all possible.” “The more screening that we’re doing in places where people are gathering, I think, the more asymptomatic disease will be, we will be detecting. And certainly there’s a lot of, there’s more gathering that happens in airports. And so to the extent that we have available tests to be able to do testing, first and foremost, I would really encourage people to not travel. But if we are traveling, this would be yet another mitigation measure to try and decrease the spread.

Federal officials are considering whether to require airline passengers to have a negative coronavirus test before boarding domestic flights, according to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

Proof of a negative test result is already required for passengers boarding international flights bound for the United States, under a policy imposed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last month.

In a program that aired on Sunday night, Mr. Buttigieg told “Axios on HBO” that “there’s an active conversation with the C.D.C. right now” about whether to require a negative test for domestic travel as well.

“What I can tell you is, it’s going to be guided by data, by science, by medicine, and by the input of the people who are actually going to have to carry this out,” he said.

Asked about the issue at a White House briefing on Monday, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the C.D.C., said that providing more coronavirus testing at places like airports could help to curb the spread of the virus by people who are contagious but do not know it, because they lack obvious symptoms.

“There’s more gathering that happens in airports, and so, to the extent that we have available tests to be able to do testing, this would be yet another mitigation measure to try and decrease risk,” Dr. Walensky said.

The testing requirement for international travelers was imposed as concern grew about more contagious variants circulating in Britain, South Africa and elsewhere. A study published on Sunday suggested that the variant first found in Britain, B.1.1.7, is already spreading rapidly in the United States.

“We should be treating every case as if it’s a variant during this pandemic right now,” Dr. Walensky said at a White House briefing days after the rule took effect.

Health officials continue to warn against nonessential travel, reiterating that public health measures to stop the spread of the virus, like social distancing and masking, are more crucial than ever.

Air travel remains down dramatically compared with before the pandemic. The Transportation Security Administration screened about 855,000 passengers on Sunday, compared with more than two million on the same date in 2020 and 2019.

But airline executives, union officials and elected officials have raised concerns about requiring testing for domestic travelers, arguing that such a rule would be difficult to implement and could inflict more financial damage on the airline industry, which has been clobbered by the abrupt halt in global travel.

Speaking before the House committee on transportation and infrastructure last week, Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, warned that the move could lead to airline bankruptcies.

Some states already require an out-of-state traveler to quarantine upon arrival, but waive the rule if the individual has recently tested negative.

Hawaii, which has enforced a strict quarantine for incoming travelers, allows an exception for those who show a negative test result from an approved provider before departing for the state.

In response to the rule for international travelers, the travel industry has sought to find ways to make testing more readily available to customers, including offering tests on-site at hotels and resorts.

The United States accepts results from rapid antigen tests in addition to the more reliable polymerase chain reaction tests, or P.C.R. tests, required by other countries.

Later on Monday, an official at the Department of Transportation said Mr. Buttigieg would quarantine for 14 days after a member of his security detail tested positive for the coronavirus in the morning.

Mr. Buttigieg, who was in close contact with the agent, tested negative after being given a P.C.R. test, and has not shown symptoms, the department’s chief of staff, Laura Schiller, said.

Mr. Buttigieg has received the first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine and will receive the second dose “when his quarantine is completed,” Ms. Schiller said.

In a Monday night appearance on CNN, Mr. Buttigieg said: “I think it’s a reminder, you know, as we go through our days, that this is why masks matter, this is why testing matters. You can get up, go to work, feel fine, and it turns out that you’re positive.”

A million doses of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine had been shipped recently to South Africa from India. The first injections were set for Wednesday. After weeks of rich countries vaccinating doctors and nurses against the coronavirus, a respite from the anxiety and the trauma seemed to be nearing in South Africa, too.

Then, all of a sudden, the plans were shelved. The country’s leaders on Sunday ordered the rollout of the vaccine halted, after a clinical trial failed to show that it could prevent people from getting mild or moderate cases of Covid-19 caused by the coronavirus variant that has overrun the country.

