Archives for April 2021

ROME (AP) — Italian restaurant owners and others angry at having their businesses shut for weeks due to a virus lockdown clashed with police Tuesday during a protest outside Parliament in Rome, while in the south, hundreds of demonstrators blocked a major highway.

One officer was injured in the scuffling, the Italian news agency LaPresse said. RAI state TV said seven protesters were detained by police.

Many in the crowd of a few hundred protesters outside the Chamber of Deputies lowered their masks to shout “Work!” and “Freedom!” Some hurled smoke flares or other objects.

Dining and drinking at restaurants, bars and cafes is currently banned through at least April. Only takeout or delivery services are permitted.

Officers charged some protesters after they tried to breach a police cordon. Members of a far-right political group joined the business owners at the protest, according to the Italian news agency ANSA.

Among the demonstrators was Hermes Ferrari, owner of a restaurant in Modena, a city in northern Italy. He boasted that he has defied authorities for months in opening his establishment to diners in breach of government decrees.

Even as the fines piled up “I was able to pay my workers,” Ferrari said, by keeping the business open.

Ferrari shouted to fellow restaurant owners at the protest to follow his lead.

“You have to open because nobody can tell you to close,” he yelled.

Italy’s current and previous governments have allocated millions of euros in aid to categories particularly hard-hit by pandemic restrictions.

The business owners insist they need to re-open permanently. Restaurants and cafes in regions with lower incidence of cases and less critically impacted hospital ICUs — so-called yellow zones — have been allowed at times to have sit-down dining and drinking before evening.

But a current surge in infections, driven mainly by virus variants, has seen daily new caseloads in the tens of thousands and hundreds of COVID-19 deaths a day now for months. That prompted the Italian government to temporarily eliminate the yellow zone designation from before the Easter holidays through the rest of April.

Expressing solidarity with the injured police officer, Interior Ministry Undersecretary Carlo Sibilia said “violence won’t be tolerated.”

Still, Sibilia, from the populist 5-Star Movement, called on the government, besides concentrating on the vaccine rollout, to provide “immediately, new compensatory funds for economic activities closed or penalized by the recent restrictions.”

Sibilia pressed for government guarantees of loans, a moratorium on mortgage payments, a stop to evictions, and compensation for income lost due to COVID-19 measures.

Hours earlier, near the southern city of Caserta, another protest blocked traffic on the A1 Highway. Among the hundreds of demonstrators were those who work in outdoor markets and owners of gyms and restaurants, the Italian news agency LaPresse said. Gyms have been closed for months.

Interior Minister Luciana Lamorgese decried as unacceptable protests that turn violent or that inconvenience citizens.

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AP journalist Gordon Walker in Rome contributed to this report.

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Follow all of AP’s pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic, https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-vaccine and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak

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AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott used his executive power Tuesday to ban state government and some private entities from requiring COVID-19 “vaccine passports” to access services, in the latest move from a Republican governor pitting public health campaigns against personal freedom and private choices.

According to Abbott’s order, state agencies and political subdivisions, and public and private organizations that receive public funding in Texas cannot require people to prove that they have been inoculated against the coronavirus.

The mandate also states that it will supersede any conflicting local executive orders and calls for the Texas Legislature to take up COVID-19 vaccine requirements during its ongoing current session.

“We will continue to vaccinate more Texans and protect public health — and we will do so without treading on Texans’ personal freedoms,” Abbott said in a statement announcing the order.

Abbott said the U.S. Constitution does not empower the federal government to mandate proof of vaccination. The White House has ruled out a national “vaccine passport,” saying it is leaving it to the private sector to develop a system for people to show they’ve been vaccinated. The Biden administration is developing guidelines for such passports, touching on privacy, accuracy and equity.

Some other countries are establishing national databases to allow vaccinated people to resume normal activities. The White House says it won’t back such a system in the U.S.

In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis issued a similar executive order Friday, banning businesses from requiring customers to prove they have been vaccinated against COVID-19 to get service and barred any government agency in Florida from issuing such documentation to provide proof of vaccinations.

