The Department Continues to Seek Avenues to Remove Mr Palij
A New York judge rules that the state's mask mandate is unconstitutional and can't be enforced.
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Read the latest on the ruling on a New York State mask policy .
A New York State judge ruled on Monday that the state's mask mandate had been enacted unlawfully and is now void, according to court documents.
Gov. Kathy Hochul had renewed a rule requiring masks or proof of vaccination at all indoor public places throughout the state in December, amid a winter virus surge, and said it would last a month. The state Health Department then extended the mandate an additional two weeks, to expire on Feb. 1.
In his six-page decision, State Supreme Court Justice Thomas Rademaker wrote that Ms. Hochul and state health officials lacked the authority to enact the mask mandate without the approval of state lawmakers, and that it violated the state constitution. Regardless of the "well aimed" intentions of state officials, such authority is "entrusted solely to the State Legislature," Justice Rademaker wrote.
The office of the state attorney general, Letitia James, filed a notice of intent to appeal the ruling on Monday night. Emily DeSantis, a spokeswoman for the state Education Department, said the department had informed its schools that, as the legal issues are resolved, "schools must continue to follow the mask rule."
— NY AG James (@NewYorkStateAG) January 25, 2022We're appealing last night's decision that struck down the mask mandate in New York.
We will continue to do everything in our power to protect New Yorkers from #COVID19.
While the ruling overturns the statewide mandate for masks in schools and public places, it does not reverse local mandates. City Hall officials, for example, said that the decision had no immediate impact on New York City's schools since the city's education department had its own masking policies in place before the state's mandate.
Ms. Hochul said in a statement on Monday that her office strongly disagreed with the ruling and would be "pursuing every option to reverse this immediately."
"My responsibility as governor is to protect New Yorkers throughout this public health crisis, and these measures help prevent the spread of Covid-19 and save lives," she said.
The Omicron surge has been receding in New York, but it is not over. An average of about 20,000 people in the state are now testing positive for the coronavirus each day, down sharply from the surge's peak of 90,000 people who tested positive on Jan. 7. The positivity rate has also fallen, by half, from more than 22 percent to 10 percent.
But New York's daily case numbers remain far higher than at the start of the surge in early December, and hospitals are still straining to treat about 10,000 Covid patients statewide. Hospitalizations have begun declining but remain higher than at any point since May 2020. More than 130 people each day have been dying of the virus statewide.
Justice Rademaker, who has run on the Conservative Party line, was elected to the Supreme Court in Nassau County in 2019. The Supreme Court in New York is the highest trial court in the state, but not the court of last resort; the Court of Appeal is the highest court.
Following his ruling, some schools districts on Long Island began telling parents that masks were optional as of Tuesday morning.
"While it is certain this decision will face legal challenges, until otherwise litigated, mask wearing will be optional for students and staff in the Massapequa Schools beginning Tuesday," the Massapequa school district posted on its website.
The Lindenhurst school district issued a similar message on Monday night, saying that it would work in accordance with the judge's decision.
"Until otherwise directed, the wearing of masks will be optional for all students and staff members," the district posted on Facebook. "We are also aware that this decision will undoubtedly result in an appeal from the state, which could result in the restoration of the mask mandate until the court issues further ruling."
The ruling was applauded by some New York Republicans, including Representative Elise Stefanik, who said in a statement that it was a "win for small businesses, parents, students, and the freedom of all New Yorkers."
"Governor Hochul's authoritarian mandates were crushing New York small businesses that already have faced unprecedented challenges throughout the Covid-19 pandemic," Ms. Stefanik said. "By forcing masks on the children in our schools, these mandates have impeded the development of our next generation."
U.S. officials limit treatments that don't work on Omicron, but doctors say alternatives are scarce.
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The Food and Drug Administration has formally restricted the use of antibody treatments that lost their once-considerable effect when faced with the Omicron variant, pausing a therapy that had been widely embraced, including by people who eschewed vaccinations.
Many health systems stopped using the antibody treatments weeks ago as Omicron surged. And while doctors have welcomed the news of additional treatments like antiviral pills, they say the trickle of pills and other treatments are no match for the geyser of new cases.
The F.D.A. said on Monday that it was limiting the emergency use authorizations of the Regeneron and Eli Lilly antibody treatments to say the infusions should not be used now, with the Omicron variant dominant, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated at 99.5 percent of all new cases nationally.
During an earlier wave driven by the Delta variant, those Regeneron and Lilly medications were effective at keeping infected people out of the hospital if given early enough. As Omicron emerged, it became apparent that the treatments would not neutralize the virus, and large health systems, including some in New York City, stopped using them in December.
