Ohio Lawmanker Continue to Relax High School

More U.S. parents are willing to vaccinate their children, a survey finds.

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A new survey found that more parents were willing to vaccinate their children in mid-September than were willing to do so in July, a shift that coincided with schools reopening in the middle of a wave of hospitalizations and deaths caused by the highly contagious Delta.

The latest monthly survey about vaccine attitudes by the Kaiser Family Foundation also found that about one in four U.S. parents reported that a child of theirs had to quarantine at home because of a possible exposure to Covid-19 since the beginning of the school year.

That is even as two-thirds of parents say they feel that their school is taking appropriate measures to contain the spread of the coronavirus.

The survey found that 58 percent of parents say that schools should have comprehensive mask requirements, 35 percent say there should be no mask mandates at all, and 4 percent believe that only unvaccinated students and staff members should be compelled to wear masks, according to the report. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that all students, teachers and staff members in elementary and secondary schools wear masks.

Kaiser conducted a nationally representative survey of 1,519 people from Sept. 13-22 — a time of surging Covid deaths — and it was mostly completed before Pfizer and BioNTech announced that their vaccine was safe and effective for children age 5 to 11. No vaccine is currently authorized in the United States for children under 12. Of those who were polled, 414 identified themselves as parents of children 17 or younger, and were included in the analysis of parents' responses.

The Pfizer vaccine, already in use for older children and adults, was authorized in mid-May for children age 12 to 15, and the report suggests that over time, parents of children in that age group and older are slowly becoming more comfortable with it. By the time of the September interviews, 48 percent said that their children age 12 to 17 had gotten at least one dose, up from 41 percent in July. According to federal data, 57 percent of that age group has received at least one dose.

And parents of children age 5 to 11 increasingly report favoring the vaccine as well. Thirty-four percent of those parents said they would have their children vaccinated as soon as possible, up from 26 percent in July.

The U.S. says Texas' ban on school mask mandates may violate disabled children's rights.

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The Justice Department signaled its support on Wednesday for the families of children with disabilities in Texas who are suing to overturn Gov. Greg Abbott's ban on mask mandates in the state's schools.

The department filed a formal statement on Wednesday with the federal district court in Austin that is hearing one of the lawsuits, saying that the ban violates the rights of students with disabilities if it prevents the students from safely attending public schools in person, "even if their local school districts offered them the option of virtual learning."

The move signals a willingness by the federal government to intervene in states where governors and other policymakers have opposed mask mandates, using federal anti-discrimination laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act. The Justice Department has often used similar statements of interest to step in to cases involving civil rights.

"Frankly I'm thrilled," said Juliana Longoria, 38, of San Antonio. Her daughter, Juliana Ramirez, 8, is one of the plaintiffs in a suit against the ban filed in August by the advocacy group Disability Rights Texas. "It gives me a lot more hope that the federal government is serious about protecting our children," Ms. Longoria said.

Lawsuits against Mr. Abbott's ban have also been filed in Texas state courts, and have sometimes found initial success, but the State Supreme Court has repeatedly sided with the governor by allowing his ban to remain in effect. The case in which the Justice Department intervened on Wednesday is federal, and is scheduled to go to trial next week.

The governor's office did not immediately respond to requests for comment, nor did the Texas Education Agency or the office of Ken Paxton, the state attorney general.

Mr. Paxton has defended the ban in state court, saying that Texas law gives the governor broad powers to guide the state through emergencies like the Covid-19 pandemic.

But the Justice Department said in its statement that the civil rights protections afforded by federal anti-discrimination laws applied "even during emergencies."

Dustin Rynders, a lawyer for Disability Rights Texas, said the department's position put schools in Texas and beyond on notice that they had an obligation to accommodate people with disabilities, including through the wearing of masks.

"It would be discrimination for a state to prohibit ramps to enter in the school," Mr. Rynders said. "And for many of our clients, people wearing masks to protect our clients' health is what is required for our clients to be able to safely enter the school."

Because masks are not required at her school, Juliana Graves, 7, has not been back to school in Sugar Land this year, according to her mother, Ricki Graves. The Lamar Consolidated Independent School District did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Juliana has had a heart transplant, and the medication she takes to prevent rejection suppresses her immune system, her mother said. As a result, respiratory infections as simple as the common cold have landed Juliana in the hospital more than a dozen times, Ms. Graves said, adding that she worries that Covid-19 could kill her daughter.

Instead of going to school, Juliana has been receiving four hours a week of instruction from a teacher through homebound school services, Ms. Graves said. Her daughter is repeating first grade, she said, and might now be falling even further behind.

