The nation’s largest teachers’ union on Thursday offered its support to policies that would require all teachers to get vaccinated against Covid or submit to regular testing.
It is the latest in a rapid series of shifts that could make widespread vaccine requirements for teachers more likely as the highly contagious Delta variant spreads in the United States.
“It is clear that the vaccination of those eligible is one of the most effective ways to keep schools safe,” Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, said in a statement.
The announcement comes after Randi Weingarten, the powerful leader of the American Federation of Teachers, another major education union, signaled her strongest support yet for vaccine mandates on Sunday.
Ms. Pringle left open the possibility that teachers who are not vaccinated could receive regular testing instead, and added that local “employee input, including collective bargaining where applicable, is critical.”
Her union’s support for certain requirements is notable because it represents about three million members across the country, including in many rural and suburban districts where adults are less likely to be vaccinated. Overall, the union said, nearly 90 percent of its members report being fully vaccinated.
Still, any decision to require vaccination for teachers is likely to come at the local or state level. And even with their growing support, teachers’ unions have maintained that their local chapters should negotiate details.
“We believe that such vaccine requirements and accommodations are an appropriate, responsible, and necessary step,” Ms. Pringle said on Thursday. She added that “educators must have a voice in how vaccine requirements are implemented.”
California has ordered all teachers and staff members to provide proof of vaccination or face weekly testing, an order that applies to both public and private schools. Hawaii is requiring all state and county employees to be vaccinated or be tested, including public-school teachers. And Denver has said that city employees, including public school teachers, must be fully vaccinated by Sept. 30.
With approval for additional Covid-19 vaccine shots for immunocompromised people “imminent,” Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert, said on Thursday that federal health authorities were “likely” to call for third shots as boosters for a broader swath of the population at some point, though there was no immediate need to do so.
In an interview on the CBS program “This Morning,” Dr. Fauci noted that federal health authorities were tracking various cohorts of vaccinated people and had seen some early signs that the shots may need shoring up. That is often the case with vaccines.
“We are already starting to see indications in some sectors about a diminution over time” in vaccines’ durability, Dr. Fauci said. Dr. Fauci made the same points in an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Thursday.
Federal regulators are expected to authorize as soon as Thursday additional shots for people with weakened immune systems. In an interview last week, Dr. Fauci made the point that, for people with weakened immune systems, “giving them an additional shot is almost not considered a booster, it’s considered part of what their original regimen should have been,” since they need more vaccine to be protected.
In contrast, boosters would be used in the broader population to counter any diminution of the vaccines’ protective power.
There are no immediate plans to authorize boosters, Dr. Fauci said, but federal authorities are actively monitoring different groups for signs of waning protection.
“We are following cohorts of individuals, elderly, younger individuals, people in nursing homes, to determine if in fact the level of protection is starting to attenuate,” Dr. Fauci said. “And when it does get to a certain level we will be prepared to give boosters” — preferably, he added, with the same vaccine received earlier.
The debate over booster shots has grown more urgent as the extremely contagious Delta variant runs rampant in the country, especially in populations with lower rates of vaccination.
Over the past week, an average of roughly 124,200 coronavirus cases has been reported each day in the United States, an increase of 86 percent from two weeks ago. Average daily hospitalizations are up to more than 68,800, an 82 percent increase over the last two weeks. The number of new deaths reported is up by 75 percent, to an average of 552 deaths per day.
Countries like Britain, France, Germany and Israel have already announced plans to provide third vaccine doses to certain groups.
Global health authorities have called booster shots a questionable use of the insufficient supply of vaccines while much of the world has not been inoculated, including front line health workers and other high-risk people.
Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization, called last week for a moratorium on boosters until the end of September, so that all countries would ideally have enough doses to vaccinate at least 10 percent of their populations.
“I understand the concern of all governments to protect their people from the Delta variant,” Dr. Tedros said. “But we cannot — and we should not — accept countries that have already used most of the global supply of vaccines using even more of it, while the world’s most vulnerable people remain unprotected.”
Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said later that day that the United States had enough vaccine to provide third doses to people if it is decided that they are needed, while still donating large vaccine supplies to other countries.
Hospitals in Texas are warning of strained resources during a week in which more than 10,000 coronavirus patients have been admitted to hospitals in the state.
