Tag Archives: rising infections

Eager travelers line up for U.S. flights as COVID travel curbs are lifted

By Tara Oakes and Antony Paone

LONDON/PARIS (Reuters) – Travelers excited at the prospect of reuniting with family and friends headed for the United States on Monday as it lifted travel restrictions slapped on much of the world since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

The travel ban, first imposed in early 2020, had barred access to non-U.S. citizens travelling from 33 countries – including China, India and much of Europe – and had also restricted overland entry from Mexico and Canada.

The United States lagged many other countries in lifting the curbs, made possible by the rollout of vaccines despite rising infections in many countries, and critical to reviving tourism around the globe.

Months of pent-up demand triggered a major spike in bookings on Monday, with travelers only required to show official proof of vaccination and a recent, negative viral test.

“Really, really exciting. I mean, I was meant to go just before COVID happened, and obviously it’s been delayed this long, so it’s really exciting to finally be able to go,” Alice Keane, travelling to Miami to see her sister, said at London’s Heathrow airport.

Long-term rivals British Airways and Virgin Atlantic carried out simultaneous take-offs from Heathrow’s parallel runways just before 0900 GMT, a stunt aimed at highlighting the importance of the transatlantic market to the UK’s aviation market.

The flights were full, Virgin Atlantic CEO Shai Weiss said, while passenger volume was expected to remain high in coming weeks with the approach of Thanksgiving and Christmas.

“It’s a major day of celebration,” Weiss said, in what he called a significant tipping point for an industry brought to its knees by the pandemic.

The United States was preparing for long lines and delays on Monday, with United Airlines alone expecting about 50% more total international inbound passengers compared to last Monday when it had about 20,000.

Delta Air Lines (DAL.N) Chief Executive Ed Bastian warned travelers should be prepared for long waits.

“It’s going to be a bit sloppy at first. I can assure you, there will be lines unfortunately,” Bastian said, adding that “we’ll get it sorted out”.

‘WE MIGHT START CRYING’

The prospect of long queues did little to dent the enthusiasm of those preparing to be reunited with loved ones.

“I think we might just start crying,” Bindiya Patel, who was going to see her one-year-old nephew in New York for the first time, said at Heathrow, where jugglers dressed in the red, white and blue of the U.S. flag greeted travelers.

Restrictions on non-U.S. citizens were first imposed on air travelers from China in January 2020 by then-President Donald Trump and extended to dozens of other countries, without any clear metrics for how and when to lift them.

In January, Trump issued an order to lift travel restrictions on people in Europe and Brazil. But the order was reversed by President Joe Biden before it took effect.

U.S. allies had heavily lobbied the Biden administration, which had repeatedly said it did not endorse so-called “vaccine passports”, to lift the rules.

Airline officials stressed that tourism and family trips alone will not be enough for whose profits depend on filling the most expensive seats.

Experts say the real battle of the transatlantic, the world’s most lucrative travel market, takes place at the front of the plane, in first, business, and premium economy class, where those paying the top prices help drive airline profits.

“As for business, we know the recovery is slower and so it’s a question mark but what we know is that there are a certain number of sectors, especially domestic and medium-haul travel, where recovery is already happening and we hope to see this same tendency for the United States,” said Air France-KLM commercial co-director, Henri de Peyrelongue.

LAND BORDER CROSSINGS

U.S. land borders also reopened to non-essential travel on Monday.

In Mexico’s Ciudad Juarez, across from the Texan city of El Paso, a line of about 20 people formed early on Monday before crossing and embracing family on the other side of the border, a Reuters witness said. One of the people hadn’t seen their relatives in El Paso since March 2020.

“We thought they were going to tell us again that they had decided not to open it,” said Lorena Hernandez, stroking her grown-up daughter’s hair and smiling broadly after they were reunited in El Paso. “I said, if they don’t reopen, I’m going to take a plane.”

Some inoculated Mexicans will not be able to enter the United States immediately if they received vaccines in Mexico that have not been approved by the World Health Organization, such as China’s CanSino and Russia’s Sputnik V.

Hundreds of migrants have arrived at Mexican border cities such as Tijuana in recent days, hoping the reset will make it easier to cross and seek U.S. asylum, despite warnings from advocates that the re-opening is for people who have papers.

In Canada, long lines formed overnight at U.S. border points for an early rush of travelers but a Canadian requirement that all returning travelers have a negative PCR test is expected to dampen travel.

Canada, which allowed fully vaccinated Americans to cross the land border in August, is under pressure to drop the negative test requirement from businesses and travelers, who say showing proof of vaccination should be enough.

Under-18s are exempt from the new vaccine requirements. Non-tourist travelers from nearly 50 countries with nationwide vaccination rates of less than 10% are also eligible for exemption.

(Reporting by Tara Oakes, Stuart McDill, Sarah Young, Antony Paone, David Shepardson; Writing by Ingrid Melander; Editing by Gareth Jones and Nick Macfie)

Factbox-Latest on the worldwide spread of the coronavirus

(Reuters) – Novavax Inc on Monday said its COVID-19 vaccine was more than 90% effective, including against a variety of concerning variants of the coronavirus in a large, late-stage U.S.-based clinical trial.

DEATHS AND INFECTIONS

EUROPE

* Prime Minister Boris Johnson delayed his plans to lift remaining COVID-19 curbs by a month, warning that thousands of more people might die if he did nothing because of the rapid spread of the more infectious Delta variant.

* COVID-19 vaccines made by Pfizer and AstraZeneca offer high protection of more than 90% against hospitalization from the Delta coronavirus variant, a new analysis by Public Health England showed.

