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States are racing to vaccinate as many people as possible as the United States’ coronavirus infection curve continues its plateau for a third week at more than 55,000 new cases per day, a level that health experts warn could rapidly escalate into a new wave.
That prospect adds further urgency to vaccination efforts, even as some states appear confident that their inoculation levels justify loosening restrictions.
At least 31 states have pledged to make vaccines universally available to their adult populations by mid-April, and many more have announced plans to expand eligibility on or before May 1, a goal set by President Biden. Alaska, Mississippi, Utah and West Virginia have already made all adults eligible to receive shots, and some local jurisdictions have also begun vaccinating all adults.
The expansion comes at a critical juncture in the pandemic, with 25 states reporting persistently high infections, according to a New York Times database. Over the past week, there has been a daily average of 58,579 new cases, about the same as the average two weeks earlier.
The number of deaths continue to trend downward, averaging about 1,000 a day, down from more than 2,000 each day a month ago. But eight states are seeing rising deaths: Kentucky, Maryland, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Ohio, Utah and West Virginia.
Mr. Biden, who initially promised to have “100 million shots in the arms” of Americans by his 100th day in office, said on Thursday at his first news conference in office that the goal had been met 58 days in and that he was doubling the target. The nation is on track to meet that new mark: 200 million shots by April 30.
As of Thursday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 130 million shots had been administered since vaccinations began on Dec. 14, and that 14 percent of the American population was fully vaccinated.
The United States is averaging about 2.5 million vaccine doses a day. If that pace continues, about half of the nation’s population will be at least partly vaccinated by mid-May. But vaccine hesitancy may slow the process, according to Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health.
Listen to ‘The Daily’: A Nursing Home’s First Day Out of Lockdown
Residents in West Virginia shared their feelings about being allowed to mix again after months of isolation.
In an interview on Fox News on Thursday, Mr. Collins said he worried not that vaccine supplies would run short, but rather that the country’s approach to herd immunity could be dampened by people who “will basically say, ‘No, not for me.’”
“That could basically cause this pandemic to go on much longer than it needs to,” he said.
Thursday brought a slew of vaccine eligibility adjustments. California will open up vaccine eligibility on Thursday to any resident 50 or older and will expand that to residents 16 or older on April 15, state officials said, citing increasing supplies of doses from the federal government. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida said that any state resident 40 or older would be eligible starting on Monday, and that the minimum age would drop to 18 on April 5.
In Connecticut, which is among the most-vaccinated states in the country, Gov. Ned Lamont said that all residents 16 and above would be eligible beginning on Thursday. New Hampshire will make shots available to all residents 16 and older starting on April 2, and North Carolina on April 7. In Rhode Island, Gov. Dan McKee said the state was on track to make vaccines available to all residents over 16 by April 19.
Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky said the state would open vaccinations to those 40 and older starting on Monday, adding that a mask mandate would stay in place for at least another 30 days. And in Minnesota, Gov. Tim Walz is expected to announce on Friday that all residents over the age of 16 will be eligible starting on Tuesday.
Hot spots are scattered.
In Michigan, new cases and hospitalizations are rapidly rising. There has been an average of 3,719 cases per day over the past week, an increase of 121 percent from the average two weeks earlier. Michigan is reporting more new cases each day relative to the size of its population than any state except New Jersey, which has seen an increase of 25 percent from the average two weeks earlier.
And in Massachusetts, which is set to open vaccines to adults 16 and above on April 19, coronavirus cases have increased 28 percent from the average two weeks earlier. Dr. Michael Hirsh, the medical director of Worcester, warned that the return of spring breakers as well as Passover and Easter could be “a setup for even a bigger surge.”
A week after several regions, including Paris, went under lockdown, the French authorities said on Thursday that three additional regions would follow suit as France tries to fight back a rise in coronavirus infections.
“The epidemic situation is not good,” Health Minister Olivier Véran said at a news conference, adding that the already high pressure on the hospital system was expected to increase in the coming days.
Mr. Véran said that three administrative regions would be put under “reinforced braking measures” for four weeks beginning on Friday night. They include the region that is home to the city of Lyon, as well as areas in the eastern part of the country.
