DeSantis’ mask ban judged as overstep
WHO exec: Wait on booster shots
A Florida judge Wednesday ruled against Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration for a second time over school mask mandates, allowing school boards to require that students wear face coverings.
Leon County Circuit Judge John Cooper again sided with parents who said an executive order from DeSantis overstepped the state’s authority in restricting school districts from requiring masks.
“We have a variant that’s more infectious and more dangerous to children than the one we had last year,” Cooper said when issuing his ruling. “We’re in a non-disputed pandemic situation with threats to young children who, at least based on the evidence, have no way to avoid this unless to stay home and isolate themselves. I think everybody agrees that’s not good for them.”
Cooper pointed to the guidance by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that recommends masks for students and staff members in schools, calling it “the gold standard.”
School districts in Florida reopened for full in-per
son learning last month, just as a surge in the delta variant of the coronavirus hit the state, causing more cases, hospitalizations and deaths on a daily basis than during any other point in the pandemic.
DeSantis signed an executive order on July 30 that said “masking children may lead to negative health and societal ramifications” and that parents should be able to decide whether their children wear them. The order cited legislation DeSantis signed into law in June, the Parents Bill of Rights.
Since DeSantis signed the mandatory mask ban order, 13 school boards representing more than half of Florida’s 2.8 million students have adopted mask requirements with an opt-out only for medical reasons. State education officials have begun going after rebellious school board members’ salaries as a form of punishment.
Jacob Oliva, public schools chancellor at the state Department of Education, said in a notice last week to superintendents that “enforcement must cease if the stay is lifted.” That includes the effort to dock salaries of school board members or impose other financial penalties.
The case next goes before the 1st District Court of Appeal in Tallahassee. DeSantis said at an appearance Wednesday in Palm Harbor that he is confident the state will prevail. The matter could ultimately be decided by the Florida Supreme Court.
The core of the governor’s argument is that the recently passed Parents Bill of Rights gives decision-making authority to parents on whether their children should wear masks at school.
“What we’ve found is in the trial courts in Tallahassee, state and federal, we typically lose if there’s a political component to it, but then in the appeals court we almost always win,” the governor said.
Cooper seemed to go out of his way to point out that he has frequently ruled in favor of Florida governors in the past, including cases involving GOP Govs. Jeb Bush and Rick Scott. Cooper has been a Leon County circuit judge since he was first elected in 2002.
“If you look at my record, it’s not somebody who runs all over the place, ruling against the governor,” Cooper said. “This case has generated a lot of heat and a lot of light.”
On the Parents Bill of Rights, Cooper said his previous order follows the law as passed earlier this year by the Legislature. The law, he said, reserves health and education decisions regarding children to parents unless a government entity such as a school board can show their broader action is reasonable and narrowly tailored to the issue at hand.
The DeSantis order impermissibly enforces only the first portion of that law, Cooper said.
“You have to show you have authority to do what you’re doing,” the judge said. “You cannot enforce part of that law but not all of it.”
In a separate case, parents of special-needs children have filed a federal lawsuit claiming that the DeSantis mandatory school mask ban violates the Americans with Disabilities Act by placing their medically sensitive children in jeopardy.
A federal judge in Miami did not immediately rule after a hearing Wednesday in that case.
Additionally, school officials in Broward, Alachua and Orange counties filed a petition to schedule a hearing before an administrative law judge. According to the filing, the local school officials want the judge to invalidate a state health department emergency rule against school mask requirements based on the governor’s executive order.
NATIONAL PICTURE
The summer that was supposed to mark America’s independence from covid-19 is instead drawing to a close with the U.S. facing a resurgence of the virus that is sending the death toll in some places back up to where it was in March.
The delta variant is filling hospitals, sickening children and driving coronavirus deaths in some places to the highest levels of the entire pandemic. School systems that reopened their classrooms are abruptly switching back to remote learning because of outbreaks. Legal disputes, threats and violence have flared over mask and vaccine requirements.
The U.S. death toll stands at more than 650,000, with one major forecast model projecting that it will top 750,000 by Dec. 1.
“It felt like we had this forward, positive momentum,” lamented Katie Button, executive chef and CEO at two restaurants in Asheville, N.C. “The delta variant wiped that timeline completely away.”
More than six months into the U.S. vaccination drive, President Joe Biden held a White House party on July 4 to celebrate the country’s freedom from the virus, and other political leaders had high hopes for a close-to-normal summer.
Then the bottom fell out. The summer wave was fueled by the extra-contagious delta variant combined with resistance to vaccinations that formed along political and geographic lines, said Dr. Sten Vermund of the Yale School of Public Health.
“The virus was more efficient in spreading among the unvaccinated so that you blunted the expected benefit of vaccines,” Vermund said.
The crisis escalated rapidly from June to August. About 400,000 covid-19 infections were recorded for all of June. It took three days last week to reach the same number.
The U.S. recorded 26,800 deaths and more than 4.2 million infections in August. The number of monthly positive cases was the fourth-highest total since the start of the pandemic.
The 2021 delta-driven onslaught is killing younger Americans at a much higher rate than previous waves of the pandemic in the Northeast last spring, the Sun Belt in the summer of 2020 and the winter surge around the holidays.
During the peaks of those waves, Americans older than 75 suffered the highest proportion of death. Now, the most vulnerable age group for death is 50-64, according to data from U.S. officials.