At least 53 Texas hospitals had intensive care units that were at maximum capacity. Two in Houston have been so overwhelmed that officials ordered overflow tents to be erected outside. In Austin, intensive care units were running short of beds. And in San Antonio, virus cases reached alarming levels not seen in months, with infants as young as 2 months tethered to supplemental oxygen.
“If this continues, and I have no reason to believe that it will not, there is no way my hospital is going to be able to handle this. There is no way the region is going to be able to handle this,” Dr. Esmaeil Porsa, president and chief executive of the Harris Health System, in Houston, told state legislators on Tuesday. “I am one of those people that always sees the glass half-full, I always see the silver lining. But I am frightened by what is coming.”
Recently, Texas has averaged more than 14,000 new cases a day, more than double the number seen just two weeks ago, according to a New York Times database. The spike comes as about one in five U.S. hospitals with intensive care units, or 583 total hospitals, recently reported that at least 95 percent of their I.C.U. beds were full as the highly contagious Delta variant fuels surges across the country.
The sudden increase of infections has refocused national attention on the efficacy of masks and comes as Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas remains firm in his refusal to enact any statewide mandates. To manage the surge, he appealed to out-of-state health care workers to travel to Texas, where coronavirus-related hospitalizations are projected to exceed 15,000 by the end of August, according to the University of Texas at Austin.
Dr. David Persse, Houston’s chief medical officer, blamed state officials for giving inadequate attention to the importance of vaccinations to stem the surge. Mr. Abbott’s framing of vaccinations as an issue of individual rights is “the wrong approach,” Dr. Persse said. The unvaccinated, he said, “are endangering themselves and their families.”
In a new and unnerving development, as of Tuesday, about 240 Texas children were hospitalized with the virus, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services. Citing those figures, President Biden on Wednesday told reporters that he was exploring whether the federal government has the authority to intervene in the orders issued by Mr. Abbott.
Earlier this week, at the Children’s Hospital of San Antonio, an increasing number of children were being admitted with severe symptoms of coronavirus. Many arriving with unrelated illnesses were also testing positive for the virus, hospital officials said.
Dr. Abhishek Patel, who works in the hospital’s pediatric I.C.U., walked in and out of a room where a 6-month-old and a 2-month-old were battling severe Covid-19 infections and were breathing with the aid of supplemental oxygen. This week alone, he said, two teenagers who had other underlying health problems succumbed to the virus.
The Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday said it would require more than 25,000 health workers — including contractors and volunteers — to receive coronavirus vaccines, becoming the latest federal agency to implement such a mandate.
Members of the Indian Health Service and the National Institutes of Health who work in federally run facilities and deal with patients, and the U.S. Public Health Service, a commissioned corps of medical officers led by the surgeon general, are subject to the requirement, the department said. Those health workers are already required to receive flu vaccines and other inoculations.
“We are looking at every way we can to increase vaccinations to keep more people safe,” Xavier Becerra, the health and human services secretary, said in a statement. “And requiring our H.H.S. health care workforce to get vaccinated will protect our federal workers, as well as the patients and people they serve.”
The Department of Veterans Affairs was the first federal agency to issue a vaccine mandate, saying last month that it would require 115,000 of its frontline health workers to be vaccinated. The Defense Department said earlier this week that it would seek to make coronavirus vaccinations mandatory for the country’s 1.3 million active-duty troops “no later” than the middle of next month.
The agency moves are part of the Biden administration’s growing push to enact and encourage vaccine requirements inside and outside of the government. On Wednesday, President Biden met with business executives and a university president who had enforced vaccination requirements, encouraging their efforts. He urged them to call on other leaders to do the same.
The H.H.S. requirement goes beyond Mr. Biden’s announcement last month that civilian federal workers who remained unvaccinated would have to submit to regular testing, social distancing, mask wearing and limits on official travel.
Mr. Biden said at the time that he was asking federal agencies to find ways for all federal contractors to be required to be vaccinated as a condition of their work. And he urged companies and local governments to adopt his rules.
The administration’s emphasis on vaccine requirements comes at a fraught moment in the nation’s vaccination campaign, with tens of millions of adults still holding out on receiving a shot as the more contagious Delta variant of the virus has caused hospitals around the country to be stretched to their limits. About 71.3 percent of adults have received at least one dose, and vaccination rates have begun climbing again, to over 700,000 new doses administered every day.