"She's missing all her social interaction, she's not able to go to school in person and be with her teachers and have recess and go to lunch," Ms. Graves said. "It's hard for her."

Correction :

Sept. 30, 2021

An earlier version of this item referred incorrectly to actions by the Texas Supreme Court. It has repeatedly allowed Gov. Greg Abbott's ban on local mask mandates to remain in effect; it has not yet ruled on whether the governor had the authority to impose the ban.

Anchorage's mayor apologizes a day after defending mask opponents who wore yellow Stars of David.

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The mayor of Anchorage, Alaska, apologized on Thursday for defending people who chose to wear a yellow Star of David at a town hall meeting to show their opposition to a proposed city mask ordinance.

The mayor, Dave Bronson, a Republican, said in a statement, "We should not trivialize or compare what happened during the Holocaust to a mask mandate."

"I want to apologize for any perception that my statements support or compare what happened to the Jewish people in Nazi Germany," the statement read. "I should have chosen my words more carefully, and if I offended anyone, I am truly sorry."

The apology came a day after a contentious debate at a town hall meeting with the Anchorage Assembly about a proposal to require that face coverings be worn indoors and at large outdoor events, regardless of vaccination status, to combat a surge in coronavirus infections throughout the state.

Several community members at the meeting who opposed the ordinance wore yellow Stars of David, a reference to patches that Jews were forced to wear in Nazi Germany. Across the United States and around the world, some conservatives, libertarians and others opposed to mask and vaccine mandates have been using yellow stars and other Holocaust imagery, drawing condemnation from the Anti-Defamation League and other Jewish organizations. The imagery has shown up at protests in Staten Island and Kansas City, as well as in England, France and Germany. One Republican lawmaker from Washington State issued an apology after wearing the star on his shirt at a protest in June.

The Anchorage Daily News reported that at the meeting, Mayor Bronson, who opposes the mask ordinance, seemed to defend the use of the star imagery.

"We've referenced the Star of David quite a bit here tonight, but there was a formal message that came out within Jewish culture about that and the message was, 'Never again,'" the mayor said, according to the Daily News. "That's an ethos. And that's what that star really means is, 'We will not forget, this will never happen again.' And I think us borrowing that from them is actually a credit to them."

The Anti-Defamation League called his comments "disturbing and offensive."

Most African countries missed a target to vaccinate 10 percent of their people.

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JOHANNESBURG — Only nine African countries have met a target of vaccinating 10 percent of their populations against Covid-19 by the end of September, the World Health Organization said on Thursday — a statistic that illustrates how far the continent is lagging behind global vaccination rates.

The W.H.O. set the benchmark this year, as part of a push for every country to vaccinate at least 40 percent of its people by the end of 2021.

Just 4 percent of Africa's population is fully vaccinated, with "still a long way to go" to reach the end-of-year target, Dr. Richard Mihigo, the W.H.O.'s program coordinator for vaccine development in Africa, told a news conference on Thursday.

Of the nine countries that met the goal, several have relatively small populations, including the island nations of Mauritius and the Seychelles, which have fully vaccinated two-thirds of their residents.

Although the infection rate in Africa has generally remained lower than on other continents, the low levels of inoculation increase the risk that new variants could emerge as the virus continues to circulate, experts said.

The W.H.O. has reliable data for 52 of the 54 African countries — Eritrea has supplied no statistics, and Tanzania only partial figures. About half have vaccinated less than 3 percent of their residents, including many of the most populous, like Nigeria, Congo, Kenya and Uganda.

The continent has suffered from vaccine shortages, made worse by a shortfall in deliveries from the global vaccine-sharing initiative, Covax. Wealthy countries that pledged to support the initiative have given it only a fraction of the promised doses.

Wealthier countries have administered the majority of Covid-19 shots around the world. That pattern has been the same in Africa, where countries with more advanced economies, including South Africa, Morocco and Botswana, have outpaced their poorer neighbors.

"In Africa, the major issue has been a supply issue rather than a demand issue," Dr. Mihigo said, adding that vaccine hesitancy has been a concern "here and there." The W.H.O. said it was working to identify bottlenecks in countries where limited technical capacity to deliver vaccines has hampered inoculation campaigns.

The African countries that have had the most success acquired doses through several channels, including initiatives like Covax and the Africa Vaccine Acquisition Trust, direct purchases from manufacturers, and donations.

For Eswatini, a landlocked monarchy in southern Africa, a July donation of more than 300,000 Johnson & Johnson vaccine doses from the U.S. government was "a game-changer," said Fortunate Bhembe, an official with the country's ministry of health.

