Covid News: Scientists Warn Omicron Will Surge and Say Biden’s Plan Is Insufficient

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Even as President Biden on Tuesday outlined new plans for battling the highly contagious Omicron variant, public health experts warned that the measures would not be sufficient to prevent a grim rise in infections and hospitalizations over the next few weeks.

The administration’s strategy includes doubling down on vaccination campaigns and propping up hospitals as they confront a large influx of patients. Federal officials will direct resources, including Army doctors, to support health care systems and distribute rapid tests to Americans.

But Mr. Biden explicitly ruled out lockdowns and other harsh measures of the kind put in place as the pandemic first unfolded in early 2020. In interviews on Tuesday, some scientists argued that the variant’s rapid spread requires more vigorous mitigation measures.

Some expressed frustration and alarm about what they described as a timid public health response, and bemoaned the apparent lack of will among politicians and society at large for more aggressive steps.

The crisis is brewing just as Americans prepare to travel to holiday gatherings, college students return home for vacation, and young and old converge for New Year’s parties or set off on trips that may further spread the virus.

Federal health officials asked health care providers on Monday to advise their patients to conduct rapid home tests for Covid before holiday gatherings, and ask their guests to do the same. But while the tests are sold over the counter, prices start at $14 for a two-pack, and many stores are sold out.

And in sharp contrast with the advice given out last year, Mr. Biden encouraged people to gather and celebrate the holidays, so long as they were vaccinated and took standard precautions.

At the same time, he warned that the variant was spreading at unprecedented speed, and said there would be Omicron infections among the vaccinated, apparently resigned to the fact that even those who have received boosters may get infected with the highly contagious variant.

“I still can’t quite wrap my head around how quickly this is moving,” said Joseph Fauver, a genomic epidemiologist at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. “I think it’s going to be really bad. I don’t know how else to put it.”

It is not yet clear whether the variant causes milder illness than earlier variants. But there is a concern among some scientists that the notion has gained wide circulation and that the pandemic-weary public has let down its guard.

“This is an incredibly contagious pathogen, and we don’t know yet its impact on severity and death,” said Galit Alter, an immunologist and virologist affiliated with the Ragon Institute of Massachusetts General Hospital, M.I.T. and Harvard.

“We have to reestablish the importance and rigor of the first wave,” she added. “We are back in ‘flatten the curve’ mode.”

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Biden Outlines Plan to Fight Omicron as Cases Surge

President Biden announced additional steps his administration will take to combat the Omicron variant, including free at-home Covid tests and increased support for overwhelmed hospitals.

We should all be concerned about Omicron, but not panicked. If you’re fully vaccinated and especially if you got your booster shot, you are highly protected. And no, this is not March of 2020 — 200 million people are fully vaccinated. In the past two weeks, we’ve seen the highest vaccination rates since last spring. And we aren’t as vaccinated as a country as we should be, though. That’s why we have added 10,000 new vaccination sites on top of the 80,000 sites that we already had in place. The federal government will purchase one-half billion — that’s not million, billion with a ‘B’ — additional at-home rapid tests with delivery starting in January. In addition, I have directed the Pentagon to mobilize an additional 1,000 troops to be deployed to help staff local hospitals and expand capacity. That’s 1,000 military doctors, nurses and medics.

President Biden accelerated his administration’s coronavirus response on Tuesday as the country faced a surge in cases from a highly contagious new variant, telling anxious Americans that “we should all be concerned about Omicron, but not panicked.”

In a White House address delivered against the backdrop of a new global struggle to cope with the two-year-old pandemic, Mr. Biden said the government will buy a half-billion rapid coronavirus tests and distribute them free to Americans; create new vaccination and testing sites; and send 1,000 military medical professionals to help hospitals nationwide.

“I know you’re tired, really, and I know you’re frustrated,” Mr. Biden said, adding that vaccinated Americans should feel comfortable celebrating with their friends and family for the upcoming holidays. “We all want this to be over, but we’re still in it.”

The president said military troops will begin arriving in Wisconsin and Indiana this week to aid health care workers at hospitals. He said the first of the new testing sites will open in New York within days. And he promised to use the Defense Production Act to help manufacturers better meet the demand for testing.

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Mr. Biden acknowledged the political division in the country and the fierce opposition to vaccine requirements among some people, saying his administration has put some mandates in place “not to control your life, but to save your life and the lives of others.” And he pleaded with Americans who remained unvaccinated to get shots to protect themselves and the people around them from infection.

Some of Mr. Biden’s announcements — including the distribution of new at-home tests — are not intended to be implemented for weeks, if not longer, raising doubts about how much they will help in the short term. And most are incremental steps that many public health experts say fall far short of the kind of aggressive actions required.

The president is not moving to mandate testing or vaccination for travelers on domestic flights, and he flatly ruled out on Tuesday returning to the kinds of restrictions that some European nations have once again imposed in an effort to slow the spread of the new variant, which doctors say is even more highly contagious than previous iterations of the virus.

“That’s what I keep getting asked,” Mr. Biden said. “The answer is absolutely no. No.”

JERUSALEM — Israeli officials said Tuesday that the country will administer a fourth dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, in a bid to curb the rapid spread of the Omicron variant.

