Vaccination and Immunization

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    China's Sinopharm Vaccine Approved for Emergency Use By W.H.O.

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    The World Health Organization has approved a Chinese vaccine for emergency use. The announcement comes at a time when officials in the country are warning of a domestic shortage.Developing countries racing for coronavirus vaccines now have another dependable option — and China’s reputation as a rising scientific superpower just got a big boost.The World Health Organization on Friday declared a vaccine made by a Chinese company, Sinopharm, as a safe and reliable way to fight the virus. The declaration marks a significant step toward clearing up doubts about the vaccine, after little late-phase clinical trial data was disclosed by the Chinese government and the company.The W.H.O. emergency use approval allows the Sinopharm vaccine to be included in Covax, a global initiative to provide free vaccines to poor countries. The possible inclusion in Covax raises hopes that more people — especially those in developing nations — will get access to shots at a crucial moment.Rich countries are hoarding doses of vaccines. India, a major vaccine maker, has stopped exports to address its worsening coronavirus crisis. Safety concerns led health authorities in some countries to temporarily pause the use of vaccines made by AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson.“The addition of this vaccine has the potential to rapidly accelerate Covid-19 vaccine access for countries seeking to protect health workers and populations at risk,” Dr. Mariângela Simão, W.H.O. assistant director general for access to health products, said in a statement.Reliable vaccine access could improve even further next week when the W.H.O. considers another Chinese shot, made by a company called Sinovac. But the fanfare may be short-lived. While China has claimed it can make up to five billion doses by the end of this year, Chinese officials say the country is struggling to manufacture enough doses for its own population and are cautioning a pandemic-weary world to keep expectations in check.“This should be the golden time for China to practice its vaccine diplomacy. The problem is, at the same time, China itself is facing a shortage,” said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations. “So in terms of global access to vaccines, I don’t expect the situation to significantly improve in the coming two to three months.”A Sinopharm shipment headed to Cameroon. The W.H.O. approval allows the Sinopharm vaccine to be included in Covax, the global initiative to provide vaccines to poor countries. Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA, via ShutterstockChina’s vaccination campaign got off to a slow start, in part because the government prioritized exports and residents did not feel rushed to get vaccinated. The country is now speeding up its national vaccination campaign and aims to inoculate 40 percent of its 1.4 billion people by the end of June.Sinopharm and Sinovac are producing about 12 million doses a day, just a little over the 10 million doses that China hopes to administer daily to meet the domestic target. The companies would have to produce roughly 500 million additional doses to meet the demands of other countries, according to a calculation of data provided by Bridge Consulting, a Beijing-based consultancy focused on China’s impact on global health.The vaccine shortage in China underscores the complexity of rolling out a mass vaccination campaign for the world’s most populous nation while also trying to execute an ambitious export program. Companies involved in the vaccine supply chain, such as those making syringes, are working overtime.“The whole world is short of this vaccine,” said a Sinovac spokesman, Pearson Liu. “The demand is just too great.”To mitigate the shortfall, Chinese officials said those getting vaccinated in China could delay getting their second shot by as long as eight weeks, or they could combine the same type of vaccine from different companies. They have said the shortage should ease by June.Andrea Taylor, who analyzes global data on vaccines at the Duke Global Health Institute, called the potential addition of two Chinese vaccines into the Covax program a “game changer.”“The situation right now is just so desperate for low and lower middle income countries that any doses we can get out are worth mobilizing,” Ms. Taylor said. “Having potentially two options coming from China could really change the landscape of what’s possible over the next few months.”China’s vaccines have been rolled out to more than 80 countries, but they have faced significant skepticism, in part because the companies have not released Phase 3 clinical trial data for scientists to independently assess the vaccines’ efficacy rates. An advisory group to the W.H.O. published the data this week.The Sinopharm vaccine developed with the Beijing Institute of Biological Products has an efficacy rate of 78.1 percent, according to the W.H.O. advisory group. The Sinovac vaccine has varying efficacy rates of between 50 percent to 84 percent, depending on the country where Phase 3 trials were conducted. Both vaccines were made using a tried-and-tested technology that involves weakening or killing a virus with chemicals.The advisory group’s data showed that it had a “high level of confidence” that the Sinopharm vaccine worked in preventing Covid-19 in adults, but a “low level” of confidence for people over 60. The group’s findings were similar for the Sinovac vaccine.The W.H.O. said that because Sinopharm enrolled few adults above 60 years old in its trials, the health agency could not estimate the vaccine efficacy for this group. But the W.H.O. said it would not restrict the use of the vaccine in that age group because preliminary data suggests “the vaccine is likely to have a protective effect in older persons.”There is limited data on how well the vaccine will work against the many coronavirus variants cropping up around the world. Chinese vaccines are overall less effective than the inoculations produced by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.But for China’s leaders, the W.H.O. approval can still be seen as a badge of honor. Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, has pledged to make a Covid-19 vaccine a “global public good.”After India announced export restrictions on vaccines last month, Indonesia and the Philippines said they would turn to China for help. Last week, China’s foreign minister offered to help South Asian nations get access to vaccines.Indonesia said it would get additional doses from Sinovac after President Joko Widodo held talks with Mr. Xi. In a speech the same week, President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines said he owed “a debt of gratitude” to China for its vaccines.It remains to be seen whether the W.H.O. approval will change Beijing’s approach to doling out vaccines. China has given only 10 million doses to Covax, though it has independently donated 16.5 million doses and sold 691 million doses to 84 countries, according to Bridge Consulting. Many of the donations were made to developing nations in Africa and Asia.“They don’t like to subsume their generosity in their products under some U.N. brand,” said J. Stephen Morrison, director of the global health policy center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “They are in a historic phase,” he said. “They want the recipients to know that this is China delivering.”Jason Gutierrez More

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    Health Advocate or Big Brother? Companies Weigh Requiring Vaccines.

