The singer Ed Sheeran announced Sunday on social media that he had tested positive for the coronavirus and would be canceling public appearances and working at home, in quarantine.
It wasn’t immediately clear what appearances would be canceled or rescheduled, or whether Mr. Sheeran was sick with symptoms of Covid-19.
The news came days before the Friday release of his new album, “=,” pronounced “equals.” The 14-song album includes his recently released single “Bad Habits.”
And it comes just after Mr. Sheeran had been announced as the musical guest for “Saturday Night Live” on Nov. 6.
The four-time Grammy winner took a break from work and social media in late 2019 after two years of touring in support of his best-selling album “÷” (or “divide”).
Ed Sheeran reveals he has tested positive for COVID-19 and will be self-isolating:
“I’m now unable to plough ahead with any in person commitments for now, so i’ll be doing as many of my planned interviews/performances from my house.” pic.twitter.com/7SB8vfAoG7
— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) October 24, 2021
Children ages 5 to 11 may be eligible for Covid vaccines by early next month, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert. He projected a timetable for young Americans to be vaccinated with at least one dose by Thanksgiving, and to be fully immunized by the holidays.
Food and Drug Administration regulators on Friday released their evaluation of data from the Pfizer-BioNTech submission for emergency authorization of a lower-dose vaccine for young children. An advisory panel to the F.D.A. will consider Pfizer’s application for those ages 5-to-11 on Tuesday. Children 12 and up have been eligible for vaccination since May.
Pfizer’s data “look good as to the efficacy and safety,” Dr. Fauci said on ABC’s news program, “This Week.”
According to Pfizer and BioNTech, the children who were vaccinated as part of the trial, who received doses that were one-third the size of the adult doses, developed robust immune responses after receiving the regimen of two shots three weeks apart. The companies have said the efficacy rate of the vaccine in children reduced the risk of developing a symptomatic infection by 91 percent.
The most common side effects in children were fatigue, headache, muscle pain and chills. According to the F.D.A., the data submitted indicated no cases of myocarditis inflammation of the heart muscle, or pericarditis, inflammation of the outer lining of the heart, rare complications that have been reported among young boys and men receiving the vaccine in other trials and in real-world applications.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was also interviewed about the upcoming decisions on child vaccines on two Sunday news shows, and seemed to promise that decisions would not be delayed. “We know how many parents are interested in getting their children vaccinated, and we intend to work as quickly as you can,” Dr. Walensky said on “Fox News Sunday.”
The last week has produced a lot of regulatory guidance for those who can receive booster or additional doses of Covid vaccines, giving a large segment of the U.S. population access to more protection.
Both Dr. Walensky and Dr. Fauci sought to dispel confusion about booster shots and explain the option of “mixing and matching” initial vaccines and boosters.
Boosters of all three vaccines available in the United States have been authorized. Additional shots of Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines have been approved for people aged 65 and older, those with underlying health conditions and all adults whose living or working conditions place them at high risk of exposure to the virus. Anyone over the age of 18 who received the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine at least two months ago is also eligible for a booster shot.
People can receive a booster shot that is different from the initial vaccine they first received, experts said.
“If you were originally vaccinated with one product, could you and would it be appropriate and safe and effective to get boosted in the third shot for the mRNA and the second shot for J.&.J. by another product?” Dr. Fauci said. “The answer is, it’s perfectly fine.”
With winter looming, German health officials and experts have raised concerns about a new surge of coronavirus cases. Infections in Germany — about 12,775 daily on average — have increased by 57 percent in the past two weeks, according to a New York Times database. Deaths on average in the same period have increased by 11 percent.
The surge comes as many European countries slowly lifted lockdowns this summer after months of restrictions driven by variants of the virus.
A national state of emergency is currently in place in Germany — which allows the government to unilaterally impose restrictions on states — but it is set to expire on Nov. 25. The order can be extended by a parliamentary vote, and some state officials are advocating that lawmakers do so.