Texas health officials reported 4,167 new confirmed COVID-19 cases Tuesday, and the addition of 1,580 other previously unreported cases took the state’s pandemic total to just over 2.8 million. Of those, an estimated 69,241 cases were active Tuesday and 2,882 cases required hospitalization on Monday, the most recent data available. Those were 110 more hospitalizations than Sunday.

According to Johns Hopkins University data, 73 more COVID-19 deaths took the Texas pandemic death toll to 48,748. There were 172 new Texas cases per 100,000 people over the past two weeks, which ranks 36th in the country for new cases per capita, with the rolling average number of daily new cases decreasing by 721.3 over the past two weeks, a decrease of 19.6%, according to Johns Hopkins data.

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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday signaled an end to more than a year of closures in California, announcing that the nation’s most populated state plans to lift most coronavirus restrictions on businesses and workplaces June 15, when enough people should be vaccinated to start returning to normal.

A statewide mask mandate will stay in effect, Newsom said, and he cautioned that California will reopen more widely in mid-June only if vaccine supply is sufficient and hospitalization rates stay stable and low.

Still, the Democratic governor, who has overseen some of the most restrictive pandemic rules in the country, said it was time to forge ahead because the state’s infection rate is among the lowest in the U.S. and 20 million vaccines have been administered so far.

“We can confidently say by June 15 that we can start to open up as business as usual, subject to ongoing mask-wearing and ongoing vigilance,” Newsom said. “So this is a big day.”

The announcement comes as states nationwide have lifted health restrictions and mask mandates as more people get vaccinated, despite rising infection rates in some places and concerns of another surge.

California has had some of the nation’s strictest pandemic rules, becoming the first to institute a statewide stay-at-home order last spring and adopting a complex color-coded tier system in August that dictated which businesses could open and at what capacity depending on how widespread the virus was in a county.

The pandemic has taken its toll on California, with more than 58,000 people dead, businesses closed and students who have been out of classrooms for much of the year.

Now, the new plan says businesses can open with “common-sense risk reduction measures” such as wearing masks and encouraging vaccinations. Most capacity limits for businesses and recreational activities will be lifted, although larger indoor events, such as conventions, will be allowed only with testing or vaccination verification requirements, Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly said. Other modifications may be needed.

The move toward a June 15 reopening comes with far fewer and must-hit metrics than Newsom’s prior announcements about reopening. While the color-coded system is based on detailed metrics for assessing risk, daily monitoring of infection rates and detailed calculations for capacity, the new plan has none of that.

Despite the caveat that California would only lift the restrictions based on hospitalization and vaccination rates, officials could not say how they would assess that or what would constitute a good trajectory. Both Newsom and Ghaly struggled at times Tuesday to explain the changes without adding caveats.

Vaccine supply must be “sufficient for Californians 16 years and older who wish to be inoculated” though state officials declined to give a must-hit number of shots. Hospitalization rates must be “stable and low,” but officials didn’t say what exactly that means.

Dr. Monica Gandhi, infectious disease expert and professor of medicine at University of California, San Francisco, believes California can begin reopening because many residents were exposed to the virus during the winter surge and many others are getting vaccinated.

“He wouldn’t have been able to keep it closed past June 15 anyway, because the cases would have been so low,” she said.

The announcement comes as the first-term Democrat faces a likely recall election pushed by critics of his handling of the pandemic.

Kevin Faulconer, a former San Diego mayor and Republican who is hoping to replace Newsom, said in a statement that “it took millions of Californians signing a recall petition for him to finally begin reopening our state.”

Newsom said he expects 30 million doses of vaccine to be administered by the end of April, putting the state on track to at least partially inoculate most of the estimated 32 million people 16 and up who will be eligible for the vaccine starting next week. Roughly 7.5 million residents are fully vaccinated, and 6 million are partially inoculated.

Bernadette Boden-Albala, dean of the public health program at the University of California, Irvine, said the governor sent a hopeful message but she worries that younger people won’t get vaccinated in the numbers needed to fully reopen and protect children from the virus.

“The population of 16-plus, among that population are those that defied all guidance and went to places like South Beach in Miami in crowds,” she said. “We needed a good message, but the message may be too soon.”

