Covid-19 Live Updates: Nations Move to Isolate U.K. Over Virus Variant

Britain, struggling to contain an outbreak of what officials said was a more contagious variant of the coronavirus, found itself increasingly cut off from the world on Monday as nations raced to ban travelers from the country, suspending flights and cutting off trade routes.

France imposed a 48-hour suspension of freight transit across the English Channel, leaving thousands of truck drivers stranded in their vehicles on Monday as the roads leading to England’s ports were turned into parking lots. Officials were scrambling to come up with emergency measures to keep goods flowing. About a quarter of all food eaten in Britain is produced in the European Union.

European Union leaders planned to meet on Monday to devise a “common doctrine” for dealing with the threat posed by the variant of the virus spreading in England.

And Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain was planning to convene the government’s emergency committee to try and get a grip on the rapidly growing crisis.

The disruption comes at a time of heightened uncertainty, with traffic at the ports already swelling before the Dec. 31 deadline when Britain withdraws from the European Union’s economic zone, the single market and customs union. With time running out, Mr. Johnson and his European counterparts have yet to secure a trade deal as they continue to engage in frantic last-minute negotiations.

The swift action taken by France and other nations around the world reflected the alarm sparked by the British government’s announcement that a new strain of the virus was spreading out of control in London and surrounding areas.

Mr. Johnson, speaking to the nation on Saturday night as he announced draconian restrictions on movement, said that the strain had been shown to be 70 percent more contagious than other variants.

Viral mutations are not uncommon, and British officials said this variant had been detected in a handful of other countries. The estimate of greater transmissibility for the British variant is based on modeling and has not been confirmed by lab experiments, said Muge Cevik, an infectious disease expert at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and a scientific adviser to the British government.

“Over all, I think we need to have a little bit more experimental data,” she said. “We can’t entirely rule out the fact that some of this transmissibility data might be related to human behavior.”

British officials said there was no reason to believe that the new variant caused more serious illness.

Even with so much about the strain uncertain — including how widely it was already circulating around the world — nations wasted no time in seeking to essentially quarantine England.

Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Ireland Italy and the Netherlands all announced restrictions on travel within hours of Mr. Johnson’s speech. Poland said it would suspend flights between the two countries starting Monday night.

Beyond the European Union, Canada, Hong Kong, Iran and Israel were among the nations issuing their own restrictions.

In the United States, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York urged the federal government to take action, saying that “right now, this variant in the U.K. is getting on a plane and flying to J.F.K.,” while also acknowledging that it may be too late. The State Department said that its travel advisory for Britain remained unchanged at Level 3.

Officials in India were among the few voices urging calm.

“If you ask me, there is no reason for such panic,” the Indian health minister, Harsh Vardhan, said at a news briefing in New Delhi. “Don’t entangle yourself in this imaginary situation, imaginary talk, imaginary panic.”

But only a short time later, the Indian Ministry of Civil Aviation announced that it would suspend all flights from Britain until Dec. 31.

A week after planes and trucks carried the first Covid-19 vaccine across the United States, inching a weary public toward hope, the second was shipped to sites around the country. The Moderna vaccine, like Pfizer’s, requires two shots, spaced weeks apart. The Food and Drug Administration authorized its emergency use on Friday.

The rollout comes as the virus shows no signs of abating in the United States — parts of California are down to their last I.C.U. beds and some hospitals in other states are at or over capacity — or around the world, as a new mutation prompted chaotic lockdowns in Britain and bans on travel from the United Kingdom in many countries.

The numbers are still as high and alarming as they have ever been: At least 317,800 people have died in the United States, more than anywhere in the world.

Many of the first vaccine shots went to health care workers. Joining them Monday will be residents and staff members of hard-hit nursing homes, set to begin inoculating their residents through Walgreens or CVS this week, part of a deal struck with the federal government. These facilities have felt the brunt of the pandemic: At least a third of the nation’s deaths have been reported in nursing homes and long-term-care facilities, and many residents have been isolated from loved ones for much of the year.