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    It is a delicate decision balancing employee health and personal privacy. Some companies are sidestepping the issue by offering incentives to those who get shots.As American companies prepare to bring large numbers of workers back to the office in the coming months, executives are facing one of their most delicate pandemic-related decisions: Should they require employees to be vaccinated?Take the case of United Airlines. In January, the chief executive, Scott Kirby, indicated at a company town hall that he wanted to require all of his roughly 96,000 employees to get coronavirus vaccines once they became widely available.“I think it’s the right thing to do,” Mr. Kirby said, before urging other corporations to follow suit. It has been four months. No major airlines have made a similar pledge — and United Airlines is waffling.“It’s still something we are considering, but no final decisions have been made,” a spokeswoman, Leslie Scott, said.For the country’s largest companies, mandatory vaccinations would protect service workers and lower the anxiety for returning office employees. That includes those who have been vaccinated but may be reluctant to return without knowing whether their colleagues have as well. And there is a public service element: The goal of herd immunity has slipped as the pace of vaccinations has slowed.But making vaccinations mandatory could risk a backlash, and perhaps even litigation, from those who view it as an invasion of privacy and a Big Brother-like move to control the lives of employees.A United Airlines vaccine clinic at O’Hare Airport in Chicago. Employers are using on-site vaccinations to encourage workers to get shots.Scott Olson/Getty ImagesIn polls, executives show a willingness to require vaccinations. In a survey of 1,339 employers conducted by Arizona State University’s College of Health Solutions and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, 44 percent of U.S. respondents said they planned to mandate vaccinations for their companies. In a separate poll of 446 employers conducted by Willis Towers Watson, a risk-management firm, 23 percent of respondents said they were “planning or considering requiring employees to get vaccinated for them to return to the worksite.”That discrepancy, said Mara Aspinall, who led the Arizona State poll, may have to do with the timing of the surveys and the pace at which executives are growing comfortable with the vaccines. Arizona State conducted its survey in March, while Willis Towers led its survey between Feb. 23 and March 12.Despite what surveys have found, few executives have taken the step of mandating vaccines. It seems that most are hoping that encouragement, whether forceful or subtle, will be enough.“While legally in the United States, employers can mandate vaccines while providing accommodations for religious and for health reasons, socially, in terms of the social acceptability of these decisions, it’s much more tenuous,” said Laura Boudreau, a professor of public policy at Columbia University. “And so the reputational risks to these companies of getting this wrong are really high.”Douglas Brayley, an employment lawyer at the global law firm Ropes & Gray, warns clients of the implications of following through on a mandate, he said.“What if 10 percent of your work force refuses? Are you prepared to lay off that 10 percent?” he said he asked clients. “Or what if it’s someone high-level or in a key role, would you be prepared to impose consequences? And then they sometimes get more nervous.”He added, “Anytime you would have them putting out a mandate, but then carrying through the consequences unevenly, that would create a risk of potentially unlawful unfair treatment.”Companies that require vaccines may also be concerned about any side effects or medical issues that an employee might claim were caused by the vaccine.“They could be held liable for any sort of adverse effects that might happen a year or two down the road,” said Karl Minges, chair of health administration and policy at the University of New Haven.Some companies are sidestepping the problem and trying incentives instead. Amtrak is paying employees two hours’ worth of regular wages per shot upon proof of vaccination. Darden, which owns Olive Garden and other restaurants, told employees it would offer hourly employees two hours of pay for each dose they receive, while emphasizing it would not make doses mandatory. Target is offering a $5 coupon to all customers and employees who receive their vaccination at a CVS at Target location.For restaurants, making vaccinations mandatory could make hiring workers even more difficult.Philip Cheung for The New York TimesIn the United States, there’s nothing new about vaccines being required for participation in public life. The Supreme Court ruled about a century ago that states could require vaccinations for children attending public school. And universities like Rutgers have instituted mandatory Covid-19 vaccinations.But the pandemic brings up a host of complications that companies typically prefer to avoid, involving the private lives, religious preferences and medical histories of employees, such as whether an employee is pregnant, breastfeeding or immuno-compromised, information they may not want to reveal.Major union groups, like the A.F.L.-C.I.O., have not aggressively pushed the issue either. They are facing dueling forces — standing up for individual worker’s rights on the one hand and protecting one another on the other. Unions have also been arguing for stronger workplace safety measures, efforts that could be complicated by companies’ arguing that mandatory vaccinations reduce the need for such accommodations. The return to work protocols negotiated between the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers and Hollywood’s unions, for instance, will not include mandatory vaccinations.“There are going to be some people who may have legitimate reasons for not getting the vaccine or for not wanting to talk about it,” said Carrie Altieri, who works in communications for IBM’s People and Culture business. “It’s not an easy issue at this point.” IBM is working with New York State on a digital passport linking a person’s vaccination records to an app to show businesses, like performance venues, that may require vaccination. It is not, though, requiring vaccinations for its employees.For some businesses like restaurants, which are already struggling to hire workers, mandating vaccinations could make hiring even more difficult. And there are questions of logistics and execution. How can companies confirm the veracity of those who say they’ve been vaccinated?Companies may need to hire additional staff, potentially with medical training, to handle such tasks, which could saddle businesses — particularly small ones — with burdensome costs.Vivint, a home security company based in Utah with 10,000 employees, began offering vaccines in its on-site clinic this week, after the state approved the company to distribute 100 shots a week to its staff. It paid $3,000 for the necessary medical-grade freezer.“We’re not requiring employees to get vaccinated, but we’re highly encouraging it,” said Starr Fowler, senior vice president for human resources. “For a lot of our employees, particularly those that are younger, the easier that we make it for them, the more likely they’re going to do it.”At Salesforce Tower park in San Francisco, up to 100 fully vaccinated employees can volunteer to work on designated floors.Jason Henry for The New York TimesOthers are experimenting with splitting up their work forces. Salesforce is introducing a policy in certain U.S. offices, including Salesforce Tower in San Francisco, where up to 100 fully vaccinated employees can volunteer to work on designated floors. The New York Stock Exchange issued a memo to trading firms saying they would be allowed to increase their staff on the floor, provided all the employees have been vaccinated.The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued guidance in December stating that employers were indeed legally permitted to require employees to be vaccinated before they return to offices. But the threat of litigation still looms.“To be concerned about the possibility of litigation seems to me to be a perfectly legitimate concern,” said Eric Feldman, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He added, “It would seem to me that employers are going to find themselves in a fairly strong position legally — but that doesn’t mean they’re not going to get sued.”Legislation that would limit the ability to require vaccines for students, employees or the public in general has been proposed in at least 25 states, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Some of those restrictions pertain only to vaccines that, like those for Covid-19, have yet to be granted full approval by the Food and Drug Administration. (The coronavirus vaccines have been granted conditional approval for emergency use.)Pfizer is expected to file for full approval of its Covid-19 vaccine soon. Others are expected to follow.Speaking at a Wall Street Journal conference this week, Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, mentioned “legal issues about requiring vaccines” when asked about bringing workers back to the office. A press officer for the bank, which plans to open its offices on May 17 on a voluntary basis, said it strongly encouraged vaccines for employees — barring any religious or health restrictions — but would not require them. A spokeswoman for Goldman Sachs, which has not guided employees either way, declined to comment.One potential path for companies seeking a middle ground is to mandate the shots only for new hires. Still, there is a fine line between encouraging and requiring shots — sometimes resulting in conflicting messages to employees.The investment bank Jefferies sent a memo to employees in early February stating “verification of vaccination will be required to access the office.” On Feb. 24 came a follow-up memo. “We did not intend to make it sound as if we are mandating vaccines,” it said.Reporting was contributed by More

