Monday, 21 June 2021

Covid Live Updates: U.S. Travel Near Pandemic Peak for Memorial Day

A traveler from Mexico received a dose of the Pfizer vaccine this month at Miami International Airport.
Credit…Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Frustrated with the lagging pace of Covid vaccination campaigns at home, wealthy and middle-class Latin Americans with tourist visas have in recent weeks been flocking to the United States, where there is a surplus of vaccine doses and where demand has been lagging.

The access has proved a bonanza for the privileged in countries where the virus continues to take a brutal toll — even if many struggle with the fact that vaccine tourism only exacerbates the inequality that has been a hallmark of the pandemic.

Sean Simons, a spokesman for the ONE Campaign, which works to eradicate disease and poverty, said vaccine travel could have serious unintended consequences, and urged nations with vaccine surpluses to funnel them instead through a World Health Organization vaccine distribution system known as Covax.

The Biden administration said this month that it would give 80 million vaccine doses by the end of June to countries that are scrambling to vaccinate their people.

Still, as success stories of Latin Americans getting their jabs are shared on social media posts and by word of mouth, and local officials in New York and Alaska actively encourage vaccination tourism, the cost of airfare on several routes has skyrocketed as thousands make plans to head north.

Florencia Gonzalez Alzaga, a photographer from Buenos Aires, hatched her plan to fly to the United States for a coronavirus vaccine after the subject came up in her Zoom book club.

“It’s like a dream,” said Ms. Gonzalez, who got her shot in Miami in April.

Reagan National Airport outside Washington on Friday. The Transportation Security Administration expects the daily number of people passing through U.S. airports to top two million over Memorial Day weekend.
Credit…Will Oliver/EPA, via Shutterstock

Memorial Day weekend is underway in the United States, and things are decidedly different for travelers than they were a year ago.

More than half of all adults in the United States have now been fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A federal mandate requires travelers in airplanes or on public transportation to wear masks, though most airlines then were asking passengers to wear them. And many, many more people are likely to leave town for the holiday this year than in 2020.

Darby LaJoye, the acting administrator at the Transportation Security Administration, said the number of travelers at U.S. airports has been increasing steadily during the spring, reaching nearly 1.9 million last Sunday, nearly eight times the figure for May 17, the comparable Sunday in 2020.

On Friday, the number of daily travelers topped 1.9 million, a level of travel not seen since March 2020, according to agency data released on Saturday. The T.S.A. predicted that airports would probably see two million passengers in a day over the holiday weekend, the latest crest in the recent waves of returning travelers. Mr. LaJoye said the increasing number of passengers could lead to longer wait times at security checkpoints.

AAA, the automobile owners group, predicted earlier this month that, all told, more than 37 million people would travel 50 miles or more from Thursday to Monday — a 60 percent increase from last year, though still 9 percent below 2019. A great majority will travel by car.

“We will continue to see a very steady increase as we approach the summer travel season,” Mr. LaJoye said. “As vaccinations continue to rise and confidence continues to build, the nation’s planes, trains, buses and roads are going to be heavily traveled.”

To help control the spread of the virus, the T.S.A. has erected acrylic barriers, installed new machines allowing some passengers to scan their own documents and adjusted the rules to allow passengers to have up to 12 ounces of hand sanitizer in their carry-on bags.

A year ago in the United States, there was no authorized coronavirus vaccine, mask requirements were left up to local officials and individual carriers and air traffic was sparse.

Now, people 12 or older can get vaccinated, and those who choose to travel have a sense of their own safety that even the boldest voyagers last year did not. (Still, traveling, and many other activities, can be complicated for younger children and their families.)

“Thanks to vaccines, tens of millions of Americans are able to get back to something closer to normal, visiting friends and family,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the C.D.C., said this week at a news conference.

