Responding to lagging vaccination rates and a rise in coronavirus cases, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Wednesday that New York’s tens of thousands of state employees would be required to show proof of vaccination or face weekly testing.
The governor also announced a much stricter mandate for state-run hospitals, saying that all “patient-facing” health care workers at those facilities would be required to be vaccinated, without the option of regular testing instead.
Mr. Cuomo’s announcement comes two days after Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a similar requirement for New York City’s government work force of 300,000 employees.
Much of the nation is grappling with the rapid spread of the Delta coronavirus variant. Earlier this week, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California announced his own requirement that would cover 246,000 state government employees, as well as two million health care workers in the public and private sectors.
The Biden administration is considering a requirement for all civilian federal employees, officials said on Tuesday. Such a policy would be a stark shift for a president who has grappled with the authority he has to force Americans to get vaccinated. Mr. Biden is expected to say more about his plans later this week.
The increasing support among government officials for vaccine mandates, which have met with pushback from some unions, underscores their concern with a far more contagious variant that poses a special threat to children, and older and unvaccinated people.
“We’re working with our unions to implement this quickly and fairly,” Mr. Cuomo, a third-term Democrat, said during remarks to a state business group on Wednesday.
The new state policy will go into effect by Labor Day, he said.
Earlier this week, Mr. Cuomo had shied away from imposing such a requirement on the state’s work force, arguing that most “public-facing” employees were municipal workers, and suggesting it was more of a decision for localities.
But Mr. Cuomo’s shift in stance appeared inevitable following Mr. de Blasio’s announcement and news that a similar move was under consideration at the federal level.
Mr. Cuomo highlighted the urgency behind the change, noting the steady rise in coronavirus cases statewide: About 2,200 new cases were reported on Tuesday, up from 275 on a month ago, on June 28.
Currently, most New York State employees are not subject to regular testing, except for those working in some congregate settings like colleges and universities.
For example, staff and faculty members at the State University of New York and the City University of New York are required to get tested for the coronavirus weekly unless they are fully vaccinated, a policy similar to the one Mr. de Blasio announced this week.
The public universities will require proof of vaccination from students attending in-person classes once the Food and Drug Administration fully approves the vaccines, although that could be months away. The vaccines are now being administered under an emergency use authorization.
Fully vaccinated travelers from the United States and the European Union will be allowed to enter England without quarantining upon arrival starting Aug. 2, the British authorities said on Wednesday as they sought to attract tourists after months of restrictions.
“We’re helping reunite people living in the U.S. and European countries with their family and friends in U.K.,” Transport Secretary Grant Shapps wrote on Twitter.
Last week, the government relaxed all but a handful of restrictions in England despite a major surge in infections. Cases have since declined, surprising experts and government officials who had expected them to keep rising.
The government has been criticized for discriminating between travelers who were vaccinated in Britain and those who were inoculated elsewhere, without any medical justification. Vaccinated people arriving in England from most “amber list” countries, those with moderately high transmission, have been required to self-isolate — unless they received their shots in Britain.
As of next Monday, the rules will apply equally to all travelers from the United States, the European Union, Iceland, Norway or Switzerland who have been fully vaccinated with shots authorized by either American or European drug regulators, Mr. Shapps said. It is unclear how British authorities will verify travelers’ vaccination status if they got their shots elsewhere.
He said travelers will still need a negative coronavirus test before a trip, and will still have to take a PCR test after reaching England. It remains unclear whether the pre-departure test would be have to be for the virus, itself or for antibodies.
The tourism industry had long advocated the policy change. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said earlier on Wednesday that he wanted American travelers to come to England “freely.” The new policy applies only to England, not to the whole of Britain. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland make their own decisions about foreign travelers.
Most European countries have opened to American tourists after the European Union recommended lifting a ban on nonessential travel last month. Yet E.U. and British residents are still mostly banned from traveling to the United States, unless they are U.S. citizens.
The Biden administration said on Monday that it would continue to restrict the entry of Europeans and others into the United States, citing concerns that infected travelers may contribute to further spread of the contagious Delta variant. The State Department is advising American travelers not to go to Britain, Spain or Portugal, and to reconsider travel to other parts of Western Europe.
