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Alabamas Republican governor made an urgent plea for residents to get vaccinated to slow a surge in Covid-19 cases, becoming the latest top GOP official to step up calls for inoculations in the face of vaccine hesitancy among conservative voters.
Weve got to get folks to take the shot, said Gov. Kay Ivey, whose state ranks poorly on Covid-19 vaccination rates. Folks are supposed to have common sense. But its time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks, not the regular folks. Its the unvaccinated folks that are letting us down, she told reporters Thursday. Lets get it done.
Earlier in the week, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) issued a stark warning: I want to underscore in the strongest possible manner I can, he said Tuesday. These shots need to get in everybodys arm as rapidly as possible.
The forceful comments come as the Delta variant has rattled policy makers and markets. The slowing uptake of vaccinations has frustrated health experts and fueled charges from Democrats that the GOP hasnt sufficiently embraced the inoculation effort or countered vaccine skepticism in its ranks.
The rise in Covid-19 cases has touched every state but is seen more prominently in areas with lower vaccination coverage. According to health officials, 99% of Covid-19-related deaths in the U.S. are occurring among unvaccinated individuals.
Like most barbers, Angel Lugo not only sees his job at Tranformerz Barber in New Haven as a career but a calling.
"This is where everybody comes and they talk about their issues, we have guy time, you know, the boys can be boys, kids can be kids, so this is just so great we can talk about life experiences, you know, everything," said Lugo.
In the cornerstone of the community, one of the biggest topics is getting a COVID-19 vaccine, but not everyone is on the same page.
"A lot of our clients are skeptical about getting it because of the fact that they have no knowledge about it," Lugo said. "A lot of people are just talking and they're listening to everyone else instead of doing their own research."
In an effort to educate people, about a week ago, two New Haven city health nurses set up a pop-up clinic and staged information sessions in the shop to talk about the vaccine.
Lugo, who has already had a brush with COVID-19 and has gotten his vaccine wants people to understand that "its not just about you its about everybody around you."
"What about your grandmother? What about your mom? What about your little brother and sister? You know what I mean, what about your friend whose wife is pregnant - do you really want to pass that along?" he said.
Just right next door, Shawn Perkins is a beautician at Elite Hair studio. She said shes fully vaccinated and feels good about it and the tune in the salon is different than the barbershop.
"Actually, there are more womenthat believe in getting vaccinated than I think the barbers and their clients."
But when it comes to giving the kids vaccine thats where the line gets blurry.
"That is still difficult like I said this is new... our children have been vaccinated with other vaccines, my concern is their reproductive systems as far as when they get old enough and want to have children, will it be an issue?"
Whether a vaccinated person ever becomes infected may depend on how high antibodies spiked after vaccination, how potent those antibodies are against the variant, and whether the level of antibodies in the persons blood has waned since immunization.
In any case, immune defenses primed by the vaccines should recognize the virus soon after infection and destroy it before significant damage occurs.
That is what explains why people do get infected and why people dont get seriously ill, said Michel C. Nussenzweig, an immunologist at Rockefeller University in New York. Its nearly unavoidable, unless youre going to give people very frequent boosters.
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Understand the State of Vaccine Mandates in the U.S.
There is limited evidence beyond anecdotal reports to indicate whether breakthrough infections with the Delta variant are more common or more likely to fan out to other people. The C.D.C. has recorded about 5,500 hospitalizations and deaths in vaccinated people, but it is not tracking milder breakthrough infections.
Additional data is emerging from the Covid-19 Sports and Society Workgroup, a coalition of professional sports leagues that is working closely with the C.D.C. Sports teams in the group are testing more than 10,000 people at least daily and sequencing all infections, according to Dr. Robby Sikka, a physician who worked with the N.B.A.s Minnesota Timberwolves.
Breakthrough infections in the leagues seem to be more common with the Delta variant than with Alpha, the variant first identified in Britain, he said. As would be predicted, the vaccines cut down the severity and duration of illness significantly, with players returning less than two weeks after becoming infected, compared with nearly three weeks earlier in the pandemic.
But while they are infected, the players carry very high amounts of virus for seven to 10 days, compared with two or three days in those infected with Alpha, Dr. Sikka said. Infected players are required to quarantine, so the project has not been able to track whether they spread the virus to others but its likely that they would, he added.
On Staten Islands South Shore, the sole mass vaccination site an elementary schools gymnasium closed down this week, and was replaced by a vaccination van that has been giving fewer than 10 shots a day.
