coronavirus pandemic
Do we need humans for that job? Automation booms after COVID
Ask for a roast beef sandwich at an Arby’s drive-thru east of Los Angeles and you may be talking to Tori — an artificially intelligent voice assistant that will take your order and send it to the line cooks.
“It doesn’t call sick,” says Amir Siddiqi, whose family installed the AI voice at its Arby’s franchise this year in Ontario, California. “It doesn’t get corona. And the reliability of it is great.”
The pandemic didn’t just threaten Americans’ health when it slammed the U.S. in 2020 -- it may also have posed a long-term threat to many of their jobs. Faced with worker shortages and higher labor costs, companies are starting to automate service sector jobs that economists once considered safe, assuming that machines couldn’t easily provide the human contact they believed customers would demand.
Past experience suggests that such automation waves eventually create more jobs than they destroy, but that they also disproportionately wipe out less skilled jobs that many low-income workers depend on. Resulting growing pains for the U.S. economy could be severe.
Read: Covid-19 in Bangladesh: Big medical bills making many people paupers
If not for the pandemic, Siddiqi probably wouldn’t have bothered investing in new technology that could alienate existing employees and some customers. But it’s gone smoothly, he says: “Basically, there’s less people needed but those folks are now working in the kitchen and other areas.”
Ideally, automation can redeploy workers into better and more interesting work, so long as they can get the appropriate technical training, says Johannes Moenius, an economist at the University of Redlands. But although that’s happening now, it’s not moving quickly enough, he says.
Worse, an entire class of service jobs created when manufacturing began to deploy more automation may now be at risk. “The robots escaped the manufacturing sector and went into the much larger service sector,” he says. “I regarded contact jobs as safe. I was completely taken by surprise.”
Improvements in robot technology allow machines to do many tasks that previously required people -- tossing pizza dough, transporting hospital linens, inspecting gauges, sorting goods. The pandemic accelerated their adoption. Robots, after all, can’t get sick or spread disease. Nor do they request time off to handle unexpected childcare emergencies.
Economists at the International Monetary Fund found that past pandemics had encouraged firms to invest in machines in ways that could boost productivity -- but also kill low-skill jobs. “Our results suggest that the concerns about the rise of the robots amid the COVID-19 pandemic seem justified,” they wrote in a January paper.
The consequences could fall most heavily on the less-educated women who disproportionately occupy the low- and mid-wage jobs most exposed to automation -- and to viral infections. Those jobs include salesclerks, administrative assistants, cashiers and aides in hospitals and those who take care of the sick and elderly.
Employers seem eager to bring on the machines. A survey last year by the nonprofit World Economic Forum found that 43% of companies planned to reduce their workforce as a result of new technology. Since the second quarter of 2020, business investment in equipment has grown 26%, more than twice as fast as the overall economy.
The fastest growth is expected in the roving machines that clean the floors of supermarkets, hospitals and warehouses, according to the International Federation of Robotics, a trade group. The same group also expects an uptick in sales of robots that provide shoppers with information or deliver room service orders in hotels.
Restaurants have been among the most visible robot adopters. In late August, for instance, the salad chain Sweetgreen announced it was buying kitchen robotics startup Spyce, which makes a machine that cooks up vegetables and grains and spouts them into bowls.
It’s not just robots, either -- software and AI-powered services are on the rise as well. Starbucks has been automating the behind-the-scenes work of keeping track of a store’s inventory. More stores have moved to self-checkout.
Read: Ensuring global access to Covid vaccines EU’s priority: Teerink
Scott Lawton, CEO of the Arlington, Virginia-based restaurant chain Bartaco, was having trouble last fall getting servers to return to his restaurants when they reopened during the pandemic.
So he decided to do without them. With the help of a software firm, his company developed an online ordering and payment system customers could use over their phones. Diners now simply scan a barcode at the center of each table to access a menu and order their food without waiting for a server. Workers bring food and drinks to their tables. And when they’re done eating, customers pay over their phones and leave.