Overall, the outbreak is still well below the all-time peaks reached over the winter, when deaths topped out at 3,400 a day and new cases at a quarter-million per day.
The U.S. is now averaging more than 150,000 new cases per day, levels not seen since January. Deaths are close to 1,500 per day, up more than a third since late August.
Even before the delta vari- ant became dominant, experts say there were indications that larger gatherings and relaxed social distancing measures were fueling new cases.
“We had been cooped up for over a year, and everyone wanted to get out,” said Dr. David Dowdy, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “In the face of that kind of strong change in behavior, even getting almost two-thirds of our adult population vaccinated wasn’t enough.”
In Rapid City, S.D., school officials have recorded nearly 300 cases among students and staff members since classes began less than two weeks ago. Still, the majority of school board officials voted this week 5-2 against a proposed two-week mask mandate.
“Nobody wanted to be here. Everyone wanted the personal freedom to be away from masks and free of illness,” said Amy Policky, who introduced the proposal with one other member. “But we have to look at the facts: We’re having illness rage through the school and the community, so what can we do?”
Button, the North Carolina chef, was feeling great heading into the summer. Her team was mostly vaccinated in May, and restrictions were loosening. But the crisis soon changed direction.
Button supports the mask mandate that was recently reinstated in her county but said her employees are exhausted by having to enforce it. And since she has no outdoor seating, some diners have been less comfortable coming in.
“It’s hard to take a step forward and then take three steps back,” she said.
BOOSTER SHOTS
Rich countries with large supplies of coronavirus vaccines should refrain from offering booster shots through the end of the year and make the doses available for poorer countries, the head of the World Health Organization said Wednesday, doubling down on an earlier appeal for a “moratorium” on boosters that has largely been ignored.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also said he was “appalled” after hearing comments Tuesday from a top association of pharmaceutical manufacturers that vaccine supplies are high enough to allow for both booster shots for people in well-supplied countries and first jabs in poorer countries that face shortages. He said that’s already been the case.
“I will not stay silent when companies and countries that control the global supply of vaccines think the world’s poor should be satisfied with leftovers,” he said at a news conference. “Because manufacturers have prioritized or been legally obliged to fulfill bilateral deals with rich countries willing to pay top dollar, low income countries have been deprived of the tools to protect their people.”
Tedros had previously called for a moratorium on boosters through the end of September. But wealthy countries — including Britain, Denmark, France, Greece, Germany, and Spain — have begun or are considering plans to offer third shots of two-dose vaccines to their vulnerable people such as the elderly or those with compromised immune systems.
Israel has been providing third doses to a wide swath of people who already received a full two-dose regimen months earlier. And last month, United States health officials recommended that all Americans get boosters to shore up their protection over evidence that the vaccines’ effectiveness is falling. WHO officials insist the scientific justification for boosters remains unclear.
Tedros acknowledged that third doses might be necessary for at-risk groups, but said: “We do not want to see widespread use of boosters for healthy people who are fully vaccinated.”
Responding to the WHO calls on booster shots, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the U.S. has donated and provided about 140 million doses with over 90 countries, “more than all other countries combined.”
She added: “From Senegal to South Africa to India, we’ve made significant investments in boosting global productions of covid vaccines. At the same time, the president and this administration has a responsibility to do everything we can to protect people in the United States.”
U.S. health officials are continuing to assess the science and utility of boosters, and there are growing indications that the U.S. may miss the Biden administration’s Sept. 20 target date for a wide rollout of extra shots for vaccinated people.
TRAVEL RESTRICTIONS
Italy now requires travelers from the United States to take tests before arrival, and unvaccinated American visitors must isolate for five days. Sweden is barring all nonessential U.S. visitors. The Netherlands says vaccinated travelers must isolate after arriving from the United States — and unvaccinated ones are not welcome.
In removing the United States from a safe list of countries whose residents can travel without coronavirus testing or quarantine requirements, the European Union last week opened the door to myriad rules, restrictions and hurdles for travelers, with the bloc’s member countries implementing different measures.
The surge of coronavirus deaths and hospitalizations in the United States has led some countries — including Bulgaria, Italy, the Netherlands and Sweden — to enforce new obstacles, and the list could grow.
The EU suggestion to reimpose restrictions on unvaccinated U.S. travelers is not binding, however, and many European governments have yet to act on it. Some may even choose to ignore it entirely, creating confusion for travelers.
For questions about requirements in a given EU member state, the best answers can usually be found on the website of its U.S. Embassy. Most, including France, Spain and Germany, still welcome travelers from the United States without much hassle.
It is different for a few others, and that’s where the confusion starts.
For instance, any traveler from the United States, no matter their nationality, is prohibited from entering Bulgaria “unless they meet an exception,” according to the U.S. Embassy in Sofia. Those exceptions include students with visas, citizens from an EU country, and foreign officials or medical professionals.
In Italy, meanwhile, the U.S. Embassy in Rome states that vaccinated travelers must take virus tests 72 hours before arrival, and that unvaccinated ones must isolate for five days. France has no travel restrictions on American visitors, but a “health pass,” based on testing or proof of vaccination, is needed to access cultural venues, restaurants or bars, among other places.
Information for this article was contributed by Lori Rozsa of The Washington Post; by Curt Anderson, Brendan Farrington, Matthew Perrone, Dee-Ann Durbin, Nicky Forster, Jamey Keaten and Aamer Madhani of The Associated Press; and by Elian Peltier of The New York Times.