The return to a pre-pandemic normal in the U.S. is gaining speed.
The New York City subway hit its highest daily ridership since March 13, 2020, with some 2.2 million riders last Friday. More than 1.7 million people traveled through the nation’s airports on Sunday, the most since the start of the pandemic.
The San Francisco Symphony held its first in-person performance in more than a year, and the Kansas City Symphony plans to return later this month to its concert hall. On Monday, some restaurants in the U.S. hit a milestone, according to data from OpenTable. Seated diners at reopened restaurants on the reservation platform’s network reached 100% of 2019 levels.
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“We’re absolutely heading to a time that’s going to feel more like normal than it’s going to feel like the pandemic,” said Jay Varma, a physician and senior adviser to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. That said, “I think just like Sept. 11 changed the way we think about physical security, I don’t think we’re ever going to feel the same way about health security,” he added.
New York, New Jersey, Minnesota, Delaware, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island will lift most economic restrictions this month.
When around 50% of people have gotten a first dose of vaccine, which is the case in New York City and elsewhere, “you reduce the risk of your healthcare system being overrun and you reduce the risk of mass death,” said Dr. Varma. “So that’s why we feel comfortable relaxing a lot of the restrictions that we have on nonessential businesses.”
Already, 28 states have fully reopened, according to research from the Kaiser Family Foundation. In 29 states, all nonessential businesses have reopened, and in 22 states there is no face-mask requirement.
The steady—even if incremental—progress on the road back to normal life for many Americans comes as Covid-19 cases decline and as the vaccination push shifts to a more targeted phase.
The seven-day average of newly reported cases has dropped below 40,000, levels last seen in September, according to data for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Modeling used by the CDC shows the number of newly reported cases will likely decrease over the next four weeks.
More than 58% of Americans over the age of 18 have received at least one dose of Covid-19 vaccine, according to CDC data. Children ages 12 to 15 are now eligible for the vaccine from Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE under an expansion of an emergency-use authorization by the Food and Drug Administration, giving an expected boost to the U.S. vaccination campaign just as the pace of vaccinations has slowed somewhat.
A new federal goal to provide at least one dose of vaccine to 70% of Americans by July 4 moved into a new phase Tuesday, as President Biden announced funding for enhanced on-the-ground efforts, including phone banking, door-to-door canvassing, and pop-up vaccination sites in workplaces and churches. Already, states, municipalities and healthcare providers have been trying new strategies to encourage people to get the shot.
Volunteers in Detroit were knocking on doors earlier this month to offer information about where people can get vaccinated.
Photo: emily elconin/ReutersThe increased vaccinations are bolstering reopening efforts. On Monday, Michigan hit a vaccination rate of 55% among those age 16 and older, a mark set by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer allowing in-person work to soon resume for all businesses after two weeks. This week, New Hampshire state employees who have been working at home because of Covid-19 were required to return to the office.
In Washington, D.C., capacity and other restrictions on most businesses and public venues will be lifted by May 21, with any remaining restrictions lifted in June. Capacity limits in Illinois will increase this month, with an eye toward a total reopening in June.
Public-health officials and epidemiologists say people who are fully vaccinated can safely resume most pre-pandemic activities with other fully vaccinated people.
“The vaccine is doing what it’s supposed to do,” said Jeffrey Shaman, an infectious-disease modeler at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health in New York City.
Dr. Shaman said that if the U.S. was under 500 new cases a day, which has happened in some countries, then the virus is steamrolled. Variants of concern, particularly variants first identified in India and in Brazil, are the wild card, he said.
States are going to continue to have flare-ups, with sudden surges of Covid-19 cases that aren’t well understood, according to epidemiologist Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.
“I don’t think anybody in public health believes that these [vaccination] levels are adequate to stop local surges right now,” Dr. Osterholm said. “In a sense, this is an experiment. We can’t continue to stay in lockdown or shutdown as a society, but at the same time we’re going to have to figure out how we fine-tune that so we don’t see these surges within a state.”
Some states, including Massachusetts, New Mexico and Oregon, are taking a slower approach to reopening. New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, has said the state will open when 60% of people eligible are fully vaccinated. The state is currently at 48%. In Oregon, Democratic Gov. Kate Brown said the state would more fully reopen when 70% of residents age 16 and older have had a first dose of vaccine. She said the state should meet that threshold in June; currently more than 56% of the population is vaccinated with at least one dose.
New York plans to lift most capacity restrictions on gyms, such as Equinox, on May 19.
Photo: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg NewsOfficials in New York City had originally planned to reopen on July 1. Last week, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, both Democrats, said the two states would on May 19 lift most capacity restrictions on businesses, including limits at restaurants, gyms, retail, offices and theaters. Social-distancing measures must be continued, and neither state lifted their mask mandates.
The move, in effect, sped up New York City’s reopening by more than six weeks. In all, the city’s businesses have been under some restriction for 14 months, going back to mid-March 2020 when Covid-19 first ripped through the city, then the center of the pandemic in the U.S.
Now, the percentage of people in the city testing positive for Covid-19 over a seven-day average is less than 2%. Presently, the average number of daily reported cases is 773, and new cases have been steadily dropping since the first week in April.
That decline, said Dr. Varma, “has exceeded our optimistic projections.”
“ ‘I’m so much happier with the way things are looking and feeling now.’ ”
For New York City restaurateur Gabriel Stulman, normal will be when waiters aren’t wearing masks, he can shake hands and guests can sit at a bar and brush an elbow against a stranger and turn around and start chatting with that person, he said.
Maintaining social-distancing in the city’s restaurants—including one of Mr. Stulman’s restaurants, which is 550 square feet—means that a 100% reopening on May 19 isn’t a true reality. Revenue remains off from pre-pandemic levels, he said, varying by location of restaurant and the weather.
Still, he is hopeful.
“I’m so much happier with the way things are looking and feeling now,” said Mr. Stulman.
This month, he said, will mark a new milestone: the reopening of one of his restaurants, The Jones, with a new design and “big ol’ sidewalk cafe.”
“I’m so bullish on New York. I love this goddamn city!” said Mr. Stulman. “I think this city is going to be the most electric fun. I couldn’t be more proud to be a New Yorker than I am in this moment.”
Write to Melanie Grayce West at melanie.west@wsj.com
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