March 15, 2022

First, a news update: With the humanitarian crisis worsening in Ukraine, three European leaders are visiting Kyiv. Find more details below and on The Times's website.

By David Leonhardt

Good morning. Covid cases are rising in parts of both Asia and Europe.

Medical workers from China at the border with Hong Kong yesterday.Tyrone Siu/Reuters

The new hot spot

Even as Covid-19 cases and deaths have continued to decline in the United States, there are some worrisome developments around the world. Today, I'll walk through them — and explain their implications for the U.S.

The Pacific region …

After more than two years of mostly fighting off Covid, Hong Kong has become the world's worst hot spot. The main problem, as in so many other places, is vaccine skepticism.

Heading into the current outbreak, nearly 40 percent of Hong Kong's population was not vaccinated, and more than half of people over 70 — the age group most vulnerable to severe Covid — were unvaccinated.

Why? Many Hong Kong residents do not trust the government, given the increasing repression by China. Others are dubious of Western medicine or have been influenced by misinformation, as my colleagues Alexandra Stevenson and Austin Ramzy have reported. "I worry that the side effects of vaccination will kill me," Lam Suk-haa, who's 80 years old, told The Times last month. "I won't get vaccinated as long as I have a choice."

Until recently, Hong Kong — like mainland China — had been largely successful in keeping out the virus, which meant that vaccine skepticism did not bring large costs. But the Omicron variant is so contagious that it overwhelmed Hong Kong's "zero-Covid" strategy.

Adding to the problem, many residents have received Sinovac, a Chinese-made vaccine that is less effective than the vaccines designed in the U.S. and Europe — by Moderna, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca. Although the Pfizer vaccine is available in Hong Kong, many residents wrongly fear that it has dangerous side effects. Sinovac still provides meaningful protection against severe illness, but not as much as the Western vaccines.

The death rate in Hong Kong has soared this month, surpassing 25 per 100,000 residents in the past week. That's not as high as New York's peak death rate in the spring of 2020, but it is higher than in any country today. And Hong Kong's rate will probably continue rising, because new case numbers did not start falling until about a week ago; death trends typically lag case trends by about three weeks.

Seven-day averages as of March 13. | Sources: New York Times database; Johns Hopkins University

"I'm not sure people appreciate quite how bad the Covid situation is in Hong Kong, nor what might be around the corner," John Burn-Murdoch of The Financial Times wrote yesterday. "What's driving this? Vaccines. Or more specifically: the elderly vaccination rate."

Many elderly residents of mainland China are also unvaccinated, and it too could be on the verge of an increase in Covid deaths. Yesterday, outbreaks led to the closures of many theaters and restaurants in Shanghai, while several large factories — including a major maker of iPhones — suspended production. The shutdowns could ripple across the global economy, exacerbating goods shortages and inflation.

Covid is also spreading rapidly in New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and several other Pacific countries that had previously kept caseloads low. The death rates in those countries are far lower than in Hong Kong, because of higher vaccination rates. (You can look up any country's data.)

… and Europe

Europe has often been a few weeks ahead of the U.S. with Covid trends — and cases are now rising in Britain, Germany, Italy and some other parts of Europe. The main cause appears to be an even more contagious version of Omicron, known as BA.2.

Seven-day averages as of March 13. | Sources: New York Times database; Johns Hopkins University

BA.2 has already begun to spread in the U.S., as well. It accounted for about 12 percent of newly diagnosed cases last week, according to the C.D.C. The variant may also be the reason that the amount of Covid virus detected in wastewater is rising in about one-third of American cities that track such data. Wastewater samples tend to be a leading indicator of case counts.

If that pattern repeats, BA.2 would be about to end two months of falling case counts in the U.S. Since mid-January, the number of new daily Covid cases has dropped more than 95 percent and is now at its lowest level since last summer, before the Delta surge.

The magnitude of any BA.2 increase may be limited by the fact that about 45 percent of Americans have already contracted Omicron. "That should be highly protective," Andy Slavitt, a former Biden administration adviser, wrote yesterday. On the other hand, a 45 percent infection rate means that most Americans did not contract Omicron, leaving many of them susceptible to BA.2.

