Some people aren’t taking their masks off yet, no matter what the C.D.C. says.
This is the Coronavirus Briefing, an informed guide to the pandemic. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
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The U.S. will send at least 20 million coronavirus vaccine doses to struggling countries, after experts and business leaders pushed President Biden to take a more aggressive international stance to combat the pandemic.
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A severe cyclone disrupted India’s vaccination campaign and diverted scarce resources away from its coronavirus response.
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Get the latest updates here, as well as maps and a vaccine tracker.
Meet the ever-maskers
New York State will adopt C.D.C. guidelines for the vaccinated on Wednesday. “No masks, no social distancing,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo said.
But some fully vaccinated people, in New York and elsewhere, are keeping their masks on for at least few more months. They are anxious about other people — especially as vaccine hesitancy remains high — and are trying to parse murky information about new coronavirus variants.
“I’m in no hurry; why should I be in a hurry?” said George Jones, 82, a retired mail carrier who lives in Harlem. “Being around is more important. That’s what counts. I’m an old man — I’d like to be around as long as I can.”
The U.S. is teetering at an inflection point. Cities have started to reopen, even though the country is nowhere near herd immunity. Only about 37 percent of Americans are fully vaccinated, and providers are administering about 44 percent fewer vaccines a day on average than they were on April 13, the peak.
“It might have been better to have kept up indoor mask mandates to help suppress the virus for maybe as little as a few more weeks,” the sociologist Zeynep Tufekci argues in a guest essay for The Times’s Opinion section.
“Telling everyone to wear masks indoors has a sociological effect,” she continues. “Grocery stores and workplaces cannot enforce mask wearing by vaccination status. We do not have vaccine passports in the U.S., and I do not see how we could. Places can either say ‘wear a mask regardless’ or just accept that people who don’t want to wear one will not.”
Related:
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If you have questions about your family, check out today’s edition of The Morning, in which David Leonhardt breaks down the guidance for fully vaccinated households, almost-vaccinated households, families with young children and unvaccinated people.
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The C.D.C.’s about-face on masks left many bamboozled, including the writers of “Saturday Night Live.”
The pandemic splits in two
A few months ago, while outbreaks were exploding across major Western cities, India’s leaders boasted that they had triumphed over the coronavirus.
Now, that pattern has flipped.
As vaccination campaigns continue around the world, the pandemic has become a global tale of haves and have-nots. Many wealthy countries are making significant progress, thanks to the vaccines they’ve obtained. But outbreaks are devastating developing nations where there aren’t enough doses available.
It has become, in other words, a K-shaped pandemic. And the fault lines keep widening as vaccines flow toward rich countries.
Vaccines are not the only defense — governments across Asia and Oceania have kept the virus at bay despite low vaccination rates. Restrictions were also critical in reining in infections. But this year, no factor has had a greater impact on a nation’s path out of the pandemic than the number of vaccines it can buy.
Vaccine rollout
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States in the Northeast, after experiencing infection spikes this year, are reporting significant drops in cases and hospitalizations. “It’s the vaccinations,” said Gov. Daniel McKee of Rhode Island, where confirmed cases have dropped by 48 percent in the past two weeks.
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An experimental vaccine from Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline produced strong immune responses in a midstage study.
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South Africa is opening vaccine appointments to people 60 and older.
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Don’t forget to schedule some downtime as you ease into your post-vaccine life.
See how the vaccine campaign is going in your county and state.
What else we’re following
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The New York City Marathon will snake through the five boroughs this November — with fewer runners.
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After more than a year, the New York City subway returned to 24-hour service.
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New Jersey’s public schools will not offer remote learning this fall.
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England reopened for indoor dining on Monday and expanded socializing, visits to cinemas and some international travel.
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Scammers are capitalizing on India’s devastating outbreak. One business repainted fire extinguishers and sold them as oxygen canisters.
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Taiwan is facing its worst outbreak yet, as the island added 333 locally transmitted cases on Monday.
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Hong Kong is tightening restrictions on travelers from Taiwan and will postpone a quarantine-free travel bubble with Singapore, where cases are climbing, The South China Morning Post reported.
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Colorado Mesa University experimented with innovative ways to track outbreaks in a partnership with the Broad Institute of M.I.T. and Harvard.
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Our colleague Eliza Shapiro looked at what it would take for New York City’s schools to fully reopen this fall.
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It’s not too late to sign up for our Fresh Start Challenge. Here’s the first day’s prompt.
What you’re doing
People keep saying: “Let’s get back to the norm. Now that you have been vaccinated you can pretty much go without your mask.” The problem is we have no idea who has been vaccinated and who is just out without a mask because they, as I have heard from many, “don’t believe in all this.” It would be wonderful if there was a way to require people to wear a pin that says “vaccinated” in order not to wear a mask. Then those of us with health issues may feel safe again. — Lana Dearborn, Alabama
Let us know how you’re dealing with the pandemic. Send us a response here, and we may feature it in an upcoming newsletter.
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