The new findings from South Africa were far from conclusive: They came from a small clinical trial that enrolled fewer than 2,000 people. And they did not preclude what some scientists say is the likelihood that the vaccine protects against severe disease from the variant — a key indicator of whether the virus will overwhelm hospitals and kill people.

But even if the vaccine is shown to prevent severe disease, scientists say, what happened in South Africa is a warning to the world. As quickly as scientists developed vaccines, the virus has seemed to evolve even more quickly. Instead of eradicating the virus, scientists now foresee months, if not years, of vaccine makers continually having to update their booster shots to protect against new variants.

And if the variant first seen in South Africa, now present in 32 countries, becomes the dominant form of the virus elsewhere, those countries could face a far slower crawl out of the pandemic.

The news was not all bad. Other vaccines offer some protection against the variant from South Africa, though less than against earlier versions of the virus. Among them is Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine, which prevented hospitalizations and deaths in clinical trials in the country. Despite not yet being authorized there, it could be rolled out to some health workers by mid-February as part of what officials vaguely described as “a research project.”

AstraZeneca is working to produce a version of its vaccine that can protect against the variant from South Africa by the fall.

Still, the findings rattled scientists, undercutting the notion that vaccines alone will stop the spread of the virus anytime soon. And they led to new, and more urgent, demands that richer countries donate doses to poorer countries that could become breeding grounds for mutations if the virus spreads unchecked.

A Democratic state senator in Ohio walked out of a hearing last week when he saw that dozens of spectators in the room were maskless and sitting close together.

“I saw danger,” said the senator, Cecil Thomas, who added that he worries about infection risk in part because his daughter has a severely compromised immune system.

Mr. Thomas returned to his office, where he watched — but could not participate in — the rest of the hearing.

Nearly a year into the coronavirus crisis, with no national standard for legislating during a pandemic, lawmakers in state capitals around the country are grappling with how to carry out a new season of sessions. A partisan pattern has emerged, but there remains a patchwork of shifting, inconsistent rules about where to meet, how the public can take part, and what to do about masks.

In at least 28 states, masks are required on the floors of both legislative chambers, according to a New York Times survey of legislatures in every state; 17 of the 28 states are controlled by Democrats. Legislatures in at least 18 states, including 15 that are Republican-controlled, do not require masks on the floor in at least one chamber. In the three state legislatures where party control is divided, one is requiring masks and two are not.

In Minnesota, masks are required in the Democratic-held House, but the Senate’s Republican majority blocked a proposal to require masks in the upper chamber. Senators are allowed to participate in sessions remotely. “Part of it is simply respecting those that may have a different point of view,” said Senator Paul Gazelka, the Republican leader.

Similar partisan divides have appeared across the country. In Ohio, Republican lawmakers have knocked down motions by Democrats to require masks in the Statehouse and allow remote participation. So, as Mr. Thomas’s colleagues heard public comments on a bill to limit the governor’s emergency powers, which could allow lawmakers to veto the governor’s public health orders, Mr. Thomas was listening in his office, unable to ask questions.

Other Republican-led legislatures, like Missouri’s, have also stopped short of requiring mask-wearing. The Arizona House of Representatives held two swearing-in ceremonies earlier this year: one for legislators who would wear masks, and the other for those who would not. Republican leaders in South Dakota, which has the country’s second-highest rate of known coronavirus cases, have required masks in the Senate but have merely encouraged them in the House. Legislators in both chambers are allowed to attend and vote remotely.

With no shortage of pressing issues facing state lawmakers — budget shortfalls, economic relief and redistricting, to name a few — many rituals of state government have been disrupted by the pandemic.

At least 26 governors, both Democrats and Republicans, moved their annual State of the State addresses online or gave them in locations that allowed more distancing than legislative chambers do. Members of the public in 22 states have been barred from Capitol buildings. Legislatures in 27 states have allowed lawmakers to attend sessions and cast their votes from home or from other locations in Capitol buildings.

And lawmakers of both parties have assembled in conditions that were unimaginable a year ago.