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    The Dream: International Travel. The Reality: Chaos and Confusion.

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    The world beckons, especially for those who have been vaccinated, but would-be travelers face a difficult moment when travel possibilities are at odds with the facts of a still reeling world.In recent days, a steady stream of promising news has painted a rosy picture of the return of international leisure travel.More than 105 million people in the United States are fully vaccinated. Greece, Iceland and Croatia, among a growing list of countries, are now open to American tourists. Airlines are resuming overseas flights. And perhaps the biggest development of all: Come summer, fully vaccinated Americans will once again be welcome across Europe.But the optimism may be premature. At the moment, the broader reality is more chaotic, and more sobering.A set of swirling crosscurrents — including a surge in global coronavirus cases, lagging vaccine rollouts in tourist hot spots and the lack of a reliable system to verify vaccinations — may be setting the stage for a slow and tortured return to high-volume international travel, despite ambitious pronouncements and the pressures of a tourism industry hoping to avoid another period of economic strain.Reopening areas to vaccinated tourists is a calculated risk, said Dr. Sarah Fortune, the chair of the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “My doomsday scenario,” she said, “is a mixing of vaccinated and unvaccinated populations in a setting where there is high viral load and high viral transmission.”At the same time, countries dependent on tourism revenue are pressing to admit more visitors. Most Caribbean countries are open to Americans, pending negative coronavirus tests — and some European countries are not far behind. Travel restrictions in Greece, where tourism accounts for around 25 percent of the country’s work force, were eased in mid-April, allowing for fully vaccinated travelers from the United States, Britain, Israel and European Union member states, among other places, to visit without quarantining or providing negative coronavirus tests. (A broader reopening is planned for later this month.)For now, it’s hard to know whether the travel industry is in the throes of a temporary transition or staring at the long-term complexities of a clash involving wishful thinking, the hard truths of a relentless pandemic and the possibility of responsible tourism.Whatever the case, there’s a churning array of forces affecting the prospects for overseas travel.Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin, which is normally crowded with tourists, was empty during a coronavirus lockdown in November. Germany is now in another lockdown. Lena Mucha for The New York TimesA dire global realityWould-be international travelers, particularly vaccinated Americans, are entering an increasingly chaotic moment when dreams of travel — fueled by more than a year of confinement — are at odds with the facts of a largely shuttered and still reeling outside world.Globally, more new coronavirus cases were reported in recent weeks than at any point since the onset of the pandemic. The numbers are being driven by an uncontrolled outbreak in India, but they also account for troubling trends among European destinations popular with Americans, from France and Germany to Italy and Spain, some of which are now undergoing extended lockdowns and curfews.In Germany, for example, a new round of lockdowns, aimed at combating a third wave of infections, is expected to last until June.Such developments might be hard for Americans to fully appreciate from afar, given the promising trends at home. But government agencies have taken note.In April, the U.S. State Department vastly expanded the list of countries in its “Level 4: Do Not Travel” category, adding, among dozens of destinations, Mexico, Canada and Britain, three of the most popular destinations for Americans. Many Caribbean countries, including the Bahamas, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica, are also at Level 4.In India, which is facing a cataclysmic surge, the presence of a potentially more menacing variant — possibly more dangerous to children, and against which vaccines may be less effective — is complicating the crisis. For the prospective traveler, it hints at the threat that emerging variants could play in the months and years to come.Inequality and lagging vaccine rolloutsOutside the United States, vaccination numbers remain comparatively low — in some cases, alarmingly so.In Italy, around 11 percent of the population is fully vaccinated. The number in Mexico, historically the country most visited by American tourists, stands at around 6 percent. In Canada, it’s at 3 percent — though that number is partly explained by the long interval between first and second doses there. By comparison, the United States just passed the 32 percent mark.While many of these percentages have been rising more quickly in recent weeks, there is also reason to believe that progress in some countries may stall.Global vaccine supplies have been disrupted by the surge of coronavirus cases in India, which has curtailed exports in order to meet growing domestic demands. Like most countries, Canada, for example, is entirely dependent on foreign sources for its vaccine supply; as a measure of the share of its population that is fully vaccinated, Canada now lags behind more than 50 other nations.Meanwhile, the push for a return to leisure travel raises questions about the ethics of vaccinated travelers demanding services among largely unvaccinated hosts. Such questions are especially complicated within communities that are economically dependent on tourism revenue.Dr. Mami Taniuchi, an infectious disease researcher at the University of Virginia, said that while the risk of breakthrough infections among vaccinated travelers is low, there is nevertheless an increased risk among unvaccinated workers who would not otherwise be coming together in such large numbers, or in such close quarters, to accommodate tourists.“The risks among vaccinated travelers are significantly reduced, but I worry about the risk of transmission among the people who are working around them,” Dr. Taniuchi said. It would help, she added, if travel workers were part of priority vaccination plans.