The innovation has shaved the number of staff, but workers aren’t necessarily worse off. Each Bartaco location — there are 21 — now has up to eight assistant managers, roughly double the pre-pandemic total. Many are former servers, and they roam among the tables to make sure everyone has what they need. They are paid annual salaries starting at $55,000 rather than hourly wages.
Tips are now shared among all the other employees, including dishwashers, who now typically earn $20 an hour or more, far higher than their pre-pandemic pay. “We don’t have the labor shortages that you’re reading about on the news,” Lawton says.
The uptick in automation has not stalled a stunning rebound in the U.S. jobs market -- at least so far.
The U.S. economy lost a staggering 22.4 million jobs in March and April 2020, when the pandemic gale hit the U.S. Hiring has since bounced back briskly: Employers have brought back 17 million jobs since April 2020. In June, they posted a record 10.1 million job openings and are complaining that they can’t find enough workers.
Behind the hiring boom is a surge in spending by consumers, many of whom got through the crisis in unexpectedly good shape financially -- thanks to both federal relief checks and, in many cases, savings accumulated by working from home and skipping the daily commute.
Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, expects employers are likely to be scrambling for workers for a long time.
For one thing, many Americans are taking their time returning to work -- some because they’re still worried about COVID-19 health risks and childcare problems, others because of generous federal unemployment benefits, set to expire nationwide Sept. 6.
In addition, large numbers of Baby Boom workers are retiring. “The labor market is going to be very, very tight for the foreseeable future,” Zandi says.
Read:US assures Covid cooperation to continue as 1-mn doses of Pfizer's vaccine received
For now, the short-term benefits of the economic snapback are overwhelming any job losses from automation, whose effects tend to show up gradually over a period of years. That may not last. Last year, researchers at the University of Zurich and University of British Columbia found that the so-called jobless recoveries of the past 35 years, in which economic output rebounded from recessions faster than employment, could be explained by the loss of jobs vulnerable to automation.
Despite strong hiring since the middle of last year, the U.S. economy is still 5.3 million jobs short of what it had in February 2020. And Lydia Boussour, lead U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, calculated last month that 40% of the missing jobs are vulnerable to automation, especially those in food preparation, retail sales and manufacturing.
Some economists worry that automation pushes workers into lower-paid positions. Daron Acemoglu, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Pascual Restrepo of Boston University estimated in June that up to 70% of the stagnation in U.S. wages between 1980 and 2016 could be explained by machines replacing humans doing routine tasks.
“Many of the jobs that get automated were at the middle of the skill distribution,” Acemoglu says. “They don’t exist anymore, and the workers that used to perform them are now doing lower-skill jobs.”
Global Covid cases near 218 million
The overall number of global Covid cases is fast nearing 218 million, as the world is still struggling to contain the second wave of the pandemic even with mass inoculations underway.
According to US-based Johns Hopkins University (JHU), the total case count mounted to 217,632,545 and the death toll to 4,518,377 on Wednesday morning.
So far, 5,277,415,976 vaccine doses have been administered across the globe.
Read: India’s COVID-19 vaccine supply jumps, raising export hopes
The US, which is the world's worst-hit country in terms of both cases and deaths, has so far logged 39,197,606 cases. Besides, 640,089 people have lost their lives in the US to date, as per the JHU data.
Brazil currently has the world's second-highest pandemic death toll after the United States and the third-largest caseload after the United States and India.
The country has recorded 20,776,870 cases with 580,413 fatalities so far, according to the health ministry.
India's Covid-19 tally rose to 32,768,880 on Tuesday as 30,941 new cases were registered in 24 hours across the country, as per the federal health ministry.
Read: Covid in Bangladesh: Both cases and deaths fall further
A total of 350 deaths due to the pandemic since Monday morning took the total death toll to 438,560 -- the world's third-highest after the US and Brazil.