Few experts are willing to draw definitive conclusions from the overall decline in cases in Britain over the past week, which could reflect transient factors like the school summer break, the end of the European soccer championships or fewer people getting tested.
But if the trend is sustained, it raises a tantalizing prospect that Mr. Johnson may have bet correctly that the country could withstand a return to normalcy, even with the Delta variant circulating widely.
Mr. Shapps also said on Twitter that international cruises would resume, and that the government would offer flexible testing programs to key workers, although he did not provide details.
Mark Landler contributed reporting.
In urging Americans to return to wearing masks indoors, at least in areas where the coronavirus is surging, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday issued only a guideline, not a legally binding mandate.
How and whether the new mask guidance is implemented depends entirely on state and local authorities, which in turn depends greatly on local politics.
As in the early days of the pandemic, the C.D.C.’s recommendation, which applies to the vaccinated and unvaccinated alike, was met with a sharp backlash, especially from political leaders in Republican-leaning states where mask mandates have been banned.
Officials in some states took the new guidance from federal experts and swiftly ran with it. Others decided to take a wait-and-see approach. And some stood firmly against it.
Shortly after the C.D.C. announcement, officials in Illinois and Nevada said they would follow the guidance, asking residents to wear masks in indoor public spaces, regardless of vaccination status.
Dr. Ngozi Ezike, director of the Illinois Department of Public Health, said that despite the effectiveness of current vaccines, including against the highly contagious Delta variant, “We are still seeing the virus rapidly spread among the unvaccinated.”
“The risk is greater for everyone if we do not stop the ongoing spread of the virus and the Delta variant,” she said.
Gov. Steve Sisolak of Nevada went further, reinstating a mask mandate for all residents in indoor public spaces in counties with high rates of transmission. The requirement includes Clark County, home to Las Vegas.
Delaware, the District of Columbia, New York and Washington State were among the jurisdictions that said they would review the C.D.C.’s guidance before making any decisions.
Two Republican governors, Greg Abbott of Texas and Doug Ducey of Arizona, signaled their opposition to the recommendation. Conservative politicians and their supporters in those states have cast public health measures as an attack on freedom.
“Arizona does not allow mask mandates, vaccine mandates, vaccine passports or discrimination in schools based on who is or isn’t vaccinated,” Mr. Ducey said on Tuesday. “This is just another example of the Biden-Harris administration’s inability to effectively confront the Covid-19 pandemic.”
Mr. Ducey added that he was concerned the C.D.C.’s announcement would undermine confidence in the vaccines.
Mr. Abbott, who in May signed an executive order preventing local governments from requiring masks, said that wearing a face covering was a matter of personal responsibility.
“Every Texan has the right to choose whether they will wear a mask or have their children wear masks,” Mr. Abbott said in a tweet.
C.D.C. officials also called on Tuesday for universal masking for teachers, staff, students and visitors in schools, regardless of vaccination status and transmission rates of the virus. Some school districts in Alabama and Georgia did not wait for state governments to weigh in and immediately instituted mask requirements.
In Florida, where new case reports have surged nearly tenfold over the last month to an average of more than 10,000 a day, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida issued a statement encouraging parents in his state to decide what’s best for their children when it comes to masking. He said experts had raised concerns that the risks of masking children outweighed the potential benefits, having negative effects on their learning, speech, social development and physical health.
“Fortunately, the data indicate that Covid is not a serious risk to healthy children,” he said. He said that he “trusts parents to weigh the risks and benefits.”
The governor did not address the new guidance about vaccinated adults at a news conference in Milton, Fla., on Wednesday.
Other jurisdictions, like Los Angeles County and St. Louis County, Mo., had reinstated mask mandates even before the C.D.C.’s announcement.
Pfizer offered new evidence on Wednesday in support of booster shots of its potent vaccine, reporting that the vaccine’s power wanes slightly over time but may be improved with a third dose.