Federal officials moved to pause their use soon after but were rebuked by Republican governors saying they could still help some patients with the Delta variant. That has become an increasingly shaky position, given the difficulty most doctors have in figuring out which variant each patient has.
Since then, one monoclonal antibody treatment by GlaxoSmithKline and Vir Biotechnology has remained effective against Omicron, though doctors have said it is in short supply. Physicians on the front lines who stopped using the ineffective treatments in December immediately began looking for replacements as cases soared.
Federal officials in January began shipping the antiviral pills Paxlovid by Pfizer and molnupiravir from Merck. The medications have proven complicated to dispense, given Paxlovid's interactions with many other drugs and molnupiravir's risks to patients of childbearing age.
They have also been hard to find, with doctors saying they have to place dozens of calls to find pills in stock at pharmacies.
Dr. Mark Morocco, a University of California, Los Angeles emergency physician, said high-risk patients, no longer eligible for the antibody treatments, were getting treatment that is similar to what people got in 2020, including supplemental oxygen and steroids. As for the antiviral pills and the effective antibody treatments, he said, supplies are "very difficult to find."
"In my view, those drugs are not really available, essentially to us, at all," Dr. Morocco said.
Despite the lack of efficacy in the Regeneron and Eli Lilly products, federal data show that nearly 20,000 doses were given to patients last week alone, with the heaviest use in Florida, Louisiana and Michigan.
The treatments, widely considered safe, can have side effects including shortness of breath, nausea and vomiting.
Options for the early treatment of Covid continue to expand. On Friday, the F.D.A. approved the use of remdesivir for outpatients, as researchers found it effective at reducing hospitalizations when used early.
Brii Biosciences has announced that its monoclonal antibody works well against Omicron and is under review by the F.D.A.
New, effective treatments can't come soon enough, though, said Dr. Steve Pergam, a professor at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center who also treats patients.
He said quantities were so sparse that early treatments are going to the leukemia patients with the highest risk of death from Covid. And given the current delays in testing, matching the highest-risk cancer patients to the handful of treatments is a major undertaking.
"The thing we tell patients is you need to do everything you can to not get this," he said, "because it can still be pretty dangerous."
Omicron offers hope the pandemic could stabilize, a W.H.O. official says.
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The astonishing spread of the Omicron variant could help set the stage for the pandemic to transition from overwhelming to manageable in Europe this year, a top health official said on Monday, potentially offering the world a glimpse at how countries can ease restrictions while keeping the virus at bay.
That hint of hope came with a heavy dose of caution: Immunity from the surge of infections will probably wane, and new variants are likely to emerge, leaving the world vulnerable to surges that could strain health systems. In the United States, where vaccination rates are lower and death rates are considerably higher than in Western Europe, there are bigger hurdles on the path to taming the pandemic.
Dr. Hans Kluge, the director for the World Health Organization's European region, warned in a statement released Monday that it was too early for nations to drop their guard, with so many people unvaccinated around the world. But, he said, between vaccination and natural immunity through infection, "Omicron offers plausible hope for stabilization and normalization."
The question that remains, however, is what a new normal looks like — a picture that would have seemed disastrous in 2019 could be a big improvement in 2022 — and how long it could last.
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transcript
W.H.O. Chief Cautions Against Predicting a Pandemic 'Endgame'
The World Health Organization's director general said it was dangerous to assume the end of the pandemic was nearing and warned that current global conditions were "ideal for more variants to emerge."
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There are different scenarios for how the pandemic could play out and how the acute phase could end. But it's dangerous to assume that Omicron will be the last variant or that we are in the endgame. On the contrary, globally, the conditions are ideal for more variants to emerge. To change the course of the pandemic, we must change the conditions that are driving it. It's true that we will be living with Covid for the foreseeable future, and that we will need to learn to manage it through a sustained and integrated system for acute respiratory diseases, which will provide a platform for preparedness for future pandemics. But learning to live with Covid cannot mean that we give this virus a free ride. It cannot mean that we accept almost 50,000 deaths a week from a preventable and treatable disease.
The Omicron variant will undoubtedly leave behind much higher levels of immunity in the population, scientists said. But whether the world will have to endure deadly and disruptive future surges of the virus before the pandemic stabilizes is not at all clear.
And while Dr. Kluge said he believed that Europe could withstand new waves without resorting to lockdowns, countries there are still working to determine what other measures they may use. New antiviral pills are more readily available in Europe than in other parts of the world, scientists said, but countries still need to administer them more quickly.
