Hochul Outlines Priorities on School Masks and Vaccine Mandates

Gov. Kathy Hochul, in her first day as governor of New York State, called on state health officials to impose a universal mask mandate in schools and said she wanted to institute Covid vaccine-or-test mandates for employees in schools.

Ms. Hochul stopped short of formally implementing either requirement. In a televised address, she said that she was ordering the state Health Department to institute the mask requirement and would partner with “all levels of government” to implement the vaccine restriction.

“I’m working now on getting this done,” she said.

But in her first remarks to the public as governor, Ms. Hochul said that her top priority as she took office was ensuring that children could safely return to in-person learning as the Delta variant of the coronavirus spreads across the state.

“Priority No. 1: We get children back to school and protect the environment, so they can learn and everyone is safe,” Ms. Hochul said.

The governor’s announcement came a day after Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that New York City would require all employees of the city’s Department of Education to receive at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine by Sept. 27. The city requirement will apply to almost every adult working inside public school buildings, including the teachers and principals in the city’s public school system, the nation’s largest.

Both mandates were expected to be a signal of more to come around the country, particularly after the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for those 16 and older on Monday.

New York would join a growing number of states, mostly led by Democrats, that are requiring proof of vaccines for teachers, or in some cases forcing them to conduct regular testing.

Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey said on Monday that all teachers in that state would have to either be vaccinated or submit to weekly testing. California and Hawaii have a similar mandate in place.

The cities of Los Angeles and Chicago, as well as Washington State and Oregon, have also recently announced full vaccine mandates for teachers. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended masking for everyone in schools, regardless of vaccination status. Several states, including California and Connecticut, currently have school mask mandates in place.

Ms. Hochul said that she would move toward requiring “vaccinations for all school personnel, with an option to test out weekly at least for now.” She added that New Yorkers could “expect new vaccine requirements” in light of the F.D.A.’s approval of the Pfizer vaccine.

The mask mandate would be one of Ms. Hochul’s first acts as governor, a position she takes as the state faces a climb in virus cases. Her predecessor, Andrew M. Cuomo, led New York through its first wave of the pandemic, often exerting a heavy hand that local officials bristled at as he set and lifted restrictions on businesses.

Before Ms. Hochul was sworn in, Mr. Cuomo, who resigned on Monday amid a swirl of sexual harassment allegations and an accelerating impeachment investigation, voiced support for vaccination mandates for teachers. He urged local school districts earlier this month to require educators to be vaccinated or submit to weekly testing.

In his farewell address on Monday, Mr. Cuomo spoke more forcefully, saying he believed that teachers “must be vaccinated for their protection and for our children’s protection.” But he said a state law would probably be required for that, especially given the heated political debate around vaccination.

New York State United Teachers, a statewide teachers’ union, has expressed opposition to vaccine mandates on school employees. “We have advocated since the beginning of the year that any educator who wants a vaccine should have easy access to one,” the union said in a statement earlier this month. But, it said, “what we have not supported is a vaccine mandate.”

In New York City, Mr. de Blasio’s vaccination push has largely been supported by educators and the city’s teachers’ union, the United Federation of Teachers. City officials are negotiating with the U.F.T. and other unions who represent education staff over what might happen to employees who do not comply with the mandate.

District Council 37, which represents classroom aides, cafeteria workers and other school employees, said that it would file a formal complaint over the city’s vaccine mandate.

Last month, Mr. de Blasio issued a mandate for all municipal workers that allowed those who were unvaccinated to opt for weekly testing. That option remains for city employees who do not work in schools.

Mr. Cuomo said on Aug. 16 that all health care workers in New York State, including employees at hospitals, nursing homes, adult care facilities and other congregate care settings, would be required to get at least one dose of coronavirus vaccine by Sept. 27.

Ms. Hochul said that the state would launch a “back to school” testing program that would help make testing for students and staff easily accessible, though she did not provide details.

She also said New York officials would consider reopening mass vaccination sites to help provide booster shots that the Biden administration recommended vaccinated American adults begin getting starting late next month, assuming federal regulators clear them.

Many of the sites, which were opened by Mr. Cuomo earlier this year when widespread vaccination began, were closed over the summer as vaccines became more widely available and demand for shots decreased.