Situation in Bangladesh
Both the Covid-19 cases and fatalities in Bangladesh dropped further as the country logged 86 deaths and 3,357 new cases, respectively, in 24 hours till Tuesday morning.
The country last saw 112 coronavirus-related deaths on June 29 and the upswing in the fatalities reached its peak on August 5 and 10 when 264 deaths were recorded.
Read: Govt plans to provide Covid jabs to two crore people by September
The fresh numbers have pushed the country’s total fatalities to 26,195, while the cases reached 1,500,618, according to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
The new cases were detected after the test of 28,097 samples in the past 24 hours, which reduced the daily case positivity rate to 11.95% from Monday’s 12.07%, said the DGHS.
Meanwhile, the government aims at vaccinating two crore people against Covid by next month, Health Minister Zahid Maleque said on Tuesday.
Covid-19: India entering 'endemecity', 26.8% of world fully vaccinated
The global Covid-19 caseload has surpassed 216 million with the world still struggling to contain the pandemic, but there may be better news for one of the worst-hit countries from the virus in the days ahead.Covid-19 in India may be entering a stage of ‘endemicity’ where there is low or moderate level of transmission going on, Chief Scientist of the World Health Organisation Dr Soumya Swaminathan said over the weekend.“We may be entering some kind of stage of endemicity where there is low level transmission or moderate level transmission going on but we are not seeing the kinds of exponential growth and peaks that we saw a few months ago," Dr Swaminathan said.
Read:How Long Will Your COVID-19 Coronavirus Vaccination Protection Last?According to Dr Swaminathan, the endemic stage is when a population "learns to live with a virus". It’s very different from the epidemic stage when a virus overwhelms a population.The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that endemic “refers to the constant presence and/or usual prevalence of a disease or infectious agent in a population within a geographic area."In the endemic stage, disease spread and rates of infection are said to be fairly predictable.India's COVID-19 tally rose to 32,695,030 (32.7 million) on Sunday, as 45,083 new cases were registered during the past 24 hours across the country, according to the federal health ministry's latest data.Besides, 460 deaths due to the pandemic since Saturday morning took the total death toll to 437,830 - the world's third-highest after the USA and Brazil.According to Johns Hopkins University (JHU), the total caseload and fatalities globally stand at 216,364,257 (over 216 million) and 4,500,596 (over 4.5 million) respectively, as of Monday morning.
Read: Covid-19 in Bangladesh: '76% leprosy-affected people face severe financial crisis'So far, 5,191,645,799 (almost 5.2 billion) vaccine doses have been administered across the globe. That number includes 3.1 billion, or 40 percent of the world population that has received at least one dose, and 2.1 billion, or 26.8 percent of the world population now fully vaccinated.The US, which is the world's worst-hit country in terms of both cases and deaths, has so far logged 38,796,236 cases while 637,525 people have lost their lives to Covid to date, according to JHU.Brazil currently has the world's second-highest pandemic death toll after the United States and the third-largest caseload after the United States and India.The country has recorded 20,741,815 cases with 579,308 fatalities so far, according to the health ministry.Situation in BangladeshWith millions of people still waiting to receive their first doses of coronavirus vaccines, the deadly virus claimed 89 more lives in Bangladesh in 24 hours till Sunday morning and infected another 3,948 people.The country's single-day death toll fell below 100 for the first time in more than two months with 80 deaths reported on Saturday.
Read: Covid fatalities shrink below 100 after 2 monthsSince the start of the Covid pandemic in March last year, Bangladesh recorded 14,93,537 infections and 26,015 deaths, according to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).The fresh cases were reported after testing 27,921 samples raising the daily case positivity rate to 14.14% from Saturday’s 13.67%.Meanwhile, the recovery rate rose to 94.79 per cent, while the case fatality rate remained unchanged at 1.74% during the period.