A large vaccination site near a mid-island beach is quiet and may also shutter soon, a site director said. And at a nearby beach parking lot, the driver of a mobile coronavirus testing van was resting with his eyes closed in a reclined seat last Friday, as only two people, he said, had shown up for testing.
Some days we get 10 to 20 people, said the driver, Jean Senecharles. Some days, no one.
Across New York City, coronavirus cases have more than tripled from last months low of 200 per day as the more contagious Delta variant has taken hold. Staten Island, in particular, has been a hot spot that presaged the broader uptick, and for weeks, several ZIP codes in the area had among the most cases in the city.
Now, as the rise in cases has taken hold in every borough, the situation on Staten Island has shown the daunting task the city faces with its broader vaccination campaign and virus response.
Like elsewhere in the city, Black and Latino New Yorkers have the lowest rates of vaccination on Staten Island. But in recent weeks, the ZIP codes with the highest rates of positive cases and the lowest rates of vaccination have been on the South Shore. Those communities are predominantly white, politically conservative and have been resistant to restrictions during the pandemic.
And that, borough leaders say, requires a different response.
On the South Shore, you cant just take the boilerplate approach as with the rest of the city, said James Oddo, the Staten Island borough president, who called the come hell or high water vaccine reluctance in that section of the borough deeply rooted in mistrust of government and authority itself.
On Staten Island, as in the city and state as a whole, vaccination rates are only inching up. Each day, fewer than 10,000 New York City residents on average are opting to get their first shot. Though the city has tried everything from vaccination buses and in-home vaccinations to exploring ways to better include primary care doctors, it has yet to find an effective strategy to quickly increase the numbers in the face of Delta.
Pockets of the city continue to have low vaccination rates. Three ZIP codes on Staten Islands South Shore are under a 56 percent full vaccination rate for adults, lower than the 65 percent rate for adults in the city overall. And fewer than 40 percent of white Staten Islanders between 18 and 44 are vaccinated, the lowest rate for that demographic group in the city.
Grace, 20, a Tottenville resident who did not want to give her last name, said she hasnt gotten vaccinated. I wouldnt get it until its F.D.A. approved, and then, maybe, she said.
She said she listens to her friends, who have told her scary stories about serious side effects, and Fox News, which she described as negative about the vaccine. And I already had Covid, she added.
In a statement, the city pointed to its many efforts to reach people to encourage vaccines, including radio ads and continued efforts to identify community leaders who can promote vaccination.
Serious infections are ticking up, though they remain far below previous peaks, said Dr. Nicole Berwald, the chair of emergency medicine at Staten Island University Hospital, the main hospital serving the South Shore. The hospital wards there have held between 14 and 18 Covid patients at a time recently, from a low of six in June. Almost all of them have been unvaccinated, she said.
To increase low vaccination rates in Black and Latino communities, the city has been using a strategy of working through trusted community leaders and clergy, such as by partnering with the Abyssinian Baptist Church to host a vaccination clinic in Harlem, and La Colmena, a Latino immigrant outreach organization on Staten Islands North Shore, to increase traffic to city vaccine buses parked across the street.
But among the politically conservative on the South Shore, city officials have had trouble finding clergy or other trusted community organizations to host clinics and spread the word that the vaccine is safe and effective, said Mr. Oddo, a Republican. The borough has been working with the city to develop a new strategy that centers on primary care physicians and Staten Island University Hospital doing personalized outreach.
July 23, 2021, 10:06 p.m. ET
Some white families on Staten Island describe internal divisions over vaccination, even in the face of serious disease. On the North Shore, the 35-year-old principal of St. Peters Boys High School, Michael Cosentino, came down with Covid in June and spent a month on a ventilator. He started to improve last week, and was sent home Wednesday.
That someone so young and healthy could get so sick was a wake-up call to some close to him to get vaccinated, but not everyone. We went through all this, and still theres some people in my family who are unvaccinated, his brother, Raymond Cosentino, said last week.
Some Staten Island residents have also resisted mask wearing and business closures, a stance which came to national attention with a protest in December at Macs Public House, a bar, that led to the owners arrest. But despite the challenges, borough officials believe the city could be more effective in handling the virus situation on Staten Island.
When positivity rates started to rise on the South Shore a month ago, City Hall said that it was flooding the area with resources, including canvassing and mobile vaccination and testing sites. But according to the borough presidents office, most of those efforts have flowed into the North Shore, where vaccination rates are more in line with city averages.
