Across the United States Monday, airports expect to be filled with people reuniting with significant others, parents and friends from the 33 countries that have been prohibited from traveling directly to the United States for more than a year and half.
Luise Greve, 23, of Erlangen, Germany is among the travelers who bought the first flight that would get them to their loved one’s side as soon as the White House announced that travel would open on Nov. 8 to fully vaccinated visitors from previously banned countries.
Under the new rules, fully vaccinated travelers will be allowed to enter the United States if they can show proof of vaccination and a negative coronavirus test taken 72 hours before departure. Unvaccinated Americans and children under the age of 18 are exempt from the requirement, but must take a coronavirus test within 24 hours of travel.
Ms. Greve last saw her boyfriend in March 2020 — “just short of 600 days ago,” she noted — when she visited him for three weeks in Sedalia, Mo.
The pair met in early 2019 when they were randomly assigned to be part of the same castle-building “guild” in Lords Mobile, a cooperative game they play on their phones. About a week before she flew back to Germany during their March 2020 visit, the United States suspended most travel from Europe. As the pandemic dragged on, her boyfriend, who is 20, could have visited her in Germany. But his job did not offer vacation days and he could not afford to quit.
Ms. Greve, who is a university student, had been planning to use a workaround utilized by many frustrated travelers during the pandemic and enter the United States after spending two weeks in Canada. But before she could do that, the White House announced that it would be lifting the travel ban. Once officials announced the date, she secured a flight departing from Neuremberg at 6 a.m. Monday and arriving, after several layovers, in Kansas City on 8:27 p.m. that night.
On Friday, ahead of her trip, she was excited but nervous. At check-in, she will have show her proof vaccination and a negative coronavirus test result.. She was not allowing herself to get her hopes up.
“I’m just worried things will go wrong because all through the pandemic things went wrong,” she said. “Once I’m in Kansas City, I can breathe again after one and half years.”
Beatrice Fratini, 24, who lives about an hour from Venice, also expressed hesitation that her reunion with her American fiancé would actually happen Monday evening in Washington, D.C. The travel ban had traumatized her she said.
“I’m excited but I’m not going to believe it until I’m there,” she said.
These long separations can put pressure on relationships, noted Giulia Polvara who lives near Milan. Ms. Polvara, 30, is traveling to the United States next Saturday, the first day she has off work after the ban lifts. Mr. Polvara met her “special friend” as she’s calling him, in December 2020 when she was visiting her sister in New York City. They spent one intense week together.
She was supposed to visit him in early March 2020, but then the Lombardy region, one of the parts of Europe hit worse by the coronavirus, was on lockdown, meaning she couldn’t even leave her town near Lake Como to get to the airport. By the time Italy loosened its restrictions on Lombardy, the United States had banned most visitors from Europe.
“There is so much building up to this event,” she said. “I’m very happy. I’m also scared of being underwhelmed or that he will be underwhelmed.”
The man she is traveling to see could not come to Europe, because he is an Iranian living in New York City and he was waiting for the United States to issue his green card. The same week that the ban was lifted his green card was issued she said.
A federal appeals panel on Saturday temporarily blocked a new coronavirus vaccine mandate for large businesses, in a sign that the Biden administration may face an uphill battle in its biggest effort yet to combat the virus among the American work force.
The stay, issued by a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Louisiana, doesn’t have an immediate impact. The first major deadline in the new rule is Dec. 5, when companies with at least 100 employees must require unvaccinated employees to wear masks indoors. Businesses have until Jan. 4 to mandate Covid vaccinations or start weekly testing of their workers.
But Saturday’s move provided momentum for a wide coalition of opponents of the rule, who have argued that it is unconstitutional. A group of businesses, religious groups, advocacy organizations and several states, including Louisiana and Texas, had filed a petition on Friday with the court, arguing that the administration had overstepped its authority.
It was unclear whether the stay would be a procedural blip for the Biden administration or the first step in the unwinding of the mandate.
At the core of the legal challenge is the question of whether OSHA exceeded its authority in issuing the rule and whether such a mandate would need to be passed by Congress. A similar issue was in play when a Texas court in late 2016 halted an Obama-era Labor Department rule that would have made millions more Americans eligible for overtime pay. The Trump administration, which took office the next year, said it would not defend the overtime rule.
The suit against the mandate stated that President Biden “set the legislative policy” of substantially increasing the number of Americans covered by vaccination requirements, and “then set binding rules enforced with the threat of large fines.”