Indonesia, where cases of the coronavirus surged last month, will gradually ease restrictions in the capital, Jakarta, and elsewhere as reports of new cases decline.

Restaurants, malls and places of worship are set to reopen on Tuesday on the densely populated island of Java, which includes Jakarta and has a population of about 140 million, and Bali, a popular resort island, and other regions.

Places of worship and restaurants will be allowed to operate at 25 percent of their capacity, while shopping centers can stay open until 8 p.m. at up to 50 percent of their capacity, said President Joko Widodo.

In Indonesia’s most recent outbreak, cases peaked in mid-July but have since continued to fall, Mr. Widodo said. They are now down by 78 percent, he said at a virtual news briefing on Monday, adding that there were now more people recovering from the virus than were being diagnosed with it.

But while the government’s official tally shows a drop in cases, the World Health Organization warned that the data might be inaccurate because the rate of testing had also slowed.

“Urgent action is needed to address the continuing surge of cases,” the health body said in a statement released last week, noting continued outbreaks in parts of the country.

On average, more than 1,000 people in Indonesia continue to die daily from the virus, down from around 1,500 a day early in August. So far, just 12 percent of the population is fully vaccinated, according to data from the Our World in Data project at the University of Oxford.

Mr. Widodo acknowledged that Indonesia had to be on the alert for signs of outbreaks.

“Several countries are currently experiencing the third wave with significant addition of cases,” he said. “Therefore, we must remain vigilant.”

Facing a surge of Covid-19 cases that is straining hospitals, Gov. David Ige of Hawaii asked tourists to stay away.

“It’s not a good time to travel to the islands,” he said. “The visitors who choose to come to the island will not have the typical kind of holiday that they expect to get when they visit Hawaii.”

The governor’s remarks came at a news conference on Monday after the island of Oahu said it was imposing tighter restrictions on gatherings.

Starting Aug. 25, indoor gatherings of more than 10 people and outdoor gatherings of more than 25 will be prohibited in Oahu, Mayor Rick Blangiardi said. The new rule will apply for at least 28 days and will affect all events, including those that are professionally organized, a change from previous restrictions.

“We really thought we saw the light at the end of the tunnel,” Mr. Blangiardi said at a news conference. “But over the last several weeks, cases have surged and the Delta variant has proved to be more than formidable.”

The governor said he fully supported the actions that Oahu had taken.

Since July 1, Hawaii has experienced a sharp rise in new cases. The state’s seven-day average of new case reports peaked at 729 a day on Aug. 19, more than double the state’s previous high last fall, according to a New York Times database. In the past two weeks, new cases increased by 37 percent in Honolulu County, and hospitalizations more than doubled.

Mr. Blangiardi said that after extensive conversations with state health officials and health care providers, it was determined that large gatherings were the main cause of the rapid communal spread recently.

The restrictions mean that athletic events at the University of Hawaii will proceed without spectators, and that large concerts at the Waikiki Shell will be canceled. The mayor said that people would still be able to hold weddings, funerals and luaus, as long as they adhered to crowd limits. Restaurants will continue to operate at 50 percent of capacity, and youth sports can finish their seasons as long as parents spread themselves out as spectators.

Hawaii was the last state to expand vaccine eligibility to all adults. About 55 percent of the state population has been fully vaccinated so far.

At the news conference on Monday, officials said they were concerned about low vaccination rates in Oahu and the large number of young men and women with Covid-19 who were being treated in the island’s intensive care units.

Dr. James Ireland, the chief of the Honolulu Emergency Medical Services, said that over the past couple of weeks, island hospitals had seen a net increase of 10 to 14 patients a day. He warned that “very, very soon,” hospitals would not have the capacity to care for any more patients and that emergency services were close to “maxed out.”

Although Oahu was acting to curb large gatherings, which appear to be fueling the current spread, officials emphasized that the best way to fight the virus was to get vaccinated. According to the Hawaii Department of Health, the highly contagious Delta variant, which is more dangerous for those who are not vaccinated, now accounts for 93 percent of the state’s Covid-19 infections.

“That’s the way out of this,” Dr. Ireland said. “Vaccinations.”

The full federal approval on Monday of a coronavirus vaccine for people 16 and older appeared to clear the way for local officials, private businesses and others who want to impose vaccine requirements to do so in some states that have banned them.

