What Hospital in Dallas Have 50 Babies Born the Same Night in 1961
Mayor Adams says he is weighing a 'temporary' remote learning option.
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Mayor Adams Says He's Open to a Remote Learning Option
Mayor Eric Adams of New York City said his administration would continue to push for in-person learning, but would also consider a temporary remote option for students.
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Safest place is in school, and I'm going to continue to push that, but we do have to be honest that there's a substantial number of children, for whatever reasons, parents are not bringing them to school. I have to make sure children are educated. My goal is to continue to push forward to get our children in school, but I must entertain with my — president of the U.F.T. to come together as a partner and say, "How do we, No. 1, identify those children that are not in the school?" Because we want to go see them, bring them into school. But I'm willing to sit down and entertain with the U.F.T., if there is a way to do a temporary remote option.
Mayor Eric Adams said on Thursday his administration is considering a "temporary" remote learning option for the significant number of students who are already staying home during the pandemic.
There appeared to be no actual policy shift on Thursday, and no active planning for a remote option that would coincide with the current Omicron surge, which already appears to be plateauing across the city. Instead, the city and the teachers' union appeared to be negotiating in public about whether and how to implement a remote learning option.
The two sides have — for nearly two years — been unable to agree on whether teachers should be allowed to livestream their in-classroom lessons to students learning at home. Without such an agreement, it's unlikely that a remote option will materialize.
Speaking at a news conference, Mr. Adams said that, even though public health experts believe school is the "safest" place for children, "we do have to be honest that there is a substantial number of children, for whatever reason, parents are not bringing them to school."
"I have to make sure children are educated," he said. "We've lost two years of education, two years. The fallout is unbelievable."
Around 75 percent of students were in school on Wednesday, Nathaniel Styer, a spokesman for the city Education Department said Thursday. The United Federation of Teachers wants a remote learning option but has consistently opposed livestreaming, a practice embraced in other school districts. The union and many of its members say the practice would place an undue burden on teachers, who would have to teach two groups of students simultaneously.
The city has argued that it is all but impossible to create a parallel at-home school district without the option of livestreaming. When the city first created a remote learning option in the fall of 2020, it experienced major staffing issues presented by having to essentially run two systems at the same time: one in person, one at home.
Omicron cases are already flattening in New York City. Still, union leaders were adamant about offering some sort of remote learning option, and not necessarily because of the current variant.
"We need to set something up, because we hope this is the last wave, but we do not know if it is," Michael Mulgrew, the president of the New York City teachers' union, said on Wednesday during a call-in town hall for union members. "So, I think it's time for the city really to think about it and contemplate it."
Mr. Mulgrew added that his members didn't want to go back to a scenario where 65 percent of children were home, so he asked that if remote learning becomes an option, parents "use it judiciously."
Meantime, Mr. Mulgrew asked that parents give schools consent to test their children regularly and to consider getting them vaccinated too. "Because these are two of the things the school system needs right now for keeping your child and all of the children safe," Mr. Mulgrew said Wednesday.
Biden announces 500 million more tests will be purchased for Americans.
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Biden Announces Purchase of 500 Million More Covid Tests
President Biden said his administration would double its previous purchase of coronavirus tests to be distributed for free to Americans and deploy additional medical personnel to states hard-hit by the Omicron variant.
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We're on track to roll out a website next week where you can order free tests shipped to your home. And in addition to the 500 million — half a billion — tests that are in the process of being acquired to ship to you, homes for free, today I'm directing my team to procure an additional half a billion, additional 500 million more tests to distribute for free. That'll mean a billion tests in total to meet future demand. And we'll continue to work with the retailers and online, and online retailers to increase availability. And for those who want an immediate test, we continue to add FEMA testing sites so that there are more free in-person testing sites. For those of you with insurance, you can get reimbursed for eight tests a month. For those without insurance, we have over 20,000 free testing sites all around the country. Just since Thanksgiving, over 800 military and other federal emergency personnel have been deployed to 24 states, tribes and territories, including over 350 military doctors, nurses and medics, helping staff the hospitals that are in short supply. Today, I'm announcing our next deployment of six additional federal medical teams. A total of more than 120 military medical personnel to six hard-hit states: Michigan, New York, New Jersey, Ohio, Rhode Island.
WASHINGTON — President Biden on Thursday stepped up his administration's response to a coronavirus surge driven by the Omicron variant, sending what he said is urgently needed help to overwhelmed hospitals and pledging to provide Americans with free tests and masks as the country enters the pandemic's third year.
Mr. Biden said he was directing his staff to purchase an additional 500 million tests for distribution to Americans, doubling the government's previous purchase as his administration scrambles to respond to the highly contagious Omicron.
In addition, the president said he is sending a total of 120 military medical personnel to six states where hospitals have been overrun by cases. And he promised to reveal next week plans to help Americans by providing free, high-quality masks that are better at prevention infection from the virus.
It is unclear when the additional tests will become available. Mr. Biden announced the first batch of 500 million tests just before Christmas, and those will not start being delivered until later this month, according to White House officials.
The president did not say when the new batch of 500 million tests will be manufactured and ready for distribution. But he said the at-home tests — along with more than 20,000 testing sites around the country — will help to meet the surging demand as people try to continue work, school and social life despite the rapid spread of the virus.