Israel is believed to be the first country to offer a fourth round of doses.

Naftali Bennett, the Israeli prime minister, said medical teams would begin to give fourth doses to those over 60, as well as to medical personnel, in a decision he hailed as “wonderful news that will assist us in getting through the Omicron wave that is engulfing the world.”

Mr. Bennett added: “The State of Israel is continuing to stand at the forefront of the global effort to deal with the pandemic.”

In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced in October that some adults with compromised immune systems would be eligible for a fourth shot of the mRNA vaccines made by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech. Pfizer’s chief executive, Albert Bourla, said this month that fourth doses of his company’s vaccine may soon be needed to deal with the Omicron variant, but Dr. Anthony Fauci, the federal government’s top infectious disease expert, has disagreed.

In Israel, at least one person has been confirmed to have died from the Omicron variant — an elderly man who had received two vaccine doses, but not a third one, health officials said Tuesday. The number of Omicron cases doubled on Tuesday to 340, the health ministry said, while the total number of coronavirus cases rose to 1,306 — the highest daily figure in nearly two months, but still proportionally lower than many developed countries.

Israel was an early trailblazer in its efforts to administer a first vaccine to citizens late last year, initially rolling out a first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine far faster than most other countries. It was subsequently also one of the first countries to return society to a semblance of normality. After succeeding Benjamin Netanyahu in June, Mr. Bennett was among the first world leaders to permit the administering of a third dose of the vaccine last summer.

Mr. Bennett also allowed for the vaccination of young children aged five and up, and held a “war game” in November in which the government tested out possible state responses to a hypothetical new virus variant.

Attempting to slow the rise of Omicron in Israel, Mr. Bennett also recently enforced more stringent entry requirements for incoming travelers, banning the entry of all foreigners without a special exemption, and barring Israelis from traveling without special permission to 58 countries, including the United States, Canada and Britain.

Mr. Bennett has said Israel is at the beginning of a fifth virus wave, and has called on citizens to vaccinate themselves and their children, to work from home and to increase their wearing of masks.

Hospitals, drug companies and Biden administration officials are racing to address one of the Omicron variant’s biggest threats: Two of the three monoclonal antibody treatments that doctors have depended on to keep Covid-19 patients from becoming seriously ill do not appear to thwart the latest version of the coronavirus.

The one such treatment that is still likely to work against Omicron is now so scarce that many doctors and hospitals have already run through their supplies.

Monoclonal antibodies have become a mainstay of Covid treatment, shown to be highly effective in keeping high-risk patients from being hospitalized. But even as infections surge and Omicron becomes the dominant form of new cases in the United States, some hospitals have begun scaling back the treatments, fearing they have become suddenly useless.

In New York, hospital administrators at NewYork-Presbyterian, N.Y.U. Langone and Mount Sinai all said in recent days that they would stop giving patients the two most commonly used antibody treatments, made by Eli Lilly and Regeneron, according to memos obtained by The Times and officials at the health systems.

“This is a dramatic change just in the last week or so,” said Dr. Daniel Griffin, an infectious disease specialist at Columbia University in New York. “And I think it makes sense.”

Federal health officials plan to assess at the end of this week whether to pause shipments of the Eli Lilly and Regeneron products to individual states, based on how dominant Omicron becomes in different regions of the country, according to a senior administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The one monoclonal antibody treatment that has performed well against Omicron in laboratory experiments is also the most recently authorized: sotrovimab, made by GlaxoSmithKline and Vir Biotechnology and cleared in May.

National Hockey League players are not expected to participate in the 2022 Beijing Olympics, reversing plans announced in September and signaling fears that rising numbers of coronavirus cases and virus-related postponements will hurt the league’s ability to complete its own season on schedule.

The decision about the Olympics is expected to be announced on Wednesday, people familiar with the deliberations said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the N.H.L. and its players’ union had not publicly disclosed their intentions, even as they had telegraphed them for weeks.

The N.H.L., which has had dozens of its games postponed this season, said on Monday that it would pause its season for several days after a swelling number of players were ruled out of games after entering the league’s health and safety protocols.

The decision that N.H.L. players would not go to Beijing, however, reflected spiraling concerns among the league, its teams and their players about the possible effects of the pandemic on the rest of the season. The N.H.L.’s retreat came only weeks before the Games’s opening ceremony on Feb. 4, and less than four months after the league announced a plan to load the men’s tournament rosters in Beijing with the sport’s biggest stars.

The decision could give the league additional flexibility as it tries to reschedule games even as it braces for more postponements, since a three-week break planned to accommodate the Games can now potentially be used to make up N.H.L. postponements instead.

But the absence of the sport’s best players will undercut the dazzle of the Olympic tournament, which now will most likely feature minor leaguers and overseas-based professionals instead of commanding figures like the N.H.L. All-Stars Auston Matthews and Connor McDavid.

Organizers of the Beijing Olympics have vowed that the festivities will proceed as planned, but the N.H.L.’s decision to opt out injected a new burst of uncertainty into the Games.

It was billed as an inauguration ritual steeped in symbolism: Eric Adams, the second Black man to be elected mayor of New York, would be sworn in at Kings Theater, a lavishly restored cultural icon in Brooklyn, whose residents, he said, chose “one of their own” to lead the city’s recovery.