Two mobile vaccine vans are scheduled to arrive on the South Shore this week. One will be parked on Sunday in Tottenville, where the average positive test rate on Tuesday reached 5.8 percent, the highest in the city. Another replaced the brick-and-mortar site at St. Joseph-St. Thomas School in Pleasant Plains, but it has not been busy, administering between five and nine shots a day, a nurse there said.
Dr. Ginny Mantello, the health and wellness adviser to Mr. Oddos office, said in an interview last week that one reason the pop-ups have not gotten a lot of visitors may be that not enough advance warning has been given.
I didnt even know until yesterday where the vans were going to be, she said last Thursday, adding that she told the citys health department she needed more time to plan and coordinate with community groups.
If they just show up and park in a particular neighborhood, no one is going to that van, she said. It takes a lot more than just coming and parking a mobile truck in a neighborhood.
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The citys Test and Trace Corps, which has been among several agencies coordinating the efforts, has been giving as much notice as it can, said Adam Shrier, a spokesman. He added the low traffic at testing sites was consistent with downturns in testing across the city.
As a whole, New York City is in the process of switching its vaccination efforts to what it calls the ground game. It is closing down mass vaccination sites for lack of interest, and setting up dozens of daily pop-up sites. It is encouraging more involvement from family doctors and providers, reaching out to 140 on Staten Island alone. And it is offering home vaccination to anyone who wants it, the city said.
On Staten Island, Eli Nazario, 13, had a home vaccination visit last Friday, only two days after his father called to schedule it. Eli has serious allergies and asthma, and his family did not want him on a long bus ride to the closest vaccine site they knew about, at the Staten Island Mall, his father said.
His father, Elias Nazario, said he told his elderly neighbors in Old Town about the home visits, but they were too scared of vaccine side effects to schedule one. They are a little cautious, Mr. Nazario said.
The ground game, at least on Staten Island, has a long way to go, Dr. Mantello and Mr. Oddo said.
Three different city entities are involved with deploying and coordinating vaccination efforts, which can be confusing when it comes to communicating, said Dr. Mantello.
I really dont know who is running the show and calling the shots, she said.
And while the Department of Health is starting one-on-one visits with South Shore primary care doctors to provide education and support, many are not ready to offer vaccines in their offices, and some are reluctant, Dr. Mantello said.
A snapshot from the shoreline in Tottenville this week was a reminder of the extent of the challenges the city faces overall. The swabber working in the mobile Covid testing van parked at Conference House Park, Jesse Henry, said he was not vaccinated. He lives in Brooklyn.
I need more results, he said. If the F.D.A. is still studying it, that means its a conversation. Until its 100 percent, you dont have my vote. I believe in Jesus. I pray a lot. Im going with that.
The outbreak at Camp Pontiac, a sleep-away camp in upstate New York, started in the girls dormitories. Nurses, worried that young campers were showing symptoms of Covid-19, began administering tests. Last Saturday, one came back positive.
More would quickly follow: As of Thursday morning, 31 of the camps 550 campers had tested positive for the coronavirus, said Jack Mabb, the health director of Columbia County, where the camp is located.
None of the children were seriously ill from the virus, Mr. Mabb said.
The outbreak, coming as the highly transmissible Delta variant spreads across the country and Covid-19 cases rise in New York State, is emblematic of the challenges that arise when a huge population cannot be vaccinated, even as it highlights the effectiveness of vaccines.
The virus reached the campgrounds, though all but a handful of Camp Pontiacs staff and its children ages 12 and over are vaccinated. All 31 children who tested positive for the virus are under the age of 12, making them too young to receive vaccines in the United States, Mr. Mabb said.
With it still unclear when younger children will be eligible for the vaccine President Biden said this week that he believed authorization would come soon Mr. Mabb said he was worried that the outbreak may be a portent for the widespread return of in-person learning this fall.
I think that when the kids go back to school, we could see this, and Im concerned about that, Mr. Mabb said.
So far, the outbreak does not appear to have spread from Camp Pontiac to the surrounding community, and there do not appear to be any so-called breakthrough infections among vaccinated individuals.
The New York outbreak is one of a spate of recent camp-related Covid-19 clusters across the United States this summer. In Texas, more than 125 teenagers and adults at a church-run camp tested positive after an indoor event. Kansas health department has reported multiple outbreaks tied to camps in and around the state. Illinois reported more than 80 cases, most of them among teens, at a summer camp there.
Those outbreaks, by and large, have come in states with lower vaccination rates than New York State, where 74 percent of adults and 62 percent of all residents have received at least one dose of a vaccine.
