“The Perils of Politicizing a Plague - Courthouse News Service” plus 1 more

The Perils of Politicizing a Plague - Courthouse News Service

Posted: 28 Jun 2020 02:30 PM PDT

Politicizing a plague has a long, sordid history, dating back to the Black Death. The medieval political mindset of leaders in many countries today indicates that the more things change, the more they remain the same.

Death celebrates the bubonic plague, from the "Liber Coronicarum," 1493.

(CN) — Politicization of disease has a long, depressing history in what we know today as the Western World. For centuries, it was a series of attacks against Jews — already segregated and ghettoized, forced into a job (money-lending) that the dominant Christian and Muslim populations claimed to abhor — which made it easier, when plague struck, to kill, sack and deport the residents of the ghettoes.

While Jews, so far, have escaped this fate during the Covid-19 pandemic, politicians around the world with medieval mindsets have employed the same tactics — with a twist, or several twists.

One goal of this series is to show how disease has been politicized since the Black Death, the worst pandemic in history, which arrived in Europe by 1347 after killing uncounted thousands in Asia.

A second goal will be to show how today's vicious and increasingly hallucinatory politicization of Covid-19 reflects the pogroms of the past — again, with a twist. When the citizens of medieval Europe sacked and burned Jewish ghettoes during the Black Death, claiming that Jews were "poisoning the wells," the Christians had no idea what caused the plague, or who carried it — what the vectors were.

Today we know. But the pattern is the same: Donald Trump blames China; China retorts, "We've controlled it better than you did;" Trump blames New York and California; Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro says it's no problem at all; India's Narendra Modi "opens up" his country to appeal to his relatively wealthy voters, despite the mounting and undercounted death toll.

The third goal will be to examine whether today's politicization of disease differs from the previous ones, and if so, in what ways.

The conclusion we will state in advance: Pre-scientific societies, cloaked in ignorance, flailing about for a way to deal with plague, resorted to execration and violence against "socially distant" groups. And though we do not yet understand all the ins and outs of Covid-19, we — modern humanity — have fallen into the same execrable habits: Blame outsiders — the people and governments we already despise. Attack, defame, and loot if you can.

The Courthouse News database already contains more than 100 lawsuits about Covid-19 scams: phony virus tests, bogus vaccines, counterfeit masks, telephone fraud, internet fraud. Even televangelist Jim Bakker has been accused of peddling a phony cure, by the attorney general of Arkansas.

Seen from the awful heights of science today, the residents of 14^th century Strasbourg, Basel and Frankfurt may be excused — perhaps — for resorting to mass terror in a time of mass fear.

But what excuse can government leaders make today for spending so much time politicizing a lethal disease, rather than devoting all their efforts to trying to limit its spread, seeking a cure, and spending money on the science needed for it, rather than on propaganda?

There is no excuse for this.

In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has claimed more than 500,000 lives and continues to stalk the world, it is worse than sad — it is a comment upon humanity — that so many so-called leaders, in so many countries — above all in Brazil, the United States, India, Russia and China — try to use a global catastrophe for small-minded, partisan political advantage that hurts their own people.

Plague Politics in Europe

Courthouse News outlined a history of plagues in a previous series.

This series will focus on how Western societies and governments have weaponized diseases and politicized them.

We begin with the Black Death, the worst pandemic in history, which killed one-third to one-half of the people of Europe. Most accounts peg its arrival in Europe at October 1347, when ships fleeing plague in the Crimea — or perhaps merely merchant ships — arrived in Messina, Sicily.

By then, the zoonotic disease, Yersinia pestis — transmitted to humans by fleas deserting the rats that died of it — had already killed uncounted thousands in China and across the Asian steppes as traders and warriors carried it west.

Zoonotic diseases are diseases that jump across animal hosts, sometimes from one species to another, and then to humans. The Black Plague jumped from rats to fleas to humans. Covid-19, according to the best scientific guesses today, may have jumped from bats to other mammals to humans.

Weaponization of the Black Death preceded its politicization. The earliest record of the arrival of Y. Pestis in Europe is probably the 1348 account of Gabriele de Mussi (ca. 1280-1356), which begins: "In the name of God, Amen. Here begins an account of the disease or mortality which occurred in 1348, put together by Gabrielem de Mussis of Piacenza."

Catapulting Corpses

The chronicler probably was not in the Crimean city of Caffa (now Feodosija) when the plague arrived, but his account was nearly contemporaneous.

He wrote: "In 1346, in the countries of the East, countless numbers of Tartars and Saracens were struck down by a mysterious illness which brought sudden death."

This happened as the Tartars, or Mongols — descendants of Genghis Khan's Golden Horde — were besieging Caffa.

"All medical advice and attention was useless; the Tartars died as soon as the signs of disease appeared on their bodies: swellings in the armpit or groin caused by coagulating humors, followed by a putrid fever."

The description of the swellings, or buboes, makes it clear that this was the bubonic plague. The "putrid" adjective indicates stench, which surely influenced European theories that contagions were carried by "vapors" in the air.

De Mussi continued: "The dying Tartars, stunned and stupefied by the immensity of the disaster brought about by the disease, and realizing that they had no hope of escape, lost interest in the siege. But they ordered corpses to be placed in catapults and lobbed into the city in the hope that the intolerable stench would kill everyone inside. … Moreover, one infected man could carry the poison to others, and infect people and places with the disease by look alone. No one knew, or could discover, a means of defense."

De Mussi said that some Caffans escaped by sea to Genoa and Venice, carrying the plague.

The chronicle, cited bymicrobiologistMark Wheelis in "Biological Warfare at the 1346 Siege of Caffa," in the September 2002 issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases, makes it clear that plague sufferers knew that the disease spread from human contact, though they did not know how. Wheelis then was a senior lecturer in microbiology at the University of California, Davis. Repeated calls to UC-Davis went unanswered.

The reference to the "intolerable stench" was repeated for hundreds of years, even in the United States, where "miasma" or "nighttime humors" were believed to spread disease.

Wheelis did not believe that the refugees of Caffa were responsible for bringing the Black Death to Europe: It would have arrived anyway. But de Mussi's account shows an early example of the weaponization of disease.

This is different from the politicization of it — which was not far behind.

(During and after World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union, among others, devoted substantial resources to weaponizing diseases, including Y. Pestis, anthrax, botulism, staphylococcus, brucellosis (undulant fever) and tularemia.

(This allegedly stopped in the 109 countries that signed the Convention on the Prohibition and Stockpiling of Bacteriological and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction, which allegedly took effect on March 26, 1975. But weaponization of disease has not stopped. It continues, often under the guise of "biodefense." Russia's biological warfare program is extensively detailed in Russian defector Ken Alibek's 1999 book, "Biohazard.")

Politicization of the Black Death

A Jew 'poisons a well' in a 14th century French woodcut. (Museum of Archaeology, Herne)

By 1348, Y. Pestis was ravaging Europe, and by 1349 Christians were massacring Jews by the thousands, blaming them for "poisoning the wells."

One of the first mass murders came in April 1348, in Toulon, Provence, where Christians sacked the Jewish quarter and murdered dozens of Jews in their homes. More mass murders and robberies soon followed in Barcelona and elsewhere in Catalonia.

The height of the massacres came in 1349. On Jan. 9 in Basel, 600 Jews were burned to death, including their rabbi. Two thousand Jews were burned alive that year in the Valentine's Day massacre in Strasbourg — even before plague came to the city. An indeterminate number were murdered in Erfurt on March 21: Estimates range from 100 to 3,000. More massacres followed in Flanders, Frankfurt am Main, Cologne and in Mainz, where 3,000 Jews were killed.

After the genocides, Christians sifted through the ashes to enrich themselves from the Jews' belongings. More than 500 Jewish quarters were sacked and burned in the first two years of the pogroms.

Profiteering from the Covid-19 pandemic may not be as blatant as sifting through medieval ashes for melted gold and silver, but it has become a multimillion-dollar business in the United States and elsewhere.

The biggest known haul was British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's ill-advised $20 million purchase of home-test coronavirus kits from a Chinese company, all of which were bogus, according to The New York Times.

Smaller-scale frauds, still running into the millions of dollars, abound across the United States. More such lawsuits are being filed every day.

During the Black Death, some Jewish ghettoes did suffer fewer per capita infections than in the quarters from which they had been banned. Historians have attributed this to better hygiene, with emphasis on hand-washing before and after meals, dietary restrictions, and the social isolation already being enforced on the ghettoes.

Pogroms waned by 1351, after the plague had killed more than one-third of the people of Europe, but did not stop. On May 22, 1370, citizens of Brussels killed dozens of Jews and banished the survivors. The spark was the supposed desecration of hosts at a synagogue. Christians claimed the Jews had stabbed the hosts, which miraculously shed blood.

The allegedly stolen hosts were recovered and revered by Brussels Christians as the "Sacrament of Miracle" until after the Holocaust of WWII made that unpopular. The reliquary that contained the hosts is still housed in the Brussels cathedral.

Syphilis

Syphilis, which began ravaging Europe in 1494, was known in Italy as the French disease, and in France as the Italian disease. Theories that it was brought back by conquistadors from the New World, where it was a relatively benign disease, have been discredited, but continue to circulate. What's certain is that the natives of the New World suffered far greater mortality per capita from measles, smallpox, influenzas and other diseases introduced by the invaders than Europeans suffered from syphilis.

Syphilis, because of its sexual transmission, fortified the prescientific delusion of disease as a moral stain, punishable by God. According to this religious view of disease, if plague was an act of God against sinners, the "cure" could be to murder the people who were accused of spreading it.

Smallpox …

The death toll from smallpox across millennia may approach or surpass the mortality from the Black Death. As many as 300 million people died of smallpox in the 20^th century alone. Its morbidity rate is as high as one-third, though many people survived it, among them Queen Elizabeth I and Beethoven. The earliest record of it is "the pustular rash on the mummified body of Pharaoh Ramses V of Egypt, who died in 1157 B.C.," according to a BBC report of 2011, "Smallpox: Eradicating the Scourge."

… and Vaccine

The British physician Edward Jenner invented vaccination in 1796. Clued in by folk tales, and observing that milkmaids who contracted a mild form of the disease, known as cowpox, seemed to be immune from smallpox, Jenner extracted pus from the hand of a milkmaid and inserted it into an incision he made in the arm of an 8-year-old boy. By 1801 Jenner was publicly promoting his procedure as proof against smallpox.

Public reaction was immense — and often hostile.

Some clerics called it "un-Christian" because cowpox came from an animal.

"Scientific" objectors denounced it, because smallpox and other diseases were known to come from "vapors" in the air, particularly at night.

But with smallpox continuing to devastate England, and the world, the English Parliament approved a Vaccination Act in 1853, mandating vaccination of children. In 1867 the Parliament toughened the act to require vaccination of everyone up to 14 years old, and added penalties for violators.

Opponents echoed the religious objections and called it invasion of privacy. They formed an Anti-Vaccination League and Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League, and began publishing pamphlets, according to a 2002 article in BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal), "Anti-vaccinationists past and present."

In an anti-vaccination march in 1885 in Leicester, a center of vaccine resistance, thousands of protesters carried banners, a child's coffin and an effigy of Jenner, according to a 2000 article in The Society for the Social History of Medicine, "They might as well brand us: Working class resistance to compulsory vaccination in Victorian England."

The resistance led the Parliament to create a commission to study vaccination, which found in 1896 that vaccination did prevent smallpox, but suggested removing penalties for failing to vaccinate. This led to the Vaccination Act of 1898, which included a conscientious objector clause that parents could invoke — just as parents in the United States today can object to public school districts' requirements that their children be vaccinated against a host of diseases to be enrolled.

English resistance led to similar resistance in the United States, including the Anti-Vaccination Society of America, founded in 1879, and similar societies in New England (1882) and New York City (1885). American anti-vaxxers fought in court to repeal vaccination laws in several states, including Illinois, California and Wisconsin.

The anti-vaccination movement reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1905, in Jacobson v. Massachusetts — the first Supreme Court case about the power of states in public health law. The case originated in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1902, where the city Board of Health ordered all city residents to be vaccinated against smallpox. Henning Jacobson objected, on privacy grounds, and was criminally charged. Jacobson appealed, and the Supreme Court ruled that states could enact compulsory laws to protect the public from communicable disease.

The 'Spanish' Flu

Estimations of mortality, hard to confirm for lack of data, have been revised upward for the "Spanish flu," which killed at least 50 million people in the aftermath of World War I.

Nowadays, historians and epidemiologists use a broad spectrum of mortality, ranging from 2.5% to 5% of the world's population, which translates to 50 million to 100 million deaths — from a flu.

The pandemic, therefore, was five to 10 times deadlier than the First World War, according to an April 23 article in Humanitarian Law and Policy, a publication of the International Red Cross.

"The lives lost during this episode teach us a valuable lesson: transparent information is crucial at all times," the journal reported. "To respect and implement public health measures, the population needs to trust the authorities. In 1918, after four years of conflict and propaganda, that trust was simply broken. What was true then is even more so in 2020. Mistrust of information from health authorities is still a challenge. Modern means of communication and the recent development of digital social networks make it even harder. Undocumented claims, false information, conspiracy theories, and dangerous conclusions can spread as quickly as viruses."

Polio

Poliomyelitis has killed and paralyzed humankind since at least 1,400 B.C., when an Egyptian stela depicted a sufferer with a withered leg.

Probably because the disease was still crippling and killing more than 500,000 people a year, there were no widespread protests in the late 1950s when the United States began vaccinating millions of children with the Salk and Sabin vaccines in public schools.

Memories of the late, wartime President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a polio sufferer who used a wheelchair, surely contributed to Americans' acceptance of the vaccines.

DPT and MMR Vaccines

Introduction of the DPT (diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough) and tetanus) and MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccines in the 1960s and '70s did not go as smoothly.

The MMR vaccine began being widely distributed in 1971 in the United States. Measles then was killing more than 2 million people a year worldwide, mostly children.

Interestingly, semi-widespread public resistance to the MMR vaccine did not begin in the United States until a generation after its introduction.

In 1998, British scientist Andrew Wakefield claimed that he had found a connection between the MMR vaccine and autism. The Lancet, the respected British medical journal that published Wakefield's article, retracted it in 2010.

The British General Medical Council found that Wakefield had a "fatal conflict of interest" because he had been paid to seek evidence to support a lawsuit filed by parents of autistic children. Wakefield was barred from practicing medicine in Great Britain.

Numerous studies since then have found no link between the MMR vaccine and autism, but the anti-vaxxer crusade continues in the United States — even denouncing the search for a vaccine for Covid-19. One researcher who asked to remain anonymous told Courthouse News he believes that parents of autistic children drive the campaign, searching for someone to blame for what remains a scientific mystery — a recurrence of the medieval linking of disease to moral stain.

AIDS

The politicization of AIDS was so obvious, and is so recent, that it is hardly necessary to recount. The late Randy Shilts's 1987 book, "And the Band Played On," describing the Reagan administration's sluggish reaction to what some called "the gay plague," laid it out in detail. As with syphilis, and "blame the Jews" for just about anything, reactionaries cast the disease as God's punishment for a moral failing — the unspoken corollary being that those who died of it deserved it.

Lessons? Learned?

Governments, authoritarian or ostensibly democratic, will always try to seize upon social chaos to try to cement themselves in office. Rulers, by instinct, will blame "outsiders" to try to shore up their power by exploiting fear in a time of unrest.

In the Covid-19 pandemic, the United States, Brazil, China, India and Iran have done this more brazenly and shamelessly than most other nations. Suffice it to say that the United States, by any estimate the most technologically and economically advanced country in the world, with 4.25% of the world's population, has suffered 25.4% of the world's confirmed deaths by Covid-19.

The politicization of Covid-19, so far, has not been as overtly violent as the weaponization of the Black Plague. But in the 21^st century, after humans have all but conquered smallpox, polio and other fatal diseases, it may be even more shameful.

The Senate Judiciary Committee last week discussed a bill to hold China responsible for billions of dollars in damages that Covid-19 has wrought upon the United States. It was an act of pure political grandstanding that could not be enforced even if it were passed. It was political panic.

The rulers and citizens of Europe had no idea what caused the Black Plague and spread it. So they panicked.

We know what causes Covid-19, though there is much more to learn about it. But governments around the world, including our own, have no excuse for spending so much time, treasure and effort in politicizing a disease rather than trying to control it.

It's important to note that governments today are panicking, far more than their citizens are. Most citizens around the world try to abide by protective suggestions and orders. It's the governments and politicians that are panicking.

The Black Plague itself — the disease — was never politicized — politics were directed against the people who supposedly carried it.

The politicization of Covid-19 is a bizarre throwback to the medieval age: the wild claims on right-wing U.S. websites that Bill Gates, George Soros and the World Health Organization designed Covid-19; that vaccines will kill you or control your mind; that, as Donald Trump Jr. said, reports on the pandemic are a fraudulent plot by the Democratic Party and "the media" to steal this year's presidential election.

These politically inspired fantasies are believed, apparently, by millions of people in the United States, where even bacilli, viruses and chemical reactions have been politicized.

Once upon a time, the United States was a world leader in science. We still are, but for how long?

The sad conclusion must be that with billions of people living in poverty around the world, without access to basic health care, medicine and even clean drinking water, while their oppressive governments reject science and increase appeals to extremist religions — Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Hindu — without deep-ranging government reforms, which are unlikely to happen, there is no reason to expect that this plague will end soon, or will be our last.

Part II of the Courthouse News series on politicizing plagues, concentrating on the world's present pandemic, will be published Tuesday.

Surging Coronavirus Cases Push Latin America ‘to the Limit’ - The New York Times

Posted: 10 Jun 2020 02:45 AM PDT

This briefing has ended. Read live coronavirus updates here.

Here's what you need to know:

A Covid-19 field hospital on the outskirts of Sao Paulo, Brazil, on Tuesday. — Credit...Andre Penner/Associated Press

As the virus pushes Latin America 'to the limit,' coup threats rattle Brazil.

The outbreak is spreading rapidly in Latin America and the Caribbean, prompting Dr. Carissa F. Etienne, the director of the Pan American Health Organization, to warn on Tuesday that the unfolding crisis had "pushed our region to the limit."

Cases are surging in countries that took early isolation measures — like Peru, which is just behind Italy in its case count — and in those that ignored recommendations, like Brazil, which has the second-highest tally worldwide, behind only the United States, according to a New York Times database.

Forced to choose between watching citizens die of the virus or of hunger, governments are loosening lockdowns, even as they watch infections climb.

"We go to bed without eating, giving nothing to our children," said María Camila Salazar, 22, a mother of two in Medellín, Colombia, who collects cardboard, glass and plastic for a living. The country's caseload — nearly 41,000 as of Tuesday night — has soared since President Iván Duque of Colombia relaxed lockdown rules.

And in Brazil, the crisis has grown so intense that some of the country's most powerful military figures are warning of instability — an ominous sign for a country that shook off military rule in the 1980s and built a thriving democracy in its wake.

Far from denouncing the idea, President Jair Bolsonaro's inner circle seems to be clamoring for the military to step into the fray. One of his sons, a congressman who has praised the former military dictatorship, has even warned of a looming "rupture" in the country's democratic system.

Widespread problems mar Georgia's primaries, a test of its ability to hold an election in a pandemic.

Credit...Audra Melton for The New York Times

Georgia election officials, poll workers and voters reported major trouble with voting in Atlanta and elsewhere in the primaries on Tuesday, a test of the state's preparations to hold elections during the pandemic.

Elections have emerged as a major point of contention since the outbreak began, with many states moving to embrace voting by mail even as President Trump has objected strenuously with false charges that such voting is riddled with fraud or that it favors Democrats.

In Georgia, there was a meltdown of new voting systems put in place after widespread claims of voter suppression during the state's 2018 governor's election, with scores of new voting machines reported missing or malfunctioning. Hourslong lines formed at polling places across the state, and some people gave up and left before casting ballots.

The office of Brad Raffensperger, Georgia's secretary of state, blamed the problems on a variety of factors, including a shortage of experienced poll workers because of virus fears and a learning curve in using the new machines.

More than one million Georgia voters had already cast ballots before Tuesday, most of them by mail, after Mr. Raffensperger sent absentee ballot applications to all active voters.

But those who had voted in person before Tuesday at early-voting sites had already reported long waits — in some cases up to seven hours. New rules for social distancing and disinfecting voting machines had caused many of those delays.

Clarice Kimp, who arrived at her polling place in DeKalb County on Tuesday morning before 7, waited until 9:15 a.m. to vote. "There were supposed to be 12 people working there, and there were only four," she said. "They could not get the voting machines to register voting cards, and they said they could not reach the technicians."

Finally, the poll workers handed out provisional ballots, Ms. Kimp said. But those were also in short supply.

By midafternoon, several counties had begun extending voting hours to account for time lost because of the new machines.

U.S. roundup

Top U.S. infectious disease expert describes the virus as his 'worst nightmare.'

Credit...Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times

The top U.S. infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, delivered a grim assessment of the devastation wrought around the world by the coronavirus, describing Covid-19 on Tuesday as his "worst nightmare" — a new, highly contagious respiratory infection that causes a significant rate of illness and death.

"In a period of four months, it has devastated the whole world," Dr. Fauci told biotech executives during a conference held by the Biotechnology Innovation Organization. "And it isn't over yet."

His discussion with a moderator was conducted remotely and videotaped for conference participants. Although Dr. Fauci said he had known that an outbreak like this could occur, one aspect surprised him: "how rapidly it just took over the planet."

An efficiently transmitted disease can spread worldwide in six months or a year, but "this took about a month," Dr. Fauci said. He attributed the rapid spread to the contagiousness of the virus and extensive world travel by infected people.

Vaccines are widely regarded as the best hope of stopping or at least slowing the pandemic, and Dr. Fauci said he was "almost certain" that more than one would be successful. Several are already being tested in people, and at least one is expected to move into large, Phase 3 trials in July.

But much is still unknown about the disease and how it attacks the body, research that Dr. Fauci described as "a work in progress." Another looming question, he said, was whether survivors who were seriously ill would fully recover.

As the U.S. caseload approaches two million, here's a look at other important developments around the country:

Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey — one of the hardest-hit states in the U.S. — said on Tuesday that he was lifting the stay-at-home order that he issued in March and increasing the limits on how many people can gather indoors and outdoors.
Harvard University said that it would dip into its endowment, the largest university endowment in the world, to avoid furloughing or laying off employees and to cover other costs during the pandemic, which is projected to cost more than $1 billion in revenue.
Senators are debating whether to extend a substantial package of unemployment benefits enacted as part of the stimulus bill to help Americans weather the pandemic, after the latest jobs report showed an unexpected rebound in hiring.

In Virginia, Gov. Ralph Northam moved on Tuesday to ease some restrictions in the northern part of the state. Beginning Friday, he said, restaurants in Northern Virginia could offer indoor dining at half capacity, gyms could reopen at 30 percent capacity, and social gatherings of up to 50 people would be allowed. .
Regular testing of nursing home employees is seen as one of the most important ways to contain outbreaks, and a debate has emerged over who should pay for it. Nursing homes, which have received nearly $5 billion in federal stimulus funding to cover virus expenses — including testing — have asked for more help. Insurers have also said they should not be required to pay.
Connecticut's top health official on Tuesday ordered hospitals that were barring visitors because of the coronavirus to make exceptions for patients with disabilities.
The U.S. Defense Department on Monday started lifting travel restrictions. Thirty-nine states and five host nations — Bahrain, Belgium, Britain, Germany, Japan — were part of the first wave of openings, allowing personnel to travel on business farther than the 100-mile restriction that had been in place if conditions at bases there met specific benchmarks.
In a sign of the economic pressure on local newspapers, The Miami Herald announced it would move out of its Doral, Fla., headquarters in August, ending its lease and directing its employees to continue working from home until year's end.

Global Roundup

South Korea rolls out smartphone tracing to fight new infections.

Credit...Bae Byung-Soo/Newsis, via Associated Press

South Korea on Wednesday began requiring gyms, nightclubs, karaoke bars and concert halls to register visitors through smartphone QR codes, in the country's latest effort to fight a new wave of coronavirus infections linked to entertainment venues.

Until now, these facilities have mostly asked their customers to write down their identities and contact information in rosters before entering. But when the authorities tried to track down customers after the new infections began cropping up last month, they found that much of the information was fake.

Under the new system, nightclubs and other facilities must install QR scanners, and customers must download a QR code that contains their basic personal information. Any QR codes that the government collects are to be automatically destroyed after four weeks.

South Korea's project is just the latest effort worldwide to harness common consumer technology to track new cases. But privacy concerns have made the approach slower to catch on in the United States and Britain. And in China, the government's virus-tracking software has prompted fears that it will randomly collect citizens' information in the name of disease prevention.

There has not yet been a significant public debate over South Korea's new QR code tracking system, although that may come as the government rolls it out.

Since last month, South Korea has eased its social-distancing restrictions, saying it was confident in its virus-containment strategy. But it has also urged the people to stick to preventive measures, and acknowledged that its goal is to keep the daily caseload below 50 until a vaccine is available.

South Korea's daily caseload has fluctuated between 38 and 57 over the past week, and the country reported 50 new cases on Wednesday.

In other news from around the world:

As India continued to ease its lockdown on Wednesday, officials reported almost 10,000 new cases over the past 24 hours. Nearly 8,000 people in the country have died, and the total number of infections is approaching 300,000.
In Russia, where the number of cases is approaching 500,000, Moscow's tough lockdown ended abruptly on Tuesday as a nationwide vote on extending President Vladimir V. Putin's rule loomed. The Russian capital continues to report more than 1,000 new virus cases a day.
Malaysia, citing virus fears, has said it will ask Bangladesh to take back 269 Rohingya refugees who arrived by boat after months at sea.
The U.S. Agency for International Development issued regulations on Tuesday that broadly restrict its workers from using federal funding to buy surgical masks, gloves and other protective medical gear to confront the virus overseas, in order to keep that equipment available for health providers in the United States.
Britain on Tuesday abandoned plans to bring back all primary school students before the summer holidays. The Department of Education had aimed for the pupils to spend four weeks in classes, but many schools have said they are already full and cannot safely accommodate more.
Residents of Spain will have to continue to wear face masks even after the country officially lifts its state of emergency on June 21, the health minister, Salvador Illa, announced on Tuesday as the government presented its "new normalcy" plan.
In France, where the virus has killed over 29,000 people, the Paris prosecutor has opened an investigation into dozens of complaints over the authorities' response to the epidemic.

The W.H.O. stumbled. Scientists see a pattern.

Credit...Christopher Black/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Officials at the World Health Organization on Tuesday walked back an earlier claim by one of their colleagues that transmission of the virus by people without symptoms is "very rare."

The officials called it a "misunderstanding," but it's not the first time the W.H.O.'s assessment has seemed to lag behind scientific opinion.

Even as agency leads the worldwide response to the pandemic, several scientists warned on Tuesday, it is failing to take stock of rapidly evolving research findings and to communicate clearly about them.

Another example: The agency delayed endorsing masks for the general public until Friday, claiming there was too little evidence that they prevented transmission of the virus. Virtually all scientists and governments have been recommending masks for months.

The W.H.O. has also said repeatedly that small airborne droplets, or aerosols, are not a significant factor in the pandemic's spread, although a growing body of evidence suggests that they may be.

These scientific disagreements have wide policy implications. Many countries, including the United States, adopted lockdown strategies because they recognized that isolating only people who were sick might not be enough to contain the epidemic.

"On the one hand, I do want to cut the W.H.O. some slack, because it is hard to do this in an evolving pandemic," said Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute. "At the same time, we do rely on the W.H.O. to give us the best scientific data and evidence."

France looks back at 1940 for answers about why it lost the war against the virus.

Credit...James Hill for The New York Times

It became the indispensable book of the pandemic, its French author revealing how society's weaknesses and human frailties gave way to disaster.

As the coronavirus tore through France, intellectuals, historians and journalists cracked open their old copies in search of eternal truths in an unsettling time.

It was not Albert Camus's "The Plague.'' "Strange Defeat'' by Marc Bloch, a scholarly dissection of the fall of France in 1940, has become the reference point to understand the underpinnings of what went wrong this time.

Why did France record one of the world's highest Covid-19 death tolls and mortality rates? Why is it expected to suffer a catastrophic drop of 11 percent in its gross domestic product?

"Strange Defeat'' described a country that, in 1940, believed it had the best army in the world but that was trounced by Hitler's forces in six short weeks.

Bloch, a historian and army officer, wrote that an ossified bureaucracy and an out-of-touch elite had left his country without the proper defenses and without the critical capacity to adapt to a rapidly changing situation on the ground.

To some readers, the parallels to 2020 cannot be ignored.

In the early months of this year, as the virus ravaged China and then found a European foothold in Italy, France watched with confidence, seemingly secure behind a health care system that it has long believed to be one of the world's best.

Once again, as in 1940, France's historical rival, Germany, has come out ahead. Though Germany has recorded nearly 9,000 deaths, France's death toll is more than 29,000.

Malaysia says it will ask Bangladesh to take back fleeing Rohingya, citing virus restrictions.

Credit...Malaysia Maritime Enforcement Agency/EPA, via Shutterstock

The Malaysian government, citing fears over the spread of the coronavirus, has said it will ask Bangladesh to take back 269 Rohingya refugees who arrived by boat after months at sea.

The refugees, who escaped genocide and persecution in Myanmar, were detained Monday in Malaysia after their dilapidated boat neared the island of Langkawi.

Malaysia has a history of turning back Rohingya refugee boats and can now cite the tightening of border controls over the virus as another reason to refuse them entry.

"The Rohingya should know, if they come here, they cannot stay," Malaysia's defense minister, Ismail Sabri Yaakob, told reporters on Tuesday.

About 730,000 Rohingya fled Myanmar in 2017 as the military waged a genocidal campaign of murder and rape. Others fled earlier, and now about a million Rohingya live in squalid camps in Bangladesh.

Leaving by boat, often at the mercy of human traffickers, is one of the few ways they can escape from the camps.

The boat that reached Malaysia is believed to have departed from Bangladesh in February with many hundreds of passengers aboard, but only 269 reached Malaysia. The fate of the others remained unclear as of Wednesday afternoon.

It also appeared unlikely that the refugees pose a coronavirus threat to Malaysia, which has reported just over 8,000 cases. The first report of the virus reaching the Bangladesh camps was not until mid-May.

Health experts fear that the spread of the virus in the crowded camps could be catastrophic.

Human rights advocates urged Malaysia to recognize the refugees' rights under international law.

"The Rohingya who were on that boat are not criminals, but asylum seekers in need of safety and protection," said Kasit Piromya, a former Thai foreign minister and a board member of Asean Parliamentarians for Human Rights.

Amazon insists its warehouses are safe, after months of criticism.

Credit...Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

After months of being embattled over its response to the coronavirus, Amazon is working to convince the public that its workplaces — specifically, the warehouses where it stores everything from toys to hand sanitizer — are safe during the pandemic.

The company is spreading its safety message after a period that Jeff Bezos, the chief executive, has called "the hardest time we've ever faced." Amazon struggled to balance a surge of orders with the health concerns of the one million workers and contractors at its warehouses and delivery operations.

Workers at hundreds of its facilities became ill with Covid-19, and many blamed the company. At the height of the crisis, one executive said he quit over the firings of workers who had raised questions about workplace safety during the pandemic.

While Amazon has rolled out safety changes, many workers and officials said the measures were unevenly deployed and came too late.

The New York Times agreed to tour a warehouse in Kent, Wash., to see the changes that Amazon and many of its workers around the country had described.

The most significant transformation is the building's entryway. When workers arrive, they are channeled past thermal cameras to take their temperatures. At a small stand enclosed in plexiglass, a worker hands out masks using tongs.

Workers then enter a makeshift testing center and are handed, via forceps, a self-service test kit for the virus. After administering the test, they seal the kit and place it into a green bin.

After a coronavirus outbreak on a U.S. Navy carrier, many sailors have antibodies.

Credit...U.S. Navy, via Reuters

The agonizing tale of the coronavirus outbreak on the carrier Theodore Roosevelt starting in March led to the infection of hundreds of crew members, an emergency stop in Guam, the removal of the ship's captain and the resignation of the acting Navy secretary.

But while the Navy and civic leaders in Guam struggled to quell the spread of the virus, naval officials and researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began a medical investigation into the outbreak, the results of which were released on Tuesday.

The study found that, among a few hundred service members who volunteered to be tested and questioned about their experiences onboard and while in Guam, more than a third had enough functioning antibodies to Covid-19 to indicate they could have some protection against the virus, at least for a limited time.

Some were still showing the presence of neutralizing antibodies, which block the virus from binding to cells, three months after the onset of symptoms.

"This is a promising indicator of immunity," said Daniel C. Payne, an epidemiologist and one of the lead authors of the study, which was undertaken in conjunction with the Navy. "We don't know how long-lasting, for sure, but it is promising."

In late April, after the outbreak began, naval medical officers began testing the volunteers. Blood samples were sent overnight from Guam to Georgia, where they were tested at the C.D.C. labs, using their own antibody tests.

The first testing found the presence of coronavirus antibodies in 228 (59.7 percent) of the volunteers. Of those, 135 (59.2 percent) had antibodies powerful enough to neutralize the virus and thwart infection.

The virus economy deals a devastating blow to Indian women.

Credit...Atul Loke for The New York Times

Before the pandemic, India's women were already dropping out of the labor force. Virus restrictions — and one of the worst economic slumps in decades — now threaten even more losses for them.

One national employment study conducted in May found that a higher proportion of women reported losing their jobs than men. Among Indians who remained employed, women were more likely to report anxiety about their futures.

The global slowdown could have especially stark consequences in developing economies, where about 70 percent of working women are employed in the informal economy, with few protections.

Although India recently lifted most of its lockdown measures in an effort to ease pressure on the economy, many women fear that even a limited degree of freedom will be difficult to regain.

Seema Munda, 21, kept refusing her parents' pleas to get married. She slipped out of her conservative village in northern India and found work stitching shirts at a factory in Bengaluru, 1,000 miles to the south.

"This job liberated me," she said.

But when the pandemic hit, Ms. Munda's life of independence shattered as she became one of the 120 million Indians left jobless. After first being forced to take shelter in a school after losing her hostel room, Ms. Munda made a wrenching decision and boarded a train home.

As the virus stirs prejudice, Asian-American illustrators reflect on identity.

Credit...Joan Wong

Since the virus began spreading in the United States, there has been an uptick in acts of violence and prejudice toward Asian-Americans. For many, these episodes represent a compounded bigotry: They are wrongly blamed for the pandemic, and they are lumped together as a single group.

The term "Asian-American" masks profound national and cultural differences in the name of representation. The Times asked 11 illustrators of Asian descent to create a self-portrait, reflecting on their heritage, their stories of immigration and how they identify as Asian-American.

"In the last couple of years we have become more visible and more heard," writes Joan Wong, above, an American artist born to parents from Hong Kong. "It has made me feel less alone and injected me with more pride."

The British government abandons plans to bring back primary school students.

Credit...Oli Scarff/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The British government on Tuesday abandoned plans to bring back all primary school students before the summer holidays amid growing concerns that filling up classrooms could lead to new infections.

The Department of Education had aimed for all primary schoolchildren to spend four weeks in school before the summer holidays, but many schools have said they are already full and cannot accommodate more children safely.

The education secretary, Gavin Williamson, said on Wednesday that the department's plans were no longer feasible and that schools would be asked to take in as many children as possible while implementing social-distancing measures and a maximum class size of 15 students.

"The safety of our children, young people and staff remains my priority," Mr. Williamson said addressing Parliament on Tuesday. "We are not able to welcome all primary school children back before the summer for a full month."

"We all know how important it is for children and young people to be in education and childcare and it is vital that we get them back there as soon as the scientific advice indicates that we can," he added.

Frequently Asked Questions and Advice

Updated June 24, 2020
- Is it harder to exercise while wearing a mask?
  
  A commentary published this month on the website of the British Journal of Sports Medicine points out that covering your face during exercise "comes with issues of potential breathing restriction and discomfort" and requires "balancing benefits versus possible adverse events." Masks do alter exercise, says Cedric X. Bryant, the president and chief science officer of the American Council on Exercise, a nonprofit organization that funds exercise research and certifies fitness professionals. "In my personal experience," he says, "heart rates are higher at the same relative intensity when you wear a mask." Some people also could experience lightheadedness during familiar workouts while masked, says Len Kravitz, a professor of exercise science at the University of New Mexico.
- I've heard about a treatment called dexamethasone. Does it work?
  
  The steroid, dexamethasone, is the first treatment shown to reduce mortality in severely ill patients, according to scientists in Britain. The drug appears to reduce inflammation caused by the immune system, protecting the tissues. In the study, dexamethasone reduced deaths of patients on ventilators by one-third, and deaths of patients on oxygen by one-fifth.
- What is pandemic paid leave?
  
  The coronavirus emergency relief package gives many American workers paid leave if they need to take time off because of the virus. It gives qualified workers two weeks of paid sick leave if they are ill, quarantined or seeking diagnosis or preventive care for coronavirus, or if they are caring for sick family members. It gives 12 weeks of paid leave to people caring for children whose schools are closed or whose child care provider is unavailable because of the coronavirus. It is the first time the United States has had widespread federally mandated paid leave, and includes people who don't typically get such benefits, like part-time and gig economy workers. But the measure excludes at least half of private-sector workers, including those at the country's largest employers, and gives small employers significant leeway to deny leave.
- Does asymptomatic transmission of Covid-19 happen?
  
  So far, the evidence seems to show it does. A widely cited paper published in April suggests that people are most infectious about two days before the onset of coronavirus symptoms and estimated that 44 percent of new infections were a result of transmission from people who were not yet showing symptoms. Recently, a top expert at the World Health Organization stated that transmission of the coronavirus by people who did not have symptoms was "very rare," but she later walked back that statement.
- What's the risk of catching coronavirus from a surface?
  
  Touching contaminated objects and then infecting ourselves with the germs is not typically how the virus spreads. But it can happen. A number of studies of flu, rhinovirus, coronavirus and other microbes have shown that respiratory illnesses, including the new coronavirus, can spread by touching contaminated surfaces, particularly in places like day care centers, offices and hospitals. But a long chain of events has to happen for the disease to spread that way. The best way to protect yourself from coronavirus — whether it's surface transmission or close human contact — is still social distancing, washing your hands, not touching your face and wearing masks.
- How does blood type influence coronavirus?
  
  A study by European scientists is the first to document a strong statistical link between genetic variations and Covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus. Having Type A blood was linked to a 50 percent increase in the likelihood that a patient would need to get oxygen or to go on a ventilator, according to the new study.
- How many people have lost their jobs due to coronavirus in the U.S.?
  
  The unemployment rate fell to 13.3 percent in May, the Labor Department said on June 5, an unexpected improvement in the nation's job market as hiring rebounded faster than economists expected. Economists had forecast the unemployment rate to increase to as much as 20 percent, after it hit 14.7 percent in April, which was the highest since the government began keeping official statistics after World War II. But the unemployment rate dipped instead, with employers adding 2.5 million jobs, after more than 20 million jobs were lost in April.
- What are the symptoms of coronavirus?
  
  Common symptoms include fever, a dry cough, fatigue and difficulty breathing or shortness of breath. Some of these symptoms overlap with those of the flu, making detection difficult, but runny noses and stuffy sinuses are less common. The C.D.C. has also added chills, muscle pain, sore throat, headache and a new loss of the sense of taste or smell as symptoms to look out for. Most people fall ill five to seven days after exposure, but symptoms may appear in as few as two days or as many as 14 days.
- How can I protect myself while flying?
  
  If air travel is unavoidable, there are some steps you can take to protect yourself. Most important: Wash your hands often, and stop touching your face. If possible, choose a window seat. A study from Emory University found that during flu season, the safest place to sit on a plane is by a window, as people sitting in window seats had less contact with potentially sick people. Disinfect hard surfaces. When you get to your seat and your hands are clean, use disinfecting wipes to clean the hard surfaces at your seat like the head and arm rest, the seatbelt buckle, the remote, screen, seat back pocket and the tray table. If the seat is hard and nonporous or leather or pleather, you can wipe that down, too. (Using wipes on upholstered seats could lead to a wet seat and spreading of germs rather than killing them.)
- What should I do if I feel sick?
  
  If you've been exposed to the coronavirus or think you have, and have a fever or symptoms like a cough or difficulty breathing, call a doctor. They should give you advice on whether you should be tested, how to get tested, and how to seek medical treatment without potentially infecting or exposing others.

Nursery school and three primary school year groups have been eligible to return to school since June. 1, but many students have stayed home because of safety concerns and capacity issues.

New Jersey's governor lifts the state's stay-at-home order.

Credit...Bryan Anselm for The New York Times

Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey said on Tuesday that he was lifting the stay-at-home order that he issued in March and increasing the limits on how many people can gather indoors and outdoors.

"With more and more of our businesses reopening, we are no longer requiring you to stay at home, but we are asking you to continue to be responsible and safe," he said.

The moves are a major milestone for the state, which was among the hardest hit, with more than 164,000 cases and more than 12,000 deaths. After peaking in April with more than 4,000 new daily cases, the number declined gradually and has remained below 1,000 in June. It dipped below 500 for the last three days.

The governor said indoor gatherings could involve 50 people, up from 10, or 25 percent of a building's capacity, with face coverings required. That extends to religious institutions but does not include indoor dining or performance venues.

Mr. Murphy also raised the limit on outdoor gatherings from 25 people to 100. The easing of restrictions does not apply to spectators at sporting events.

The limit on the size of outdoor gatherings will be raised to 250 people by June 22 and to 500 by July 3. Because graduation ceremonies will be permitted on July 6, schools may plan to have as many as 500 people. Gatherings like political protests of "any persuasion" and outdoor religious services will not be limited in size.

But Mr. Murphy said state officials might reverse permission for bigger gatherings "should we see any troubling signs in the data indicating a spike in cases." The governor said state officials needed more data to assess the spread and urged residents to get tested, especially recent demonstrators.

Facing a billion-dollar loss, Harvard will tap its rich endowment to avoid staff cuts.

Harvard said that it would dip into its endowment, the largest university endowment in the world, to avoid furloughing or laying off employees and to cover other costs during the pandemic, which is projected to cost more than $1 billion in revenue.

The university's governing body voted for a one-time special expenditure from the endowment — valued at $41 billion before the outbreak — to cover immediate virus costs, including room and board rebates to students for the spring semester and their moving costs. The money will also cover an increase in financial aid, enhancements in remote learning and public health improvements on campus, officials said.

Harvard said it had lost $415 million since the spring because of the pandemic and estimated that it would lose another $750 million in the fiscal year that begins in July.

A Harvard spokesman declined to put a dollar amount on extra funds that the university would draw from its endowment or to disclose how much the endowment had shrunk as the pandemic upended the market.

In April, Harvard turned down $8.6 million in taxpayer money from a $14 billion federal emergency relief package for higher education after President Trump attacked the university for receiving federal funds despite its large endowment. "Harvard's going to pay back the money," Mr. Trump said.

But Harvard said there was nothing to pay back because it had never applied for or received the money, even though it was included in the federal formula.

'We're in a new phase': As New York reopens, officials urge continued caution.

Video player loading — A 7 p.m. ritual outside Brooklyn Hospital Center in Fort Greene, where crowds have gathered to cheer hospital workers during the virus crisis, ended Monday with a farewell party. Video footage from Kara Baker.

With all of New York State now reopened in some capacity, officials on Tuesday preached caution, warning that as hundreds of thousands of people returned to work, the risk of spreading the virus remained.

"We're in a new phase," Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said. "Reopening resets the whole game."

The governor unveiled a new online dashboard that he said would show the percentage of positive cases by region and county. The information would signal "tremors of a spike" in infections if one were on the horizon, he said.

In New York City, which began reopening this week, Mayor Bill de Blasio offered a similar message. Based on the timeline outlined by the state, it is technically possible that the city could move into Phase 2 on June 22. But the mayor has targeted early July for that next step, and on Tuesday he continued to emphasize patience.

Any missteps, he added, could lead to a resurgence of the virus that would put the city under "fuller restrictions or worse." "I do not want to unduly raise expectations," the mayor said. "We are not like the other regions of state."

Arts and sports roundup

'God understands you can't sing right now': Choirs search for a safe way to return.

Credit...Nidarosdomens Guttekor

Group singing has gone from being something life-affirming to a potential source of disease, even death. Outbreaks have been linked to choir rehearsals and church services around the world.

Some countries have banned group singing as a result, and scientists are studying the risks. But with conflicting messages from the authorities worldwide, for now singers are left with little but anxiety.

The most obvious reason singing is a risk for transmission is that droplets of saliva containing the virus can spray from someone's mouth. But a potentially bigger issue comes from tiny particles, called aerosols, that are so light that they travel on air currents. There is uncertainty over whether aerosols spread the virus, but some scientists say that outbreaks among choir groups suggest they played a role, especially when singers said they had followed social-distancing rules. In May, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued guidance that churches should ensure that choirs follow social distancing. Its previous advice that was to "consider suspending or at least decreasing" singing.

Lucinda Halstead, the president-elect of the Performing Arts Medical Association, said if "it's a small group and it's outside and the wind is not at your back," the risk of catching the virus while singing would be reduced.

But she said that choirs probably cannot return to their past ways without a vaccine or rapid testing. "This is only temporary." she said. "God understands you can't sing right now."

Here are other arts- and sports-related developments:

The Salzburg Festival announced on Tuesday that it would go forward in August, but in modified form. The original plan — more than 200 performances over 44 days — will become 90 performances over 30 days. Audiences of up to 1,000, about half the capacity of its main theater, will sit in staggered formation.
The first women's golf major championship of this year, the Evian Championship, was canceled on Tuesday because of travel restrictions and quarantine requirements related to the pandemic. The L.P.G.A. Tour has canceled or postponed nearly two dozen tournaments and has not held an event since the Women's Australian Open in February.
Chicago canceled all arts performances and festivals in parks through Labor Day, including Lollapalooza, Chicago SummerDance and the Chicago Jazz Festival.
The N.F.L. has detailed the steps that teams must take before players can return to training facilities, the latest effort by the league to return to business as usual in an off-season that has largely been conducted virtually.
A North Carolina auto racing track was ordered to close after it staged two events with packed stands last month. Ace Speedway held its season opener on May 23, with a near-capacity crowd at the 5,000-seat facility, in defiance of Gov. Roy Cooper's order banning outdoor public gatherings of more than 25 people. The speedway held another night of racing on May 30.
Visitors can once again enter the Pantheon in Rome after the monument joined a growing list of sites that reopened their doors after weeks of lockdown. In Milan, the building housing Leonardo's "Last Supper" also reopened Tuesday, as did the Capodimonte Museum in Naples.
While the in-person art world in New York City remains mostly shuttered, some galleries are opening spaces in the Hamptons.

Relief workers abroad are limited in use of U.S. virus funds for masks and gloves.

Credit...Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times

Relief workers are broadly restricted from using federal funding to buy surgical masks, gloves and other protective medical gear to confront the virus overseas, in order to keep that equipment available for health providers in the United States, according to regulations issued Tuesday by the U.S. Agency for International Development.

The new rules did grant an exception: The money can be used to buy equipment if it is produced in the part of the world where it would be used, a key provision that helps local economies that also are struggling because of the virus.

Humanitarian aid groups have waited for months for the guidance, a topic of intense debate within the Trump administration, as masks, gloves, ventilators and respirators were desperately needed by American health workers to care for U.S. patients.

As they waited, the groups received only a fraction of nearly $1.6 billion that Congress approved in March to send to aid workers in foreign countries.

The new guidance, a copy of which was obtained by The Times, requires that humanitarian aid groups that are distributing support to some of the poorest or most unstable countries seek written approval before using federal funding to buy N95 respirators or other surgical face masks, medical gloves, ventilators, certain air purifiers and filters and American-made testing kits.

The limits on the protective medical gear will remain in place until there is a surplus of supplies in the United States.

The chairman of the Senate health committee wants the U.S. to be better prepared for the next pandemic.

Credit...Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times

The chairman of the Senate health committee, hoping to pass legislation this year to address future pandemics, on Tuesday released a set of proposals for beefing up the U.S. ability to respond to a public health crisis — and is crowdsourcing suggestions from the public.

In a white paper entitled "Preparing for the Next Pandemic," Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, identified five priorities: accelerating research and development of tests, treatments, and vaccines; expanding disease surveillance capability; rebuilding the Strategic National Stockpile; beefing up state and local public health departments; and improving coordination of federal agencies during a public health emergency.

"In this internet age, attention spans are short," Mr. Alexander said in a statement. "Even with an event as significant as Covid-19, memories fade, and attention moves quickly to the next crisis. That makes it imperative that Congress act on needed changes this year in order to better prepare for the next pandemic."

Public health experts have been warning of a deadly pandemic for decades. In 2015, Susan Rice, the national security adviser to President Barack Obama, created a "global health security and biodefense unit" inside the White House. But President Trump disbanded the team.

Mr. Alexander's white paper steered clear of laying blame for the lack of preparedness. But he said the federal government must play a critical role in preparedness., noting, for example, that "only the federal government can fund research at the scale necessary to create tests, treatments, and vaccines" and "coordinate the distribution of supplies and information at the national level."

Mr. Alexander, who has held his Senate seat since 2003 and will retire when his term expires early next year, said he hoped that the paper would lead to discussion among lawmakers and the public. Anyone with ideas may submit them, no later than June 26, to PandemicPreparedness@help.senate.gov.

Connecticut hospitals must exempt patients with disabilities from 'no visitor' policies.

Connecticut on Tuesday ordered hospitals that were barring visitors because of the pandemic to make exceptions for patients with disabilities. They must be allowed to have a family member or a care provider accompany them when they need support.

The order assures "vital safeguards for individuals with special needs to ensure proper and safe care is being provided and received in a hospital setting," Gov. Ned Lamont said in a statement released by the federal health department's Office of Civil Rights.

The order resolved complaints that disability rights groups had filed with the federal agency.

Roger Severino, who directs the health department's Office of Civil Rights, said in an interview that Connecticut's order should be a model for other states trying to balance safety with civil rights during the pandemic.

"People should not be left to fend for themselves when they can be reasonably accommodated," he said. "The safety of patients with disabilities shouldn't be pitted, as if it's a zero-sum game, against the safety of others. Both can be protected."

Moscow is recording over 1,000 new cases per day, but abruptly ends its stay-at-home order.

Credit...Kyodo News, via Getty Images

Moscow's tough lockdown ended abruptly on Tuesday as a nationwide vote on extending President Vladimir V. Putin's rule loomed. The Russian capital continues to report more than 1,000 new virus cases a day.

Barbershops, beauty parlors, veterinary clinics and photography studios were allowed to reopen on Tuesday, and the city's intricate system of digital permits for leaving one's house stopped operating. A day earlier, Mayor Sergei S. Sobyanin said the spread of the virus in the capital had slowed to the point that the city's shelter-in-place measures, some of the world's most stringent outside of China, could be lifted.

Libraries and agencies including real estate, advertising and consulting will be allowed to reopen next Tuesday, Jun,Mr. Sobyanin said, along with museums and zoos as long as they sell tickets online. Sporting events will reopen to spectators at 10 percent capacity, and restaurants and cafes will be able to serve customers seated outdoors. Gyms, pools and kindergartens will fully open on June 23.

"The battle is not yet over," Mr. Sobyanin told Muscovites on his website. "Nevertheless, I would like to congratulate you with our latest joint victory and with a major step toward returning to full-fledged life."

But critics said Mr. Sobyanin was declaring victory far too soon and pointed to possible pressure from the Kremlin. Last month, Mr. Putin postponed the military parade celebrating the 75th anniversary of Soviet victory in World War II; it will be held June 24. And Mr. Putin rescheduled to July 1 a constitutional referendum that would allow him to stay in office until 2036.

A grand parade coupled with a renewed sense of optimism thanks to relaxed lockdown measures could help Mr. Putin drum up much-needed enthusiasm for the July 1 vote, analysts said. It wasn't clear what metrics Mr. Sobyanin was using to suddenly end the lockdown in Moscow, which has reported a total of 198,590 cases and 3,029 deaths. The number of daily new reported cases had hovered around 2,000 for two weeks before falling to 1,572 on Tuesday.

Child welfare advocates worry that abuse cases are going unreported in New York City and other areas.

Credit...Natalie Keyssar for The New York Times

Reports of child abuse cases in New York City cases have dropped 51 percent compared with the same time period a year ago, a concerning trend among child welfare advocates who worry an unseen epidemic of abuse is spreading behind locked doors.

When the virus shuttered New York City, the fragile system of safeguards designed to protect children has fallen apart and left them confined at home, the most dangerous place they can be, Times correspondent Nikita Stewart reports. In the first eight weeks of spring 2019, New York City's child welfare agency received an average of 1,374 cases of abuse or neglect to investigate each week. In the same period this year, that number fell to 672, a decline of 51 percent.

Teachers, pediatricians, social workers and camp counselors, for example, are typically the first to discover bruises or signs of hunger or mistreatment of children. But the virus has transitioned those interactions to virtual ones.

The tensions resulting from stay-at-home orders and social distancing — isolation, unemployment and even alcohol abuse — can easily erupt into violence, child welfare experts said. Sexual predators now have all-day access to children who would normally be in school; in the Bronx, for example, sexual abuse is the most common type of child abuse arrest since the start of the pandemic, according to the borough's District Attorney's Office.

Credit...DeAgostini/Getty Images

Antarctica is the only continent that has not reported any cases of the virus. In an effort to keep it that way, Antarctica New Zealand, the government agency responsible for carrying out New Zealand's activities on the continent, will cut back on research trips.

The institute will support only "long-term science monitoring, essential operational activity and planned maintenance this season in Antarctica," it said in a statement on Tuesday. The reduction will minimize the number of visitors to the continent.

Antarctica is not a country and is governed by the Antarctic Treaty system, which came into force in 1961. New Zealand is among the countries that operates a base there.

Antarctica New Zealand and other government agencies, the statement said, are preparing a "managed isolation plan" for the continent, which is largely isolated anyway, to make sure it remains free of the virus.

"We acknowledge the impact this Covid-19 response will have on research this season, but these are unprecedented times," Simon Trotter, the general manager of Antarctic operations for the institute, said on Tuesday.

Reporting was contributed by Ian Austen, Ken Belson, Ronen Bergman, Aurelien Breeden, Choe Sang-Hun, Emily Cochrane, Michael Cooper, Maria Cramer, Abdi Latif Dahir, Reid J. Epstein, Jack Ewing, Richard Fausset, Sheri Fink, Jerry Garrett, Denise Grady, Anemona Hartocollis, Mike Ives, Lara Jakes, David D. Kirkpatrick, Aaron Krolik, John Leland, Antonio de Luca, Iliana Magra, Apoorva Mandavilli, Alex Marshall, Patricia Mazzei, Jesse McKinley, Raphael Minder, Paul Mozur, Norimitsu Onishi, Aimee Ortiz, Richard C. Paddock, Bill Pennington, Elisabetta Povoledo, Suhasini Raj, Scott Reyburn, Jaspal Riyait, Rick Rojas, Kai Schultz, Jeanna Smialek, Kaly Soto, Matt Stevens, Alexandra Stevenson, Nikita Stewart, Katie Thomas, Anton Troianovski, Julie Turkewitz, David Waldstein, Karen Weise, Edward Wong, Jin Wu, Sameer Yasir, Ceylan Yeginsu, Raymond Zhong and Karen Zraick.

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