But the event will now serve as a less welcome symbol, reflecting the rising concerns about the rampant spread of the Omicron variant.

Mr. Adams, who takes office on Jan. 1, canceled the ceremony on Tuesday, one of several developments that underscored how the latest wave of coronavirus cases has thrown New York City’s recovery into doubt and shifted priorities as the year ends.

The number of reported cases in the city has surged in recent days to more than 15,000 on Monday, the highest level since at least January and about four times the number of cases recorded just one week earlier.

Covid-19 hospitalizations in the city have been rising over the past month but are still at less than half the level of last winter’s peak, reaching about 270 new admissions a day on Monday, according to New York State figures.

Northwell Health officials say that their 53 urgent care facilities in the New York City area are seeing unprecedented volume. About 4,000 to 5,000 patients are coming into those facilities daily, up from 2,000 normally, and most are seeking testing, said John D’Angelo, Northwell Health’s chief of integrated operations. Positivity rates of those tests have gone from 7 percent a week ago to 14 percent now.

“I would expect that if that is going to translate to a steeper trajectory on the inpatient side, we should be seeing that in the next week or so,” Mr. D’Angelo said. “So we’ll see.”

The Omicron variant made up 37 percent of cases in New York State over the last two weeks, according to state data, and 92 percent of new cases in a larger area that includes New York and New Jersey, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate released Monday. Now Mayor Bill de Blasio and his successor, Mr. Adams, face painful decisions about how to handle the next stage of the pandemic.

Will schools fully reopen in January? Will a New Year’s Eve party in Times Square be canceled? How can the city avoid another broad shutdown or a shortage of hospital beds?

Already, Broadway shows have canceled performances, a handful of schools and some classrooms have closed, sporting events have been postponed and holiday travel plans have been abandoned. Some elected officials are calling for setting up a mass testing site at Javits Center in Manhattan, which served as a temporary hospital during the height of the pandemic.

Millions of U.S. travelers are forging ahead with their holiday plans, despite a national surge in coronavirus cases fueled by the highly transmissible Omicron variant.

More than 109 million Americans are expected to travel between Dec. 23 and Jan. 2, a 34 percent increase from last year, according to AAA. The number of airline passengers alone is projected to rise 184 percent from last year.

And airport personnel are bracing for trouble. At Miami International Airport, which is expecting a record number of passengers for the holiday season, two men were arrested on Monday after the authorities said they clashed with police officers.

The men — Mayfrer Gregorio Serranopaca, 30, of Kissimmee, Fla., and Alberto YanezSuarez, 32, of Odessa, Texas — were each charged with battery on a law enforcement officer, according to the Miami-Dade Police Department, which is investigating the episode. Mr. Serranopaca also faces additional charges, including resisting an officer with violence and inciting a riot.

“Like airports across the country, MIA is seeing record-high passenger numbers this winter travel season,” Ralph Cutié, the airport’s director and chief executive officer, said in a statement.

The Miami airport said it expected about 2.6 million travelers — an average of about 156,000 per day — to pass through its gates from Tuesday through Jan. 6, an increase of 6 percent over the same period in 2019.

“Unfortunately, that passenger growth has come with a record-high increase nationwide in bad behavior as well,” Mr. Cutié said, noting the altercation at the airport on Monday.

Disruptive passengers could face arrest, civil penalties up to $37,000, being barred from flying and possible federal prosecution, Mr. Cutié said.

He urged people to travel responsibly “by getting to the airport extra early, being patient, complying with the federal mask law and airport staff, limiting your alcohol consumption and notifying police at the first sign of bad behavior by calling 911.”

Health officials in Texas said that an unvaccinated Houston-area man who died on Monday afternoon had the Omicron variant.

The death appeared to be among the first in the United States to be publicly attributed to Omicron. However, only a small percentage of coronavirus samples across the country are checked to determine which variant is involved, and experts say that there are gaps and time lags in the reporting of Covid deaths, so other Omicron deaths may simply have not yet been announced.

The authorities in Harris County, the third largest in the United States and home to Houston, said that the man was in his 50s and had previously been infected with the coronavirus, but had not been vaccinated. “The individual was at higher risk of severe complications from Covid-19 due to his unvaccinated status and had underlying health conditions,” the county public health department said in a statement.

The highly contagious Omicron variant, first identified less than a month ago in southern Africa, has spread so fast that it is already the dominant source of new infections in the United States. What has been less clear so far is how the severity and deadliness of disease caused by Omicron compares with earlier variants.

The announcement came as Judge Lina Hidalgo, the top public official in Harris County, raised the county’s coronavirus threat level to “significant” because of the rapid spread of Omicron variant. Unvaccinated residents are told to minimize contact with others and avoid gatherings of more than a few people.

The county is now averaging more than 2,000 new cases a day, more than five times the average from two weeks ago, according to a New York Times database. About 59 percent of adults in the county are fully vaccinated.

“Omicron is producing breakthrough infections,” Ms. Hidalgo said at a news conference on Monday. “So folks with the vaccine are getting it. That does not mean the vaccine doesn’t work. On the contrary, the evidence shows the vaccine is going to keep you out of the hospital. But we are seeing an increase in breakthrough cases.”

