Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas announced on Tuesday that he was abandoning the state’s face mask requirement imposed amid the coronavirus pandemic and will allow businesses to operate at full capacity, saying “it is now time to open Texas 100 percent.”
The wide-reaching announcement in Texas came as similar rules were being lifted elsewhere: Restaurants, schools, movie theaters and bars are reopening and shedding restrictions in some of the nation’s biggest cities and most populous states, prompting more Americans to emerge after months of isolation and bringing the country closer to a semblance of life before the coronavirus pandemic.
The pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co will help manufacture the new Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine under an unusual deal, brokered by the White House, that could substantially increase the supply of the new vaccine and ramp up the pace of vaccination just as worrisome new variants of the virus have been found in the United States.
The arrangement, first reported by The Washington Post on Tuesday, comes just days after the Food and Drug Administration granted emergency authorization to the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
The U.S. vaccine campaign has heightened tensions between rural and urban America, where from Oregon to Tennessee to upstate New York complaints are surfacing of a real — or perceived — inequity in vaccine allocation.
