Coronavirus Live UpdatesCovid News: Mississippi Urges Masks for Indoor Gatherings as Delta Spreads

Mississippi health officials, in a stark reversal, announced new recommendations on Friday to combat the spread of the more contagious Delta variant, urging older and chronically sick residents to avoid crowded indoor spaces.

The highly contagious Delta variant became the dominant variant in the United States this week, accounting for about 52 percent of infections. It is spreading just as states have lifted most, if not all, pandemic restrictions.

Studies suggest that vaccines remain effective against the Delta variant, but public health experts say it poses a serious threat to unvaccinated populations. Only 33 percent of Mississippi residents in the state are fully immunized, tied for last with Alabama.

“We have seen an entire takeover of the Delta variant for our transmission,” Dr. Thomas Dobbs, the state health officer, said Friday afternoon. The state is asking that:

• All residents over 65 years of age avoid all indoor mass gatherings (regardless of vaccination status).

• All residents with chronic underlying medical conditions avoid all indoor mass gatherings.

• All unvaccinated residents wear a mask when indoors in public settings.

• All residents 12 years of age and older receive a Covid-19 vaccination.

In addition to asking people to get vaccinated as soon as possible and to wear a mask in public until they do, the state is now asking vulnerable people to take extra precautions, Dr. Dobbs said.

“For the time being, if you’re in one of these high-risk groups, it is very wise for you to avoid indoor mass gatherings where we are going to see significant transmission,” Dr. Dobbs said.

Health officials said that they hope that the new guidelines will help slow the transmissions they’ve seen spreading out from church groups, summer school classes, enrichment programs and outbreaks in nursing homes.

“We’re going to remain vulnerable for a long time,” Dr. Dobbs said. “I don’t think we’re going to have some miraculous increase in a vaccination rate the next few weeks.”

Over the last week, the state has averaged about 250 cases per day, a 91 percent increase from the average two weeks ago, according to a New York Times database.

Hospitalizations have increased by 34 percent from two weeks ago. No county has reached the mark of 50 percent of its residents fully vaccinated, and Smith County has the lowest vaccination rate, at 21 percent.

Gov. Tate Reeves, a Republican, has no intention of putting in place mask mandates, or restrictions, a spokesman said Friday night, emphasizing that these were simply recommendations.

Dr. Paul Byers, the state epidemiologist, offered a grim forecast of increased cases and hospitalizations in the coming weeks. He said 95 percent of the cases identified in the last month and 90 percent of hospitalizations and deaths have been among unvaccinated people in Mississippi.

“It’s a disturbing and concerning trend that we’re seeing,” he said. “We’re certainly moving in the wrong direction.”

Earlier this week, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and President Biden’s chief coronavirus adviser, said if he were in a place with vaccination rates as low as Biloxi, Miss., he would consider wearing a mask.

Dr. Fauci is fully vaccinated. But on Sunday in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” he said that in parts of the country with low levels of vaccination and rising coronavirus caseloads, he might “go the extra mile to be cautious enough to make sure that I get the extra added level of protection.”

The two largest U.S. unions representing educators expressed approval on Friday of new federal guidelines calling for schools to fully reopen, while acknowledging that more challenges lay ahead with children under 12 not eligible for vaccination.

The new recommendations, issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday, come after students, teachers and parents have endured a disruptive school year characterized by shifting guidance, school closures and hastily implemented remote learning plans to contain the coronavirus.

Education has been a flash point since the pandemic unfurled, when many teachers and families were frightened of in-person schooling. But remote learning has proved an inadequate substitute for many parents and students, and virtually all major districts plan to reopen schools full time in the fall — though they still need to convince some hesitant parents to send their children back.

Miguel Cardona, the secretary of education, said in a statement on Friday that “our top priority is to ensure that our nation’s students can safely learn in-person in their schools and classrooms.”

The new C.D.C. guidance will help educators achieve that goal, union leaders said.

Becky Pringle, the president of the National Education Association, the largest teachers’ union in the country, said the guidelines were an “important road map for reducing the risk of Covid-19 in schools” in a statement.

Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers who has already pushed for schools to fully reopen this fall, said in her own statement that “the guidance confirms two truths: that students learn better in the classroom, and that vaccines remain our best bet to stop the spread of this virus.”

The new recommendations call for vaccinating as many people as possible, mask-wearing for unvaccinated people in schools, three feet of social distancing between students and layering different preventive tactics.

“For educators across the country, this guidance sets a floor, not a ceiling; it builds on the evidence we have about Covid transmission and reminds us that we must remain committed to other mitigation strategies,” Ms. Weingarten said, adding that “we share the growing concern over the Delta variant, as well as the evolving science around Covid transmission in young people, all of which make it incumbent upon school districts to remain committed both to vaccinations, and to these safety protocols.”

Studies suggest that vaccines remain effective against the Delta variant. As of Friday, 55.9 percent of those 12 and older across the country were fully vaccinated, according to federal data.

