As the highly contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus fuels outbreaks in the United States, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned on Friday that “this is becoming a pandemic of the unvaccinated.”
Cases, hospitalizations and deaths remain far below last winter’s peak and vaccines are effective against Delta, but the agency’s director, Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, urged people to get fully vaccinated to receive robust protection, pleading, “do it for yourself, your family and for your community. And please do it to protect your young children who right now can’t get vaccinated themselves.”
The number of new virus cases is likely to increase in the coming weeks, and those cases are likely to be concentrated in areas with low vaccine coverage, officials said at a White House briefing on the pandemic.
“Our biggest concern is that we are going to continue to see preventable cases, hospitalizations, and sadly, deaths among the unvaccinated,” Dr. Walensky said. The nation surpassed 34 million cumulative cases on Friday, according to a New York Times database.
Delta now accounts for more than half of new infections across the country, and case numbers have been ticking up in every state. There is an average of roughly 28,000 new cases a day, up from just 11,000 a day less than a month ago.
So far, data suggests that many of the vaccines — including the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson shots — provide good protection against Delta, especially against the worst outcomes, including hospitalization and death. (Receiving a single dose of a two-shot regimen, provides only weak protection against the variant, however.) Nearly 60 percent of U.S. adults have been fully vaccinated, but fewer than 50 percent of all Americans have been; only those 12 and older are eligible.
“We have come a long way in our fight against this virus,” Jeffrey D. Zients, the administration’s Covid-19 response coordinator, said at the briefing.
The pace of vaccination has slowed considerably since the spring, and vaccine coverage remains highly uneven. Delta is already driving case numbers up in undervaccinated areas, including in parts of Missouri, Arkansas and Louisiana.
In mid-May, when cases were on a decline, the C.D.C. said fully vaccinated people could go maskless in most scenarios, and on July 4, President Biden hosted an event for essential workers and others at the White House to tout progress against the virus. As cases increase, Americans may have to navigate seemingly diverging messaging, with local health officials advising something potentially different than the C.D.C.’s broad guidance.
The World Health Organization recently repeated its recommendation that even vaccinated people should continue to wear masks, in part due to the global spread of Delta.
The C.D.C. has stood by its mask guidance, however, with Dr. Walensky noting the W.H.O.’s global purview and the fact that wealthy nations have snapped up so many of the available shots. She has added that local officials in the United States can opt for more stringent measures to protect the unvaccinated. On Thursday, Los Angeles County said it was reinstating an indoor mask mandate for everyone beginning this weekend, regardless of vaccination status. On Friday, Dr. Walensky pointed out the heterogenous nature of the country and said “these decisions have to be made at the local level.”
“If you have areas of low vaccination and high case rates, then I would say local policymakers might consider whether masking at that point would be something that would be helpful for their community,” she added.
In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Friday there were currently no plans to reintroduce an indoor mask mandate for everyone citywide, nor did he think the move was needed. The city has reported a recent streak of more than 400 cases per day, up from about 200 per day on average just a few weeks ago. “We need to watch it like a hawk,” he said on a radio show, referring to the Delta variant.
Health officials are focused on hospitalizations, he said, which have remained low in recent weeks. About 53 percent of city residents are fully vaccinated, according to city data. Should hospitalization rates rise, he said, the city will adapt.
“We don’t have a plan to change course at this point,” he said, adding that “if we see something that we need to change, we will say it immediately and will call people to arms.”
After narrowly missing a self-imposed goal of having 70 percent of adults at least partially vaccinated by July 4, the Biden administration is making a renewed push to try to reach those who have still not gotten their shots. Officials have also recently announced the creation of “surge response teams” to help hard-hit states manage Delta-driven outbreaks. Missouri and Nevada have already requested assistance.
Emily Anthes and
Athletes in isolation. A host city under a state of emergency with coronavirus cases surging. Empty venues where winners will place medals around their own necks.
One week before the Summer Olympics are scheduled to begin in Tokyo, organizers, participants and officials in Japan face ever-growing challenges as they try to pull off the world’s biggest sporting event in the middle of a pandemic.
Organizers have instituted strict Covid rules, barring spectators from most events, mass-testing Olympics personnel, and creating bubbles aimed at separating the public from the thousands of athletes, coaches and guests flying in from around the world. On Thursday, the president of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, insisted that there was no risk that the Games would spread infections, saying that organizers would do everything they could to ensure “that we do not bring any risk to the Japanese people.”