Powerful Hurricane Ida closing in on Louisiana landfall
Hurricane Ida crossed the Gulf of Mexico on track for a potentially devastating landfall on the Louisiana coast Sunday, while emergency officials in the region grappled with opening shelters for displaced evacuees despite the risks of spreading the coronavirus.
The National Hurricane Center predicted Ida could be an extremely dangerous Category 4 hurricane with 130 mph (209 kph) winds when it makes an expected afternoon landfall. The storm arrived on the exact date Hurricane Katrina ravaged Louisiana and Mississippi 16 years earlier.
Ida was a Category 2 hurricane Saturday night with maximum sustained winds of 105 mph (168 kph). The storm was centered about 235 miles (375 kilometers) southeast of coastal Houma, Louisiana, and was traveling northwest at 16 mph (26 kph).
The storm threatened a region already reeling from a resurgence of COVID-19 infections, thanks to low vaccination rates and the highly contagious delta variant.
Read: Tropical Storm Ida a hurricane menace to New Orleans
New Orleans hospitals planned to ride out the storm with their beds nearly full, as similarly stressed hospitals elsewhere had little room for evacuated patients. And shelters for those fleeing their homes carried an added risk of becoming flashpoints for new infections.
Gov. John Bel Edwards vowed Saturday that Louisiana’s “resilient and tough people” would weather the storm. He also noted shelters would operate with reduced capacities “to reflect the realities of COVID.”
Edwards said Louisiana officials were already working to find hotel rooms for many evacuees so that fewer had to stay in mass shelters. He noted that during last year’s hurricane season, Louisiana found rooms for 20,000 people.
“So, we know how to do this,” Edwards said. “I hope and pray we don’t have to do it anywhere near that extent.”
In coastal Gulfport, Mississippi, a Red Cross shelter posted signs displaying directions for evacuees along with warnings about COVID-19. With skies still sunny, only a handful of people had shown up Saturday evening.
Shelter manager Barbara Casterlin said workers were required to wear face masks. Evacuees were encouraged to do the same. Anyone who refuses will be sent to an isolated area, she said, and so will people who are sick.
“We’re not checking vaccinations,” Casterlin said, “but we are doing temperature checks two or three times a day.”
President Joe Biden approved emergency declarations for Louisiana and Mississippi ahead of Ida’s arrival.
Read: Henri hurls rain as storm settles atop swamped Northeast
Comparisons to the Aug. 29, 2005, landfall of Katrina weighed heavily on residents bracing for Ida. A Category 3 storm, Katrina was blamed for 1,800 deaths as it demolished oceanfront homes in Mississippi and caused levee breaches and catastrophic flooding in New Orleans.
In Saucier, Mississippi, Alex and Angela Bennett spent Saturday afternoon filling sand bags to place around their flood-prone home. Both survived Katrina, and didn’t expect Ida to cause nearly as much destruction where they live, based on forecasts.
“Katrina was terrible. This ain’t gonna be nothing,” Alex Bennett said. “I hate it for Louisiana, but I’m happy for us.”
Long lines formed at gas pumps Saturday as people rushed to escape. Trucks pulling saltwater fishing boats and campers streamed away from the coast on Interstate 65 in Alabama, while traffic jams clogged Interstate 10 heading out of New Orleans.
Ida intensified so swiftly that New Orleans officials said there was no time to organize a mandatory evacuation of its 390,000 residents. Mayor LaToya Cantrell urged residents to leave voluntarily. Those who stayed were warned to prepare for long power outages amid sweltering heat.
Officials also stressed that the levee and drainage systems protecting the city had been much improved since Katrina. But they cautioned flooding was still possible with up to 20 inches (50 centimeters) of rain forecast in some areas.
Edwards said 5,000 National Guard troops were being staged in 14 Louisiana parishes for search and rescue efforts. And 10,000 linemen were on standby to respond to electrical outages.
