Australias second-largest city, Melbourne, is grappling with a spiraling coronavirus outbreak that has led to a lockdown with some of the toughest restrictions in the world offering a preview of what many urban dwellers elsewhere could confront in coming weeks and months.

The new lockdown is the product of early success; the country thought it had the virus beat in June. But there was a breakdown in the quarantine program for hotels. Returning travelers passed the virus to hotel security guards in Melbourne, who carried the contagion home.

Even after masks became mandatory in the city two weeks ago, the spread continued. And now, as officials try to break the chain of infections, Melbourne is being reshaped by sweeping enforcement and fine print. A confounding matrix of hefty fines for disobedience to the lockdown and minor exceptions for everything from romantic partners to home building has led to silenced streets and endless versions of the question: So, wait, can I ____?

Restaurant owners are wondering about food delivery after an 8 p.m. curfew began on Sunday night. Teenagers are asking if their boyfriends and girlfriends count as essential partners. Can animal shelter volunteers walk dogs at night? Are house cleaners essential for those struggling with their mental health? Can people who have been tested exercise outside?

This is such a weird, scary, bizarro time that we live in, said Tessethia Von Tessle Roberts, 25, a student in Melbourne who admits to having hit a breaking point a few days ago, when her washing machine broke.

Our health care workers are hustling around the clock to keep us alive, she said. Our politicians are as scared as we are, but they have to pretend like they have a better idea than we do of whats going to happen next.

Pandemic lockdowns, never easy, are getting ever more confusing and contentious as they evolve in the face of second and third rounds of outbreaks that have exhausted both officials and residents. With success against the virus as fleeting as the breeze, the new waves of restrictions feel to many like a bombing raid that just wont end.

For some places, risk calculations can change overnight. In Hong Kong, officials banned daytime dining in restaurants last month, only to reverse themselves a day later after an outcry. Schools in some cities are opening and closing like screen doors in summer.

In many areas where the virus has retreated and then resurged, the future looks like a long, complicated haul. Leaders are reaching for their own metaphors to try to explain it.

In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom has compared his opening and shutting of businesses to a dimmer switch. Dan Andrews, the premier in Victoria, the state of which Melbourne is the capital, has repeatedly referred to pilot light mode for industries like construction and meatpacking, which have been ordered to temporarily reduce their work forces.

Whatever the metaphor, the situation is bleak.

In Melbourne, a city of five million that is considered a capital of food and culture, the pandemic has come raging back even after a so-called Stage 3 lockdown began in early July until recently the highest level of restrictions.

Officials have been flummoxed at every turn by the persistent complacency of just enough people to let the virus thrive and multiply.

Traffic data showed people driving more in July than they had during the first Stage 3 lockdown, in March and April. Even worse, almost nine out of 10 people with Covid-19 had not been tested or isolated when they first felt sick, Mr. Andrews, the states top leader, said in late July. And 53 percent had not quarantined while waiting for their test results.

That means people have felt unwell and just gone about their business, Mr. Andrews said.

Sounding the alarm, he made face masks mandatory the next day, on July 22.

Still, infections have continued to rise. They peaked at 753 new cases on July 30, and have hovered around 500 a day ever since, with the death toll in Victoria now standing at 147, after 11 deaths were recorded on Monday.

Those figures, while far less troublesome than those in the United States, have paved the way for a Stage 4 lockdown what officials are calling a shock and awe attack on the virus that will last at least six weeks.

Overwhelming force, with precision, seems to be the goal. The chief modelers of the pandemic response in Australia have found that the virus can be suppressed only if more than 70 percent of the population abides by social distancing guidelines and other public health rules.

Mr. Andrews said the new restrictions would take 250,000 more people out of their routines, in the hopes of reaching the necessary threshold.

So retail stores will be closed. Schools will return to at-home instruction. Restaurants will be takeout or delivery only. Child-care centers will be available only for permitted workers.

Those restrictions are already well understood. The rules requiring more explanation are tied to the curfew and industries that have to cut back.

Large-scale construction projects of more than three stories, for example, will have to reduce their on-site work force by 75 percent, and workers will not be able to work at more than one location. Small-scale construction cannot have more than five workers.