In Maryland, a labyrinth of plexiglass barriers separated masked lawmakers on the Senate floor as they returned to work last month. The New Hampshire legislature held its organizing meetings outdoors. In Illinois, the House of Representatives has conducted business at a convention center rather than at the Capitol. And in California, the Assembly moved its opening ceremony to the Golden 1 Center, the home arena of the Sacramento Kings of the N.B.A.

Representative Ron Wright, Republican of Texas, died on Sunday after battling Covid-19 in the hospital, his office said on Monday. He was 67.

Mr. Wright announced on Jan. 21 that he had tested positive for the coronavirus after coming into contact earlier in the month with someone who had the virus. In the statement about Mr. Wright’s death, his office said that he and his wife, Susan, had both been hospitalized in Dallas for the past two weeks.

The statement did not confirm whether the virus caused the death of Mr. Wright, who had also been undergoing treatment for cancer.

He is the first seated member of Congress to die after battling the virus. Luke Letlow, a Louisiana Republican elected in November, died a few days before he was scheduled to be sworn in.

“Congressman Wright will be remembered as a constitutional conservative,” the congressman’s office said in a statement. “He was a statesman, not an ideologue.”

“As friends, family, and many of his constituents will know, Ron maintained his quick wit and optimism until the very end,” the statement continued. “Despite years of painful, sometimes debilitating treatment for cancer, Ron never lacked the desire to get up and go to work, to motivate those around him, or to offer fatherly advice.”

Mr. Wright, a sixth-generation resident of Tarrant County, has represented Texas’ Sixth Congressional District since 2018. A former city council member, he was a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus.

Representative Joaquin Castro, Democrat of Texas, said on Twitter that Mr. Wright “was a gentleman who cared deeply about public service.”

Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader, said on Monday that Mr. Wright was a colleague who “led with principle, integrity, and thoughtfulness” and “emulated the very best of America.”

Before serving in Congress, Mr. Wright had been the chief of staff for his predecessor, Representative Joe Barton.

“Ron was not only a dedicated public servant, a principled conservative, and a proud Texan, he was also a loving father and grandfather,” Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, said in a statement. “Ron’s life is a testament to his unshakable faith and now he rests with the Lord, having fought the good fight, finished the race, and kept the faith.”

Speaker Nancy Pelosi said members of Congress were praying for Mr. Wright’s family and the loved ones of the more than 460,000 Americans who have died from the virus.

“May it be a comfort to Congressman Wright’s wife Susan, their children Rachel, Derek and Justin, and their nine grandchildren, and the entire Wright family that so many mourn their loss and are praying for them at this sad time,” she said.

Catholic schools in the United States suffered their largest single-year enrollment decline in nearly 50 years in 2020, as school closures and economic turmoil during the pandemic disproportionately affected low-income families, who often choose parochial schools when seeking private educational options.

By the start of the 2020 academic year, more than 200 Catholic schools across the country had closed, and overall enrollment had declined by 6.4 percent, or 111,000 students, from the previous school year, according to a new report by the National Catholic Educational Association.

The financial struggles faced by Catholic schools and the families of their students were particularly severe in urban areas, where lockdowns hampered fund-raising efforts for scholarships and other forms of charitable assistance, said John Reyes, the organization’s executive director for operational vitality.

Nearly half of the enrollment decline came from prekindergarten programs, mirroring similar losses in public school enrollment, though Mr. Reyes said officials were concerned that Catholic schools would not bounce back after years of steadily declining enrollment even before the pandemic.

Enrollment at Catholic schools peaked at 5.2 million nationwide in the early 1960s, according to the association. But the number of children enrolling in Catholic schools has declined as the percentage of practicing Catholics has dropped across the United States. Enrollment for the 2020-21 school year was down to about 1.6 million students at 5,981 Catholic schools, compared with more than 11,000 schools in 1970.

Over all, in Catholic schools, 17 percent of students are not members of the faith, Mr. Reyes said. But a higher proportion of non-Catholic students — 28 percent — were attending the schools that were closed down last year.

“That’s devastating,” he said, noting that many of the schools were vital educational institutions for low-income families of color. “Those impacts on society and communities and the future of our nation are potentially tremendous,” he said.