Read: Rescuers racing in Haiti as storm threatens to follow quake
Ida posed a threat far beyond New Orleans. A hurricane warning was issued for nearly 200 miles (320 kilometers) of Louisiana’s coastline, from Intracoastal City south of Lafayette to the Mississippi state line. A tropical storm warning was extended to the Alabama-Florida line.
Meteorologist Jeff Masters, who flew hurricane missions for the government and founded Weather Underground, said Ida is forecast to move through “the just absolute worst place for a hurricane.”
The Interstate 10 corridor between New Orleans and Baton Rouge is a critical hub of the nation’s petrochemical industry, lined with oil refineries, natural gas terminals and chemical manufacturing plants. Entergy, Louisiana’s major electricity provider, operates two nuclear power plants along the Mississippi River.
A U.S. Energy Department map of oil and gas infrastructure shows scores of low-lying sites in the storm’s projected path that are listed as potentially vulnerable to flooding.
Covid: Sylhet sees 10 more deaths in 24 hours
Sylhet division on Wednesday morning logged 10 new Covid-related deaths in 24 hours.
Of the total deaths, nine were reported in Sylhet district alone, said officials of the Sylhet health department.
During this period, some 230 people were found positive, taking the total tally of cases to 51,855.
Read:Sylhet div logs 17 deaths in single day
With the fresh figures, the total fatalities in the division now stand at 1015. Moreover, 41,791 people have recovered to date.
Besides, 218 people are currently undergoing treatment at the corona unit of Sylhet Osmani Medical College and Hospital, while 609 Covid patients are recovering at other hospitals of the division.
Japan to further expand virus emergency areas as cases surge
Japan was set to expand its coronavirus state of emergency for a second week in a row Wednesday, adding several more prefectures as a surge in infections fueled by the delta variant strains the country’s health care system.
The government last week extended the state of emergency until Sept. 12 and expanded the areas covered to 13 prefectures from six including Tokyo. Sixteen other prefectures are currently under quasi-emergency status.
Read:Japan to widen virus emergency after record spike amid Games
The government at a meeting of experts Wednesday proposed upgrading eight prefectures from quasi-emergency status to a full state of emergency. Those prefectures include Hokkaido and Miyagi in the north, Aichi and Gifu in central Japan, and Hiroshima and Okayama in the west.
The proposal was expected to be approved and formally announced later Wednesday.
Japan’s state of emergency relies on requirements for eateries to close at 8 p.m. and not serve alcohol, but the measures are increasingly defied. Unenforceable social distancing and tele-working requests for the public and their employers are also largely ignored due to growing complacency.
The Japanese capital has been under the emergency since July 12, but new daily cases have increased more than tenfold since then to about 5,000 in Tokyo and 25,000 nationwide. Hospital beds are quickly filling and many people must now recover at home, including some who require supplemental oxygen.
Read: Tropical storm to bring rain, wind, waves to northeast Japan
More than 35,000 patients in Tokyo are recovering at home, about one-third of them unable to find a hospital or hotel vacancies immediately. Only a small percentage of hospitals are taking virus patients, either for financial reasons or because they lack the capability to treat the infections, experts say.
Japan has weathered the pandemic better than many other countries, with around 15,600 deaths nationwide since the start, but its vaccination efforts lag behind other wealthy nations. About 40% of the population has been fully vaccinated, mainly elderly people.
Economy and Fiscal Policy Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura, also in charge of the COVID-19 measures, said Wednesday that infections are spreading among those in their 20s to 50s who are largely unvaccinated. He urged them to take extra caution.
“Just imagine you may be the one getting infected tomorrow,” he said.
Rising infections among schoolchildren and teenagers could accelerate the surge as they begin returning to school after the summer vacation, said Dr. Shigeru Omi, top government medical advisor. He proposed schools curtail activity and urged high schools and colleges to return to online classes.
“Infections in Tokyo are showing no signs of slowing, and the severely tight medical systems will continue for a while,” he told a parliamentary session Wednesday.