The country has also purchased about 400,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Together with more than 100,000 doses expected from Covax later this year, they are intended for use in children ages 12 to 16, Ms. Bhembe said.

South Africa, which has the highest number of cumulative Covid-19 cases on the continent, is emerging from a third wave of Covid-19 infections driven by the Delta variant, President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Thursday. At the peak of the wave in July, the country recorded an average of roughly 20,000 new cases a day, the most since last January.

The average number of new infections reported in the last week was around 1,800 a day, Mr. Ramaphosa said, a downward trend that has encouraged officials to ease Covid-19 lockdown regulations, including a curfew and size limit for public gatherings, in place since last March.

"We have been living under the shadow of the pandemic for 574 days now, and all of us have taken strain," Mr. Ramaphosa said.

South African officials hope to vaccinate 70 percent of the country's population by the end of the year. So far about 15 percent of the population has been fully vaccinated, according to the Our World in Data project at the University of Oxford.

Nearly two months after mandate, 91 percent of Tyson Foods' workers are vaccinated.

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Tyson Foods has reached a 91 percent vaccination rate for its work force, the latest evidence that corporate vaccine mandates can help increase immunizations in the United States.

When Tyson said on Aug. 3 that it would require coronavirus vaccines for all 120,000 of its U.S. employees, less than half of its work force was inoculated. Nearly two months later, about 109,000 employees are vaccinated, said Dr. Claudia Coplein, Tyson's chief medical officer.

Tyson's frontline workers have until Nov. 1 to get vaccinated (or request an exemption), while the company's roughly 6,000 office workers have until Friday. Unlike some other big companies, Tyson has not faced lawsuits over its mandate, although it has lost a handful of employees, a number that may increase as the deadline nears.

The company added a carrot to its mandate by offering cash incentives and paid time off to those who get vaccinated. Employees with at least one shot at 50 of the company's chicken-processing plants were allowed to partake in a weekly raffle for a $10,000 award. It also offered fully vaccinated employees a $200 bonus.

Tyson was one of the first major companies to mandate vaccines after incentives like paid time off to be inoculated started to lose traction. Other companies' broad mandates have reported similar success. United Airlines said this week that 99 percent of its work force was vaccinated, and scores of hospital workers have agreed to a shot after initial resistance. In California, health care employers have reported vaccination rates of 90 percent or higher.

E.U. nations risk a new virus surge if they ease restrictions now, health officials warn.

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There is a high risk of a surge in new coronavirus cases and deaths in European countries with insufficient vaccination coverage if they relax Covid-19 restrictions in the next few weeks, according to a new report by the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control.

Just over 62 percent of the total population of the European Union is fully vaccinated, and only three of its 27 member countries have fully inoculated more than 75 percent of their residents, according to the agency's data.

That level of vaccine coverage is not enough to forestall the virus from spreading when Covid-19 restrictions are relaxed, the agency warned, especially now that the highly contagious Delta variant is causing most new reported coronavirus cases on the continent.

"Countries should continuously strive to increase their vaccination coverage in all eligible age groups, regardless of current vaccination coverage levels," said Andrea Ammon, the agency's director.

Anticipating surges of new cases, hospitalizations and deaths if precautions are relaxed soon, Ms. Ammon said it might be necessary to keep Covid-19 restrictions in place until the end of November.

The report comes at a time when most children in the European Union have resumed attending school in person, with no coronavirus vaccine authorized yet for use in children under 12. For this reason, the report said that it was especially important for the education system to implement preventive measures. The European Medicines Agency, the bloc's drug regulator, said last week that it would decide by early November whether to approve the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in children under 12.

As a whole, the European Union is well advanced with vaccination efforts; more than 73 percent of the bloc's adults are fully vaccinated. But there are considerable differences from country to country.

Eastern nations like Romania and Bulgaria are far behind wealthier countries to the west, putting a large portion of the bloc's population at greater risk. The agency's report said it was crucial for those countries to increase their vaccination rates, by understanding why residents are not getting vaccinated and by adopting policies tailored to reach groups with particularly low vaccination uptake.

People with disabilities have a tougher time getting Covid vaccines, the C.D.C. reports.

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Americans with a disability were more likely to want coronavirus vaccines but were having a harder time getting them than other people, according to data released on Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a stark signal of what the agency's scientists said was a need for health officials to remove barriers to access.

In a survey of nearly 57,000 people from May to June, unvaccinated people with a disability such as serious difficulty seeing, hearing or walking were nearly twice as likely as their unvaccinated counterparts without a disability to say that they would definitely get vaccinated. (The survey only included people outside of nursing homes and other institutions.)