"We're on track to roll out a website next week where you can order free test shipped to your home," he said, adding that people with medical insurance can also soon get reimbursed for the purchase of up to eight tests a month.
Mr. Biden also did not provide any details about what he said would be a plan to ensure that Americans have access to high-quality masks, such as the KN95 and N95 face coverings.
The announcement about help for hospitals was the beginning of a deployment of 1,000 service members to help doctors and nurses deal with a surge in Omicron cases, Mr. Biden said.
- Cases
- Hospitalizations
- Deaths
300% of last winter's peak
About this data
Sources: State and local health agencies (cases, deaths); U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (hospitalizations).The new teams of doctors, nurses and other medical personnel would begin arriving at hospitals in Michigan, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio and Rhode Island, the president said. They will help triage patients arriving at hospitals, allowing short-staffed emergency departments to free up space.
Each of those states has suffered an astronomical rise in known cases, already exceeding the previous nationwide peak per capita reached last winter, according to a New York Times database.
The deployments are part of the Biden administration's efforts to tackle the latest surge of Omicron cases, which have reached more than 780,000 a day across the country. The number of Americans hospitalized with Covid-19 has hit a record high of about 142,000.
Research has emerged that Omicron causes less severe disease and vaccines remain protective against the worst outcomes for the vast majority of people. Still, experts say that the sheer number of cases are likely to burden health care systems already strained by previous surges and grappling with staffing shortages.
Adeel Hassan contributed reporting.
The Supreme Court blocks Biden's mandate for large employers but allows the vaccine mandate for health care workers.
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The Supreme Court on Thursday blocked the Biden administration from enforcing a vaccine-or-testing mandate for large employers, dealing a blow to a key element of the White House's plan to address the pandemic as cases resulting from the Omicron variant are on the rise.
But the court allowed a more modest mandate requiring health care workers at facilities receiving federal money to be vaccinated.
The vote in the employer mandate case was 6 to 3, with liberal justices in dissent. The vote in the health care case was 5 to 4, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh joining the liberal justices to form a majority.
The employer mandate would have required workers to be vaccinated against the coronavirus or to wear masks and be tested weekly, though employers were not required to pay for the testing. There were exceptions for workers with religious objections and those who do not come into close contact with other people at their jobs, like those who work from home or exclusively outdoors.
Parts of the mandate concerning record-keeping and masks had been scheduled to take effect on Monday. The administration had said it would not enforce the testing requirement until Feb. 9.
The Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, had issued the mandate in November, and it applied to more than 84 million workers. The administration estimated that it would cause 22 million people to get vaccinated and prevent 250,000 hospitalizations.
At oral arguments at a special session on Friday, members of the court's conservative majority seemed doubtful that the administration had congressional authorization to impose the requirements.
That second mandate applies to workers at hospitals and other health care facilities that participate in the Medicare and Medicaid programs. It would affect more than 17 million workers, the administration said, and would "save hundreds or even thousands of lives each month."
The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld state vaccine mandates in a variety of settings against constitutional challenges. The new cases are different, as they primarily present the question of whether Congress has authorized the executive branch to institute the requirements.
A divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati, said last month that the mandate for large employers appeared to be lawful.
"The record establishes that Covid-19 has continued to spread, mutate, kill and block the safe return of American workers to their jobs," Judge Jane B. Stranch wrote for the majority. "To protect workers, OSHA can and must be able to respond to dangers as they evolve."
In dissent, Judge Joan L. Larsen wrote that the administration most "likely lacks congressional authority" to impose the vaccine-or-testing requirement.
"The mandate is aimed directly at protecting the unvaccinated from their own choices," she wrote. "Vaccines are freely available, and unvaccinated people may choose to protect themselves at any time."
Walensky's remark about Covid deaths continues to anger advocates for the disabled.
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A remark by the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about who is likeliest to die from the coronavirus prompted an outpouring of grief and rage from people with disabilities or chronic illnesses that has not abated almost a week later.
In a television appearance last Friday, the director, Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, discussed the results of a new study of 1.2 million vaccinated people, finding that only 0.003 percent of them had died from Covid-19.
Given "encouraging headlines" about "this new study showing just how well vaccines are working to prevent severe illness," Cecilia Vega of ABC News asked Dr. Walensky, "is it time to start rethinking about how we're living with this virus, that it's potentially here to stay?"
Dr. Walensky's response, which her agency argues was poorly edited and taken out of context, angered many Americans with disabilities or chronic illnesses. Advocacy groups requested a meeting with Dr. Walensky, which has been scheduled for Friday, and released an open letter on Thursday.
"The overwhelming number of deaths, over 75 percent, occurred in people who had at least four comorbidities, so, really, these are people who were unwell to begin with," Dr. Walensky said in the interview. "And yes, really encouraging news in the context of Omicron. This means not only to get your primary series, but to get your booster series, and yes, we're really encouraged by these results."
To many Americans with comorbidities — a term that encompasses many kinds of conditions, from immunosuppression to cystic fibrosis to obesity — these comments were something of a last straw, exhausting their patience with a federal pandemic response that they see as cavalierly dismissive of their lives. When they began posting on social media using the hashtag #MyDisabledLifeIsWorthy, their complaints were about much more than one comment.
