For more than a year, Chinese officials have beat back the coronavirus with a tried formula: Strict lockdowns at the sites of outbreaks. Lengthy quarantines for travelers. And citywide testing when new cases appear.
But an outbreak of the fast-spreading Delta variant could challenge China’s zero-tolerance approach toward new infections.
In the outbreak, centered in the eastern city of Nanjing, about 200 cases have been reported as of Friday. But infections have spread rapidly, with patients emerging in at least six Chinese provinces and the capital, Beijing, in just three weeks.
As officials move to contain the spread, the highly infectious Delta variant could prove to be a more difficult foe than the original version of the virus, which China stamped out with harsh efficiency in 2020. With most of China’s people already vaccinated, the emergence of Delta could also present a test for the country’s domestically made vaccines and could force the authorities to take even tougher steps to control the virus.
Chinese officials say they have administered enough vaccine doses to cover around 800 million people. But several other countries that used Chinese-made vaccines have reported that fully inoculated people continue to be infected, although most do not appear to become seriously ill. Data also indicates that the Delta variant is more easily transmitted, even by those who have had two doses of more effective vaccines, such as those produced by the companies Pfizer and Moderna.
The outbreak in China began when a group of airport workers in Nanjing were sickened around July 10, probably from exposure to an infected person who arrived on a flight from Russia, according to city officials. Two rounds of citywide testing of more than eight million people turned up 184 cases.
To stop the spread, Nanjing has increasingly shut down services, first closing the airport, then restricting indoor gatherings. This week, the city authorities closed parts of the expressway that connects Nanjing with other major cities in Jiangsu Province.
As handfuls of cases connected to Nanjing have popped up in other provinces, the authorities there have moved swiftly to impose restrictions.
In the central city of Zhangjiajie, in Hunan Province, indoor public areas including movie theaters and malls were closed after the authorities said that four people with the virus, all asymptomatic, went to a show in the city. Nearly 200 miles away in the provincial capital of Changsha, the authorities banned indoor gatherings in response to one confirmed case.
In central Sichuan Province, where seven cases were found, the authorities declared parts of the capital, Chengdu, a medium-risk zone. The discovery of three cases in the northern city of Shenyang prompted officials there to begin tracking visitors who had come from other areas with outbreaks.
Perhaps most worrying to officials are two cases that appeared in Beijing, where the government has generally followed stricter prevention policies. Officials said that a husband and wife who traveled from Zhangjiajie had tested positive and that 654 people who had been in close contact with them had been placed in quarantine.
Li You contributed research.
The Pentagon said on Thursday evening that it would require military personnel to attest to their vaccination status against the coronavirus or face frequent testing and other restrictions.
The announcement came just hours after President Biden announced that federal employees and on-site contractors must be vaccinated against the coronavirus, or be required to submit to regular testing and other measures.
Mr. Biden also called upon the Department of Defense to move rapidly toward requiring coronavirus vaccines for all members of the military, a step that would affect almost 1.5 million troops, many of whom have resisted taking a shot that is highly effective against a disease that has claimed the lives of more than 600,000 Americans.
But he stopped short of saying he would use his powers as commander in chief to compel service members to get vaccines not yet fully approved by the Food and Drug Administration by issuing a waiver.
On Thursday night, Jamal Brown, a deputy Pentagon press secretary, said in a statement that military members would need to adhere to the same guidelines as the department’s civilian workers.
Employees would be asked to “attest to their vaccination status” and, if unwilling to do so, they “will be required to wear a mask, physically distance, comply with a regular testing requirement and be subject to official travel restrictions,” the statement said.
The military sits firmly at the center of an escalating debate over vaccine mandates as Mr. Biden and other officials struggle to get ahead of the Delta variant sweeping through the nation.
Members of the military are regularly given vaccines, and unvaccinated service members are sometimes not allowed to deploy abroad and face other restrictions. But as a political matter, forcing the coronavirus vaccines on the military is all but certain to set off a firestorm among Mr. Biden’s critics.
The Delta variant is much more contagious, more likely to break through protections afforded by the vaccines and may cause more severe disease than all other known versions of the virus, according to an internal presentation circulated within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, the director of the agency, acknowledged on Tuesday that vaccinated people with so-called breakthrough infections of the Delta variant carry just as much virus in the nose and throat as unvaccinated people, and may spread it just as readily, if less often.
But the internal document lays out a broader and even grimmer view of the variant.
The Delta variant is more transmissible than the viruses that cause MERS, SARS, Ebola, the common cold, the seasonal flu and smallpox, and it is as contagious as chickenpox, according to the document, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times.
The immediate next step for the agency is to “acknowledge the war has changed,” the document said. Its contents were first reported by The Washington Post on Thursday evening.
The document’s tone reflects alarm among C.D.C. scientists about Delta’s spread across the country, said a federal official who has seen the research described in the document. The agency is expected to publish additional data on the variant on Friday.
