Covid News: China to Use Pfizer Treatment as Outbreak Grows - The New York Times

Global roundup

China has revised the country’s pandemic guidelines to include the use of antiviral pills made by Pfizer, as the country scrambles to contain its biggest outbreak since the early days of the pandemic.

The country’s medical products regulator last month approved Pfizer’s Paxlovid treatment for emergency use. The government’s move to include it in its Covid-19 treatment guidelines was announced this week.

The authorities have had to modify their policies to accommodate a rising number of cases in more than two dozen provinces. According to the latest guidelines, people who test positive for the virus and have only mild symptoms will no longer be required to be hospitalized, but should instead stay in centralized isolation facilities.

The health commission also shortened the quarantine period for patients who have been discharged from the hospital or isolation facilities. Earlier, the government approved the use of rapid antigen tests by the public to help detect cases more quickly.

China is enduring its biggest surge this month since the coronavirus first emerged in the city of Wuhan more than two years ago.

The country is one of the last holdouts of a strategy that aims to completely eradicate the virus.

“The epidemic in some areas is surging rapidly, and the risk of spread and spillover in the society is relatively high,” Lei Zhenglong, the deputy director of the National Health Commission’s Bureau of Disease Control and Prevention, said on Tuesday.

The surge in cases has prompted the Chinese authorities to lock down residents, close factories and stop truck traffic, snarling already frayed supply chains. On Wednesday, Foxconn, the Taiwanese electronics firm that assembles Apple’s iPhones, said that it had resumed some production in the city of Shenzhen at factory compounds where employees live on the grounds.

In other virus news from around the world:

• In ​​South Korea, officials reported a record 400,741 cases on Wednesday. The country has been slowly opening up as officials loosened certain social distancing regulations like dropping mandatory vaccine passes for entry into businesses and public spaces.

• Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister of Scotland, said the legal requirement to wear masks on public transportation and in some places indoors would be extended until April.

• Japan said Wednesday it was planning to end coronavirus restrictions in Tokyo and 17 other prefectures next week, noting that the number of new Omicron cases had dropped significantly.

— Alexandra Stevenson and Amy Chang Chien

The Biden administration has clawed back $377 million in federal emergency housing aid from states and counties, most of them controlled by Republicans, and redirected the cash to states that have been clamoring for more help, including New York, California and New Jersey.

The $46 billion Emergency Rental Assistance Program, first enacted by Congress in 2020, succeeded in preventing a wave of evictions stemming from the downturn caused by the pandemic. But Treasury Department officials, increasingly concerned that evictions might rise after the program winds down, have tried to ensure that none of the remaining funding goes unspent while pushing states to find other funding sources to assist poor tenants.

In recent months, White House officials have pressured governors in states with unspent funds to turn over the money to local governments within their states. Now they are going one step further, pulling back cash from states with relatively few tenants — like Montana, Nebraska, South Dakota and Wyoming — or localities that failed to efficiently distribute the aid, including Alabama, Arkansas and several counties in Texas.

The money, in turn, is being diverted to four states that have tapped out their allotted amounts — with $136 million in additional aid headed to California, $119 million to New York, $47 million to New Jersey and $15 million to Illinois, according to a spreadsheet provided by a senior administration official.

New York officials were happy with their windfall but said it fell far short of the $1.6 billion in additional aid requested by the state.

“This is better,” said Representative Ritchie Torres, a Democrat whose district includes the South Bronx, which has some of the highest eviction and poverty rates in the country. “But it’s a pitiful drop in the bucket compared to what we need.”

The four states, home to roughly a third of the nation’s low-income renters, have already spent billions in emergency aid paying back rent for tenants at risk of eviction, and they have requested more funding, citing affordable housing shortages and rising rents. In January, their governors — Gavin Newsom of California, Kathy Hochul of New York, Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey and J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, all Democrats — called on Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen to shift cash from low-spending states into their accounts, saying that tenants were “facing an immediate need now.”

Treasury officials responded with the reallocation — but made it clear the well is running dry, and states will soon have to begin making hard choices by using their own revenues, or other federal pandemic relief funding, to bankroll anti-eviction initiatives that might have been buoyed by President Biden’s stalled social spending bill.

— Glenn Thrush

As the Asia-Pacific region struggles with its first Omicron surge, it appears that Europe may be heading for a second jump, just as countries on both continents have rapidly lifted most pandemic restrictions.

Global cases, which bottomed out in early March, are rising again, driven by high caseloads in Asia and Europe, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. Cases per capita in Europe were already far higher than any other region in the world when they began creeping up again recently.