The C.D.C. said that what Dr. Walensky was calling "encouraging news" was the study's finding that vaccines protect most people from serious illness and death, not the fact that those who did die tended to be people with disabilities. This week, ABC replaced its original, edited video online with a longer version in which she prefaced her comments with a quick summary of the research.
Disability advocates said that the context did not make her remarks less hurtful — that they still presented the deaths of disabled people as a footnote. And they said that the agency's defense was missing context, too: its pandemic response over the past two years.
"Even including the part that was edited out, that would make no difference," said Imani Barbarin, who started the #MyDisabledLifeIsWorthy hashtag. She added, "Even when someone's misspeaking or not getting their point across correctly, that still means harm for us."
As for the study that Dr. Walensky was discussing, Ms. Barbarin said that it might be encouraging for generally healthy people, but "for us, it's terrifying."
Advocates said the federal government had failed disabled Americans throughout the pandemic by, among other things, failing to make at-home tests and high-quality masks widely available, or provide clear public health guidance, or increase global vaccinations fast enough to prevent the emergence of new variants like Omicron.
"Director Walensky's comments aren't a kind of one-off, flippant response," said Maria Town, the president and chief executive of the American Association of People with Disabilities. "One of the reasons her comments are so concerning is because they reveal the way that people with disabilities have been deprioritized and viewed as acceptable losses."
A C.D.C. spokesman said: "Dr. Walensky did not intend comments in a recent television appearance to be hurtful toward those with disabilities. She is deeply concerned and cares about the health and well-being of people with disabilities and those with medical conditions who have been impacted by Covid-19."
Businesses are whipsawed again as the U.S. Supreme Court blocks OSHA's vaccine mandate.
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The U.S. Supreme Court blocked a requirement that large companies mandate vaccines or weekly testing for workers on Thursday. Parts of the rule, which the Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued in November, had been scheduled to take effect on Monday.
The often fraught choice is now up to employers, who have to decide whether to proceed with planned mandates without cover from the federal government.
The decision may snarl some planned mandates. Employers have been concerned about losing employees to mandates when workers are already scarce.
And some companies with vaccine mandates said keeping those policies might become more difficult in light of the Supreme Court's ruling.
In a November poll of 543 companies by the consulting firm Willis Towers Watson, 57 percent said they either required or planned to require Covid-19 vaccinations. But that included 32 percent that planned to mandate vaccines only if the OSHA rule takes effect. And only seven percent said they planned to carry it out regardless of the outcome.
Still, companies have been preparing for months for the mandate, and many may still go forward with their policies, said Douglas Brayley, an employment lawyer at Ropes & Gray.
And several major companies — including United Airlines and Tyson Foods — already have vaccine requirements. Firms with mandates say concerns about mass resignations have largely not come to fruition.
In fact, United Airlines said this week that while 3,000 of its employees had Covid-19, none of its vaccinated employees were currently hospitalized. Since its vaccine policy went into effect, the airline said, its employee hospitalization rate had dropped significantly below the rate for the U.S. population.
"This decision will be an excuse for those employers who care less about their employees to return to business as usual," said David Michaels, an epidemiologist and a professor at George Washington University and a former OSHA administrator.
Sapna Maheshwari contributed reporting.
In U.S. cities where Omicron hit first, new virus cases are beginning to slow.
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At another bleak moment of the pandemic in the United States — with nearly 800,000 new cases a day, deaths rising and federal medical teams deploying to overwhelmed hospitals — glints of progress have finally started to emerge. In a handful of places that were among the first to see a surge of the Omicron variant last month, reports of new coronavirus cases have started to level off or decline.
Daily case reports have been falling rapidly around Cleveland, Newark and Washington, D.C., each of which sustained record-shattering spikes over the past month. There were also early signs in Chicago, New York, Puerto Rico and hard-hit ski resort towns in Colorado that cases were hitting a plateau or starting to drop.
The slowing of the spread in those places was welcome news, raising the prospect that a national peak in the Omicron wave may be approaching. But most of the country continued to see explosive growth in virus cases, with some Western and Southern states reporting 400 percent increases over the past two weeks. Officials also warned that hospitalizations and deaths lag actual infections.
It was just seven weeks ago that scientists in South Africa alerted the world to the fast-spreading Omicron variant, and just a month ago that the variant started to gain a foothold in the United States.
Scientists have found that Omicron tends to cause less severe illness in many people than prior forms of the virus, and that vaccines, though less protective against infection, continue to provide robust defense against critical illness and death.
Still, the speed and scale of the Omicron surge has disrupted American life and taxed a health care system that was already strained by an autumn uptick driven by the Delta variant. Across the country, more than 1,800 deaths are being announced each day, a rise of about 50 percent over the past two weeks.
Christina Ramirez, a biostatistician at the University of California, Los Angeles, said it was too early to tell where the United States was in its surge. Omicron passed through and peaked in South Africa in about a month, but countries like Denmark and Germany look more like a "jagged sawtooth," she said. "You get a couple days where it goes down, goes back up and goes back down."
"We've been fooled by the virus before," Dr. Ramirez said. "The next couple of weeks will be very telling."
Michael D. Shear and Tracey Tully contributed reporting.
Puerto Rico will require booster shots for students 12 and older.
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Gov. Pedro Pierluisi of Puerto Rico signed an executive order Thursday requiring students 12 and older to get booster shots by Feb. 15 to be considered fully vaccinated and learn in-person.