Even if cases rise, as seems likely, there are good reasons not to panic. Vaccination tends to turn Covid into a mild illness, especially for people who have received a booster. For the unvaccinated and unboosted, BA.2 is another reason to get a shot.

It's also a reason for the federal government and states to expand access to both Evusheld — a drug that can help protect the immunocompromised — and Paxlovid — a post-infection treatment. Finding either is often difficult today. (If you're looking for one of them, click on this link for Evusheld and this one for Paxlovid.)

The bottom line: Covid isn't going away, but vaccination and other treatments can keep future increases manageable. The biggest problem remains the millions of people who remain unvaccinated, many of them by choice. That's the case in the U.S., in Hong Kong and across much of Europe, Africa and the rest of the world.

Inducing more people to get shots — through persuasion or mandates — would probably save more lives than any other Covid policy.

THE LATEST NEWS

State of the War

Residents of a building that was shelled in Kyiv, Ukraine's capital.Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

Despite continuing bombardments on Kyiv, Russia's advance seems to have stalled across multiple fronts.
The situation on the ground remains horrific. Hundreds of people escaped the port city of Mariupol, but 400,000 others were trapped without heat, food or clean water.
But negotiations offered a glimmer of hope. Russia and Ukraine held talks yesterday and are continuing today. U.S. and Chinese officials met in Rome to discuss the war.
Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine's president, plans to address Congress remotely tomorrow and may ask the White House to give fighter jets to the Ukrainian military.
Zelensky also stepped up his appeals to Russian soldiers and citizens to end the fighting.

MORNING READS

Sweet tooth: An ode to Entenmann's, caterer of Communion parties and late-morning gossip sessions.

Bilingual city: How streets in Manhattan's Chinatown got their official Chinese names.

How-to: Spring clean your brain.

A Times classic: How social isolation hurts your health.

Advice from Wirecutter: The best travel gear.

Lives Lived: Bernard Nussbaum faced Whitewater, Vince Foster's suicide and other controversies during his 14 months as Bill Clinton's first White House counsel. Nussbaum died at 84.

ARTS AND IDEAS

From left, the choreographers Aakomon Jones, Kathryn Burns and Kyle Hanagami.Maggie Shannon for The New York Times

A union for movement

From Steven Spielberg's "West Side Story" to the TikTok dances that propel songs up the Billboard charts, choreographers help the entertainment industry earn millions. But in film, television and music videos, there is little standardization as to how the people who create dances are paid or credited.

About a year ago, more than 100 entertainment-industry choreographers began creating the Choreographers Guild, which is now in the process of becoming an official labor union, Margaret Fuhrer writes in The Times. For years, choreographers have been anomalies in Hollywood, where many jobs are unionized.

"Hearing stories about these major choreographers that I looked up to having their work being reused in commercials and reused on competition shows and reused on Broadway, without them being compensated or getting credit — it was appalling," Kyle Hanagami, a creative director and choreographer, said.

Vincent Paterson, who created dances for Michael Jackson and Madonna in the '80s and '90s, said he felt optimistic about the unionization efforts because of dance's current ubiquity in popular culture. "Can you imagine if Dalí wasn't allowed to sign his paintings?" Paterson asked.

PLAY, WATCH, EAT

What to Cook

Linda Pugliese for The New York Times

This is not your usual Caesar salad.

Art

Summertime Gallery is redefining what outsider means, one art show at a time.

What to Read

The cartoonist David Sipress's memoir "What's So Funny?" is "endearingly vulnerable," Alexandra Jacobs writes.

Late Night

Trevor Noah talked about Tom Brady's un-retirement.

Now Time to Play

The pangrams from yesterday's Spelling Bee were betiding and debiting. Here is today's puzzle — or you can play online.

Here's today's Wordle. Here's today's Mini Crossword, and a clue: Its capital is Damascus (five letters).

If you're in the mood to play more, find all our games here.

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David

P.S. Tressie McMillan Cottom is becoming a Times Opinion columnist.

Here's today's front page.

"The Daily" is about a defining war photo.

Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti, Ashley Wu and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.