The new guidelines also suggest that districts base their approaches on local conditions rather than broad prescriptions, an approach that Ms. Pringle applauded.

“It is important that we pay attention to the unique needs of all our schools and the communities they serve,” Ms. Pringle said. “We have a responsibility as a country to address the disproportionate burden suffered throughout this pandemic by communities of color, which has contributed to families being unable or reticent to have their children return to in-person instruction.”

Schools largely proved to be far safer during the pandemic than many had thought, and in general, serious illnesses and death among children have been rare. Young children are also less likely to transmit the virus to others than teens and adults are.

Meisha Porter, the chancellor for New York City schools, the largest school system in the country, reiterated that it planned to bring students back for full-time, in-person learning in September.

“The science shows that our rigorous, multi-layered approach has made our schools the safest places to be, and we are reviewing the C.D.C. guidance with our health experts,” Ms. Porter said in a statement.

But no vaccines have been federally authorized for children under 12, and children have made up a greater proportion of cases as the pandemic has gone on, even though there are far fewer cases overall than during the winter peak.

Scientists are concerned about an inflammatory syndrome that can emerge in children weeks after they contract the virus, even those who were asymptomatic when they were infected, and some children experience lingering symptoms often known as long Covid.

The highly transmissible Delta variant is spreading rapidly in areas with low rates of vaccination — the C.D.C. estimates it is now the dominant variant in the United States.

Expert opinion on the new guidance was mixed.

Dr. Benjamin Linas, an infectious disease specialist at Boston University, called the suggestions “science-based and right on the mark.”

“For the first time, I really think they hit it on the nose,” he said.

Emily Oster, the Brown University economist and author of parenting books who waded last year into the contentious debate over school reopenings, using data to argue that children should return to school in person, said that she was generally pleased with the agency’s framework, which she said gave districts a road map to reopen without being too prescriptive.

Though she had pushed for even more relaxed guidance — doing away with the three-foot rule altogether, for example — she said the new recommendations gave districts important flexibility.

“This is, in some ways, the most positive I’ve been about their advice,” Dr. Oster said.

But Jennifer B. Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University, worried that debate between local officials about the best safety protocols could prove “paralyzing.”

At a news conference on Friday, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said that deciding which measures to implement had “always been the purview of local school districts.”

Reporting contributed by Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Emily Anthes and Sarah Mervosh.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new guidance for schools on Friday, urging them to fully reopen and calling on local districts to tailor their public health measures to local coronavirus data.

The recommendations signal a change from the C.D.C.’s past guidelines for schools and arrive less than a month before the first day of school for some districts.

Here’s what we know.

“Layered” prevention strategies

The new guidance continues to recommend that students be spaced at least three feet apart, but schools can rely on combining other strategies, like indoor masking, testing and enhanced ventilation, if such spacing would prevent them from fully reopening.

The guidance suggests masks for all unvaccinated students, teachers or staff members.

The guidance relies greatly on the concept of “layered” prevention, or using multiple strategies at once, like regular screening testing, improving ventilation, promoting hand washing and contact tracing combined with isolation or quarantine, in addition to social distancing and masking.

It also strongly urges schools to promote vaccination, which it called “one of the most critical strategies to help schools safely resume full operations.” But a vaccine has not been authorized for children younger than 12, so a large percentage of students would not be protected from the virus in that manner. As of Friday, 55.9 percent of those 12 and older across the country were fully vaccinated, according to federal data.

A more local approach

The issue of school closures has been contentious and divisive since the pandemic began, and advising school districts has been fraught for the C.D.C. The updated guidance acknowledges that a uniform approach to regulating schools is not useful when virus caseloads and vaccination rates vary so greatly, and suggests that local officials decide on the best precautions for their schools.

In order to do so effectively those officials should closely monitor the virus in their areas, and if districts choose to remove prevention strategies they should remove one at a time, monitoring for any increases in Covid-19, the recommendations say.

The virus and children

Though there are far fewer cases overall than during the winter peak, children have increasingly made up a greater proportion of cases as the pandemic has gone on and, recently, as more adults have been vaccinated.

Serious illnesses and death among children have been rare, and young children are also less likely to transmit the virus to others than are teens and adults. But scientists are concerned about an inflammatory syndrome that can emerge in children weeks after they contract the virus, even those who were not symptomatic when they were infected, and some children experience lingering symptoms often known as long Covid.

And the highly transmissible Delta variant is spreading rapidly in parts of the country with low rates of vaccination — the C.D.C. estimates it is now the dominant variant in the country. Studies suggest that vaccines remain effective against the Delta variant.

A ceremony marking the Olympic torch’s arrival in Tokyo was held in a nearly empty park on Friday, a day after the city declared a new state of emergency over a rise in Covid-19 cases and organizers of the Summer Games said they would bar spectators from most events.

Tokyo’s rising numbers are part of a surge across the Asia Pacific region, where countries that once led the world in containing the virus are grappling with new variants and a lack of vaccines.