Experts said that precautions like testing and isolating would remain essential. And if coronaviruses cases climb in the coming winters, scientists said, short-term mask mandates could be a way of suppressing cases to help hospitals dealing with other respiratory illnesses, too.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the W.H.O., said on Monday that the emergency phase of the pandemic was still very much here.
"It's dangerous to assume that Omicron will be the last variant or that we are in the endgame," Dr. Tedros said at an executive board meeting of the organization. "On the contrary, globally, the conditions are ideal for more variants to emerge."
Over the past two years, people around the world have become exhaustingly familiar with the wicked way the virus evolves and confounds expectations. Last fall, with vaccination spreading and the Delta variant waning, there were predictions of a return to normal — only for the world to be blindsided by Omicron.
China lifts a monthlong lockdown on the 13 million residents of the city of Xi'an.
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The authorities in China have said that, starting on Monday, the 13 million residents in Xi'an will be allowed to travel in and out of the city, ending a 32-day lockdown that raised questions about the country's harsh Covid controls and commitment to preventing any outbreak of the disease.
Streets, supermarkets, and public areas once emptied by the restrictions were again crowded, according to posts on Chinese social media from residents. Local officials said that the city had been downgraded to a "low-risk area" and that normal work and production could be restored.
Prompted by an outbreak of more than a thousand infections of the Delta variant last month, the lockdown in Xi'an was as severe as the country's first, in the city of Wuhan, where the coronavirus was first observed two years ago. After an initial outbreak in early December, the shutdown was imposed on Dec. 23. In total, the city recorded 2,080 infections, but has not had any cases since Jan. 21, according to local officials.
The harsh lockdown in Xi'an became a symbol of the extreme measures that China's government has taken to control Covid after testimonies emerged on Chinese social media of problems including people struggling to get enough food. In other cases, those in need of medical care were denied entry to hospitals because of stringent epidemic prevention measures. In one case, a pregnant woman was refused treatment because of an expired coronavirus test. She later lost her child.
Public transport in Xi'an, as well as flights and trains to and from the city, resumed service over the past week. Those with a green health code in China's official Covid-19 tracking software can now leave the city without official approval.
In other parts of China, cities remain in various states of lockdown as officials seek to beat back other outbreaks, including cases of the highly infections Omicron variant. In Beijing, officials have struggled to control an outbreak of Omicron as the city enters the final preparations to host the Winter Olympics.
Some Covid-19 counter measures for the Olympics were eased on Monday, according to a statement released by the International Olympic Committee. The committee said that changes had been made to lower the threshold for a test being classified as a positive coronavirus case. It also adjusted the period of time for someone to be considered a close contact of a Covid case to seven days, from 14.
Idaho reactivates crisis standards to ration care at overwhelmed hospitals.
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Severe staffing and blood shortages in southern Idaho have prompted state officials to again activate "crisis standards of care" that allow hospitals to triage care, potentially resulting in longer wait times, unavailable equipment and harrowing decisions about which patients need treatment the most.
The crisis standards apply to hospitals in most of the southern part of the state, according to the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare. The standards could be extended throughout Idaho, the state's Health Department said.
Health officials had previously announced crisis standards statewide in September 2021; they were lifted three months later.
While the Omicron wave seems to be peaking nationally, cases remain dangerously high and are continuing to rise in parts of the South, Midwest and West, flooding hospitals whose staff have been depleted by the virus. Hospitalizations nationwide are averaging 157,000 each day over the past week, up 14 percent. Deaths are up 25 percent from two weeks ago to more than 2,000 a day.
Colorado reactivated crisis standards earlier this month, advising patient transport in "only the most severe cases," according to reporting by Colorado Public Radio. And there is a continuing medical oxygen shortage in California, where emergency workers in Los Angeles were urged this month to administer as little oxygen as possible.
New cases in Idaho are still climbing steeply, up 174 percent over two weeks, a New York Times database. Hospitalizations are up 67 percent.
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About this data
Sources: State and local health agencies (cases, deaths); U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (hospitalizations).Only 48 percent of Idaho's population is fully vaccinated, the lowest rate in the country, according to a Times tracker.
Dave Jeppesen, the director of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, said in a statement on Monday that "the highly contagious Omicron variant has thrown us a curve ball."
"Once again, the situation in our hospitals and health systems is dire — we don't have enough resources to adequately treat patients," Mr. Jeppesen said.