Mayor Sylvester Turner of Houston — who is vaccinated and boosted — has said that he has tested positive for the coronavirus and has mild symptoms. Mr. Turner is 67.

“The time to get your booster shot is now,” Ms. Hidalgo said. “As we approach Christmas and New Year’s, give yourself, give your family the gift of health. Get your booster, especially if you’re 65 and older.”

With the holiday travel season underway, new coronavirus cases are surging in the United States, prompting governors and mayors to once again wrestle with how far to go to tackle the virus as federal officials said that the Omicron variant had become by far the dominant cause of new cases in the country.

In New York State, reports of new cases shot up more than 80 percent over two weeks. In Washington, D.C., where the mayor reinstated an indoor mask mandate on Monday, more than three times as many infections are being identified each day as at the start of December.

On Tuesday, Gov. Charlie Baker of Massachusetts announced steps to aid his state’s straining hospitals. He ordered that up to 500 National Guard troops be sent to help hospitals with nonmedical tasks like food service and transportation, and that starting next Monday, all nonessential procedures that were likely to involve a patient admission had to be postponed, among other measures.

Mayor Michelle Wu of Boston, where cases are surging, said on Monday that proof of vaccination would be required for certain indoor settings like gyms and restaurants.

“We all remember the gravity and uncertainty as those early weeks turned into months,” the mayor said of the grim spring of 2020, though she noted that there was a key difference between then and now. “Today,” she said, “vaccines are available for every adult and even children as young as 5 years old.”

In Chicago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s office ordered that everyone aged 5 and up would need to show proof of vaccination to enter public indoor spaces, like restaurants and gyms, as of Jan. 3, and that those 16 and over would have to show IDs that match their vaccinations cards.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Monday that Omicron, which accounted for less than 1 percent of new Covid-19 cases in the United States as December began, now accounts for nearly three-quarters of new cases.

Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, a Democrat, announced that he, his wife and his 9th-grade son had tested positive for the virus, and that all were breakthrough infections. Mr. Walz said he and his wife had also had booster shots.

Maryland’s governor, Larry Hogan, a Republican, said on Monday that he had tested positive, even though he had received a booster shot. On Sunday, two Democratic senators made similar announcements: Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Cory Booker of New Jersey.

Though the country’s alarming case numbers may echo earlier waves of the pandemic, there is preliminary evidence from South Africa that the Omicron variant may cause less severe disease. Epidemiologists warn that the variant may behave differently in areas where fewer people have immunity through either vaccination or prior infection.

Although breakthrough Omicron infections are common, scientists believe that the vaccines will provide protection against the worst outcomes. Even so, some researchers worry that the dangerous infectiousness of Omicron poses a threat to the nation’s already strained health system.

With cases of Omicron rising throughout the United States, Americans are scrambling to distinguish the symptoms of this new variant from those of other coronavirus variants, including Delta.

Most P.C.R. and rapid antigen tests can detect Omicron — the Food and Drug Administration has noted there are only a few tests that don’t — but results do not indicate to the user which variant they are infected with, leaving people to guess.

Some symptom differences have emerged from preliminary data, but experts are not certain they are meaningful. Data released last week from South Africa’s largest private health insurer, for instance, suggest that South Africans with Omicron often develop a scratchy or sore throat along with nasal congestion, a dry cough and muscle pain, especially low back pain.

But these are all symptoms of Delta and of the original coronavirus, too, said Ashley Z. Ritter, a nurse practitioner at the University of Pennsylvania. Given that Omicron has only been circulating for only about three weeks, she added, “it’s still too early to say that there’s any difference in symptoms between the Omicron variant and previous versions.”

It’s likely that the symptoms of Omicron will resemble Delta’s more than they differ.

“There’s probably a huge amount of overlap between Omicron and the prior variants, because they are essentially doing the same thing,” said Dr. Otto O. Yang, an infectious disease physician at the University of California, Los Angeles, David Geffen School of Medicine. “If there are differences, they’re probably fairly subtle.”

The Justice Department moved on Tuesday to allow federal inmates to remain on home confinement after the government declares an end to the Covid emergency, reversing a Trump-era legal opinion that said the Bureau of Prisons would have to recall them to federal facilities.

The shift was a rare instance in which Attorney General Merrick B. Garland reversed a high-profile decision made under the previous administration, and a victory for criminal justice advocates who had been pressuring the Justice Department on the issue.

“Thousands of people on home confinement have reconnected with their families, have found gainful employment and have followed the rules,” Mr. Garland said in a statement.

Congress gave the Bureau of Prisons the authority to release thousands of federal inmates to home confinement as part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, which passed in spring 2020 to address the myriad threats posed by the coronavirus pandemic, including the risk to people living and working in overcrowded prisons.

But in January, five days before President Biden took office, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel determined that nearly all those people would need to return to prison once the government said the pandemic no longer constituted an emergency.

Germany, Sweden, Portugal and Scotland on Tuesday ordered tighter restrictions on gatherings as the Omicron variant continued its march across Europe, and Swedish officials warned that a surge of infections driven by the variant would continue rising until mid-January.