In the race to vaccinate Americans against Covid-19, most states and counties are struggling to move fast enough to meet the immense demand. In one rural county in northeast Georgia, though, a clinic has been punished for getting on with the job too fast.

Georgia health officials suspended the Medical Center of Elberton from the state’s vaccine program for six months for starting to vaccinate teachers before they officially became eligible under state guidelines.

The clinic says it thought it was doing the right thing. By the end of December, it had vaccinated everybody in the area who wanted a shot and who qualified in the first eligible group, known as 1A — frontline health care workers and the residents and staff of nursing homes. So it moved on to the next batch of eligible people, group 1B, which included essential workers like teachers.

On Dec. 30, though, the state switched things up, announcing that it was expanding eligibility to include everyone 65 and older and their caregivers, as well as law enforcement officers and firefighters. It called that huge new group 1A+, and made them eligible starting Jan. 11, pushing group 1B and the teachers farther back in line.

Too late. “We had already finished vaccinating teachers by the time 1A+ came out,” said Dr. Jonathan Poon, who works at the clinic, though the teachers had only received the first of the two required doses. “We got caught in this in-between zone between guidelines,” he said.

Dr. Poon said Elberton County’s small population of roughly 20,000 people allowed the clinic to get the first group done sooner than other parts of the state had done, and the clinic wanted to keep moving forward. But instead of drawing praise, that swift progress got the clinic into trouble.

The Georgia Department of Health called on Jan. 26 to ask whether the clinic had been vaccinating teachers. “Next thing we know, on Jan. 28, we had our vaccine privileges suspended,” Dr. Poon said.

The following week, he said, state workers came to the clinic and took away its vaccine supply, leaving the clinic with only enough to administer second shots to people who had already gotten their first doses there.

The health department said in a statement that the clinic was wrong to have vaccinated people beyond the current phase of eligibility, and that it would no longer receive shipments of vaccine from the state.

The clinic appealed the decision once and was turned down. It is awaiting a response to a second letter of appeal.

“We were trying to be part of the solution, to get our community vaccinated,” Dr. Poon said. “Obviously, it’s been completely stripped away. And it’s not because we were trying to be first — it’s just that we saw what was going to be the best opportunity to get this done efficiently, which I thought was the whole goal of the vaccine rollout.”

Video

transcript

Back

transcript

New York Will Resume Indoor Dining on Friday

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York announced on Monday that restaurants could again begin to offer limited indoor dining to customers starting Friday, two days earlier than anticipated.

We were planning to open the restaurants in New York City — 25 percent indoor dining on Valentine’s Day. They have made the point that they’d like to open a couple of days earlier so they can be ready for Valentine’s Day — get the staff oriented, get supplies into the restaurants, and that’s a reasonable request. So we’ll start indoor dining on Friday at 25 percent. And they’ll be ready for that weekend and for Valentine’s Day. Crossing out Valentine’s Day is not really accurate. Valentine’s Day should be a big restaurant day. And so — but we’ll open 25 percent indoor dining, New York City, Friday before Valentine’s Day. So they’ll have a big Valentine’s Day.

Restaurants in New York City can again begin serving customers indoors on Friday, two days earlier than previously planned, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced at a news conference on Monday.

The city’s restaurants, which have been prevented from conducting business indoors since December, were originally slated to resume indoor dining on Sunday, which is also Valentine’s Day.

The holiday is often a busy night for the city’s restaurant business, but Sundays are typically slower in the industry. Many restaurant owners asked the governor to consider allowing indoor dining to begin earlier so they could recoup lost revenue with weekend dining crowds.

“They have made the point that they would like to open a couple of days earlier so they can be ready for Valentine’s Day,” Mr. Cuomo said.

After reviewing the latest virus data, the state had concluded that was “a reasonable request,” he added.

Andrew Rigie, the executive director of the NYC Hospitality Alliance, an industry group, applauded Mr. Cuomo’s decision.

“This will allow restaurants to generate much needed revenue from the Valentine’s Day weekend business, much of which they would have lost because the holiday falls on a Sunday this year,” he said in a statement.