This year’s holiday falls at a time when parts of the world, like the United States and the European Union, are progressively reopening their borders and allowing tourism to restart. But the virus continues to ravage other areas, notably India, South America and Southeast Asia, where vaccine supplies are scarce and worrisome virus variants have been detected.

As it happens, the average number of new cases being reported in the U.S. is about the same now as it was around Memorial Day last year, about 23,000 a day, though testing was far scarcer as the pandemic initially hit. In each case, the figure had been declining from a recent peak in mid-April.

Last year, reports of revelers ignoring mask and social distancing rules over the holiday weekend were legion. Within weeks of some states reopening, virus cases were starting to surge to record levels. Jumps in virus cases have been seen after other holiday weekends, Dr. Walensky noted this week.

Now that many people have been vaccinated, any virus outbreaks in the United States after the holiday will probably look different, according to Dr. Wafaa El-Sadr, an epidemiologist at Columbia University. She said she was concerned about “micro-epidemics” in vulnerable areas.

“We could potentially see these surges focused in specific communities, where there’s low vaccination rates and low masking rates,” Dr. El-Sadr said.

A quarantine area in Hanoi, Vietnam, on Wednesday. The country has faced a huge surge of coronavirus cases in recent weeks.
Credit…Luong Thai Linh/EPA, via Shutterstock

Vietnam has discovered a new variant of the coronavirus that the country’s health minister said was a mix of the variants first detected in India and Britain and was also more contagious, according to news reports.

Nguyen Thanh Long, the health minister, said in a government meeting that the new variant combined the variant discovered in India with mutations from the one initially detected in Kent, England.

“The concentration of virus in the throat fluid increases rapidly and spreads very strongly to the surrounding environment,” Mr. Long said at the meeting, a recording of which was obtained by Reuters. He called the variant “very dangerous,” Reuters reported.

It was not immediately clear how fully the new variant is understood. Mr. Long cited lab cultures in discussing its transmissibility, but they may not necessarily reflect how the virus behaves in real-world situations. It was also not clear whether its prevalence is known or whether it might evade the protections afforded by vaccines or natural immunity acquired through earlier infection from a different version of the virus. Viruses mutate constantly, but most of the mutations dwindle away.

The variant detected in India, known as B.1.617, is believed to be more transmissible, the World Health Organization said this month, citing a study that had yet to be peer reviewed, and it could be more resistant against antibodies from vaccines or previous infections, according to the organization.

That variant has been spreading in Britain and now accounts for most of the new cases detected there.

Vietnam, a nation of around 97 million people, has been credited for its forceful approach to containing the virus, having recorded only 6,856 cases and 47 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic. But it has faced a surge of cases in recent weeks, with more than half the country’s total cases reported this month. Only 1 percent of the population has been vaccinated, according to a New York Times database.

At least 85 people tested positive as part of a cluster at a Protestant church in Ho Chi Minh City, the Health Ministry said. Worshipers sang and chanted while sitting close together without wearing proper masks or taking other precautions, according to The Associated Press.

Vietnam subsequently ordered a ban on all religious events nationwide, and major cities have prohibited large gatherings and shut down nonessential business including in-person restaurants, bars, clubs and spas.

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Hundreds Protest Vaccine Passports in London

Demonstrators opposing coronavirus vaccines and the idea of vaccine passports gathered in central London on Saturday.

[drums] [crowd noise] [chanting] “Stand up.” “Take your freedom back.”

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Demonstrators opposing coronavirus vaccines and the idea of vaccine passports gathered in central London on Saturday.CreditCredit…Henry Nicholls/Reuters

The debate over so-called Covid-19 vaccine passports reached two European capitals on Saturday, as London and Brussels drew protesters angry at pandemic-related restrictions and even some who deny the coronavirus is real.

A crowd of hundreds gathered in London’s Parliament Square for a “Unite for Freedom” rally protesting the use of vaccine passports, or digital proof of vaccination, while other participants claimed the pandemic is a hoax. Attendees held signs that read, “No vaccine passports, no 2-tier society, no medical tyranny.” Another stated, “My body, my choice.”