All of which sounds clear. But does a bathroom renovation, for example, amount to home building in an apartment with one bathroom? And what about fixing things that break, like Ms. Von Tessle Robertss washing machine?

Some businesses, like cleaning services, are already emailing customers to say they think they can do some work, for people who pay through welfare or who need help for mental health reasons. But, like many others, they are still seeking official clarification.

Mr. Andrews, a Labor politician sometimes described as awkward and paternal, has become the dad everyone needs answers from. He now oversees, under the lockdown rules, what may be the countrys most intrusive bureaucracy since its days as a penal colony.

Updated August 4, 2020

On Tuesday, he answered questions from reporters about dog-walking (allowed after curfew, sort of, only near home) and other subjects of great confusion at a news conference in Melbourne.

Thanking those who complied with the new rules and scolding those who did not, he announced that no one in self-isolation would now be allowed to exercise outdoors. A door-knocking campaign to check in on 3,000 people who had Covid-19 found that 800 of them were not at home.

All 800 have been referred to the Victoria police for investigation. The fine for violators going forward, he said, will be 4,957 Australian dollars, $3,532.

Working, even legally, will also become trickier. Other than, say, hospital workers with formal identification, everyone traveling for a job deemed essential during the lockdown must carry a formal document a work permit signed by the employer and employee.

For Cara Devine, who works at a wine store that closes at 8 p.m., that means carrying a government form with her everywhere, and hoping that the police recognize her task as essential when she heads home after the curfew. But she also worried about the Uber drivers who take her back and forth.

Even before the newest restrictions, Ive had two Uber drivers being really late picking up from the shop because they got stopped by the police, taking about an hour out of their work time, she said.

The police are already confronting opposition. On at least four occasions in the last week, they reported having to smash the windows of cars and pull people out after they refused to provide a name and address at a police checkpoint. The Victoria police commissioner, Shane Patton, said a 38-year-old woman had also been charged with assault after attacking a police officer who had stopped her for not wearing a face mask.

Some criminologists are questioning whether the harsher enforcement will help. Mostly, though, Melburnians are just trying to endure.

Walking to get groceries, Peter Barnes, 56, said he welcomed the stricter rules, though he admitted his city was starting to feel like George Orwells 1984, with the heavy hand of the state around every corner.

Those focused solely on the economics, he said, should remember the obvious: You cant hire a corpse. Very bad employment prospects for people who are dead.

By Monday night, the city seemed to be in listening mode. The streets were emptying out, silent in hibernation.

Its like a Sunday in the 1950s, said Mark Rubbo, the owner of Readings, Melbournes largest independent bookstore. He also noted that people were stocking up again on books through online orders, with a memoir called The Happiest Man on Earth, about a Holocaust survivor, becoming a runaway hit.

Ms. Von Tessle Roberts has found another solution, perhaps just as likely to grow in popularity: Stand on your front porch and scream. Thats the name she has given to an event she posted on Facebook, set for Friday at 7 p.m. By Tuesday afternoon, 70,000 people had expressed an interest in joining her collective shout in anguish.

Yelling is great, she said. Its less dehydrating than crying.

Besha Rodell and Yan Zhuang contributed reporting from Melbourne, and Livia Albeck-Ripka from Cairns, Australia.

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Melbourne is a Case Study in Navigating a Second Wave of Coronavirus - The New York Times

California Gov. Gavin Newsom held a coronavirus press conference Monday and highlighted some good news. He also issued a warning about the states future with respect to COVID-19.

Newsom announced a total of 5,719 new coronavirus cases in the state for a total of 514,901 confirmed cases since the pandemic began. Thats a much lower daily number than some of the record-setting totals seen last week.

The overall trendis showing a decrease from where we were over a week ago, said Newsom. But one week does not make the kind of trend that gives us confidence to generate headlines. We are looking forward to that and need to see another few weeks of this kind of data to come in to feel more confident about where we are as a state.

The rate of positive tests over the last 14 days is 7.0 percent. Thats down from 7.4 about two weeks ago.

On Monday, there were 6,383 coronavirus patients in hospitals. Thats down from more than 8,800 on July 21. Likewise ICU beds; the number now occupied by COVID-19 patients has fallen below 2,000.