Sweden’s public health agency also released new forecasts that suggested that, under a worst-case scenario, in which vaccinations afford the least protection against being infected with Omicron, the country could see 15,000 daily infections in mid-January, far higher than previous peaks.

In Germany, state governors and Chancellor Olaf Scholz met to discuss, among other things, keeping critical infrastructure — including the police, firefighters and medical services — functioning in the face of a likely Omicron urge.

Sweden’s new rules include a cap of 50 people for private gatherings and instructions that most people should work from home. In announcing them, Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson said that the country, which had thrown off nearly all restrictions over the summer, “must adapt to the new reality.”

“I understand that many are tired of this — so am I — but we now have a new virus variant, which means we are in a new situation,” she said.

Days before Christmas, many European nations are imposing new social restrictions, mask mandates and travel rules as Omicron drives the continent’s infection rates to their highest levels of the pandemic. An average of 51 daily cases are being recorded per 100,000 people in Europe, the most of any continent.

Denmark announced on Tuesday that it had recorded 13,558 cases in the previous 24 hours, a daily record. The health minister, Magnus Heunicke, said on Twitter that Omicron was now the dominant variant in the country “and continues to grow.”

The government of Portugal said on Tuesday that it was reintroducing of a raft of lockdown restrictions to respond to another surge in coronavirus cases, almost half of which are now of the Omicron variant.

The measures include the closure of all nightclubs and the obligation to work from home. Residents will also have to present a negative test result to enter establishments like theaters and sports venues, while such a test result will also have to be shown to enter a restaurant on the special days of the winter holiday season, including Christmas and New Year’s Eve.

The government said the measures would come into force on Saturday. Portugal is facing a rise in cases even as it is among the countries that has the most advanced vaccination rollout, with 87 percent of its population vaccinated to date.

Scotland announced limits on crowds at large events for three weeks, beginning the day after Christmas, and ordered bars and restaurants only to serve seated patrons in order to limit social contact. The rules in effect mean that professional sporting events will take place without spectators, following a similar announcement made by the government of Wales.

“The obligation of government is to take difficult decisions to keep the country as safe as possible, no matter how unpopular they might be,” said Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon.

Omicron is now the dominant variant in Scotland, just as it is in London, the epicenter of the virus surge in Britain, where daily case totals have set records.

German authorities agreed to ban gatherings bigger than 10 — whether indoors or outdoors — as well as reducing audiences for sports and cultural events and closing all clubs and discothèques.

Other rules, such as restrictions keeping unvaccinated people out of all but the most essential businesses, will remain in place. The daily number of infections in Germany has been decreasing in recent days, as the country is overcoming the worst of its fourth pandemic wave.

“This pandemic is wearing us all out,” Mr. Scholz said at a news conference after his meeting with the governors. “We are all worn down and tired of the pandemic. But that can’t be helped. Once again, we have to stand together and, in many cases, keep our distance.”

Noting that last Christmas and Easter did not really increase infections, Mr. Scholz said the measures would only go into effect after Christmas, but asked people to have themselves tested before meeting loved ones.

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E.U. Sets Covid Travel Passes to Expire After 9 Months

The European Union moved to change coronavirus vaccine certificates next year, so that people must have received booster shots or been fully vaccinated within the previous nine months to travel freely within the bloc.

It harmonizes the acceptance period of E.U. digital Covid certificates of vaccination, certificates specifically at 270 days. This will be applicable as of the 1st of February. This means that as of the 1st of February, member states will have to accept vaccination certificates up to 270 days following the end of the primary vaccination cycle. They can neither prolong this period, nor shorten this period. So this is a direct harmonization. This will give a lot of certainty to citizens so you can know for how long you can use the vaccination certificate following the first dose, or the first and second dose, depending on the vaccine that you use for your primary vaccination.

Also on Tuesday, the European Union said that from next year, people would be allowed to travel freely within the bloc only if they had received booster shots or had been fully vaccinated within the previous nine months.

The new rules, which are set to come into force on Feb. 1, aim to standardize travel across the bloc by setting an expiration date on Covid passes, which first came into effect in July and show the holders’ vaccination status. But even with the rules, individual countries can still decide whether to require visitors to quarantine or show proof of a negative test upon entry. The change also does not affect domestic passes that some countries require for entry into public places like bars and restaurants.

The United States population grew by just one-tenth of 1 percent from July 2020 to July 2021, the lowest rate since the nation’s founding, according to data released on Tuesday by the Census Bureau. The bureau noted that the coronavirus pandemic had caused hundreds of thousands more deaths in the country than would have been expected, had slowed immigration and had prompted parents to put off having children.

“Population growth has been slowing for years because of lower birth rates and decreasing net international migration, all while mortality rates are rising due to the aging of the nation’s population,” said Kristie Wilder, a demographer at the Census Bureau. “Now, with the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, this combination has resulted in an historically slow pace of growth.”

The nation’s population grew by just 392,665 in the period. Of that figure, 148,043 came from natural increase — births minus deaths — and 244,622 from net international migration. It was the first time the net number of people moving in from abroad in a year exceeded the natural increase.

In percentage terms, Idaho, Utah and Montana were the fastest growing states, while Washington, D.C., New York and Illinois saw the largest relative declines.

