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ImageCredit…Benjamin Norman for The New York Times
One of the most aggressive vaccine mandates in the nation is set to take effect Friday evening in New York City, and it is expected to bring a flurry of last-minute legal wrangling, protests and possibly force some city services to be curtailed.
Similar mandates in Texas, Florida and other municipalities have been met with a barrage of court challenges and opposition from lawmakers.
Though some of New York City’s more than 300,000 employees were already covered by earlier mandates, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced last week that “all city workers” needed to get at least one vaccine dose by 5 p.m. Friday, or they would face unpaid leave.
Most city workers have been vaccinated, but about 46,000 had not been as of last week, officials said. The highest percentage of unvaccinated employees is in the city’s Department of Corrections, where only half of the workers had been vaccinated.
More than a quarter of employees in other crucial departments — emergency medical services, fire, police and sanitation — remained unvaccinated as of last week.
Mr. de Blasio’s announcement of the mandates was met with protests and lawsuits.
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Municipal Workers Protest Against N.Y.C. Vaccine Mandate
A large crowd, including many fire, police and sanitation workers, took to the streets in New York to protest the city’s vaccine mandate.
[siren] “No vaccine mandate. “No vaccine — ” “No vaccine mandate.” “No vaccine mandate.” “No vaccine mandate.” “U.S.A., U.S.A.” “No vaccine mandate.” “No vaccine mandate.” [siren] [crowd cheering]
A large crowd, including many fire, police and sanitation workers, took to the streets in New York to protest the city’s vaccine mandate.CreditCredit…Ed Jones/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
On Monday, thousands of people, including police officers, firefighters and sanitation workers, marched across the Brooklyn Bridge, holding large American flags and chanting that they would not comply.
The city’s largest police union, the Police Benevolent Association, filed a lawsuit on Monday to halt the mandate, but a New York State judge on Wednesday denied the request.
The police union said it would appeal, and has previously instructed members on how to undermine City Hall edicts. Patrick J. Lynch, the president of the police union, said in a statement, “Today’s ruling sets the city up for a real crisis.”
Andrew Ansbro, the president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association, said recently that he had ordered his unvaccinated members to report to work and defy the mandate, Reuters reported. But the city’s fire commissioner said he expected about a 20 percent staffing reduction at firehouses and in ambulances because of the mandate, Gothamist reported.
Workers who do not show proof of vaccination by 5 p.m. Friday will be put on unpaid leave as of Monday. Requests for medical or religious exemptions were due on Wednesday, and workers who applied for those exemptions will be permitted to work if they undergo weekly testing while their cases are considered.
Because of a severe staffing shortage on Rikers Island, the city made an exception for uniformed corrections officers, giving them until Dec. 1 to get their first dose. The city’s health care workers and education department employees were already required to be vaccinated under earlier mandates.
Mr. de Blasio said Wednesday that the city had been preparing for the possibility of staff shortages and predicted that almost all workers would ultimately get vaccinated rather than lose their paychecks.
“These are agencies that have been preparing for months,” Mr. de Blasio said. “Every one of the commissioners has been absolutely confident that they can make the adjustments and every one of the commissioners has adamantly wanted us to move forward with a vaccine mandate. So, I feel ready.”
Level the economy was on track
to reach before the pandemic.
Trendline of
1st qtr. 2015 to
4th qtr. 2019
Adjusted for inflation and
seasonality, at annual rates
Level the
economy was
on track to
reach before
the pandemic.
Trendline of
1st qtr. 2015 to
4th qtr. 2019
Adjusted for inflation and
seasonality, at annual rates
Economic growth slowed sharply over the summer as supply-chain bottlenecks and the resurgent pandemic restrained activity at stores, factories and restaurants.
Gross domestic product, adjusted for inflation, grew 0.5 percent in the third quarter, the Commerce Department said Thursday. That was down from 1.6 percent in the second quarter, dashing earlier hopes that the recovery would accelerate as the year went on.
Growth in consumer spending, which has helped drive the recovery, slowed to 0.4 percent, from 2.9 percent in the second quarter, and spending on goods fell sharply. Business investment also slowed.
On an annualized basis, G.D.P. rose 2 percent in the third quarter, down from 6.7 percent in the second quarter.
The slowdown was partly a result of the spread of the Delta variant of the coronavirus, which led many Americans to pull back on travel, restaurant meals and other in-person activities. More recent data suggests that people have returned to those activities as virus cases have fallen, and most economists expect significantly faster growth in the final three months of the year.