“In a situation where there’s a mixing of people who are vaccinated and unvaccinated, most of the transmission events are going to be among those who are not vaccinated,” she said.The trouble with ‘vaccine passports’Health certificates that prove one’s immunization status — commonly referred to as “vaccine passports” — have been touted as keys to unlocking international travel. But so far the prospect of developing an easy-to-use and widely accepted digital certificate has been tripped up by a web of bureaucratic, logistical and technical snags.The Biden administration has ruled out the possibility of a centralized federal vaccination database. Instead, individual states (and some cities and territories) have been maintaining a patchwork of records. Any company or organization hoping to develop a digital vaccine certificate in the United States would therefore need to track down immunization data from a range of registries.At present, the most viable option for Americans to prove their immunization status while traveling internationally is to present the Covid-19 vaccination record cards they received when they got their shots. But the cards are easily forged. Several states have offered downloadable PDFs of the cards freely on their websites; fakes have even been offered for sale on TikTok, eBay and Craigslist.The development of digital health certificates is a multidimensional challenge, involving public policy, public health, customer experience and international cooperation, said Eric Piscini, who has overseen the development of IBM’s health passport app, Digital Health Pass.“I’m very optimistic about the long term,” Mr. Piscini said, “but the road is not easy.” He estimated that the European Commission’s Digital Green Certificate won’t be fully operational until late June or July. Integration with platforms beyond Europe will take time.Until then, he said, countries like Greece — which, for now, is verifying visitors’ immunization statuses with easily forged paper certificates — may face both a lack of trust from travelers and pushback from locals who fear that the policies are putting them at risk.Chairs were piled up in front of a restaurant that was closed because of lockdowns in Paris in March.Bertrand Guay/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAltered destinationsEven if international tourists could travel safely and securely, and without risking the well-being of their hosts, visitors may face yet another impediment: Their destinations may lack many of their usual draws.Throughout the world, the pandemic has shuttered museums, forced restaurants to close and curtailed countless other cultural offerings. Many regions in Europe are subject to local curfews that come and go as case numbers fluctuate. Last month in Spain, confusion reigned over whether socially distanced beachgoers and sunbathers were required to wear masks, though the rule was eventually clarified. (They aren’t.)All of which suggests that, in the near future, there may be a gap between tourists’ expectations and their destinations’ restricted realities.In Paris, for example, bars and restaurants have been closed since the end of October. So, too, are museums — including the Louvre, normally one of the most visited museums in the world. Nighttime curfews, from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m., have emptied the city’s streets.In late April, President Emmanuel Macron of France announced plans to relax certain restrictions beginning on May 19, but he left open the possibility of regional delays. The country, he said, will be able to pull an “emergency brake” in certain places, if need be.“I really don’t know what’s going to be attractive to tourists in Paris, now or in the near future,” said Yumi Kayayan, a travel writer who lives near the Louvre, citing a dearth of cultural offerings. The rules governing curfews and regional restrictions, she added, would be difficult for foreigners to make sense of. “To be honest, the rules are very confusing right now even for Parisians,” she said.The big picture, and the costsIn 2019, the number of international tourist arrivals reached 1.5 billion globally — a staggering figure. But grasping the scale of international travel, and the industries that have grown to support and encourage it, is central to understanding the forces pressing now for its return.Governments, tourism boards, airlines, hotel companies, travel agencies and cruise operators, along with tour bus drivers, housekeepers, local guides, pilots, restaurateurs, museum operators, bed-and-breakfast hosts, entertainers, caterers, fishermen, shopkeepers and bar owners — in short, all the people standing to profit from tourism dollars — are facing extreme economic pressure not to lose out on another tourism season. The past year without travel, when international arrivals dropped from 1.5 billion to 381 million, was devastating. For many, another similar year would be unthinkable.And so an already stressed system has been forced to confront an existential quandary: Do countries opt for continuing international lockdowns, or do they increase the risk of disease and court much-needed tourism revenue? New Zealand, which, through a combination of stringent lockdowns, border closures and strict quarantines, has all but eliminated the coronavirus from its shores, has staked its claim at one end of the spectrum. Greece appears to be claiming the other.There are no easy answers, no universal solutions. In many cases, the onus will fall on individual tourists — the fortunate and vaccinated few, plied with incentives and feverish for travel — to thoughtfully navigate the ethical considerations.Of all the variables, only one thing seems inevitable: The choices we make, whether to venture out or huddle close to home, are unlikely to bode well for the individual workers — the unfortunate and unvaccinated many — who, by dint of circumstance, are vulnerable to both the virus and the teetering fortunes of a hard-hit industry.“I do think we’ve learned important lessons over the course of the year about how to engage more safely in public spaces,” said Dr. Fortune, who emphasized that it’s important for vaccinated travelers to continue testing, wearing masks and practicing social distancing.“I think the real danger,” she added, “is that the most vulnerable people are the ones who have the least ability to mitigate risk.”Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to receive expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. More