The agency’s new masking guidelines for vaccinated people, introduced on Tuesday, were based on the information presented in the document. The C.D.C. recommended that vaccinated people wear masks indoors in public settings in communities with high transmission of the virus.
But the internal document hints that even that recommendation may not go far enough. “Given higher transmissibility and current vaccine coverage, universal masking is essential,” the document said.
In a speech at the White House on Thursday, President Biden announced plans for new actions to spur coronavirus vaccinations and slow the spread of the Delta variant in the United States.
The contagious variant is ripping through unvaccinated communities, threatening to undo the progress made by the Biden administration in its first six months. About half of all Americans have been fully vaccinated, but the pace of vaccinations has declined significantly from early spring. Recent research has shown fully vaccinated people are protected against the worst outcomes of Covid-19, including those involving the Delta variant. And cases, hospitalizations and deaths are still a fraction of their devastating winter peaks.
Here are the key points of the plan:
Strengthen protocols for federal employees and contractors. All civilian federal employees will be required to be vaccinated or be forced to submit to regular testing, social distancing, mask requirements, as well as restrictions on most travel. The federal government employs more than 4 million Americans throughout the country and abroad.
Urge vaccination mandates for members of the military. The Department of Defense has been asked to detail when and how they will add the coronavirus vaccine to the list of required vaccinations for members of the military. The president stressed the importance of immunization for service members because American troops serve in countries where vaccination rates are low and Covid-19 is prevalent.
Expand paid leave to enable vaccinations for families and children. Small- and medium-sized businesses will be reimbursed for offering employees paid leave to get themselves and their family members vaccinated. Children younger than 12 cannot yet get vaccinated but will likely be eligible later this year.
Call on local and state governments to offer $100 incentives for getting vaccinated. States, territories and local governments are being asked to do more to incentivize vaccination, including offering $100 to those who get the shot. Some states, including New Mexico, Ohio and Colorado, have piloted $100 incentive programs that have helped move the dial on vaccination rates. New York City said this week that the city will begin offering $100 payments, too.
Increase vaccinations for children returning to classrooms. School districts are being encouraged to host at least one pop-up vaccination clinic over the coming weeks, with the goal of increasing vaccination rates among children 12 and older. Mr. Biden said that while almost 90 percent of educators and school staff are vaccinated, he believes every student should have an accessible way to receive a vaccine. The administration is also directing pharmacies in the federal pharmacy program to prioritize children 12 and older, and to work with school districts across the country to host vaccination clinics at schools and colleges.
Outside the Olympic bubble, Japan’s coronavirus outbreak continued to worsen on Friday, as health officials reported more than 10,000 new daily infections. It was the first time the country had surpassed that mark since the pandemic began.
Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga announced that the government would expand a state of emergency to four areas besides Tokyo, and that the restrictions in the capital would be extended until the end of August — past the conclusion of the Olympics and into the start of the Paralympic Games.
Tokyo and Japan at large have reported record numbers of new infections in recent days, fueling questions about whether the Games are contributing to the surge.
Olympic organizers on Friday reported 27 new coronavirus infections among people connected to the Games, the highest daily count reported so far. A total of 225 people with Olympic credentials have tested positive since July 1, including 26 athletes.
While the cases inside the Olympic bubble are lower than some had feared, experts suggested that the presence of the Games in Tokyo was having the psychological effect of making members of the public believe they could relax, even if they are under an emergency declaration.
The Los Angeles Unified School District announced on Thursday that it would require all students and employees returning for in-person instruction to participate in weekly coronavirus testing.
The decision is a shift in policy for the school district, which is the second largest in the United States. The largest, in New York City, recently announced that all teachers and schools staff must be vaccinated before classes resume on Sept. 13 or be subjected to weekly testing.
Previously, the Los Angeles school district only required testing for students and staff members who were unvaccinated. Officials said that the new requirement was in accordance with the most recent guidance from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. It comes as the average number of cases in Los Angeles County has grown 119 percent from two weeks ago, according to a New York Times database.
The spread of the more contagious Delta variant has left many parents worried about what will happen when students return to class in the fall. “We believe Los Angeles Unified has the highest Covid safety standards of any public school district in the nation,” the interim superintendent, Megan K. Reilly, wrote in an email to the parents.
She urged that every eligible individual be vaccinated, calling it “the greatest protection against Covid and the Delta variant.”
Testing at Los Angeles schools will begin Aug. 2 in preparation for a return to full in-person learning on Aug. 16.
“The evidence is mounting that vaccinated individuals can be part of transmission chains,” said Dr. Anne W. Rimoin, a professor of epidemiology at the Fielding School of Public Health at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Any testing regimen that does not include vaccinated individuals is going to be incomplete and leave people at risk.”