The two vaccines, from Moderna and from Pfizer and BioNTech, were developed and approved on a historic timeline and promised to nations around the world. Many European countries were readily awaiting a meeting of the European Medicines Agency on Monday, in which regulators will assess the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, opening the door for fast-tracked approvals around Europe; Britain has already begun vaccinations, starting several days before the United States.

At the same time, a large portion of people in the United States have said they will not get vaccinated. In part to persuade the public of the safety of the vaccines, some world leaders have broadcast themselves getting the injections.

President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. is the latest, scheduled to get vaccinated on Monday. He and his wife, Jill Biden, will receive their shots during a live television event in Delaware. Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will get vaccinated after Christmas, a spokeswoman said. Doctors recommended Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris stagger their first shots rather than receive them together.

BRUSSELS — From Stockholm to Athens and from Lisbon to Warsaw, European Union governments are gearing up to receive a coronavirus vaccine this week, even as cases keep rising in some parts of the continent.

The bloc’s drug authority, the European Medicines Agency, is expected to approve the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine on Monday, setting off a logistical marathon the likes of which most authorities in the region have not had to contend with before.

The operation to buy, approve and distribute the shots across the European Union has been complex and politically charged, and the stakes could not be higher. The pandemic’s second wave is still raging in parts of the region, most Europeans are spending the holidays in some type of lockdown, and the bloc’s economies are in tatters.

If the vaccine mission is successful, it may bolster the credentials of the European Union, establishing its administration as a real force with executive powers and capabilities that can take on important tasks on behalf of its members. If not, the failure may spread acrimony and disaffection.

Already, the European Medicines Agency has come under intense scrutiny for the pace at which it has reviewed the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Britain granted the vaccine emergency approval weeks ago and then started rolling out its inoculation program, with the United States following not far behind.

In the end, the European agency decided to speed up the process, moving forward an approval meeting that had been set for Dec. 29. The United States has also approved a vaccine from Moderna, but the European agency will not address the application for authorization of that company’s shots until Jan. 6.

If the agency authorizes the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine on Monday, the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, is expected to rubber stamp the decision within 48 hours. That would be the green light for Pfizer to start distributing vaccines across the region.

The commission hands over responsibility for this first load as the cargo departs Pfizer factories in Puurs, Belgium, and in Mainz, Germany, headed for European capitals, most likely on Thursday. The company, which declined to answer detailed questions about transportation plans for security reasons, will play an active role in vaccine transport and storage in each country.

From that point on, each of the bloc’s 27 member governments will be responsible for distributing the vaccine to its population in a manner that fits each country’s needs, priorities and capabilities.

The first Europeans are expected to be inoculated on Dec. 27, 28 and 29.

China is preparing to vaccinate 50 million people against the coronavirus before Feb. 15, the Lunar New Year holiday when hundreds of millions of people are expected to travel, according to a Chinese vaccine expert.

China’s National Health Commission set the ambitious target with provincial officials in a teleconference with them on Dec. 15, Tao Lina, a vaccine expert based in Shanghai and a former immunologist with the city’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a telephone interview. He cited information given to him from officials who were on the call and minutes of the meeting that were provided to him. The National Health Commission did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Tao said the 50 million figure was an estimate based on an initial assessment of the “key population targets” that would be first in line for the vaccines. He added that the provinces were in the process of tallying the total number of people. This month, the government said that it was prioritizing health care professionals, pilots, people who work in the food import industry and others at an elevated risk for contracting the virus.

China has not disclosed safety and efficacy data for any of its five vaccines that are in late-stage testing, but officials say several are on track for authorization. The state-run company Sinopharm, which has two vaccines in late-stage trials, has applied to China’s regulators for approval. The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain recently approved a vaccine made by Sinopharm after an early analysis found that it was effective.

The rapid rollout in China could cause some discontent among people who are reluctant to be vaccinated. Mr. Tao said he knew of several medical workers who were not eager to be inoculated because they were worried about the novel shots. Some of them are also less afraid of contracting Covid-19 because the pandemic appears to have been mostly stamped out in China, he said.