The measures, which come on top of a nightly curfew already in place in the three areas, are similar to those imposed last week around Paris, in a large part of the north and in the southeastern tip of the country.
Most stores considered nonessential will have to close, and people’s movements will be limited to within a six-mile radius of their homes. Leaving the regions will be banned.
Mr. Véran tried to put the new rules in the least onerous light. “This is not a lockdown,” he said, “but 50 shades of measures that take into account the epidemic situation and what we know about the virus.”
Asked about the possible closing of schools, he said it would be a “solution of last resort” because of its “very heavy consequences” on children and their families.
Unlike some of its neighbors, France has resisted a new national lockdown, even in the face of new virus variants, opting instead for regional measures.
Mr. Véran said more than seven million people in the country had received a first shot of a Covid-19 vaccine, almost 11 percent of the population. More than 2.5 million have had two injections, he said.
He also announced an expansion of vaccine eligibility starting on Saturday to anyone over 70. The goal is to get a first shot to 10 million people by mid-April.
“This summer could be one of a progressive return to normal, and then there would probably not be additional waves to come,” Mr. Véran told reporters. “We have to hold on for a few more weeks, and we will make it. We are going to defeat this third wave.”
France registered more than 45,000 new cases on Thursday, a number reminiscent of figures during the pandemic’s second wave in the fall. The death toll rose by 225 over the past 24 hours to 93,378, the eighth-highest in the world.
The president of a pharmaceutical company with longstanding ties to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo received special access to coronavirus testing last year as the first wave of the pandemic tore through New York, a time when tests were severely limited.
The company, Regeneron, requested tests from the state for its president, Dr. George Yancopoulos, and his family after a “member of his household became infected with Covid-19,” a company spokeswoman said. State officials granted the request and tested the family at home in March.
By then, New York had become the epicenter of the pandemic, its frightened populace suddenly confronted with a widespread shutdown in the face of a virus that little was known about.
The following month, Mr. Cuomo announced that Regeneron would create 500,000 kits for testing samples and provide them free of charge to New York State.
The company, which eventually became a critical player in the efforts to lower the risk of hospitalization and death among high-risk Covid-19 patients, said Dr. Yancopoulos had not been involved in the donation of the kits.
The unusual and preferential treatment granted to Dr. Yancopoulos was also extended to Mr. Cuomo’s relatives, including his mother, Matilda Cuomo, and brother, the CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, and at least one of his sisters, as well as other well-connected people, according to people with direct knowledge of the effort.
Revelations about the special access they got to state-run coronavirus tests early in the pandemic have drawn the interest of investigators in the New York State Assembly.
The judiciary committee of the New York State Assembly has already been looking into several accusations of sexual harassment made in recent weeks against Mr. Cuomo, as well as the manipulation by his senior staff of data related to nursing home deaths.
On Thursday, the chair of the committee, Assemblyman Charles D. Lavine, said the preferential access for Mr. Cuomo’s family would also become part of the inquiry.
Global Roundup
New Zealand has said it will require people returning from overseas to remain in the country for six months, twice as long as the previous requirement, and to pay for hotel quarantine if they don’t.
The new rules, which took effect on Wednesday, add to the anxiety of New Zealand residents abroad who have been waiting to book spots in a quarantine system that the government introduced in October. There is a waiting list of around four months, and new slots often disappear within minutes.
Under the new system, returnees who plan to stay less than six months must pay 3,100 New Zealand dollars, or around $2,150, for the two-week hotel quarantine they are required to undergo upon arrival. They were previously required to pay the fee for stays of less than three months.
The changes were a response to anecdotal evidence that New Zealanders were entering the country for a three-month “holiday” to avoid paying the fee, said Chris Hipkins, the minister for Covid-19 response.
“Ultimately, our managed isolation facilities are designed to ensure that New Zealanders who need to return home are able to,” he told reporters on Wednesday.
New Zealand is one of the few places in the world that are limiting the number of residents who can return home during the pandemic. Tens of thousands of Australian citizens have also been stranded abroad in recent months because of restrictions that limit number of people allowed on flights into the country.