Michael Rodriguez, owner and general manager of the Cadillac Bar & Grill in San Francisco’s empty downtown, can’t wait for the tech employees at Twitter and Square to return for happy hour cocktails and for theaters to reopen to live audiences.

“Everybody has something to look forward to now,” he said.

As of Tuesday, only Inyo and Merced counties remain in California’s most restrictive purple tier, while 16 other counties moved into less-restrictive tiers, including San Diego. The state also hit its goal of administering 4 million doses to people in the ZIP codes hardest hit by the pandemic, further loosening metrics for moving between tiers.

State officials said the two-month notice should give people enough time to schedule their first dose, wait the recommended three to four weeks for a second shot and get through the two-week period for the vaccines to fully kick in.

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Taxin reported from Orange County. Associated Press writer Kathleen Ronayne contributed to this story from Sacramento, California.

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PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A Philadelphia City Council member and Italian American groups are suing the mayor’s administration in federal court over the decision to change the name of city’s Columbus Day holiday to Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

The lawsuit filed Tuesday argues that while both groups deserve recognition, Mayor Jim Kenney “may not take action that discriminates against Italian Americans to exalt another ethnic group in its place,” The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

The plaintiffs, who include Councilman Mark Squilla, allege that Kenney’s recent executive order renaming the October holiday fits a pattern of discrimination by the mayor against his Italian American constituents, who they say should be designated a protected class.

Also cited are efforts to remove a statue of Christopher Columbus from south Philadelphia and last year’s removal of a statue of ex-mayor and police commissioner Frank Rizzo from outside the municipal services building near City Hall after it became a target for protests.

After the Rizzo statue was removed, defenders gathered at the Columbus statue in Marconi Plaza statue and protesters also arrived. The groups clashed for days before the city covered up the statue with a wooden structure and announced plans to seek to its removal.

Many Italian Americans have embraced the 15th century explorer — once hailed as the discoverer of America — as a cultural hero, but not all agree. Cities across the U.S. have scrutinized Columbus’ legacy in recent years, accelerated by protests against racial injustice that began last sprint in the wake of the death of George Floyd.

In ordering the holiday’s name changed, Kenney said in a proclamation that the story of Christopher Columbus was “deeply complicated,” adding that the explorer “enslaved indigenous people, and punished individuals who failed to meet his expected service through violence and, in some cases, murder.”;

Philadelphia is not the first city to strip Columbus’ name from the October holiday to instead recognize Native Americans — Los Angeles, Denver and Austin, Texas, are among the municipalities to make the switch.

Back in Philadelphia, the plaintiffs also allege discrimination in the designation of prioritized neighborhoods for distribution of coronavirus vaccines, something the city has said targeted areas and groups with low vaccination rates.

On Tuesday, Kenney called the lawsuit “a patently meritless political ploy” and said it will “waste precious resources at a time when we are trying to both deal with devastating pandemic and work to build a safer and more equitable city for all residents.”

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Nearly half of new coronavirus infections nationwide are in just five states — a situation that is putting pressure on the federal government to consider changing how it distributes vaccines by sending more doses to hot spots.

New York, Michigan, Florida, Pennsylvania and New Jersey together reported 44% of the nation’s new COVID-19 infections, or nearly 197,500 new cases, in the latest available seven-day period, according to state health agency data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Total U.S. infections during the same week numbered more than 452,000.

The heavy concentration of new cases in states that account for 22% of the U.S. population has prompted some experts and elected officials to call for President Joe Biden’s administration to ship additional vaccine doses to those places. So far, the White House has shown no signs of shifting from its policy of dividing vaccine doses among states based on population.

Sending extra doses to places where infection numbers are climbing makes sense, said Dr. Elvin H. Geng, a professor in infectious diseases at Washington University. But it’s also complicated. States that are more successfully controlling the virus might see less vaccine as a result.

“You wouldn’t want to make those folks wait because they were doing better,” Geng said. “On the other hand, it only makes sense to send vaccines to where the cases are rising.”

The spike in cases has been especially pronounced in Michigan, where the seven-day average of daily new infections reached 6,719 cases Sunday — more than double what it was two weeks earlier. Only New York reported higher case numbers. And California and Texas, which have vastly larger populations than Michigan, are reporting less than half its number of daily infections.