Two facilities in Idaho's Saint Alphonsus Health System, the hospital network that requested the reactivation of crisis standards, are nearly out of I.C.U. beds.
Sarah Palin, who is unvaccinated, recently dined indoors in New York City before testing positive.
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Sarah Palin, who is not vaccinated against the coronavirus, dined indoors Saturday night at Elio's, an Italian restaurant on the Upper East Side of Manhattan that regularly draws celebrities, despite New York City's requirement that all indoor guests show proof of vaccination. She tested positive for the virus on Monday.
"We just made a mistake," said Luca Guaitolini, a manager for the restaurant, who was not working Saturday night but confirmed Ms. Palin's visit. In an interview on Monday, he said that the restaurant checked vaccination cards for all first-time customers but not for regulars who come each week, and that Ms. Palin had dined with a longtime guest, whom he declined to name.
"She probably just walked in and strolled over" to the table, Mr. Guaitolini said. "We are trying to get to the bottom of this."
Ms. Palin's lawyers did not respond to a request for comment. Mr. Guaitolini said that the restaurant was notifying customers that they had been exposed to the coronavirus, and that the staff would be tested this week.
Ms. Palin, the former Alaska governor who ran for vice president in 2008, had traveled to New York for the trial of her defamation lawsuit against The New York Times. The trial was set to begin this week, but because of her positive test result, it will now start on Feb. 3. According to the judge in the case, Ms. Palin's lawyers reported that she had received three Covid tests, all of which came back positive, and that she had not been vaccinated.
Shawn McCreesh, a features writer for New York Magazine, tweeted Saturday that he had spotted Ms. Palin at Elio's while out to dinner on Saturday night. ("My mom thought she was Tina Fey," he wrote in a follow-up tweet.)
Brian Schwartz, a political finance reporter at CNBC, tweeted that he had also recently dined at the restaurant, and that the staff there had not verified his vaccination status.
New York City recorded 8,914 new coronavirus cases on Sunday, according to a Times database, 19,634 fewer than the Sunday before. Hospitalizations, which lag cases, have risen 106 percent in the past two weeks.
In light of the highly contagious Omicron variant, some restaurants have imposed more stringent safety measures for workers than those required by the government, including keeping Covid tests on hand and strictly enforcing the wearing of masks. But at many of these restaurants, including at Elio's, the sole requirement for diners is that they be vaccinated.
Elio's, which opened in 1981 on Second Avenue at East 84th Street, is known for its famous clientele, which has included Tom Hanks, Joan Didion and Mick Jagger. An obituary for the restaurant's founder Elio Guaitolini, who died in 2016, described the place as "an informal clubhouse for Manhattan's social and media elite."
His son, Mr. Guaitolini, said Ms. Palin "is a controversial person wherever she goes. I just hope she has a speedy convalescence."
Fauci suggests Omicron wave is peaking but warns of 'more pain' to come.
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The crushing wave of Omicron variant cases may show signs of receding in the United States, but Dr. Anthony S. Fauci has warned that the surge has not yet peaked in some parts of the country and that Americans should not let their guard down.
The highly contagious Omicron does seem to have peaked in the Northeast, parts of the Upper Midwest and other areas where it first arrived, offering a bit of relief to virus-weary Americans. Nationally, new cases and hospital admissions have leveled off in recent days.
"What we would hope," Dr. Fauci, President Biden's top medical adviser for the coronavirus, said during an appearance on ABC's "This Week," "is that, as we get into the next weeks to month or so, we'll see throughout the entire country the level of infection get to below what I call that area of control."
That does not mean eradicating the virus, Dr. Fauci said. Infections will continue. "They're there, but they don't disrupt society," he said. "That's the best-case scenario."
For now, the United States remains in a precarious position, averaging 690,000 daily cases, still far higher than at any other point in the pandemic. Hospitals are overstretched and deaths have risen to about 2,100 a day. Parts of the West, South and Great Plains are still seeing sharp increases.
"There may be a bit more pain and suffering with hospitalizations in those areas of the country that have not been fully vaccinated or have not gotten boosted," Dr. Fauci said. Hospitals are struggling to keep up after multiple surges and staffing shortages, including in Mississippi, where nearly all of the state's acute-care hospitals have been pushed to capacity. The National Guard and active-duty U.S. military medics have been deployed to hospitals in several states.
States that are lagging in vaccinations, including Utah, are reporting record levels of cases and hospitalizations.
But Omicron also has yet to peak in some Western states with higher vaccination rates.