The order comes during an onslaught of cases driven by the Omicron variant and as the island has reported more Covid-related deaths in the past week than in any other seven-day period.
An earlier order by Mr. Pierluisi required everyone who works in education and health to receive a booster shot by Saturday.
He said the measure was "to minimize contagion and allow students to continue face-to-face classes." (Mr. Pierluisi recently delayed the reopening of schools for two weeks amid the surge.) The order applies to all students at public or private institutions, including those at colleges or technical schools.
If students qualify for a medical or religious exemption, they will have to get weekly tests or submit proof of recent infection and recovery within the previous three months. Remote learning or other alternative methods are also options, he said. Students 5 and older had to get their first dose by Monday, Jan. 10, The Associated Press reports.
"We all have to be part of the solution," he wrote on Twitter on Thursday.
The requirement, and deadline, also extend to people who work in hotels, theater, cinemas and other public-facing businesses. There are more than 900 vaccination sites around Puerto Rico, Mr. Pierluisi wrote on Twitter. He urged employers to allow workers to get vaccinated during work, and to permit them to take time off if they experienced side effects.
Mr. Pierluisi also put out an executive order on Thursday limiting commercial activity from midnight to 5 a.m. through Feb. 2, and banned sales of alcohol during that time.
Businesses where people have to remove their masks, like restaurants and bars, must remain at 50 percent capacity indoors and 75 percent capacity outdoors.
More than 73 percent of the island is fully vaccinated, according to data from The New York Times. The island of 3.3 million is averaging 8,703 cases a day, a 49 percent increase from two weeks ago.
Hospitalizations are also high, which Mr. Pierluisi attributed to the Omicron variant. Almost 800 patients are in wards with coronavirus infections, a 293 percent increase from two weeks ago.
"We need to take care of each other so we can overcome this new challenge together," Mr. Pierluisi wrote on Twitter.
'It's too much.' Nurses say N.Y.C. hospitals are overrun with Covid patients.
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Nurses at overwhelmed public hospitals in New York City issued a public cry for help on Thursday, describing overrun emergency rooms, hospital floors filled to capacity, and nurses running themselves ragged as they struggle to take care of a surging patient load with fewer staff.
"Patients are lying in the hallway on stretchers that are touching each other," said Karen Lam, an emergency room nurse at Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx, where nurses held a news conference and demonstration on Thursday to draw attention to the conditions. "And if the patients are Covid positive, we pack four to five of them in an isolation room that was originally only meant to hold two patients."
In recent days, she said, between 30 to 40 admitted patients have been boarding in the emergency room, sometimes for days, while waiting for a bed to free up upstairs. Nurses are asked to care for these patients in addition to the flood of new arrivals in the emergency room. Nurses and doctors at other hospitals have described similar scenes as Omicron has surged through New York City.
"It's too much," Ms. Lam said. "I'm just exhausted, in tears and feeling guilty, because I know under these working conditions, I cannot possibly provide these patients with the care that they deserve."
Hospitalizations of patients with Covid-19 are still rising in New York City, even though the pace of their increase is beginning to slow as the Omicron wave appears to crest. The intensity of this surge has slammed into hospitals whose ranks were already thinned by attrition over the pandemic. The virus intensified the staff shortages by sickening staff members and leaving the ones still working to handle many more patients than they usually do.
In New York City, the 11 public hospitals, and about a dozen safety-net independent hospitals that rely on Medicaid for their revenue, are particularly strained because they started out with fewer resources. Not enough reinforcements have arrived, in part because even the major hospital systems are overstretched, and because the state has focused its available National Guard personnel on even more stressed health systems in upstate New York.
The N.Y.C. Health and Hospitals Corporation, which runs the city's public hospitals, said Thursday that its nurses' voices were being heard. More than 800 nursing and clinical staff were being added to supplement those out sick; 2,500 patients have been transferred across its facilities to balance patient loads; and virus testing vans had been deployed outside of most city hospitals to alleviate the crush in their emergency departments, a spokesman said.
On Thursday, President Biden announced the deployment of military medical teams to six states hit hard by Omicron, including New York. Two teams of about 20 members each will be going to two New York City public hospitals — Coney Island Hospital in Brooklyn and North Central in the Bronx, Gov. Kathy Hochul's office said.
Governor Hochul has requested that the federal government send an additional 800 clinical staff to mobilize strike teams across the state, her office said. Two other federal teams are already helping at hospitals in Buffalo and Rochester.
Nurses on Thursday described their frustration with political leaders that they said were not doing enough to slow the surge in patients, despite the overtaxed hospitals. They also blasted the new federal guideline calling on hospital staff to return to work five days after testing positive for Covid, saying that they felt patient safety was being compromised.
"It just feels like we are so desperately trying to seek normalcy without remembering that, again, our hospitals were not designed for this type of situation," said Kelley Cabrera, another emergency room nurse at Jacobi.
Scores of doctors and scientists sign a statement condemning personal attacks against Fauci.
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More than 200 leading American doctors and scientists — including four Nobel Prize winners and a former Republican leader — have signed an open letter in support of Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, calling Republican attacks on him "inaccurate, unscientific, ill-founded in the facts and, increasingly, motivated by partisan politics."
Dr. Fauci, who has led the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984 and is now President Biden's top medical adviser for Covid-19, has repeatedly clashed with congressional Republicans, and particularly with two who are fellow physicians: Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, and Senator Roger Marshall, Republican of Kansas.