New outbreaks are bringing back restrictions unseen for months, in places where the authorities once kept transmission relatively low — relying heavily on mask wearing, contact tracing and social distancing — but have been unable to vaccinate at a pace that would significantly tamp down infections.

Even the region’s richest countries have made little progress in their vaccination drives. Less than a third of the populations of Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea, for instance, have gotten even one dose of a coronavirus shot, according to a New York Times tracker. And in several middle-income countries whose access to vaccines has been hindered by supply constraints or other factors, the one-dose figure is either in single digits or low double digits.

As the more contagious Delta variant ripples through the region, many governments are reimposing harsh restrictions on movement and socializing that many had considered a relic of the pandemic’s early, anxious months.

Sydney, Australia’s largest city, reported 38 cases on Thursday, its highest daily caseload yet. The city is under a stay-at-home lockdown until July 17, and the authorities warned on Friday, as they tightened restrictions further, that it could be extended.

In Southeast Asia, which saw one of its deadliest days of the pandemic on Thursday, new cases and restrictions are rising in tandem in several countries. In Myanmar, where health workers have been striking to protest a military coup, cases are rising sharply, and the military said on Friday that it would close schools nationwide for two weeks.

In Vietnam on Friday, the government began restricting movement in Ho Chi Minh City, the commercial capital. And in Thailand, where the government announced a new round of lockdown measures, a terminal at Bangkok’s main international airport was being converted into a field hospital.

People in several Malaysian cities are suffering amid strict lockdowns, as the country reports Southeast Asia’s highest per capita caseload, about 22 per 100,000, according to a New York Times database. Neighboring Indonesia has seen daily records of both cases and deaths this month, and doctors there who received the Sinovac shot have been falling ill or dying. The Indonesian capital, Jakarta, added about 13,000 new cases on Thursday alone, as health officials blamed the surge on the Delta variant.

In East Asia, South Korea reported 1,316 new cases on Friday, its highest daily tally of the pandemic. The government has said it would raise restrictions to the highest level in Seoul, the capital, and some neighboring regions starting on Monday. Schools will be closed, bars and nightclubs will be shut, and public meetings will restricted to two people after 6 p.m.

And in Tokyo, a fourth state of emergency will also take effect on Monday, less than two weeks before the start of the Olympics. Restaurants, department stores and other businesses will be asked to close early, and people will be asked not to gather in public to watch the Games.

Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga of Japan has said that if vaccinations pick up and the strain on hospitals eases, the government will consider lifting the emergency before Aug. 22, when it is set to expire. Yet his own Covid-19 adviser has warned that the Olympics — which most Japanese people had hoped would be canceled — could prompt new infections. At least four members of Olympic teams have already tested positive.

In the latest volley of the debate over the origins of the coronavirus, a group of scientists this week presented a review of scientific findings that they argue shows a natural spillover from animal to human is a far more likely cause of the pandemic than a laboratory incident.

Among other things, the scientists point to a recent report showing that markets in Wuhan, China, had sold live animals susceptible to the virus, including palm civets and raccoon dogs, in the two years before the pandemic began. They observed the striking similarity that Covid-19’s emergence had to other viral diseases that arose through natural spillovers, and pointed to a variety of newly discovered viruses in animals that are closely related to the one that caused the new pandemic.

The back and forth among scientists is taking place while intelligence agencies are working with an end-of-summer deadline to provide President Biden with an assessment of the origin of the pandemic. There is now a division among intelligence officials as to which scenario for viral origin is more likely.

The new paper, which was posted online on Wednesday but has yet to be published in a scientific journal, was written by a team of 21 virologists. Four of them also collaborated on a 2020 paper in Nature Medicine that largely dismissed the possibility that the virus became a human pathogen through laboratory manipulation.

In the new paper, the scientists provided more evidence in favor of the virus having spilled over from an animal host outside of a laboratory. Joel Wertheim, a virologist at the University of California, San Diego, and a co-author, said that an important point in support of a natural origin was the “uncanny similarity” between the Covid and SARS pandemics. Both viruses emerged in China in the late fall, he said, with the first known cases popping up near animal markets in cities — Wuhan in the case of Covid, and Shenzen in the case of SARS.

GLOBAL ROUNDUP

As criticism mounts about the Indian government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, the health minister, Harsh Vardhan, has stepped down as part of a major cabinet reshuffle.

The overhaul of government positions was carried out as Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government come under increasing fire for their handling of the crisis. Critics have accused the authorities of failing to adequately prepare for a second wave of the virus after pronouncing the end of the pandemic this year — just before a devastating new outbreak unfolded, which saw untold numbers of people in a desperate search for scarce hospital beds, medical oxygen and other lifesaving help.

Arati Jerath, a political analyst and writer, said, “Clearly there is realization that the pandemic was mismanaged, that there is a great deal of unhappiness.”

“Mr. Modi was the face of the fight against Covid, so I think he has made Harsh Vardhan the scapegoat,” she added.