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    As U.S. Prospects Brighten, Fed’s Powell Sees Risk in Global Vaccination Pace

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    Some countries are lagging behind in vaccinations, and policymakers warned that no economy is secure until the world is safe from coronavirus variants.Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, and the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Kristalina Georgieva, emphasized the economic need for worldwide vaccinations on Thursday.Pool photo by Stefani ReynoldsJerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, stressed on Thursday that even as economic prospects look brighter in the United States, getting the world vaccinated and controlling the coronavirus pandemic remain critical to the global outlook.“Viruses are no respecters of borders,” Mr. Powell said while speaking on an International Monetary Fund panel. “Until the world, really, is vaccinated, we’re all going to be at risk of new mutations and we won’t be able to really resume activity with confidence all around the world.”While some advanced economies, including the United States, are moving quickly toward widespread vaccination, many emerging market countries lag far behind: Some have administered as little as one dose per 1,000 residents.Mr. Powell joined a chorus of global policy officials in emphasizing how important it is that all nations — not just the richest ones — are able to widely protect against the coronavirus. Kristalina Georgieva, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, said policymakers needed to remain focused on public health as the key policy priority.“This year, next year, vaccine policy is economic policy,” Ms. Georgieva said, speaking on the same panel as Mr. Powell. “It is even higher priority than the traditional tools of fiscal and monetary policy. Why? Without it we cannot turn the fate of the world economy around.”Still, she also warned against pulling back on monetary policy support prematurely, saying that clear communication from the United States is helpful and important. The Fed is arguably the world’s most critical central bank thanks to the widely used dollar, and unexpected policy changes in the United States can roil global markets and make it harder for less developed economies to recover.“Premature withdrawal of support can cut the recovery short,” she cautioned.The Fed has held interest rates near zero since March 2020 and has been buying about $120 billion in government-backed bonds per month, policies meant to stoke spending by keeping borrowing cheap. Officials have been clear that they will continue to support the economy until it is closer to their goals of maximum employment and stable inflation — and that while the situation is improving, it is not there yet.“There are a number of factors that are coming together to support a brighter outlook for the U.S. economy,” Mr. Powell said, noting that tens of millions of Americans are now fully vaccinated, so the economy should be able to fully reopen fairly soon. “The recovery though, here, remains uneven and incomplete.”Employers added more than 900,000 workers to payrolls last month, but the country is still missing millions of jobs compared with February 2020 and fresh data showed that state jobless claims climbed last week. Mr. Powell pointed out that the burden is falling heavily on those least able to bear it: Lower-income service workers, who are heavily minorities and women, have been hit hard by the job losses.When asked what keeps him awake at night, Mr. Powell said that “there’s a pretty substantial tent city” he drives past on his way home from work in Washington. “We just need to keep reminding ourselves that even though some parts of the economy are just doing great, there’s a very large group of people who are not.”Given the pandemic’s role in exacerbating inequality, both Mr. Powell and Ms. Georgieva said it was critical to support workers and make sure they can find their way into new and fitting jobs.The Fed chair said policy tended to focus too much on short-term, palliative measures and not enough on longer-term solutions that help to expand economic possibility.“I think we need to, really as a country — and I’m not talking about any particular bill — invest in things that will increase the inclusiveness of the economy and the longer-term potential of it,” Mr. Powell said. “Particularly invest in people, so that they can take part in, contribute to and benefit from the prosperity of our economy.”Those comments come as the Biden administration is pushing for an ambitious $2 trillion infrastructure package that would include provisions for labor market training, technological research and widespread broadband. The administration has proposed paying for the package by raising corporate taxes.“For quite some time, we have been in favor of more investment in infrastructure. It helps to boost productivity here in the United States,” Ms. Georgieva said, calling climate-focused and “social infrastructure” provisions positive. She said they had not had a chance to fully assess the plan, but “broadly speaking, yes, we do support it.”But the White House’s plan has already run into resistance from Republicans and some moderate Democrats, who are wary of raising taxes or engaging in another big spending package after several large stimulus bills.Some commentators have warned that besides expanding the nation’s debt load, the government’s virus spending — particularly the recent $1.9 trillion stimulus package — could cause the economy to overheat. Fed officials have been less worried. “There’s a difference between essentially a one-time increase in prices and persistent inflation,” Mr. Powell said on Thursday. “The nature of a bottleneck is that it will be resolved.”If price gains and inflation expectations moved up “materially,” he said, the Fed would react.“We don’t think that’s the most likely outcome,” he said. More

