In the past week, the United States has reported a daily average of nearly 160,000 new coronavirus cases. The virus is overwhelming health systems and killing more than 1,100 Americans a day. But there is a slender silver lining: It is hastening the testing of vaccines that could eventually end the pandemic.
The surging virus has already allowed the drugmakers Pfizer and Moderna to accelerate the testing of their vaccines, which appear to be very effective at preventing Covid-19.
In late-stage vaccine trials, the faster that participants get sick, the faster that drug developers gain enough data to know whether their vaccines are effective.
Pfizer said on Wednesday that its coronavirus vaccine was 95 percent effective and had no serious side effects — the first set of complete results from a late-stage vaccine trial as Covid-19 cases skyrocket around the globe.
Moderna announced on Monday that an early analysis had found its vaccine to be 94.5 percent effective. The company had planned on needing only 53 cases of Covid-19 to turn up in its trial before experts would take a first look at the data. But the nationwide surge in infections helped Moderna blow past that number: The results were based on 95 sick participants.
The fast-growing pandemic could also speed up trials of treatments for Covid-19.
The drug company Regeneron, for example, is testing the antibody treatment that President Trump received after he caught Covid-19. A company spokeswoman said enrollment in its trial has accelerated slightly this month.
Even if the grim situation in the United States ultimately helps vaccines and treatments become available sooner, the country would have been much better off if it had kept the pandemic under control, public health experts said.
“This is not how anyone would want it to play out,” said Natalie Dean, a biostatistician and an expert in vaccine trial design at the University of Florida. “I’d rather be South Korea,” which has kept the virus at bay since early in the year, she said.
One day after the governor of California announced that the state was “pulling the emergency brake” on its reopening and reinstating broad restrictions, Los Angeles County went a step further on Tuesday and announced a curfew for businesses.
Starting Friday, restaurants, breweries, bars, wineries and nonessential retail establishments must close from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. A similar move is being considered statewide.
“This is a different kind of moment, a new level of danger,” Mayor Eric Garcetti said on Monday before the new measures were announced. “If we don’t make these decisions now, there really is only one outcome: We will almost certainly have to shut things down again. And more people will get sick and die.”
The moves in California came as state and local leaders across the United States try to slow the coronavirus, which has killed nearly 250,000 Americans and is now setting daily records for the number of people hospitalized with the disease. On Wednesday morning, that number stood at 76,823, according to the Covid Tracking Project.
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, said on Tuesday that the nation needed “a uniform approach,” instead of a “disjointed” state-by-state, city-by-city response.
But that is not what is happening. Like in the spring, when the country failed to develop a coordinated national response, a patchwork of measures is being put in place to combat the virus. Public health experts say the lack of a national strategy has been a primary reason for the country’s world-leading caseload and death toll.
Unlike in the spring, the virus is now spreading much more widely, exacting a deadly toll in communities from coast to coast. On Tuesday, more than 1,580 new deaths were reported nationwide, the highest single-day total since mid-May. Five states set single-day records for new deaths.
In the past two days, Ohio announced a nightly curfew, and Mississippi extended a mask mandate to seven more counties. Iowa will issue its first statewide mask order, Maryland will order all bars, restaurants and night clubs to close by 10 p.m., and Pennsylvania will require anyone who enters the state to be tested before arrival.
In Illinois, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said that, starting Friday, the entire state would move to Tier 3 under its mitigation plan, which limits the number of customers at many businesses and restricts private indoor gatherings to people in the same household, among other measures. Casinos and indoor venues like theaters and museums must close, and outdoor group activities will be limited to 10 people.
In Maryland, Gov. Larry Hogan announced that, beginning Friday, all bars, restaurants and night clubs would have to close by 10 p.m. and businesses, religious institutions and organizations would be limited to 50 percent of capacity.
In Mississippi, where Gov. Tate Reeves lifted a statewide mask mandate in September, new extensions in parts of the state meant that masks were only required in 22 counties out of 82.
Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio, a rare Republican leader of a red state who has consistently bucked President Trump’s opposition to tough restrictions, announced that his state would be under a curfew from 10 p.m. until 5 a.m. for three weeks starting on Thursday.
Ohio has reported a daily average of more than 7,000 new cases over the past week, seven times as many as in early October and more than at any time since the pandemic began. “These are astronomical numbers,” the governor said at a news conference on Tuesday, urging residents to wear masks and maintain strict social distancing until a vaccine is widely available.
Mr. DeWine said all retail businesses would have to close during the curfew and that residents should stay home unless they are commuting to work or traveling for emergency purposes. He called the rules “common sense.”
Even as France became the first country in Europe to pass two million detected cases of coronavirus infection this week, authorities expressed optimism that weeks of restrictions on movement and social interactions were starting to slow the spread of the virus.
“Our collective efforts are starting to bear fruit,” Jérôme Salomon, a top health ministry official, said at a news conference on Tuesday.
Still, French officials warned that lockdown restrictions would have to remain in place for at least several more weeks. France recorded more than 45,000 new cases over the previous 24 hours, bringing the country’s total to 2,036,755.
The number of hospitalized Covid-19 patients peaked at nearly 33,500 this week — slightly more than during the first wave last spring — and the pressure on French hospitals is still “very strong,” Mr. Salomon said.
Over 46,000 deaths have been tied to the virus in France.
France last month became one of the first countries in Europe to return to a nationwide lockdown, albeit one markedly less draconian than the measures put in place in the spring.
Public gatherings are banned, restaurants, bars and cinemas are once again closed and movement outside the home has been limited. But parks and schools are still open and a wider range of businesses are allowed to remain open.
The limits could start to be lifted next month.
The French authorities are considering allowing small businesses and shops to reopen in the run-up to Christmas. Catholic worshipers have also protested in recent days, demanding that the government relax a ban on religious services.
But officials said they would only loosen the rules if the trends remain encouraging. A government spokesman, Gabriel Attal, said at a news conference on Wednesday that while there might be an “adaptation” of the rules next month, the country was “far from” lifting the lockdown.
At the same time, officials sought to reassure the public, saying that while the road may be long and hard, the country was on the right path.
“Your efforts are starting to pay off, you must definitely not stop them,” Olivier Véran, the health minister, told the BFM TV news channel on Tuesday. “Yes it’s long, yes it’s difficult, but that’s the price to return to a normal life.”
Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, 87, on Tuesday became the latest lawmaker to be affected by the virus, announcing that he had tested positive. His absence helped to temporarily derail the confirmation of President Trump’s nominee for the Federal Reserve Board and shattered Mr. Grassley’s pride and joy, the longest consecutive voting streak in Senate history.
His diagnosis came the day after Representative Don Young of Alaska, also 87, disclosed that he had been hospitalized over the weekend after what he described as a particularly brutal bout with Covid-19. The twin announcements from two men whose gender and age put them at peak vulnerability to being killed by the virus underscored the risks that lawmakers are operating under as Congress continues to meet.
The marble-and-stone petri dish that is Capitol Hill is a vivid microcosm of the national struggle to confront and contain the spread of the pandemic, with partisan bickering often thwarting already unevenly enforced health precautions. Having effectively declared themselves essential workers, the nation’s lawmakers — a group of older Americans whose jobs involve weekly flights, ample indoor contact and near-constant congregating in close quarters — are yet again struggling to adapt their legislative and ceremonial routines to stem the spread of the virus, even as it rages within their ranks.
As of Tuesday afternoon, both Senator Rick Scott, Republican of Florida, and Mr. Grassley were in quarantine as a result of possible exposure, marking the first time Mr. Grassley had missed a vote since 1993. In the House, Mr. Young — who noted on Monday that he was “alive, feeling better and on the road to recovery” after being discharged — is among four lawmakers who have revealed they contracted the virus in the past month.
More than 80 members of Congress have either tested positive, quarantined or come into contact with someone who had the virus, according to GovTrack.