Mansukh Mandaviya, minister of state for chemicals and fertilizers, was appointed to take Dr. Vardhan’s place during what the government has described as a critical moment to stave off a third wave.

The government has also been criticized for continuing shortages of Covid-19 shots, despite the country’s being home to the world’s largest vaccine maker, the Serum Institute of India, which is producing tens of millions of AstraZeneca doses per month.

Only 4.9 percent of India’s nearly 1.4 billion people are fully vaccinated, and health officials are warning that the pace of immunization could be too slow to prevent another major outbreak.

In early March, Dr. Vardhan, a member of Parliament and an ear, nose and throat specialist, said India was “in the endgame” of the pandemic. Three weeks later, India halted vaccine exports as case numbers surged.

In the latest reshuffle, Mr. Modi appointed nearly three dozen ministers — some of whom were promoted to cabinet-level posts — while a dozen ministers were dropped, including two seen by members of Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party as having badly controlled the messaging around the government’s pandemic response.

Those two ministers were Prakash Javadekar, who oversaw information and broadcasting, and Ravi Shankar Prasad, the minister tasked with enforcing an unpopular new law that makes media companies, including social media platforms, more liable for content. The law is being challenged in several courts around India.

Elsewhere in the world:

• As part of President Biden’s pledge to distribute vaccines to countries in need, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said on Friday that the United States was sending 3 million doses to Indonesia, 1.5 million doses to Nepal, 500,000 doses to Moldova, and 500,000 doses to Bhutan.

Haiti, the only country in the Americas without a Covid-19 vaccine campaign, is also the country with one of the world’s most dysfunctional health care systems.

Even as Haitians struggle to understand a shifting political crisis in the wake of the assassination of the nation’s president and worry about a surge in violence on the streets, looming in the backdrop is a pandemic whose scale is essentially unknown.

The country of 11 million people has yet to receive its first doses from the Covax vaccine-sharing program, making it one of few places that have not started an inoculation campaign.

Having never fully recovered from a 2010 earthquake that destroyed the Health Ministry’s building and 50 health care centers, Haiti has long depended on billions of dollars of foreign aid and the work of nongovernmental organizations to provide basic services.

But even before the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse this week, violence posed an increasing challenge to those working to deliver assistance. Humanitarian groups have become primary targets, and last month Doctors Without Borders evacuated some of its staff members and closed an emergency center in Haiti after gangs attacked it.

The dozens of armed gangs that control more than a third of the capital have also killed hundreds of people and impelled thousands to flee their homes over the past year.

International organizations and humanitarian groups warn that the assassination threatens to worsen a crisis that has been building for more than a year, ever since Mr. Moise’s decision to remain in office after opponents said his term had expired essentially paralyzed the government.

On Friday, UNICEF said that nearly one-third of all children in Haiti — about 1.5 million of them — were in urgent need of emergency relief because of the rising violence.

Against this overall backdrop, many in the country have viewed the pandemic as an abstraction. But there are indications that the coronavirus is far more widespread than officially reported.

The neighboring Dominican Republic, which has roughly the same size population, has reported more than 330,000 cases and nearly 4,000 deaths. Haiti has registered 19,000 cases and 467 deaths — but hospitals have reported struggling in recent weeks to find enough oxygen for a surge in patients.

UNICEF said that some patients had died because gang violence prevented ambulances from reaching them with oxygen and emergency treatment. “Amidst the upsurge of coronavirus cases in Haiti, any additional day without vaccine puts hundreds of lives under threat,” Bruno Maes, the organization’s Haiti representative, said on Friday.

The Rev. Richard Frechette, a doctor at St. Luke’s Hospital in Port-au-Prince, told the humanitarian aid organization Direct Relief that he had pleaded with gang leaders to allow the delivery of critical supplies, including oxygen.

“If the streets turn into looting and riots, we’re not going to be able to get oxygen,” he said. “That always happens when there’s instability.”

Haiti is due to receive about six million coronavirus vaccine doses from the United States, but it is unclear when they might be delivered.

Tyson Fury and several other members of his team have tested positive for the coronavirus, forcing his heavyweight title fight with his rival Deontay Wilder to be postponed, a person familiar with the situation said Friday.

The World Boxing Council, the group bestowing the title of champion to the match’s winner, said in a statement on Friday afternoon that the highly anticipated rematch would be put off “following a Covid-19 outbreak in Fury’s training camp.”

The bout had been slated for July 24 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. The council — which works with the promoters ultimately responsible for securing a venue, a TV deal and the cooperation of state regulators — said a new date would be announced “in the coming days.”

The person familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity because details of the outbreak had not been released and a replacement fight date had not been announced, said Mr. Fury was also showing symptoms of Covid-19 and promoters were considering rescheduling the highly anticipated bout for October.

Mr. Fury knocked out Mr. Wilder for the World Boxing Council heavyweight championship in February 2020, a bout that was held in Las Vegas before the pandemic prompted widespread shutdowns of sporting events in the United States.