In other global developments:

• Gatherings of more than five people will be banned in South Korea’s capital region as an elevated step to suppress what the authorities call an “explosive” surge in coronavirus infections, The Associated Press reported. The region around the capital, Seoul, is home to half of South Korea’s 51 million people and has been at the center of a recent viral resurgence. . The acting mayor of Seoul, Seo Jung-hyup, said on Monday that the ban would apply to any type of gathering, including year-end parties, office dinners, birthday celebrations and picnics. Only weddings and funerals can follow the current rule of no more than 50 people.

After congressional leaders struck a long-sought agreement on a $900 billion pandemic relief package, lawmakers in both chambers on Monday will race to finalize legislative text and send the measure to President Trump’s desk before government funding lapses.

An agreement in principle was reached late Sunday afternoon, hours before a midnight deadline to avoid a government shutdown. With additional time needed to transform their agreement into legislative text, both chambers had to approve a one-day stopgap spending bill, giving them an additional 24 hours to finalize the deal.

Lawmakers will have just a few hours to review the hundreds of pages of text that will encompass about $2.3 trillion in relief legislation and a catchall omnibus to keep the government funded for the remainder of the fiscal year. But after months of gridlock and debate, both chambers are expected to approve the spending measures on Monday and send them to the president for his signature.

The $900 billion agreement is set to provide $600 stimulus payments to millions of American adults earning up to $75,000. It would revive lapsed supplemental federal unemployment benefits at $300 a week for 11 weeks — setting both at half the amount provided by the first pandemic relief package in March.

The final proposal will also include $69 billion for the distribution of a Covid-19 vaccine and more than $22 billion for states to conduct testing, tracing and coronavirus mitigation programs.

The agreement is also expected to:

• Continue and expand benefits for gig workers and freelancers, and extend federal payments for people whose regular benefits have expired.

• Provide more than $284 billion for businesses and revive the Paycheck Protection Program, a popular federal loan program for small businesses that lapsed over the summer.

• Expand eligibility under that program for nonprofit organizations, local newspapers and radio and TV broadcasters and allocate $15 billion for performance venues, independent movie theaters and other cultural institutions devastated by the restrictions imposed to stop the spread of the virus.

• Provide $82 billion for colleges and schools, $13 billion in increased nutrition assistance, $7 billion for broadband access and $25 billion in rental assistance.

• Extend an eviction moratorium set to expire at the end of the year.

When the coronavirus pandemic first reached Afghanistan in March, the government struggled to shut down cities and persuade Afghans to wear masks, wash their hands and practice social distancing. The measures were haphazardly enforced for several weeks before citizens began to chafe under the restrictions.

Today, even as public health officials confirm a second deadly virus wave, Covid-19 is an afterthought. Afghans have embraced a culture of denial, where personal priorities triumph over public health experts whose pleas are drowned out by public apathy, skepticism and an enduring belief that Allah determines a believer’s fate.

“The mentality that Trump and his supporters have, it’s exactly the same for the Afghan people,” said Dr. Tariq Ahmad Akbari, until recently the head physician at Kabul’s only infectious disease hospital. “They think Covid is Western propaganda.”

But unlike in the United States, there is no political party or anti-government movement playing down the virus by spreading misinformation. Even the Taliban have distributed personal protection equipment and run public health information programs. They have allowed government health workers into areas they control, the health ministry said.

In cities across the country, people go about their daily lives as if the coronavirus never existed. Afghans cram into buses and taxis, eat shoulder to shoulder indoors in restaurants, pray in mosques, embrace in traditional Afghan greetings and cluster in sprawling bazaars.

On crowded city streets, few people wear masks. Ubiquitous public health posters warning of Covid-19 are routinely mocked as relics of a not-so-distant past when the coronavirus seemed terrifying and indomitable.