Parts of Asia are enduring their worst outbreaks ever as the Omicron variant continues its first sweep through the continent. The situation is especially dire in China, an outlier that remains committed to stamping out the virus, as well as New Zealand and South Korea, countries that like others around Asia have moved on from what had been some of the world’s strictest Covid rules.

In Europe, some are bracing for what could be another Omicron wave, with cases on the rise again in France, Britain, Italy and elsewhere and again approaching record levels in Germany. And the war in Ukraine has prompted fears that another outbreak could explode there at any time.

This comes weeks after many European countries thought they were free of the worst of Covid and raced to lift restrictions in February and March.

On Tuesday, the Netherlands announced it would drop most of its remaining pandemic restrictions, including its mask mandate, on March 23. Cases have just started declining after surges in February and March, according to Our World in Data.

Austria, the first Western democracy to impose a general Covid vaccine mandate, abandoned the requirement last week. Caseloads have now surged to record levels there, according to Our World in Data.

Dr. Eric Topol, the founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, said that loosening restrictions in Europe may have contributed to a spike in cases. Other factors could include waning vaccine immunity and the rapid spread of a more contagious Omicron subvariant, BA.2, he said.

Dr. Topol said Europe’s worst periods throughout the pandemic have been a harbinger of what was to come in the United States.

“Every time we followed suit within a matter of weeks,” he said.

While caseloads in the United States have declined drastically since their record highs in mid-January, according to a New York Times database, Dr. Topol said one indicator that will be closely watched for an early sign of a new spike will be wastewater sewage data.

Because people excrete the virus through their stool, wastewater can be used to predict where the coronavirus is or will be prevalent and if a new variant is circulating.

About 38 percent of active U.S. wastewater sampling sites reported an increase in coronavirus levels from Feb. 24 to March 10, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s wastewater data tracker, which surveys 688 wastewater sites across the country.

Dr. Jay Varma, an epidemiologist who was a senior health adviser to former Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City, warned that people should be prepared for another wave of cases and not let their guard down.

“We have to plan for the worst and hope for the best, like hurricane season,” he said.

Emma G. Fitzsimmons contributed reporting.

— Alyssa Lukpat

BERLIN — Two years to the day after Germany first locked down because of fears that coronavirus cases would overwhelm its health care system, German lawmakers on Wednesday discussed ending most of the country’s nationwide pandemic policies.

The complexities of Germany’s three-party coalition government are coloring the issue. The smallest of the three parties, the Free Democrats, campaigned on criticism of the nation’s pandemic restrictions. Under a compromise the party reached with its partners, the government has proposed letting most of the measures lapse, with the proviso that individual states can impose their own local restrictions if cases there threaten to overburden health care systems. The proposal drew sharp criticism from opposition parties.

Reports of new coronavirus cases in Germany have soared again to record heights this month, as a renewed surge driven by the Omicron variant sweeps the country, only a month after the first peak of the Omicron surge in mid-February.

The country is now averaging more than 200,000 new cases a day, an increase of nearly 50 percent from two weeks ago, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. Deaths have increased 23 percent to about 200 a day. The number of intensive-care hospital beds in use by Covid patients has remained relatively stable over the past few weeks, at slightly more than 2,000 patients.

As in many other European countries, proponents of dropping restrictions in Germany argue that the country’s fairly high vaccination rate — 76 percent of the population has been fully vaccinated — and the Omicron variant’s tendency to cause severe illness less often make the reported numbers of new cases a less important consideration than before.

Still, many lawmakers who have supported strict measures during the pandemic are balking at the idea of dropping virtually all of them now. Ates Gürpinar of the left-wing Linke party said the government’s proposal amounted to making “chaos and contamination” its strategy.

Some members of the governing parties that support the measure also let their displeasure show. Maria Klein-Schmeink of the Green party pointedly wore a pink face mask throughout her remarks to the Parliament — lawmakers must wear them when seated but generally take them off to address the chamber — and she acknowledged that the proposal was the result of a compromise.

“Of course, it is very difficult to stand by it,” she said.

The surge in infections on Germany reached into the parliamentary debate itself, when a deputy had to replace Bärbel Bas, the chamber’s president, in leading the discussion because Ms. Bas had tested positive for the virus. Of the six parliamentarians who usually enforce debate rules and etiquette, four are infected.

The current law governing pandemic measures will expire on March 19, and lawmakers are scheduled to vote Friday on new rules to take effect after that.

The proposal made by Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition government would require masks on public transportation and in some settings with vulnerable populations, like nursing homes and hospitals; masks would be optional anywhere else. Restaurants, bars and night clubs would be allowed to open at full capacity and would no longer have to check patrons’ vaccination certificates.