But another major restriction on growth may be slower to recede. The pandemic has snarled supply chains around the world, even as demand for many products has surged. The resulting backups have made it hard for U.S. stores and factories to get the products and parts they need. Economists initially expected the disruptions to be short, but many now expect the issues to linger into next year.
Many businesses are also struggling to find enough workers to make, sell and deliver products — another supply shortage that is holding back growth longer than economists expected.
“The economy doesn’t have a demand problem,” said Ben Herzon, executive director of IHS Markit, a forecasting firm. “It has a supply problem.”
In some cases, those supply issues are resulting in delayed deliveries, reduced selection and empty shelves. In other cases, they are resulting in higher prices: Inflation soared last spring and has remained elevated. Consumer prices rose 1.3 percent in the third quarter, slightly slower than in the prior quarter, but still well above the prepandemic rate. Prices were up 4.3 percent from a year earlier.
In government statistics, faster price increases result in slower inflation-adjusted growth: Consumers are spending just as much, but getting less in return.
The combination of faster inflation and slower growth is causing headaches for the Federal Reserve, which has indicated it expects to being pulling back support for the economy as early as next month. It is also a political problem for President Biden as he tries to push his longer-term economic agenda through Congress.
Still, the economy is in much better shape than forecasters expected for most of last year. Gross domestic product returned to its prepandemic level in the second quarter, although it has not caught up to where it would be if the pandemic had never occurred. Government aid, along with reduced spending during the pandemic, has left Americans flush with cash, which should support spending for the rest of the year.
“Supply chain disruptions together with Delta conspired to hold back growth,” said Constance L. Hunter, chief economist for KPMG, the accounting firm. “It’s a speed bump not a slowdown.”
Food prices are surging, and food banks and pantries are struggling to keep up. To cope, they’re substituting or pulling the most expensive products, like beef, from their offerings, The New York Times’s Nelson D. Schwartz and Coral Murphy Marcos report.
The Latest on Food Prices
Nelson D. SchwartzReporting on economics
The Latest on Food Prices
Nelson D. SchwartzReporting on economics
Kaiti Sullivan for The New York Times
The cost of food is soaring — and it’s changing shopping and eating habits for tens of millions of Americans. Some are skipping the most expensive items, while others are working longer hours to put food on the table.
Here’s what to know →
The Latest on Food Prices
Nelson D. SchwartzReporting on economics
Prices of meat, poultry, fish and eggs in U.S. cities are up 15 percent since the start of 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Steak, ground beef for hamburger, and turkey are especially costly.
The increases are due to supply chain shortages and higher labor costs and there is little relief in sight. In fact, some economists think prices could rise even more, given the increase in energy prices.
The Latest on Food Prices
Nelson D. SchwartzReporting on economics
Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times
I spoke to Americans from all over the country about the high costs.
Robin Mueller, who lives in Indianapolis, would buy ground beef for meatloaf or hamburgers to serve once or twice a week for her family. Now she can afford to cook it only once or twice a month.
The Latest on Food Prices
Nelson D. SchwartzReporting on economics
Food banks, too, are feeling stretched.
A case of peanut butter that was $13 to $14 before the pandemic now costs $16 to $19, according to Alexandra McMahon, director of food strategy for the Gleaners Food Bank of Indianapolis.
Green beans that used to retail for $9 a case now sell for $14.
As a result, some food banks are limiting offerings or seeking more in donations to cover their costs.
The Latest on Food Prices
Nelson D. SchwartzReporting on economics
Kaiti Sullivan for The New York Times
The trend is a sharp reversal from much of the last decade, when food prices were relatively stable and meals didn’t take up as big of a part of household budgets.
Unfortunately, it looks like bigger grocery bills aren’t going away soon.
Read more about food prices:
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Credit…Kevin Frayer/Getty Images
This week, after tracking every movement of a couple of retirees who tested positive after visiting Gansu Province, Inner Mongolia and Xi’an, China locked down a city of four million, as well as several smaller cities and parts of Beijing. The aim was to contain a new outbreak that has infected more than 240 people in at least 11 provinces and regions.
The no-holds-barred response is emblematic of China’s “zero Covid” policy, which has served the country remarkably well: China has reported fewer than 5,000 deaths since the pandemic began. The scale of the new outbreak, while tiny compared with many other countries, is large for China.
The policy has also, increasingly, made China an outlier. The rest of the world is reopening, including New Zealand and Australia, which also once embraced zero tolerance.