The good news is we do feel confident about our critical care capacity, pointed out the governor.

Newsom announced 32 new deaths, resulting in a total of 9,388 people lost to the pandemic. Thirty-two is a lower number than in the past[but] were likely to see those numbers remain stubbornly high over the next few days and weeks.

These are just a few days worth of results, warned the governor.

Weve seen some stabilization in most parts of the state, said Newsom. At the same time, we can quickly find ourselves back to where we were just a few weeks ago, a month ago, with significant increases if we do not maintain our vigilance.

This virus is not going away, he warned. Its not just going to take Labor Day off. Its not going to take Halloween off. Or the holidays off.

Until we have quality therapeutics, until we have a vaccine, we are going to be living with this virus, predicted Newsom.

We anticipate the second wave in the fall, he said. And that second wave also challenged byflu season on top of COVID-19.

Watch Newsoms new conference below.

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California Coronavirus Update: Governor Gavin Newsom Warns COVID Could Impact Labor Day, Halloween And The Holidays - Deadline

America, along with the rest of the world, is working swiftly to develop a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, the new coronavirus responsible for COVID-19.

Many people are pinning their hopes on the development of a safe and effective vaccine for COVID-19 that can stop the spread of the virus. Through itsOperation Warp Speed initiative, the Trump administration is investing billions of dollars to accelerate efforts in the U.S. to develop, manufacture and distribute such vaccines.

But despite the efforts to work quickly, safety remains the top priority of researchers in the U.S.

We are moving as quickly as we can to shorten the timelines to get a vaccine to the public, but we will not compromise one iota the multiple safety checks and safety processes that we have always had in place for vaccine development and testing, says Kayvon Modjarrad, director for emerging infectious diseases at the U.S. Armys Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, which is working to develop a vaccine for COVID-19. We cannot and will not take any shortcuts when it comes to safety assessments of the vaccines we are advancing.

The FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] will only approve or make available a COVID-19 vaccine if we determine that it meets the high standards that people have come to expect of the agency, said Peter Marks, director of the FDAs Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research.

Vaccines typically take years to develop, and extensive testing is built into the process. In the U.S., promising vaccines developed in the lab move on to animal studies, followed by human studies called clinical trials. The FDA sets guidelines for the three phases of clinical trials, with each phase increasing in population size. Phase 3 clinical trials, for example, typically involve thousands of volunteers receiving the test vaccine.

If the clinical trials show that the vaccine is effective without harmful side effects, the vaccine manufacturer can apply for FDA approval to publicly administer it. Even after the vaccine is in widespread use, the federal government continually monitors it for adverse effects.

History shows the potential risks associated with vaccine development. A polio vaccine developed by renowned scientist Jonas Salk was licensed for public use in 1955, but a production error caused some batches of the vaccine to contain the live virus. The incident led to increased quality-control measures in the U.S., to ensure safe immunization of children.

Peoples lives are too important for us to cut corners on the safety side of things.Robert Hopkins, chair of the National Vaccine Advisory Committee

Today, the FDAs Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research oversees vaccine safety and reviews and licenses vaccine candidates in the U.S.

David Jones, a professor of the history of science at Harvard University, says vaccine development is inherently safer than in the past. Rather than live virus, most vaccines contain either an inactivated form of the virus or a specific protein of the virus that is used to trigger the bodys immune response.

New candidate COVID-19 vaccines, including those in development by Moderna and Pfizer/BioNtech, are exploring new technologies using the viruss genetic code.

Nevertheless, safety is critical. Theres a tremendous amount at stake, says Jones. If a vaccine is developed without safety at the forefront of the process, it could harm peoples health and create a loss of trust. That could potentially decrease vaccination rates for polio, measles and everything else, says Jones.

The U.S. is working to shorten the path to a COVID-19 vaccine without compromising safety, says Robert Hopkins, chair of the National Vaccine Advisory Committee, which advises the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services National Vaccine Program on development and safety.