Susie Lupert, the executive director of the American Camp Association of New York and New Jersey, said that large outbreaks at camps in those two states were not common.
We have not heard of outbreaks, Ms. Lupert said. Certainly, there have been some positive cases here and there which have been easy to contain. And the camps continue to operate as they planned to.
New Yorks Health Department did not respond to a request for comment. But several county health departments said they had seen few to no cases tied to camps.
Nancy McGraw, the health director in Sullivan County in the Catskills, said the county had seen fewer than 10 camp-related cases since June. Dan Torres, the assistant deputy county executive in Ulster County, said the county had been lucky this far.
July 23, 2021, 10:06 p.m. ET
New Jerseys Health Department has been notified of six camp-connected outbreaks, a spokeswoman said. All of them three in Bergen County, two in Burlington County and one in Essex County were smaller than the Camp Pontiac outbreak; only 16 camp-related cases had been reported in the state so far.
After being forced to close in 2020, sleep-away camps in New York were given the green light to open in May. Parents, eager to provide their children with a semblance of normalcy after a school year marked by remote learning and social isolation, eagerly enrolled their children.
Still, with the pandemic remaining a threat, camps were required to adhere to extensive state guidelines on mask-wearing, social distancing and testing, and they were required to submit safety plans that detailed how they would handle potential outbreaks.
Mr. Mabb, the county health official, said that Camp Pontiac had submitted such a plan. Campers and staff were tested for the virus before they arrived at camp, and the camp had been working closely with the Health Department since it became aware of the outbreak.
Camp Pontiac, located in Copake, N.Y., sits about 110 miles north of New York City on 150 acres at the foot of the Berkshires. Both boys and girls ranging from ages 7 to 16 attend the camp, and about half of them are younger than 12 years old. The camp lasts for seven weeks and costs between $12,200 and $13,550, according to the camps website.
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The camp administration said in a statement that it was keeping in touch with the families of campers and noted that it was owned and operated by two physicians that are at camp during the summer.
It did not respond to further questions, but it forwarded a letter that it sent to parents saying that it had decided to test all unvaccinated campers for the coronavirus.
The camp will not close despite the outbreak, Mr. Mabb said.
Instead, more than 100 children the 31 who tested positive and more than 80 others who were close contacts had been asked to quarantine or isolate.
Most of the campers hail from metropolitan New York City, and their parents had come to pick them up, though one, Mr. Mabb said, sent a private jet. When their quarantine is done, they will be allowed to return to camp.
Fewer than 10 children from more distant states were being held in an isolation area at the camp. Obviously, you cant put them on an airplane, and you cant put them on the bus, Mr. Mabb said.
Dr. Philip Zachariah, an epidemiologist at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and a pediatrics professor at Columbia University, said that parents worried about transmission risk at camps should ask directors for clear policies on vaccinations and masking.
But he said that the precautions that camps had already been asked to take in the state were likely to keep children safe, especially as vaccinations rise.
Dr. Zachariah also noted that children who contracted the virus usually were asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic and were very unlikely to be hospitalized.
As such, he did not think that the outbreaks at camps across the country would necessarily herald a dangerous wave of illness among unvaccinated children once the school year starts.
Is this the canary in the coal mine for massive school-based outbreaks in the fall? I dont think so, Dr. Zachariah said.
Illinois health officials on Friday reported 7,983 new COVID-19 cases in the past week, along with 47 additional deaths and more than 139,000 new vaccine doses administered.
In all, 1,407,929 cases of coronavirus have been reported in the state since the pandemic began. The additional deaths reported this week bring the state to 23,401 confirmed COVID fatalities.
The state has administered 241,150 tests since last Friday, officials said, bringing the total to more than 26 million tests conducted during the pandemic.
The states seven-day positivity rate on all tests rose to 3.3% from 1.9% the week before and 1.5% two weeks prior - meaning the positivity rate has more than doubled in the past two weeks. The rolling average seven-day positivity rate on individuals tested rose to 3.5%, up from 1.7% then 2.3% in the past two weeks, officials said.
Over the past seven days, a total of 139,495 doses of the coronavirus vaccine have been administered to Illinois residents. That brings the states average to 19,928 daily vaccination doses over the last week, down from the figures reported last Friday, per IDPH data.
State officials say Illinois this week crossed the threshold of 13 million vaccine doses administered since vaccinations began in December. More than 58% of adult residents in the state are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, with 73% receiving at least one dose.
As of midnight, 670 patients are currently hospitalized due to COVID in the state. Of those patients, 135 are in intensive care units, and 44 are on ventilators. All three metrics are a reported increase since last Friday.