“Every locality should firmly adhere to the policy of ‘Defend externally against importation, defend internally against rebound,’” Mi Feng, a spokesman for the National Health Commission, said at a news conference on Sunday. “The current control measures cannot be relaxed.”
The strict strategy is the product of a uniquely Chinese set of calculations. Thriving exports have helped to keep the economy afloat. The ruling Communist Party’s tight grip on power enables lockdowns and testing to be carried out with astonishing efficiency. Beijing is set to host the Winter Olympics in February.
For many Chinese, the low case numbers have become a source of national pride. But experts — both in China and abroad — have warned that the approach is unsustainable.
“The regime thinks it needs to maintain a ‘zero Covid’ policy to maintain its legitimacy,” said Lynette Ong, a political scientist at the University of Toronto. “At a huge cost, though.”
Credit…Roman Pilipey/EPA, via Shutterstock
Athletes traveling to Beijing for the Winter Olympics will be able to skip quarantine if they are fully vaccinated, a signal that China is willing to ease some restrictions to ensure that teams make it to the Games in February.
But athletes will still face strict rules, and punishment for violating them, including expulsion, the Beijing Olympics’ organizing committee said on Wednesday. The committee members did not specify what offenses would merit expulsion. But the Beijing Olympics are already shaping up to be the most extraordinarily regulated, large-scale sporting event since the start of the pandemic.
Organizers have outlined a “closed-loop management system” that will restrict athletes, officials, journalists and staff members to a bubblelike environment for the duration of their stay in China. Those in the bubble must be fully vaccinated or spend 21 days in quarantine, and they will also be tested for the virus daily. Currently, all overseas arrivals to China must undergo quarantine.
Other potential penalties for violating the rules include warnings, temporary suspension of credentials or other “relatively serious consequences,” Zhang Jiandong, a senior official on the committee, said at a news conference.
Tickets for the Winter Olympics will be sold exclusively to domestic spectators. Beijing’s Covid protocols so far appear more strict than those of the Tokyo Olympics in July and August.
At the Tokyo Games, athletes were not required to be vaccinated, and they were allowed limited contact with people outside the bubble. Some athletes violated the rules, including not wearing masks. And other people went on unauthorized sightseeing excursions. No participants, however, were actually removed from competition unless they tested positive for the virus, and the organizers allowed almost no spectators.
China enforces a strict “zero Covid” policy, carrying out widespread lockdowns and testing to eliminate even small-scale outbreaks. On Tuesday, it locked down Lanzhou — a northwestern city of about four million people — as officials tried to quash a small Covid outbreak.
Credit…Mauricio Lima for The New York Times
A large clinical trial has found that a common and inexpensive antidepressant lowered the odds that high-risk Covid-19 patients would be hospitalized. The results, published on Wednesday, could open the door to new guidelines for the drug’s use both in the United States and globally.
The drug, fluvoxamine, has been safely prescribed for nearly 30 years as a treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder. But when the coronavirus started spreading, researchers were drawn to the medication because of its ability to reduce inflammation, potentially allowing it to quell the body’s overwhelming response to a coronavirus infection.
Several smaller studies of fluvoxamine earlier in the pandemic showed promising results, but none was as large or persuasive as the one published on Wednesday by a group of researchers in Canada, the United States and Brazil, outside scientists said. Among nearly 1,500 Covid patients in Brazil given either fluvoxamine or a placebo, the drug reduced the need for hospitalization or prolonged medical observation by one-third, the study found. It was published in The Lancet Global Health.
Some patients struggled to tolerate the drug and stopped taking it, the study said, raising a question among outside scientists about whether they had yet identified the ideal dose. But among those who had largely followed doctors’ orders, the benefits were even more striking. In those patients, the drug reduced the need for hospitalization by two-thirds and slashed the risk of dying: One Covid patient given fluvoxamine died, compared with 12 given a placebo.
“That’s really good,” said Dr. David Boulware, an infectious disease scientist at the University of Minnesota who worked on a smaller, real-world study of the drug in Covid patients in California. Plus, he added, “it’s not a shiny new, expensive drug. The nice thing about this is it has a known safety profile.”
Beyond proper dosing, the study left other questions unresolved, scientists said. Penny Ward, a visiting professor in pharmaceutical medicine at King’s College London, noted that part of the drug’s benefit appeared to come from reducing the need for extended medical observation, which the study tracked alongside hospital admissions. And most patients in the study were unvaccinated, Professor Ward said, so it’s unclear how well the drug would work in the vaccinated.
