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N.Y.C.’s health commissioner resigns after clashing with the mayor over the virus.
New York City’s health commissioner, Dr. Oxiris Barbot, resigned on Tuesday in protest over her “deep disappointment” with Mayor Bill de Blasio’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak and subsequent efforts to keep the outbreak in check.
Her departure came after escalating tensions between City Hall and top Health Department officials, which began at the start of the city’s outbreak in March, burst into public view.
“I leave my post today with deep disappointment that during the most critical public health crisis in our lifetime, that the Health Department’s incomparable disease control expertise was not used to the degree it could have been,” she said in her resignation email sent to Mr. de Blasio, a copy of which was shared with The New York Times.
“Our experts are world renowned for their epidemiology, surveillance and response work. The city would be well served by having them at the strategic center of the response not in the background.”
Dr. Barbot’s resignation could renew questions about Mr. de Blasio’s handling of the response to the outbreak, which devastated the city in the spring, killing more than 20,000 residents, even as it has largely subsided in recent weeks. And it comes at a pivotal moment: Public schools are scheduled to partially open next month, which could be crucial for the city’s recovery, and fears are growing that the outbreak could surge again when the weather cools.
The mayor had been faulted by public health experts, including some within the Health Department, for not moving faster to close down schools and businesses in March, when New York emerged as an epicenter of the pandemic.
Public health officials have bristled at the mayor’s decision to strip the Health Department of its responsibility for contact tracing and give it instead to the public hospital system, known as Health + Hospitals. The Health Department has performed such tracing for decades; the public hospitals have not.
“It had been clear in recent days that it was time for a change,” Mr. de Blasio said in a hastily called news conference. “We need an atmosphere of unity. We need an atmosphere of common purpose.”
The mayor moved quickly to replace Dr. Barbot, immediately announcing the appointment of a new health commissioner, Dr. Dave A. Chokshi, a former senior leader at Health + Hospitals.
‘Long days, long nights’: Washington prepares for a prolonged fight over virus relief.
Negotiators on Tuesday are set to reconvene on Capitol Hill to continue hammering out differences over a coronavirus relief package, with top Trump administration officials scheduled to return for another meeting with congressional Democrats.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, will meet with Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader. Mr. Mnuchin and Mr. Meadows will also join Senate Republicans for a closed-door policy lunch.
The Senate is scheduled to take a monthlong recess at the end of the week, but it is unclear if lawmakers will leave Washington without a deal. Tens of millions of Americans have lost crucial unemployment benefits as well as a federal moratorium on evictions, and economists warn that permanent damage could be wrought on the economy without action.
“I’ve never been a gambler,” said Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, when asked about the prospect of a deal before the end of the week. “But if I were a gambler, I’d say we need to have some long days, long nights. Work hard.”
White House officials and Democratic leaders reported some progress over the weekend, but there are still substantial differences. Democrats are proposing a $3 trillion rescue plan that would include restoring $600-per-week jobless aid payments that expired on Friday and extending them through January, while Republicans are pushing a $1 trillion package that would reduce those payments substantially.
President Trump on Monday raised the idea of using an executive order to address the moratorium on evictions, while also hurling insults at Democratic leaders who were meeting with his top advisers in search of a compromise. But he has been notably absent from the negotiations themselves.
Mr. Trump accused Democrats of being focused on getting “bailout money” for states controlled by Democrats, and unconcerned with extending unemployment benefits.
Democrats have proposed providing more than $900 billion to strapped states and cities whose budgets have been decimated, but it is Republicans who have proposed slashing the jobless aid. Democrats have refused to do so, cementing the stalemate.
Fueling an already complicated impasse, outside advisers are also trying to get the president to bypass Congress and unilaterally impose a temporary payroll tax cut, an idea that Mr. Trump has championed but that his negotiators dropped amid opposition from both parties.
Congressional staff and lobbyists who are engaged in discussions said on Monday that the talks between administration officials and Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Schumer had essentially frozen negotiations between top Democrats and Republicans on key committees who would have to hammer out the details of any deal.
That could leave the parties little time to flesh out any compromises over additional aid to businesses or individuals, yielding a plan that mostly consists of re-upping existing aid programs like the Paycheck Protection Program and direct payments to individuals.
Education Roundup
Israel’s rocky reopening of its schools may be a lesson for the U.S.
As the United States and other countries anxiously consider how to reopen schools, Israel, one of the first countries to do so, illustrates the dangers of moving too precipitously.
Confident that it had beaten the virus and desperate to reboot a devastated economy, the Israeli government invited the entire student body back in late May.