Oregon is reporting a 71 percent increase in daily average cases over a two-week period and a 65 percent increase in hospitalizations, according to The Times's database. This month, Gov. Kate Brown said she would be deploying up to 500 National Guard members to help strained hospitals with the soaring caseload.
California reported a 47 percent increase in daily average cases over the past two weeks, and a 61 percent increase in hospitalizations. Masks continue to be mandated indoors by state officials, and Gov. Gavin Newsom has also called on the National Guard in his state.
Scientists say it remains an open question whether Omicron signified the transition of the coronavirus from a pandemic to a less-threatening endemic virus, or whether future surges or variants would introduce a new round of tumult.
Dr. Fauci advised that remaining ready for the possibility of what he called "the worst-case scenario" would be wise. "I'm not saying it's going to happen, but we have to be prepared," he said, describing that situation as, "We get yet again another variant that has characteristics that would be problematic, like a high degree of transmissibility or a high degree of virulence."
But overall, he said, "Things are looking good. We don't want to get overconfident, but they look like they're going in the right direction right now."
Esha Ray , Kenneth Chang , Mitch Smith , Julie Bosman and Tracey Tully contributed to this report.
Proposals by California officials move to treat the coronavirus as endemic.
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SACRAMENTO — As health experts warn that Covid-19 will remain a fixture of life after the current surge passes, a group of California legislators on Monday rolled out the latest in a package of proposals aimed at coping with the coronavirus long-term in the most populous U.S. state.
In a measure that would treat the virus like measles and whooping cough — longstanding threats against which most Americans are vaccinated in childhood — the lawmakers said they would seek to eliminate an exemption for "personal belief" from a new mandate that schoolchildren receive coronavirus vaccinations.
Last week, the group — roughly a half-dozen members of the State Legislature's Democratic majority — introduced a bill that would allow children 12 and older to be vaccinated against the coronavirus regardless of parental consent, as is the case in California for immunization against hepatitis B and human papillomavirus. Additional proposals for workplace and consumer protections and for countering vaccine disinformation are expected in the coming weeks.
Amid a towering surge in cases and hospitalizations driven by the Omicron variant, the proposals are part of a push not only to drive down infections and strengthen the state's aggressive health protections, but also to set the stage for a future in which the virus becomes a manageable risk.
In news conferences this month, Gov. Gavin Newsom has hinted that state policy will soon begin "the endemic phase of this reality and how we live with future variants." Last week, a group of physicians at the University of California, San Francisco petitioned state health policymakers to ease masking requirements in public schools, among other emergency measures, calling for a "post-Omicron pivot."
"You can't just drive this virus down, you've got to keep it down," said Senator Richard Pan, a Sacramento pediatrician who has led the state's efforts on vaccine policy and is the chairman of the Senate's health committee. "With these kinds of fundamental policies in place, we hopefully can lift other restrictions that are more intrusive and less effective, because there's no indication that Covid is going away."
California's Covid vaccination rates are among the nation's highest, with about 67 percent of children 12 to 17 fully vaccinated, roughly the same as the state's overall population. Dominated by Democrats, who hold a legislative supermajority, the electorate has largely supported the state's emphasis on public health.
But vaccination rates vary widely from county to county. And a mandate that Mr. Newsom issued in October, adding Covid vaccines to the list of immunizations required for California's more than six million K-12 students, is contingent on Food and Drug Administration approval of vaccines for each age group.
The F.D.A. has granted emergency authorization for the Pfizer vaccine in children ages 5 to 15, but has given full approval only for people 16 and older. The mandate is not expected to cover most students until at least July.
Additionally, because the vaccine was added to the school immunization list by the governor rather than the Legislature, state law requires that families be allowed to opt out if their personal beliefs preclude vaccination. Closing that loophole is expected to engender fierce backlash, as is the proposal to let older children be vaccinated against Covid-19 without parental consent.
When the 2014-15 measles outbreak at Disneyland prompted the state to end the personal belief exemption for other required immunizations, vaccine resisters jammed the Capitol for weeks, screaming at lawmakers in hallways and harassing public health lobbyists on sidewalks.
Senator Pan received death threats, and demonstrators invaded his wife's dental practice. In 2019, after a further tightening of vaccine rules, an anti-vaccine activist livestreamed himself assaulting the senator outside a Sacramento restaurant.
Senator Pan said that aligning Covid policies with California's other vaccine laws, which are among the nation's strictest, would help raise vaccination rates and minimize educational disruptions. In the state's largest school district, in Los Angeles, roughly nine in 10 students have complied with a mandate that conditions in-person instruction on vaccination for students 12 and older, even though a lack of documentation among some 34,000 students recently prompted the district to postpone enforcement of the requirement.