Many German states have already announced that they would continue strict rules through a transition period lasting until the beginning of April.

— Christopher F. Schuetze

Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine against the coronavirus will have to wait longer for a decision on emergency use authorization by the World Health Organization.

A W.H.O. official said on Wednesday that the organization was forced to delay the assessment process for the vaccine because of difficulties created by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“We were supposed to go do inspections in Russia on the 7th of March, and these inspections were postponed for a later date,” said Dr. Mariângela Simão, an assistant director general of the W.H.O., at a news conference in Geneva. “The assessment, along with inspections, have been affected because of the situation.”

Dr. Simão said that obstacles to booking flights into Russia and using credit cards while there were among the many issues confronting the agency’s inspectors. After Russian forces invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, most Western countries closed their airspace to Russian aircraft, and Mastercard and Visa suspended operations in Russia.

Dr. Simão said a new timetable would be drawn up as soon as possible.

The two-dose Sputnik V was developed by the Gamaleya Research Institute, part of Russia’s Ministry of Health. Russia began distributing the vaccine in the fall of 2020, and regulators in more than 70 countries have approved it for use, according to the Russian Direct Investment Fund, which backed the vaccine’s development.

But Sputnik V has not yet been approved by the European Union’s main drug regulator or the World Health Organization. Russians and other travelers who have received the vaccine have had a difficult time entering the European Union or the United States.

Though President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has called Sputnik a medical breakthrough, the country repeatedly failed to follow international procedure and provide all the data foreign regulators need to assess safety of a vaccine that was rushed through large-scale clinical trials to speed its release in the fall of 2020. An E.U. health official accused Russia’s government last fall of repeatedly delaying inspections of Russian facilities. But Russian officials insist that the delays in the approval process have been political.

Russia cleared a hurdle in February 2021 with the publication in the British medical journal The Lancet of late-stage trial results showing that Sputnik V vaccine was safe and highly effective. Even then, many countries, including Brazil and South Africa, have rejected using it. Ukraine also does not recognize Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine.

The United Nations-backed Covax program that distributes vaccines globally to low- and moderate-income nations cannot use vaccines that are not approved by the W.H.O.

About half of Russian adults have been fully vaccinated, according to the Our World in Data project at the University of Oxford.

— Adeel Hassan

India on Wednesday started administering coronavirus vaccines to children ages 12 to 14, as schools across the country reopen after two years of pandemic closures.

The first day of the drive to inoculate over 71 million children in that age group came on national vaccination day, an annual event promoting vaccination and celebrating the country’s victory over polio.

Since January, children ages 15 to 17 have been getting inoculated. Those 12 to 14 will receive Corbevax, a vaccine that has been approved for emergency use in children and that uses standard protein-vaccination technology that is widely available around the world, making it relatively cheap and easy to produce.

Health experts have stressed that mass vaccinations could be the only way for India to fully emerge from the pandemic. India’s campaign to vaccinate its 1.4 billion people is being carried out by an army of health care workers, who have sometimes trekked through inhospitable terrain and weathered snow and rain to carry out vaccinations.

So far, the country has administered about 1.8 billion doses, and about 60 percent of the population is fully vaccinated, according to the Our World in Data project at the University of Oxford.

Schools began reopening in some places in February, and across the country more recently as cases decline.

India, which has been hit hard by multiple coronavirus waves, has officially recorded about 43 million coronavirus cases. On Wednesday, the country recorded 2,876 new cases, but the average number of daily cases has decreased by 68 percent from the average two weeks ago, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. The death toll is officially at 516,072.

Experts have said that the actual toll is most likely far higher than what is officially reported in part because deaths are often underreported.

In January, India recommended booster shots for frontline workers and people over 60 with underlying conditions, but on Wednesday, it expanded that to include anyone over the age of 60. Health experts have been calling on the government to administer booster doses to fight new variants.

“If children are safe, then the country is safe,” said Mansukh Mandaviya, the federal minister for health. “I request guardians of all children and persons in the 60 and above age group to come forward and take the vaccine shot.”

— Sameer Yasir

Mark Levine, the Manhattan borough president, and Dr. Jay Varma, a top health adviser to former Mayor Bill de Blasio, called on the city on Wednesday for a plan to encourage New Yorkers to get their booster shots and protect residents from any future waves of the coronavirus.

The suggested plan is driven by the potential threat of a new variant, which could cause a fresh rise in cases and hospitalizations and the need for more “forceful” action, Dr. Varma said.