The new data, which have not yet been peer-reviewed nor published in a scientific journal, nonetheless confirm that the two-dose vaccine offers potent protection against the coronavirus. Whether booster shots will ever be widely needed is far from settled, the subject of heated debated among scientists.
So far, federal health officials have said boosters for the general population are unnecessary. And experts questioned whether vaccinated people should get more doses when so many people have yet to be immunized at all.
“There’s not enough evidence right now to support that that is somehow the best use of resources,” said Natalie Dean, a biostatician at Emory University in Atlanta.
Still, the findings raise questions about how much protection two doses will provide in the months to come. And with coronavirus cases surging again in many states, the data may influence the Biden administration’s deliberations about delivering boosters.
If third shots are cleared for the general population, the boosters would likely represent a multi-billion-dollar business for Pfizer.
In a study posted online, Pfizer and BioNTech scientists reported that the vaccine’s effectiveness against symptomatic infection wanes slightly over time, but remains strong in preventing severe disease.
The vaccine had a sky-high efficacy rate of about 96 percent against symptomatic Covid-19 for the first two months following the second dose, the study showed. But the figure declined by about 6 percent every two months after that, falling to 83.7 percent after six months.
Against severe disease, however, the vaccine’s efficacy held steady at about 97 percent.
“It’s not a big drop, but it is noteworthy,” Dr. Dean said. “Overall, they find that the vaccine is still performing very well, at very high efficacy.”
The study period ended before the rise of the Delta variant, the highly contagious version of the virus that now dominates in the United States and makes vaccines somewhat less effective against infection.
The findings come from 42,000 volunteers in six countries who participated in a clinical trial that Pfizer and BioNTech began last July. Half of the volunteers got the vaccine, while the other half received a placebo. Both groups received two shots spaced three weeks apart.
The researchers compared the number of people in each group who developed symptoms of Covid-19, which was then confirmed by a P.C.R. virus test. When the companies announced their first batch of results, the vaccine showed an efficacy against symptomatic Covid-19 of 95 percent.
In other words, the risk of getting sick was reduced by 95 percent in the group that got the vaccine, compared with the group that got the placebo. That result — the first for any Covid-19 vaccine — brought an exhilarating dose of hope to the world in December when it was riding what had been the biggest wave of the pandemic.
Since then, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has made up the majority of shots that Americans have received, with more than 191 million doses given so far, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
In the new study, the researchers followed the volunteers for six months after vaccination, up to March 13. Over the entire period, the researchers estimated, the vaccine’s efficacy was 91.5 percent against symptomatic Covid-19. (The study did not measure the rate of asymptomatic virus infections.)
But within that period, efficacy did gradually drop. Between one week and two months after the second dose, the figure was 96.2 percent. In the period from two to four months following vaccination, efficacy fell to 90.1 percent. From four months after vaccination to the March cutoff, the figure was 83.7 percent.
Those figures still describe a remarkably effective vaccine, however, and may not convince critics that booster shots are widely needed.
Earlier on Wednesday, Pfizer reported that a third dose of its vaccine significantly increases blood levels of antibodies against several versions of the virus, including the Delta variant.
Results were similar for antibodies produced against the original virus and the Beta variant, which was first identified in South Africa. Pfizer and BioNTech expect to publish more definitive research in the coming weeks.
The announcement was a preliminary snapshot of data contained in an earnings statement. The finding has not been peer-reviewed nor published in a scientific journal. And although antibody levels are an important measure of immunity, they are not the only metric. The body has other defenses that turn back infection.
Pfizer also said in its statement that vaccines for children ages 5 through 11 years could be available as early as the end of September. The vaccine is already authorized in the United States for everyone ages 12 and up.
Pfizer’s vaccine brought in $7.8 billion in revenue in the last three months, the company said, and is on track to generate more than $33.5 billion this year.
The vaccine is poised to generate more sales in a single year than any previous medical product, and by a wide margin. The sales figures are poised to translate into billions of dollars in profit for the drug maker.
The House of Representatives will once again require all lawmakers and staff members to wear masks inside, a sharp reversal of policy as growing fears about the Delta variant reach the doorstep of Congress. Senators will be encouraged to mask up, too, but are not required to do so.