Last month, a judge in San Diego struck down a Covid vaccine mandate for students there, and the Los Angeles school system has been sued over its mandate. In a letter on Friday, officials in those districts urged legislators to take "urgent action" to mandate coronavirus vaccinations for students statewide.
Covid setbacks to schooling are 'nearly insurmountable,' the U.N. says.
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Almost two years into the coronavirus pandemic, more than 635 million children globally remain affected by full or partial school closures, the United Nations said Monday in a report that called the setbacks to education "nearly insurmountable."
The report from the United Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF, said that many of these children had lost basic numeracy and literacy skills from the prolonged loss of classroom learning.
The UNICEF report was derived from studies done recently with the World Bank and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO.
In low- and middle-income countries, UNICEF said up to 70 percent of 10-year-olds could not read or comprehend a simple text, up from 53 percent before the coronavirus became a pandemic in March 2020.
Notable data points in the report included Brazil, where 75 percent of second graders in some states are behind in reading, compared with 50 percent prepandemic; and South Africa, where schoolchildren are up to a full year behind where they should be.
In the United States, the report said, states including California, Colorado, Maryland, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia have reported that two-thirds of their third graders scored below grade level in mathematics last year, compared with half in 2019.
"Quite simply, we are looking at a nearly insurmountable scale of loss to children's schooling," Robert Jenkins, the chief of education at UNICEF, said in the report. "While the disruptions to learning must end, just reopening schools is not enough. Students need intensive support to recover lost education."
Globally, the report said, "disruption to education has meant millions of children have significantly missed out on the academic learning they would have acquired if they had been in the classroom, with younger and more marginalized children facing the greatest loss."
Despite efforts to mitigate the effects of school closures with remote learning, that solution is impractical or impossible where families lack internet access and home computers. And many students in low-income countries are not returning to class even when schools reopen.
Earlier this month in Uganda, where schools reopened for the first time since the pandemic began, educators estimated that up to one-third of students, who had taken jobs to help support their struggling families, might not return.
Education is one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, benchmarks established by the United Nations to help measure basic improvements in people's lives. According to the U.N.'s Department of Economic and Social Affairs, which monitors each goal on its website, the coronavirus has "wiped out 20 years of education gains."
Seven school boards sue Virginia's governor over his order making masks optional.
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Seven school districts in Virginia sued Gov. Glenn Youngkin on Monday, objecting to his executive order overruling their mask policies and making the wearing of masks optional in public schools.
The school districts include the Fairfax County Public Schools, the state's largest with more than 178,000 students, as well as the school systems in Prince William County, Alexandria, Arlington, Falls Church, Hampton, and Richmond. Together, the districts serve more than 350,000 students.
The school districts said in a statement on Monday that the suit "defends the right of school boards to enact policy at the local level, including policies that protect the health and well-being of all students and staff." The lawsuit was filed in the Circuit Court in Arlington County.
The school officials questioned whether an executive order "can unilaterally override" the authority given to local boards by the state constitution. The suit also disputes whether the governor's order can override legislative action taken in 2021 that allowed students to attend classes in person while local school boards follow recommendations of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"Without today's action, school boards are placed in a legally untenable position — faced with an executive order that is in conflict with the constitution and state law," the lawsuit says.
A spokeswoman for the governor, Macaulay Porter, said in a statement that the governor's office was "disappointed that these school boards are ignoring parent's rights." She said Mr. Youngkin and the state attorney general were committed to fighting the lawsuit.
Mr. Youngkin issued an executive order on Jan. 15, the day he took office, that said parents could decide for themselves whether to follow school mask mandates. The order aimed to end a mandate imposed by Mr. Youngkin's predecessor, Ralph Northam.
Mr. Youngkin ordered that the parents of any child enrolled in a school or a school-based early child care and educational program "may elect for their children not to be subject to any mask mandate in effect" at the facility.
"Parents should have the ability to decide whether their child should wear masks for the duration of the school day," it reads.
The schools' lawsuit said, in part, that the plaintiff's schools "have students and staff members who are particularly vulnerable to the effects of Covid-19, and for whom an infection with the virus could lead to serious illness or death" and that masks were among the mitigation measures the schools have taken for the 2021-22 school year.
Asked about the lawsuit on Monday, the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said: "Studies show that masks reduce transmissions in school. They're a proven tool that helps keep students and teachers safe from Covid. And they can thus help keep schools open and safe."