And yet, people with a disability were less likely to be vaccinated: Among 50- to 64-year-olds, 63 percent of people with a disability had received coronavirus shots, compared with 72 percent of other people. Among people older than 75, the gap was smaller but still evident: Eighty-eight percent of people with a disability were vaccinated, compared with 90 percent of people without one.

"Covid-19 vaccination coverage was lower among U.S. adults with a disability than among those without a disability, even though adults with a disability reported less hesitancy to getting vaccinated," the study's authors wrote.

The study noted that state-run vaccine registration websites were not all compliant with basic accessibility recommendations. It suggested that online scheduling systems offer call lines for people who needed help booking vaccinations.

It also said that not all vaccination sites had American Sign Language interpreters or workers trained in helping people with developmental disabilities, and that getting to those sites in the first place was often difficult for people with a disability.

"These efforts would be relevant to the reduction of health disparities related to disability beyond the Covid-19 pandemic," the study said.

A study finds no signs of trouble in getting flu and Covid shots at the same time.

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A British clinical trial found no sign of danger in getting a flu shot and a second dose of a Covid-19 vaccine at the same time, results that support the advice of U.S. health authorities and are welcome news for strained health care workers as flu season hits.

In the study, doctors recruited 679 people from April to June across Britain. At the time, all of the volunteers had received a first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, either from AstraZeneca or Pfizer-BioNTech, the two vaccines first authorized there.

When the volunteers returned for a second vaccine dose, the researchers also gave half of them a flu shot and the other half a placebo. The researchers then monitored the volunteers for side effects, such as aches and fevers.

"There are no safety concerns raised in this trial," the authors wrote in their preliminary report, which was posted online on Thursday and has not yet been published in a scientific journal.

In addition to looking at the safety of the vaccines, the researchers also collected blood to measure antibodies to the coronavirus. Some combinations of different vaccine brands led to a slightly lower level of antibodies, and a slightly higher level in other cases. But the researchers did not suspect that any combination of a flu and Covid vaccine would result in a lower effectiveness than each given individually.

The researchers did not speculate about what immune responses people might experience if they get a flu shot at the same time as a third Covid-19 shot, which many people may be doing as countries authorize boosters.

In California and New York, where mandates for health care workers have gone into effect, many are complying.

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As California's requirement that all health care workers be vaccinated against the coronavirus took effect on Thursday, major health systems reported that the mandate had helped boost their vaccination rates to 90 percent or higher. In New York, another mandate that began this week compelled thousands of hospital and nursing home workers to get shots. And at several major corporations, executives reported surges in vaccination rates after adding their own requirements.

Until now, the biggest unknown about mandating Covid-19 vaccines in workplaces has been whether such requirements would lead to compliance or to significant departures by workers unwilling to get shots — at a time when many places were already facing staffing shortages. So far, a number of early mandates show few indications of large-scale resistance.

"Mandates are working," said John Swartzberg, a physician and professor at the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley. "If you define 'working' by the percentage of people getting vaccinated and not leaving their jobs in droves."

Unlike other incentives — "prizes, perks, doughnuts, beer, we've seen just about everything offered to get people vaccinated" — mandates are among the few levers that historically have been effective in increasing compliance, said Dr. Swartzberg, who has tracked national efforts to increase rates of inoculation.

The various mandates in place are arriving as many employers await further guidance from the Biden administration, which announced sweeping actions in September, including a mandate that all companies with more than 100 workers require vaccination or weekly testing. Mr. Biden also moved to mandate shots for health care workers, federal contractors and a vast majority of federal workers, who could face disciplinary measures if they refuse.

Vaccine mandates complicate hospital staffing woes in Wyoming.

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The coronavirus is raging in the northern states of the Mountain West, especially Wyoming, where the Delta variant is tearing through one of the least vaccinated areas in the country.

Wyoming is tied with its neighbor Idaho for the second-lowest vaccination rate of any U.S. state. Each has fully vaccinated 41 percent of residents, compared with 56 percent nationally. And newly reported virus cases are at their highest levels since November in Wyoming and neighboring Montana.

Covid-19 patients are filling Wyoming's hospitals and stretching health care workers thin, leading to the cancellation of elective procedures at some hospitals. Some patients are traveling as far away as Texas for care.

Unlike hospitals in many states, most in Wyoming are not requiring their employees to be vaccinated. Some hospital administrators worry that President Biden's national vaccine mandate for health care workers, which has yet to take effect, could prompt some workers to quit, making staffing shortages more severe.