Citing a surge in the Delta coronavirus variant, the University of Texas at San Antonio has announced that students will spend the first three weeks of the fall semester studying mostly in virtual classes.
The university of 30,000 students was set to begin its fall semester on Aug. 23 with in-person classes, but city public health officials have raised risk levels to severe in San Antonio, as cases there have crowded medical facilities.
“Since the very beginning of the pandemic, we committed to put the health and safety of our entire campus community first,” wrote the university’s president, Taylor Eighmy, in a statement on Wednesday announcing the shift.
The announcement comes as universities across the country — concerned about the spreading Delta variant — are reviewing their reopening plans. San Antonio appeared to be the first major school announcing a shift to virtual classes amid growing concern over whether universities and public schools can ensure the safety of students.
While professors and students on the University of Texas campuses have been pushing for ramped up safety measures, university leaders are hamstrung by an executive order issued by Gov. Greg Abbott that bars schools, among many other entities, from requiring vaccines or masks.
Texas is averaging more than 14,000 new cases a day, more than double the level just two weeks ago, according to a New York Times database. At least 53 Texas hospitals report that their intensive care units are at maximum capacity. In San Antonio, virus cases have reached levels not seen in months.
The three major public universities in Arizona — Arizona State, the University of Arizona and Northern Arizona University — announced on Wednesday that they were instituting mandatory mask policies, despite a state prohibition on mask mandates. The state’s daily average of new cases has risen more than 70 percent over the past two weeks, reaching 2,450.
The trustees of the University of Arkansas, which includes seven campuses, voted to require masks in all its facilities on Wednesday. The decision followed a ruling by an Arkansas judge last week temporarily blocking the state from enforcing its mask mandate ban. Average cases in Arkansas had been at less than 200 from March to early June, but have now have risen to more than 2,300.
The University of Texas at San Antonio also announced it would institute a mandatory coronavirus testing protocol, beginning with students moving into dormitory rooms, which will open on schedule beginning Aug. 16.
Federal regulators are expected to authorize a third shot of coronavirus vaccine as soon as Thursday for certain people with weakened immune systems, as the highly contagious Delta variant sweeps the nation.
The decision to expand the emergency use of both the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines is meant to help those patients with immune deficiencies who are considered most likely to benefit from an additional shot. It covers people who have had solid organ transplants and others whose immune systems are similarly compromised, according to an official familiar with the plan.
The development will give physicians latitude to recommend additional shots for those patients. About 3 percent of Americans have weakened immune systems for a variety of reasons, from a history of cancer to the use of certain medications such as steroids.
Many scientists argue that the immunocompromised population is too diverse to uniformly recommend additional shots of coronavirus vaccine. Some may be protected by the standard vaccine dosage, despite their conditions. Others may be poorly shielded by the vaccines, but unable to benefit from an additional shot.
Studies suggest that patients such as organ transplant recipients are in between — often showing little immune response to the standard vaccine regimen, but benefiting from a third shot. One recent randomized, placebo-controlled study by Canadian researchers found that a third dose of the Moderna vaccine improved the immune response of people in that group.
The Food and Drug Administration’s decision to authorize a third shot for organ transplant recipients and those with similarly compromised immune systems will be considered by an advisory committee to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, scheduled to meet on Friday. Although the F.D.A.’s action is independent of the panel’s recommendation, in practice many physicians wait to act until the C.D.C. weighs in.
If the committee votes to endorse the shots, as expected, the C.D.C. could issue a recommendation the same day. That could give further guidance to physicians and pharmacists about how to proceed.
France has offered additional vaccine doses to certain people with poor immune responses since April, and Germany and Hungary recently followed suit.
Cities in South Texas, the busiest crossing point along the border with Mexico, are at a harrowing place where two international crises intersect: an escalating surge of migrants and the rise of the Delta variant of the virus.
Amid a ferocious resurgence of infections in many parts of the country, some conservative politicians, including the governors of Texas and Florida, have blamed the Biden administration’s failure to halt the influx of migrants for the soaring case numbers.
In fact, that is extremely unlikely, public health officials and elected leaders say, noting that the region was facing rising case numbers, even before the recent increase in border crossings.