The tensions took an extraordinary turn on Tuesday, when Dr. Fauci — who has been the subject of death threats — publicly accused the senators of fomenting threats of violence against him and his family. He said his children had received obscene phone calls, and he noted the recent arrest of an armed man in Iowa who said he was driving to Washington to kill public figures including Mr. Biden and Dr. Fauci.
"Physicians trying to work for the country are outraged by Tony's treatment — the innuendo, smear campaign," said Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania who organized the letter, referring to Dr. Fauci by his nickname. "It is reminiscent of Joe McCarthy attacking people without any basis and ruining them, in this case inciting others to violence."
Dr. Emanuel said the clash at Tuesday's hearing prompted the statement of support, and that neither Dr. Fauci or the Biden administration knew about the effort.
Among the signatories:
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Dr. Bill Frist, a former Senate Republican leader from Tennessee.
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Dr. Harvey Alter, an immunologist who helped discover the Hepatitis C virus, and winner of a Nobel Prize.
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Dr. David Baltimore, a biologist who discovered how tumor viruses integrate themselves into cells, and Nobel winner.
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Dr. Harold Varmus, a former director of the National Institutes of Health who helped discover virus genes that cause cancer, and Nobel winner.
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Dr. William Kaelin, whose work has unraveled the mystery of how the body adapts to changing levels of oxygen, and Nobel winner.
Dr. Fauci, they wrote, "has served the U.S.A. with wisdom and integrity for nearly 40 years," guiding the nation through a series of infectious disease crises, including H.I.V., Ebola and now Covid-19. "He has our unreserved respect and trust as a scientist and a national leader," the statement said.
Presidents from both parties have long treated Dr. Fauci with deference and respect. He worked closely with President George W. Bush to develop an international program to combat AIDS, and he was close with Mr. Bush's father, the first President Bush. But President Donald J. Trump apparently did not like Dr. Fauci's blunt advice, and repeatedly threatened to fire him.
Other Republicans have since climbed on the anti-Fauci bandwagon. Mr. Paul, an ophthalmologist, has repeatedly accused Dr. Fauci of using N.I.H. money to support studies in Wuhan, China, of how viruses could be made more transmissible. Dr. Fauci has steadfastly denied it. "Senator Paul, you do not know what you are talking about, quite frankly," he said at a hearing in July.
On Tuesday, Dr. Fauci accused Mr. Paul of trying to raise campaign contributions by whipping up sentiment against him, and he appeared to call Mr. Marshall a "moron" under his breath — a comment that was picked up by an open microphone — after Mr. Marshall insinuated, incorrectly, that Dr. Fauci was hiding his financial disclosure forms.
"Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic," the doctors' and scientists' statement said, "Dr. Fauci has provided the American political leadership and the public with sagacious counsel in these most difficult of times. His advice has been as well-informed as data and the rapidly evolving circumstances allowed."
Teachers across France stage a one-day walkout over virus rules.
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PARIS — Teachers across France staged a widespread one-day walkout on Thursday to protest changing Covid-19 rules that they say have disrupted schools and are now too lax to protect against the Omicron variant that is tearing across the nation.
Tens of thousands of teachers and school personnel, sometimes joined by students' parents, participated in marches in cities across the country, in what appeared to be one of France's biggest school protests in decades.
The education ministry said that nearly 40 percent of elementary school teachers and nearly a quarter of secondary school teachers were on strike, although school unions put those figures much higher, at 75 percent and 60 percent. A leading union said it expected about half of all elementary schools, or about 20,000 schools, to be closed.
"It's all this exasperation and anger that has built up to today," said Sophie Vénétitay, a teacher and an official of the leading union in secondary schools.
The walkout, which most of the country's teaching unions supported, posed a serious challenge for President Emmanuel Macron's government, which has taken pride in keeping its schools open longer than many other European countries during the pandemic.
"I fundamentally believe the choice that we made to keep schools open is the right choice," Mr. Macron said at a news conference on Tuesday.
The school policy is part of a social contract that Mr. Macron has bet will allow France to live with the virus, keeping pandemic restrictions limited in return for a high vaccination rate.
But the fast-spreading Omicron variant has partially disrupted that contract.
France is now averaging nearly 300,000 newly reported coronavirus cases a day, almost six times as many as a month ago and far more than at any earlier point in the pandemic. Olivier Véran, the country's health minister, said on Twitter that he had tested positive on Thursday.
Hoping to stave off a wave of growing anger, Prime Minister Jean Castex said Monday that the protocols would be relaxed. Parents will no longer have to pick up their children immediately after a classmate tests positive, and potentially exposed children no longer have to be tested at pharmacies and labs to return to class. Instead, the tests can be done at home.
But teachers said that the simplified rules increased risks of infections at school. They have also complained for weeks about a lack of equipment, like air-quality monitors, and shortages of highly protective masks.
Adèle Cordonnier contributed reporting from Paris.
Djokovic may be a divisive figure abroad, but he remains a hero in Serbia.
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BELGRADE, Serbia — The images painted on the concrete walls of the Brutalist housing complex in Banjica, a residential area a few miles south of downtown Belgrade, depict some of Serbia's most cherished figures: revered religious leaders, poets and warriors.