"We're near bursting at the seams, and a lot of that has to do not really with the number of beds we have available, but with the staffing for those beds," said Eric Boley, the president of the Wyoming Hospitals Association, a trade group that represents most of the state's hospitals.

"I don't think they realize what a delicate balancing act it is to try to have enough trained staff," he said of federal officials.

Gov. Mark Gordon of Wyoming has encouraged vaccinations but resisted requiring them. He issued a directive in May that prevents state agencies, boards and commissions from restricting access based on vaccine status, and the state is preparing a possible legal challenge to Mr. Biden's mandates.

Mr. Gordon has activated the Wyoming National Guard to provide nonmedical support for hospitals with staff shortages, and allocated more than $20 million to help hospitals hire and pay extra workers.

Dr. Mark Dowell, the health officer for Natrona County, said the governor's approach was out of sync with the reality on the ground.

"It's become political instead of medical," said Dr. Dowell, an infectious disease specialist. "There has been basically no major activity at a state level to acknowledge or deal with this — it's almost as if it doesn't exist." He added that because anti-vaccine sentiment was so pervasive in Wyoming, vaccine mandates were needed "simply to save lives."

Many health care workers do not need the extra push, said Mike McCafferty, the chief executive of Sheridan Memorial Hospital. He said that more than 70 percent of his hospital's employees had been vaccinated without using an incentive or mandates.

Many health care workers around the country, especially those at large hospital systems, seem to be going along with vaccination requirements. That is true at Wyoming's largest hospital, the Wyoming Medical Center in Casper, according to Dr. Carol Solie, its chief medical officer.

All of the hospital's roughly 1,500 workers and contractors must be fully vaccinated by Nov. 1, with exemptions for religious and medical reasons. Dr. Solie said that more than 60 percent were already vaccinated, while "a very small number" had quit over the mandate, which was announced on July 20.

"If you tell a group of professionals that they have to do something to keep their job," Dr. Solie said, "the majority are going to act on it."

Hundreds are quarantining in one of New Jersey's biggest school districts.

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More than 800 students and staff members in one of New Jersey's largest school districts are in quarantine because of possible exposure to the coronavirus, just three weeks after the district began the school year with a mask-optional policy.

According to the Covid-19 tracker for the district, Toms River, at least 817 students and staff are at home after going into quarantine this week. The figure is equal to about 5.5 percent of the district's student population and a little more than 1 percent of its staff.

There have been 270 confirmed cases of the coronavirus — 236 among students and 34 among staff members — in the district this year. With about 14,600 students, Toms River, in Ocean County, had the sixth-largest student body in the state last year, according to enrollment data.

Gov. Philip D. Murphy, a Democrat, said in June that school districts would be allowed to create their own mask-wearing policies after the Toms River district pushed back on the governor's initial plans for a statewide school mask mandate in the fall.

But in August, amid a surge in cases of Covid-19 fueled by the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant, Governor Murphy required mask-wearing once more — though he included an exemption for "extreme heat indoors." The policy does not specify what constitutes "extreme heat."

Citing that exception, Toms River made masks optional for students and staff at the beginning of the school year. The district then began to require masks starting Sept. 20 after the heat and humidity were no longer considered excessive, Michael Kenny, a spokesman for the district, said.

In a statement on Wednesday, the district said masks had been optional for only eight days at the start of the school year, and only in spaces where air conditioning was not available.

"Generally speaking, our numbers are consistent with a community at high risk of transmission, as Ocean County currently is," the district said.

Mr. Kenny added that more than 70 students had been released from quarantine since Wednesday.

The county's case numbers remain high, though flat, according to an analysis by The New York Times, with an average of 215 cases reported per day. Forty-seven percent of Ocean County residents are fully vaccinated, compared with 64 percent of residents statewide.

Studies have shown that schools can operate safely during the pandemic with strict safety measures, including ventilation, mask-wearing and quarantining.

A national school boards group asks Biden to protect its members from anti-mask protesters.

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Describing a "crisis affecting America's public schools," a group representing tens of thousands of school board members urged President Biden on Thursday to take action to protect them from rising threats and violence by members of the public, including opponents of coronavirus mask mandates.

In a letter, the National School Boards Association called for federal law enforcement agencies to investigate and prevent violence, citing numerous instances this year of school board meetings being interrupted by anti-mask protesters or members of extremist groups.

Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, on Thursday called the threats to school board members "horrible" and said the administration took the security of public servants and elected officials seriously, though such issues generally fell to local law enforcement.