In a memo late Tuesday night, Dr. Brian P. Monahan, Congress’s top doctor, said he was recommending the change based on new C.D.C. guidance and the nature of the Capitol, where thousands of people traveling from across the country mix each week. Speaker Nancy Pelosi made the change official on the House floor Wednesday morning.
“For the Congress, representing a collection of individuals traveling weekly from various risk areas (both high and low rates of disease transmission), all individuals should wear a well-fitted, medical-grade filtration mask (for example an ear loop surgical mask or a KN95 mask) when they are in an interior space,” Dr. Monahan wrote to House officials.
In a letter to top Senate leaders, Dr. Monahan dispensed the same advice but stopped short of recommending a mask mandate. The Senate is a smaller body, and for much of the pandemic, its members wore masks voluntarily. Most Senators are vaccinated.
The House triumphantly dropped its longtime mask requirement six weeks ago in a show of optimism that the grip of the pandemic was loosening.
Since then, at least one House lawmaker and an aide to Speaker Nancy Pelosi have tested positive for the coronavirus after being fully vaccinated. Others on Capitol Hill have gone into voluntary quarantine after exposure to individuals who were sick with Covid-19, and on Wednesday, the Senate Homeland Security Committee called off a business meeting after staff members tested positive for the virus, a committee aide said. At the same time, new cases have skyrocketed across the country.
Like broader mask guidance from the C.D.C. and aggressive interventions being considered by President Biden to increase the nation’s vaccination rate, the new mask mandate in the House is likely to test the patience of a weary public and the opposition Republican Party, which is eager to accuse Democrats of undermining confidence in vaccines and jeopardizing the health of the recovering economy. Republicans in the House immediately protested and raised the prospect that they may refuse to comply.
“Make no mistake — The threat of bringing masks back is not a decision based on science, but a decision conjured up by liberal government officials who want to continue to live in a perpetual pandemic state,” Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California and the minority leader, wrote on Twitter.
House rules say that any lawmaker who does not wear a mask in specified spaces in the Capitol complex can be fined $500 or more. Several Republicans were fined earlier this year for that reason. But it is unclear what Ms. Pelosi and other House leaders would do if many Republican members refuse to go along.
Signs of such resistance were seen on Wednesday morning minutes after Ms. Pelosi announced the updated rules. When a staff member designated to work on the House floor handed a mask to Representative Lauren Boebert, Republican of Colorado, she tossed it back at the person, according to another aide who witnessed the exchange and requested anonymity to describe it.
Asked about Mr. McCarthy’s comments on Wednesday, Ms. Pelosi did little to hide her scorn. “He’s such a moron,” Ms. Pelosi was heard to say by reporters.
Ms. Pelosi’s spokesman later said he could not verify her precise words, but that the speaker indeed felt that Mr. McCarthy’s position on the issue “is moronic.”
Senate Republicans have taken a more conciliatory tack, with their top leaders pleading with conservatives who have refused vaccination to get inoculated. For instance, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, plans to begin using tens of thousands of dollars in campaign funds to run radio ads in his home state promoting the coronavirus vaccines as a “modern medical miracle” and urging his constituents to accept them.
“If you haven’t been vaccinated, do the right thing for you — for your family — and get vaccinated right now,” said Mr. McConnell, who recounts his own fight with polio in the ad. “I’m Mitch McConnell and I approved this message.”
On a global scale, the latest wave of the pandemic appears to be cresting at a lower level than those of the winter and spring, but the pattern differs markedly from place to place, as each nation endures its own particular drama.
The patchwork reflects the radically different paths the coronavirus takes from nation to nation, depending not only on vaccines, but on geographic isolation, the spread of the highly infectious Delta and other variants, social and economic restrictions, public compliance and an element of luck.
Conditions have improved substantially in places like India and South America that a few months ago were among the hardest-hit in the world, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.