Germany’s health minister, Jens Spahn, though, noted the country’s high vaccination rate and said that the emergency order could be lifted while other rules are put in place, like mask mandates and proof of vaccination. About 70 percent of the population has received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine.
Pandemic restrictions in Germany are set individually by the country’s 16 states, and in general, masks are required on public transportation and in stores. Since August, visitors to Germany have had to show proof of vaccination, recovery from infection or a recent negative test for entry to indoor public spaces, like restaurants, salons and gyms. Clubs in Berlin, famed for its hedonistic nightlife, reopened last month for the first time in over a year.
Cases are also resurging in Britain, where the government lifted virtually all restrictions in July, arguing that a rapid vaccination rollout had helped mitigate rates of hospitalizations and deaths. In June, the country reported as few as 2,000 cases a day, but last week, it reported an average of 47,209 new cases a day, a 30 percent increase over the average two weeks ago.
The government has rejected calls for an immediate reintroduction of some coronavirus restrictions, but it has also said that rules could be put back in place if a vaccine booster program did little to stop the spread. Health experts are cautioning that while vaccines do help prevent serious illness, they alone will not be enough to stop the upward trajectory of infection rates.
“Relying on the vaccine program to kind of take care of the problem is not going be a solution, I’m afraid,” Adam Finn, a member of a government vaccination committee, said to the BBC on Sunday. “It is really time that everyone got the message that they can’t just go back to normal if they want to avoid further restrictions later in the year.”
China reported 26 new cases of coronavirus on Saturday, as a spread of cases linked to domestic vacation travel continued to be felt around the country and officials ordered mass testing and lockdowns in some areas.
New cases were concentrated in the northwestern provinces of Inner Mongolia, Gansu and Ningxia. Four cases were also reported in Beijing, the capital.
China has imposed a strict regimen to control the spread of the coronavirus that first emerged in the city of Wuhan in late 2019. Its government has not reported any large or significant outbreaks this year.
The United States, by contrast, has been averaging about 73,300 new coronavirus cases daily.
China’s new domestic case numbers were down slightly from Friday, when 38 were reported, the highest since mid-September.
Several of the most recent cases have been linked to a couple from Shanghai who traveled to Shaanxi, Gansu and Inner Mongolia. A subsequent outbreak in the Changping district of Beijing was traced to a group of Beijing residents who had traveled to Inner Mongolia and back by car.
This week, Beijing has sealed off parts of the Changping district for large-scale testing, closed some community centers and asked residents not to leave the city unless necessary.
Five cities in Gansu shut down tourist attractions, theaters and other public places and imposed restrictions on movement to prevent further spread, the state-run Lanzhou Evening News reported on Saturday.
The United States was one of the first countries to begin vaccinating its population, and by summer, was leading most nations in getting shots in arms, with 67 percent of the population receiving at least one shot by July 4.
Today, 87 percent of people in Portugal are fully vaccinated, according to the Our World in Data project at Oxford University. That rate is second only to that of the United Arab Emirates, a far smaller country whose rulers exert considerably greater control. Earlier this month, Portugal ended nearly all of its coronavirus restrictions.
The United States, meanwhile, despite having a surplus of doses, has fully vaccinated only 57 percent of its population, according to a New York Times tracker. Resistance remains high among some demographic groups and within some specific work force sectors, including police officers and firefighters.
That has left the United States lagging behind dozens of nations in the pursuit of full vaccination. Although, with a population of about 330 million, it ranks third in the sheer number of administered doses, more than 411 million, after China’s more than 2.2 billion doses and India’s more than one billion.
Other early vaccination leaders have also stumbled. Israel got an early start on its vaccination campaign on Dec. 20 and rapidly outpaced virtually every other nation in getting jabs into arms — and now in giving booster shots to nearly half of its eligible population. But today, with hesitancy remaining among Arab, Orthodox Jewish and younger Israelis, the country reports that just 63 percent of its population is fully vaccinated, less than South Korea, Italy and some 40 other countries.
Public health experts blame the shortcomings of the U.S. effort partly on a toxic political environment, amplified by misinformation on social media and muddled messaging by government authorities.