The United States population has been growing more slowly over the last decade than at most other times in the nation’s history, because of reduced immigration and a declining birthrate, which fell in 2020 for the sixth straight year. The pandemic appears to have amplified those trends, while also substantially raising the death rate.

The surge in coronavirus cases is starting to take a real financial toll on Broadway, just as the industry is attempting to rebound from its lengthy shutdown.

The Broadway League, a trade association, said on Tuesday that its theaters brought in $22.5 million last week. That’s a 26 percent drop from the $30.5 million in tickets sold the previous week; in the week before Christmas in 2019, total grosses were $40.1 million.

The drop in grosses is a reflection of the fact that multiple shows have canceled performances when positive coronavirus tests forced cast or crew members to quarantine and there were not enough understudies or replacement workers for the shows to continue.

Last weekend, about one-third of all shows canceled some performances, and this week, multiple shows decided to postpone performances until after Christmas, including “Ain’t Too Proud,” “Aladdin,” “Dear Evan Hansen,” “Hadestown,” “Hamilton,” “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” “The Lion King, “MJ” and “Skeleton Crew.” Plus, “Tina” canceled until Christmas night; and “Jagged Little Pill” closed entirely, and “Mrs. Doubtfire” canceled Tuesday night.

Attendance also dropped, given the cancellations: 184,227 people saw a Broadway show last week, down from 240,602 the previous week.

The resulting revenue drop is a real concern for an industry where most shows, even before the pandemic, fail financially. But the damage is not evenly dispersed — some shows that stay open are benefiting by selling tickets to people scrambling for something to see after their first-choice show canceled. This year the Broadway League is releasing only aggregate weekly grosses rather than breaking them down for individual productions, so it is difficult to see exactly how the financial ramifications are unfolding.

Five other shows cited the pandemic shutdown in deciding not to reopen this fall — the musicals “Frozen,” “Mean Girls” and “West Side Story” and the plays “Hangmen” and “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Two shows cited the ongoing pandemic in deciding to close for good after starting (or restarting) performances this fall, then pausing because of positive coronavirus tests in their companies: not only “Jagged Little Pill,” which announced its closing Monday night, but also the play “Chicken & Biscuits,” which closed last month.

The current crisis is coming at the worst possible time for the industry, because the holiday season is traditionally the most lucrative time of year for Broadway, and many shows depend on the holidays to make up for softer periods.

Charlotte St. Martin, the president of the Broadway League, said she does not envision the industry shutting down again, no matter how many individual shows have to pause. “I do not imagine a shutdown by us, unless every show has people with Covid,” she said. “We’re going to keep as many people employed as we can.”

And New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, at a news conference on Tuesday, was similarly shutdown-averse. “No more shutdowns,” he said. “We’ve been through them. They were devastating. We can’t go through it again.”

The rapid spread of the Omicron variant has added even more uncertainty about how to navigate life after vaccination. Is it safe to gather unmasked with my vaccinated friends? Can I travel for the holidays? Can my children safely see their grandparents?

But rapid home testing can lower risk, ease worry and allow you to spend time with the people you care about.

Testing isn’t a substitute for being vaccinated or getting a booster shot. But at-home rapid tests can tell people within minutes whether they are contagious with Covid-19. It gives added assurance that no one at a child’s birthday party, a wedding or a family holiday gathering is spreading the virus. If you’ve been traveling through airports, it’s a good idea to take a few rapid tests, days apart, to make sure you didn’t contract the virus during your travels.

One big problem is that the tests can be hard to find. The nation’s coronavirus testing capacity is facing enormous new pressure, with holiday travelers waiting in long lines to be tested, overworked laboratories struggling to keep up and rapid at-home diagnostics flying off pharmacy shelves as the Omicron variant fuels a rapid spike in Covid-19 cases.

The Biden administration has promised an investment of $1 billion in home testing. Many stores and websites do still have tests in stock, but it may require some effort to find them. The administration has said that starting in December, an estimated 200 million rapid tests should be available to Americans each month.

No test is a 100 percent guarantee, but given that your vaccine and booster already protect you, a home test is another layer of precaution to lower risk. Unvaccinated people can benefit from using home tests as well, but they should not rely on testing as a substitute for a vaccine.

Home tests are particularly useful for families with young children who aren’t yet eligible for vaccination and for anyone with an at-risk family member. When my vaccinated daughter wanted to visit her 80-year-old vaccinated grandmother in New Mexico, she was tested in New York before leaving, and she carried several rapid home tests to use when she landed and every day of the short visit.

“Testing is an information business, and that information is liberating,” said Mara Aspinall, an expert in biomedical diagnostics at Arizona State University who is also on the board of OraSure, which makes rapid Covid tests. “For some, it’s going to be to not wear a mask at an event. For some, it’s going to be to go visit great grandma or interact with the public. If your test is positive, it means you’ve got the power to protect yourself and other people.”

In the United States, a boxed set of two tests can range from $14 to $24, making them too expensive for most people to use frequently. But home tests can still be a helpful way to lower the risk of indoor gatherings and spending time with extended family members.