“We can’t attribute the rise in Covid numbers to migrants,” Mayor Javier Villalobos of McAllen, Texas, said in an interview. He said city and county officials issued a disaster declaration on Aug. 2 and moved to set up a quarantine center after it became apparent that the surge in border crossings posed a health risk to local residents.
Of the 96,808 migrants who have passed through McAllen this year and been checked for the coronavirus, 8,559 had tested positive as of Tuesday.
Yet the prevalence of the virus among migrants thus far has been no greater than among the U.S. population overall, according to medical experts, and the highest positivity rates in the country are not in communities along the border. Rather, they are in areas with low vaccination rates and no mask mandates.
The positivity rate among migrants serviced by Catholic Charities in McAllen reached 14.8 percent in early August, after hovering between 5 and 8 percent from late March to early July, but it has not surpassed the rate among local residents.
In Hidalgo County, the migrant positivity rate was about 16 percent last week compared with 17.59 percent for residents, who have had little, if any, interaction with the migrants.
“Is this a pandemic of the migrants? No, it’s a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” Dr. Iván Meléndez, the health authority in Hidalgo County, said last week during a news conference.
Young Black New Yorkers are especially reluctant to get vaccinated, even as the Delta variant is rapidly spreading among their ranks. City data shows that only 27 percent of Black New Yorkers ages 18 to 44 years are fully vaccinated, compared with 48 percent of Latino residents and 52 percent of white residents in that age group.
This vaccination gap is emerging as the latest stark racial disparity in an epidemic full of them. Epidemiologists say they expect the current third wave, driven largely by the highly contagious Delta variant, will hit Black New Yorkers especially hard.
“This is a major public health failure,” said Dr. Dustin Duncan, an epidemiologist and Columbia University professor.
In interviews, dozens of Black New Yorkers across the city — an aspiring dancer in Brownsville, a young mother of five in Far Rockaway, a teacher in Canarsie, a Black Lives Matter activist in the Bronx, and many others — gave a long list of reasons for not getting vaccinated, many rooted in a fear that during these uncertain times they could not trust the government with their health.
The fact that the virus hit Black neighborhoods disproportionately during the first wave made many extra wary of getting vaccinated: They feel that they have survived the worst and that the health authorities had failed to help them then.
But ultimately, many also said they would get vaccinated if forced to do so.
“If it’s going to be mandatory to work, I’ll have no choice,” said Kaleshia Sostre, a 27-year-old from Red Hook, Brooklyn, who teaches parenting classes to young mothers.
In Canarsie, Brooklyn, a 21-year-old college student, Justin Mercado, said Mayor Bill de Blasio’s recent announcement that dining in a restaurant would require proof of vaccination got his attention. He is now likely to get vaccinated.
“I want to go on a date sometime and enjoy life as much as I can before this strain shuts us back down,” Mr. Mercado said.
There have been many confrontations over workplace safety since the pandemic began. One of the strangest has just been resolved: the case of the dog diapers.
Workers at a McDonald’s restaurant in Oakland, Calif., said their employer provided them with masks made from the diapers in lieu of bona fide masks at the start of the pandemic last year. They were also given masks made from coffee filters, they said.
After complaining, the employees said, they were given proper disposable masks but were told to wash and reuse them until they frayed. The allegations were included in a subsequent lawsuit, which contended that the franchise owner’s inattention to safety had resulted in a Covid-19 outbreak among workers and their families.
Now the workers and the franchise owner are announcing a settlement in which the restaurant has agreed to enforce a variety of safety measures, including social distancing, contact tracing and paid sick leave policies. The settlement also calls for a management-worker committee to meet monthly to discuss compliance with the mandated measures and whether new ones are needed. Lawyers for both sides said they could not comment on whether the settlement included a financial component.
“The committee was one of those things that was extremely important,” Angely Rodriguez Lambert, a former worker at the McDonald’s who was one of the plaintiffs, said through an interpreter. “We were being treated like dogs — giving us dog diapers to use as masks. We are not dogs.”
Michael Smith, who owns and operates the store, denied all the accusations in his legal filings, and the settlement does not involve an admission of wrongdoing.