The plan also comes as Mayor Eric Adams has been aggressively promoting efforts to rebuild the city’s economy in recent weeks, removing the vaccination mandate for indoor activities and mask mandates for schools. The mayor has also been encouraging tourists to visit New York, telling people at a recent news conference in Times Square to come and “spend money.”

If the plan were to be adopted, New Yorkers who have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine but have yet to get a booster would receive a text, an email and a postcard with a location and an appointment to get the shots. The plan also suggests reinstating the $100 incentive for receiving the booster shot, a program that was introduced by Mr. de Blasio and reintroduced by Mr. Adams in February, although it expired at the end of the month.

“I am thrilled at the progress we’ve made in the past two months and exhilarated by the increasing return to normal life in New York City,” Mr. Levine said in an interview. “We need this.”

The effect of the Omicron wave over the winter was a major setback for the city’s recovery, he said, one that he doesn’t want to see again. “There are steps we can take now to prepare ourselves, so that we can blunt the severity of a future wave.”

Positive test rates, deaths and hospitalizations in New York City have all fallen in recent weeks, according to a New York Times database. An average of 662 daily cases were being reported as of Tuesday, compared with more than 40,000 a day during the peak of the Omicron wave.

Booster shots have been shown to be 90 percent effective at preventing hospitalization from the Omicron variant, and were found to be especially beneficial against infection and death for people ages 50 and older. But new city vaccination data shows wide disparities among residents who have received their booster shots.

Almost half of Manhattan has been boosted, compared with only 27 percent in the Bronx. Citywide, while 36 percent of the city’s residents overall had received their dose as of Tuesday, only 24 percent of Black residents got a booster, compared with 57 percent of Asian and Pacific Islander residents.

Mr. Levine and Dr. Varma’s plan also suggested broader Covid safety measures, calling for the city to provide frontline workers and people in communities hardest hit by the pandemic with “Covid safety bags,” which would contain rapid test kits and masks. It also suggests that government agencies allow more flexibility for remote work, as well as establish a new program to improve data collection on positive coronavirus test rates.

In a statement on Wednesday, Patrick Gallahue, a spokesman for the city’s health department, said the city’s case tracking system was “constantly evolving” and that the department was open to all recommendations on how to improve the city’s Covid response.

“Data on race and poverty, as well as other characteristics, are considered in our data and we especially appreciate their prioritization,” he added. “Equity has been, and must continue to be, at the center of the recovery.”

The speed at which Mr. Adams has relaxed the city’s Covid safety precautions has worried some who have argued that the vaccination mandate allowed more people to feel safer going out in the city.

In an interview, Dr. Varma said he believed it would be difficult to get residents to comply with the mandates if they were reinstated. At this point, he added, the city should focus on preventing as many deaths as possible through an increased effort to get its residents boosted.

“We need to focus on the things that government absolutely can and should do,” Dr. Varma said. “To me, that includes very targeted, directed outreach for people to get vaccinated.”

— Ashley Wong

New Zealand, whose border closures were among the strictest in the world, plans to welcome back foreign tourists months ahead of schedule in a bid to bolster the country’s economic recovery, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced on Wednesday.

Vaccinated Australians will be allowed to enter from just before midnight on April 12. Vaccinated travelers with valid visas and those from visa-waiver countries such as Canada and the United States can enter from May 1.

“We are sending a very clear message that we are accelerating our economic recovery,” Ms. Ardern said at a news conference on Wednesday. She added, “In short, we’re ready to welcome the world back.”

The announcement comes as cases remain near peak levels in New Zealand, which, like other countries, is facing economic uncertainty and rapidly rising inflation. The government on Tuesday announced cuts to the cost of fuel among other measures to tackle a “cost of living crisis.”

Incoming travelers will not be required to quarantine on arrival, but must take a supervised rapid coronavirus test before entering and two additional tests in the first week of their stay. These tests are intended to prevent the spread of new variants, Ms. Ardern said.

The government had intended to allow tourists back starting in July, with a full reopening planned for October. But after an outbreak of the Omicron variant sent cases in the country surging to more than 20,000 per day, tourism operators and businesses pushed to bring forward that timeline. They argued that borders should not remain closed to try to keep the variant out because of it has already spread around the globe.

New Zealand closed its borders early in the pandemic, allowing only a trickle of citizens to return, and later essential workers, and mandating a two-week hotel quarantine on arrival. The border closures allowed New Zealand to maintain a “zero-Covid” policy for most of the pandemic, with total deaths and hospitalizations among the lowest in the world.

But the policy also crippled its international tourism sector, which previously catered to millions of foreign visitors each year. Some companies say revenues have plunged by 95 percent since the pandemic began, while others have had to target the less lucrative domestic market.

— Natasha Frost