In May, India reached about 400,000 new infections and 4,000 Covid-19 deaths officially reported per day, though experts said the true toll was much higher. On Monday, the daily tally of new cases in India dipped below 30,000 for the first time in more than four months, and the country is now reporting fewer than 1,000 deaths a day.
The most troubled countries now are a scattered assortment, not concentrated in any one region. Botswana, Kazakhstan, Malaysia and Spain have among the highest infection rates in the world, with numbers still climbing. Indonesia, which was recording more cases than any other country this month, remains badly affected, but the pace there has eased somewhat.
In many countries, rates of new cases are relatively low but have risen sharply in recent days. They include countries with some of the highest inoculation rates, like Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel and the United States.
Vaccination rates range from more than 80 percent of adults in some countries to less than 1 percent in others, including in many of the world’s poorest nations, according to data from the Our World in Data project at the University of Oxford.
Britain has become an outlier: One of the most-vaccinated parts of the world, it has a high (though declining) infection rate.
Globally, more than 500,000 new cases are being recorded daily, compared with more than 800,000 three months ago. But comparisons like that are fraught, because official reporting practices vary widely from region to region. The picture is especially difficult to gauge across most of Africa, where both testing and vaccines remain scarce.
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Biden Administration May Require Vaccinations for Federal Workers
President Biden said a mandate requiring all federal employees to be vaccinated against the coronavirus was under consideration, reflecting concern over the spread of the Delta variant.
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Reporter: “Will you require all federal employees to get vaccinated?” “That’s under consideration right now, but if you’re not vaccinated, you’re not nearly as smart as I thought you were.” Reporter: “Are you concerned that the C.D.C.’s new mask guidance could sow confusion?” “We have a pandemic because of the unvaccinated, an they’re sowing enormous confusion, and the more we learn, the more we learn about this virus and the Delta variation, the more we have to be worried and concerned. And there’s only one thing we know for sure: If those other 100 million people got vaccinated, we’d be in a very different world. So get vaccinated and if you haven’t, you’re not nearly as smart as I said you were — thanks.”
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration is considering requiring all federal employees to be vaccinated against the coronavirus or be forced to submit to regular testing, social distancing, mask requirements and restrictions on most travel, officials said Tuesday — a major shift in approach by President Biden that reflects the government’s growing concern about the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant.
Mr. Biden said on Tuesday that a vaccine mandate for all federal workers was under consideration, but did not provide details. Administration officials said the idea being debated was similar to a plan announced by New York City, which would require any of the city’s 300,000 employees who refuse to be vaccinated to submit to weekly testing.
Officials said there was no consideration of simply firing employees who refuse to get vaccinated, but that the government could add additional burdens or restrictions on those who do not get the protections in an effort to convince more people to get the shot in the first place. They said there was evidence that making life inconvenient for those who refuse the vaccine works reasonably well to increase vaccination rates.
Around the country, mayors, business leaders, hospital administrators and college presidents are requiring Covid-19 vaccinations, even for those who have refused to voluntarily roll up their sleeves. So far, Mr. Biden has resisted. He has not yet required all federal workers to be vaccinated. He has not ordered members of the military to get shots. And he has not used his bully pulpit to call for a broader use of vaccine mandates.
But the president’s stance may be shifting quickly.
Inside the West Wing, his top public health experts are furiously debating the right path forward, according to administration officials, as the Delta variant surges in places where there are high numbers of unvaccinated Americans, posing a special threat to children, older people, cancer patients and others with weakened immune systems.
Two months after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it was OK for vaccinated people to forgo masks indoors, the agency reversed course on Tuesday, saying that Americans should put masks on again — at least in areas where the coronavirus infection rate is high.
The official guidance — swayed by research on the Delta variant, which is causing rising case counts and “breakthrough” infections of vaccinated people — is aimed at places where the virus is surging. At the moment, that covers nearly two-thirds of U.S. counties. Per the guidance, all residents of Florida, vaccinated or not, should wear masks indoors.
The announcement complicates return-to-office plans for many companies at a time the Delta variant is already forcing some of them to push back their start dates. Asana, a software company, told employees last week that it was pushing its return-to-office date for all employees in San Francisco and New York to no earlier than Feb. 1, a person familiar with the situation said. The company is also mandating vaccines for all employees coming into the office.
