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Hogan, a Republican, said that the state plans to follow the federal guidelines issued by President Donald Trump last week, which call for states to meet specific metrics before considering lifting restrictions, including a 14-day downward trend in key numbers. He warned that the state has not yet hit its peak for coronavirus cases and deaths,.

The Democrat explained that phase one of reopening will require downward trends in new cases and hospitalizations for 14 days, increased testing and contact tracing and a sustainable supply of hospital beds and personal protective equipment. The specifics for the second and third phases have not yet been unveiled.

The first stage would begin by lifting the state's stay-at-home order. It would include reopening many small businesses, including certain retail shops and golf courses, and restarting many lower-risk community activities, like recreational boating and fishing, tennis and outdoor religious activities, along with outdoor fitness and gym classes. It would also include the resumption of elective outpatient surgeries and procedures in certain counties with lower concentrations of cases.

we’re gonna kick your ass our way. You are our middle finger’s dream come true. We’re not gonna test everyone and contact trace everyone like other countries, leaving ourselves on the slippery slope to ultracommunism. We’re not gonna forbid talking in our grocery stores like the cowardly Germans have. My nana wants her 10 minutes to catch up with the cashier before whipping out her checkbook, and she’s gonna get it. And we’re gonna take responsibility when things don’t go our way. Not like those Chinese people. Can you believe that China would send us this virus and not even cop to it? Months ago, I was telling everyone I know, “Hey, you look out for that China. They’ve sent us defective products before, and they’ll do it again,” and no one did JACK SHIT. Cannot believe China and everyone afraid of China fucked this up so badly.

You see our boldest innovators turning down opportunities to leverage this crisis to their own personal benefit? You see our pro sports owners refusing to donate a literal thousandth of their net worth to aid the workers they’ve had to tragically furlough? You see our most cherished brands blithely ignoring the chance to shoehorn nurses into their ads at the last second and to concoct empty hashtags in support of our frontline workers? Not a chance.

a few patterns do emerge.

Some of the most successful countries in fighting covid-19 are democracies with well-educated populaces, high levels of trust and transparency, and governments that are run by technocrats. They have tested early and often, and they have used contact tracing to isolate carriers.

Examples include New Zealand, Australia, the Czech Republic, Germany, South Korea and Taiwan.

For the past year, people trying to go to China have run into some of the world’s most formidable barriers to entry. To stop the coronavirus, China bans tourists and short-term business travelers outright, and it sets tough standards for all other foreigners, even those who have lived there for years.

Other countries have their own travel restrictions, though few are as tight. The United States, for example, bans foreigners traveling directly from China unless they are green card holders or certain immediate family members of American citizens. It also bans foreigners leaving from Europe, as well as Brazil and other countries.

China was the only major economy to grow last year. It knows businesses will find a way to keep their Chinese operations running, with or without expatriates, and it is betting that they will come back when the pandemic eases. At the same time, China’s restrictions highlight the inadequacies of its vaccine rollout, which has been slow compared to those of the United States, Britain and other countries.

If baseball is a metaphor for American life, Opening Day brought a tantalizing springtime hint of better days ahead, despite reflecting a nation divided by the polarized politics of a pandemic and Georgia's battle over Republican voter suppression.

ongoing contact tracing postponed a game in Washington were a reminder of the still potent peril of Covid-19 as the country faces another infection surge.

But the fact that there were fans in the seats at all to watch teams play ball underscored how much of the country is tentatively itching for a return to some semblance of normality after a grim winter of sickness and death and as millions of vaccines go into American arms at an increasing pace.

The coronavirus variant discovered in Britain is more easily spread among children, as it is among adults. Current safeguards should protect schools, experts said, but only if strictly enforced.

Initial reports were tinged with worry that children might be just as susceptible as adults, fueling speculation that schools might need to pre-emptively close to limit the variant’s spread. B

Based on detailed contact-tracing of about 20,000 people infected with the new variant — including nearly 3,000 children under 10 — the report showed that young children were about half as likely as adults to transmit the variant to others. That was true of the previous iteration of the virus, as well.

WASHINGTON — President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., racing against a surge in coronavirus cases and the emergence of a new variant that could significantly worsen the pandemic, is planning a vaccination offensive that calls for greatly expanding access to the vaccine while promising to use a wartime law to expand production.