"We're continuing to explore what more can be done from across the administration," she said. "But, again, a lot of this will be local law enforcement, and how they can help ensure these school board members feel protected."

In Mendon, Ill., this month, a 30-year-old man was arrested and charged with battery and disorderly conduct after striking a school board member at a meeting. Two school board meetings in Michigan were disrupted when a person yelled and gave a Nazi salute in protest of mask requirements, the group said.

Arguing that the actions could amount to "a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes," the association asked for agencies including the F.B.I. to investigate whether the incidents violated counterterrorism or any other federal laws.

"These threats and acts of violence are affecting our nation's democracy at the very foundational levels, causing school board members — many who are not paid — to resign immediately and/or discontinue their service after their respective terms," the group wrote.

Once staid, sparsely attended affairs, school board meetings have turned chaotic across the United States in recent weeks, with demonstrators challenging mask requirements, testing guidelines and other measures imposed by school districts to prevent the spread of the coronavirus as students nationwide return to in-person learning.

The school boards association, which represents more than 90,000 school board members across 14,000 districts, said that threats had also been sent in the mail and via social media platforms. A letter mailed to a school board in Ohio, carrying the return address of a local neighborhood association, warned that "we are coming after you" for imposing a mask requirement "for no reason in this world other than control. And for that you will pay dearly."

The school boards group asked the U.S. Postal Service to intervene to stop threatening letters and cyberbullying against students, school boards, district officials and other educators. It also asked Mr. Biden to increase collaboration between federal law enforcement agencies and local authorities to more closely monitor such threats.

"As the threats grow and news of extremist hate organizations showing up at school board meetings is being reported," the association wrote, "this is a critical time for a proactive approach to deal with this difficult issue."

Adeel Hassan contributed reporting.

Asia, once a vaccination laggard, revs up inoculations.

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As the United States and Europe ramped up Covid-19 vaccinations, countries in the Asia-Pacific region, once lauded for their pandemic response, struggled with their inoculation programs. Now, many of those countries that lagged behind are speeding ahead, lifting hopes of a return to normalcy in an area that had been resigned to repeated lockdowns and onerous restrictions.

The turnabout is as much a testament to the region's success in securing supplies and working out the kinks in their programs as it is to vaccine hesitancy and political opposition in the United States.

Japan, Malaysia and South Korea have even pulled ahead of the United States in the number of vaccine doses administered per 100 people — a pace that seemed unthinkable in the spring. Several have surpassed the United States in the percentage of their populations that are fully vaccinated, or are on track to do so.

In South Korea, the authorities said that vaccines had helped keep most people out of the hospital. In Japan, new cases and hospitalizations have plummeted.

"It's almost like the tortoise and the hare," said Jerome Kim, the director general of the International Vaccine Institute, a nonprofit based in Seoul. "Asia was always going to use vaccines when they became available."

In contrast with the United States, vaccines were never a polarizing issue in the Asia-Pacific region. Although each country has had to contend with its own anti-vaccine movements, the opposition has been relatively small.

Are you still not working because of the pandemic? We want to hear from you.

The economy has begun to rebound from the coronavirus pandemic, but millions of people still haven't returned to work. Some are looking but haven't been able to find jobs. Others can't work because of child care or other responsibilities. Still others say the pandemic led them to rethink how they prioritize their careers.

What is keeping you on the sidelines right now? How are you getting by financially without a steady paycheck? How has your time away from work changed your life, both now and in the future?

Merck says it has the first antiviral pill found to be effective against Covid.

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Merck Antiviral Pill's Clinical Trial Success Is 'Good News,' Fauci Says

Health officials said the drug could provide an effective way to treat Covid-19, but stressed that vaccines remained the best tool to prevent infections.

"The news of the efficacy of this particular antiviral is obviously very good news. The company, when they briefed us last night, had mentioned that they will be submitting their data to the F.D.A. imminently. The data are impressive. There was a 50 percent diminution — of importance is that in the placebo group, there were eight deaths and in the treatment group, there were no deaths. That's also very important, and very good news. We always hesitate to make any timelines. The F.D.A. will look at the data and in their usual, very efficient and effective way, will examine the data as quickly as they possibly can. And then it will be taken from there because once a recommendation is made, then we go through the same process of getting the recommendation for its usage through the C.D.C." "The federal government has contracted to purchase 1.7 million doses to make this therapy available. The government also has an option for some additional doses. If approved, I think the right way to think about this is, this is a potential additional tool in our toolbox to protect people from the worst outcomes of Covid. But I think it's really important to remember that vaccination, as we've talked about today, remains far and away our best tool against Covid-19. It can prevent you from getting Covid in the first place, and we want to prevent infections, not just wait to treat them once they happen."