Companies that have already opened their doors must decide whether to retrench on masking policies. When the C.D.C. lifted its masking guidance in May, many companies issued new guidelines allowing fully vaccinated employees and customers to return without masks. The move served as an important incentive for workers, as well as a signal that the pandemic was winding down. For employees, it provided a sense of safety and normality in returning to offices.
Walmart, which began to allow fully vaccinated employees to go mask-free in May, did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did a spokeswoman for Kroger, which has likewise reduced its masking restrictions.
In New York City, finance firms have already begun to call back workers. Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, which allow fully vaccinated employees to go mask-free, had no comment about the C.D.C.’s announcement. A spokeswoman for American Express said the company had “no updates to share,” as the company is not back in the office yet.
“People are enjoying their freedom, so I don’t know if we’re going to go back or not,” said Alana Ackels, a labor lawyer at Bell Nunnally. She added that after the C.D.C.’s guidance in May, her phone “was ringing off the hook because everyone wanted to get rid of the mask.” On Tuesday evening, after the agency’s reversal, “I haven’t gotten a single call about it,” she said.
MGM Resorts International, the casino and hotel giant, said Tuesday it would require all guests and visitors to wear masks indoors in public areas, “based on the latest information and guidance from health experts and public officials.”
The National Retail Federation, which represents businesses on the front lines of managing and enforcing public masking policies, said in a statement that “retailers will continue to follow the guidance of the C.D.C.” It added, “It is truly unfortunate that mask recommendations have returned when the surest known way to reduce the threat of the virus is widespread vaccination.”
The C.D.C.’s move may spur more corporate vaccine mandates, said David Schwartz, who runs the labor group at the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. This might be a preferable alternative to “requiring employees and customers to wear masks and not being able to maintain a consistent policy,” he said. The Washington Post on Tuesday joined a short but growing list of private companies requiring vaccination as a condition of employment.
If businesses think vaccine mandates are beneficial, “we encourage them to do so,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the C.D.C.’s director.
Government officials have been imposing vaccine mandates at the state, local and federal levels recently, and encouraging private companies to follow suit. President Biden is weighing a vaccine mandate for all two million federal employees, and is expected to deliver a speech on Thursday about it.
Kellen Browning and Sarah Kessler contributed reporting.
Confronted with surging infections, California this week became the first state to mandate coronavirus vaccines or regular testing for state employees and health care workers.
No state has vaccinated more people against Covid-19, but infections in California have risen sharply, largely because unvaccinated people are spreading the highly contagious Delta variant.
Most of the state’s labor groups and hospital systems have been publicly supportive of the new rules announced by Gov. Gavin Newsom, including the California Medical Association, the California Nurses Association and Kaiser Permanente, which said it would require all of its employees nationwide to get vaccinated or tested regularly.
But pockets of vaccine resistance have been stubborn, even in liberal-leaning California, where the vaccination rate is relatively high, and even among health care workers.
Like the state as a whole, where about 52 percent of the population is fully vaccinated, the government and health care work forces and their unions include a striking number of vaccine resisters.
Starting next month, all public- and private-sector health care workers — two million people — along with some 246,000 state government employees, will have to show proof of vaccination. If they cannot, they will be required to wear face masks at all indoor work locations and to be tested at least weekly, and in some cases several times a week.
Sophia Perkins, 58, an unvaccinated state employee who processes death certificates for the Department of Health Care Services in Sacramento and is a union member, said she would be “forced into retirement” rather than adhere to the new rules.
“Nobody should mandate somebody else to inject poison into their body,” Ms. Perkins said. “There’s not enough research on this vaccine.”
Some state employees may pose more of a challenge than others.
Only about half of the thousands of unionized prison guards working in California’s vast correctional system have received a vaccine dose, according to Donald Specter, the executive director of the Prison Law Office, a nonprofit public interest law firm based in Berkeley, Calif.
“It’s no secret that many of the staff who work in prisons are not progressive liberals,” Mr. Specter said.