Afghans continue to contract the virus and die, but the scale of the epidemic is nearly impossible to measure. The Health Ministry’s reported coronavirus death toll is 2,074, with 50,677 positive cases, but Afghanistan’s testing capacity is severely limited — it has conducted just 180,000 tests since March. Its beleaguered health system cannot always distinguish Covid-19 from other causes of death in a country where disease and violence are endemic.

As Americans celebrate the rollout of a Covid-19 vaccine, many of the doctors and nurses first in line for inoculation say a victory lap is premature.

They fear that the optimism stirred by the vaccine will overshadow a crisis that has drawn scant public attention in recent months: the alarming shortage of personal protective equipment, or P.P.E., that has led frontline medical workers to ration their use of the disposable gloves, gowns and N95 respirator masks that reduce the spread of infection.

At St. Mary’s Medical Center in Duluth, Minn., health care workers who treat Covid-19 patients are required to reuse their tightfitting respirator masks up to six times before throwing them away. Although soiled N95s are sterilized each day with ultraviolet light, Chris Rubesch, 32, a cardiac nurse, says the masks invariably sag after two or three shifts, leaving gaps that can allow the virus to seep through.

“Our days are filled with fear and doubt,” Mr. Rubesch said. “It’s like driving a car without seatbelts.”

Many of the shortages are the result of skyrocketing global demand, but supply chain experts and health care providers say the Trump administration’s largely hands-off approach to the production and distribution of protective gear over the past nine months has worsened the problem. That has left states and hospitals to compete for limited supplies. Price gouging has become the norm, and scores of desperate institutions have been duped into buying counterfeit products.

President Trump has made only sparing use of the Defense Production Act, a Korean War-era law that allows federal agencies to coordinate the distribution of scarce goods and force companies to prioritize government orders. The D.P.A. can also provide grants to companies that need help ramping up production.

With the White House largely disengaged from the crisis, medical workers, supply chain specialists and public health experts are urging President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. to make good on his campaign promises to use the Defense Production Act to increase domestic manufacturing of personal protective equipment, test kits, vaccines and the medical supplies needed to immunize hundreds of millions of Americans. They are also hoping the incoming administration will take over the distribution of scarce goods and put an end to profiteering and the mad scramble for P.P.E. that has pitted states and deep-pocketed hospital chains against nursing homes and small rural hospitals.

President-elect Joseph R. Biden, Jr. and the incoming first lady, Jill Biden, are set to receive the coronavirus vaccine on live television on Monday in Delaware, sending a message to Americans across the country that the vaccine is safe to take.

Since March, Mr. Biden’s team has been taking public health guidelines about social distancing and masks seriously, as President Trump and his aides have willfully disregarded them. But even Mr. Biden’s more careful circle has been infiltrated by the virus. Representative Cedric L. Richmond, Democrat of Louisiana and one of Mr. Biden’s closest advisers, tested positive for the coronavirus last week, the transition team announced.

Vice President-elect Kamala Harris is expected to receive her vaccine after Christmas, a spokeswoman said, following advice from doctors who recommended Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris stagger their first shots rather than receive them together.

Vice President Mike Pence, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, all received the first dose of the vaccine on Friday.

Mr. Trump, however, has neither participated in nor supported the public health campaign to reassure vaccine skeptics worried about its dangers.

On Friday, he did nothing to promote Mr. Pence taking the vaccine, an event held at the White House that officials asked all of the television networks to carry live on TV for maximum exposure. Instead, Mr. Trump was tweeting out anti-mask claims minutes after Mr. Pence received his vaccine.

Some of Mr. Trump’s advisers have defended his decision to put off his own vaccination, arguing that he still has the protective effects of the monoclonal antibody cocktail that was used to treat him for the virus in October.

But doctors have said it would set a good example to Americans who have recovered from Covid-19 that they still should receive the vaccine.

“We know that infection doesn’t induce a very strong immune response and it wanes over time,” Moncef Slaoui, the chief adviser of Operation Warp Speed, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “So I think, as a clear precaution, it is appropriate to be vaccinated because it’s safe. I think people should be vaccinated, indeed.”