Covid-19 and Vaccine News: Live Updates

The coronavirus vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford provided strong protection against Covid-19 in a large clinical trial in the United States, completely preventing the worst outcomes from the disease while causing no serious side effects, according to results announced on Monday.

The findings, announced in a news release from AstraZeneca, may help shore up global confidence in the vaccine, which was shaken this month when more than a dozen countries, mostly in Europe, temporarily suspended the use of the shot over concerns about possible rare side effects.

The trial, involving more than 32,000 participants, was the largest test of its kind for the shot. The vaccine was 79 percent effective overall in preventing symptomatic infections, higher than observed in previous clinical trials. The trial also showed that the vaccine offered strong protection for older people, who had not been as well-represented in earlier studies.

But the fresh data may not make much difference in the United States, where the vaccine is not yet authorized and may not be needed.

If AstraZeneca wins authorization for emergency use in the United States based on the new results, the vaccine is unlikely to become available before May, when federal officials predict that three manufacturers that already have authorization will be producing enough doses for all the nation’s adults.

AstraZeneca said on Monday that it would continue to analyze the new data and prepare to apply “in the coming weeks” for emergency authorization from the Food and Drug Administration. It already has approval in more than 70 countries, but clearance from American regulators, if the company can secure it, would bolster the vaccine’s reputation globally.

The interim results announced on Monday were based on 141 Covid-19 cases that had turned up in volunteers. Two-thirds of participants were given the vaccine, with doses spaced four weeks apart, and the rest received a saline placebo. Volunteers were recruited from Chile and Peru as well as the United States.

None of the volunteers who got the vaccine developed severe symptoms or had to be hospitalized, a major selling point for the shot. Five participants who were given the placebo developed severe Covid-19, Ruud Dobber, an executive vice president at AstraZeneca, told CNBC on Monday.

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Police Break Up Spring Break Crowds in Miami Beach

The police fired pepper balls to disperse crowds after an 8 p.m. curfew went into effect on Saturday. Local Miami officials said people had flocked to the city because of its relatively few coronavirus restrictions.

[yelling; sirens]

One day after the spring break oasis of South Beach descended into chaos, with the police struggling to control overwhelming crowds and making scores of arrests, officials in Miami Beach decided on Sunday to extend an emergency curfew for up to three weeks.

Officials went so far as to approve closing the famed Ocean Drive for four nights a week until April 12, including to pedestrians, during the 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew. Residents, hotel guests and employees of local businesses are exempt.

The strip, frequented by celebrities and tourists alike, was the scene of a much-criticized skirmish on Saturday night in which police officers used pepper balls to disperse a large crowd of sometimes unruly and mostly unmasked revelers just hours after the curfew had been introduced.

The restrictions were a stunning concession to the city’s inability to control unwieldy crowds. The city and the state of Florida have aggressively courted visitors.

“I believe it’s a lot of pent-up demand from the pandemic and people wanting to get out,” David Richardson, a member of the Miami Beach City Commission, said on Sunday. “And our state has been publicly advertised as being open, so that’s contributing to the issue.”

In an emergency meeting, the commission approved maintaining the curfew in the city’s South Beach entertainment district from Thursday through Sunday for three more weeks, which is when spring break typically ends. Bridges along several causeways that connect Miami Beach with the mainland will also continue to be shut during the curfew.

Law enforcement officials said many people had been drawn to the city for spring break this year because it has relatively few virus restrictions, mirroring the state at large. And hotel rooms and flights have been deeply discounted, to make up for the months of lost time.

Miami-Dade County, which includes Miami Beach, has recently endured one of the nation’s worst outbreaks, and more than 32,000 Floridians have died from the virus, an unthinkable cost that the state’s leaders rarely acknowledge. The state is also thought to have the highest concentration of B.1.1.7, the more contagious and possibly more lethal virus variant first identified in Britain.

GLOBAL ROUNDUP

The coronavirus, once seemingly in retreat in India, is again rippling across the country. On Monday, the government reported almost 47,000 new cases, the highest number in more than four months. It also reported 212 new deaths from the virus, the most since early January.