“That is a quintessential legislative act — and one wholly unrelated to the purpose of OSHA itself, which is protecting workplace safety,” the suit said. “Nowhere in OSHA’s enabling legislation does Congress confer upon it the power to end pandemics.”
A separate lawsuit against the new rule was also filed on Friday in the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in St. Louis by 11 Republican-led states, among them Texas, Mississippi, South Carolina and Utah.
The Fifth Circuit panel said in a brief order, signed by a deputy clerk, that the judges were blocking the regulation “because the petitions give cause to believe there are grave statutory and constitutional issues with the mandate.” It said the rule was suspended “pending further action by this court.”
The two-page order directed the Biden administration to respond by 5 p.m. Monday to the group’s request for a permanent injunction.
Seema Nanda, the chief legal officer for the Department of Labor, said in a statement that the government was confident in its legal authority to issue the mandate on vaccinations and testing.
“The Occupational Safety and Health Act explicitly gives OSHA the authority to act quickly in an emergency where the agency finds that workers are subjected to a grave danger and a new standard is necessary to protect them,” Ms. Nanda said.
“We are fully prepared to defend this standard in court,” she added.
After both sides have filed briefs, the court will decide whether to lift the temporary injunction, allowing the rule to proceed as planned, or whether to grant a permanent injunction. OSHA could then take the case to the Supreme Court.
“The side that is asking for the injunction has to prove that this rule violates the Constitution,” said Mark F. Kluger, founding partner at the employment law firm Kluger Healey. “That’s a really tough burden to meet,” he added, noting that “federal agencies over the years have become increasingly aggressive about passing or creating rules.”
As an example, he cited the National Labor Relations Board’s rules for union elections. But not all such efforts have been upheld up by the courts.
“The fight is not over and I will never stop resisting this Admin’s unconstitutional overreach!” Attorney General Ken Paxton of Texas, who had challenged the mandate, said in a tweet on Saturday.
Mr. Paxton has previously called the Biden administration’s mandate a “breathtaking abuse of federal power” and is one of the attorneys general who has sued the administration over federal worker vaccine mandates.
The Louisiana attorney general, Jeff Landry, said in a tweet that the court’s decision was a “major win for the liberty of job creators and their employees.” Attorney General Alan Wilson of South Carolina also applauded the court’s decision on Twitter. “The Constitution will prevail,” he wrote. “The President is not above the law.”
But David Michaels, a leader of OSHA during the Obama administration, described the court’s move on Saturday as a faulty ruling with political motivations. “The same activist court that refused to stay Texas’ law that permits bounty hunters to sue anyone who aids an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy has stayed an OSHA rule that is clearly within OSHA’s authority, will save lives and make workplaces safe.”
Britain’s health secretary is urging eligible residents to get booster shots of the coronavirus vaccine, aiming to reduce pressure on the country’s health system as winter approaches.
Ten million Britons, largely those over age 50, have received booster shots since the government began offering them, and millions more will be invited in the coming weeks to book appointments.
Officials hope the extra doses will boost protection against the virus. Some research suggests that immunity against infection in certain populations, particularly the elderly and those with underlying medical conditions, may begin to wane six months after full vaccination.
“If we all come together and play our part, we can get through this challenging winter, avoid a return to restrictions and enjoy Christmas,” said Sajid Javid, the health secretary, in a statement on Sunday.
The move recalled last winter’s outbreak, when the Alpha variant ripped through the country, prompting dozens of nations to ban British travelers and forcing families to cancel Christmas gatherings because of lockdown restrictions.
As Britain and several European countries struggling with a surge in cases, the World Health Organization said this week that Europe was re-emerged as an epicenter of the pandemic and could experience a half million Covid-related deaths in the next three months.
The region was reporting an average of more than 30 new cases a day for every 100,000 people, a rate that has almost doubled since mid-September. Officials have blamed the relaxation of coronavirus restrictions and low vaccination rates in some countries.
Germany, where vaccination rates are lagging behind those in such European countries as Spain and Italy, reported a new daily case record this week, with about 25,320 infections on average per day. Some 67 percent of the population is fully vaccinated.
Two spotted hyenas at the Denver Zoo have tested positive for the coronavirus, becoming the first known cases in the world among hyenas, zoo and veterinary services officials announced on Friday.