A London bus stopped near Trafalgar Square was covered with anti-vaccine stickers that read, “There is no pandemic” and “The media is the virus.”

Similar demonstrations have taken place in Britain throughout the past year in opposition to lockdowns and government regulations. Saturday’s protests came a day after the British drug regulator approved Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose Covid-19 vaccine for use despite concerns about blood clotting.

Vaccination requirements have also become a cultural flash point in the United States, where Republican governors in Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Montana and Texas have denounced vaccine passports and have issued executive orders restricting their use.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention already provides everyone who is vaccinated a card that can serve as proof, and people can always carry paper records of negative coronavirus tests. But industry leaders liken digital vaccination apps to security screening services like TSA PreCheck; it is not required, but it might make the travel experience smoother.

Separate from pandemic-related demonstrations, the streets in London were also filled with protesters attending a rally against a criminal justice bill that, among other things, would put new restrictions on protests.

In Brussels, thousands marched to the European Union headquarters in protest of pandemic restrictions. While hospitalization and death rates are improving as vaccinations rise in Belgium, the country has strict rules banning most gatherings and requiring masks in large crowds.

Protesters at the E.U. headquarters were blocked by police officers and dispersed, The Associated Press reported.

Another Brussels gathering was an unauthorized anti-lockdown party, the latest of several in recent weeks that have drawn thousands of participants and resulted in clashes with the police. Police use of tear gas and water cannons has resulted in a number of arrests and injuries.

Earlier on Saturday, hundreds of health care workers demonstrated at an authorized protest in Brussels calling for more financial support and hospital staff.

Chelsea defeated Manchester City, 1-0, in the biggest prize in European soccer — the Champions League final — in Porto, Portugal, on Saturday.

The teams, two of the richest and most talented in England’s Premier League, drew many fans to Porto on matchday. By morning they were passing through the city’s airport and looking for the fastest route to the city.

With hours to kill before the evening kickoff, thousands gravitated to the waterfront in the city center, where the sun was shining and the beer was flowing. Masks weren’t always in evidence.

Security police, wary of the size of the crowds, kept a close watch. But among Manchester City fans flocking to their club’s first Champions League final, and Chelsea supporters thrilled to be back in the game, the mood was light.

Portugal was recently added to Britain’s “green list” of countries that residents can travel to without quarantining upon return.

But getting into the country required one extra step this year: a coronavirus test.

Protesters gathered outside Hatwrks in Nashville on Saturday after the store advertised Star of David “Not Vaccinated” patches.
Credit…Laura Thompson/Shutterstock

Protesters gathered on Saturday outside a hat store in Nashville that sold “not vaccinated” Star of David patches and compared vaccine passports to the Nazi practice of requesting “your papers.”

The store, Hatwrks, said on Instagram in a post that was later deleted that it was selling the patches for $5. Amid an outbreak of anti-Semitic attacks across the country, the post was criticized on social media and outside the store, where protesters held signs saying “no Nazis in Nashville” and “sell hats not hate.”

A separate post to the store’s Instagram account — which also touted “mask free shopping” and promoted the conspiracy theory that vaccines have microchips in them — said that “all unvaccinated people will be segregated from society, marked and must wear a mask. What comes next?”

The hat company Stetson said that “as a result of the offensive content and opinions shared by Hatwrks,” it would stop selling its products through the store. Several other hat companies also announced they would immediately end distribution with the retailer, including Goorin Bros, Dorfman Pacific, Milano Hat Company, Akubra, Bailey and Kangol.

Brixton stated the company had not sold its product to the store in years and requested that its name be removed from the store’s website.

A post on the store’s account responding to the criticism said that “I pay much more respect to history by standing up with the fallen than offering silence and compliance.” A later post apologized “for any insensitivity,” saying “my hope was to share my genuine concern and fear, and to do all that I can to make sure that nothing” like the Holocaust “ever happens again.”