By giving its formal blessing to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, the Food and Drug Administration lifted it out of the emergency-use category and effectively put it on par with other vaccines required by public health authorities, universities, employers and others.

At least three states that banned vaccine requirements by law or executive order — Montana, Texas and Utah — did so specifically because the three vaccines in use in the United States were being administered under emergency-use authorizations, not full approval.

Now one of the vaccines has that approval, undercutting that justification and potentially setting the stage for more of the kind of legal battles that have erupted around the country over the bans, often pitting cities, counties or school districts that want stricter vaccine requirements against governors who say they want to protect individual freedom.

The issue has grown more urgent as the pace of vaccination has slowed and as new cases, hospitalizations and deaths have risen sharply, driven largely by the highly contagious Delta variant. Many states that have banned vaccine requirements also have relatively low vaccination rates and are struggling with the latest surge in infections.

In Utah — where the Republican-led legislature passed a bill in March barring government entities from requiring a Covid-19 vaccine that was authorized for emergency use only — a spokeswoman for the state health department said the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine should no longer be subject to the restrictions because it now had full approval. State legislative leaders did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott issued an executive order that took effect in July, stating that “no governmental entity can compel any individual to receive a Covid-19 vaccine administered under an emergency use authorization.”

Last week, after the San Antonio Independent School District sought to impose a vaccine requirement for its employees, the state attorney general, Ken Paxton, announced a lawsuit against the district. Pedro Martinez, the district’s superintendent, responded with a statement on Friday saying he would “not compel any staff member to be vaccinated until the vaccines are fully approved by the F.D.A.”

Mr. Paxton claimed victory in a statement on Monday, saying his office had stopped the district from trying to “play by its own set of rules.” But it was not immediately clear what would happen now that the F.D.A. had granted the approval Mr. Martinez said he was awaiting. Neither the school district nor the offices of Mr. Paxton and Mr. Abbott responded immediately to requests for comment.

Montana’s vaccine-mandate ban stipulates that “an individual may not be required to receive any vaccine whose use is allowed under an emergency use authorization or any vaccine undergoing safety trials.”

Brooke Stroyke, a spokeswoman for Montana’s governor, Greg Gianforte, maintained that vaccine mandates remained illegal in the state. She said the F.D.A. approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine did not entirely invalidate Montana’s law, which also prohibits discrimination based on whether a person has been inoculated.

Full federal approval for the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine for those 16 and older is opening the way for institutions like the military, corporate employers, hospitals and school districts to announce vaccine mandates for their employees.

Within hours of the announcement, the Pentagon, CVS, the State University of New York system and the New York City school system, among others, announced that they would enforce mandates they had prepared to carry out but had made contingent on the F.D.A.’s action.

One of the first and largest to move ahead was the Pentagon. Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III had already received authorization from President Biden to mandate vaccines for all active-duty troops once the vaccine was fully approved, and he was moving swiftly to put the plans into action, said John F. Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman. The secretary will soon send specific vaccination guidelines to 1.4 million service members.

“These efforts ensure the safety of our service members,” Mr. Kirby said during a news briefing on Monday. He said the deadline date for getting vaccinated was still being determined.

Last month, Mr. Biden ordered that all federal employees and on-site contractors must be vaccinated against the coronavirus, or else submit to regular testing and other measures. The requirement applied to the 766,372 civilians working for the Defense Department, but not active-duty service members.

The Defense Department’s website said that as of Aug. 18, more than one million service members have been vaccinated, along with more than 300,000 civilian employees.

Vaccine mandates for college students were also gathering pace after the F.D.A.’s decision.

The F.D.A.’s approval brought into force a requirement in New York, announced in May, that all in-person students at State University of New York and City University of New York schools be vaccinated. CUNY’s website said that after federal approval students “have 45 days to get fully vaccinated or will be subject to potential academic withdrawal.”

The University of Minnesota system, with five campuses and 60,000 students, said on Monday that the coronavirus vaccine would be added to the university’s list of mandatory immunizations for students. And the president of Louisiana State University told reporters that his school would also require vaccination. Each institution had previously said it would do so once the F.D.A. gave a coronavirus vaccine final approval.