Whats being done with Operation Warp Speed and a lot of our current vaccine trials is that were taking some of those [usual] steps and instead of doing them one after the other, were doing some of them in parallel, says Hopkins. We are doing things in a slightly different sequence in order to get to the end point more rapidly, but that doesnt mean were cutting out any of the steps when it comes to assessing safety and efficacy. Peoples lives are too important for us to cut corners on the safety side of things.

Modjarrad, of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, says that manufacturers typically wait for all the clinical studies and approvals from the FDA to be complete before making large doses of the vaccine. That adds on months, if not years, to the timeline, he says. Not so with Operation Warp Speed, which is partnering with the private sector to scale up manufacturing of multiple candidate COVID-19 vaccines.

By not waiting for the clinical studies to be completed to make the large doses of vaccine, we will have vaccine ready for large populations the day it is approved by the FDA, Modjarrad says. (Note: If it is not approved, the doses will not be used.)

Whats more, he says, our expertise with coronaviruses; our experts in immunology, structural biology and virology; our manufacturing facility and clinical trials center have all come together to compress the timeline of vaccine development. Nowhere along the way have we skipped any steps in ensuring, assessing and reassessing safety processes.

I cannot stress enough how controlled and regulated a process vaccine development is when it comes to safety, Modjarrad continues. That is the prime objective, safety, when it comes to the development of these vaccines.

Freelance writer Linda Wang wrote this article.

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Safety is top of mind as US develops coronavirus vaccine - US Embassy in Georgia

About a month after closing bars and mandating masks, Nashville officials say the city has made promising but fragile progress against the spread of coronavirus, offering a rare sign of hope in a state where the pandemic is otherwise growing.

The average number of new daily infections in Nashville has dropped 28% percent in just the past week. Hospitalizations, which climbed throughoutmuch of July, have begun to flatten. Fatalities remain low.

The steps we took a month ago, mandating masks, going to a modified Phase Two and closing bars, are working, said Dr. Alex Jahangir, head of the Nashville coronavirus task force, on Tuesday.We are seeing our metrics improve, but we are not out of the woods yet. And most of you are doing your part.

Dr. Michael Caldwell, Director of the Metro Public Health Department, reminds people to wear masks on Lower Broadway in Nashville, Tenn., Friday, July 31, 2020.(Photo: Andrew Nelles / The Tennessean)

Nashville made this progress despite a worsening statewide outbreak and an impasse on Lower Broadway, the heart of the citys entertainment district, where unmasked crowds gather in brazen defiance of public health orders. City officials have become increasingly desperate to rein in Broadway but have largely failed to do so.

CORONAVIRUS: Nashville officials signal intent to prosecute organizers of Fashion House party

Mayor John Cooper said Tuesday the city may soon try "different strategies on Broadway and conceded that closing the street altogether was a possibility. Cooper suggested Nashville is making progress, despite defiance on Broadway, because thosecrowds are largely composed of tourists.

The fact is that a lot of people on Lower Broadway may be testing positive and not showing up in our numbers. They dont live here Cooper said. We dont want COVID-19 to show up in these folks home communities either.

As of Tuesday, Nashville had recorded 21,879 residents with coronavirus, including about 3,500 active infections, 700 total hospitalizations and 199 deaths. Average daily infections peaked in July at more than 400 and have since fallen to about 250. More than 220 people were actively hospitalized two weeks ago, but that count has since fallen to 170. Test positivity rates, as calculated by the city, have fallen to their lowest point since June.

The slowing of infections in Nashville is a likely result of themandatingmasks on June 28 and closingbars on July 3. The city followed up two weeks later by ordering restaurants to shut their doors at 10 p.m. in an effort to limit restaurants that essentially became bars after dark.

Cooper said these decisions were recently validated by the White House coronavirus task force, which recommended similar precautions statewide. Gov. Bill Lee gave county mayors the authority to require masks but hasn't issued a statewide mandate and rejected a White House recommendation to close bars.

Although the virus is slowing in Nashville, the story is not the same statewide. Tennessee infections and deaths increased throughout most of July, and average hospitalizations reached record levels just last week. Experts warn the virus is moving away from major citieslike Nashville and Memphisand into smaller cities and rural areas that have less hospitals and public health resources to combat an outbreak.