But the murals there of Novak Djokovic hold a special significance — this is where the future tennis star's grandfather lived and where, as a 12-year-old boy, he sought shelter while NATO bombed the Serbian capital in 1999.
Georgio Petrovic, 21, was born a year after the bombing and lives in the same imposing, angular tower block.
"He is a hero," he said, looking at one of the murals of Mr. Djokovic. But he sees him as more than a sports champion. Struggling to find a job, Mr. Petrovic has written to Mr. Djokovic, thinking he might be able to help where others have failed. He has not heard back, but he is hopeful.
That feeling of personal connection and pride is widely shared in a nation that has united over his triumphs on the court at a time when discontent is widespread over issues like endemic corruption and a government that is widely distrusted. The recent imbroglio over whether Mr. Djokovic should be allowed to play in the Australian Open has done little to dim his shine, even among those who do not agree with his decision to stay unvaccinated.
"In this gray and lousy environment, the only joyful event for many is watching when he wins another trophy," said Dr. Zoran Radovanovic, an epidemiologist who has been watching the debate over Mr. Djokovic's fate as the Omicron variant of the coronavirus spreads across the country.
But Mr. Djokovic has also become entwined with a broader debate in Serbia about coronavirus restrictions, government policies, personal liberty and vaccination.
For some, he is a threat to public health — a powerful and influential figure whose decision not to be vaccinated against the coronavirus could undermine inoculation campaigns in a region where vaccine uptake is among the lowest in Europe.
Although he has said he does not urge others to avoid inoculations, his image has been co-opted by a host of anti-vaccination groups on Facebook in Serbia and beyond.
To others, particularly those in his homeland, he is widely seen as a victim — with political and religious leaders rushing to his defense by tapping into powerful regional narratives of martyrdom that resonate deeply with the public but also serve their own interests.
With elections looming in April, President Aleksandar Vucic, the country's authoritarian leader, has tried to walk a fine line, both encouraging vaccinations while steadfastly defending the nation's favorite son.
"When you can't defeat someone on the court, then you do such things," he said last week after the tennis star was detained.
Unvaccinated women with Covid are more likely to lose fetuses and infants, Scottish data show.
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Researchers in Scotland reported on Thursday that pregnant women with Covid were not only at greater risk of developing severe disease, but also more likely to lose their fetuses and babies in the womb or shortly after birth, compared with other women who gave birth during the pandemic.
The risk of losing a baby through stillbirth or the first month of life was highest among women who delivered their babies within four weeks of the onset of a Covid infection: 22.6 deaths for every 1,000 births, four times the rate in Scotland of 5.6 deaths per 1,000 births.
All of those deaths occurred in pregnancies among unvaccinated women, the researchers found. "Quite strikingly, no baby deaths occurred in women who had SARS-CoV-2 and were vaccinated," said Dr. Sarah J. Stock, the paper's first author, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at the University of Edinburgh Usher Institute in Exeter.
The study also found a higher rate of preterm birth among women diagnosed with Covid, a rate that spiked if the baby was born within a month of the mother falling ill. More than 16 percent of these women gave birth before 37 weeks of pregnancy, compared with 8 percent among other women.
In Scotland, as in the United States, vaccination rates of pregnant women are low. Only one-third of pregnant women are vaccinated against the coronavirus, despite the protections afforded by immunization. Early research has found no evidence that the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines pose serious risks during pregnancy.
Indeed, the Scottish study found that the vast majority of infections among pregnant women were in those who were completely unvaccinated or were only partially vaccinated. Only 11 percent of the total infections were reported among fully vaccinated pregnant women.
Pregnant women who were unvaccinated were also four times as likely to be hospitalized, compared with vaccinated pregnant women.
Dr. Stock and her colleagues analyzed data collected by the Covid-19 in Pregnancy in Scotland study, a national cohort of all women who were pregnant or became pregnant after March 1, 2020, through the end of October 2021. The team tracked 144,546 pregnancies in 130,875 women during this period.
One weakness of the study is that the authors did not adjust for confounding factors, like maternal age or pre-existing medical conditions, which could lead to poor pregnancy outcomes regardless of coronavirus infection or Covid diagnosis (they also did not know whether women who were hospitalized were admitted because of Covid disease, or were just incidentally found to test positive at admission).
Vaccination rates are low among pregnant women across the board, but are particularly low among younger women and those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, the study noted. Future analyses will take these demographic factors and other confounding factors into account, the authors said.
Still, the discrepancies in hospitalization, premature birth and infant loss rates between vaccinated and unvaccinated women are so marked that those adjustments are unlikely to alter the conclusions, Dr. Stock and her colleagues said.
They urged pregnant women to get vaccinated, echoing the pleas of health officials in the United States.
"The key take home we'd love to get across is that really the best way to protect mother and baby is vaccination at the earliest opportunity, and that can be done at any stage of pregnancy," said Aziz Sheikh, a population health researcher at the University of Edinburgh and another of the paper's authors.
"We have enough information to bring the really strong message around promoting vaccination in pregnancy now," said Rachael Wood, a consultant in public health medicine in Public Health Scotland, and a member of the study team.
The police in China detain a testing lab official on suspicion of helping spread the virus.
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The police in a city in central China have detained the manager of a regional coronavirus testing laboratory on suspicion of "committing acts that caused the spread of the coronavirus or seriously increased the danger of spreading it."