Gigi Gaskins, who according to state records is the store’s owner, did not respond to requests for comment.

Criticism of vaccine passports, or digital proof of Covid-19 vaccination, extends beyond the United States: In London and Brussels on Saturday, demonstrators gathered to protest vaccination requirements.

Oregon said last week that it would require businesses to verify the vaccination status of customers before allowing them to enter without a mask, though business groups there questioned the practicality of the requirement. New York has created the Excelsior Pass, but is not requiring that it be used widely.

In Tennessee, Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, signed into law on Wednesday legislation prohibiting local governments from requiring businesses to verify proof of vaccination.

Residents lined up for coronavirus testing in the Liwan District in Guangzhou, China, on Wednesday. Parts of the neighborhood were shut down over the weekend after an uptick in cases.
Credit…Associated Press

Officials in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou ordered a neighborhood to lock down over the weekend, closing schools and banning dining in restaurants while they try to contain a cluster of coronavirus cases that appeared to have spread from a dim sum restaurant.

Investigators have so far traced the burst of cases in the city, the capital of Guangdong Province, to a 75-year-old woman who began experiencing a fever and other symptoms more than 10 days ago and was confirmed to be infected with the virus. She had dined at a dim sum restaurant in the Liwan District, where she lives, and medical tracking uncovered two other people at the restaurant who were infected and appear to have spread the virus to a dozen others, the China Youth Daily reported.

On Saturday, the Guangzhou Health Commission ordered residents in five streets of the Liwan District to mostly stay at home. Households can send one member out each day to buy necessities, and students will study remotely, with some exceptions where boarding at school is possible.

The coronavirus spread in central China in 2019, igniting the pandemic, but the country has since avoided major new virus waves by applying strict controls. Officials in Guangzhou said the latest outbreak was a worrisome development. The city has more than 15 million residents and is a major business and manufacturing center close to Hong Kong.

“The main difference between this outbreak and previous ones has been the speed of transmission,” Zhang Zhoubin, a deputy director of the Guangzhou Center for Disease Control, said at a recent news conference. He noted that the virus could be spread through brief contact “while eating a meal.”

The authorities have given no indication that a wider shutdown is coming, but are racing to test residents across the hot-spot neighborhood and trying to identify possible links with other recent cases in districts and cities near Guangzhou. Since the 75-year-old woman was diagnosed with the virus, health officials have confirmed at least 26 other cases in and near Guangzhou, including asymptomatic cases found through mass testing of residents.

Isaac Goodlow, 13, receiving a dose of the Pfizer vaccine at a shopping center this month in San Antonio.
Credit…Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times

Shots for newly eligible teens and tweens have delivered a much-needed boost to the United States’ Covid-19 inoculation campaign at a time when vaccination rates have fallen among the oldest age groups and stalled among young adults.

After falling sharply in April and May, daily vaccinations have been inching upward again, in large part thanks to immunizations among 12- to 15-year-olds. In the two and a half weeks that this group has been eligible for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, nearly 2.5 million have gotten their first shot, making up about a quarter of all new vaccinations.

Even though 12- to 15-year-olds are just 5 percent of the population, experts say that reaching this group of nearly 17 million people has benefits for the rest of the country. Beyond reducing infections in their communities, vaccinated youth could encourage older family members to get a shot and help their families return to a feeling of normalcy.

Global Roundup

The line at a coronavirus testing center in Hong Kong’s business district in March.
Credit…Vincent Yu/Associated Press

Hong Kong’s borders have been sealed for more than a year and its quarantine rules — which require compulsory hotel stays of up to three weeks — are among the strictest in the world.

Corporate executives, however, are now eligible for special treatment.