The seven-day average of new cases, as well as hospitalizations and the positive test rate, has been declining in New York City in recent weeks after a steady rise in December and early January. But all three metrics remained higher, as of Thursday, than they were in December when Mr. Cuomo initiated the indoor dining ban in the city.

Restaurants will be subject to significant limits in their dining rooms. They will be allowed to operate at only 25 percent capacity indoors, and restrictions that were in place when indoor dining was first allowed in the fall — including temperature checks and mandatory distance between tables — will remain in place.

Restaurant workers are also eligible to receive a coronavirus vaccine in New York City, after Mr. Cuomo last week loosened guidelines to allow them to be inoculated before the return of indoor dining.

Outside the city, restaurants in New York State are permitted to operate at half capacity. Many restaurant owners and industry groups, including Mr. Rigie’s, have called for an end to the discrepancy, which Mr. Cuomo has framed as necessary because of the city’s density.

John Keefe contributed reporting.

Top House Democrats are preparing to unveil legislation that would send up to $3,600 per child to millions of Americans, as lawmakers aim to change the tax code to target child poverty rates as part of President Biden’s sweeping $1.9 trillion stimulus package.

The proposal would expand the child tax credit to provide $3,600 per child younger than 6 and $3,000 per child up to 17 over the course of a year, phasing out the payments for Americans who make more than $75,000 and couples who make more than $150,000. The draft 22-page provision, reported earlier by The Washington Post and obtained by The New York Times, is expected to be formally introduced on Monday as lawmakers race to fill out the contours of Mr. Biden’s stimulus plan.

“The pandemic is driving families deeper and deeper into poverty, and it’s devastating,” said Representative Richard E. Neal of Massachusetts, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee and one of the champions of the provision. “This money is going to be the difference in a roof over someone’s head or food on their table. This is how the tax code is supposed to work for those who need it most.”

The credits would be split into monthly payments from the Internal Revenue Service beginning in July, based on a person’s or family’s income in 2020. Although the proposed credit is for only a year, some Democrats said they would fight to make it permanent, a move that could reshape efforts to fight child poverty in America.

The one-year credit appears likely to garner enough support to be included in the stimulus package, but it will also have to clear a series of tough parliamentary hurdles because of the procedural maneuvers Democrats are using to muscle the stimulus package through, potentially without Republican support.

The House Democratic leadership is aiming to have the stimulus legislation approved on the chamber floor by the end of the month, and Congress moved last week to fast-track Mr. Biden’s stimulus plan even as details of the legislation are still being worked out. Buoyed by support from Democrats in both chambers and a lackluster January jobs report, Mr. Biden has warned that he plans to move ahead with his plan regardless of whether Republicans support it.

Chris Cameron and Jim Tankersley contributed reporting.

For a vast majority of Americans, a coronavirus vaccine is like sleep for a new parent: It’s all you can think about, even if you have no idea when you will get it.

People are scrolling through perpetually crashing websites at 3 a.m., or driving 150 miles each way in the snow. Others are lining up at grocery stores for hours on end, hoping to snag a leftover shot, or racing to hospitals amid rumors of extra doses.

Many more are tossing in bed in the dark, praying that tomorrow will be their mother’s lucky day.

A small portion — about 11 percent — have received one or two shots of the vaccine, leaving the nation in a medical and cultural interregnum. Some of those with only one shot are in a precarious limbo, in states snarled over second-dose distribution.

Byzantine rules setting up tiers of the eligible mean most will be holding their collective breath for months, as another set moves gingerly toward the restoration of their lives on the other side of the divide.

Debates over masks, indoor eating, testing availability and school reopenings all now center on a single axis: the lagging rollout of the vaccine.

It is the alchemy of “unrelenting waves of exhaustion, fear, hope, uncertainty and pandemic fatigue,” said Lindsey Leininger, a health policy researcher and clinical professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H. “I stay focused on the lotus mud metaphor and think about how gosh-darned beautiful we are all going to be when we come out the other side.”

The United States recorded at least 87,000 new cases on Sunday, according to a New York Times database. Although the number of reported cases is usually lowest on Sundays, it was the first time since early November that the country had fewer than 100,000 new cases on a single day.