The president-elect said he would invoke the Defense Production Act, if necessary, to build up vaccine supply.

The Biden team promised to ramp up vaccination in pharmacies, and build mobile vaccination clinics to get vaccine to hard-to-reach and underserved rural and urban communities, emphasizing equity in distribution.

It’s not common to contract Covid-19 from a contaminated surface, scientists say. And fleeting encounters with people outdoors are unlikely to spread the coronavirus.

Instead, the major culprit is close-up, person-to-person interactions for extended periods. Crowded events, poorly ventilated areas and places where people are talking loudly—or singing, in one famous case—maximize the risk.

“We should not be thinking of a lockdown, but of ways to increase physical distance,” said Tom Frieden, chief executive of Resolve to Save Lives, a nonprofit public-health initiative. “This can include allowing outside activities, allowing walking or cycling to an office with people all physically distant, curbside pickup from stores, and other innovative methods that can facilitate resumption of economic activity without a rekindling of the outbreak.”

he Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has updated its website with near-real-time information on local outbreaks. The site also reports several COVID-19 statistics for every region of the country.

United States offers vanishingly few details on how the disease is spreading, even as people increasingly socialize and travel, and authorities reopen schools and businesses. This state of affairs is frustrating data researchers, who want to help authorities make decisions that can save lives.

Experts told Nature that political meddling, privacy concerns and years of neglect of public-health surveillance systems are among the reasons for the dearth of information in the United States.

Since late last month, I have been meeting frequently online with a group of nine colleagues: David Baltimore, Mike Brown, Don Ganem, Peggy Hamburg, Richard Lifton, Marc Lipsitch, Dan Littman, Shirley Tilghman, and Bruce Walker. All are well known for their work in areas such as virology, immunology, genetics, and epidemiology

All have served in one or more leadership roles: as presidents of universities or other academic institutions, as heads of government agencies, as advisers to drug or biotechnology companies, or simply as pioneers and mentors in their field. All have sought solutions to the great medical problems of our time. None of us can recall a crisis as stark as COVID-19.

we believe that expanding current testing capacity remains a matter of extreme urgency—one that justifies a level of intense, coordinated work at a national, even international, scale that resembles the campaigns we associate with world wars

“I have my own business and I don’t have anybody wear a mask in my business,” said Mr. Girvin, a used-car dealer. “I don’t buy into it. When you look at the facts, with how many people die of influenza every year. Obesity kills more people than the Wuhan virus does.”

“Joe Biden has enough nerve to say Donald Trump’s killing people? No. The far-left liberals are causing this. The Pelosis, the Soroses and all these people, that’s who caused it. And I wish them all the worst.”

“Younger people’s more safe,” said Mr. Dechert, 31. “Older people have an issue. Nobody batted an eye for the flu. Now all of a sudden, it’s an election year — Covid.” #styln-signup .styln-signup-wrapper { max-width: calc(100% - 40px); width: 600px; margin: 20px auto; padding-bottom: 20px; }

when the coronavirus pandemic reached the United States, it found a public-health system in disrepair. That system, with its overstretched staff, meager budgets, crumbling buildings, and archaic equipment, could barely cope with sickness as usual, let alone with a new, fast-spreading virus.

By one telling, public health was a victim of its own success, its value shrouded by the complacency of good health

By a different account, the competing field of medicine actively suppressed public health, which threatened the financial model of treating illness in (insured) individuals

Dr. Varadkar, 41, is winning praise for his energetic handling of the crisis. He canceled St. Patrick’s Day festivities, oversaw an aggressive early testing program, closed pubs and schools earlier than other European leaders and has spoken to the public about the contagion in honest, humane terms — in other words, like the general practitioner he once was.

Britain has 13 times the population as Ireland and is far more densely populated, with a capital, London, that has nearly twice as many people as the entire Irish Republic

“Some of the difference may be serendipity,” said Dr. Patricia Kearney, an expert in epidemiology at the University College Cork. “We have a relatively small population, and the way we live outside the cities is far less dense than in the U.K. But there was still really decisive action by our political leaders.”

antibody tests don’t give a snapshot of the present. It can take two weeks for a patient to develop a detectable amount of antibodies in their blood, so antibody surveys are necessarily backward-looking. But when public-health officials are deciding whether schools or businesses are safe to reopen, the key piece of information is the number of people currently infected. “I want to know what is happening now,” Osterholm said, “and antibody testing will not get that to you.”