The Department of Veterans Affairs will require nearly every worker, volunteer and contractor within its vast health care system to be vaccinated against the coronavirus over the next eight weeks, in stark contrast to the Pentagon which has resisted immediate mandates for the country’s 1.3 million active-duty troops.
Last month, the department began requiring shots for 115,000 of its frontline health care workers, making it the first federal agency to mandate that employees, including doctors, dentists, registered nurses, be inoculated. Those who refuse face penalties including possible removal.
The expansion, which will impact approximately 245,000 new workers, was announced on Thursday by Denis McDonough, the secretary of veterans affairs, as the highly contagious Delta variant of the virus continues to rapidly spread throughout the nation, threatening hundreds of thousands of veterans seeking care. Both mandates together will cover 360,000 workers and contractors.
“This pandemic is not over and V.A. must do everything in our power to protect Veterans from Covid-19,” Mr. McDonough said in a statement. “With this expanded mandate, we can once again make and keep that fundamental promise.”
Under the expanded mandate, a vast array of workers, including psychologists, pharmacists, social workers, nursing assistants, physical therapists, engineers, housekeepers and most others who come into contact with patients will need to be vaccinated. Officials are also considering expanding such a requirement to visitors.
The mandate would not expand to workers outside the medical system, such as administrative workers in Washington and beyond, though Mr. McDonough recently said he would consider making them compulsory for the highest ranking officials to set an example.
As of last week, roughly 63 percent of the 351,000 Veterans Health Administration employees were fully vaccinated. The administration is the largest integrated health care system in the United States, with 1,293 health care facilities.
The Pentagon announced earlier this week that it would make vaccinations mandatory for troops “no later” than the middle of next month rather than require them immediately, bowing to concerns expressed by White House officials about putting a mandate in place for troops before the Food and Drug Administration granted full approval for the vaccine, expected in the next few weeks. President Biden under federal law can order troops to take vaccines not yet approved by the F.D.A.
Scores of hospitals and health care systems have compelled their employees to get vaccines, and recent court decisions have upheld employers’ rights to require vaccinations.
Her name is Delta, her head is made from a discarded rice cooker, and she greets those self-isolating with “Assalamualaikum” — peace be upon you — when delivering essentials like food or disinfectant to villagers.
While named for the malicious coronavirus variant circulating now, the white and purple robot has become a benevolent force for good in Tembok Gede, an Indonesian village in East Java where she is bringing some much-needed joy in a country badly battered by the pandemic.
The brainchild of a group of villagers, Delta was created using recycled household goods. Besides her rice cooker head, her torso is made from a boxy television, her arms are fashioned from PVC pipes, and her voice belongs to the wife of one of her creators, Aseyan, a community leader.
“Excuse, me, assalamualaikum…. It’s a delivery,” she says, as she arrives at someone’s home. She is unfailingly polite, saying goodbye to villagers with a hearty “Thank you, I wish you a speedy recovery.” Mindful of these pandemic times, Delta also makes disinfecting rounds each week, sanitizing surfaces as she rolls down the street.
Delta, who is operated by remote control and came to life two weeks ago, has become indispensable to villagers stuck in quarantine. As of now, she can be operated from about 600 feet away. But Aseyan hopes to expand her range by soon controlling her using a phone with an internet connection.
Tembok Gede has become known in Indonesia as a smart village, respected for its upcycling efforts. Delta was originally designed to work as a waitress serving food and drinks at a local food stall. Benazir Imam Arif Muttaqin, one of the leaders of this project, said she was made in collaboration with the Telkom Institute of Technology Surabaya and the Adhi Tama Institute of Technology Surabaya.
But Aseyan said she was repurposed, as the pandemic raged, as a way of reaching villagers suffering from coronavirus in sometimes densely populated areas, without exposing real people to risk.
“There was a person who was self-isolating and asked us to send her goods,” he said. He put vegetables and food in the Delta’s torso and sent the robot to her house via remote control.
Last month, Indonesia became a new epicenter of the pandemic, temporarily surpassing India and Brazil to become the country with the world’s highest count of new infections. As of Wednesday, the country had reported a total of 3.7 million cases and more than 112,000 deaths.
Currently, 71 districts and cities in Indonesia are under tough restrictions, with schools operating remotely, local markets limiting visitors and local businesses closing at 8 p.m.
