The BulleTin • Monday, March 29, 2021 A3
TODAY
Today is Monday, March 29, the
88th day of 2021. There are 277
days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On March 29, 1974, eight Ohio
National Guardsmen were in-
dicted on federal charges stem-
ming from the shooting deaths
of four students at Kent State
University. (The charges were
later dismissed.)
In 1638, Swedish colonists set-
tled in present-day Delaware.
In 1812, the first White House
wedding took place as Lucy
Payne Washington, the sister
of first lady Dolley Madison,
married Supreme Court Justice
Thomas Todd.
In 1867, Britain’s Parliament
passed, and Queen Victoria
signed, the British North Ameri-
ca Act creating the Dominion of
Canada, which came into being
the following July.
In 1936, German Chancellor
Adolf Hitler claimed overwhelm-
ing victory in a plebiscite on his
policies.
In 1951, Julius and Ethel Rosen-
berg were convicted in New
York of conspiracy to commit
espionage for the Soviet Union.
(They were executed in 1953.)
In 1973, the last United States
combat troops left South Viet-
nam, ending America’s direct
military involvement in the
Vietnam War.
In 2017, Britain filed for divorce
from the European Union as
Prime Minister Theresa May sent
a six-page letter to EU Council
President Donald Tusk.
Ten years ago: A seriously ill
73-year-old British woman was
accidentally dropped into the
bitterly cold Norwegian Sea
as rescue workers took her off
the cruise ship Ocean Countess
(Janet Richardson later died at a
hospital).
Five years ago: Oscar-winning
actor Patty Duke, 69, died in
Coeur D’Alene, Idaho.
One year ago: President Don-
ald Trump extended restrictive
social distancing guidelines
through April, bracing the na-
tion for a coronavirus death toll
that he acknowledged could
exceed 100,000 people.
Today’s Birthdays: Author
Judith Guest is 85. Former British
Prime Minister Sir John Major is
78. Comedian Eric Idle is 78. Bas-
ketball Hall of Famer Walt Frazier
is 76. Singer Bobby Kimball (Toto)
is 74. Actor Bud Cort is 73. Actor
Marina Sirtis is 66. Rock singer
Perry Farrell (Jane’s Addiction) is
62. Comedian-actor Amy Sedaris
is 60. Model Elle Macpherson is
58. Rock singer-musician John
Popper (Blues Traveler) is 54.
Actor Lucy Lawless is 53.
— Associated Press
Coos
Continued from A1
Still, health officials
cautioned that the coun-
ty’s modest improvements
could easily be wiped away
by additional virus spread.
“We’re in spring break
right now, so let’s not forget
what that could bring,” said
Becky Fairhurst, a CHW
case investigator.
Travelers and gatherings
during breaks have been at-
tributed to county cases in
the past, Gleason said.
“We always have seen
spikes after large events, like
large gatherings. Luckily
we’re not Florida, but it still
could be pretty bad depend-
ing on who has done what
and where,” Gleason said.
“So, fingers crossed that
maybe we’ve learned some-
thing from that, that we
aren’t going to go and put
ourselves in a position that
sets us back.”
Tourists and visitors from
out of the area can be a par-
ticular challenge for county
health officials.
“We do try to determine
where people got the illness,”
Fairhust said. “It’s getting
harder and harder because
there’s a lot of commu-
nity spread right now, but
if someone’s forthcoming
and they say, ‘my relative or
friend came from Califor-
nia and they went back and
tested positive,’ we might be
able to reflect it there too,
but we don’t always know.”
New restriction cate-
gories will be announced
April 6 to take effect April
9. To leave the extreme-risk
category, the county will
need to reduce that per-
100,000 number to 200 or
fewer, and that test positiv-
ity below 10%.
Spread
Palmiro Tami,
82, holds hands
with his wife,
Franca Persico,
in the garden of
the Fondazione
Martino Zanchi
nursing home in
northern Italy on
March 22 after
he received his
second shot of the
Moderna vaccine.
Italy’s nursing
homes have been
declared an initial
success in an
otherwise lagging
vaccine campaign.
Continued from A1
Worldwide, half a billion vac-
cine doses have been administered,
according to Bloomberg’s vaccine
tracker. While shots have been given
in some 140 countries, the vast ma-
jority have gone to developed na-
tions that secured early doses by the
hundreds of millions. That disparity
risks prolonging the pandemic, even
for places currently leading the vac-
cination race.