“Every country has an anti-vax movement, but in most countries it’s exceedingly small,” said Dr. John Swartzberg, a professor at the School of Public Health at the University of California at Berkeley who has taught a seminar on vaccine hesitancy for several years. “It’s not a new movement, but it’s never had the traction it has today.”
Social media has been “irresponsible” in dealing with unfounded rumors, he said, and the United States has been “the poster child of a country that has not handled the messaging about vaccines.”
A lack of trust in authorities and expertise, along with deep political polarization, also played a key role in hampering the U.S. vaccination effort, said Dr. Michael Lauzardo, deputy director of the University of Florida’s Emerging Pathogens Institute.
“If somebody’s family member is diagnosed with cancer, you’re going to talk to an expert,” he said. “But if somebody’s family member gets a life-threatening disease, in this case Covid, they’re more willing to listen to television pundits and get their information from social media than from doctors and public health experts.”
In Asia, part of the turnaround comes from countries finally securing supplies and working out the kinks in their vaccination programs.
In countries like France, Italy and Canada, officials began requiring people to use health passports to show proof of vaccination to enter many establishments, a move that is credited with improving their vaccination efforts.
“We do not have the barriers of supply or distribution or access to the vaccine,” said Dr. Leana Wen, a public health professor at George Washington University. “The only barrier at this point is people’s willingness to be vaccinated. That’s what’s going wrong compared to other countries that have solved their supply, distribution and access issues.”
An artist residency is an intentional form of social distancing, different from what we have become used to, affording an artist time and space to contemplate, or complete work in progress without other distractions, often in the company of creative peers.
Studios, workshops, tools and specialized equipment; a staff to provide assistance; sometimes three square meals: this form of arts funding has been a breeding ground for prominent artists.
That definition of retreat changed drastically last year as many of these spaces shut down. According to Res Artis, a global database of residencies, which conducted a Covid-19 impact survey, 54 percent of planned residencies were canceled or postponed, and one in 10 organizations supporting artists closed indefinitely.
Not all programs ground to a halt, however, as some museums and institutions were able to pivot. And certain artists discovered the pause had unintended consequences for their creative process.
In March 2020, the musician Roberto Carlos Lange, whose stage name is Helado Negro, and his wife, the visual artist Kristi Sword, were invited to perform their multimedia collaboration “Kite Symphony, Four Variations” at Ballroom Marfa, in the Texas town that has become a beacon for groundbreaking art. The New York-based couple planned to stay two weeks, but got stuck isolating there for six months.
“It was a ghost town,” Mr. Lange said. “When we arrived, the world locked down.” And so their stay became a de facto residency. “The time we spent in Marfa reprogrammed our brains a lot,” he said. “It was a moment of focused creativity because there was nothing else to do. We just dug in more, trying to fill the unknown void.”
Although traveling internationally has been confusing throughout the pandemic — especially in Europe, where entry allowances and restrictions continue to change — there’s been one constant since January: Regardless of vaccination status, Americans (and all other passengers) flying to the United States must show proof of a negative coronavirus test before they are allowed to board their planes.
On-property tests have become common at hotels and resorts throughout Mexico and the Caribbean, as the tourism industry seeks to attract Americans. Although virus testing isn’t as widely available at European hotels, travelers will find solid testing infrastructure at pharmacies, medical clinics and dedicated sites. And there are plenty of good online resources.
First, try tapping airline websites for pre-departure research. Over the last 18 months they’ve evolved into hubs of coronavirus information, including maps and lists of testing facilities abroad.
Local resources are treasure troves. “I’m constantly reminding clients they need to work with the concierge to set up their Covid tests,” said Cydney Lembersky, a SmartFlyer travel adviser based in Rome. Four- and five-star hotels often have doctors who can come and test people.
Individual pharmacists can also be helpful. “There’s a pharmacy on every corner in Europe — we know this,” Ms. Lembersky said. “They don’t all offer Covid tests, but they’re all used to being asked which ones do — at this point, by locals and Americans alike.”
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