The drugstore chain CVS said on Monday that its pharmacists would have to be fully vaccinated by Nov. 30 and that all corporate employees and other workers who interact with patients had until Oct. 31 to comply. The requirement affects about 100,000 employees, the company said. Workers may request exemptions for medical or religious reasons.

And Disney World said unions representing more than 30,000 employees had agreed to a mandate, citing the F.D.A.’s full approval, that would require workers to be vaccinated by Oct. 22.

New York City announced on Monday that every employee of the city’s Department of Education, from principals to janitors, would have to receive at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine by Sept. 27.

Hours later, New Jersey’s governor, Philip D. Murphy, said that all state employees and employees of public, private and parochial schools in his state must be fully inoculated by Oct. 18 or be tested once or twice a week for the virus. And Chevron became the first major American oil producer to require its field workers to get vaccinated.

Before the F.D.A.’s announcement, the three coronavirus vaccines available in the United States, made by Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson, were all being administered in the United States under an emergency use authorization. (The Pfizer vaccine remains available on that basis for youths 12 to 15 and for extra doses for some immunocompromised people.)

U.S. officials hope that full federal approval will quiet some of the vaccine misinformation online and induce more hesitant people to get vaccinated. A recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that three out of every 10 unvaccinated people said that they would be more likely to get a shot once it was fully approved.

But whether the announcement will help convince the roughly 85 million unvaccinated Americans to get inoculated without the added pressure of new requirements remains to be seen

Stephanie Saul, Eliza Shapiro, Tracey Tully and Coral Murphy-Marcos contributed reporting.

The United States has a far higher share of seniors without full vaccine protection than many other wealthy countries, a key risk factor driving serious Covid-19 illness and death, a Times analysis shows.

As the Delta variant has torn across the country, America’s pace of vaccinations has sped up after months of relative stagnation, and full federal approval of the Pfizer vaccine on Monday could extend that momentum. Just over half of Americans are now fully vaccinated.

But national averages mask the high rate of older Americans who remain deeply vulnerable. Older people still account for most Covid-19 deaths, and in many counties, especially in the South and Mountain West, seniors without full vaccination make up more than 10 percent of the total population.

“We have swaths of populations in counties who are healthy Americans, over 60, who are not vaccinated,” said Claire Hannan, executive director of the Association of Immunization Managers. “These people are at extreme risk, and they don’t realize it.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has updated its health advice for travel to six countries it now considers to be “very high” risk given the rapid spread of the coronavirus and the Delta variant. It is suggesting that people avoid traveling to these countries altogether, or if they must go, to get vaccinated beforehand.

The six countries — Haiti, Kosovo, Lebanon, Morocco, the Bahamas and St. Martin in the Caribbean — have all had more than 500 cases per 100,000 residents in the past 28 days, pushing them into the C.D.C.’s highest warning category.

Several other countries, including Brazil, Britain and Georgia — which currently has the highest daily global average, at 126 new cases a day per 100,000 people, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University — were already on the list.

The warnings come as the rapid spread of the Delta variant has upended travel plans for Americans amid a summer that many had hoped would include more freedoms thanks to high vaccination rates.

“Even fully vaccinated travelers may be at risk for getting and spreading Covid-19 variants,” the C.D.C. warns on its site. The agency also recommends against any international travel without full vaccination.

“The Covid-19 situation, including the spread of new or concerning variants, differs from country to country,” the agency says. “All travelers need to pay close attention to the conditions at their destination before traveling.”

After a precipitous drop in international student enrollment in 2020, the number of American student visas granted to international students has recovered to levels preceding the coronavirus pandemic.

This year, American consulates approved almost 117,000 F-1 student visas in May and June, about 90 percent of figures in 2019, according to U.S. State Department data. Among them, 57,000 Chinese students, who make up a large proportion of the international cohort, received F-1 student visas in May and June, a slight increase from 2019.

Last year, the number of international students in the United States on F-1 and M-1 visas fell by 20 percent to 1.25 million, while the number of new students dropped by 72 percent. Some students had opted to take classes remotely while others deferred their education in the United States because of coronavirus restrictions, including the suspension of in-person lessons.

The issue of visas for Chinese students has emerged as a point of contention in already strained ties between China and the United States. Travel between the countries has been largely frozen by visa controls imposed because of Covid-19 as well as geopolitical tensions.