Kellen Browning and Matt Craig contributed reporting.
Tokyo 2020 organizers on Wednesday reported 16 new coronavirus infections among Olympic personnel, bringing to 174 the total number of people connected to the Games who have tested positive since July 1.
No new infections were reported among athletes. Organizers also removed two earlier cases from their tally, including of one athlete, but did not offer details.
A total of 20 athletes are confirmed to have tested positive since arriving in Tokyo, derailing many of their Olympic hopes, but so far Covid-19 has mostly been a sidelight to the Games.
That is far from the case outside the Olympic bubble, where the virus is surging. Tokyo officials said that 3,177 people had tested positive for the virus on Wednesday, the city’s highest one-day total since the pandemic began, breaking a record set just a day earlier by more than 300 cases. Government data also showed that 14.5 percent of coronavirus tests in the city were turning up positive, suggesting that many cases may be going unrecorded.
Tokyo is currently under its fourth state of emergency since early 2020, with bars and restaurants closing early and sales of alcohol tightly restricted. But health experts said that the continuing surge in cases suggests that the measures, which had helped subdue earlier outbreaks, may no longer be as effective as the more contagious Delta variant accounts for a larger proportion of new cases.
The United States is ramping up vaccine deliveries to Africa as a third wave of the pandemic continues to accelerate across the continent.
On Wednesday, Washington will ship almost 10 million Covid-19 vaccines to two of Africa’s most populous nations, with 5.6 million Pfizer doses going to South Africa and four million Moderna doses to Nigeria. The deliveries are part of a pledge President Biden made in June to share 80 million doses globally — with about 25 million doses expected to arrive in 49 African states.
Over the past two weeks, Covax, the global vaccine partnership, has, in collaboration with the African Union, delivered millions of Johnson & Johnson doses from the United States to countries including Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Djibouti, Gambia, Lesotho, Niger, Tunisia, and Zambia. The latest shipments to Nigeria and South Africa brings the total number of vaccines donated to 16.4 million doses.
The donations from the United States come as Africa continues to lag behind the rest of the world in vaccination. Only about 21 million of the continent’s 1.3 billion people have been fully vaccinated, according to the World Health Organization, with 77 percent of all the doses received already administered. With the current inoculation rates, almost two-thirds of African countries will not reach a W.H.O. target of vaccinating 10 percent of their populations by the end of September.
Vaccine availability in Africa has been hampered because wealthy nations have bought excess doses and was set back further with India’s decision in March to cut back on vaccine exports, particularly the supplies from the Serum Institute of India that Covax had been relying on. Because of those issues, the African continent will most likely not be able to meet the slightly longer-term goal of vaccinating 20 percent of the population by the end of 2022.
The continent is experiencing vaccine shortages even as the severe third wave overwhelms health care systems and pushes countries to institute lockdowns and extend overnight curfews. The current surge in cases has been attributed to a lack of inoculation; loose compliance with public health measures, such as mask wearing and social distancing; and the spread of more contagious variants. More than 20 African countries have seen cases rise by more than 20 percent for at least two weeks, according to the W.H.O., with the Delta variant reported in 26 countries.
The W.H.O. has said that political crises in several countries threaten to undermine efforts to vaccinate people and curb the virus. That includes Ethiopia, where the conflict in Tigray is set to intensify, and Eswatini, where deadly antigovernment protests broke out this month. In South Africa, the looting and killings that followed the imprisonment of former President Jacob Zuma have had a negative impact on vaccination efforts in the eastern province of KwaZulu-Natal, Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, the health organization’s Africa director, has said.
Both the W.H.O. and the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have said that vaccine deliveries will continue to ramp up. Besides the United States, millions of doses from the European Union are expected to arrive in the coming weeks. And Britain said it would start delivering nine million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine this week to countries including Kenya. China also raised its vaccine pledges to Africa this month, sending Sinovac doses to nations including Tanzania and Uganda. Covax has said that it will deliver over 500 million vaccines to Africa by the end of the year.