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker warned Tuesday that stricter mitigations could return forareas seeing a rise in COVID cases.
"I believe strongly that we will impose mitigations as it's appropriate, where it's appropriate," Pritzker said in an interview.
Calling on anyone who is unvaccinated to get vaccinated, Pritzker said the state continues to monitor COVID metrics like positivity rate, case numbers and hospitalizations.
"It is always a difficult thing for me," he said. "I wake up every morning and I look at those numbers and when they're rising, you know, that's a bad day, and I want to do whatever I can to mitigate that. So that's included making sure testing is widely available, making sure that the vaccines are widely available, and I'll continue to do that and if we need to take stricter mitigations we will."
The same day, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said she was "sounding the alarm" due to a recentuptick in coronavirus cases across the city.
Citing a rise in both average daily cases and test positivity in Chicago largely attributed to the more transmissible delta variant, Lightfoot said that while numbers are still well below the spikes seen during the peak of the pandemic, "it's still a concerning development that we want to not only stay ahead of, but to quash completely."
"If we allow the virus to continue to linger here in Chicago we will likely see further mutations, some of which our current vaccines may not be able to protect against and have to reinforce some of the restrictions that have come to infamously define much of 2020, and part of 2021," Lightfoot said during a coronavirus update alongside city health officials.
"The reality is this scenario - the worst case - is entirely preventable, and that's because we have three different vaccines readily available to all of our residents, which offer very good protection against delta, and other new variants," she added.
In this May 24, 2021 file photo, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the WHO, speaks at WHO headquarters, in Geneva, Switzerland. The WHO is asking China to be more transparent as scientists search for the origins of the coronavirus. Laurent Gillieron/AP hide caption
In this May 24, 2021 file photo, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the WHO, speaks at WHO headquarters, in Geneva, Switzerland. The WHO is asking China to be more transparent as scientists search for the origins of the coronavirus.
BEIJING China cannot accept the World Health Organization's plan for the second phase of a study into the origins of COVID-19, a senior Chinese health official said Thursday.
Zeng Yixin, the vice minister of the National Health Commission, said he was "rather taken aback" that the plan includes further investigation of the theory that the virus might have leaked from a Chinese lab.
He dismissed the lab leak idea as a rumor that runs counter to common sense and science.
"It is impossible for us to accept such an origin-tracing plan," he said at a news conference called to address the COVID-19 origins issue.
The search for where the virus came from has become a diplomatic issue that has fueled China's deteriorating relations with the U.S. and many American allies. The U.S. and others say that China has not been transparent about what happened in the early days of the pandemic. China accuses critics of seeking to blame it for the pandemic and politicizing an issue that should be left to scientists.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of WHO, acknowledged last week that there had been a "premature push" after the first phase of the study to rule out the theory that the virus might have escaped from a Chinese government lab in Wuhan, the city where the disease was first detected in late 2019.
Most experts don't think a lab leak is the likely cause. The question is whether the possibility is so remote that it should be dropped, or whether it merits further study.
The first phase was conducted earlier this year by an international team of scientists who came to Wuhan to work with their Chinese counterparts. The team was accused of bowing to demands from the Chinese side after it initially indicated that further study wasn't necessary.
Zeng said the Wuhan lab has no virus that can directly infect humans and noted that the WHO team concluded that a lab leak was highly unlikely. He added that speculation that staff and graduate students at the lab had been infected and might have started the spread of the virus in the city was untrue.
Yuan Zhiming, the director of the biosafety lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, said they had not stored or studied the new coronavirus before the outbreak. "I want to emphasize that .... the Wuhan Institute of Virology has never designed, made or leaked the novel coronavirus," he said.
The WHO team concluded that the virus most likely jumped from animals to humans, probably from bats to an intermediate animal. The experts visited markets in Wuhan that had sold live animals, and recommended further study of the farms that supplied the market.
"In the next step, I think animal tracing should still be the priority direction. It is the most valuable field for our efforts," Liang Wannian, who headed the Chinese side, said at Thursday's news conference.
Tedros said last week that he hoped for better cooperation and access to data from China. "We are asking China to be transparent, open and cooperate, especially on the information, raw data that we asked for in the early days of the pandemic," he said.
His words were echoed at the same virtual news conference by Germany's health minister, Jens Spahn, who called on China to intensify cooperation in the search for the origin of the virus.
Zeng said China has always supported "scientific virus tracing" and wants to see the study extended to other countries and regions. "However, we are opposed to politicizing the tracing work," he said.