In a brief statement, the police in Xuchang, a city in Henan Province, also said that the authorities in the nearby city of Yuzhou were investigating the man, identified only by his surname, Zhang, for "serious criminal offenses," but they did not provide more details.
The detention, announced on Wednesday, comes as China faces its largest surge in coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic, an effort that has relied heavily on mass testing to ferret out cases. More than 20 million people across at least five Chinese cities are under lockdown as officials seek to tamp down outbreaks before the start of the Beijing Olympics in three weeks.
Guangzhou KingMed Diagnostics Group, the parent company of the testing laboratory, said in a statement on Wednesday that the employee had been working with local health departments in Yuzhou to assist with the logistics of the city's mass-testing campaign. The company said the employee had not been involved in any of the laboratory testing and called reports that he had purposely spread the virus, lost samples and fabricated and withheld data "rumors and false information."
Founded in 2003, KingMed Diagnostics Group is one of the largest third-party coronavirus testing providers in China, with 37 laboratories around the country, according to the company's website. Zhong Nanshan, one of China's top medical advisers, is a member of its academic advisory committee, according to an article posted on the company's website.
Yuzhou, a city of 1.1 million in Henan, has been in lockdown for more than a week after the discovery of three asymptomatic cases this month. Since then, the authorities have carried out at least seven rounds of mass testing as part of a broader effort to realize China's "zero Covid" strategy. As of Wednesday, Yuzhou had reported 275 confirmed cases in the recent outbreak.
There have been several incidents involving testing companies in China since the start of the pandemic. In January 2021, a testing company employee was detained in the northern province of Hebei for reporting a sample of hundreds of thousands of residents as negative before the testing was completed.
The sample was later discovered to include several positive cases, according to the Chinese state media.
U.S. college enrollment dropped again in the fall of 2021, despite the arrival of vaccines.
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The enrollment crisis at U.S. institutions of higher learning continued a second year into the pandemic, even as coronavirus vaccines became widely available for students last fall, according to the latest numbers from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.
Total undergraduate enrollment dropped 3.1 percent from the fall of 2020 to the fall of 2021, bringing the total decline since the fall of 2019 to 6.6 percent — or 1,205,600 students.
"Our final look at fall 2021 enrollment shows undergraduates continuing to sit out in droves as colleges navigate yet another year of Covid-19," said Doug Shapiro, the executive director of the research center, which collects and analyzes data from 3,600 postsecondary institutions.
Even before the pandemic, college enrollment was declining nationally as the number of college-age students leveled off. At the same time, high tuition costs discouraged prospective domestic students, and the highly polarizing immigration debate drove away international students.
That decline then accelerated steeply when Covid-19 forced many classes online and restricted campus life. The economic disruption caused by the pandemic also forced many prospective college students into the workplace.
The new figures show that undergraduate enrollment declined at every type of college, but public two-year colleges remain the hardest-hit, with U.S. community colleges disproportionately hurt.
Tens of thousands of students, many of them low-income, were forced to delay school or drop out because of the pandemic and the economic crisis it has created. The new data showed that enrollment in community colleges was down 13.2 percent, or 706,000 students, compared with 2019.
The number of students seeking associate degrees at four-year institutions also fell, as did the number of students aged 24 and over.
"Without a dramatic re-engagement in their education, the potential loss to these students' earnings and futures is significant, which will greatly impact the nation as a whole in years to come," Mr. Shapiro said in a news release.
There was one bright spot in the data: The enrollment of first-year students stabilized, up about 0.4 percent, or 8,100 students, from 2020 to 2021.
Even so, first-year enrollment is 9.2 percent lower than prepandemic levels in fall 2019.
Iraq plans to bar unvaccinated people from entering the country.
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BAGHDAD — Iraq's government says it plans to bar anyone who is not fully vaccinated against the coronavirus from entering the country, including Iraqis and religious pilgrims.
"All arrivals to Iraq, both Iraqis and foreigners, must present Covid-19 vaccination cards" with a QR code showing evidence of at least two vaccine doses, the country's top coronavirus panel said in a list of recommendations announced on Wednesday.
The measures were adopted after a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi. It was not immediately clear when the rules would come into effect. Also uncertain was whether the government planned to deny entry completely to returning Iraqis, a move that would contravene fundamental citizens' rights, or whether it would subject them to other measures such as mandatory isolation.
In addition to proof of vaccination, travelers to Iraq will continue to have to present proof of a negative P.C.R. test taken within 72 hours of arrival.
The government panel, the Iraqi Supreme Committee for National Health and Safety, noted that the requirements would apply to religious pilgrims. Pilgrims, most of whom are Iranians visiting some of the holiest sites in Shiite Islam, have previously been allowed to enter Iraq without proof of vaccination. Like other travelers, they have been required to show a negative P.C.R. test.
About eight million of Iraq's population of 42 million have received at least one vaccine dose. The country has provided third doses to older people and to the medically vulnerable. Iraqis mistrustful of their government and of coronavirus vaccines have been hesitant to get inoculated, and mask wearing and social distancing in the country are rare.
The committee also said that it would require federal government ministries to enforce existing rules requiring employees to present proof of vaccination and that it was asking the national security agency to crack down on forged vaccination cards.