Within days, infections were reported at a Jerusalem high school, which quickly mushroomed into the largest outbreak in a single school in Israel, possibly the world.
The virus rippled out to the students’ homes and then to other schools and neighborhoods, ultimately infecting hundreds of students, teachers and relatives. Other outbreaks forced hundreds of schools to close. Across the country, tens of thousands of students and teachers were quarantined.
Israel’s advice for other countries?
“They definitely should not do what we have done,” said Eli Waxman, a professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science and chairman of the team advising Israel’s National Security Council on the pandemic. “It was a major failure.”
The lesson, experts say, is that even communities that have gotten the spread of the virus under control need to take strict precautions when reopening schools. Smaller classes, mask wearing, keeping desks six feet apart and providing adequate ventilation, they say, are likely to be crucial until a vaccine is available.
“If there is a low number of cases, there is an illusion that the disease is over,” said Dr. Hagai Levine, a professor of epidemiology and the chairman of the Israeli Association of Public Health Physicians. “But it’s a complete illusion.”
The United States is facing similar pressures to fully reopen schools, but is in a far worse position than Israel was in May: Israel had fewer than 100 new infections a day then. The United States is now averaging more than 60,000 new cases a day, and some states continue to set alarming records.
On Tuesday, the secretary general of the United Nations, António Guterres, said that over a billion children worldwide were affected by school closures last month, exacerbating what he called a “learning crisis” before the pandemic in which more than 250 million children had been out of school. “We are at a defining moment for the world’s children and young people,” Mr. Guterres said.
Other key education developments:
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Students in Mexico will exclusively take classes broadcast on television or the radio when the school year begins later this month, in an effort to avoid further coronavirus outbreaks, the government announced on Monday. Schools will only reopen when authorities determine that new and active infections, which remain high across the nation, decline enough for a safe return to the classroom.
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A rash of positive cases during the first week of school in some parts of the United States foreshadows a stop-and-start year in which students and staff members may have to bounce between instruction in the classroom and remotely at home because of infections and quarantines.
As Isaias makes landfall, the virus makes it trickier to shelter from the storm.
Storm shelters in North Carolina, where Hurricane Isaias made landfall late Monday, prepared to deal with a dual threat from severe weather and the virus by screening for symptoms of the virus and socially distancing people who took shelter.
“Our state has weathered our fair share of storms in recent years,” Gov. Roy Cooper said over the weekend. “We know how to plan, prepare and respond when it’s over. Nothing about that has changed, but this time, we’re going to have to do it with a mask on.”
The state’s Department of Public Safety also urged residents to bring their own blankets and bedding, and asked people to stay at motels or with relatives if possible. Shelters will serve meals in sealed containers rather than in typical serving lines.
Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey also urged residents to take shelter, but not to break social-distancing guidelines by staying with large groups of friends or relatives.
“I’m not a fan of hurricane parties,” Mr. Murphy said on Monday, referring to the events that became something of a tradition in Florida during minor storms. “If it’s a hurricane party, you’re inside. It just doesn’t make sense, folks. It doesn’t end well. And we know that.”
The storm made landfall on Monday night in Ocean Isle Beach, N.C., as a Category 1 hurricane, but weakened as it pushed through North Carolina and into Virginia on Tuesday morning. Still, forecasters warn that Isaias will bring powerful winds and heavy rains as it continues moving north toward New York and New Jersey and into New England.
Trump addresses the death toll: ‘It is what it is.’
A day before the United States surpassed 150,000 deaths from the coronavirus, President Trump appeared resigned to the toll, saying in an interview, “It is what it is.”
“They are dying. That’s true,” Mr. Trump told Axios in an interview recorded on July 28 and released in its entirety on Monday. “It is what it is. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t doing everything we can. It’s under control as much as you can control it.”
The president’s critics say he could have done much more to keep the virus from spreading to the extent it has, including encouraging states to be more cautious in reopening instead of encouraging them.
The country’s death toll, currently nearly 156,000, is far from the total of “75, 80 to 100,000” deaths that Mr. Trump predicted in early May when he credited himself with preventing the toll from being worse.
Even after his predictions proved wrong, Mr. Trump has continued to credit himself for the United States not being even worse off.
“One person’s too much,” Mr. Trump told Axios. ”And those people that really understand it, that really understand it, they said it’s an incredible job that we’ve done.”
The W.H.O. cautions Russia on its vaccine rollout.
The World Health Organization on Tuesday urged Russia to follow established guidelines for producing safe and effective vaccines, after Moscow announced that it would begin widespread vaccination of its population in October with a vaccine that had not yet been fully tested in clinical trials.