“I think people should embrace home testing more,” said Neeraj Sood, a professor and vice dean for research at the University of Southern California and director of the Covid Initiative at the U.S.C. Schaeffer Center. “I’m planning to go to India. I’ll do the home test the moment I land to make sure I’m not infectious before I give a hug to my father.”

School districts in the United States have mostly been reassuring families that they plan to continue in-person learning until the Christmas break and reopen as planned in January, even though a few classrooms have been closed to contain spread of the virus.

New York City, Boston and Montgomery County, Md., in suburban Washington, are among the large school systems that have said they would not shift entirely to remote learning, or would do so only if forced to by public health officials.

Still, the alarming spread of the virus in the weeks since the Omicron variant emerged could expose the rickety infrastructure that has kept schools running through most of this year. Many schools are still short of substitute teachers and bus drivers, and can ill afford an outbreak that would send even more staff members home.

Despite the classroom closures and staffing issues, the school year had been going relatively smoothly. Across the nation’s 13,000 districts and 98,000 public schools this week, there are about 600 closed schools or districts, according to data from Burbio, a company that has tracked school operations through the pandemic. There are fewer closures in effect now than in November.

New York City’s public school system, the largest in the nation and the one currently threatened most by the Omicron variant, has 1,600 schools; four are currently closed because of virus cases, and 44 more are under investigation.

Nationally, the picture had been bright enough until recently that many schools were relaxing some virus restrictions. And in Missouri, the attorney general, a Republican, sent a letter to districts directing them to drop mask mandates and quarantine requirements after a circuit court judge there ruled that the measures violated the State Constitution. Several districts are resisting the directive, a sign of possible dissension to come after the holidays, when the surge could be more severe.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention encouraged schools on Friday to reduce quarantines and closures by using a protocol known as test-to-stay, in which close contacts of positive cases are given frequent rapid tests. Many districts, however, do not have a sufficient supply of the tests, nor the staff to administer them widely.

Businesses in many parts of Europe are demanding more government help as new pandemic restrictions and heightened anxiety over the highly contagious Omicron variant have crushed what would normally be a profitable time of year.

Nowhere is this worse than in the Netherlands, where the Dutch government instituted a lockdown over the weekend, closing most shops, bars, restaurants, gyms, outdoor sports, cultural venues and schools through January.

Some business owners fear they may never reopen.

“That is something that I ask myself every day,” said Omar Waseq, who owns a cheese bar and a film cafe in the center of Utrecht. “I’m not 100 percent sure.”

Mr. Waseq estimated that he is losing about $50,000 each month while his cheese bar, Kaasbar Utrecht, is shuttered, and $100,000 at the cafe. Plans to rebuild a nightclub he owns that was burned in a fire in January have been put on hold.

He has had to let go most of his 80-person staff and is now trying to make money selling mulled wine in the streets and cheese packages door-to-door.

Many Dutch business owners are seeking help from the government. Calls to the nation’s business registry asking for assistance climbed past 400 on Monday — seven times the number logged the previous Monday.

In Britain, the government responded Tuesday, announcing 1 billion pounds, or about $1.3 billion, in aid for the hospitality industry, including one-time grants of £6,000 and rebates for employees’ sick pay.

The hope for more aid comes as a fresh wave of anxiety over the coronavirus and the economy washes over the region.

In Germany, businesses are pressing the government to lift new requirements that customers show proof of vaccination or recent recovery that they say have scared away customers at what is supposed to be their busiest — and most lucrative — time of the year.

Spain’s government has scheduled an emergency meeting with regional leaders on Wednesday to discuss whether to adopt new restrictions, and Italy’s government is meeting on Thursday.

“We are in a different phase now where lockdown will be potentially more costly,” said Claus Vistesen, chief eurozone economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics. “Up until now we’ve been used to lockdowns followed by support from the government. I think that will be the case as well, but support will be more conditional, less comprehensive than before.”

In the Netherlands, Mr. Waseq said that because he opened his businesses after the pandemic began and did not have 2019 sales to use as a benchmark comparison, he was not eligible for government assistance.

Ron Sinnige, a spokesman for the country’s national business registry, the Kamer van Koophandel, said the agency was flooded with calls from owners this week asking about financial assistance, advice, or liquidating their operations. Some were seeking guidance on how to qualify as an essential business — could a clothing store sell candy and soda, could a beauty salon offer post-surgical massages or list Botox injections as a medical procedure.

The questions were a sign of people’s creativity and despair, Mr. Sinnige said. “As opposed to previous lockdowns, people are really at the end of their financial flexibility and emotional flexibility,” he said.

France has banned tourists from Britain and canceled a menu of year-end celebrations. Tougher restrictions on businesses seem unlikely at the moment, however, particularly with a second round of presidential elections coming in April.

Ireland imposed an early curfew of 8 p.m. on restaurants and bars that began on Monday, while also limiting attendance at events.

In Denmark, restaurants and bars must stop serving alcohol after 10 p.m., while a slate of venues and event spaces including ​​theaters, museums, zoos, concert halls and Tivoli, Copenhagen’s landmark amusement park, have been closed.

Switzerland’s restrictions that bar unvaccinated people from going to restaurants, gyms and museums are expected to last until Jan. 24.