On Tuesday, the absence of Mr. Grassley and Mr. Scott temporarily stalled the confirmation of Judy Shelton, Mr. Trump’s Fed nominee, after Republicans fell short of the support necessary to advance to a final vote.
“There’s this kind of macho, ‘Well, I’m not afraid of Covid’ thing going on,” said Senator Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaii, who has one of the longest congressional commutes and has instructed his entire staff to work remotely. “We have to run the government — that’s our obligation. Our obligation is not to show that we’re personally unafraid, because we have to pass legislation to address this crisis, and we’re no good to anybody if we’re sick or quarantining.”
The drugmaker Pfizer said on Wednesday that its coronavirus vaccine was 95 percent effective and had no serious side effects — the first set of complete results from a late-stage vaccine trial as Covid-19 cases skyrocket around the globe.
The data showed that the vaccine prevented mild and severe forms of Covid-19, the company said. And it was 94 percent effective in older adults, who are more vulnerable to developing severe Covid-19 and who do not respond strongly to some types of vaccines.
Pfizer, which developed the vaccine with its partner BioNTech, said the companies plan to apply to the Food and Drug Administration for emergency authorization “within days,” raising hopes that a working vaccine could soon become a reality.
The trial results — less than a year after researchers began working on the vaccine — shattered all speed records for vaccine development, a process that usually takes years.
If the F.D.A. authorizes the two-dose vaccine, Pfizer has said that it could have up to 50 million doses available by the end of the year, and up to 1.3 billion by the end of next year.
However, only about half of its supply will go to the United States this year, or enough for about 12.5 million people — a sliver of the American population of 330 million. Americans will receive the vaccine free of charge, under a $1.95 billion deal the federal government reached with Pfizer for 100 million doses.
Federal health officials have said the first doses of the vaccines will likely go to groups like health care workers who are at high risk for exposure, as well as people who are most vulnerable to the disease, such as older people.
The results align with an early analysis that Pfizer and BioNTech reported last week, which found that the vaccine was more than 90 percent effective. Then on Monday, the drugmaker Moderna reported that its vaccine was 94.5 percent effective in an early analysis.
Dr. Saad Omer, the director of the Yale Institute for Global Health, said the results showing the vaccines protected people from severe disease was good news, because with such limited availability initially, the first goal will be not to stop transmission of the disease, but to prevent people from becoming extremely ill. “So that is very reassuring,” he said.
If the vaccine is authorized, attention will immediately shift to how it will be distributed. The vaccine must be stored at minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit, colder than any other vaccine in development. Pfizer will ship the vaccine in special boxes of 1,000 to 5,000 doses that are stuffed with dry ice and equipped with GPS-enabled sensors.
BERLIN — Police broke up an organized protest by coronavirus deniers, vaccine skeptics and right-wing extremists in Berlin on Wednesday as lawmakers passed legislation meant to undergird the government’s efforts to contain the spread of the virus.
Police officers in riot gear used water cannons to disperse the crowd, which gathered near the Brandenburg Gate. The protesters were ordered to leave around noon because they refused to wear masks or keep social distance. Some protesters threw rocks, bottles and firecrackers at the police in response.
As many as 10,000 demonstrators descended on the city in an effort to stop lawmakers from passing a bill that they said would give the state and federal governments too much power to override basic constitutional rights in the fight against the pandemic.
While Chancellor Angela Merkel’s pandemic response has found broad acceptance, opponents have been demonstrating actively since the government instituted its first lockdown in the spring. The protest movement combines people who question the government’s response to the pandemic, those who deny the existence of the virus altogether and those who have long called for the overthrow of Ms. Merkel’s government.
Not far from the water cannons, inside the Reichstag, where lawmakers debated the bill, far-right lawmakers from the nationalist AfD party protested the proceedings by refusing to wear masks and by ignoring social distancing rules. Other AfD lawmakers could be seen mingling with the demonstrators outside.