The city’s Securities and Futures Commission quietly published a notice on Friday saying that fully vaccinated “senior executives” from local companies or their international affiliates could apply for an exemption from the standard quarantine requirements when they visit or return to Hong Kong. Companies must submit detailed itineraries for their executives, who are allowed to leave quarantine accommodations only for approved activities, the notice said.

The commission did not issue a news release, and the notice offered no explanation for the timing or justification for the measure. Neither the Securities and Futures Commission nor Hong Kong’s Department of Health responded to requests for comment on Saturday.

The Chinese territory reported no new cases on Friday. Though densely populated, it has managed to avoid a full lockdown and has kept its coronavirus caseload low through aggressive social distancing rules and forced quarantine in government facilities for close contacts of Covid-19 patients, among other measures. Even vaccinated travelers must quarantine in hotels for up to three weeks, depending on where they fly in from.

The quarantine exemption announced on Friday is not the first for corporate executives in Hong Kong; a similar one was issued last year for executives from local companies re-entering the territory from the Chinese mainland. But it further illustrates how coronavirus policies in Hong Kong, which has one of the biggest income inequality gaps in the world, do not apply evenly to all of its 7.5 million residents.

Officials have imposed lockdowns and mass testing after Covid-19 clusters were detected in poor neighborhoods, where many residents live in crowded tenements with faulty piping and poor ventilation. Critics have accused the government of allowing the conditions for outbreaks to fester, then imposing heavy-handed measures on a group that can least afford to bear them.

The government has also repeatedly accused the 370,000 or so migrant domestic workers who live in the city of violating social distancing restrictions, even though major outbreaks have revolved around clusters of expatriates and wealthy locals.

In early May, the government backtracked on a contentious order that would have required all migrant domestic workers to be vaccinated. But it still went ahead with a plan to subject them to a second round of compulsory coronavirus testing, despite the first round turning up just three positives among 340,000 people.

The government has said that its compulsory testing protocols are based solely on “risk assessment” and apply equally to anyone working in high-risk places, including nursing homes.

In other news around the world:

  • Malaysia reached 9,020 new coronavirus cases on Saturday, the fifth straight day of record new infections in the country, according to Reuters. On Friday, Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin announced that a two-week nationwide lockdown would begin in June to fight the recent surge.

  • Saudi Arabia is lifting a ban on travelers from 11 countries, the Saudi Press Agency announced on Saturday. Beginning on Sunday, visitors will be allowed entry from the United Arab Emirates, Germany, the United States, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Switzerland, France and Japan.

  • Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge and wife of Prince William, announced on Twitter that she received her first dose of the coronavirus vaccine at London’s Science Museum. “I’m hugely grateful to everyone who is playing a part in the rollout — thank you for everything you are doing,” she wrote. According to the government portal, more than 39 million people in the United Kingdom have received at least one dose of a Covid vaccine.

  • Taiwan reported 355 new domestic coronavirus cases on Sunday as it confronts its biggest outbreak of the pandemic. The number includes 89 cases added to the totals for recent days as an adjustment in its infection numbers following delays in reporting positive tests.

Cat Moody, a New Zealander, and her American husband, Eric Mills, returned to her homeland during the pandemic.
Credit…Cornell Tukiri for The New York Times

Like many New Zealanders before her, Cat Moody chased the broader horizons of life abroad, unsure whether she would ever return to a homeland that she saw as remote and limiting.

But when the pandemic arrived, fresh air, natural splendor and a sparse population sounded more appealing, as did the sense of security in a country whose strict measures have all but vanquished the coronavirus.

In February, Ms. Moody, 42, left her house and the life she had built in Princeton, N.J., and moved back to New Zealand with her husband, a U.S. citizen. She is among more than 50,000 New Zealanders who have flocked home during the pandemic, offering the country a rare opportunity to win back some of its best and brightest.

New Zealand typically posts a net loss of thousands or tens of thousands of citizens each year, with its overall population growth fueled by migrants. In 2020, New Zealand posted a yearly net gain of thousands of citizens for the first time since the 1970s.