* Norway now expects to receive 900,000 fewer Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine doses in the July-September quarter compared to what authorities had earlier anticipated, the health minister said.

* The Delta variant doubles the risk of hospitalization compared with the previously dominant variant in Britain, but two doses of vaccine still provide strong protection, a Scottish study found.

ASIA-PACIFIC

* Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte extended partial coronavirus curbs in the capital and nearby provinces until end-June, but placed more areas under tighter quarantine measures because of rising infections and high hospital occupancy.

AMERICA

* Mexican health officials said the country will receive its first shipment of J&J vaccines on Tuesday.

MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA

* Africa will get priority treatment for the Group of Seven’s pledged 870 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine, a senior World Health Organization adviser said on Monday.

* Johnson & Johnson will export more ready-to-administer COVID-19 vaccines to South Africa beyond the 300,000 doses already pledged, CEO of Aspen Pharmacare said.

* In Afghanistan, the two main hospitals treating people with COVID-19 have had to close their doors to new patients because of a lack of beds, a senior health official and doctors said.

MEDICAL DEVELOPMENTS

* South Korean drugmaker Celltrion announced positive results for its experimental antibody COVID-19 treatment.

ECONOMIC IMPACT

* Global stock markets were mixed on Monday, U.S. Treasury yields ticked up and gold slid as investors prepared themselves for an upcoming Federal Reserve meeting and any clues on the trajectory of its unprecedented monetary stimulus. [MKTS/GLOB]

* The European Union began selling the first bond backing its recovery fund, according to a lead manager, a crucial step in financing member states’ economic recovery.

* The World Bank has approved a $250 million loan to support Botswana’s economic recovery efforts.

(Compiled by Krishna Chandra Eluri, Juliette Portala and Veronica Snoj; edited by Catherine Evans, Mark Heinrich and Arun Koyyur)

Sewage testing could protect schools, hospitals from COVID-19 outbreaks

By Allison Martell

TORONTO (Reuters) – Early in the pandemic, a few cities and countries around the world began testing sewage for evidence of the coronavirus, hoping to detect rising infections early.

Now some researchers are fine-tuning that strategy by moving upstream to test waste from single hospitals or other buildings, aiming to quickly pinpoint burgeoning COVID-19 outbreaks and stop them with testing and isolation.

While the virus primarily spreads through droplets expelled from the mouth and nose, it can also be shed via human waste.

Testing sewage is cheaper and less invasive than swabbing hundreds of people, and it could be done more frequently. With the virus again surging across much of the world, schools, hospitals and care homes badly need to catch new cases early.

“What we’re trying to do is identify outbreaks before they happen,” said Francis Hassard, a lecturer at Cranfield University, part of a project that started collecting samples at 20 London secondary schools last month.

Hassard’s UK government-funded team will expand sampling to at least 70 schools. The program is a research project, meant to test the approach, and is not yet a full-fledged surveillance system.

In the Canadian province of Alberta, researchers at the University of Calgary have been gathering samples from three local hospitals, including the site of a recent outbreak in which 12 people died.

The team was still refining their methods when that outbreak began. When they went back to test wastewater, they found the amount of coronavirus genetic material rose 580% as the virus spread, said Kevin Frankowski, executive director of Advancing Canadian Wastewater Assets.

“We saw a very significant change,” said Frankowski. “It was really strong proof that this … approach works.”

The project shares data with Alberta Health Services, which runs the province’s hospitals. If levels spike again, they could respond by testing individuals or taking other steps to mitigate spread, depending on the situation, said Frankowski.

In the United States, professional services company GHD set up wastewater testing at a handful of university residences, and recently started advertising the service to long-term care homes, drawing significant interest, said Peter Capponi, a principal at GHD.

CLOSE TO THE SOURCE

So far, most sewage testing has been done at treatment plants. Dutch authorities publish a national statistic, based on samples from all over the country, and French authorities have cited similar data for months. The state of Ohio monitors water at treatment plants across the state.

However, it can take 24-to-36 hours for waste to arrive at a treatment plant, and heavy rain or industrial effluent can dilute samples.

When viral levels rise at a treatment plant, it is not always obvious what should be done. But when virus material suddenly appears in sewage leaving a single building, the path forward is more clear.

At the University of Arizona, for example, sewage from one residence turned positive on August 25. The next day, the university began testing students. Two tested positive and were isolated, heading off what could have been an outbreak, the school said in a release.

With most of these efforts in early stages, it is not yet clear how well the approach will work at scale.

Not every infected person sheds virus in their waste, and there is some disagreement among researchers on how early in the course of COVID-19 that shedding begins on average.

Human behavior can affect data collection. Do enough children use the bathroom at school to generate good data? The virus does not show up in urine, just solid waste.

There are also logistical issues.

“Buildings have multiple discharge points,” said GHD’s Capponi. “Some of them are not accessible. Some may show up on a design drawing, but were not constructed that way.”

Outside the controlled environment of a treatment plant, sewage is less uniform. Sampling equipment can get clogged with toilet paper and other debris, said Hassard.

And a single “grab” sample might miss the virus. The UK project collects throughout the school day.

Higher-tech auto-samplers can collect waste over a longer period, but are in increasingly short supply as more testing programs ramp up.

MilliporeSigma, a unit of Germany’s Merck KGaA, makes the Centricon P-70 filter used on some waste samples.

The company has doubled production, a spokeswoman said, after an “unprecedented surge in demand” from governments hoping to test for the virus.

(Reporting by Allison Martell in Toronto; Edilting by Caroline Humer and Bill Berkrot)