Coronavirus Briefing: What Happened Today

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/10/us/coronavirus-today-mandates.html

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Unvaccinated Americans are 11 times more likely than vaccinated Americans to die of Covid, the C.D.C. reports.

Pfizer and BioNTech will soon seek approval for vaccine use in children as young as 5 years.

The lead developer of the AstraZeneca vaccine says a mass booster program is unnecessary.

Get the latest updates here, as well as maps and a vaccine tracker.

The sweeping vaccine mandates that President Biden announced yesterday will affect almost every aspect of society in the United States. Our colleague Apoorva Mandavilli, who covers science for The Times, had a simple question: Will the mandates slow the surging pandemic?

Yes, scientists told her — but not immediately.

Immunization itself takes time to be fully effective — roughly six weeks for a two-dose regimen. Add in the procedural hurdles to rolling out the Biden mandates and the fierce backlash that is already unfolding, and the president’s effort could be “too little, too late,” said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association.

Experts pointed out that the administration didn’t emphasize measures that would quell the Delta variant surge more quickly, like masking and widespread testing. The companies affected by the mandates employ about 80 million Americans, but it’s not clear how many of those people are already vaccinated.

Some researchers said, however, that over the long term the administration’s plan should stem infections and return the country to some semblance of normalcy.

“It’s going to fundamentally shift the arc of the current surge,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health. “It’s exactly what’s needed at this moment.”

The measure with perhaps the most immediate impact is the requirement that health care facilities receiving Medicaid or Medicare funding mandate vaccinations for their work forces. That’s because health care facilities are high-risk settings for transmission. Mandates that were imposed at the Pentagon and Department of Veterans Affairs also suggest that they can quickly boost vaccination rates.

But for the new requirements to work, they must withstand inevitable legal challenges. The largest union representing federal workers has already raised questions, and Republican governors in several states said they planned to file lawsuits. (Biden’s response: “Have at it.”)

Legal experts say that Biden’s mandates should ultimately be protected by broad provisions attributed to the federal government and the public health emergency caused by the coronavirus.

“As long as there are provisions for workers not healthy enough to get the vaccine and probably to some extent religious accommodations,” said Jennifer Shinall, a law professor at Vanderbilt University, “I think that the legal challenges fail.”

For a year and a half now, restaurants and bars have adapted to the shifting realities of serving customers in a pandemic.

Some of that shift is obvious: Outdoor structures, requests to see vaccine cards before handing out menus, and bottles of hand sanitizer next to the salt and pepper.

But our colleagues on the Food desk looked at some of the smaller, less heralded developments that have the potential to stick around. Here are a few of our favorites from their piece on the transformation in American hospitality.

Unset Tables: Instead of a formal place setting, many restaurants are rolling their utensils in a napkin.

Thicker Pizza: To keep up with delivery-first chains, independent artisanal pizzerias reworked their base.

QR Menus: They’re here to stay.

Some Indian states moved to curb crowds at religious festivals.

New York City’s mayor ordered municipal employees back to in-person work.

The F.D.A. again warned parents not to get children under 12 vaccinated yet.

An appeals court allowed Florida to continue its ban on school mask mandates, reversing a lower court ruling.

Countries in the Asia-Pacific region are preparing for a life with some level of Covid infections.

France granted citizenship to more than 12,000 foreign essential workers.

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