She added, "What we're advising school districts on is to abide by public health guidelines and follow public health guidelines."
Adeel Hassan contributed reporting.
Correction :
Jan. 24, 2022
An earlier version of this item misstated the court where the lawsuit was filed. It was filed in the Circuit Court in Arlington County, not the Arlington District Court.
Researchers are trying to figure out how Omicron defied the normal rules of evolution.
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As nurses and doctors struggle with a record-breaking wave of Omicron cases, evolutionary biologists are engaged in a struggle of their own: figuring out how this world-dominating variant came to be.
When the Omicron variant took off in southern Africa in November, scientists were taken aback by its genetic makeup. Whereas earlier variants had differed from the original Wuhan version of the coronavirus by a dozen or two mutations, Omicron had 53 — a shockingly large jump in viral evolution.
In a study posted online last week, an international team of scientists further deepened the mystery. They found that 13 of those mutations were rarely, if ever, found in other coronaviruses, suggesting they should have been harmful to Omicron. Instead, when acting in concert, these mutations appear to be key to some of Omicron's most essential functions.
Now the researchers are trying to figure out how Omicron defied the normal rules of evolution and used these mutations to become such a successful vector of disease.
"There's a mystery here that someone has to figure out," said Darren Martin, a virologist at the University of Cape Town who worked on the new study.
Mutations are a regular part of a coronavirus's existence. Every time a virus replicates inside of a cell, there's a small chance that the cell will create a flawed copy of its genes. Many of those mutations would make new viruses defective and unable to compete with other viruses.
But a mutation can also improve a virus. It could make the virus stick more tightly to cells, for example, or make it replicate faster. Viruses that inherit a beneficial mutation may outcompete others.
Over most of 2020, scientists found that different lineages of the coronavirus around the world gradually picked up a handful of mutations. The evolutionary process was slow and steady, until the end of the year.
In December 2020, British researchers were jolted to discover a new variant in England carrying 23 mutations not found in the original coronavirus isolated in Wuhan a year before.
Biden's response to the pandemic has struggled to pivot, experts say.
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President Biden took office last January with a 200-page coronavirus response strategy, promising a "full-scale wartime effort" rooted in science and competence.
Mr. Biden and his team have gotten much right, including getting at least one dose of a vaccine into nearly 85 percent of Americans 12 and older and rolling out lifesaving treatments. Those achievements have put the United States in a far better place to combat the virus than it was a year ago, with most schools and businesses open and the death rate lower because the vaccine significantly reduces the chance of illness or death, even from the highly contagious Omicron variant.
But an examination of Mr. Biden's first year of fighting the virus — based on interviews with scores of current and former administration officials, public health experts and governors — shows how his effort to confront "one of the most formidable enemies America has ever faced," as he recently described it, has been marked by setbacks in three key areas:
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The White House bet the pandemic would follow a straight line, and was unprepared for the sharp turns it took. The administration did not anticipate the nature and severity of variants, even after clear warning signals from the rest of the world. And it continued to focus almost single-mindedly on vaccinations even after it became clear that the shots could not always prevent the spread of disease.
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The administration lacked a sustained focus on testing, not moving to sharply increase the supply of at-home Covid tests until the fall, with Delta tearing through the country and Omicron on its way. The lack of foresight left Americans struggling to find tests that could quickly determine if they were infected.
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The president tiptoed around an organized Republican revolt over masks, mandates, vaccine passports and even the vaccine itself, as he worried that pushing certain containment measures would only worsen an already intractable cultural and political divide in the country. The nation's precarious economic health, and the political blowback that Mr. Biden and members of his party could face if it worsened, made him all the more cautious. So rather than forcing Americans to get shots, he spent months struggling to accomplish it through persuasion.
Germany's vaccine mandate forges an unlikely coalition of protesters.
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At the start of the pandemic, Germany was widely lauded as a model of unity in combating the coronavirus. A general trust in government encouraged citizens to comply with lockdowns, mask guidance and social distancing restrictions.
But that confidence in the authorities has steadily waned as the pandemic enters its third year and the fight has shifted toward vaccines, exposing deep rifts in German society and setting back efforts to combat Covid cases.
Plans by the new German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, to make the vaccine mandatory have galvanized a nationwide protest movement, mobilizing tens of thousands in marches in cities and villages every week even as Covid cases surge to new highs with the spread of the Omicron variant.
Germany, with a vaccination rate of 69 percent, has the largest share of unvaccinated people among big Western European nations, and its organized resistance to vaccines may be more pronounced than anywhere else in Europe.