Federal and city authorities decided on Tuesday that a protest in front of the Reichstag building would be prohibited because it could disrupt proceedings in Parliament. During a big protest in August, a small group of protesters managed to climb the stairs of the Reichstag, prompting a nationwide outcry.
In the spring, as European governments imposed draconian lockdown orders that turned capitals into ghost towns and forced people to largely confine themselves to their homes, Sweden opted for a lighter touch.
The “Sweden model,” as it came to be known, has been the subject of fascination and study even as the effectiveness of the approach is still hotly debated.
But on Tuesday, in a few short words posted on social media, King Carl XVI Gustaf captured the dramatically different mood as a resurgent virus sweeps across Europe.
“Hold on tight,” he said in a statement posted on Instagram. “Hold on!”
This week, the government announced the strictest limitations on the country since the coronavirus first appeared and warned that there will be darker days ahead.
“It is a clear and sharp signal to every person in our country as to what applies in the future,” Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said during a news conference on Monday. “Don’t go to the gym, don’t go the library, don’t have dinner out, don’t have parties — cancel!”
With governments around Europe struggling to avoid sweeping national lockdown orders this time around — but moving step by step in that direction as new restrictions are put in place — Sweden is no longer the outlier.
After earlier adopting a ban on serving alcohol after 10 p.m. and advising against the use of public transportation, Mr. Lofven announced a ban on public gatherings of more than eight people starting next week.
While Sweden’s number of Covid-19 deaths still pales in comparison to those of some European countries like Italy or Spain, it is more than 10 times higher than in Finland or Norway. Over the past five days, Sweden has recorded more than 15,000 new infections and Mr. Lofven warned that “it will get worse.”
Still, despite introducing tighter virus control measures, the Swedish leader said that a national lockdown was still not on the table.
“We don’t believe in a total lockdown,” he said.
Children in the United States are on pace this year to miss nine million vaccine doses for measles, polio and other highly contagious diseases, according to medical claims data — a disruption that health care authorities called alarming and attributed to the coronavirus pandemic.
The data was made public on Wednesday by the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, one of the nation’s largest federations of insurance companies, which said that routine childhood vaccinations had declined by as much as 26 percent, compared with 2019.
The findings emerged less than two weeks after the World Health Organization and UNICEF warned that progress vaccinating children from polio and measles was being threatened by the pandemic. In an emergency call to action, the two organizations said that the risk of measles and polio outbreaks was on the rise.
Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the W.H.O. reported that measles deaths worldwide had soared to their highest level in 23 years in 2019 and were 50 percent higher than just three years earlier.
Dr. Megan Ranney, an emergency physician at Brown University in Rhode Island who specializes in public health research, said that failure to maintain childhood vaccine rates could compromise what is known as herd immunity. The term refers to the point at which a disease stops spreading because nearly everyone in a population has become immune to it.
“We know that once you fall below herd immunity, it offers a foothold for these deadly childhood diseases to once again rear their head in our communities,” Dr. Ranney said in an interview.
Blue Cross Blue Shield said that 40 percent of parents and legal guardians whom it had surveyed said that their children missed their vaccinations because of the pandemic. The majority of missed appointments occurred from March through May, at the beginning of the pandemic, and in August, which is when many children typically get vaccinated before school resumes, the association said.
The state of South Australia will go into lockdown for six days in an effort to contain a growing coronavirus outbreak. The cluster, which has been traced to a traveler quarantining in a hotel, has included 22 cases since Saturday.
It is the first major outbreak in Australia since one in Victoria state in June that was also traced to a hotel quarantine. Tight restrictions were in place across Victoria for nearly four months.
Starting at midnight on Wednesday, only one person from each household in South Australia will be able to go out per day to access essential services: to buy groceries, access medical services or for caregiving purposes. Restaurants, cafes, pubs and retail stores will close, as will schools and universities. Outdoor sports and physical activities are banned, and masks will be mandatory.