The government has faced criticism for holding this summer’s Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics despite strong opposition from the public. Officials deny any direct link between the games and the spike in infections.
Global Covid cases surge past 213 million
With the world still grappling to contain the second wave of the pandemic, the global Covid-19 caseload has now surpassed 213 million.
The total caseload and fatalities stand at 213,098,413 and 4,450,408, respectively, as of Wednesday morning, according to Johns Hopkins University (JHU).
So far, 4,995,430,625 vaccine doses have been administered across the globe.
Read:UNGA: No scope for side events this time due to Covid-19
The US, which is the world's worst-hit country in terms of both cases and deaths, has so far logged 38,053,653 cases, according to JHU, while 630,663 people have lost their lives to Covid to date.
Brazil currently has the world's second-highest pandemic death toll after the United States and the third-largest caseload after the United States and India.
The country has recorded 20,614,866 cases with 575,742 fatalities so far, according to the health ministry.
The third worst-hit country, India's Covid-19 tally rose to 32,474,773 on Tuesday, as 25,467 new cases were registered in the past 24 hours across the country, as per the federal health ministry data.
Read: US regulators give full approval to Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine
Besides, 354 fatalities due to the pandemic since Monday morning took the total death toll to 435,110.
Situation in Bangladesh
Covid-related cases and fatalities in Bangladesh are seeing a downtrend as both the number of deaths and infections dropped in 24 hours till Tuesday morning, logging 114 deaths and 5,249 new cases.
The country last saw 112 coronavirus- related deaths on June 29 and the upswing in the fatalities reached its peak on August 5 and 10 when 264 deaths were recorded.
The fresh deaths pushed the country’s total fatalities to 25,513 while the cases reached 1,472,964, according to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
Read: New Zealand player tests positive for Covid-19 in Dhaka
The fresh cases were detected after testing 34,708 samples in 24 hours, which reduced the daily case positivity rate to 15.12% from Monday’s 15.54%, said the DGHS.
The recovery rate rose to 93.81%, but the case fatality remained unchanged at 1.73% compared to the same period.
So far, the government has managed to vaccinate 6,976,317 people with two doses, and another 17,242,479 with the first dose, said DGHS.
Schools, colleges asked to prepare for reopening, guidelines issued
The education authorities have issued some guidelines as part of preparations to reopen educational institutions which have remained closed since March last year due to Covid pandemic.
The teachers of primary schools have been instructed to return to their work places from Tuesday.
Read:SSC, HSC exams either in Nov or Dec next: Education Minister
The Primary Education Directorate asked the upazila/thana education officers to inspect the schools their jurisdiction within a week.
Besides, it also gave instructions to keep the institutions clean and tidy by taking utmost care to prevent dengue.
The primary school authorities were instructed to prepare their wash block accordingly.
Besides, the Directorate of Secondary & Higher Education (DSHE) asked the regional directors to take necessary preparations to reopen schools and colleges.
According to education ministry sources, most of the teachers and staffers of the educational institutions have been vaccinated.
Read:Educational institutions to remain closed until July 31, says govt
Besides, sources within the University Grants Commission claimed that around 80 % students of Dhaka University got their Covid jabs.
However schools will reopen only after the covid positivity rate comes below 5 %, said a source of the education ministry.
In that case, the closure of schools might be extended again.
Director of DSHE professor Shahedul Kabir Chowdhury said the regional directors were asked to inspect and submit a report on the final preparations on resuming academic activities at educational institutions.
Director General of the Directorate of Primary Education Alamgir Md Mansurul Alam said teachers have been told to return to schools.
Read:WB approves $191mn credit for Bangladesh’s education sector
"We also instructed our officials to visit institutions and submit a report on preparations to reopen. Failure to do so will result in administrative actions," he added.
The government shut down educational institutions on March 17, last year after the country reported its first Covid-19 cases on March 8.