Their rematch was highly anticipated because even though Mr. Fury won decisively, it was the first loss of Mr. Wilder’s career (his record is 42-1-1). They fought to a draw in 2018, driving up interest in the third bout.

Mr. Wilder’s manager, Shelly Finkel, expressed frustration with Mr. Fury and his team in an interview with The Athletic. “There’s so much money, prestige and things riding on this, and we all have a job to do to make sure it happens on time,” Mr. Finkel said.

Mr. Wilder won an arbitration case in May that established that he was entitled to a third fight. The verdict forced Mr. Fury to delay a heavyweight title fight in Saudi Arabia against Anthony Joshua.

Numerous sporting events have been canceled, postponed or derailed as a result of the pandemic, including a lightweight title fight that was delayed from June until August when the champion, Teófimo López, tested positive for the virus.

Olympic organizers said on Thursday that spectators would not be allowed at the majority of events. The decision came after a new state of emergency was declared in Tokyo following a surge in cases.

The International Monetary Fund’s executive board approved a plan to issue $650 billion worth of reserve funds to help troubled countries buy vaccines, finance health care and pay down debt. If approved by the I.M.F.’s board of governors, as is expected, the reserves could become available by the end of August.

How will the I.M.F. create this fund?

The reserve fund will be created through an allocation of Special Drawing Rights, and it will be the largest such expansion of the asset in the organization’s nearly 80-year history.

Special Drawing Rights, or S.D.R.s, were created in the 1960s and are essentially a line of credit that can be cashed in for hard currency by member countries of the I.M.F. They are intended to help countries bolster their reserves and make the global economy more resilient.

Each of the I.M.F.’s 190 countries receives an allotment of S.D.R.s based on its shares in the fund, which track with the size of a country’s economy. The drawing rights are not a currency, and therefore cannot be used to buy things on their own. But they can be traded among member countries for currencies that can. Their value is based on a basket of international currencies — the U.S. dollar, euro, Chinese renminbi, Japanese yen, and British pound sterling — and is reset every five years.

To use the S.D.R.s, countries can agree to trade this interest-bearing asset with other countries in exchange for cash. The I.M.F. serves as a middleman to help facilitate the transaction. If the United States buys a batch of S.D.R.s from, say, Angola, it will earn interest on those assets. And Angola, which would be paid for the sale in U.S. dollars, could use the money to buy what it needed, such as vaccines to inoculate its population against Covid-19.

The plan approved by the I.M.F. executive board would effectively create $650 billion worth of S.D.R.s. Poor countries could then trade their share of those with wealthier countries to get hard currency to fund vaccines.

Why is the plan controversial?

While the idea of new S.D.R. allocations was introduced last year, the United States, under the Trump administration, prevented it from moving forward. It argued at the time that boosting the emergency reserves was an inefficient way to provide aid to poor countries and that doing so would provide more resources to advanced economies that did not need the help, like China and Russia, which would get a large share of the S.D.R.s that were approved.

Republicans have continued this argument, seizing on the issue as a way to criticize President Biden, who supports the allocation, for not putting “America first.”

At a Senate hearing in March, Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, tried to make the case to the Treasury secretary, Janet L. Yellen, that the United States would be subsidizing loans to countries if it bought S.D.R.s, essentially putting taxpayers at risk.

Republicans such as Mr. Kennedy argue that the S.D.R. allocation would do more to benefit American adversaries than the developing countries it is intended to help. He argues that China and Russia would get the equivalent of a combined $40 billion.

Ms. Yellen has dismissed both notions, arguing that any borrowing the United States did to buy a country’s S.D.R.s would be offset by the interest it collected on the asset. The Treasury Department also did not buy the claim that allocating the I.M.F. reserves would benefit China and Russia, as they have shown little use for the S.D.R.s and the United States would not be inclined to cut a deal with such rivals.

Eswar Prasad, a former head of the I.M.F.’s China division, agreed that any benefit to China or Russia from the S.D.R.s would be negligible and that American taxpayers had nothing to lose.

“Any such conversions of S.D.R.s into U.S. dollars would be guaranteed by the I.M.F., so there are no risks to the U.S.,” he said.

Will the new reserves be enough to developing countries fight the pandemic?

Some have said the I.M.F. should be doing more.

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development called this year for $1 trillion worth of Special Drawing Rights to be made available by the I.M.F. as a “helicopter money drop for those being left behind.”

To address some of these concerns, the I.M.F. is working to develop a new trust fund where wealthier countries can channel their excess S.D.R.s. The goal is to create a $100 billion pot of money that less developed countries can borrow from to use toward expanding their health care systems or addressing climate change in conjunction with existing I.M.F. programs.

Other changes are also in the works to address the political sensitivity over how the reserves are used. At the urging of the United States, the I.M.F. is working to create greater transparency around how the assets are being used so that is clear that American adversaries are not benefiting from the proceeds.