Fear and recrimination shook European capitals, while Washington brimmed with confidence. In early April, the European Union lagged far behind the United States in Covid-19 vaccination, the gap was widening rapidly, and the World Health Organization berated Europe for an “unacceptably slow” pace.
But the U.S. effort peaked that month and then nose-dived, while the E.U. campaigns, so recently a target of ridicule, grew faster than those in any other region of the world. This week, the European Union pulled ahead of the United States in total vaccinations, adjusted for population. In July, it has given shots at four times the American pace — a turnabout that would have been hard to imagine in the spring.
Early on, while the United States and a handful of others surged ahead, the Europeans undermined their inoculation campaigns with repeated stumbles, delaying vaccine purchases, damaging public confidence in some shots and bungling the rollout when doses became available.
Now, the European Union is on a pace to end this week having given about 105 doses per 100 people, and at least one to just over 70 percent of adults, while the United States is at about 103 per 100 people and 69 percent of adults.
“The catch-up process has been very successful,” Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, the E.U. executive branch, said this week.
But the reversal is not just a story of the European Union and its member countries working out the early kinks, and in fact their vaccination campaigns remain far from trouble-free. Major political differences between the United States and Europe set them on divergent paths.
Puerto Rico’s governor announced on Wednesday that all public employees in the territory would have to be vaccinated against the coronavirus or face weekly testing, joining a growing list of states, municipalities, companies and the federal government that have imposed some form of vaccine requirement.
The governor, Pedro R. Pierluisi, said on Twitter that government employees must get their first shot by Aug. 16 and be completely inoculated by Sept. 30, though exceptions for religious reasons or disabilities will be allowed.
On Thursday, President Biden announced in Washington that all civilian federal employees in the United States must be vaccinated or submit to regular testing, social distancing, mask requirements and restrictions on most travel.
In recent days New York, California and North Carolina have all announced similar vaccination requirements for their employees, as has the Department of Veterans Affairs. Google, Facebook and The Washington Post are among the companies that have announced mandates of their own.
The pace of vaccinations has declined dramatically since they peaked in April, and just under half the country is fully vaccinated, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some communities with low rates of vaccination have seen soaring case rates and hospitalizations in recent weeks, due in part to the highly contagious Delta variant.
Mr. Pierluisi’s mandate is in response to a sharp increase in known coronavirus cases in Puerto Rico — the island saw a 311 percent jump in daily cases over the past two weeks, the most of any U.S. state or territory, according to a New York Times database.
In Puerto Rico, public employees who are not vaccinated will need to provide a negative coronavirus test result every week, or a positive test result with a certification from a doctor that they are no longer contagious. Those who refuse will be forced to use their vacation or paid leave time, then placed on unpaid leave.
Puerto Rico was one of the first parts of the United States to order a lockdown because of the coronavirus. Cases and hospitalizations there surged in April 2021 after businesses, schools and tourism reopened, and Mr. Pierluisi reinstated a curfew, imposed a testing requirement for tourists, and lowered the indoor capacity for businesses and restaurants.
Conditions improved by May, and Mr. Pierluisi relaxed some of the restrictions; but cases started to rise in July, and have since grown dramatically, though they are still about a third of their April 2021 peak.
Uber told employees on Thursday that it would require them to be vaccinated, and it postponed a mandate to return to the office, joining a group of tech companies that have delayed reopening and stepped up vaccine requirements in response to the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus.
On Wednesday, Google postponed its return-to-office plans until October and said employees in its U.S. offices would be required to be vaccinated. Lyft, Uber’s largest U.S. competitor, said it would not require employees to return to the office until February. Twitter shut down its San Francisco and New York offices, and put an indefinite halt to its reopening plans. Last week, Apple postponed its reopening until October.
The changes come as coronavirus cases have surged in the United States. Cases in the country increased 146 percent in the past two weeks, according to a New York Times tally.
Uber will also require employees to be vaccinated in order to work from the office. The mandate will begin with employees in the United States, and the company will assess its requirements for employees in other countries based on vaccine availability, Uber’s chief executive, Dara Khosrowshahi, wrote Thursday in an email to staff seen by The New York Times. Unvaccinated employees will be required to work from home.
Uber had already opened some offices for employees who wanted to return voluntarily, and a spokesman said that employees could continue to come into Uber’s offices if they are vaccinated and wear masks. But the company said it would not require employees to return until Oct. 25, a delay from its initial September return date.
“It’s important to say that this date is a global target, and local circumstances will continue to dictate when it makes sense to bring employees back in a given city,” Mr. Khosrowshahi said. “Rising Covid cases in our communities are a real reminder that we still need to be cautious, look at the data, and listen to experts as we return to offices. Every day, teams across the company are closely monitoring the rapidly changing global situation.”
Uber’s return date could be pushed back further if cases continue to surge, Mr. Khosrowshahi wrote.
Uber has not said whether it will require its drivers or riders to be vaccinated. It does require them to wear masks.
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