U.S. approaches new records as experts debate which numbers are most important

LAS VEGAS — Massive TVs. Powerful computers. Augmented reality, smart glasses and self-driving cars. Every year, the world’s biggest tech companies, start-ups and automakers give us a glimpse at how much more convenient and luxurious the near-future could be at CES, the world’s largest consumer electronics show.

But as CES 2022 opens its doors in Las Vegas on Wednesday amid a surge of coronavirus infections around the world (total cases in the United States alone have now surpassed 57 million), the show will serve as a litmus test for whether in-person events can be executed while keeping attendees safe during a pandemic.

CES is the first major trade show of 2022, and its organizer — the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) — has insisted on holding the event in person despite the fast spread of the omicron variant. The World Economic Forum last month postponed its annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, moving it from January to mid-2022, citing the omicron variant. And JPMorgan Chase said its annual health-care conference in San Francisco scheduled for later this month would be virtual instead of in person.

The Electronic Entertainment Expo, the world’s largest video game conference more commonly known as E3, will no longer be held in person in 2022, according to the Entertainment Software Administration (ESA), the event’s organizer. The decision comes as coronavirus cases continue to spike across the United States due to the virus’s omicron variant.

“Due to the ongoing health risks surrounding covid-19 and its potential impact on the safety of exhibitors and attendees, E3 will not be held in person in 2022,” the ESA said in a statement to The Washington Post Thursday. “We are nonetheless excited about the future of E3 and look forward to announcing more details soon.”

From 2009 until 2019, E3 had been held annually in June at the Los Angeles Convention Center. The onset of the covid-19 pandemic canceled the event outright in 2020 and forced it to evolve into a four-day series of online presentations in 2021. The 2021 conference opened with an announcement that the conference would return to an in-person format in 2022. The persistence of coronavirus cases appears to have changed that plan.

When President Biden announced coronavirus vaccination requirements for private employers and health-care facilities in November, he said the rules would help get people back to work and increase immunization rates nationwide. “Too many people remain unvaccinated for us to get out of this pandemic for good,” he said at the time.

The Supreme Court on Friday will review two challenges to the administration’s vaccine policies affecting nearly 100 million workers. Most already have made the choice to be vaccinated, but Biden has said the numbers are not good enough.

One measure requires large private companies to implement a vaccination requirement or impose a masking and weekly testing regime. The second applies to health-care workers at facilities that receive certain federal funding.

Together, the cases test a signature aspect of the White House’s response to the pandemic that has killed more than 800,000 people in the United States.

The Supreme Court must decide whether to block the requirements while legal battles continue, or to let them be implemented during that time. Here’s an overview of the cases, the history and the issues the justices will consider.

Global coronavirus infections have reached a pandemic high, with 9.5 million new cases reported last week, the World Health Organization said Thursday.

That figure represented a 71 percent increase over the previous week and is probably an undercount, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, noting a backlog of cases from the holidays and unreported at-home tests. Cases are up in every region of the world; the highest jump was in the Americas, where they increased 100 percent.

The omicron variant driving the surge appears to be less severe than delta, Tedros said. But, he added, “the tsunami of cases is so huge and quick that it is overwhelming health systems around the world.”

The United States on Thursday continued to set or approach new all-time highs for coronavirus infections and hospital admissions, as the country continued its lurch into the pandemic’s latest phase and experts debated the utility of some long-standing metrics to measure the impact of covid-19.

Since the omicron variant began its dominant reign, new virus cases have exploded, smashing old daily records with such frequency and dependability that it has ceased to be headline-grabbing news. On Thursday, the seven-day average of new cases surpassed 600,000 for the first time, according to Washington Post tracking.

But because omicron appears to cause less severe illness while also being ultra-contagious, some of the nation’s leading experts — including the White House’s top medical adviser, Anthony S. Fauci — have said the more important statistic is covid-19 hospitalizations.

On that front, the numbers aren’t rising as rapidly as infections, but cause for concern remains. On Thursday, the country recorded more than 25,500 new hospital admits who have tested positive for the virus or who have suspected infections — the second-highest total on record, trailing only a mark set one year ago, during the first devastating winter wave. The number of pediatric covid inpatients has doubled since Christmas to an average of more than 3,900 children.