Siti Sarah Raisuddin was a 36-year-old pop star, a mother of three children and in the last trimester of pregnancy with her fourth, when she contracted Covid-19 in July along with the rest of her family in Malaysia.
She documented her family’s struggles to her millions of followers on Instagram, as her symptoms worsened from mild to life-threatening. Doctors put her into an induced coma on Friday to extract the baby, who survived, according to The New Straits Times.
Ms. Raisuddin died three days later.
The death of Ms. Raisuddin — who performed as Siti Sarah — came as Malaysia is struggling with its worst wave yet of coronavirus infections, despite nationwide restrictions in place since June. The country recorded 20,780 cases on Wednesday, just short of its peak of 20,889 reached last week, and added 211 deaths. It has the highest number of reported cases per capita in Southeast Asia, where a number of other countries are also facing their worst outbreaks of the pandemic, driven mostly by the more contagious Delta variant of the virus.
Despite the strain on hospitals as case and death numbers remain high, the Malaysian government is relaxing restrictions in eight states for those who are fully vaccinated, allowing privileges like dining in at restaurants and tourism to other states. The restrictions in Kuala Lumpur, the capital and largest city, will not be eased.
Just 29 percent of the population is fully vaccinated, according to a New York Times database.
Ms. Raisuddin’s death shocked many of her fans, with thousands of people leaving comments on her Instagram posts and the king and queen offering condolences on Facebook. In a video posted last week, she hugged her children while wearing an oxygen mask. On Aug. 1, she asked for prayers for her family.
Her husband, Shahmira Muhamad, and the three children went into isolation and later tested negative, but Ms. Raisuddin was rushed to the hospital last week because of low oxygen levels, according to The New Straits Times.
“She fought hard to save our baby,” her husband said, according to the newspaper.
They named the newborn boy Ayash Affan — her choice, he said.
New Zealand, a global standout in its success at fighting the coronavirus, unveiled a cautious plan for reopening on Thursday, vowing to retain its goal of zero coronavirus cases even as it begins to unseal its borders.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said New Zealand’s border restrictions would ease starting early next year, allowing vaccinated travelers from low-risk countries to enter without having to quarantine. The country’s borders have been closed to almost all foreign travelers since March 2020.
In a new program beginning in October, vaccinated New Zealanders returning to the country may also be able to self-isolate at home and skip the 14-day hotel quarantine that is currently required.
Ms. Ardern warned, however, that the country’s borders would not return to their pre-pandemic norm, when passengers did not face vaccination or testing requirements.
“Just like after 9/11, the border will never be the same after Covid,” she said. “Things can change, but that doesn’t mean we can’t adapt to them in a way that eventually feels normal again.”
New Zealand, a geographically isolated country with a population of about five million people, has been a rare success story during the pandemic, reporting just 2,905 cases and 26 deaths from the virus, according to a New York Times database.
In addition to closing its borders early, New Zealand implemented one of the world’s strictest lockdowns, allowing it to limit the virus’s spread. It has since removed almost all restrictions, responding to rare outbreaks with stringent, localized lockdowns and highly sophisticated contact tracing.
The country’s tough approach has put it at odds with many of its closest allies, which have suffered a far more serious toll during the pandemic. Australia, which until recently was pursuing a comparable “Covid-zero” strategy, is now battling surging cases of the Delta variant, prompting New Zealand to suspend quarantine-free travel between the two countries indefinitely.
“If we give up our elimination approach too soon there is no going back,” Ms. Ardern said at a news conference. “We could see significant breakouts here like some countries overseas are experiencing who have opened up early in their vaccination rollout.”
New Zealand itself is relatively early in its vaccination campaign, which is using only the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and has lagged behind those of other wealthy nations. About 29 percent of adults have received at least the first dose of the vaccine, while 17 percent are fully vaccinated. The country intends to accelerate its rollout in the coming weeks, with all residents over the age of 16 allowed to book appointments starting Sept. 1.
They traveled to Tokyo to compete for their country in the Summer Olympics, winning 46 medals for Australia in swimming, cycling, basketball and more. But that didn’t exempt Australian Olympians from their country’s strict rules for quarantine, which for some athletes is up to 28 days.