As countless fans across England gathered on Wednesday to watch their team defeat Denmark in the European Championship semifinal, coronavirus cases have spiked across the nation and researchers have hinted at a possible link between the sudden rise and gatherings for games that have mostly ignored social distancing measures.

Research released on Thursday showed that men in England were currently 30 percent more likely to be infected with the coronavirus than women — a finding that could dampen the excitement of the legions of mostly male fans hoping to celebrate a victory in the European Championship soccer final on Sunday.

Steven Riley, a professor of infectious disease dynamics at Imperial College London who was one of the report’s authors, said the higher rates of infections among men were probably explained by changes in social behaviors like watching soccer.

The European Championship soccer tournament started on June 11 and ends on Sunday, and crowds have been gathering in London and across Britain to watch the matches in pubs, restaurants and on outdoor screens.

Researchers at Imperial College London also found that from June 24 to July 5, the number of coronavirus cases had quadrupled across England and had risen eightfold in London.

The World Health Organization warned last week that the games, held in cities across Europe, had driven a rise in coronavirus cases. The two semifinals this week were played at Wembley Stadium in London — including England’s hard-fought win against Denmark on Wednesday night — as will the final on Sunday. Attendance at each game has been about 60,000 people.

Germany’s Interior minister, Horst Seehofer, has called the decision by UEFA, European soccer’s governing body, to allow large crowds in stadiums “utterly irresponsible.” Yet the British authorities have gone ahead, filling Wembley at two-third capacity.

Although those in attendance at Wembley were required to provide proof of a full coronavirus vaccination or a negative test result taken 48 hours before the game, few people wore masks in the outdoor stadium or its inner concourses, and trains were packed tightly before and after the game.

Coronavirus infections have quadrupled in England in recent weeks, according to the study from Imperial College London, which was published on the government’s website. On Wednesday, Britain reported more than 32,500 new cases and 33 deaths.

England’s last pandemic restrictions are set to be lifted by July 19, even as public health experts said the nation could face 50,000 new daily infections later this month.

In a letter published in The Lancet on Wednesday, 122 scientists and doctors accused the British government of conducting a “dangerous and unethical experiment” by letting the virus circulate widely, while half of the population has yet to be fully vaccinated.

The authorities also said on Thursday that fully vaccinated travelers returning to England’s from countries deemed to be a mid-level risk — those on the “amber” list on its stoplight-code system — would no longer have to quarantine.

The move could prompt many in Britain to book vacations in European destinations like France, Italy, Portugal and Spain, although some countries have in return imposed new restrictions on travelers arriving from Britain.

In June, the European Union officially recommended its member countries reopen their borders to American tourists after more than a year of tight restrictions.

But residents of Europe’s Schengen area — spanning 29 countries, city-states and micro-states — as well as those in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland are still barred from traveling to the United States, unless they are U.S. citizens or have spent 14 days before arrival in a country that is not on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s prohibited list. Certain family members are also exempt.

The restrictions were first put in place in March 2020.

Discussions about when to resume inbound travel have been opaque. In late June, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said it was too soon to say when the United States would lift travel curbs for E.U. citizens.

“We are anxious to be able to restore travel as fully and as quickly as possible — we’re very much guided by the science, by our medical experts,” Mr. Blinken said in Paris in June, adding that he “can’t put a date on it.”

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said on Thursday that the United States was not yet ready to lift restrictions on international travel.

“A lot of this is based on what’s going on with progress on the vaccines,” Mr. Buttigieg said in an interview with Bloomberg TV. “Obviously we see good news and bad news out there in terms of the variants. One moment, you’re reading about a variant happening across the world, the next you know, it’s becoming the dominant strain here in the U.S.”

The unwillingness of many people in New York and elsewhere to get vaccinated against Covid-19 is complicated as a matter of both politics and psychology. But it is increasingly concerning to public health officials as the more transmissible Delta variant of the coronavirus continues to spread.

Although 52 percent of New Yorkers are completely vaccinated, that statistic is misleading. In most parts of Central Brooklyn only a third of residents have been fully immunized, less than half the figure in affluent parts of the city.

To entice people to get the vaccine, the city has offered incentives such as giveaways from Krispy Kreme, and the chance to win an annual membership to the Public Theater or tickets to see the Brooklyn Cyclones.

The reasons for refusing the vaccine differ by community and demographic, dooming any unified approach. In Staten Island, where some of the highest infection rates in the city have surfaced again lately, the data has shown that young people are the ones exempting themselves. Among Caribbean immigrants, skepticism about the vaccine has fomented around concerns that it will endanger fertility, said Dave Chokshi, the city’s health commissioner.

But the work of convincing Guyanese women in Crown Heights that the vaccine is not a threat to pregnancy is different from the work of convincing 17-year-olds in Tottenville that it is worth getting off the couch and going to CVS.

It is not clear what succeeds. The city’s approach to correcting vaccine disparities can seem blind to the broad range of anxieties born of the long-term dismissal of poor urban communities.