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Health officials said the drug could provide an effective way to treat Covid-19, but stressed that vaccines remained the best tool to prevent infections. Credit Credit... Merck

The drug maker Merck said on Friday that its pill to treat Covid-19 was shown in a key clinical trial to halve the risk of hospitalization or death when given to high-risk people early in their infections.

The strong results suggest that a new wave of effective and easy-to-use treatments for Covid will gradually become available in the United States, though supply is likely to be limited at first. Merck said it would seek emergency authorization from the Food and Drug Administration for its drug, known as molnupiravir, as soon as possible. The pills could be available by late this year.

Merck's drug would be the first pill to treat Covid-19; it is likely to be followed by a number of other antiviral pills that other companies are racing to bring to market. They have the potential to reach more people than the antibody treatments that are being widely used in the United States for high-risk patients.

"I think it will translate into many thousands of lives being saved worldwide, where there's less access to monoclonal antibodies, and in this country, too," said Dr. Robert Shafer, an infectious disease specialist at Stanford University.

White House officials on Friday hailed the strong trial data, but they noted that the antiviral pills are no substitute for more Americans getting vaccinated. Despite the growing number of governments and companies mandating vaccines, only 56 percent of Americans are fully vaccinated.

"The right way to think about this is this is a potential additional tool in our toolbox to protect people from the worst outcomes of Covid," said Jeff Zients, a White House coronavirus adviser. Vaccination, he said, "remains far and away our best tool against Covid-19. It can prevent you from getting Covid in the first place, and we want to prevent infections — not just treat them when they happen."

The results of clinical trials of two other antiviral pills, one developed by Pfizer and the other from Atea Pharmaceuticals and Roche, are expected in the next few months.

The Merck drug is designed to stop the coronavirus from replicating by inserting errors into its genetic code. Doctors will prescribe the treatment to patients, who will receive the pills from pharmacies. The drug is meant to be taken as four capsules twice a day for five days — a total of 40 pills over the course of treatment.

The federal government has placed advance orders for 1.7 million courses of treatment, at a price of about $700 per patient. That is about one-third of the current cost of a monoclonal antibody treatment, which is typically given to patients via intravenous hookups.

The limited number of doses that the U.S. government has ordered means that only a small fraction of those who fall ill from Covid are likely to be able to receive the treatment, at least initially. Merck said on Friday that it expects to be able to make enough pills for 10 million people by the end of this year, though it is unclear how many of those doses will go to the United States or other countries.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed reporting.

Covid cases hit records in South Korea and Singapore despite widespread vaccinations.

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Credit... Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters

As countries in Asia accelerate their vaccination efforts with an eye toward easing restrictions and fully reopening their economies, some are reporting a rise in new infections.

In South Korea, officials said on Friday that they would extend social distancing regulations for another two weeks starting on Monday, amid the nation's worst wave of infections. And in Singapore, Covid infections have surged to record highs in the past week, with 2,487 new infections reported on Thursday, the highest number of daily cases since the pandemic began.

The rise in South Korea's cases has been linked to activities around Chuseok, a holiday celebrating the fall harvest when many families traveled to gather together. Health officials reported 2,486 new daily cases on Friday, the eighth consecutive day the number has exceeded 2,000.

"After Chuseok, the country's cases have been rising," said Lee Gi-il, a senior health official at the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters.

He said the next two weeks would be the "most important turning point" in South Korea's reopening.

The nation's capital and surrounding areas will remain under the strictest level of restrictions. Up to six people may gather socially after 6 p.m., as long as at least four are fully vaccinated. Bars, restaurants and other businesses must close at 10 p.m.

The government's goal is to fully vaccinate 80 percent of the population by the end of October and start lifting restrictions in November. As of Thursday, more than half the population was fully vaccinated, according to health officials.

Covid hospitalizations and deaths remain low in South Korea, and most are among unvaccinated people, according to the health officials' data. People who are fully vaccinated can still get infected and transmit the virus to other people, though fully vaccinated people are far less likely to experience severe symptoms.

Cases have also been rising in Singapore, where 82 percent of the population was fully vaccinated as of Wednesday, and the government put tighter restrictions in place this week.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week advised unvaccinated people to avoid nonessential travel to Singapore.

The new rules there limit gatherings to two people and include a policy of working from home by default. Singapore has also imposed severe restrictions on hundreds of thousands of migrant workers for the past year and a half.