Then the closure was extended several times until August 31 this year.
Kathy Hochul becomes New York’s first female governor
Kathy Hochul became the first female governor of New York at the stroke of midnight Tuesday, taking control of a state government desperate to get back to business after months of distractions over sexual harassment allegations against Andrew Cuomo.
The Democrat from western New York was sworn in as governor in a brief, private ceremony in the New York State Capitol overseen by the state’s chief judge, Janet DiFiore.
Afterward, she told WGRZ, a Buffalo television station, she felt “the weight of responsibility” on her shoulders.
Read:As Cuomo exits, Hochul to take office minus ‘distractions’
“I’ll tell New Yorkers I’m up to the task. And I’m really proud to be able to serve as their governor and I won’t let them down,” she said.
Hochul’s ascent to the top job was a history-making moment in a capital where women have only recently begun chipping away at a notoriously male-dominated political culture.
Cuomo left office at 12:00 a.m, two weeks after he announced he would resign rather than face a likely impeachment battle. He submitted his resignation letter late Monday to the leaders of the state Assembly and Senate.
On his final day in office, Cuomo released a pre-recorded farewell address in which he defended his record over a decade as New York’s governor and portrayed himself as the victim of a “media frenzy.”
Hochul was scheduled to have a ceremonial swearing-in event Tuesday morning at the Capitol, with more pomp than the brief, legally required event during the night.
She planned to meet with legislative leaders later in the morning and make a public address at 3 p.m.
For the first time, a majority of the most powerful figures in New York state government will be women, including state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, Attorney General Letitia James and the chief judge, DiFiore. The state Assembly is led by a man, Speaker Carl Heastie.
Hochul will inherit immense challenges as she takes over an administration facing criticism for inaction in Cuomo’s final months.
COVID-19 has made a comeback, with new cases up nearly 1,370% since late June. Hospitalizations are climbing even as schools prepare to go back into session.
Big decisions lay ahead on whether to mandate masks or vaccines for certain groups, or whether to reinstate social distancing restrictions if the state’s latest wave of infections worsens. Hochul has said she favors making masks mandatory for schoolchildren, a contrast with Cuomo, who said he lacked that authority.
The economy remains unsettled. Jobs lost during the pandemic have been coming back, but unemployment remains double what it was two years ago.
New York has also struggled to get federal relief money into the hands of tenants behind on their rent because of the pandemic, releasing just 6% of the budgeted $2 billion so far. Thousands of households face the possibility of losing their homes if the state allows eviction protections to expire.
Hochul also faces questions about whether she’ll change the culture of governance in New York, following a Cuomo administration that favored force over charm.
Cuomo’s resignation comes after an independent investigation overseen by state Attorney General Letitia James concluded there was credible evidence he’d sexually harassed at least 11 women.
In his farewell remarks, Cuomo struck a defiant tone, saying the attorney general’s report that triggered his resignation was designed to be ”a political firecracker on an explosive topic, and it did work.”
Read:Kathy Hochul to be 1st female NY governor after Cuomo leaves
“There was a political and media stampede,” he said.
Cuomo also touted himself as a bulwark against his party’s left wing, which he said wants to defund the police and demonize businesses, and boasted of making government effective in his years in office. He cited his work battling the COVID-19 pandemic, legalizing same-sex marriage and hiking the minimum wage to $15.
“I tried my best to deliver for you,” Cuomo said.
Some critics jumped on Cuomo’s remarks as self-serving.
Assemblymember Yuh-Line Niou, a fellow Democrat, tweeted he had a hundred million opportunities to improve as a leader and “Chose himself every time. Goodbye, Governor Cuomo.”
Cuomo’s top aide, Melissa DeRosa, released a statement saying the governor was exploring his options for his post-gubernatorial life but had “no interest in running for office again.”
Cuomo’s resignation won’t end his legal problems.