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    I.M.F. Seminar Stresses Importance of Global Vaccinations

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    Whether it’s reporting on conflicts abroad and political divisions at home, or covering the latest style trends and scientific developments, Times Video journalists provide a revealing and unforgettable view of the world.Whether it’s reporting on conflicts abroad and political divisions at home, or covering the latest style trends and scientific developments, Times Video journalists provide a revealing and unforgettable view of the world. More

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    Biden, Pitching Stimulus, Promises Milestones for Covid-19 Vaccines and Checks

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    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Biden’s Stimulus PlanBiden’s AddressWhat to Know About the BillAnalysis: Economic RescueBenefits for Middle ClassAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyBiden, Pitching Stimulus, Promises Milestones for Vaccines and ChecksThe president kicked off a week of events to promote his $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan by appointing Gene Sperling, a longtime Democratic aide, to oversee spending under the bill.“The American Rescue Plan is already doing what it was designed to do: make a difference in people’s everyday lives,” President Biden said in a brief address from the White House on Monday.Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesJim Tankersley and March 15, 2021Updated 8:23 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — President Biden said on Monday that his administration was on pace to achieve two key goals by March 25: 100 million shots of Covid-19 vaccines since his inauguration and 100 million direct payments under his economic relief bill.The announcement was the first in what promises to be a series of end-zone dances that Mr. Biden and administration officials are set to stage this week as they promote the $1.9 trillion package that the president signed into law last week.“Shots in arms and money in pockets. That’s important,” Mr. Biden said in a brief address from the White House. “The American Rescue Plan is already doing what it was designed to do: make a difference in people’s everyday lives.”Over the weekend, the Treasury Department began issuing direct electronic payments of $1,400 per person, as authorized by the law, to low- and middle-income Americans. The United States has administered 92.6 million vaccine doses since Jan. 20, when Mr. Biden took office, according to data released on Monday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At the current pace of vaccinations, the country will pass 100 million doses before the end of the week, well ahead of the president’s promise of March 25.Mr. Biden had set the goal of 100 million doses before taking office, and he has repeatedly heralded the country being on pace to meet it, though many public health experts say it is relatively easily attainable.The relief plan also includes dozens of other provisions that have yet to be carried out, such as new monthly checks for parents, $350 billion for state and local governments and additional relief for the unemployed.With so much money at stake and Republicans criticizing the package as wasteful, Mr. Biden vowed to bring “fastidious oversight” to the relief bill in order to ensure that it is distributed quickly and equitably.He introduced Gene Sperling, a longtime Democratic policy aide who advised Mr. Biden’s presidential campaign last year, as his pick to oversee spending from the relief package. Mr. Sperling will be a senior adviser to the president and a White House employee, operating independently from an oversight commission established by Congress during the pandemic that consists of inspectors general from various agencies.“We have to prove to the American people that their government can deliver for them, and do it without waste or fraud,” Mr. Biden said.His remarks came as his team prepared to fan out across the country for a week of sales pitches for a bill that has proved very popular with voters but garnered zero Republican votes.Mr. Biden will visit Delaware County, Pa., on Tuesday and appear with Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday in Atlanta, which helped deliver Democrats the Senate majority that made the relief plan possible.A group of administration officials, including the first lady, Jill Biden, and Ms. Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff, will make their own trips. Ms. Harris and her husband landed in Las Vegas for an event on Monday afternoon, while Dr. Biden finished an event in New Jersey.The road show is an effort to avoid the messaging mistakes of President Barack Obama’s administration, which Democrats believe failed to continue vocally building support for his $780 billion stimulus act after it passed in 2009. The challenge for the Biden administration will be to highlight less obvious provisions, including the largest federal infusion in generations of aid to the poor, a substantial expansion of the child tax credit and increased subsidies for health insurance.Mr. Sperling’s challenge will be to meet Mr. Biden’s promises of transparency and accountability for those programs.The president and White House officials called Mr. Sperling well qualified for the task. He was the director of the National Economic Council under Mr. Obama and President Bill Clinton. In the Obama administration, where he first served as a counselor in the Treasury Department, Mr. Sperling helped to coordinate a bailout of Detroit automakers and other parts of the administration’s response to the 2008 financial crisis..css-yoay6m{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-yoay6m{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}.css-k59gj9{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;width:100%;}.css-1e2usoh{font-family:inherit;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;border-top:1px solid #ccc;padding:10px 0px 10px 0px;background-color:#fff;}.css-1jz6h6z{font-family:inherit;font-weight:bold;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.5rem;text-align:left;}.css-1t412wb{box-sizing:border-box;margin:8px 15px 0px 15px;cursor:pointer;}.css-hhzar2{-webkit-transition:-webkit-transform ease 0.5s;-webkit-transition:transform ease 0.5s;transition:transform ease 0.5s;}.css-t54hv4{-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-1r2j9qz{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-e1ipqs{font-size:1rem;line-height:1.5rem;padding:0px 30px 0px 0px;}.css-e1ipqs a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;}.css-e1ipqs