“This is about South Australia pausing so that we stay ahead of the virus,” South Australia’s premier, Steven Marshall, said at a news conference. “Our concern is that if we don’t have this circuit breaker, that we will not stay ahead of this.”
After the six-day lockdown, South Australia will face another eight days of lesser restrictions, details of which have not yet been announced.
— Yan Zhuang and
The Turkish government, facing growing public anger over its handling of the pandemic and accusations that it is hiding the true toll of the coronavirus, announced that it would close classrooms and impose new restrictions on movement on weekends as part of a raft of measures as the death toll in the country steadily rises.
Starting Friday, people will not be allowed to go out in public between 8 p.m. and 10 a.m. on weekends, according to the Interior Ministry. Schools will have to cancel in-person classes, moving fully to online learning.
Restaurants and cafes will only be allowed to serve takeout, while shopping malls will be forced to close at 8 p.m.
Turkey has reported at least 11,700 deaths related to the virus, with more than 420,000 detected cases of infection. Local officials and opposition politicians say the government is hiding the true death toll.
The mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, said that 164 people had died of infectious diseases in the city on Saturday, when the government put the death toll for the entire country at only 92.
Mr. Imamoglu, writing on Twitter, said the government had been late to take action. The government has not responded to the criticisms.
Like countries everywhere, Turkey is wrestling with balancing public health concerns and economic consequences.
It is a challenge made even more difficult in Turkey, where the economy is collapsing and the currency, the lira, has fallen by 30 percent this year.
For those who have been forced to work from home, the decision to close classrooms hit the hardest.
“The education at schools will be online until the end of the year,’’ said President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, announcing the measures after his cabinet meeting Tuesday. But much about the policy remained unclear, including what ages would be affected.
“I immediately thought of kindergartens,” said Gozde Orhan, 37, an academic and mother of a four-year-old. She waited anxiously for the government announcement — waking in the middle of the night to check for information — and while she had a few days to prepare for the school closing, she did not know how she would cope.
“I don’t know what would happen after two days,” she said. “I lecture online, and as of now, I don’t know what to do with my daughter.”
British police say the coronavirus pandemic and the subsequent social isolation have contributed to a “perfect storm” that is making more young people vulnerable to radicalization.
Neil Basu, the assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, said that police had already seen a sharp increase in extremist material online and, with young people spending more time online in isolation without the protective influence of schools and support networks, they were increasingly at risk.
“In my opinion that is a perfect storm, one which we cannot predict and that we might be feeling the effects of for many years to come,” Mr. Basu said in a statement released by the police on Wednesday.
The comments come after a series of attacks in France and a shooting this month in Vienna, all linked to Islamist extremists. Britain’s terror threat level was raised to its highest — severe — in the wake of the violence, meaning authorities suspect an attack is likely, though without a specified threat.
Mr. Basu also noted that the police are seeing more young people being drawn to terrorist activity. In 2019, 12 children under the age of 18 — including some as young as 14 — were arrested in relation to terrorism offenses, he said.
“That is a relatively new and worrying trend in the U.K., because just a few years ago we were not seeing anyone that young amongst our casework,” Mr. Basu said.
The information was released as the authorities introduced a new website, called ACT, that encourages the family and friends to reach out if they fear someone they know is in danger of being radicalized.
She wrote “I Will Always Love You” and “Jolene” on the same day and built a theme park around herself. She has given memorable onscreen performances as a wisecracking hairstylist and a harassed secretary. She even helped bring about the creation of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
Now, Dolly Parton’s fans are crediting her with saving the world from the coronavirus. It’s an exaggerated, tongue-in-cheek claim, to be sure. But for legions of admirers, Ms. Parton’s donation this spring to Vanderbilt University Medical Center, which worked with the drugmaker Moderna to develop a coronavirus vaccine, was another example of how the singer’s generosity and philanthropy have made her one of the world’s most beloved artists.
In April, Ms. Parton announced that she had donated $1 million to Vanderbilt after her friend Dr. Naji Abumrad, a professor of surgery at the university, in Nashville, told her about the work researchers were doing to come up with a vaccine.