An aide who said Cuomo groped her breast has filed a complaint with the Albany County Sheriff’s Office. Separately, Cuomo was facing a legislative investigation into whether he misled the public about COVD-19 deaths in nursing homes to protect his reputation as a pandemic leader and improperly got help from state employees in writing a book that may net him $5 million.
The switch in leadership was happening in the aftermath of Tropical Storm Henri, which narrowly missed Long Island on Sunday but dumped rain over the Catskill Mountains and Hudson Valley.
Hochul will need to quickly build her own team of advisers to steer the administration for at least the next 16 months.
Hochul, who said she didn’t work closely with Cuomo and wasn’t aware of the harassment allegations before they became public, has vowed no one will ever call her workplace “toxic.”
“I have a different approach to governing,” Hochul said Wednesday in Queens, adding, “I get the job done because I don’t have time for distractions, particularly coming into this position.”
She announced the planned appointments Monday of two top aides: Karen Persichilli Keogh will become Secretary to the Governor and Elizabeth Fine will be Hochul’s chief legal counselor.
Read:New York Governor Andrew Cuomo resigns over sexual harassment
She plans to keep on Cuomo-era employees for 45 days to allow her time to interview new hires, but said she will not keep anyone found to have behaved unethically.
Hochul, who has already said she plans to run for a full term next year, is expected to pick a left-leaning New York City politician as her lieutenant governor. Hochul once represented a conservative Western New York district in Congress for a year and has a reputation as a moderate.
State Democratic Party Chair Jay Jacobs praised Hochul as “formidable.”
“She’s very experienced and I think she’ll be a refreshing and exciting new governor,” he said.
Global Covid cases top 212 million
The global Covid-19 caseload has now surpassed 212 million, with the world still grappling to contain the second wave of the pandemic.
The total caseload and fatalities stand at 212,502,421 and 4,440,932, respectively, as of Tuesday morning, according to Johns Hopkins University (JHU).
So far, 4,957,118,557 vaccine doses have been administered across the globe.
Read:US regulators give full approval to Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine
The US, which is the world's worst-hit country in terms of both cases and deaths, has so far logged 37,935,465 cases, according to JHU, while 629,406 people have lost their lives to Covid to date.
Brazil currently has the world's second-highest pandemic death toll after the United States and the third-largest caseload after the United States and India.
The country has recorded 20,583,994 cases with 574,848 fatalities so far, according to the health ministry.
The third worst-hit country, India's Covid-19 tally rose to 32,449,306 on Monday, as 25,072 new cases were registered during the past 24 hours across the country, as per the health ministry's latest data.
Read: No more mass Covid vaccination drive as supply is low, says health minister
This is said to be the lowest single-day spike of the new pandemic cases in 160 days, said the health ministry.
Besides, as many as 389 deaths were reported due to the pandemic since Sunday morning, taking the total death toll to 434,756.
Situation in Bangladesh
Bangladesh logged 117 more Covid-related deaths in 24 hours till Monday morning, the lowest in 55 days.
The country last saw 115 coronavirus- related deaths on June 30 and the upward curve of the fatalities reached its peak on August 5 and 10 with 264 deaths.
Besides, 5,717 more people came out positive for the virus after 26,789 samples were tested in the past 24 hours, according to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
The fresh cases have pushed up the country’s total fatalities and cases to 25,399 and 1,467,715, respectively.
Meanwhile, the daily case positivity rate rose to 15.54% from Sunday’s 15.16%, said the DGHS.
Read: Bangladesh reports lowest 117 single-day Covid deaths in nearly 2 months
The recovery rate rose to 93.54%, but the case fatality remained unchanged at 1.73% compared to the same period.
The country saw around 158 deaths and 6,157 cases on a seven-day average, as of Sunday.
Meanwhile, Health Minister Zahid Maleque said on Monday that Bangladesh will not conduct any new mass Covid inoculation drive as "the supply of vaccine doses is much lower than the demand".