Other countries in Asia are reporting more success in slowing the spread of the virus and are rolling back restrictions. Japan's state of emergency was lifted this week after a steady decline in new cases, making it the first time since April that the entire country is not under the measure. And Vietnam's capital, Ho Chi Minh City, started easing its restrictions on Friday.

The U.S. surpasses 700,000 Covid deaths.

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Credit... Erin Schaff/The New York Times

Deaths in the United States from the coronavirus surpassed 700,000 on Friday, according to a New York Times database, a milestone that few experts had anticipated months ago when vaccines became widely available to the American public.

An overwhelming majority of Americans who have died in recent months, a period in which the country has offered broad access to shots, were unvaccinated. The United States has had one of the highest recent death rates of any country with an ample supply of vaccines.

The new and alarming surge of deaths this summer means that the pandemic has become the deadliest in American history, overtaking the toll from the influenza pandemic of 1918 and 1919, which killed about 675,000 people.

The recent virus deaths are distinct from those in previous chapters of the pandemic, an analysis by The New York Times shows. People who died in the last three and a half months were concentrated in the South, a region that has lagged in vaccinations; many of the deaths were reported in Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas. And those who died were younger: In August, every age group under 55 had its highest death toll of the pandemic.

The United States government has not closely tracked the vaccination status of everyone who has been infected with the virus, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has so far identified 2,900 people who were vaccinated among the 100,000 who died of Covid since mid-June.

Vaccines have been proven highly effective in preventing severe illness and death, and a study from the C.D.C. that was published in September found that after Delta became the dominant variant, unvaccinated people were more than 10 times as likely to die of the virus as the vaccinated were. The study, which spanned from April to mid-July, used data from 10 states, New York City, Los Angeles County and King County, Wash., which includes Seattle.

The pace of death has quickened, then slowed, then quickened again over the past 18 months as the virus has rippled across America in waves.

The most recent 100,000 deaths occurred over more than three months, a considerably slower pace than when the pandemic reached its peak last winter. During that earlier surge, just 34 days elapsed between the nation's 400,000th and 500,000th death.

The outsize impact on the South propelled Mississippi ahead of New York and New Jersey for the most coronavirus deaths relative to population throughout the pandemic. Before the Delta surge, the worst-hit states had been mostly Northeastern states that suffered dire early outbreaks, as well as Arizona. But Louisiana and Alabama have become two of the five states with the highest proportion of Covid deaths.

A judge rejects Rhode Island health care workers' bid for a religious exemption to a vaccine mandate.

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Credit... David Goldman/Associated Press

A federal judge in Rhode Island on Thursday ruled against four health care workers who argued that they should be exempt from a vaccination mandate for religious reasons.

Employees of state-run health care facilities in Rhode Island are required to be fully vaccinated against the coronavirus by Friday, or they could lose their jobs. The workers had claimed in a lawsuit that the state's vaccine mandate violated their constitutional and civil rights by not allowing for religious exemptions. They had requested a temporary restraining order.

"Mandatory vaccination laws are a valid exercise of a state's police powers, and such laws have withstood constitutional challenges," the judge, Mary S. McElroy, wrote in her ruling.

Religious exemptions have been a rising topic of conversation around the United States as government agencies and private employers require workers to be inoculated against the virus and some people contest the mandates on religious grounds. State laws around religious exemptions vary; 44 states and the District of Columbia currently grant such relief.

The four unvaccinated workers, who were not named in the lawsuit, said that the regulation denied them the ability to request exemptions on religious grounds, running afoul of the Constitution and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Although the regulation was announced in August, the workers did not file the suit until eight days before the mandate went into effect.

In her decision, Judge McElroy, of the United States District Court in Rhode Island, said that temporary restraining orders were "an extraordinary remedy," and that the workers had failed to show they would likely win a trial.

Judge McElroy wrote that nothing in the regulation's language "prevents any employer from providing a reasonable accommodation to an employee who seeks one in accord with their sincerely held religious beliefs."

She also dismissed the request for a preliminary injunction.

In New York, some Christian health care workers are suing the state, which does not allow for religious exemptions, over its mandate requiring that they get vaccinated. Some of the vaccines were developed and tested using cells derived from the fetal tissue of elective abortions that took place decades ago, and the workers have said that getting the vaccines would run counter to their religious belief that abortion is wrong.

In another case, the N.B.A. denied the request of Andrew Wiggins, a player on the San Francisco Golden State Warriors, for a religious exemption from vaccination. San Francisco requires proof of inoculation to attend large indoor events, including Warriors home games.

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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/09/30/world/covid-delta-variant-vaccines

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