The new study, coming nearly a year after smaller trials of the drug, was a reminder of the difficulty that many researchers have had running large tests of Covid treatments. The Biden administration has made more funding available for such trials, scientists said, but enrolling enough patients has only gotten more difficult: Most high-risk Americans are vaccinated, and vaccine-averse people may be less likely to participate in trials.
Because fluvoxamine is already approved for treating O.C.D., doctors can already prescribe it “off label” for Covid. But Dr. Boulware said that prescriptions of the drug had increased only slightly during the pandemic, unlike other repurposed drugs with far less scientific support, like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin.
“It hasn’t really gotten any cult following,” he said.
Federal treatment guidelines say that larger trials are necessary to evaluate the use of fluvoxamine for Covid, and scientists said they expected those recommendations to change on the basis of the new study.
The new findings are also expected to boost the popularity of the drug in less wealthy countries: A 10-day course of the drug costs about $4.
Credit…Nick Perry/Associated Press
New Zealand’s government announced on Thursday that it would halve the mandatory quarantine period for travelers to the country next month.
From Nov. 14, those arriving in New Zealand will be required to spend only one week in a hotel quarantine facility, down from two, Chris Hipkins, the official responsible for the nation’s pandemic response, said at a news conference. After testing negative multiple times over that period, they will then be allowed to quarantine at home for another three days, before taking one additional test.
People arriving in the country who are not citizens will be required to be fully vaccinated from Nov. 1, he added.
The changes will free up about 1,500 rooms a month in New Zealand’s quarantine hotels, allowing more people to return to the country from overseas and permitting some rooms to be allocated to those already in the country who could not quarantine safely at home. Tens of thousands of New Zealanders are waiting to gain access to a room in the hotels, which can be booked only via a lottery system.
The guidance reflected New Zealand’s shift to a living with the virus approach from a zero tolerance one, even if that means cases spread. The country has been battling an outbreak of the Delta variant since Aug. 17. Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city, has been in lockdown for more than 10 weeks, and on Thursday, two cases were identified in the South Island for the first time in a major city in more than a year.
International arrivals no longer posed the greatest risk of infection for people in New Zealand, Mr. Hipkins said. “We now only get two to three cases per 1,000 arrivals, and only around one in 2,000 is detected after seven days of isolation,” he said. “With increasing cases in the community, the overall risk profile has changed.”
From Nov. 8, New Zealand will also open its borders for quarantine-free travel to people arriving from Pacific Island nations such as Samoa, Tonga, Vanuatu and Tokelau.
After New Zealand has reached its vaccination target of 90 percent of the eligible population across all regions, Mr. Hipkins said, the country will start to move to a new system in which people would be able to quarantine at home.
Credit…Carl Court/Getty Images
In mid-August, Japan was recording over 20,000 daily coronavirus cases, its highest levels during the pandemic. On Wednesday, it reported just 310 nationwide.
About 70 percent of the eligible population has been fully vaccinated, the government announced Wednesday, and life in the country has returned to a state of cautious optimism and near normalcy from one of acute concern. Tokyo has lifted nearly all restrictions on daily life, and the subways, streets and shopping arcades are once again filled with people. The city has reported fewer than 50 daily cases for over a week.
Experts in Japan are unclear about what caused the precipitous drop in cases, although they agree that high vaccination levels and ubiquitous masking are probably the most important factors keeping the virus at bay.
In remarks to reporters on Wednesday, government experts said other factors, such as cooler weather, an effective testing regime and heightened caution during the recent surge in cases, may have also contributed to the sudden drop in cases.
They also noted that asymptomatic cases of the virus also seemed to be on the wane.
Testing levels in the country, however, are significantly lower than in its peer countries, which could mean an underreporting of cases. At the peak, Japan was performing only around 270,000 tests a day.
Unlike other countries, Japan had never gone into lockdown or put compulsory restrictions on people’s behavior. Instead, the government placed the country under a succession of national emergencies in which the authorities called businesses to voluntarily shorten their hours and urged citizens to reduce the amount of time they spent outside.
Nevertheless, infection levels in the country have remained relatively low through the pandemic, peaking at around 23,000 in late August before rapidly dropping. Total deaths in Japan stand at just over 18,200.
Despite the current low infection levels, government experts warn that the country could experience a new surge in cases in the winter as more activities move indoors. In preparation, officials say they will ease access to testing and increase the number of hospital beds available for coronavirus patients.
Hisako Ueno contributed reporting.