But concerns have grown after several coronavirus cases emerged in recent days among competitors and others involved with the Games.
On Friday, the organizing committee reported four new infections among Olympics-related personnel, bringing to 30 the total confirmed cases this month. One of the cases is of a Nigerian official who tested positive upon arrival and was hospitalized, according to Japanese news outlets, the fifth case detected among delegations from overseas.
This week, 21 South African rugby players went into isolation after being identified as close contacts of an infected person on their flight. Several staff members at a hotel where Brazilian athletes are staying also tested positive for the virus, sending the competitors into isolation.
Bradley Beal, a guard who had been expected to be one of the primary scorers for the U.S. men’s basketball team, will miss the Tokyo Olympics after being placed in health and safety protocols.
Team USA also canceled Friday’s scheduled exhibition against Australia and placed forward Jerami Grant in health and safety protocols as the team faces hurdles in anticipation of the Olympics. Gregg Popovich, Team USA’s coach, told reporters that he expected Grant would still participate in the Olympics.
Australian player Liz Cambage said she had been suffering panic attacks about the prospect of entering an Olympic Covid-19 bubble.
“Every athlete competing in the Olympic Games should be at their mental and physical peak, and at the moment, I’m a long way from where I want and need to be,” she said.
Out of an abundance of caution, the USA Men's National Team exhibition versus Australia on Friday has been cancelled.
The USA Women's National Team's matchup with Australia will be played at 2:30 PM ET on NBCSN.
— USA Basketball (@usabasketball) July 16, 2021
Cases are climbing in Tokyo, which recorded 1,271 new infections on Friday, continuing its biggest surge in six months. Across Japan, despite social distancing restrictions in much of the country, the daily average of cases has risen 63 percent in the past two weeks, according to New York Times data. About 20 percent of Japan’s 126 million people are fully vaccinated, far lower than in many Western countries.
The developments prompted one of Japan’s leading newspapers, The Asahi Shimbun, to declare that the Olympics’ Covid bubble “has already burst.” In an article published on Thursday, the newspaper described confusion at airports, where some arriving athletes took selfies and exchanged fist-bumps with other passengers, and at hotels, where staff members said they sometimes could not determine which guests were part of Olympics delegations and subject to stricter rules.
“It has become clear that organizers’ plans to separate Olympic-related people and the general public are failing miserably,” the newspaper wrote.
Organizers say that their protocols are working and that infections have occurred among only a handful of the tens of thousands of people involved in the Games. Tokyo’s governor, Yuriko Koike, said on Friday that the Games would “draw attention from the world, where they can be a light of hope under the predicament of Covid.”
During a meeting with Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga on Thursday, Mr. Bach said that 85 percent of residents of the Olympic Village would be vaccinated against Covid-19, and that nearly all I.O.C. members and staff would arrive in Japan fully immunized.
Listen to ‘The Daily’: What the Japanese Think of the Olympics
Despite low coronavirus vaccination rates and an ambivalent public, Tokyo is still set to host the Games.Last week, officials said that they would bar spectators from most events, after Tokyo’s decision to extend a state of emergency for the duration of the Games. On Thursday, the I.O.C. announced changes to the medal ceremonies, saying that medals would be laid out on trays for the athletes to pick up themselves and that podiums would be larger than usual to ensure social distancing.
Still, public opposition to the Games, which were postponed from last year, has remained intense. Protesters have picketed outside Mr. Bach’s hotel and circulated petitions demanding that the event be called off. Kenji Utsunomiya, a former chairman of Japan’s bar association, submitted a petition with more than 450,000 signatures to the Tokyo metropolitan government on Thursday, arguing that the Games should not be held under a state of emergency.
“We won’t be able to save lives if the infection spreads further and the medical system collapses,” he told reporters. “Now is the time to cancel the Games with courage.”
From protests and Covid-related bans on fans, join Times journalists for an exclusive virtual event as we discuss what this moment means for Tokyo 2020. Plus learn about the sports new to the Olympics through interviews with U.S. surfer Carissa Moore and Czech climber Adam Ondra. Click the button above to R.S.V.P.
global roundup
Canada is preparing to open its borders to travelers in the coming months as coronavirus infections continue to decline across the country, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Thursday.