About 500 Chinese postgraduates with offers to study STEM subjects were denied student visas this year, China Daily, a state news outlet, reported in July. Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing, condemned the visa rejections and called on President Biden to end restrictions imposed by the Trump administration on researchers and scholars suspected of having Chinese military ties.

Campus closures last year stranded about 400,000 Chinese students studying in the United States, including 26,000 in primary and secondary schools. Many desperately tried to secure a passage home when almost all flights to and from the country were canceled.

It remains unclear how the Delta variant will affect international student enrollment. Data of visa approvals in July, one of the busiest months ahead of the fall semester, has yet to be released.

Goldman Sachs told employees on Tuesday that it would require anyone who entered the bank’s U.S. offices, including clients, to be fully vaccinated starting on Sept. 7, making it the most prominent Wall Street bank to issue such a broad requirement.

The announcement, in a memo obtained by The New York Times, comes a day after the Food and Drug Administration gave full approval for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, a move that many large corporations had been seeking before making mandates.

President Biden seized on the F.D.A.’s approval, urging private businesses to protect their workers through vaccinations.

“If you’re a business leader, a nonprofit leader, a state or local leader, who has been waiting for full F.D.A. approval to require vaccinations, I call on you now to do that,” the president said on Monday. “Require it.”

Companies have been consulting with advisers for months about whether to mandate vaccines, but have been wary of employee pushback and potential litigation. The quick spread of the highly contagious Delta variant and prominent first moves by large corporations like Walmart and the Walt Disney Company helped to expedite those talks. Now, the F.D.A. approval on Monday has finally given them some assurances they need to move forward.

Goldman Sachs told employees on Tuesday that anyone in the United States who is not fully vaccinated by Sept. 7 must work from home. It will also require fully vaccinated employees to undergo weekly coronavirus testing.

The bank, which employs roughly 20,000 in the United States, is reinstating mask requirements throughout office common areas as of Wednesday. At offices in San Francisco and Washington, masks will be required at all times, except while eating or drinking.

Other Wall Street banks have similar requirements. Citigroup said earlier this month that it would require vaccinations for employees returning to its corporate offices in the New York area this fall, and Morgan Stanley said in June it would require all employees and visitors to its New York offices to be vaccinated. JPMorgan Chase has so far strongly encouraged, but not required, vaccinations for its work force.

The Goldman Sachs announcement followed several others that came this week. On Monday, Chevron said it was mandating vaccines for expats and employees who travel internationally, as well as for the offshore work force in the Gulf of Mexico and for some onshore support personnel. CVS Health said its pharmacists had until Nov. 30 to be fully vaccinated, while others who interact with patients, and all corporate staff, have until Oct. 31. Disney Cruise Line said Tuesday it was requiring passengers over 12 years old to be fully vaccinated for sailings to the Bahamas.

The F.D.A. approval also gives industry groups grounds to encourage vaccinations from their members — and lobby against legislation that may hinder those efforts. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce announced earlier this month it would mandate vaccines for its work force once they were fully approved by the F.D.A. The Business Roundtable, an influential lobbying group, said Monday that it supported mandates.

“Many companies have made the decision to mandate vaccines for some or all of their employees, and we applaud their decision,” the group, led by the Walmart chief executive Doug McMillon, said in a statement. “We also encourage policymakers, including at the state and local levels, to support — not impede — companies’ ability to make such a decision.”

At least three states — Montana, Texas and Utah — that had banned vaccine requirements by law or executive order did so specifically because the three vaccines used in the United States were being administered under emergency-use authorizations, not full approval. Some companies, like Norwegian Cruise Line in Florida, have resisted such prohibitions, but most have largely stayed out of the fray so far.

Over the past month, there have been signs that companies are showing an increased appetite for vaccine mandates. As of Aug. 7, the share of job postings requiring vaccinations was up 90 percent compared with a month earlier, according to the job search company Indeed. Those that require vaccinations, though, are still a small fraction of the overall listings.

F.D.A. authorization could also simplify negotiations with unions, whose mixed stance toward mandates has contributed to a class divide among workers. On Monday, Disney World said unions representing more than 30,000 employees had agreed to a mandate, citing the F.D.A.’s full approval, that would require workers to be vaccinated by Oct. 22.