“We need to try to bridge the gap
between the vaccine haves and vac-
cine have-nots to really meet the
goals that we’re seeking to achieve in
ending this pandemic and getting our
economies running again,” Thomas
Bollyky, director of the global health
program at the Council on Foreign
Relations, said in an interview.
Covax, a facility that aims to dis-
tribute doses equitably around the
globe, has started delivering shots to
lower-income countries like Ivory
Coast and Ghana, but the WHO has
said more needs to be done.
Here’s a look at how vaccine dis-
parities and a resurgent virus are
playing out in half a dozen countries.
Israel
Israel’s economy has mostly re-
opened now that half the country is
fully vaccinated and new cases are
plunging.
People are flocking back to the
restaurants and bars that survived
the pandemic, crowding the coun-
try’s beaches and enjoying live con-
certs and football matches in the
early days of spring.
Israel is still closed to foreign tour-
ists out of concern the spread of vari-
ants could undermine its vaccination
program. Still, some hotels say they’re
fully booked for the Passover holi-
day, which will be celebrated without
new restrictions on movement. That’s
a switch from last year, when lock-
downs were imposed over the period
to avoid a spike in cases.
Britain
The U.K. remains in a lockdown,
but the government’s roadmap to
reopening the economy has offered
a pathway to normality for a popu-
lation that’s being vaccinated faster
than any of its European neighbors.
The country recently passed the
milestone of giving a first dose to
Redistricting
Continued from A1
Only about half the states
have laws or constitutional
provisions explicitly requiring
them to use census data, ac-
cording to the NCSL.
Oregon’s deadline: July 1
In Oregon, the state consti-
tution requires lawmakers to
draw legislative districts “ac-
cording to population” by July
1. If they fail to do so, then the
secretary of state is to complete
maps by Aug. 15.
Democratic legislative lead-
ers cited “constitutional tur-
moil” caused by late census
data in asking the state Su-
preme Court to extend redis-
tricting deadlines until three
months after the figures are
received. But Secretary of State
Shemia Fagan, a Democrat,
contends that could trigger a
chain reaction that could delay
the state’s May 2022 primaries.
“The resulting cost, confu-
sion, and instability to Ore-
gon’s electoral process could
be staggering,” Attorney Gen-
eral Ellen Rosenblum argued
in a court filing on Fagan’s
behalf.
Fagan suggests the Legis-
lature could use population
estimates from Portland State
University to draft maps by the
constitutional deadline and re-
vise them during a likely legal
challenge as the 2020 census
data becomes available. Offi-
cials at the university’s Pop-
ulation Research Center told
The Associated Press that their
statewide estimates were off by
just 0.2% — fewer than 8,000
people — during the 2010 cen-
sus.
Other states
The Oklahoma Constitu-
tion requires the Legislature
to redraw its districts within
90 working days of starting its
regular session.
With the clock ticking, law-
makers have decided to use
population estimates from
2015 to 2019 to redraw leg-
islative maps. After the 2020
census data is released, the
Legislature may reconvene in
a special session if adjustments
Luca Bruno/AP
more than half its adults. It set a
daily record on March 20, inoculat-
ing almost 1.3% of the population
on a single day. Hospitalizations also
fell by more than a fifth from the
week before, bringing some relief to
the National Health Service.
Schools have reopened and some
employees are starting to return to
offices in London’s financial dis-
tricts, but residents won’t be able to
eat at restaurants or buy non-essen-
tial goods in stores for another two
weeks. Still, the government hopes
to remove all lockdown restrictions,
including allowing nightclubs to re-
open, by June 21.
United States
The daily death toll has fallen
steadily since mid-February as states
pushed to speed vaccinations and
balanced medical concerns with
protests by anti-lockdown groups.
Yet disparities remain. While New
Mexico has given at least one dose to
over a third of its population, Geor-
gia has just managed a fifth. The
inequities are also present among
racial groups: in 16 U.S. states and
Washington, D.C., less than 10% of
the Hispanic population has been
vaccinated — a milestone most
states reached with white popula-
tions weeks ago. Still, more than a
quarter of Americans have received
their first vaccine dose.