Amid a global race to develop the first effective coronavirus vaccine, experts have raised concerns about cutting corners in research and putting people at risk with an unsafe product. Last week Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the United States, warned Congress about programs like Russia’s that are not transparent.
“I do hope that the Chinese and the Russians are actually testing the vaccine before they are administering the vaccine to anyone,” Dr. Fauci said at hearing.
Russia is moving ahead with several prototypes, its officials said, and at least one effort, developed by the Gamaleya Institute in Moscow, has reached advanced stages of testing. The vaccine candidate is similar to one developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca, using modified viruses that typically cause mild colds in humans.
Russia said it will start so-called Phase III trials of the vaccine this month. In Phase III, trials test for effectiveness in humans, after testing in animals. It is the last stage before approval, allowing widespread use.
The candidate vaccine reportedly has been tested to some extent on soldiers, and the Russian defense ministry said those soldiers all had volunteered. The institute’s director said on Russian television that he himself had also tried the vaccine before it finished testing in monkeys.
Two N.I.H. studies are recruiting patients to test possible Covid-19 treatments.
The National Institutes of Health announced Tuesday the launch of a key second, phase of clinical trials for an antibody treatment to help patients early in the course of Covid-19.
The two studies, which are now recruiting patients, are testing drugs called monoclonal antibodies produced by Eli Lilly and its partner, Abcellera Biologics in Vancouver. Researchers hope to have results in October or November.
The process began in March, and has progressed at “record speed,” said Daniel Skovronsky, chief scientific officer at Eli Lilly. Two and a half months later, the company began safety tests in humans, “surely a record speed,” he said.
The first study, dubbed ACTIV 2, will start with 220 Covid-19 patients who are ill but not hospitalized. Half will receive the antibodies and half a placebo infusion. If there are signs the drug is helping, the trial will expand to a total of 2,000 patients with the hope that the drug reduces the duration of symptoms and speeds the time it takes for the virus to be undetectable in the patients’ upper respiratory tracts.
The second study, ACTIV 3, will begin with 300 patients who are hospitalized but not gravely ill who have had symptoms for 10 days or less, though patients with virus-caused organ damage are excluded. Half of the patients will receive a placebo infusion. If the drug appears helpful, the study will move on to 1,000 individuals.
The antibodies used in these trials were produced from serum from a Washington patient who was one of the first people to recover from Covid-19. Researchers at Abcellera selected this antibody from many in the patient’s blood because it was most effective at blocking the virus.
Without knowing if the drug will be beneficial, Eli Lilly is preparing to meet a goal of having 100,000 doses by the end of the year, Dr. Skovronsky said.
As these clinical trials progress, the researchers may add other treatments as well.
What Lockdown 2.0 looks like: Harsher rules and deeper confusion.
Australia’s second-largest city, Melbourne has imposed some of the toughest restrictions in the world as it grapples with a spiraling coronavirus outbreak in a country that once thought it had the pandemic beat.
But as officials cast about for ways to break the chain of infections, the city has become a confounding matrix of hefty fines for disobedience, minor exceptions for everything from romantic partners to home building, and endless versions of the question: So, wait, can I ____?
Restaurant owners are wondering about food delivery after an 8 p.m. curfew began on Sunday. Teenagers are asking if their boyfriends and girlfriends count as essential partners. Can animal shelter volunteers walk dogs at night? Are house cleaners essential for those struggling with their mental health? Can the virus-tested exercise outside?
“This is such a weird, scary, bizarro time that we live in,” said Tessethia Von Tessle Roberts, 25, a student in Melbourne who admits to having hit a breaking point a few days ago, when her washing machine broke.
“Our health care workers are hustling around the clock to keep us alive,” she said. “Our politicians are as scared as we are, but they have to pretend like they have a better idea than we do of what’s going to happen next.”
Pandemic lockdowns, never easy, are getting ever more confusing and contentious as they evolve in the face of second and third rounds of outbreaks that have exhausted both officials and residents. With success against the virus as fleeting as the breeze, the new waves of restrictions feel to many like a bombing raid that just won’t end.
U.S. ROUNDUP
The virus reaches the last untouched corner of California.
In rural Modoc County, Calif., population 8,800, social distancing was a way of life well before the virus. The county seat, Alturas, has just one blinking red traffic signal. And for five months, officials hoped that the county’s isolation in the northeastern corner of the state would spare it.
But the virus finally reached Modoc, the last county in the state without a confirmed case, when a couple in Alturas tested positive last week.
The county has not named the two people who contracted the virus, but Jodie Larranaga, an owner of the Brass Rail bar and restaurant, said it was a waitress who worked at the bar and her husband. She said the couple had recently returned from a family vacation in Fresno.