Anyone flying into Australia must quarantine in a hotel for 14 days, with many Olympians arriving in Sydney, Australia’s largest city, and completing their quarantine there. But 16 athletes traveling on from Sydney to the state of South Australia must spend another 14 days quarantining at home, a requirement that the country’s Olympic committee has called “cruel and uncaring.”
South Australia has tightened its border controls since last month, when a man who traveled there after completing his quarantine in Sydney tested positive for the coronavirus, sending the state into a seven-day lockdown. Sydney is at the center of a nationwide virus outbreak driven by the more contagious Delta variant of the virus, unnerving a country that has kept cases to a minimum for most of the pandemic. Almost half of Australia’s population is currently under lockdown, including in Canberra, the capital, which began a seven-day lockdown on Thursday after reporting its first locally acquired infections in more than a year.
Belinda White, a member of the softball team, said on Thursday that the extra 14 days felt like “a bit of a slap in the face” after representing her country in the Olympics.
Ms. White arrived in Adelaide, the capital of South Australia, on Thursday afternoon after completing the two-week quarantine in Sydney. Speaking to reporters via a virtual news conference while in home quarantine, she said she understood why officials felt the second quarantine was necessary, but that it was “definitely not what I expected and a bit of a shock to the system. I hadn’t prepared for 28 days of this.”
In a statement on Wednesday, the Australian Olympic Committee denounced the “double quarantine” as lacking in “science and common sense.” The committee noted that the athletes were all fully vaccinated and said such a long quarantine could be harmful to their mental health.
“While other countries are celebrating the return of their athletes, we are subjecting ours to the most cruel and uncaring treatment,” said Matt Carroll, chief executive of the committee. “They are being punished for proudly representing their country with distinction at the Olympic Games.”
The committee said its application for the South Australian athletes to be exempted from the extra 14 days had been rejected without explanation.
Steven Marshall, the premier of South Australia, on Thursday defended the policy.
“I think most people can accept that we’ve got to be prudent in South Australia,” he told local journalists. “We enjoy a quality of life that most of the rest of the world, they’re very envious of the situation we have, so we’re going to be doing everything we can to protect that.”
He said officials had notified the Australian Olympic Committee of the requirement last month, and that the majority of the 56 athletes from South Australia were not returning via Sydney so did not need to do the extra 14 days.
“It is tough, it is very tough, and we feel for these athletes, but every person coming in from Sydney at the moment is required to do 14 days of quarantine,” Mr. Marshall added.
The British economy grew 4.8 percent in the three months through June, from the previous quarter, as the vast majority of the country’s lockdown restrictions were lifted, the Office for National Statistics said on Thursday.
The economy swung back into growth after a strict winter lockdown, as consumers spent heavily on restaurants, hotels and transport. Retail sales also grew as shops deemed nonessential were allowed to reopen, the statistics agency said. At the end of the quarter, the recovery benefited from the euphoric mood that swept across the country as England’s national soccer team progressed through the Euro 2020 tournament, eventually making it to the final in July.
The education sector was also a major contributor to growth as in-school attendance rates increased. The production of cars was a drag on the economy for a second-consecutive quarter because the industry is still hampered by a shortage of semiconductors. But demand for cars went up when showrooms reopened, raising the price of used cars instead.
In June, gross domestic product edged up 1 percent, the statistics office said. But the overall size of the economy was still 2 percent smaller than it was before the pandemic in February 2020. The recovery briefly went into reverse in the first three months of 2021, when the economy contracted by 1.6 percent.
Recently, there has been evidence that some of this growth momentum has been lost. In mid-July, remaining social distancing restrictions were abandoned in England but the change was unlikely to have added much fuel to the economic recovery because, at the same time, the number of coronavirus cases was rising rapidly as the Delta variant spread. This kept most people working from home instead of offices. Economic indicators that seek to measure the pace of the recovery in real time, using restaurant reservations, credit card spending and retail footfall, have plateaued.
Earlier this month, the Bank of England predicted that in the third quarter the economy would grow by about 3 percent, slightly lower than its previous forecast, as people reduced how much time and money they spent shopping, dining and socializing, either because they were forced to self-isolate or because they were acting more cautiously.
But these factors will only temporarily alter the shape of the recovery. By the end of the year, the economy will have recovered to its prepandemic size, the central bank said.
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