The outbreak is centered in the state of Maharashtra, home to Mumbai, the country’s financial hub. Entire districts of the state have gone back into lockdown. Scientists are investigating whether a new strain found there is more virulent, like variants found in Britain, South Africa and Brazil.

Officials are under pressure to aggressively ramp up testing and vaccination, especially in Mumbai, to avoid disruptions like the dramatic nationwide lockdown last year, which resulted in a recession.

But less than 3 percent of India’s population of 1.3 billion has received a shot, including about half of health care workers.

The campaign has also been plagued by public skepticism. The government approved a domestically developed vaccine, called Covaxin, before its safety and efficacy trials were even over, though preliminary findings since then have suggested it works.

The other shot available in India is the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, which was suspended in some countries after a number of patients reported blood clots and strokes, though most have since reversed course and scientists haven’t found a link between the shots and the patients’ conditions.

In other developments around the world:

• The leading opposition candidate for president in the Republic of Congo died while being transferred to France for treatment for Covid-19, Reuters reported on Monday, citing a spokesman. The candidate, Guy Brice Parfait Kolelas, 61, had been hospitalized in the capital, Brazzaville, after becoming ill in the final days of the campaign. In a video that circulated on social media over the weekend, he warned supporters that he was “fighting death” but asked them to “stand up and vote for change.” The election was on Sunday, and the incumbent, President Denis Sassou N’Guesso, is expected to extend his 36 years in power.

• Taiwan, one of the few places in the world to successfully contain the coronavirus from the beginning of the pandemic, kicked off its vaccination drive on Monday. Premier Su Tseng-chang and Chen Shih-chung, the health minister, were among the first to be inoculated with the AstraZeneca vaccine, the only one authorized so far. The vaccinations were widely televised in Taiwan, part of an effort to increase confidence in the vaccine. Taiwan has been relatively slow to start inoculating, in part because it has had so few reported cases: As of Monday, the all-time total was 1,006, with 10 deaths, on an island of 24 million people.

• The Chinese company CanSino Biologics said on Monday that Hungary had authorized its Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use, the first European country to do so. The vaccine, known as Convidecia, is a single-dose product developed with the Chinese military, and the company said that authorization had been granted based on the interim results of Phase 3 clinical trials. Hungary is also using another Chinese-made vaccine, from Sinovac, and Russia’s Sputnik V, as well as the Western ones approved elsewhere in the European Union.

• Norway reported on Sunday that two more people had died after receiving the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, bringing the country’s total number of such deaths to four. The Norwegian Medicines Agency said in a statement that it “cannot rule out that these cases may be related to the AstraZeneca vaccine,” although the European Medicines Agency, the continent’s top drug regulator, said last week that it considered the vaccine safe. Denmark reported over the weekend that two people had experienced brain hemorrhages after receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine, one of whom died.

• The Philippines reported record-breaking numbers of new coronavirus infections over the weekend, leading the government to place metropolitan Manila and four surrounding provinces under the second-highest level of lockdown for the next two weeks. On Saturday, officials reported 7,999 cases, the most the country has had in a single day. President Rodrigo Duterte approved restrictions including a ban on all mass gatherings and a curfew from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. Nonessential travel to or from the area is banned. The restrictions will disrupt in-person religious services for Holy Week, a popular travel period, for the second year in a row.

• Health officials in South Africa say the country has sold its unused doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to 14 other states in the African Union, Reuters reported on Sunday. It paused the use of the vaccine last month after a small trial showed it offered only minimal protection against mild to moderate illness caused by the dominant local variant of the virus. At the time, South Africa had received one million AstraZeneca doses from the Serum Institute of India, with 500,000 more pending.

• Australia and New Zealand are moving closer to opening a travel bubble, with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand saying on Monday that she would announce a date for the start of quarantine-free travel on April 6. Both countries have all but eliminated the coronavirus. Though Australia has lifted its quarantine requirement for passengers arriving from New Zealand, New Zealand has yet to reciprocate, despite pressure from opposition parties and the country’s tourism sector. On Sunday, Australia also amended its travel ban legislation to exclude New Zealand visitors from a requirement to seek government permission before leaving.

The Biden administration, with hundreds of billions of dollars to spend to end the Covid-19 crisis, has set aggressive benchmarks to determine whether the economy has fully recovered, including returning to historically low unemployment and helping more than one million Black and Hispanic women return to work within a year.