China has frequently sought to deflect accusations that the pandemic originated in Wuhan and was allowed to spread by early bureaucratic missteps and an attempted coverup.
Government spokespersons have called for an investigation into whether the virus might have been produced in a U.S. military laboratory, a theory not widely shared in the scientific community.
China has largely ended local transmission of COVID through lockdowns and mask-wearing requirements, and has now administered more than 1.4 billion doses of Chinese vaccines. Just 12 new domestically spread cases were reported Thursday and China's death toll from the virus has remained unchanged for months at 4,636.
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Most common respiratory viruses circulated at historically low levels in 2020, likely due to COVID-19 mitigation measures such as wearing face masks and social distancing, the CDC said Friday.
But now, as those measures relax, some viruses have begun circulating at increased levels at an unusual time of the year, the CDC said.
"Reduced circulation of influenza viruses during the past year might affect the severity of the upcoming influenza season given the prolonged absence of ongoing natural exposure to influenza viruses," the CDC said.
Not sure how to tell the difference between COVID-19 symptoms and the common cold? Check out our guide here.
It's Friday, and this is Coronavirus Watch from the USA TODAY Network. Here's more newsyou need to know:
Today's numbers:The U.S. has reported more than 34.3million COVID-19cases and 610,200deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Worldwide, there have been more than 192.9million cases and more than 4.1 million deaths. About 56% of people in the U.S. have received at least one vaccine shot, and about 49%are fully vaccinated, according to the CDC.
Tracking the pandemic:See the numbers in your area here. See where cases are rising here. See vaccinationrates here. And here,compare vaccinations rates worldwide and see which countries are using which vaccines.
Grace Hauck, USA TODAY breaking news reporter, @grace_hauck
The merriment is still on hiatus.
The Public Theaters free Shakespeare in the Park production of Merry Wives, which had already pushed back its opening night by nearly two weeks after its leading man was injured, announced on Friday that it would cancel its third consecutive performance after learning a production member had tested positive for the coronavirus on Wednesday.
The theater had canceled the Wednesday and Thursday performances at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, in accordance with its existing protocols. It announced on Twitter on Friday that it would call off Fridays performance as well to support the artistic and logistical efforts required to restart performances.
A spokeswoman for the theater, Laura Rigby, said the theater planned to resume performances on Saturday. The production is scheduled to run through Sept. 18, with a special gala performance on Sept. 20.
The theater noted on Twitter that it practiced rigorous testing and daily health and safety protocols to ensure everyones safety. It said on Wednesday that the cast, crew and staff members would isolate and take additional tests if needed.
Earlier this week the theater postponed the plays opening night to Aug. 9, from July 27, after Jacob Ming-Trent, who plays Falstaff, sustained an undisclosed injury. (He is recuperating, the theater said, and his understudy Brandon E. Burton will perform the role in his absence.)
The show, a contemporary adaptation of Shakespeares comedy The Merry Wives of Windsor, has been running in previews since July 6. Written by Jocelyn Bioh and directed by Saheem Ali, it is set in South Harlem and represents African immigrant communities not often seen onstage. Bioh and Ali have said they hope the production makes Shakespeare accessible to all audiences, especially people of color who may have been told Shakespeare was not for them.
We want it to be antiracist, Ali told The New York Times this month. We want it to have opportunities for people of color that didnt exist before.
In June, the theater announced that it would fill the Delacorte Theater to 80 percent capacity after initially saying it would allow only 428 attendees in the 1,800-seat theater for each performance.
People who show proof of vaccination can occupy full-capacity sections, and distanced sections are available for those who are unvaccinated (and those theatergoers do not need to show proof of a negative test to enter). Face masks are required for people in both sections when entering and moving around, though those in the full-capacity sections may remove them while seated.
On Friday, Rigby said the theater was monitoring Covid-19 cases in New York City and would adjust its policies if needed in collaboration with its city, state and union partners.
The cancellations come amid the rise in cases caused by the highly transmissible Delta variant of the coronavirus, which has been responsible for the postponement of a number of stage productions and delays in television and film projects in Europe over the past month. Andrew Lloyd Webbers Cinderella musical recently moved its opening night in Londons West End back about a month after a cast member tested positive, while productions like Hairspray at the London Coliseum and Romeo and Juliet at Shakespeares Globe have also experienced delays following positive tests.
In the United States, the Delta variant is now responsible for a majority of cases, and some experts are recommending that fully vaccinated people wear masks again to protect the unvaccinated.