The Iraqi Health Ministry on Wednesday reiterated a call for people to wear masks and avoid social gatherings, but it has not introduced fines or other measures to ensure compliance. The Baghdad municipality also on Wednesday announced that working hours for its employees would be cut in half because of concerns about a new wave of the virus.
Iraq has recorded more than two million coronavirus cases and more than 24,000 deaths since the pandemic began.
The Australian Open must again limit spectators, but some matches could be full.
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MELBOURNE, Australia — The Australian Open will operate at significantly reduced spectator capacity, the Victorian state government said on Thursday.
The Grand Slam tennis tournament, which begins on Monday in Melbourne, set out to be held at full capacity, but those plans were scuttled because of rising numbers of coronavirus cases and hospitalizations in Victoria.
There could still be full, or nearly full, arenas for some matches. The Victorian government said that no previously sold tickets would be canceled or changed, but that further ticket sales would be "paused at 50 percent capacity."
The tournament has long been one of the best-attended sports events in the world. It attracted 812,174 spectators in 2020 during its two-week run in late January and early February. But crowds were significantly reduced last year, when the tournament was delayed because of the pandemic. The Open did not host spectators for five of its 14 days after a lockdown took effect during the event.
The Australian Open is set to open on Monday even as coronavirus cases, fueled by the Omicron variant, are rising in a country that said it would try to live with the virus after imposing some of the world's longest lockdowns on residents.
Even the tournament has not escaped outbreaks. On Thursday, Bernard Tomic, an Australian player who had a first-round exit from the qualifiers, confirmed to reporters that he had Covid-19. Tomic, 29 received a positive test result 48 hours after he faced Roman Safiullin of Russia on Tuesday and lost in straight sets.
After the game, Tomic posted on Instagram: "Feeling really sick, I'm now back in my hotel room. Just spoke to the doctors on site and they've asked me to isolate."
On Thursday, he told Australian news outlets, "I still feel pretty sick."
The tournament has also been overshadowed by the vaccine exemption controversy surrounding the No. 1 men's player, Novak Djokovic, who was cleared by a judge to play after he was initially denied entry to the country.
On Thursday, Tennis Australia, which is hosting the tournament, listed him as the top seed to play. But the world is still awaiting a decision by Australia's immigration minister about whether to cancel his visa for a second time.
W.H.O. officials see signs that Omicron may be peaking in Africa.
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JOHANNESBURG — Has the Omicron-driven wave of new coronavirus cases — the fastest since the start of the pandemic — crested in Africa, where the variant was first detected? There are some signs that the surge may be leveling off, regional officials at the World Health Organization said at a news conference on Thursday.
Those signs come mostly from the southern part of the continent, particularly South Africa, which has accounted for most of the new cases reported in the World Health Organization's Africa region. (The region takes in most of the continent, but it omits seven countries in the north and east that the W.H.O. counts as part of its Middle East region.)
South Africa is something of an outlier, with more advanced public health resources than most other African countries, including more robust genomic sequencing and surveillance testing. It also has a relatively high vaccination rate for the continent, with 28 percent of the population fully vaccinated. Even so, W.H.O. officials said, the fall in the rate of new cases there since mid-December was an encouraging sign that the Omicron surge may prove shorter-lived across Africa than previous waves of the pandemic were.
Other parts of the continent have also seen some decreases in new case reports in January, the officials said, though the northern part of the W.H.O.'s Africa region was still experiencing sharp increases. The spottiness of data collection in many countries and lowered rates of testing during the holidays meant that it was too soon to say with any confidence whether those figures reflect the true trajectory of the pandemic.
Studies in South Africa and elsewhere have indicated that Omicron has tended to cause severe disease and death much less often than other variants did, but W.H.O. officials warned that Omicron still posed a serious threat to vulnerable populations.
Omicron "is actually behaving like other variants" in vulnerable people, Dr. Abdou Salam Gueye, the W.H.O.'s director of emergency preparedness and response in Africa, said on Thursday.
Many African nations have managed to vaccinate only small fractions of their populations so far. In Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, just 2.6 percent of the population is fully vaccinated, and a number of others remain in the single digits. At least 30 African countries have reported Omicron cases, but "we should admit that it is more than that, because some countries may not detect it, or may have detected it and are in the process of reporting cases of Omicron," Dr. Gueye said.
In a separate news conference, the head of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. John Nkengasong, warned that more time was needed to fully understand how Omicron has behaved in Africa. While the data from South Africa has been encouraging, he said, "We truly don't have good epidemiological data to see the trends in other countries."
— Lynsey Chutel
'The Daily' hears from teachers, students and parents about the Chicago schools standoff.
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As the highly infectious Omicron variant surged recently, a high-stakes battle played out between Mayor Lori Lightfoot of Chicago and the city's teachers' union about how to keep schools open and safe.
The union called for more testing and better masks, with 73 percent of its members voting to move to remote learning. When teachers stopped reporting to their classrooms, Ms. Lightfoot accused them of an illegal work stoppage before the two sides finally reached a compromise.
This episode of "The Daily" charts the battle on the ground in Chicago, speaking with teachers, parents and students about the standoff.
Listen to 'The Daily': 'The Kids Are Casualties in a War'
How students, teachers and parents were caught in the middle of a standoff between Chicago's mayor and its teachers' union.
What Hospital in Dallas Have 50 Babies Born the Same Night in 1961
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/01/13/world/biden-covid-19-speech
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