Still, although cases and hospitalizations continue to decline, and as the pace of vaccinations picks up, some Americans — including those now vaccinated and ostensibly protected — are approaching the spring and summer with trepidation. The divide is still quite wide between the haves and the have-nots, and many fear that even a vaccinated nation and world will not restore a sense of safety or security.

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, discussed the vaccine supply during an interview broadcast on NBC on Sunday.

“I can tell you that things are going to get better, as we get from February into March, into April, because the number of vaccine doses that will be available will increase substantially,” he said on “Meet the Press.”

Dr. Fauci has also said that about 75 percent of the population would need to acquire resistance to the coronavirus, either through infection or vaccination, in order to achieve herd immunity.

President Biden, in an interview broadcast on CBS on Sunday, stressed that achieving herd immunity by the summer would be “very difficult.”

An expansion of Alabama’s lagging Covid-19 vaccination program drew large crowds of people on Monday as the state opened the last of eight new sites for inoculations.

The centers marked a huge expansion of a vaccination program that has struggled to gain traction. Only 7.7 percent of eligible Alabamians have gotten at least one dose of vaccine, according to a New York Times database, placing the state last among the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Long lines of cars formed outside a downtown stadium in Selma, a hospital parking deck in Dothan and the site of a former shopping mall in Montgomery, where teams of workers delivered vaccinations through car windows. Shots were available to anyone above age 65 and to select groups that included educators, farm workers, grocery employees and state legislators.

Before the centers opened, only about 700,000 medical workers, emergency medical workers, nursing home residents and people 75 and over were eligible to be vaccinated. The opening of the eight centers coincided with an expansion of eligibility for vaccination that raised that total to about 1.5 million.

Each of the eight centers is equipped to give 5,000 vaccinations by week’s end. By comparison, workers at Southeast Health medical center in Dothan had vaccinated fewer than 4,700 people since vaccines first became available in late December, the hospital spokesman, Mark Stewart, said in an interview.

Mr. Stewart said thousands of applicants had already sought appointments in the Dothan area. About 900 vaccinations were to be given out by day’s end, he said.

Global Roundup

Indonesia began inoculating people 60 and older on Monday after health officials concluded that the Chinese-made coronavirus vaccine they were using was safe for that age group.

The government had been criticized over its earlier decision to exclude people 60 and older in the early stages of its vaccination campaign, which began on Jan. 13. People in that age group have accounted for half of Indonesia’s coronavirus deaths.

Officials said that clinical trials in Indonesia for the Sinovac vaccine, which is made by a private Chinese company and is the only one approved for use in Indonesia so far, did not include any volunteers over age 60 and that more data was needed.

Indonesia’s Food and Drug Administration reversed course last week, granting emergency use authorization for the Sinovac vaccine among older people after analyzing trial results from China and Brazil.

However, people 60 and older will receive their second dose of the vaccine after four weeks rather than two like everyone else because a trial showed that it would give recipients in that age group greater protection, said the agency’s head, Penny Lukito. The health minister, Budi Gunadi Sadikin, said the priority would be to inoculate older health care workers because they were most at risk.

Indonesia, the world’s fourth most-populous nation, with 270 million people, has recorded more than 1.1 million infections and more than 31,000 deaths, making it the worst outbreak in Southeast Asia. Experts estimate that the actual number of infections is at least three times higher than officially reported.

In other global developments:

• China on Monday reported zero locally transmitted coronavirus cases for the first time since mid-December. In recent weeks, the country has been battling new outbreaks in northern provinces that prompted the government to impose lockdowns on millions of people. Though the National Health Commission reported one local asymptomatic case, such cases are not included in China’s official count.

• The armies of Pakistan and Cambodia have both received donations of Covid-19 vaccines from the People’s Liberation Army of China, Chinese state news media reported, the first foreign militaries to do so. According to Xinhua, the state-run news agency, China has also donated vaccines to Laos, which on Monday received a shipment of the vaccine made by the state-owned company Sinopharm. Pakistan has reported more than half a million cases; while Cambodia and Laos have reported a relative handful, experts say the real number of infections is likely to be much higher.