The charges in New Zealand are expected to affect approximately 3 percent of those returning, according to the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment.
As of February, New Zealand’s quarantine system was free to most residents and had collected $4.7 million in fees since its introduction last spring. The system has cost taxpayers about $1.7 million a day, according to figures provided to Radio New Zealand last year.
New Zealand has all but eliminated local transmission of the coronavirus, reporting a total of 2,476 cases and 26 deaths as of Friday, according to a New York Times database. It has vaccinated 41,500 people, most of them workers at the country’s border or immigration facilities.
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In Australia, hospitals, prisons and nursing homes in Brisbane went into lockdown on Friday after a 26-year-old man tested positive for Covid-19. It was the first local transmission detected in Queensland State in two weeks. The health authorities said that the man had been infectious since last Friday and that they were still trying to determine how he had contracted the virus.
If the so-called Stop the Steal movement appeared to be chasing a lost cause once President Biden was inaugurated, extremist organizations are now adopting a new agenda from the anti-vaccination campaign to try to undermine the government.
The safety and efficacy of coronavirus vaccines is being bashed in chat rooms frequented by all manner of right-wing groups, among them the Proud Boys; the Boogaloo movement, a loose affiliation known for wanting to set off a second Civil War; and various paramilitary organizations.
Although negative reactions to the vaccines have been relatively rare, many extremist groups are using the isolated cases to try to bolster false and alarmist disinformation in articles and videos with labels like “Covid-19 Vaccines Are Weapons of Mass Destruction — and Could Wipe out the Human Race” and “Doctors and Nurses Giving the Covid-19 Vaccine Will be Tried as War Criminals.”
The groups tend to portray vaccines as a symbol of excessive government control.
“If less people get vaccinated then the system will have to use more aggressive force on the rest of us to make us get the shot,” read a recent post on the Telegram social media platform, in a channel linked to members of the Proud Boys charged in the storming of the Capitol.
The focus on vaccines is particularly striking on discussion channels populated by followers of QAnon, the group that prophesied that Donald J. Trump would continue as president while his political opponents were marched off to jail.
“They rode the shift in the national conversation away from Trump to what was happening with the massive ramp-up in vaccines,” said Devin Burghart, the head of the Seattle-based Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, which monitors far-right movements. “It allowed them to pivot away from the failure of their previous prophecy to focus on something else.”
Taking note of President Biden’s vow to make every adult in the United States eligible for a vaccine by early summer, Rutgers University, in New Jersey, said on Thursday that all students would need to be fully vaccinated against the coronavirus to be allowed to return to campus in the fall.
“Adding Covid-19 vaccination to our student immunization requirements will help provide a safer and more robust college experience for our students,” the Rutgers president, Jonathan Holloway, said in a statement. The university, one of the largest in the country, is thought to be among the first to require students to receive the coronavirus vaccine.
That requirement will apply to Rutgers’ three main campuses, in New Brunswick, Newark and Camden. Beginning in the fall, students will have to show “proof of vaccination” before moving into a dorm or attending in-person classes.
According to the university, students may file for an exemption for medical or religious reasons. Those attending fully online or off-campus programs will also be exempt. The university has more than 70,000 students, 81 percent of whom are New Jersey residents.
Gov. Phil Murphy said this month that the state would have enough vaccine supply “for almost everyone” by May. He has set a goal of ensuring that 70 percent of the state’s adult population is inoculated in the next six months.
Rutgers plans to open a vaccine center once more doses become available. Dory Devlin, a university spokeswoman, said the college was still developing plans for how vaccinated and non-vaccinated students will interact.
Even with the new requirement, students on the Rutgers campuses will be required to practice social distancing and use face coverings, the university said. All faculty, employees and students on campus will be required to participate in the university’s testing program. And the university expects to continue offering some hybrid courses to prevent crowding in classrooms next school year, Ms. Devlin said.
University leaders have not made it mandatory for faculty and employees to be vaccinated but “strongly urge” them to do so before the fall.
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