The adult hyenas, 22-year-old Ngozi and 23-year-old Kibo, have so far exhibited mild symptoms of Covid, including “a little bit of coughing and sneezing,” and nasal discharge and lethargy, but they are believed to be “in good shape and improving,” Jake Kubié, a spokesman for the Denver Zoo, said on Saturday.
The hyenas are the latest in a number of infections confirmed among animals at the Denver Zoo, with positive test results returned for 11 lions and two tigers, which Mr. Kubié said “have either fully recovered or are on their way to recovery.”
Samples were collected from a variety of species at the zoo, said the announcement from the National Veterinary Services Laboratories, which is part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The samples were tested by the Colorado State University Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory.
Coronavirus infections among animals in zoos and sanctuaries have affected several types of big cats, otters and nonhuman primates, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The risk of these animals spreading the virus to people is considered to be low, the C.D.C. says.
Early in the pandemic, a Malayan tiger that was 4 years old at the time was the first tiger to test positive for the virus at the Bronx Zoo. Other cases among zoo animals followed there and elsewhere. Recently, coronavirus infections were detected among tigers and lions at the National Zoo in Washington, where a lion was reported to have the Delta variant; Sumatran tigers and snow leopards at a children’s zoo in Lincoln, Neb.; the world’s oldest gorilla in captivity among others at the zoo in Atlanta; and even among vaccinated tigers at the San Diego Zoo.
This summer, zoo animals started receiving an experimental Covid vaccine made by Zoetis, a veterinary pharmaceutical company in New Jersey.
Ngozi and Kibo, older adults in hyena years, were not vaccinated, and neither were the tigers or lions found to have been infected in Denver, but the zoo is working to prioritize its supply of the animal Covid vaccine and ordering more. “We have been able to vaccinate some of our animals, primates and great apes, because we know they are most at risk, but we haven’t had the supply to vaccinate all of our other animals,” Mr. Kubié said.
For now, Mr. Kubié said, the zoo’s staff is observing infected animals for any signs of worsening health, whether they are less active or lose their appetite, to administer antiviral or anti-nausea medication if needed.
Despite many signals that things are improving in the United States — the stock market is hitting record highs, hiring is accelerating sharply with 531,000 jobs added in October, workers are earning more, and Covid hospitalizations and deaths are dropping from their autumn peaks — many Americans seem stuck in a pandemic hangover of pessimism.
More than 60 percent of voters in opinion surveys say that the country is heading in the wrong direction — a national funk that has pummeled President Biden’s approval ratings and fueled a backlash against Democrats that could cost them control of Congress in next year’s midterm elections.
In more than two dozen interviews across the country, voters ticked off a snowballing list of grievances that had undercut their faith in a president who ran on a pledge of normalcy and competence: The chaotic, deadly pullout from Afghanistan. A spike in migrants crossing the southern border. A legislative agenda stymied by Republican opposition and Democratic infighting.
The complaints are not just coming from conservatives. Voters who supported Mr. Biden said they had grown dispirited about his ability to muscle through campaign pledges to address climate change, voting rights and economic fairness while also confronting rising prices and other disruptions to daily life exacerbated by the pandemic.
“It’s incredibly frustrating,” said Daniel Sanchez, who lost his teaching contract at a community college in suburban Phoenix when enrollment plunged during the pandemic. Now, he is making minimum wage at an organic market and searching for full-time teaching work.
Mr. Sanchez, 36, said he still supported Mr. Biden, echoing many Democratic voters who said they believed the president was being unfairly blamed by Republicans and the news media for problems beyond his control, such as the price of gasoline or Covid spikes among Americans who refuse to get vaccinated.
But Mr. Sanchez has grown exasperated with the endless melodrama in Washington as a Democratic effort to confront climate change and strengthen the social safety net has stalled amid intraparty disputes. He is particularly frustrated with two moderate Democratic senators — Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Mr. Sanchez’s own senator, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.
“It seems like the answers are right in front of them, and people are willing to do nothing about it,” he said.
Mr. Biden came into office vowing to “build back better.” But voters said little was getting built as Democrats fight over multitrillion-dollar measures to strengthen the country’s social safety net and improve physical infrastructure. Normal life was not back, and might never be. And voters said so many things just felt worse.
It is not just the federal government they blame. Trash is piling up on city streets because of a dearth of garbage haulers. School bus services are being canceled and delayed for want of drivers. Americans who have been hurt economically by the pandemic are still struggling to get rental assistance and unemployment benefits, sometimes months after applying.
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