The key strategies for stopping the disease are still the same ones experts have been promoting from the beginning: testing, contact tracing, isolating for those who test positive for COVID-19, and social distancing for everyone else. “There’s going to have to be some level of new normal for a while,”

Current antibody surveys are revealing, furthermore, that immunity to COVID-19 can vary widely from location to location

Yaneth Ochoa, a Colombian woman who lives in Queens, was glad to find a job cleaning the subway last summer, as demolition jobs had dried up during the pandemic.

But as trains rolled into the Jamaica-179 Street Station in Queens, she learned she would not just be wiping down cars to remove traces of the coronavirus.

Like workers at end-of-line stations all over New York City, Ms. Ochoa, 30, was expected to scrub away grime, sputum and even human excrement, she said, without adequate training or special equipment.

While the final Senate bill has not been released yet, lawmakers are expected to make two major changes -- narrowing eligibility for the stimulus checks and nixing an increase in the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.

The bulk of the Senate legislation will, however, largely mirror the $1.9 trillion package approved by the House and laid out by President Joe Biden in January.

Senate Democratic leaders are facing more hurdles to advancing the legislation since the party can't afford to lose a single member thanks to the 50-50 split in the chamber. Plus, they must adhere to the strict rules of reconciliation, which they are using to approve the bill without any Republican support.

Since March of last year, cruise ships carrying more than 250 people have been prohibited by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from sailing in U.S. waters.

On May 25, Royal Caribbean became the first cruise line to receive approval from the C.D.C. to conduct simulated voyages, which are planned for its Freedom of the Seas ship starting from PortMiami in Florida in late June.

Several major cruise companies have already announced Alaska sailings starting in late July, which will require all passengers to prove that they are vaccinated. But in Florida, the cruise lines’ biggest U.S. departure point, recently enacted state law bans businesses from requiring proof of immunizations from people seeking to use their services.

The United States was unprepared for the coronavirus, the response "wasn't a good performance," and there's still "a lot of work to do" to get ready for the next pandemic when it comes. That's the assessment of Dr. Anne Schuchat, the No. 2 official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who is retiring this summer after 33 years at the agency.

Schuchat also says she supports further investigations into the origins of the pandemic. "There's a lot we really do need to know here," she says. "So understanding where this came from and how it spread so easily, I think is important."

Schuchat does not quite have the public profile of Dr. Anthony Fauci, but her work as a disease detective tracing outbreaks is a part of American popular culture. Kate Winslet's character in the movie Contagion was modeled in part on Schuchat. Schuchat's career as a doctor began in the 1980s in New York City, which was a challenging time and place.

On Wednesday, Kamala Harris will become the first woman, and the first woman of color, to serve as vice president of the United States.Twelve years ago, hundreds of thousands of people filled the National Mall to watch Barack Obama make history as the nation's first Black president.But when Harris takes the oath, the mall will very likely be nearly empty.

A surging pandemic had already led President-elect Joe Biden and Harris to urge supporters to watch the inauguration from home. Now, after a deadly siege of the U.S. Capitol by supporters of President Trump, thousands of National Guard members have been deployed to protect the transfer of power against more violence. The brazen attempt to block Congress from certifying Biden and Harris' November election victory was unprecedented. But for Harris, the undercurrents of hate and racism it represented were not.

Why is it so important to you to stick with the planned ceremony and take the oath outside?I think that we cannot yield to those who would try and make us afraid of who we are.

on Thursday is expected to outline proposals for trillions of dollars in government spending to combat the coronavirus pandemic and its effects on the economy, with an initial focus on large-scale expansions of the nation’s vaccination program and virus testing capacity.

Plans for the first package also include a significant increase in spending on vaccine deployment, testing and contact tracing, Mr. Deese said, and Mr. Biden will seek enough money to allow most schools to open, in an effort to increase labor force participation.

Transition team officials would not say on Wednesday how expensive Mr. Biden’s proposals were likely to be or whether he would announce a cost estimate on Thursday. Last week, Mr. Biden said he expected his full agenda would cost “trillions” of dollars.