Though Michigan has seen the highest rate of new infections in the past two weeks, Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has said she does not plan to tighten restrictions. She has blamed the virus surge on pandemic fatigue, which has people moving about more, as well as more contagious variants.

“Taking steps back wasn’t going to fix the issue,” Whitmer said as she got her first vaccine Tuesday at Ford Field in Detroit, home of the NFL’s Lions. “What we have to do is really put our foot down on the pedal on vaccines” and urge people to wear masks, keep their social distance and wash their hands.

Whitmer got the shot the day after Michigan expanded eligibility to everyone 16 and older. She asked the White House last week during a conference call with governors whether it has considered sending extra vaccine to states battling virus surges. She was told all options were on the table.

In New York City, vaccination appointments are still challenging to get. Mayor Bill de Blasio has publicly harangued the federal government about the need for a bigger vaccine allotment almost daily, a refrain he repeated when speaking to reporters Tuesday.

“We still need supply, supply, supply,” de Blasio said, before adding, “But things are really getting better.”

On the state level, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has not called publicly for an increase in New York’s vaccine allotment, even as cases ticked up in recent weeks and the number of hospitalized people hit a plateau.

In New Jersey, where the seven-day rolling average of daily new infections has risen over the past two weeks, from 4,050 daily cases to 4,250, Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy said he is constantly talking to the White House about demand for the coronavirus vaccine, though he stopped short of saying he was lobbying for more vaccines because of the state’s high infection rate.

Vaccine shipments to New Jersey were up 12% in the last week, Murphy said Monday, though he questioned whether that’s enough.

“We constantly look at, OK, we know we’re going up, but are we going up at the rate we should be, particularly given the amount of cases we have?” Murphy said.

New virus variants are clearly one of the drivers in the increase, said Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, chair of the department of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California at San Francisco. Failure to suppress the rise in cases will lead to more people getting sick and dying, she said, and drive increases in other parts of the country.

“More vaccine needs to be where the virus is,” Bibbins-Domingo said, adding that people should get over the “scarcity mindset” that has them thinking surging vaccine into one place will hurt people elsewhere.

In Florida, relaxed safeguards during a busy spring break season likely helped spread virus variants, said University of South Florida epidemiologist Jason Salemi. The state’s seven-day average of daily new infections has exceeded 5,400, an increase of 20% in the past two weeks.

While many new infections appear to be among younger people, Salemi said he’s worried about Florida’s seniors. About 78% of residents age 65 and older have received at least one vaccine dose, but roughly 1 million more still have not gotten any shots.

“We seemingly have the supply,” Salemi said. “Are these people not planning to get vaccinated?”

Talk of sending extra shots to some states comes at a time when the number of daily infections in the U.S. has fallen dramatically compared to a January spike following the holiday season. However, the seven-day average of daily infections been rising slowly since mid-March.

The five states seeing the most infections stand out. As of Tuesday, 31 U.S. states were reporting seven-day averages of fewer than 1,000 new daily cases.

White House coronavirus coordinator Jeff Zients said Tuesday more than 28 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines will be delivered to states this week. That allocation will bring the U.S. total to more than 90 million doses distributed in the past three weeks.

The news came as Biden announced more than 150 million coronavirus shots have been administered since he took office, and that all adults will be eligible to receive a vaccine by April 19.

About 40% of U.S. adults have now received at least one COVID-19 shot, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 23% of American adults have been fully vaccinated — including more than half of Americans 65 and older.

Geng said the nation should take a step back and go slow. Even just a few more weeks of Americans sticking with social distancing and other precautions could make a huge difference.

“The take-home message here is, let’s not jump the gun,” Geng said. “There’s light at the end of the tunnel. We all see it there. And we will get there. Slow and steady.”

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Bynum reported from Savannah, Georgia. Smith reported from Providence, Rhode Island. Associated Press writers Darlene Superville in Washington, David Eggert in Lansing, Michigan, Adriana Gomez Licon in Miami and Michael Catalini in Trenton, New Jersey, also contributed to this report.

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