According to a statement released by his office, Mr. Trudeau said during a meeting with Canadian regional leaders that if current trends continued, “Canada would be in a position to welcome fully vaccinated travelers from all countries by early September.” Immunized Americans and permanent residents could be allowed in as early as mid-August, he added.
Canada initially trailed the United States in its vaccination campaign, as the manufacturers of two vaccines currently approved in Canada, Pfizer and Moderna, faced production issues this year.
But the country has quickly caught up. About 47 percent of Canadians have been fully vaccinated, and about 70 percent have received one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, according to a New York Times tracker. (In the United States, about 48 percent of the population has been fully vaccinated, and about 56 percent has received at least one dose.)
Canada’s regional authorities have recently lifted restrictions, as hospitalizations and deaths have been steadily declining.
Canadian provincial ministers are expected to share details of their reopening plans early next week.
In other news from around the world:
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In France, the Eiffel Tower reopened to the public on Friday, nearly nine months after it shut down because of the pandemic. It was its longest closure since the end of World World II. The tower is set to operate at only half-capacity, and starting Wednesday, visitors will have to present proof of vaccination or a negative test. As of Friday, 70,000 tickets had been booked for visits through the end of August.
The relaxation of pandemic restrictions and the growing ranks of people vaccinated against the coronavirus have propelled Europe’s economy forward in the past few months. And the European Commission even upgraded its forecasts for the region.
But the rapid spread of the more contagious Delta variant has made the path of the recovery much more unpredictable and uneven.
In Britain, the final lifting of restrictions on Monday is expected to add fresh momentum to the economic recovery. But the surge in infections presents a new hurdle to businesses trying to operate at full capacity. Sectors like hospitality, theater and trucking are having to temporarily shut as workers go into self-isolation because they have either caught the virus or have been told they have come into contact with someone who has.
In Spain, which once again has one of the highest infection rates in Europe, some regional governments have reintroduced restrictions. Portugal has reintroduced a curfew in Lisbon, Porto and other popular tourism spots, dampening a second summer travel season. The Netherlands also announced new measures this week.
The German economy has been bouncing back quickly, and the country’s unemployment rate, at 5.9 percent, is almost back to the pre-crisis level.
But Germany’s recovery has also been bumpy. The number of new cases has doubled in the last week, and three-quarters of those were attributed to the variant. Although there is no talk of renewed lockdowns in Germany so far, quarantine rules for returning travelers may discourage tourism.
That is bad news for the rest of Europe: Germans are among the continent’s most avid travelers.
Africa is in its deadliest stage of the pandemic so far, and there is little relief in sight.
The more contagious Delta variant is sweeping across the continent. Namibia and Tunisia are reporting more deaths per capita than any other country. Hospitals across the continent are filling up, oxygen supplies and medical workers are stretched thin, and recorded deaths jumped 40 percent last week alone.
But only about 1 percent of Africans have been fully vaccinated. And even the African Union’s modest goal of inoculating 20 percent of the population by the end of this year seems out of reach.
Rich nations have bought up most doses long into the future, often far more than they could conceivably need. Hundreds of millions of shots from a global vaccine-sharing effort have failed to materialize.
Supplies to African countries are unlikely to increase much in the next few months, rendering vaccines, the most effective tool against Covid, of little use in the current wave. Instead, many countries are resorting to lockdowns and curfews.
On Friday, Gavi, the vaccine alliance that co-lead the vaccine sharing program Covax, said the United States would deliver 25 millions doses of the vaccine manufactured by Johnson & Johnson to African countries in the coming weeks.
Yet even a year from now, supplies may not be enough to meet demand from Africa’s 1.3 billion people unless richer countries share their stockpiles and rethink how the distribution system should work.
“The blame squarely lies with the rich countries,” said Dr. Githinji Gitahi, a commissioner with Africa Covid-19 Response, a continental task force. “A vaccine delayed is a vaccine denied.”
Exactly one month after Gov. Gavin Newsom triumphantly announced California’s “grand reopening” from more than a year of health restrictions, Los Angeles County said on Thursday that it would again require face masks indoors starting this weekend.
The proclamation — along with a warning from the University of California that most unvaccinated faculty, staff and students would be barred from its campuses this fall — underscored the gathering concern that the coronavirus may be poised for a resurgence, although not one nearly as concerning as previous spikes.