Credit…Sergey Dolzhenko/EPA, via Shutterstock
An experiment in Ukraine that pursued an aggressive campaign to vaccinate most inhabitants of one small town has yielded the expected results: very low infection rates and no hospitalizations for Covid-19.
In April, when Ukraine was still short on vaccines, only certain categories of the population, like teachers and doctors, were allowed to get vaccinations. But the Health Ministry made an exception for the town of Morshyn, in western Ukraine, allowing local health authorities to try to vaccinate all 6,000 residents.
Morshyn was chosen partly because its economy, which depends on tourism to resorts and spas, had essentially shut down because of the pandemic, and because it was thought people would be receptive to vaccination so they could resume working.
The plan was to give 70 percent of the town a first dose of vaccine in one month. But despite the economic incentive, distrust in vaccines was an obstacle. Nationwide, 56 percent of Ukrainians still say they will not be vaccinated.
Morshyn’s authorities went on the offensive.
“We realized that we need to call each person individually,” Dr. Henadiy Yukshynsky, the town’s chief doctor, said in an interview with local news media. “We created five special teams that called people and explained to everyone the need for vaccination.”
The local authorities posted billboards, set up tents with information tables inside, made videos for social networks and the news media, and created handouts advocating vaccination.
In the end, it took two months to vaccinate 72 percent of the town’s residents, far more than Ukraine’s nationwide rate of 16 percent, which is the lowest in Europe.
Across the country, cases and hospitalizations are soaring, with an average of 21,364 new cases a day over the past week. The death rate in Ukraine is higher now than during the first wave of Covid, with an average of 538 deaths per day. Panic is beginning to take hold, and more areas of the country have been designated “red zones” and placed under partial lockdown. On Thursday, the mayor of Kyiv, the capital, announced a tightening of restrictions, Reuters reported.
But life in Morshyn goes on as usual. It has no patients hospitalized with Covid and only 19 cases of the virus, 15 of them in people who were not vaccinated.
Credit…Jake Crandall/The Montgomery Advertiser, via Associated Press
Gov. Kay Ivey of Alabama issued an executive order this week directing state agencies to not cooperate, whenever possible, with federal vaccine mandates, describing the Biden administration’s actions as an “overreach.”
The governor’s directive comes as some Republican governors across the country, playing to their conservative bases, have taken actions aimed at countering President Biden’s attempt to raise the country’s overall vaccination rate through expansive mandates.
The White House has issued an order requiring all federal employees, workers for federal contractors, and people who work for health care companies receiving Medicare and Medicaid to be vaccinated. The administration also has plans to ask companies with more than 100 workers to adopt vaccine mandates or weekly testing.
The federal mandates, along with masks in schools, are unpopular among conservatives, many of whom see them as an infringement on personal freedoms, and Republican elected officials in some states have sought to capitalize on that sentiment.
“Alabamians are overwhelmingly opposed to these outrageous Biden mandates, and I stand with them,” Ms. Ivey said in a statement.
In Texas, the Republican governor, Greg Abbott, issued a broad executive order that bars virtually any coronavirus vaccine mandate in the state. And in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is seen as a possible G.O.P. presidential contender, has adamantly opposed any measures that would require vaccines or masks, saying they infringe on personal liberties.
Ms. Ivey’s order says state agencies should prepare to assist with a lawsuit that the Alabama attorney general is expected to file challenging the federal mandate.
Legal experts say the federal government has broad authority to address the public health crisis created by the pandemic, and Mr. Biden has predicted that his health orders will survive legal challenges.
Beyond political symbolism, the impact of Ms. Ivey’s order is unclear. It directs state agencies not to punish businesses and people who do not comply with the federal vaccine mandate. It also states that if an agency is required to enforce the federal mandate, employees should inform those businesses or individuals that the state “does not approve, condone or otherwise endorse” such mandates.
“The federal government’s outrageous overreach has simply given us no other option but to begin taking action, which is why I am issuing this executive order to fight these egregious Covid-19 vaccine mandates,” Ms. Ivey said in a statement.
Ms. Ivey has walked a fine line on the issue of vaccinations. During the summer, she expressed frustration over unvaccinated people’s refusal to get a shot, saying that it was “time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks, not the regular folks.”
“It’s the unvaccinated folks that are letting us down,” she told reporters in July.
Still, Ms. Ivey said that she is “adamantly” opposed to issuing her own vaccine mandate in the state, adding that she believed the way to increase vaccination rates was through “persuasion.”