• The health minister of France, Olivier Véran, received a first dose of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine on live television on Monday, as the country tried to pick up the pace of its vaccination rollout. Almost 2.1 million people in France have received at least one dose of a vaccine, but the country’s per capita vaccination rate is one of the lowest in Europe, according to a New York Times database. Asked about South Africa’s decision to halt the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine after trials showed that it fared poorly against a more contagious variant of the virus, Mr. Véran said the variant was hardly present in France.

• As the virus has rampaged through Israel in recent months, it has shaken the assumptions of some in the insular ultra-Orthodox world, swelling the numbers of those who decide they want out. Experts attribute the departures to a breakdown of supervision and routine, a rise in internet use during the pandemic and generally more time for questioning and self-discovery.

• In an effort to combat coronavirus variants, the government in the Netherlands announced on Monday that the countrywide curfew would be extended until March 3 “because new, more contagious variants of coronavirus are gaining ground in the Netherlands, which could lead to a new wave of infections.” The curfew, which extends from 9 p.m. to 4:30 a.m., was put in place on Jan. 23 and was met with unrest across the Netherlands, The Associated Press reported.

• The Australian Open began in Melbourne on Monday, after a three-week delay because of the pandemic. The number of spectators has been capped at 30,000 per day, or about half the usual attendance.

Video

transcript

Back

transcript

New York City Will Open Vaccine Site at Citi Field on Wednesday

Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York announced on Monday that the vaccination site at Citi Field will open on Wednesday, specifically targeting residents of Queens, drivers licensed by the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission and food delivery workers.

On Wednesday, Citi Field is going to be open as a site. Citi Field, this is one that we’ve been hoping for a long time to get it up and running. I want to thank the Mets. This is going to be great for the people of Queens. The focus will be on residents of the borough of Queens. They’ll also be a special vaccination effort for T.L.C. drivers. So these are folks who we all depend on — Taxi Limousine Commission-licensed drivers. We need them to help us get around the city. They’re vulnerable. We want to make sure that there are specific appointments set aside for them. Also, food service workers — folks we depend on, folks who really have taken care of us. And were there throughout this whole crisis. They’ll be special appointments for T.L.C.-licensed drivers and food service workers from all over the five boroughs can go to a Citi Field for appointments. And we’re going to continue to build out. But we need supply. We need supply to keep making these efforts go farther and farther.

New York City will open a previously delayed vaccination site at Citi Field on Wednesday, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Monday. The site will focus on inoculating residents of Queens, which was hit particularly hard during the first wave of the pandemic, as well as food delivery workers and licensed taxi and for-hire drivers.

“This is going to be great for the people of Queens,” Mr. de Blasio said at a news conference.

The vaccination site will operate 24 hours a day, from Wednesday to Saturday, Mr. de Blasio said. Half of the appointments will be set aside for Queens residents who are eligible for the vaccine under state guidelines, which currently include health care workers, people older than 65 and some essential workers.

The other half will be reserved for drivers licensed by the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission and food delivery workers from any of the city’s boroughs. The latter group became eligible for the vaccine last week, when Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo loosened eligibility criteria.

The vaccination program at Citi Field, home of the Mets, follows the opening last week of a similar site at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, which currently has the city’s highest positive test rates.

The Yankee Stadium location, however, vaccinates only Bronx residents. Mr. de Blasio said that Citi Field’s large parking capacity led officials to determine it could better serve drivers and delivery workers, many of whom have been working throughout the pandemic at risk of contracting the virus.

So far, 997,844 doses of vaccine have been administered in the city, Mr. de Blasio said.

More people across New York State will soon be eligible to get a vaccine after the state announced a change last week. Starting Feb. 15, people with some chronic health conditions that put them at greater risk of severe illness from the virus will be able to receive a vaccine.

In a separate news conference on Monday, Mr. Cuomo said that those people would be required to provide proof of their eligibility in order to receive the vaccine. Local governments will be able to decide what forms of verification are required, he said, but possible forms of verification include a doctor’s letter, some other medical information or a signed certification.