The question is how long the edge will last. Those returning face some of the same pressures that provoked their departure, like sky-high housing costs, lagging wages and constricted job prospects. And fewer than 153,000 people in the country of five million have received both doses of a coronavirus vaccine.

A pool in Woodmere, N.Y., last summer. About 96,000 pools were built in the country last year, according to a Goldman Sachs report.
Credit…Amr Alfiky/The New York Times

This year, the arrival of Memorial Day and pool season has industry experts warning of a chlorine shortage that threatens to disrupt backyard plans from coast to coast.

Last year saw people building pools in record numbers, in part to make quarantine more enjoyable and because of savings from canceled vacations and other cutbacks. About 96,000 pools were constructed, a 23 percent increase over the previous year, according to a Goldman Sachs report.

Then a fire at the end of the summer caused a shutdown at the plant that produces most of the U.S. supply of chlorine tablets.

“There is a very, very good possibility that we’re going to run out of chlorine tablets,” said Rudy Stankowitz, a swimming pool consultant and educator with more than 30 years of experience in the industry. “People should start looking into alternative methods of sanitizing swimming pools.”

To reduce the need for chlorine, the Pool and Hot Tub Alliance, an industry trade group, advises people to shower before swimming, to keep pets out of the pool and to run the filter daily. It also recommends that people “shock” their pools — adding chemicals that raise the chlorine level enough to kill algae and bacteria — with liquid chlorine, calcium hypochlorite or potassium monopersulfate instead of chlorine tablets.

The shortage, which Mr. Stankowitz described somewhat hyperbolically as a “poolocalypse,” will affect residential pools more than public ones, which typically use different forms of chlorine.

Above all, pool owners should resist the urge to panic-buy chlorine, Mr. Stankowitz said. Doing so could risk making chlorine tablets as scarce as toilet paper was at the beginning of the pandemic.

Catch Up

Sonia Maestre helping her son Alvaro last year while working at home in Palma, Spain. Millions of women — particularly those with children — have been pushed out of their jobs or forced to downsize their careers, spurring what many economists are calling the world’s first “she-cession.”
Credit…Jaime Reina/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

President Biden this week ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to investigate the origins of the coronavirus, indicating that his administration takes seriously the possibility that the deadly virus was accidentally leaked from a lab in China.

The president’s statement on Wednesday was an abrupt shift. Until Wednesday, the White House hewed to the prevailing theory that the virus was transmitted by an animal to humans outside a lab and maintained that the World Health Organization was the proper agency to handle an international inquiry. A report from a joint inquiry by the W.H.O. and China that was issued last month described the chances that the virus had slipped out of the lab as “extremely unlikely.”

Mr. Biden gave the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies 90 days to investigate, a move that came after intelligence officials told the White House they had unexamined evidence that required additional computer analysis that might shed light on the mystery, according to senior administration officials. Officials declined to describe the new evidence, but the push suggests that there is more to examine in the archives than previously thought.

Mr. Biden’s push is intended to prod American allies and intelligence agencies to mine existing information — like intercepts, witnesses or biological evidence — as well as hunt for new intelligence to determine whether the Chinese government covered up an accidental leak.

The effort to uncover the origins of the coronavirus began more than a year ago, during the Trump administration, but many were skeptical of the former president’s motives to investigate. Current officials say the central goal of the new intelligence push is to improve preparations for future pandemics. As a result, Mr. Biden’s message this week was calibrated to leave open the possibility of future cooperation with China.

Mr. Biden committed on Thursday to making the results of the review public, but added a caveat: “unless there’s something I’m unaware of.”

Here’s what else happened this week:

  • New studies have found that immunity to the coronavirus can last at least a year, and possibly a lifetime, improving over time especially after vaccination. The studies suggest that most people who have recovered from Covid-19 and who were later immunized will not need boosters. Vaccinated people who were never infected most likely will need boosters, however, as will a minority who were infected but did not produce a robust immune response.