“There is all this language — ‘vaccine hesitancy.’ People aren’t ‘hesitant,’” said Dionne Grayman, the president and a co-founder of We Run Brownsville, a women’s health organization. “They don’t trust a system that has never worked for them before.”

Making a life in the arts was always going to be hard. But not like this.

Over 16 months of pandemic and social unrest, students at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts watched almost all stage actors lose their jobs and witnessed widespread layoffs at regional theaters. They heard the footsteps of another year of young artists coming up right behind, and wondered whether there would still be room for them.

“I call us the Class of Covid-19,” said David Johnson III, who is back home in Michigan, driving for Grubhub, “even though we’re the Class of 2020.”

The school is on the grounds of a former high school a few miles outside downtown Winston-Salem, a onetime tobacco and textile town now trying to position itself as a tech hub. Its drama program, which is all undergraduate, is highly regarded — in a recent informal survey, The Hollywood Reporter declared it the fourth best in the world.

As the students’ senior year evaporated, many of them stayed in Winston-Salem and made their own rituals. Then they scattered: Most went back to wherever they had grown up, shelving plans to move to New York or Los Angeles.

A few have landed short-term projects with notable companies. One was in the ensemble for an audio production of “Row,” a new musical that the prestigious Williamstown Theater Festival made for Audible.

Carlo Feliciani Ojeda, a directing student from South Florida, moved to London to pursue further education.

“I didn’t want to use someone else’s story,” he said, “so I started writing my own adaptation, about how I was feeling in 2020 and 2021, and, after the murder of George Floyd, about what it means to be a person of color in the theater world.”

The crush of new Covid patients this week at Mercy Hospital in Springfield, Mo., was unlike anything the staff had seen during the past 16 months. Officials resorted to borrowing ventilators from other hospitals and pleaded on social media for help from respiratory therapists.

The run on ventilators subsided, but this week Mercy Springfield cared for more Covid patients than it has seen in any week since the pandemic started. The city is in Greene County, where only about 35 percent of residents have been fully vaccinated and the highly contagious Delta variant is spreading.

“Six weeks ago, we had 10 patients and now it’s 128 on Friday, which is greater than the third wave back in December,” said Dr. John Mohart, Mercy’s senior vice president of clinical services.

Missouri has been averaging about 1,000 new cases per day, a 44 percent increase over the past two weeks, though a fraction of the state’s November peak when its average topped 5,000, according to a New York Times database. Hospitalizations are up 25 percent from two weeks ago.

The Delta variant of the coronavirus has driven this outbreak in Missouri’s Southwest, around Springfield and Joplin, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This week, an epidemiologist with the C.D.C. arrived in Springfield, as part of a “surge response team” requested by the state.

Delta became the dominant variant in the United States this week, accounting for about 52 percent of cases. The C.D.C. estimates the variant was behind nearly three-fourths of the new cases in Missouri.

Studies suggest that vaccines remain effective against the Delta variant. But public health experts say Delta poses a serious threat to unvaccinated populations, and studies suggest that a single shot of a two-dose vaccine regimen provides only weak protection against the variant.

At the same time, the gap in vaccination rates between counties that voted for Donald J. Trump and those that voted for Joseph R. Biden Jr. is widening, according to a new survey released by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Missouri has a vaccination rate of 40 percent, well below the national rate of 48 percent. Many counties have vaccination rates in the teens and 20s.

The number of Missourians seeking the vaccine has dwindled. Nearly 50,000 were getting vaccinated each day in mid-April; on Thursday, it was 7,000.

The drop-off in vaccinations is true across the country. As of Friday, providers were administering about 590,000 doses per day on average, a decrease of about 82 percent from the peak of 3.38 million reported on April 13.

Hospitalizations are rare among the fully vaccinated. Dr. Mohart said that 95 percent of the 128 Covid patients at Mercy Springfield on Friday had not been immunized and tests show that most cases were of the Delta variant.

It was a similar picture at Cox Medical Center South in Springfield, which admitted 19 new patients for Covid-19 treatment on Thursday. From June 1 through July 8, there were 29 coronavirus deaths there.

“The staff is exhausted and overwhelmed,” said Ashley Casad, vice president of clinical services for CoxHealth, which has six hospitals in southwest Missouri and northwest Arkansas. “This is going to go on for a month. The light at the end of the tunnel seems incredibly far away.”

She said the rise in cases seemed to be caused by three factors: the area’s low vaccination rate, the arrival of the Delta variant and Springfield’s recent decision to lift its mask mandate. Ninety percent of Covid patients at Cox Medical Center South in Springfield have the Delta variant, and they are trending younger, she said.

Ms. Casad said the hospital was sending patients to other medical centers because it lacked enough staff members to care for them, though the supply of respirators was adequate.

A state health official said on Friday that 500 ventilators were stockpiled in the capital, Jefferson City, and were available to be sent out to hospitals, but that so far there had been no requests for them.