The state will audit local health departments to ensure that the vaccine is being appropriately distributed, he said.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, who has made it clear that he sees the return of art and culture as key components of the economic revival of the state, announced on Monday that a series of more than 300 free pop-up performances, “NY PopsUp,” would begin Feb. 20 and run through Labor Day.

Mayor Bill de Blasio, meanwhile, announced details of the city’s Open Culture program, which will permit outdoor performances on designated city streets this spring.

The state’s pop-up events are part of a public-private partnership, New York Arts Revival, and will feature more than 150 artists including Amy Schumer, Chris Rock, Mandy Patinkin, Renée Fleming and Hugh Jackman.

Since the state does not wish to draw large crowds in the pandemic, many of the events will not be announced in advance.

The events, the state said, will take place in parks, museums and parking lots, as well as on subway platforms and in transit stations. People can follow a new Twitter and Instagram account, @NYPopsUp, for details about upcoming performances. Many will be shown online.

Mr. de Blasio also announced on Monday that the city would start a new program to help some of its cultural institutions apply for federal grants. The city’s effort, called “Curtains Up NYC,” will offer webinars and counseling to businesses and nonprofits that are connected in some way to live performances.

Facebook said on Monday that it plans to remove posts with erroneous claims about vaccines from across its platform, including taking down assertions that vaccines cause autism or that it is safer for people to contract the coronavirus than to receive the vaccinations.

The social network has increasingly changed its content policies over the past year as the coronavirus has surged. In October, the social network prohibited people and companies from purchasing advertising that included false or misleading information about vaccines. In December, Facebook said it would remove posts with claims that had been debunked by the World Health Organization or government agencies.

Monday’s move goes further by targeting unpaid posts to the site and particularly Facebook pages and groups. Instead of targeting only misinformation around Covid-19 vaccines, the update encompasses false claims around all vaccines. Facebook said it had consulted with the World Health Organization and other leading health institutes to determine a list of false or misleading claims around Covid-19 and vaccines in general.

In the past, Facebook had said it would only “downrank,” or push lower down in people’s news feeds, misleading or false claims about vaccines, making it more difficult to find such groups or posts. Now posts, pages and groups containing such falsehoods will be removed from the platform entirely.

“Building trust and confidence in these vaccines is critical, so we’re launching the largest worldwide campaign to help public health organizations share accurate information about Covid-19 vaccines and encourage people to get vaccinated as vaccines become available to them,” Kang-Xing Jin, head of health at Facebook, said in a company blog post.

The company said the changes were in response to a recent ruling from the Facebook Oversight Board, an independent body that reviews decisions made by the company’s policy team and rules on whether they were just. In one ruling, the board said that Facebook needed to create a new standard for health-related misinformation because its current rules were “inappropriately vague.”

Facebook also said it would give $120 million in advertising credits to health ministries, nongovernmental organizations and United Nations agencies to aid in spreading reliable Covid-19 vaccine and preventive health information. As vaccination centers roll out more widely, Facebook said it would help point people to locations where they can receive the vaccine.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and chief executive, has been proactive against false information related to the coronavirus. He has frequently hosted Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, on Facebook to give live video updates on the American response to the coronavirus. In his private philanthropy, Mr. Zuckerberg has also vowed to “eradicate all disease,” pledging billions to fighting viruses and other diseases.

Yet Mr. Zuckerberg has also been a staunch proponent of free speech across Facebook and was previously reluctant to rein in most falsehoods, even if they were potentially dangerous. The exception has been Facebook’s policy to not tolerate statements that could lead to “immediate, direct physical harm” to people on or off the platform.

Facebook has been criticized for that stance, including for allowing President Donald J. Trump to remain on the platform until after the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

For years, public health advocates and outside critics took issue with Facebook’s refusal to remove false or misleading claims about vaccines. That led to a surge in false vaccine information, often from people or groups who spread other harmful misinformation across the site. Even when Facebook tried updating its policies, it often left loopholes that were exploited by misinformation spreaders.

Facebook on Monday said it would also change its search tools to promote relevant, authoritative results on the coronavirus and vaccine-related information, while making it more difficult to find accounts that discourage people from getting vaccinated.