But restoring economic activity, which was central to President Biden’s pitch for his $1.9 trillion stimulus package, faces logistical and epidemiological challenges unlike any previous recovery. New variants of the virus are spreading. Strained supply chains are holding up the distribution of rapid coronavirus tests, which could be critical to safely reopen schools, workplaces, restaurants, theaters and concert venues.

Then there are questions of whether the money can reach schools and child care providers quickly enough to make a difference for parents who were forced to quit their jobs to care for their children.

Economic optimism is rising as the pace of vaccinations steadily increases. Unemployment has already fallen from its pandemic peak of 14.8 percent last April to 6.2 percent in February. Federal Reserve officials now expect the unemployment rate to slip below 4 percent by next year and for the economy to grow faster this year than in any year since the Reagan administration.

But risks remain. For the economy to fully bounce back, Americans need to feel confident in returning to shopping, traveling, entertainment and work. No matter how much cash the administration pumps into the economy, recovery could be stalled by the emergence of new variants, the reluctance of some Americans to get vaccinated and, in the coming weeks, spotty compliance with social distancing guidelines and other public health measures.

A year ago the pandemic drained the New York City subway of nearly all its riders, sickened thousands of transit workers and plunged North America’s largest public transit agency into its worst financial emergency ever.

Today ridership on the subway has crept back up to about one third of its usual levels, from an all-time low of 7 percent last spring. An infusion of billions of dollars in federal aid has kept the Metropolitan Transportation Authority afloat. And the agency, which operates the subway, buses and two commuter rail lines, was further lifted by another $6 billion in President Biden’s rescue plan.

But the M.T.A.’s long-term survival depends on the return of its largest funding source: riders. Fares provide early 40 percent of the agency’s operating revenue, a higher percentage than almost any other major American transit system.

Now, as more people are vaccinated and urban life slowly rebounds, public transit officials are confronting a sobering reality: a growing consensus that ridership may never return entirely to its prepandemic levels.

Though public health experts generally agree that riding trains and buses is not a major risk factor for exposure to the virus, transit experts say some commuters with the means to do so are still likely to stay with the alternatives — like using cars or bikes — that they turned to during the pandemic.

JERUSALEM — Vaccinated Israelis are working out in gyms and dining in restaurants. They’re partying at nightclubs and cheering at soccer matches by the thousands.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is taking credit for bringing Israel “back to life,” as he calls it, and banking on the country’s giddy, post-pandemic mood of liberation to put him over the top in a close election on Tuesday.

But nothing is quite that simple in Israeli politics.

Even as most Israelis appreciate the government’s world-leading vaccination campaign, many worry that the grand social and economic reopening may prove premature and suspect that the timing is political.

Instead of a transparent reopening process led by public health professionals, “decisions are made at the last minute, at night, by the cabinet,” said Hagai Levine, an epidemiologist at the Hebrew University-Hadassah Braun School of Public Health in Jerusalem. “The timing, right before the election, is intended to declare mission accomplished.”

The parliamentary election on Tuesday will be the country’s fourth in two years. Mr. Netanyahu is on trial on corruption charges and analysts say his best chance of avoiding conviction lies in heading a new right-wing government. He has staked everything on his handling of the coronavirus crisis.

He takes personal credit for the country’s inoculation campaign, which has fully vaccinated about half the population of nine million — outpacing the rest of the world — and he has declared victory over the virus.

“Israel is the world champion in vaccinations, the first country in the world to exit from the health corona and the economic corona,” he said at a pre-election conference last week.

The vaccination campaign has been powered by early delivery of several million doses from Pfizer, and Mr. Netanyahu has presented himself as the only candidate who could have pulled off that deal, boasting of his personal appeals to Pfizer’s chief executive, Albert Bourla, who, as a son of Holocaust survivors, has great affinity for Israel.

Mr. Netanyahu even posted a clip from “South Park,” the American animated sitcom, acknowledging Israel’s vaccination supremacy.

But experts said his claim that the virus was in the rearview mirror was overly optimistic.