The rise of new cases in southwest Missouri prompted Springfield public schools to mandate masks for the summer session, and Mercy health system said that it would require its staff members to be immunized by Sept. 30.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

The highly contagious Delta variant is now the dominant version of the coronavirus in the United States, according to figures released this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Delta now accounts for more than half of infections across the country, a benchmark health experts had predicted it would pass. Delta is believed to be about 60 percent more transmissible than Alpha, a variant first detected in Britain that became dominant in the United States this spring. Alpha now accounts for just 28.7 percent of cases, the C.D.C. reports.

Despite Delta’s growing presence, the average numbers of new virus cases and deaths across the country, as well as hospitalizations, are significantly down from the devastating peaks during previous surges.

While there is limited data on the threat Delta poses to current vaccines, studies so far suggest that several of the leading shots, including those authorized in the United States, are proving effective against the variant.

Still, Pfizer and BioNTech this week announced plans to develop a vaccine that specifically targets Delta, with clinical trials expected to begin in August.

U.S. vaccination rates have flattened, with just under 160 million Americans, or nearly half the population, fully vaccinated. President Biden outlined strategies to get more people vaccinated, calling on employers to set up clinics at work and to offer paid time off for workers.

In other news this week:

• With the 2020 Tokyo Olympics just weeks away, organizers announced that they would ban most spectators from the Games following a sudden rise in cases across Tokyo that put the city into a state of emergency. In June, organizers had announced that domestic spectators would be permitted, albeit with tight restrictions. In recent polls of the Japanese public, a majority of respondents said the Olympics should be either canceled or further delayed.

• Nearly all pandemic-era restrictions in England will be lifted on July 19 after more than a year and a half of regulations and various levels of lockdowns. But Prime Minister Boris Johnson is facing backlash after saying he would leave it up to the public whether to wear masks on trains and in other crowded, indoor spaces. Critics warned that such a casual approach could leave vulnerable people at heightened risk as the virus continues to spread.

• A third, dangerous wave of the coronavirus is sweeping across much of southern and eastern Africa. Officials from the World Health Organization have called it the continent’s “worst pandemic week ever.” Africa is also short of vaccines. The rise in infections has been driven largely by the Delta variant, which has increased hospitalization rates and deaths and crippled health care systems.

• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new guidance for schools on Friday, urging them to fully reopen and calling on local districts to tailor their public health measures to local coronavirus data. The news, which won support from two of the largest educators’ unions, marks a departure from the C.D.C.’s past guidelines for schools and arrives less than a month before the first day of school for some districts.

With less than a month to go before many schools begin reopening for the fall, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday released new guidelines for preventing coronavirus transmission in schools.

The guidelines outline numerous strategies, including masking, weekly screening testing and social distancing. But the agency also said schools should fully reopen even if they cannot take all of the measures. The agency left much of the decision-making up to local officials.

Here are answers to some common questions about the new guidance.

Can my child go back to school full time in the fall?

Almost certainly. The new recommendations make it clear that reopening schools is a priority and that schools should not remain closed just because they cannot take all of the recommended precautions.

Transmission rates have generally been very low in schools, especially when additional precautions are in place.

Will they have to wear a mask?

It depends.

The guidelines recommend that children ages 2 or older who are not fully vaccinated should wear a mask indoors — but imply that fully vaccinated students generally do not need to wear masks in the classroom.

The C.D.C. also notes that some schools may choose to require everyone to wear masks. On Friday, California said it planned to do just that. (At least eight states, on the other hand, have already forbidden mask mandates.)

Masks are not generally needed outdoors, the agency said.

What about social distancing?

The agency recommended that students remain at least three feet apart from one another in the classroom. Schools that do not have enough space to keep students so far apart should reopen anyway, the agency said. In those cases, it is particularly important to adopt other precautions, including masking, frequent virus testing and improved ventilation.

The guidelines also recommend that students remain at least six feet apart from teachers and staff members and that unvaccinated teachers and staff members remain six feet apart from one another.

Will vaccines be mandated?

There is currently no major effort to mandate vaccines in K-12 schools, though that could change over time.

Right now, only children 12 and up are eligible for the vaccine, and the shots were approved under emergency use authorization. Until they are given full approval, it’s unlikely that vaccines will be required for school. Still, the United States has a long history of mandating that students be vaccinated for certain diseases — from polio to measles — and experts believe Covid-19 is likely to join the list at some point.

In the meantime, it’s possible that schools could ask if older students eligible for the vaccine have their shots. Chicago Public Schools, for example, has said it plans to ask families to submit Covid-19 vaccine information.

As for teachers, employers generally have the right to inquire about immunization status and even require vaccination for employees, experts say, though the effort in schools may be complicated by teachers’ unions.

When can my elementary schooler be vaccinated?

Probably sometime this fall. Pfizer has said that it plans to apply this fall for emergency authorization of its vaccine for children between 5 and 11.

Moderna has said that the results from its clinical trial of young children are expected before the end of the year. Last month the company applied for authorization for use of its vaccine in 12- to 17-year-olds.