  • Over the last year, Apple and Google helped states create virus alert apps that have been downloaded more than 90 million times. But researchers don’t yet know whether the apps’ ability to alert users to virus exposure outweighs potential drawbacks, like falsely warning unexposed people, raising questions about the power of Big Tech to set global standards for public health tools.

  • The pandemic forced millions of women — particularly those with children — to either leave their jobs or downsize their careers, spurring what many economists are calling the world’s first “she-cession.” In the United States, White House advisers and members of Congress have held up women’s enormous job losses as an urgent reason to expand investment in child care by historic proportions. But a study published in April by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that child care is not the only contributing factor: Labor protections or the ability to work remotely played equally significant roles in determining levels of female employment.

Employees at DemeTech, a Florida company that this month laid off 1,500 workers who made surgical masks. U.S. manufacturers have seen a calamitous drop in sales.
Credit…Scott McIntyre for The New York Times

Mask mandates have eased, a welcome milestone in the battle against Covid-19. But for the two dozen American companies that jumped into the mask-making business last year, the good news comes with a downside: a calamitous drop in sales.

Some of the slackening demand is tied to the loosening of masking guidelines by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But industry experts say a bigger factor has been the return of inexpensive protective gear from China that began flooding the American market earlier this year.

Industry executives and some members of Congress have accused China of dumping, arguing that many imports are priced so low — sometimes a tenth of what American factories charge for comparable products — that there is little chance for domestic companies to compete.

In recent weeks, at least three companies have stopped producing masks and medical gowns. Several others have markedly scaled back production, including Premium-PPE, a year-old surgical mask-maker in Virginia that recently laid off most of its 280 workers. DemeTech, a medical-suture company in Florida, laid off 1,500 workers this month who made surgical masks.

The crisis faced by domestic producers presents a test for the Biden administration, which has pledged to shore up American manufacturing and to ensure that health care workers will never again scramble to find adequate protective gear. Those shortages, health experts say, most likely contributed to the high rates of infection among frontline workers, more than 3,600 of whom died of Covid-19 during the first year of the pandemic, according to a tally by The Guardian and Kaiser Health News.

Tourists in the coastal resort town of Cascais this month. Portugal opened up to British tourists last weekend despite still adhering to coronavirus precautions such as curfews.
Credit…Daniel Rodrigues for The New York Times

After enduring a winter of strict lockdown, and a gradual reopening in spring marred by lousy weather, the first British tourists have begun arriving in Portugal after the country was “green-listed” by Britain for quarantine-free travel.

The arrivals offer a preview of what a broader return to international travel might look like for others, including vaccinated Americans when they are welcomed to Europe this summer: a mixture of joy, relief, and at times awkward interactions as cultures converge after a year of disparate pandemic experiences.

This month, Britain included Portugal on its “green list” of 12 countries and territories that residents could travel to starting May 17 without quarantining for up to 10 days upon return. Now, Portugal is one of Britain’s only tourist destinations. Most other green-listed places are either not accepting tourists or are not major draws.

But British travelers expecting a kind of prepandemic travel experience found something different in Lisbon during the first weekend it reopened to them. Though the Portuguese capital still offered its signature food, museums, picturesque vistas and attractions, stringent mask rules and curfews reminded visitors this would not be an unfettered escape.

Mark Boulle, 38, from Oxford, England, said he typically tries to avoid crowds while traveling, so the trip was in that respect a dream. When he took a day trip on Monday to Sintra, a nearby town with postcard-ready palaces and castles, “for the first half of the day I virtually had the whole place to myself,” he said.

But masking — or not — is proving to be a source of tension for both visitors and the Portuguese. Mr. Boulle was dismayed by the widespread use of masks outdoors in Lisbon, given that, in Britain, the government has never suggested wearing masks outside and most people do not.

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