But the United Food and Commercial Workers International, a union that represents around 1.3 million workers in grocery stores, pharmacies and meatpacking plants, warned on Monday against mandates that did not take employees’ concerns into consideration.

“With more employers considering vaccine mandates after this new F.D.A. approval, U.F.C.W. continues to urge all businesses to negotiate any vaccine requirements with their frontline workers,” the union’s president, Marc Perrone, said. The union had previously cited concerns about lack of regulatory approval in its negotiations with Tyson Foods over the meatpacker’s decision to require its entire work force to get vaccinated.

Unions and other industry groups are grappling with continued hesitancy about the shot. A recent poll found that three out of 10 unvaccinated people said that they would be more likely to get a fully approved F.D.A. shot, but some experts believe that this figure could be exaggerated.

Some companies that previously cited approval status for the vaccines had no updates to share as of Tuesday. “It’s very difficult for us to come in and mandate a vaccine that isn’t even federally approved yet,” the chief executive of Delta Air Lines, Ed Bastian, told CNBC earlier this month. “So stay tuned.”

A spokesman for the airline told The New York Times that the airline’s plans were “status quo”: mandating vaccines for new hires and strongly encouraging them for existing employees.

More regulatory action is coming that could make vaccines easier to mandate. Moderna’s application for full approval of its vaccine was filed in June, a month after Pfizer’s. Johnson & Johnson is expected to apply for full approval soon. And the F.D.A. is also weighing whether to authorize booster shots for the fully vaccinated, another twist for corporate vaccine mandates.

Niraj Chokshi and Daniel E. Slotnik contributed reporting

global roundup

The Philippines’ largest public hospital has been so overwhelmed by a continuous stream of coronavirus patients that it temporarily stopped accepting patients at its emergency room on Tuesday.

The Philippine General Hospital’s decision came a day after the health department reported 18,332 new cases on Monday, a new daily high for the country. On Tuesday, 12,067 were recorded, with the country’s total number of reported cases exceeding 1.8 million.

“We ask for your understanding,” the hospital said in its in a statement. It said more than 100 of its 230 Covid-19 patients were in intensive care and needing high-flow oxygen and ventilators.

It said admitting more patients at this stage would place both patients and hospital workers in danger.

The hospital serves more than half a million patients a year, providing health care services to majority of the country’s poor.

Hospitals designated for Covid-19 have been reporting high caseloads since the beginning of August, fueled by the more infectious Delta variant.

The government said on Monday that it had detected 466 new cases of the Delta variant, bringing to 1,273 the total number of those known to be infected with this variant. It had also detected community transmissions of Delta in the capital, Manila.

On Tuesday, the presidential spokesman Harry Roque again appealed to the public to have themselves vaccinated as more shots arrive in the country.

“While cases are going up, it is true that we are now in the critical warning stage,” Mr. Roque told an online press forum, adding that the intensive care unit beds available in Manila were now nearly full.

“72 percent of all I.C.U. beds in Metro Manila are now in use,” he said, adding that the same trend was happening nationwide, with nearly half of available ventilators also in use. “It is understandable given the Delta variant, but we need to increase the use of masks, to wash hands and if possible, get vaccinated.”

In other news from around the globe:

• Greece announced new measures meant to push more people to get vaccinated and to head off a renewed spike in infections from the Delta variant. Among them: People who have neither been vaccinated nor show proof that they recovered from a Covid-19 infection will be barred from barred from restaurants, cafes, clubs and sporting venues, the country’s health minister announced. Unvaccinated workers, especially in the tourism industry, will have to undergo frequent testing at their own expense, paying 10 euros ($12) a test — a sizable amount in a country where the average worker earns about $1,300, a month. About 52 percent of Greece’s population has been vaccinated so far. The new measures take effect Sept. 13.

• The health watchdog in France has recommended a third vaccine dose for immunocompromised people and those 65 or older. They will be eligible for the booster shot beginning in September, but must be at least six months away from their last vaccination. New reported cases in the country are averaging more than 20,000 daily, but have been falling in recent days. The United States and Israel are already implementing booster vaccination campaigns.

Léontine Gallois and Niki Kitsantonis contributed reporting.