a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}.css-1o76pdf{visibility:show;height:100%;padding-bottom:20px;}.css-1sw9s96{visibility:hidden;height:0px;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-1cz6wm{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;font-family:’nyt-franklin’,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;text-align:left;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1cz6wm{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-1cz6wm:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1cz6wm{border:none;padding:20px 0 0;border-top:1px solid #121212;}Frequently Asked Questions About the New Stimulus PackageThe stimulus payments would be $1,400 for most recipients. Those who are eligible would also receive an identical payment for each of their children. To qualify for the full $1,400, a single person would need an adjusted gross income of $75,000 or below. For heads of household, adjusted gross income would need to be $112,500 or below, and for married couples filing jointly that number would need to be $150,000 or below. To be eligible for a payment, a person must have a Social Security number. Read more. Buying insurance through the government program known as COBRA would temporarily become a lot cheaper. COBRA, for the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, generally lets someone who loses a job buy coverage via the former employer. But it’s expensive: Under normal circumstances, a person may have to pay at least 102 percent of the cost of the premium. Under the relief bill, the government would pay the entire COBRA premium from April 1 through Sept. 30. A person who qualified for new, employer-based health insurance someplace else before Sept. 30 would lose eligibility for the no-cost coverage. And someone who left a job voluntarily would not be eligible, either. Read moreThis credit, which helps working families offset the cost of care for children under 13 and other dependents, would be significantly expanded for a single year. More people would be eligible, and many recipients would get a bigger break. The bill would also make the credit fully refundable, which means you could collect the money as a refund even if your tax bill was zero. “That will be helpful to people at the lower end” of the income scale, said Mark Luscombe, principal federal tax analyst at Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting. Read more.There would be a big one for people who already have debt. You wouldn’t have to pay income taxes on forgiven debt if you qualify for loan forgiveness or cancellation — for example, if you’ve been in an income-driven repayment plan for the requisite number of years, if your school defrauded you or if Congress or the president wipes away $10,000 of debt for large numbers of people. This would be the case for debt forgiven between Jan. 1, 2021, and the end of 2025. Read more.The bill would provide billions of dollars in rental and utility assistance to people who are struggling and in danger of being evicted from their homes. About $27 billion would go toward emergency rental assistance. The vast majority of it would replenish the so-called Coronavirus Relief Fund, created by the CARES Act and distributed through state, local and tribal governments, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. That’s on top of the $25 billion in assistance provided by the relief package passed in December. To receive financial assistance — which could be used for rent, utilities and other housing expenses — households would have to meet several conditions. Household income could not exceed 80 percent of the area median income, at least one household member must be at risk of homelessness or housing instability, and individuals would have to qualify for unemployment benefits or have experienced financial hardship (directly or indirectly) because of the pandemic. Assistance could be provided for up to 18 months, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. Lower-income families that have been unemployed for three months or more would be given priority for assistance. Read more.He advised Mr. Biden’s campaign informally in 2020, helping to hone the campaign’s “Build Back Better” policy agenda. Friends have described Mr. Sperling in recent months as eager to join the administration; he had been mentioned as a possible appointee to lead the Office of Management and Budget after Mr. Biden’s first nominee for that position, Neera Tanden, withdrew amid Senate opposition.Mr. Sperling’s challenge with the rescue plan will be different than the one Mr. Biden faced in 2009, because the relief bill differs starkly from Mr. Obama’s signature stimulus plan. The Biden plan is more than twice as large as Mr. Obama’s. It includes money meant to hasten the end of the pandemic, including billions for vaccine deployment and coronavirus testing. The plans also have similarities, including more than $400 billion each in total spending for school districts and state and local governments.Oversight of the $1.9 trillion relief legislation is currently expected to rely on the byzantine oversight architecture that was established in the stimulus packages Congress passed last year.The new effort will continue to rely on the Government Accountability Office and the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, a panel of inspectors general from across the federal government.Less clear is the fate of the Congressional Oversight Commission, the five-person bipartisan panel that was created to oversee the $500 billion Treasury Department fund that supported the Federal Reserve’s emergency lending programs and loans to airlines and companies that are critical to national security. The commission currently has only three members, and the Fed programs concluded at the end of last year.The commission’s report in January said that it planned to continue “analyzing loans, loan guarantees and investments that were made prior to program termination” and producing reports.It is not clear if the existing mechanisms will be sufficient for overseeing the money in the new relief package, which will pump billions of dollars into states and cities. Additional oversight measures are likely to be needed.A Treasury official said that the department would set up a process to monitor the use of funds that are being sent to states to ensure that they are used according to the eligibility requirements in the law.Like many Americans in the pandemic, Mr. Sperling will have to coordinate and navigate those efforts virtually, at least at first. Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said on Monday that Mr. Sperling would work remotely from his home in California until he is vaccinated.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Photos: How Covid Changed New York’s Economy