Restaurants in New York City —
once the pandemic’s American epi-
center — can now operate at 50%
capacity indoors, with many diners
taking advantage of covered side-
walk seating in Manhattan. The
city’s mayor has announced plans
for a vaccination center on Broad-
way to inoculate theater-industry
workers in preparation for a planned
re-opening in September.
The U.S. is now averaging nearly
62,000 cases a day, up from 54,000
two weeks ago, according to The As-
sociated Press.
Brazil
About a year after the virus first
arrived and two months after vac-
cinations began, Brazil is going
through its worst stretch of the pan-
demic yet.
The vast Latin American nation
reported 3,650 deaths on Friday, its
highest daily toll. On Wednesday,
it became just the second country
after the U.S. to record 300,000 fa-
talities. Since starting inoculations
in mid-January, just 6% of the pop-
ulation has received a dose. The cri-
sis has prompted neighbors to close
borders, impose travel bans and re-
quire forced quarantines.
President Jair Bolsonaro, who
long downplayed the coronavirus,
has now promised to speed up vacci-
nation efforts. The pathogen’s resur-
gence follows months of relatively
lax rules, which included New Year’s
celebrations and clandestine parties
in Rio de Janeiro.
India
India, a vaccine-making colossus
key to supplying much of the world
with low-cost shots, has struggled to
immunize itself. Now the country of
almost 1.4 billion is slowing exports
to keep more doses at home after
new infections climbed sixfold since
February to more than 60,000 a day.
Last week, the government ex-
panded the rollout to everyone over
the age of 45 and has allowed its
huge network of private hospitals to
charge a subsidized rate for the vac-
cines. Those moves have boosted
immunization rates and may help
Prime Minister Narendra Modi
reach a target of inoculating 300
million Indians by August.
While India has been reluctant to
reimpose lockdowns after a costly
shutdown last year did little to halt
the spread of the virus, there are in-
creasing concerns that tighter re-
strictions may be needed.
Italy
A year after it became Europe’s first
virus hotspot, Italy has again been
forced to impose a costly lockdown.
In the nation with the highest
death toll in the European Union,
daily fatalities have been climb-
ing since the start of the month as
a highly contagious strain spreads
across the country. Prime Minister
Mario Draghi has been pressing the
EU to lean on pharmaceutical com-
panies to respect vaccine delivery
commitments while warning that
Italy will block exports by firms that
breach contracts.
A general has been appointed
as a new virus czar to speed up the
vaccine rollout and make sure that
all Italian regions keep up the pace.
Draghi hopes to gradually ease Ita-
ly’s lockdown after the Easter holi-
days and to vaccinate 80% of citizens
by the end of September.
COMING SOON!
are needed.
“There’s an awful lot you
can do with the data that are
already available to start on a
rough sketch” for redistricting,
said Justin Levitt, a professor at
Loyola Law School in Los An-
geles who specializes in redis-
tricting.
But relying on anything
other than 2020 census data
for the final maps poses a
“substantial legal risk,” Levitt
said.
Lawsuits over redistricting
are a near certainty in many
states as political parties angle
to get preferential maps. A de-
cade ago, courts twice delayed
the Texas primaries because
of legal challenges to the maps
drawn by the Republican-led
Legislature.
Candidate filing for Texas’
March 1 primary is scheduled
to run from mid-November
to mid-December. But Repub-
lican Rep. Phil King is spon-
soring legislation that would
allow the governor, lieutenant
governor and House speaker to
agree to delay the primaries to
as late as July 1.
If census data isn’t received
until September, “it gets pretty
tight,” King said. “This is just
a safety net in case we have to
back it up a little bit.”
North Carolina’s top elec-
tions administrator wants law-
makers to postpone November
municipal elections and March
2022 primaries. But Key Re-
publican lawmakers say it’s too
soon to know whether that’s
necessary. Only about 60 of
the hundreds of municipalities
will need to redraw wards or
districts.
It’s not just potential candi-
dates who are affected by the
delayed census data. Election
administrators need time to
align new districts into voting
precincts so each voter gets a
ballot listing the correct candi-
dates. And officials need to get
that done early enough to mail
ballots to military and overseas
voters at least 45 days before an
election.
“All these things, they’re all
asking for time, and it’s all just
getting crazy compressed be-
cause of this late census data,”
Mitchell said.
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