Every U.S. state has reported an increase in new virus cases in recent days. California’s figures have nearly tripled over the past month, largely because of cases in San Bernardino and Los Angeles. Still, the current rate of 3,000 new cases a day is a blip compared with the winter peak, when there were more than 44,000.
Scientists say that the about 160 million people across the country who are fully vaccinated are largely protected from the virus, including against the highly contagious Delta variant. Fifty-one percent of Californians are fully vaccinated, well below the levels in some Northeastern states but above the national rate.
“If we want to extinguish this pandemic, this disease, we’ve got to get vaccinated. Period. Full stop,” Mr. Newsom said this week.
Los Angeles County, where public health officials had been recommending masks indoors but not requiring them, has reported more than 1,000 daily cases, a tripling in the past two weeks. The reinstated masking mandate is set to take effect on Saturday.
At the 10-campus University of California system, which serves more than 285,000 students, the university president, Michael V. Drake, said in a letter to chancellors that the current research, both from medical studies and the university’s own infectious-disease experts, pointed to the need for a vaccine mandate for anyone who was going to be on campus.
The requirement will apply to students and employees alike, and to participants in athletic and study-abroad programs, Dr. Drake said.
Under the policy, students without approved vaccine exemptions will be barred from campus housing, events, facilities and classrooms. While there will be “limited exceptions, accommodations and deferrals,” not all classes will be offered remotely.
A Ugandan weight lifter who traveled to Japan in the hopes of competing in the Tokyo Olympics has gone missing after failing to show up for a coronavirus test, officials said on Friday.
The weight lifter, Julius Ssekitoleko, 20, is one of nine Ugandans who had been staying in Izumisano, a city in Osaka Prefecture in western Japan, since mid-June.
Olympic organizers have tried to keep all Games participants in a “bubble” and under strict rules to prevent the spread of the coronavirus while they are in the country. Athletes training outside Japan have been restricted to hotels and training venues.
Last month, two people traveling with the Ugandan Olympic delegation tested positive for the coronavirus after arriving in Japan. It is not clear whether Mr. Ssekitoleko was one of them.
The police are conducting a search, said Katsunobu Kato, the chief cabinet secretary to Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga. Mr. Kato said the police and city officials were making an “all-out effort” to find the weight lifter.
Yuji Fukuoka, a spokesman for the city of Izumisano, said that an official who had traveled with the Ugandan delegation checked Mr. Ssekitoleko’s hotel room on Friday, only to find that he was not there.
“All we want is that he’s found as soon as possible,” Mr. Fukuoka said. “He might be having a tough time.”
The mayor of Windsor, Ontario, said the Canadian government had blocked his plan to vaccinate residents inside the tunnel that connects his city with Detroit, using some of Michigan’s surplus, soon-to-expire Covid-19 vaccine doses.
It was an ambitious idea: Since Canadian officials wouldn’t allow U.S. vaccines into the country, American pharmacists would come to the edge of the U.S. border inside the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel, which connects the two cities, and jab the vaccine into the arms of Canadians on the other side.
The plan, which was reported by The Detroit Free Press, was the brainchild of Drew Dilkens, the mayor of Windsor. He said in an interview on Thursday that medical professionals in Detroit had told him they were tossing extra vaccines as the demand for the shots in the United States slowed.
Michigan has scrapped nearly 150,000 unused vaccine doses since December, said Lynn Sutfin, a spokeswoman for the state’s Department of Health and Human Services. In addition to looming expiration dates, she said, doses were also discarded because of broken syringes or vials.
The Canadian government has not allowed those surplus vaccines to enter the country, so Mr. Dilkens figured that his tunnel plan would keep the doses in Michigan and his residents in Canada. He even arranged for a white line to be painted along the border in the tunnel.
“When the Canadians go down, their feet would stay on the right side of the line,” he said, “and the United States folks, their feet stand on the left.”
But the Canada Border Services Agency denied the request, saying in a letter last month that closing the tunnel for the proposed vaccination effort could disrupt trade and would have “significant security implications.”
Canada had lagged behind the United States in distributing vaccines but has recently caught up. According to the government’s health database, nearly 68 percent of Canadians have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, and nearly 36 percent have been fully vaccinated. In the United States, where demand for vaccines has cooled in recent weeks, nearly 56 percent of Americans have received at least one dose and just over 43 percent are fully vaccinated, according to a Times database.
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