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    Aug. 23, 2020 Times Square Oct. 1, 2020 Inside the Astoria, Queens, home of a couple while they worked alongside their two small children As the virus marched across the United States last year,over 20 million jobs vanished in just one month, the worst toll since the Great Depression. In New York, where cases peaked […] More

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    Companies Put Return-to-Work Plans in Motion

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    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesRisk Near YouVaccine RolloutNew Variants TrackerBuildings in Manhattan, where the amount of sublet office space available to rent surged nearly 50 percent last year.Credit…George Etheredge for The New York TimesReturn-to-Office Plans Are Set in Motion, but Virus Uncertainty RemainsMany employers are not making a decision until many workers are vaccinated. And some are making plans for “hybrid” work arrangements.Buildings in Manhattan, where the amount of sublet office space available to rent surged nearly 50 percent last year.Credit…George Etheredge for The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main storyJulie Creswell, Gillian Friedman and March 3, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETA year and a pandemic ago, over 100,000 people filled the central business district in Charlotte, N.C., pouring out of offices, including several recently built skyscrapers, and into restaurants, bars and sports venues. Then as the coronavirus sent employees to their homes, much of the city center quickly went quiet and dark.The return of those employees to their offices has been halting and difficult. Last fall, Fifth Third Bank began bringing back workers, but soon reversed course. LendingTree, which is moving from the suburbs to the city, is waiting for the end of the school year. Wells Fargo has delayed its return to the office several times, telling its employees recently that they will continue to work remotely through at least May 1. And Duke Energy will bring some employees back in June, and most of the 6,000 people at its headquarters in September, when children should be able to go back to schools.Corporate executives around the country are wrestling with how to reopen offices as the pandemic starts to loosen its grip. Businesses — and many employees — are eager to return to some kind of normal work life, going back to the office, grabbing lunch at their favorite restaurant or stopping for drinks after work. But the world has changed, and many managers and workers alike acknowledge that there are advantages to remote work.While coronavirus cases are declining and vaccinations are rising, many companies have not committed to a time and strategy for bringing employees back. The most important variable, many executives said, is how long it will take for most employees to be vaccinated.Another major consideration revolves around the children of workers. Companies say they can’t make firm decisions until they know when local schools will reopen for in-person learning.Then there is a larger question: Does it make sense to go back to the way things were before the pandemic given that people have become accustomed to the rhythms of remote work?“Everyone has different comfort levels with coming back,” said Chuck McShane, a senior vice president at the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance, an organization that has helped lure businesses to the area. “For some companies, it depends on the type of work you’re doing and whether you can remain at home. But a concern about continued remote work is, how do entry-level workers get socialized into the office culture?”About a quarter of employees across the country are going into offices these days, according to Kastle Systems, an office security firm that gets data from 3,600 buildings in the United States.Many companies, paying to rent empty office space, are eager for that number to rise. Their executives believe having employees working side by side improves collaboration, supports the development of younger employees and nurtures the heart and soul of any company — its culture.A mass return to the office would help revive the economies of city centers that have been ghost towns for months.Credit…George Etheredge for The New York TimesA lone pedestrian in Midtown Manhattan. The number of workers returning to the office remains below 20 percent in New York.Credit…George Etheredge for The New York TimesThat’s why some managers like Mark Rose, chief executive of Avison Young, a commercial property consulting and property management firm based in Chicago with offices around the world, is asking employees to return to the office in April.“You’re not going to be fired or written up if you don’t come back, but it is the expectation that, subject to local laws, and subject to your individual issues, that you start to make your way back,” Mr. Rose said about his 5,000 employees. “It absolutely is going to be an expectation.”A mass return to the office would, of course, be a boon for commercial real estate companies like Avison Young. Landlords, whose revenues are under threat as corporations move out or reduce the amount of space they rent, would breathe a sigh of relief. Many tenants have more space than they need. In Manhattan, the amount of sublet office space available to rent surged nearly 50 percent last year and it is currently 27 percent of all available space, the highest share since the period right after the 2008 financial crisis, according to Savills.Moreover, a return to the office would help revive city centers that have been ghost towns for months. Restaurants and bars could start hiring again and returning commuters could generate much-needed revenue for struggling transit systems.The course of the pandemic has largely dictated office attendance. That number crashed in March and April last year as the pandemic took hold and started slowly rising in the late spring, according to Kastle. Another surge in infections after Thanksgiving drove occupancy down but it appears to be on an upswing.There are big regional differences. In large cities in Texas, more than a third of workers are back, while the New York, San Francisco and Chicago areas remain below 20 percent.[embedded content]Some of these regional differences might be explained by how people get to work. “In places where people are commuting through public transportation, we know that makes people much more vulnerable to Covid because of the sheer presence of others, compared to if you’re commuting in your own car,” said Tsedal Neeley, a Harvard Business School professor who studies remote work.The Coronavirus Outbreak More