The county Health Department put out a request on Tuesday for anyone who had visited a bar in the previous two weeks to call a hotline. But Ms. Larranaga said that the department was not casting the net wide enough. “This couple has been all over the place,” she said. “They were all around town.”
Most people still go maskless when they shop in Alturas, despite a statewide order to wear masks in public places — an order that the county sheriff refuses to enforce.
Juan Ledezma, the owner of a thrift store in Alturas, estimated that 20 percent of customers come in with a mask on. “I don’t ask them to do it because they might get offended,” he said.
Caterers rush to adjust as most events are canceled or severely scaled down.
The pandemic has the nation’s caterers — roughly 12,000 individuals or companies with annual revenues of more than $60 billion — reeling. Many say they expect their business to be down between 80 and 90 percent this year.
Corporate cafeterias that they provide food and staff to remain closed. Events like graduation and anniversary parties, bar mitzvahs, charity dinners and weddings have been canceled or pushed into next year.
And the ones that took place were on a decidedly smaller scale. “We did one 50-person wedding,” said David Cingari of David’s Soundview Catering in Stamford, Conn. “It was a clambake in the backyard. That was supposed to be a 250-person wedding.”
On a recent Saturday, he was dashing about at a pop-up restaurant he opened in mid-June, serving lobster rolls, blackened mahi-mahi tacos and smashburgers alongside cocktails like the Painkiller to socially distanced diners.
He made about $600, far from the roughly $6,600 that a 210-person wedding (petite lobster rolls on toasted brioche, coconut shrimp with mango aioli) and a bar mitzvah party for 180 (torched s’mores and a chocolate fountain) planned for that day, pre-pandemic, would have brought in.
The collapse of the catering industry this year also directly affects bartenders, wait staff and others who typically work these events as part-time employees.
The industry — a collection of large corporations like Aramark and Compass Group and thousands of smaller companies owned by individuals — is not tracking how many caterers have permanently closed because of the pandemic, but they say it will happen.
And while caterers say they are taking a financial beating, many feel better situated than those in the restaurant business. Instead of paying often expensive rent in desirable locations like most restaurants, caterers typically pay less for large kitchens that can be off the beaten track.
The deadline for the 2020 census has been moved up by a month.
Counting for the 2020 census will end on Sept. 30, a month earlier than previously scheduled, the Census Bureau said in a statement on Monday.
The census is constitutionally required to count all residents of the United States every 10 years, but the 2020 effort has faltered amid the pandemic. In recent weeks, the Trump administration and Senate Republicans appeared to signal that they wanted the census finished well ahead of schedule.
Census data is enormously important. It is used to reapportion all 435 House seats and thousands of state and local districts, as well as to divvy up trillions of dollars in federal aid.
“Under this plan, the Census Bureau intends to meet a similar level of household responses as collected in prior censuses, including outreach to hard-to-count communities,” the Census Bureau said in its statement.
Critics said the move was pushed by the White House and motivated by partisanship.
“We’re dealing with a census that’s been really challenged by Covid-19,” said Vanita Gupta, a former head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division who is now the president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “And in the middle of this pandemic, the administration has tried to sabotage the census for partisan gain, to move its anti-immigrant agenda and to silence communities of color.”
She added that rural communities could be badly hurt by an undercount.
On Monday night, the White House referred questions to the Commerce Department, which oversees the Census Bureau. It did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A reporter offers a glimpse inside the N.B.A. bubble.
The Times’s Marc Stein has covered pro basketball for almost 30 years, but he says he has seen nothing like life inside the league’s so-called bubble at Walt Disney World in Florida:
Every day in the bubble starts the same for reporters. We record our temperature and oxygen saturation readings via a league-sanctioned app to receive access at checkpoints within the bubble.
Then we head to the testing room, with access set aside exclusively for reporters in the 9 a.m. hour, to receive three shallow throat swabs and one shallow swab of each nostril — daily.
There is no guarantee that the N.B.A. can continue to keep the coronavirus from infiltrating this first-of-a-kind village that houses 22 teams.
But it already seems clear that the bubble approach was the only approach that had any shot in 2020.
Reporting was contributed by Livia Albeck-Ripka, Pam Belluck, Emma Bubola, Ben Carey, Damien Cave, Emily Cochrane, Michael Gold, J. David Goodman, Maggie Haberman, Mike Ives, Isabel Kershner, Gina Kolata, Marc Stein, Eileen Sullivan, Jim Tankersley, Michael Wines, Will Wright and Karen Zraick.