Most Germans back not just vaccinations but also a vaccine mandate, but the opposition has forged an alliance of strange bedfellows that stretches across the political spectrum. Much of its center of gravity remains on the far right, giving new momentum to the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, a party best known for its anti-immigrant views.
South Korea urges people to avoid travel for the Lunar New Year holiday.
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Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum of South Korea urged the public on Monday to avoid traveling during the coming Lunar New Year holiday, which takes place from Jan. 31 through Feb. 2, because of rising cases of the coronavirus.
"It's been two years since we haven't been able to celebrate a proper Lunar New Year," Mr. Kim said in a statement. "We ask that once again, you all celebrate the holidays at heart while social distancing."
On Monday, South Korea reported 7,513 new daily cases, almost double the figure for the same day last week. Omicron is now the dominant coronavirus variant in the country.
The country tightened its social-distancing rules a few weeks ago, and the new regulations will last through the holiday weekend, meaning that businesses will have to close at 9 p.m.
Restrictions on social gatherings however, have been raised from four to six people. According to the Our World in Data project at Oxford University, South Korea has a vaccination rate of 85 percent. People must prove that they are fully vaccinated status before they are allowed to enter businesses or public buildings.
The world surpasses 10 billion vaccine doses administered, but gaps persist in who gets the shots.
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When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel rolled up his sleeve in December 2020 to receive a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine, kicking off one of the world's first mass rollouts of Covid shots, he declared that it marked "the beginning of the end" of the pandemic.
Thirteen months later, his prediction has proved far from true, but 10 billion vaccine doses have been administered globally, a milestone that reflects the astonishing speed with which governments and drug companies have mobilized, allowing many nations to envision a near future in which their people coexist with the virus but aren't confined by it.
The milestone, reached on Friday, according to the Our World in Data project at the University of Oxford, has not been arrived at equitably, even though 10 billion doses could theoretically have meant at least one shot for all of the world's 7.9 billion people.
In the wealthiest countries, 77 percent of people have received at least one dose, whereas in low-income countries the figure is less than 10 percent. As North America and Europe race to overcome Omicron surges by offering boosters, with some nations even contemplating a fourth shot, more than one-third of the world's people, many of them in Africa and poor pockets of Asia, are still waiting for a first dose.
The United States has administered five times as many extra shots — about 85 million — as the total number of doses administered in all of Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation.
"Ten billion doses is a triumph of science but a complete failure of global solidarity," said Madhukar Pai, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at McGill University in Montreal.
And not all vaccines are the same. Those made in China have shown to be less effective than the mRNA vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. And while nearly all of the world's Covid vaccines protect against severe illness, early research suggests that most offer little protection against infection from Omicron.
The consequences of the vaccine gap have been highlighted by Omicron, which was first identified in southern Africa. Low vaccination coverage creates conditions for widespread virus circulation and with that the possibility of new variants emerging.
The disparities remain even as Covax, the global vaccine sharing initiative that facilitates distribution of donations from rich nations, increases its deliveries. After a slow start because of hoarding by rich nations and large outbreaks that prompted export blockages, Covax said this month that it had delivered its billionth dose — though that is less than half of its initial target.
Misinformation on social media and mistrust of government and pharmaceutical companies has fed into vaccine hesitancy in many countries. Even where people are willing to be inoculated, delivering doses to far-flung areas with poor health infrastructure has been challenging.
Thomas Hale, an associate professor of public policy at the University of Oxford, said that in sub-Saharan Africa, "We're seeing pretty good vaccination rates in cities and capitals, where vaccines tend to land, but that supply runs headfirst into the general challenges of building stronger health systems in these countries."
High-income nations have announced initiatives to assist, including the Global Covid Corps, a U.S. government program to help countries overcome logistical and delivery hurdles. But experts say that another monumental challenge is that rich countries have failed to agree on waiving intellectual property restrictions on vaccines, and have not put pressure on drug companies to share their technology so that poorer nations can manufacture doses locally.
South Africa, for example, has set up a hub to begin developing mRNA vaccines where scientists, with the backing of the W.H.O., are trying to reverse-engineer the Moderna vaccine from scratch, because the U.S. drugmaker won't share its technology.
Dr. Pai likened this to reinventing the wheel while a car is on fire.
"We have learned through this pandemic that charity does not work in global health, and charity is not the same as justice," he said. "And that is what countries are looking for — a just approach to be able to save themselves."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/01/24/world/omicron-covid-vaccine-tests
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