Vaccines are now reaching countries like Tanzania, which previously made no effort to secure doses and whose former president played down the pandemic and pronounced that God helped eliminate the virus.
On Saturday, Tanzania received over one million Johnson & Johnson doses from the United States. On Wednesday morning, President Samia Suluhu Hassan received her Covid-19 vaccine, beginning the country’s vaccination campaign.
During the ceremony, Ms. Hassan assured the public of the safety of the shots and urged those vaccinated to continue following public health measures.
“I have agreed to be vaccinated today,” Ms. Hassan said, “just as my body has been vaccinated a lot since childhood.”
When South Koreans logged on to a government website this month to book Covid-19 vaccine appointments, a pop-up window told them there was “just a bit” of a delay.
“There are 401,032 people waiting in front of you,” read one of the messages that exasperated South Koreans captured in screenshots and shared online. “Your expected waiting time: 111 hours, 23 minutes and 52 seconds.”
Most people in the country are still waiting for shots.
Once held up as a model in fighting the pandemic, South Korea has stumbled for months with its vaccination program. The country is among the least vaccinated in the Group of 20 nations, with only 34.9 percent of its 52 million people having received at least one dose as of Wednesday, well below the 55 to 70 percent in other advanced nations. And now South Koreans are more desperate than ever for shots.
The country is in the throes of its worst wave of infections, with 1,896 new cases reported on Wednesday, its highest daily count. Critics say that the government, resting on its early success in the pandemic, miscalculated how urgently South Korea needed to secure shots, and that those mistakes are being amplified at a time when the country appears to be most vulnerable against the disease.
Just weeks ago, the government considered relaxing restrictions ahead of summer vacation. It announced that up to six people would be allowed to dine together starting July 1, up from the previous cap of four. Nightclubs would reopen. Restaurants, cafes and gyms would be allowed to stay open until later in the night.
Epidemiologists warned against easing restrictions while inoculations remained low and the more contagious Delta variant appeared to be spreading.
“The government was sending a wrong signal to the people,” said Kim Woo-joo, an infectious disease specialist at Korea University in Seoul.
All of New York City currently exceeds the threshold for coronavirus transmission outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday in its guidance recommending that vaccinated people resume wearing masks in public indoor spaces in areas where the virus is raging.
Agency officials said that Americans should wear masks indoors in parts of the country that have recorded more than 50 new infections per 100,000 residents over the previous week, or where more than 8 percent of tests are positive for infection over that period.
All five counties in New York City fall under those parameters. Staten Island, which has again become a virus hot spot and has some of the lowest vaccination rates in the city, recorded 109 cases per 100,000 residents last week, according to the C.D.C. In Brooklyn and Manhattan, 78.1 and 70.4 cases were recorded, respectively, while the Bronx (58.6) and Queens (56.4) are both closer to the 50-case benchmark set by the C.D.C.
The agency’s recommendations are not binding, and on Wednesday, it remained unclear whether New York City would alter its mask requirements to reflect the new guidelines.
Mayor Bill de Blasio said at a news conference that the city was still evaluating the guidance and the research and data that underpinned it.
“We got it less than 24 hours ago, and it is complicated information,” Mr. de Blasio said. “So our health team is reviewing and we’ll have more to say on it in the next few days.”
As they weighed the C.D.C.’s suggestions, city health officials continued to urge residents to get vaccinated. Starting Friday, the city will give $100 to residents who get their first dose of a vaccine at city-run vaccination sites.
Mr. de Blasio has in recent days emphasized the need for vaccine mandates as the pace of inoculations has slowed in the city. But on Wednesday, he said that the city still believed incentives could work hand-in-hand with more forceful vaccine guidance.
“There are a huge number of New Yorkers open to vaccination but just haven’t quite gotten there,” he said. “I think when someone says here’s $100 for you, that’s going to make a big impact.”
Officials at the C.D.C. also called for universal masking in schools, a policy that New York City’s public school system, the nation’s largest, had already said it would keep in place.
Currently, vaccinated individuals are largely not required to wear masks in New York State, though they are required on the city’s buses, subways and trains.
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