The distributor of China’s Sinopharm vaccine in the United Arab Emirates says it has started offering a “very small number” of people a third shot after these recipients reported insufficient levels of antibodies following a two-dose regimen.

The distributor, G42 Healthcare, has found that some people were “not really responsive” to the Sinopharm vaccine, Walid Zaher, the company’s chief researcher, told Dubai Eye Radio on Sunday.

Dr. Zaher’s disclosure could add to questions about the overall efficacy of the Sinopharm vaccine, which has been rolled out to at least six countries. The state-owned company has not reported detailed Phase 3 clinical data for scientists to independently assess the strength of its vaccines. Sinopharm did not respond to a request for comment.

It is unclear which of Sinopharm’s two vaccines Dr. Zaher was referring to. One was developed in conjunction with the Beijing Institute of Biological Products, and the other with the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products. In December, the Emirates became the first government to approve the vaccine that was made with the Beijing Institute.

Dr. Zaher said that G42 Healthcare had approached people to be part of a study in which they were given a third shot.

“No one vaccine will be working for everyone,” he said.

Pfizer and BioNTech said last month that they planned to test a third booster shot in response to concerns over coronavirus variants. Similarly, Moderna said it had shipped doses of a newly adjusted vaccine to the National Institutes of Health for testing that would address the variant first detected in South Africa, known as B.1.351.

Dr. Farida al-Hosani, a spokeswoman for the Emirates’ health sector, has also said that residents and Emiratis inoculated with the Sinopharm vaccine can get a third dose if they do not develop sufficient antibodies, telling the National newspaper this month that only a small number of people would be affected.

Dr. Zaher said he did not know the exact number of people who would require a third shot “because obviously we did not measure everyone, but it’s a very small number.” He said anyone who was concerned about their antibody levels after receiving the Sinopharm vaccine could approach their doctor about getting a third shot.

Sinopharm has said the vaccine made with the Beijing Institute has an efficacy rate of 79 percent, while the one made with the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products has an efficacy rate of 72.5 percent. Both are above the 50 percent threshold that the World Health Organization has said would make a vaccine effective for general use.

In addition to Sinopharm, the Emirates, which is inoculating its population faster than any country except Israel and the Seychelles, is also using the Pfizer-BioNTech, Oxford-AstraZeneca and Sputnik V vaccines. The government is donating some of the Sinopharm doses it purchased to countries where it has strategic or commercial interests, including the Seychelles and Egypt.

But some doctors in Egypt have been reluctant to receive the shots, citing a lack of trust in the data released by Sinopharm and the Emirates, where some of the trials were held. Malaysia, one of the Emirates’ biggest trading partners, also declined an offer of 500,000 doses, saying that regulators would have to independently approve the Sinopharm vaccine.

Kent Taylor, the founder and chief executive of the Texas Roadhouse restaurant chain, died by suicide on Thursday after suffering from post-Covid-19 symptoms, the company and his family said in a statement. He was 65.

“After a battle with post-Covid-related symptoms, including severe tinnitus, Kent Taylor took his own life this week,” the statement said.

His body was found in a field on his property near Louisville, Ky., the Kentucky State Police told The Louisville Courier Journal. The State Police and the Oldham County coroner did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Sunday.

Mr. Taylor, who was also the chairman of the company’s board of directors, founded Texas Roadhouse in 1993. He sought to create an “affordable, Texas-style” restaurant but was turned down more than 80 times as he tried to find investors, according to a biography provided by the company.

Eventually, he raised $300,000 from three doctors from Elizabethtown, Ky., and sketched out the design for the first Texas Roadhouse on a cocktail napkin for the investors.

The first Texas Roadhouse opened in Clarksville, Ind., in 1993. Three of the chain’s first five restaurants failed, but it went on to open 611 locations in 49 states, and 28 international locations in 10 countries.

Until his death, Mr. Taylor had been active in Texas Roadhouse’s operations, the company said. He oversaw decisions about the menu, selected the murals for the restaurants and picked songs for the jukeboxes.

Greg Moore, the lead director of the company’s board, said in a statement that Mr. Taylor gave up his compensation package during the coronavirus pandemic to support frontline workers in the company.

If you are having thoughts of suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (TALK). You can find a list of additional resources at SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources.