CoronavirusCovid News: China Reports Its First Deaths From the Coronavirus in Over a Year

China, which is facing its worst Covid-19 surge since the coronavirus first emerged in the city of Wuhan, on Saturday reported its first deaths from the virus in more than a year.

The two deaths were in the northeastern province of Jilin, according to China’s national health commission. This week, Jilin banned its 24 million residents from leaving the province or traveling between cities because of the surging case numbers there.

China is grappling with sustained outbreaks in two-thirds of its provinces, posing the toughest test yet of its zero-tolerance policy toward the virus. Before Saturday, the country had not reported a Covid-19 death since January 2021. Many experts, however, suspect that some deaths may have gone unreported and that case numbers in general may have been understated by officials.

On Saturday, China reported 3,844 new locally transmitted cases, most of them in Jilin. A week ago, the province was reporting about 100 cases a day. More than 25,000 cases have been reported in China in recent weeks, many of which were of the highly transmissible BA.2 subvariant of Omicron.

Even as other countries loosen pandemic restrictions, China continues to impose lockdowns and other stringent measures. In part, that is because its older population has a relatively low vaccination rate and because medical care in its vast rural areas is often basic and could be overwhelmed by major outbreaks.

Still, the health authorities have had to modify their policies somewhat as cases have surged. Under the latest guidelines, people who test positive but have only mild symptoms will no longer have to be hospitalized, but will be required to stay in centralized isolation facilities.

As of Saturday, China had officially reported 4,638 deaths from the pandemic.

The Los Angeles Unified School District, the second-largest in the United States, will lift indoor mask requirements for students and staff next week in an agreement with its teachers’ union, the district announced Friday.

The new policy will take effect “no later than Wednesday,” and masking in classrooms will still be strongly recommended, the district said in its announcement. Los Angeles Unified had remained one of the last holdouts after California dropped its school mask mandate on March 11. Teachers in the city had insisted on higher vaccination rates among students before easing the requirement.

“I strongly support ending the indoor mask requirement and am committed to continuing to uphold our science-based approach to Covid-19 safety and protocols,” Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho said in the statement. “We know some in our school communities and offices will continue to wear masks, while others may not. Please consider your situation and do what is best for you or your child.”

Like other states, California has seen its coronavirus infection numbers drop rapidly in recent weeks as the Omicron wave subsides. As part of the agreement, the district will attempt to administer P.C.R. tests on all students and employees through the end of the school year.

A February poll found broad support in the state for continued coronavirus measures in schools, including vaccine mandates and mask requirements. Four out of 10 parents said they were not confident that their children could be kept safe from the virus in schools.

New York City’s school district, the nation’s largest, stopped requiring masks on March 7. Nationwide, 92 percent of schools have dropped mask mandates, according to Burbio, a data company that has been tracking school reopenings.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics now recommend masking in schools under certain conditions, including high rates of virus transmission in the surrounding community.

An even more transmissible version of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus known as BA.2 now accounts for about 30 percent of new cases in New York City, health officials said on Friday.

The subvariant is more transmissible than BA.1, the Omicron version that drove a sudden spike in cases and hospitalizations in New York last December and disrupted the city’s path to economic recovery.

Dr. Ashwin Vasan, who started this week as the city’s new health commissioner, said that he and others were watching closely to see if New York was on the verge of experiencing a wave of BA.2 cases like those taking place in parts of Europe and Asia, including Hong Kong. But as of this week, he said, there is no cause for immediate alarm.

“Community spread remains low,” Dr. Vasan said, in his first news conference as health commissioner. “Hospitalizations and deaths are stable or decreasing.”

New cases of the virus had been declining sharply since early January, when the surge that started the month before began to plummet from a peak of more than 40,000 average daily cases, leaving a relatively low death toll. But cases have been increasing in recent days, said Dr. Celia Quinn, the deputy commissioner who oversees the Health Department’s public health laboratory.

As of Thursday, an average of 905 cases per day were reported in New York City, a 35 percent increase from the average of less than 700 two weeks ago, according to a New York Times database. The uptick comes as Mayor Eric Adams has rolled back some mask and vaccination requirements as part of a bid to restore a sense of normalcy in the city and promote economic recovery.

Officials will continue to monitor cases and hospitalization rates, Dr. Quinn said. But she noted that BA.2 “does not appear to cause more severe illness” than BA.1, and she and Dr. Vasan said they believed hospitals would be prepared if there were any significant increase in severe illness.

BA.1 is responsible for the majority of cases in the United States, but the share of BA.2 cases is growing, reaching about 23 percent, according to estimates published Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Epidemiologists are not yet sure whether BA.2 will drive a new spike in virus cases and related hospitalizations. BA.1 proved to be intrinsically less severe than prior variants, causing less damage in the lungs, and researchers in Britain and Denmark have found that BA.2 does not carry a higher risk of hospitalization. Vaccines were also effective at reducing severe illness from BA.1, particularly among those who received a booster shot, and researchers in Britain and Qatar have found the same for BA.2.

But though 77.4 percent of New York City residents are fully vaccinated, just 36.1 percent have received an additional vaccine dose.

“It’s essential that New Yorkers go and get boosted when they’re eligible,” Dr. Vasan said.

In New Jersey, Gov. Philip D. Murphy said that he and the state’s health officials expect to “eventually see an increase in the number of cases” that follows their rise across the globe. The state’s seven-day average for confirmed cases was 790 on Friday, down 12 percent from a week ago, Mr. Murphy said.

Hong Kong said that more than one million people in the city of 7.5 million had tested positive for the coronavirus since the beginning of the pandemic, a worrying milestone for a city being battered by an extraordinarily lethal Omicron wave.

Hong Kong health officials said in a news conference on Friday that they had recorded 20,082 daily new cases and 206 new deaths, bringing the cumulative totals to more than 1,010,000 cases and more than 5,000 deaths.

While other places in Asia like China, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam are experiencing similar case waves driven by Omicron, Hong Kong’s death rate is high, far outstripping that of mainland China, which has reported a total of about 4,600 deaths in a population of over 1.4 billion. Almost 95 percent of the city’s deaths have come in the past 30 days, government data show.

Hong Kong was once viewed as a world leader in controlling the coronavirus crisis. But despite limits on public gatherings, restrictions on nighttime dining and mask mandates, a wave of Omicron cases that began late last year has overwhelmed its health care system, leading to bodies of the dead being piled up in hospitals.

In the past two weeks, Hong Kong has recorded about 65 percent of cases that it has ever had, government data show. Experts have said that figure is most likely an undercount. Using models, researchers at the University of Hong Kong estimated this week that at least 3.6 million people had been infected. Up to 4.5 million people may get the virus before the current outbreak ends, they added.

The outbreak involves the BA.2 subvariant of Omicron, which is more transmissible than Omicron’s first version, BA.1, though not necessarily more virulent. Researchers in Britain and Denmark have found that BA.2 is no more likely to cause hospitalizations, but studies elsewhere are ongoing.

Other factors in Hong Kong’s surge are also at play: The city is densely populated, and has a low vaccination rate among those 70 and older and residents of nursing homes. Its success in keeping the virus at bay until recently has also left many residents without any enhanced immunity.

Hong Kong’s government is caught between the surging cases and deaths, pressure from Beijing for mass testing and lockdowns, and pandemic fatigue among residents. On Thursday, Carrie Lam, the city’s chief executive, said at a news conference that she would move up the review of its current measures planned for April 20 to as soon as next week and reconsider its flight bans, compulsory testing and mandatory quarantines for travelers. “I have a very strong feeling that people’s tolerance is fading,” she said.

Hong Kong’s case data included results from rapid antigen tests, officials said, which the government has accepted in lieu of P.C.R. test results since last month to expand testing capacity. Residents who test positive with rapid antigen tests have not had to seek confirmation with P.C.R. tests. But the government has also asked them to self-report their infections, or face legal consequences. Those who receive a positive result from a rapid antigen test may be randomly requested to be administered a P.C.R. test, officials said.

At a news conference on Friday, Ms. Lam underscored the urgency of reporting home tests to health authorities. “If there are people blatantly refusing to comply, then isn’t it incumbent upon the law enforcement body to do something?” she said.

Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering, which has supplied the raw numbers for Our World in Data and The New York Times’s coronavirus world map, has reported fewer cases than the Hong Kong government.

The difference is because the center has not been including results from the city’s rapid antigen tests in its total, but in an email on Friday, it said it intended to incorporate them in the future.

Throughout the pandemic, many people in the United States desperately hoped for an end to mask wearing, isolation from friends and co-workers, and six feet of social distance. Others not so much.

In fact, new research suggests, millions have no intention of ending some pandemic behaviors even if the threat from the coronavirus and its variants were to fully subside.

Roughly 13 percent of people in the study reported that they did not intend to change their protective behaviors, like avoiding elevators, mass transit and eating indoors at restaurants.

The research was conducted by economists from Stanford University, the University of Chicago and ITAM, a think tank in Mexico. They used survey data comparing attitudes over the course of the last two years from about 5,000 people monthly, sampled from the total of 75,000 respondents for broader research on working and living habits in light of Covid.

One of the researchers, Nicholas Bloom, a professor of economics at Stanford, said he called the phenomenon “long social distancing” — a play on “long Covid,” the term for the extended physical and mental problems that some Covid patients experience. He said he was “astounded” by the size of the group and that the level of commitment had stayed consistent over nearly two years.

“I can understand that people in July 2020 are terrified,” he said. At the time, about 11 percent of people surveyed reported they would “have no return to pre-Covid activities.” But in February 2022, the latest monthly report from the economists, the figure was slightly up, to nearly 13 percent. Weighted for the national work force, that’s about 20 million adults, said Dr. Bloom.

“Even if it’s just half that, it’s a huge number,” he said. “It’s many millions of people who have disappeared out of society.”

The reason or reasons were not clear. Dr. Bloom hypothesized that some might be “happy with their hermit lifestyle” and others might find interaction so stressful that they prefer isolation, or fear getting sick even if the coronavirus threat were to disappear.

He also said that holding onto social distancing might comfort some people, but could damage society’s “social fabric.”

“It’s an extreme version of ‘Bowling Alone,’” he said, referring to a data-driven book published in 2000 about Americans’ increasing social isolation. “Maybe you feel you’re engaged with your neighbor, but you are really not.”

A flurry of high-profile coronavirus cases in Washington — including in people who have been around President Biden — has raised new questions about the trajectory of the two-year-old pandemic, even as the White House has signaled confidence in the country’s ability to resume normal activities.

On Thursday, Mr. Biden canceled face-to-face meetings with Prime Minister Micheal Martin of Ireland after the prime minister received a positive result from a coronavirus test during a gala event on Wednesday night that both men attended.

In the past week, Doug Emhoff, the husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, tested positive for the virus, as did former President Barack Obama. At least nine House Democrats received positive tests this week after a party retreat in Philadelphia and late-night voting at the Capitol.

White House officials said Mr. Biden, 79, had not been in close contact with anyone who tested positive and did not appear worried about his safety. They said that the administration was monitoring a highly transmissible subvariant known as BA.2, which is spreading rapidly in parts of China and Europe, but that there appeared to be little reason to think there would be a U-turn back to social distancing and universal mask wearing in the United States.

But the recent cases in the nation’s capital, and the spread of yet another variant around the world, highlight a challenge for Mr. Biden and his team: how to embrace the country’s desire to move on while being careful not to declare victory over a virus that is still making people sick and killing more than 1,000 Americans each day.

Emily Cochrane, Adeel Hassan and Alyssa Lukpat contributed reporting.

In good years, flu kills Americans in the low tens of thousands and sickens many times more. Yet even in the time of Covid, flu, the other respiratory killer caused by a virus, is underestimated. Almost half of American adults don’t bother to get vaccinated against it. Despite the ongoing Covid experience, researchers and historians don’t expect Americans’ attitudes toward flu to change much.

“Statistics on flu have been given to the public,” said Dr. David Morens, a flu researcher and senior adviser to the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “And they just don’t care.”

Some researchers and historians are examining attitudes toward flu for clues about how Americans will deal with Covid in the years to come. Will Covid, like flu, be a serious infectious disease that the public shrugs off even as it continues to cause large numbers of deaths each year?

Public attitudes toward flu, historians and public health experts say, are revelatory — and illustrate the paradoxical thinking about risks and diseases.

“I think, for the public, ‘flu’ means minor illness,” said Dr. Arnold Monto, a public health researcher at the University of Michigan. But in bad flu years, hospitals are filled, and elective surgeries are postponed. “People forget that,” he said.

In 1918 a new influenza strain caused a pandemic with a frightening mortality rate. Yet when that pandemic ended, said Nancy Bristow, chair of the history department at the University of Puget Sound, complacency resumed. People wanted to put that awful period behind them.

Employers are embracing a workplace atmosphere reminiscent of prepandemic times — elevators jammed, snack tables brimming, face coverings optional — even as a new Omicron subvariant spurs concerns about coronavirus safety. Across the United States, office occupancy has hit a pandemic high, 40 percent, reached just once before in early December.

After several false starts in calling workers back, company leaders now seem eager to press forward. A flurry of return to office plans have rolled out in recent weeks, with businesses including American Express, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Microsoft calling some workers back to their desks. Many of those companies followed state and local governments in easing Covid-19 restrictions, arguing that ending mask mandates could make workplaces more pleasant.

But some workers, especially those with compromised immunity or unvaccinated children, feel uncomfortable with the rush back to open floor plans.

A January survey of New York City employers by the Partnership for New York City, a business group, found that 38 percent expected to have more than half of their workers back in the office on an average weekday by late March. As employees come back, they’re facing a patchwork of Covid safety protocols. Just one-quarter of U.S. workers are covered by vaccine mandates in the workplace, according to Gallup data from last month.

This has left many workers to navigate masking on their own, making Covid safety measures a matter of office etiquette rather than protocol. Some have negotiated new remote work arrangements with their bosses as rules have eased, or even left their companies in search of jobs at workplaces that made them feel safer.

The Pacific island nation of Samoa has closed its borders and prohibited public gatherings in a two-day national lockdown after recording its first known locally transmitted case of the coronavirus.

The 48-hour lockdown order, which began at midnight local time on Saturday, came after officials said they received a positive test result from an individual who had taken a coronavirus test on Thursday as a requirement for departure from Samoa, Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa said in a statement on Thursday. The individual is isolating, and the government is conducting contact tracing, she said.

The prime minister said the cabinet would continue to assess the situation throughout the lockdown.

On Friday, the country closed all schools, bars, fitness centers and nightclubs. Residents are required to carry their vaccination cards and wear masks in public. Under the lockdown, churches are closed and other services are not permitted unless they are essential.

The case reported on Thursday was believed to be the first that the country of about 200,000 people has found without any known path of transmission.

It is not Samoa’s first lockdown this year. The government imposed one in January after passengers who arrived on a flight from Brisbane, Australia, tested positive.

Samoa reported its first case in November 2020. At the time, it was one of the few countries worldwide with no confirmed cases, many of which were also island nations. Samoa has recorded 49 cases and no deaths since the beginning of the pandemic, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. About 66 percent of the country’s population has been fully vaccinated, according to the Our World in Data project at the University of Oxford.

The virus has been spreading on other islands in the central South Pacific. Tonga, locked down last month amid an outbreak that started among aid workers assisting in its recovery efforts from a tsunami and volcanic eruption, and in recent weeks, American Samoa — one of the world’s last holdouts from the virus — saw a surge in cases.

However, some islands in the area have been spared: Nauru and Tuvalu have not reported any cases.