Her contribution, which became known as the Dolly Parton Covid-19 Research Fund, helped pay for the first part of the vaccine research, which was led by Dr. Mark Denison, a professor of pathology, microbiology and immunology at Vanderbilt. The federal government eventually invested $1 billion in the creation and testing of the vaccine, but Dr. Denison said it was Ms. Parton’s money that funded the “critical” early stages of the research.
“Her money helped us develop the test that we used to first show that the Moderna vaccine was giving people a good immune response that might protect them,” Dr. Denison said on Tuesday.
On Monday, after Moderna announced that early trials of the vaccine showed a 94.5 percent effectiveness rate, fans reacted rapturously.
“Shakespeare may have written King Lear during the plague, but Dolly Parton funded a Covid vaccine, dropped a Christmas album and a Christmas special,” the author Lyz Lenz said on Twitter.
The Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday gave an emergency green light to the first rapid coronavirus test that can run from start to finish at home, paving a potential path for more widespread testing outside of health care settings.
The test, developed by California-based company Lucira Health, requires a prescription from a health care provider. People under the age of 14 also can’t perform the test on themselves. But with a relatively simple nasal swab, the test can return results in about half an hour, and is projected by the company to cost $50 or less, according to the product’s website. Clinicians can also run the test on their patients, including children under the age of 14, potentially delivering answers during a single visit to a care center or pharmacy, instead of routing a tough-to-collect sample through a lab.
A handful of other tests have been cleared by the F.D.A. for at-home collection of samples, which are then shipped to a lab for processing. But Lucira’s test is the first to remove the need for an intermediary.
“Today’s authorization for a complete at-home test is a significant step toward F.D.A.’s nationwide response to Covid-19,” Jeff Shuren, director of F.D.A.’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, said in a statement. “Now, more Americans who may have Covid-19 will be able to take immediate action, based on their results, to protect themselves and those around them.”
People who test positive for the coronavirus are expected to isolate themselves from others for 10 days from the day their symptoms started, or the day they tested positive, per guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Laboratory tests that look for the coronavirus’s genetic material using a technique called polymerase chain reaction, or P.C.R., are still considered the gold standard for detecting the virus. But the new at-home test relies on similar principles by using a method called a loop mediated amplification reaction, or LAMP. Like P.C.R., LAMP repeatedly copies genetic material until it reaches detectable levels, making it possible to identify the virus even when it is present at only very low levels in the respiratory tract. While faster and less cumbersome than P.C.R., LAMP is generally thought to be less accurate.
People taking the battery-powered test must swirl a swab in both of their nostrils, then dip and stir the swab into a vial of chemicals. That vial is then plugged into a test cartridge that processes the sample. Within half an hour, the test cartridge will light up as “positive” or “negative.” Federal guidelines note that people taking the test should report the results to their health care providers, who must then inform public health authorities to help track the virus’s spread.
An at-home test for the virus “was going to happen,” said Omai Garner, a clinical microbiologist and diagnostics expert at the University of California, Los Angeles Health System. “I am hopeful that it works well.”
Dr. Garner noted that the news should be taken with a note of caution, however. In recent months, several experts have called for more widespread at-home testing as a way to help curb the virus’s spread. But others have raised concerns about the practicality of a strategy that would likely rely on tests that sacrifice a degree of accuracy for convenience and a more affordable price tag.
According to the product’s instructions, Lucira’s LAMP test was able to accurately detect 94 percent of the infections found by a well-established P.C.R. based test. It also correctly identified 98 percent of the healthy, uninfected people.
Representatives at Lucira Health did not respond immediately to requests for comment.
Saskia Popescu, an infection prevention expert and epidemiologist at George Mason University, also cautioned that home testing, while a notable advance, should not be seen as a panacea. To help fill more of the gaps in coronavirus diagnostics, Dr. Popescu said, “we need more accessible and fast lab-based testing.”
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