In Germany, the check-in process at stores, which requires stopping everyone at the door and asking to see their vaccination certification and an ID, was cumbersome and kept shoppers away, the German Trade Association said.

Retailers surveyed by the group reported a 37 percent drop in sales compared with Christmas 2019, with an even bigger drop in the number of shoppers, threatening the future of many stores, especially smaller shops.

“After months of lockdowns, the restrictions are once again bringing many retailers to the edge of their existence,” said Stefan Genth, head of the Trade Association.

A court in the northern state of Lower Saxony last week threw out the vaccine verification restrictions there, after the Woolworth department store chain challenged them on grounds they were not fairly applied and that requiring shoppers to wear masks provided sufficient protection against the spread of coronavirus. The ruling on Thursday raised hopes that other states would follow their lead, giving a final boost to last-minute shoppers.

“Last weekend was better, but overall the shopping season has been more than depressing,” said Mark Alexander Krack, head of the Lower Saxony Trade Association. “The restaurants, theaters and cinemas all still have restrictions and that means fewer people in the city shopping.”

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New Zealand Delays Phased Border Reopening Amid Omicron Concerns

New Zealand postponed plans to reopen its borders to citizens and international travelers until the end of February. The country will also accelerate its booster program to slow down the Omricon variant’s spread.

All evidence so far points to Omicron being the most transmissible variant yet, and public health advice suggests that soon every case coming in through our border into our managed isolation facilities will be the Omicron variant. Our immediate job right now must be to slow it down, and to delay it from entering the New Zealand community for as long as we possibly can. Cabinet has decided to push back the date for self-isolation for those traveling from Australia from the 17th of January to the end of February, so that we can accelerate the rollout of that booster program and have as many people boosted with their vaccination before we have people isolating at home across the international border. Around three million New Zealanders will be due to get their booster by the end of February, and assuming most of this group get their booster on time, at that point, we will be far better protected from Omicron.

New Zealand said on Tuesday that it was pushing back a phased opening of its borders to the end of February, in another indication of how countries throughout the Asia Pacific region are scrambling to respond to the threat of the Omicron variant.

New Zealand also postponed its plans to allow its citizens living in Australia to return without quarantining starting on Jan. 17. Now the program will not start until the end of February.

New Zealand has detected 22 cases of Omicron in international arrivals, but no community cases of the variant have been reported. In the event of an outbreak, the government intends to replace lockdowns of the past with more targeted measures, Chris Hipkins, the Covid-19 response minister, said.

“It’s not our intention to move to lockdowns unless that is absolutely necessary in the event of a widespread outbreak, where our health system becomes under considerable strain and the overall health risk becomes too much to bear,” he said.

In other measures to limit the new variant’s eventual spread, the government said that residents would get access to a booster shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine sooner — at four months instead of six — after their second shot.

New Zealand is one of several countries in the region that are tightening restrictions or considering tougher quarantine rules as cases of the variant rise.

In Japan, which closed its borders to all nonresident foreigners last month, an outbreak of 180 cases at an American military base has also raised fears of a resurgence. The virus was first detected at the base on the southern island of Okinawa on Friday, the authorities said, adding that it was unclear how many of those people had been sickened by Omicron. The government has asked the United States to increase restrictions on and around the base, a top Japanese health official said on Monday.

Just a few weeks after reopening to foreign tourists, Thailand said on Tuesday that it was pausing its quarantine-free travel program until Jan. 4 because of concern about the variant.

In Indonesia, where only 40 percent of the population is fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, the government has banned entry by foreign nationals from several countries in Africa and Europe. The government has said it is considering increasing the quarantine period for Indonesian citizens arriving from those countries to 14 days from 10, local news outlets reported.

And in Australia, the Omicron variant is coursing through the community and has even reached Yulara, a remote community more than 1,000 miles south of the nearest coastal city, Darwin. Two workers who had flown there from Brisbane tested positive, the health authorities said on Tuesday.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison insisted, however, that the country would not return to harsh lockdowns.

“Yes, we’re going to need to continue to calibrate how we manage this virus and how we live with this virus in the face of Omicron,” Mr. Morrison said on Tuesday. But, he added: “We’re not going back to lockdowns. We’re not going back to shutting down people’s lives.”

New York City Ballet canceled a performance of “George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker” on Tuesday after several people involved in the production tested positive for the coronavirus, in the latest sign of how the surge in cases is disrupting attempts to bring back some of the city’s most beloved holiday performances.

As the production, one of City Ballet’s most popular, was called off at Lincoln Center, plans to fill Carnegie Hall on Tuesday evening with the “Hallelujah” chorus were canceled when Music Sacra postponed a performance of Handel’s “Messiah,” citing the virus. And there are no more holiday kicklines at Radio City Music Hall: The remaining performances of the “Christmas Spectacular Starring the Radio City Rockettes” were canceled Friday.

The cancellations came shortly after it was announced that some of Broadway’s biggest hits would not resume until after Christmas, forgoing one of their most lucrative periods of the year amid concerns about the spread of the Omicron variant.

It is not only New York that is seeing holiday performances canceled. A number of performances of “A Christmas Carol” at the Center Theater Group in Los Angeles were recently canceled, with the theater saying that it would not come back until after Christmas.