However, while the number of total covid inpatients has increased steadily, it still remains well short of the levels reached last year, a sign that many of those newly admitted patients are being released faster than at previous points in the pandemic. And the number of total covid-positive patients in ICUs — the most serious cases — has risen, but also remains lower than last year’s peaks.

In recent days, more evidence has emerged that overall hospitalization data may not tell a straightforward story, either. Hospitals across the country have reported key differences in this latest surge of patients. In some facilities, a large share of positive patients were initially admitted for other maladies and their covid infections were discovered incidentally.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul this week directed her state’s hospitals to begin distinguishing these cases — the people who were hospitalized for their covid symptoms and those whose infections are secondary. But no matter how the numbers are sliced, she added, hospitals only have so much capacity. Health-care workers have said this latest crunch of cases comes at a perilous time, with hospitals stretched thin and staff shortages on the rise.

Cornell University plans to begin the spring semester with two weeks of virtual classes, a staggered return of students from winter break and testing before and after students get to the Ivy League campus, the university’s leaders announced Thursday.

Cloth masks worn alone no longer meet university standards for protection, university president Martha E. Pollack and other officials noted. Cornell will provide masks such as N95s and KN95s to campus community members who need them.

Cornell saw a huge surge in student cases before the break, with more than 1,000 students testing positive one week in December, leading school officials to switch to virtual finals and make other changes.

The school’s message Thursday said evidence suggests the now-dominant omicron variant has a lower overall health risk, especially among a vaccinated and boosted population such as Cornell’s. But given the transmissibility of the omicron variant, they anticipate an early-semester spike that will challenge Cornell — and other universities — with the need to provide enough isolation space and support for those who test positive while also allowing students to continue with classes. They anticipate in-person classes will resume Feb. 7.

Six former health advisers to President Biden’s transition team released a series of journal articles on Thursday calling for a “new normal” in the nation’s approach to fighting the coronavirus and other viral threats.

In the articles, the advisers lay out dozens of recommendations, sometimes explicitly and often implicitly criticizing the federal response. For instance, they urge the administration to create a “modern data infrastructure” that would offer real-time information on the spread of the coronavirus and other potential threats, saying inadequate surveillance continues to put American lives and society at risk.

They also suggest investments in tests, vaccines and prevention beyond what the White House has done, such as mailing vouchers to Americans that could be used to obtain free, high-quality face masks.

“We’re trying to take the next steps, to anticipate where we need to be in the next three to 12 months,” said Ezekiel Emanuel, the University of Pennsylvania bioethicist who coordinated the effort. In an interview, Emanuel characterized the advisers’ articles, which were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, as an “outline of a national strategy … to find a new normal.”

Rather than continuing in “a perpetual state of emergency,” he and the others argue, the United States must shift to a strategy of seeking to live with the virus by suppressing its peaks, rather than attempting to eliminate it.

Asked on Thursday whether Biden believed the virus was here to stay, and whether health officials had read the JAMA articles, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said, “The president’s ultimate goal continues to be to defeat the virus.”

Yale is directing students to avoid local businesses — even outdoor restaurants and bars — as they return to campus after winter break.

Amid a national surge in coronavirus cases, colleges and universities have been scrambling to try to control infections and keep those who are potentially infected away from others. The rise of the omicron variant came as many schools were finishing the fall semester, causing on-campus spikes. Now students are returning to a patchwork of approaches as cases continue to rise nationwide.

At Yale, the request that students skip indoor and outdoor restaurants and bars was part of a Tuesday message from dean of student affairs Melanie Boyd laying out multiple health and safety requirements. Students, who must be vaccinated and boosted, are allowed to come back to the New Haven, Conn., campus between Jan. 14 and Feb. 4.

As part of a first-phase, individual in-room quarantine, they have to stay in their dorm rooms as much as possible, avoiding contact with others and wearing masks around their roommates, until receiving the result of a coronavirus test given on arrival.

In the second phase — a campuswide quarantine — students are to avoid local businesses, regardless of whether they live on or off campus. They are allowed to move around campus, order curbside pickup or take walks or runs off campus. The school also asks that they avoid out-of-state travel.

The campuswide quarantine is expected to continue until Feb. 7. But Boyd noted that it “may extend beyond that date if on- or off-campus covid-19 rates are high.”