Brett Kelman is the health care reporter for The Tennessean. He can be reached at 615-259-8287 or at brett.kelman@tennessean.com. Follow him on Twitter at @brettkelman.

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In Nashville, fewer coronavirus infections and a glimmer of hope - Tennessean

Many people worry about bats as a source of viruses, including the one that has caused a worldwide pandemic. But another question is surfacing: Could humans pass the novel coronavirus to wildlife, specifically North American bats?

It may seem like the last pandemic worry right now, far down the line after concerns about getting sick and staying employed. But as the spread of the novel coronavirus has made clear, the more careful we are about viruses passing among species, the better off we are.

The scientific consensus is that the virus originated in bats in China or neighboring countries. A recent paper tracing the genetic lineage of the novel virus found evidence that it probably evolved in bats into its current form. The researchers also concluded that either this coronavirus or others that could make the jump to humans are likely present in bat populations now we just havent found them yet.

So why worry about infecting new bats with the current virus? The federal government considers it a legitimate concern both for bat populations, which have been devastated by a fungal disease called white-nose syndrome, and for humans, given potential problems down the road.

The U.S. Geological Survey and the Fish and Wildlife Service, two agencies involved in research on bats, took the issue seriously enough to convene a panel of 12 experts to analyze the likelihood of human-to-bat transmission of the virus, SARS-CoV-2, in North America.

Another team of scientists, mostly from the two agencies, assessed the expert opinions and issued a report in June. They concluded that there is some risk, although how much is hard to pin down. Taking precautions, like wearing masks, gloves and protective clothing, could significantly cut it down.

Kevin Olival, a vice president for research at EcoHealth Alliance, an independent group and an author of the report, said that as the virus began to spread around the globe, there was a real concern that not only North American but wildlife populations all over the world could be exposed.

While the group studied interactions between North American bats and scientific researchers, Dr. Olival said wildlife-control workers and people who rehabilitate injured bats, for example, may come into contact with bats even more than researchers do.

Evaluating risk meant trying to cope with unknowns piled on unknowns: the risk of an infected research scientist or wildlife worker encountering bats; the risk of the bats becoming infected in that situation; the risk of an infected bat passing the virus onto other bats so that the virus becomes established in the population.

The authors of the paper concluded there was a risk of humans infecting bats with the novel coronavirus. How much risk? You might say little, or small, or unknown, but this report is from two federal agencies, so it describes the risk as non-negligible.

Although the issue of how bat researchers should conduct their work may seem narrow, the potential consequences are broad. The report notes that if SARS-CoV-2 became established in North American bats, it would allow the virus to keep propagating in animals even if it didnt cause disease. And the virus could potentially spill back over to humans after this pandemic is contained.

Another concern involves how readily the coronavirus might spread from bats to other kinds of wildlife or domestic animals, including pets. Scientists have already shown that domestic cats and big cats can become infected, and domestic cats can infect each other. Ferrets are easily infected, as are minks. On the suspicion that they may be passing the disease to people, Spain and the Netherlands have slaughtered thousands of minks at fur farms.

A small number of infected pets has gotten a good deal of publicity. But public health authorities like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have said that, although information is limited, the risk of pets spreading the virus to people is low. They do recommend that any person who has Covid-19 take the same precautions with their pets that they would with human family members. National Geographic reported Thursday that the first U. S. dog known to have tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, had died. The dog, Buddy, apparently had lymphoma.

Updated August 4, 2020

As to the susceptibility of North American bats, Dr. Olival was not aware of any published work on whether they can be infected with the virus. Researchers in Hong Kong have reported that in a lab the coronavirus infected the intestinal cells of Chinese rufous horseshoe bats. A report this month in The Lancet found that fruit bats could become infected with the virus.

Beyond bats, Dr. Olival said that scientists should be concerned about how they conduct research on wildlife in general and consider what precautions to take to avoid potentially infecting one species or another. One step, he said, would be evaluating research goals to weigh what level of contact would be necessary.

In some cases, he said, observation and data recording could be done without handling animals. If not, gloves and other precautions make sense, although some old-school researchers have balked at the suggestions, he said.

He said his group continues to recommend, the highest level of personal protective equipment when you work with wildlife, because its not just a risk that you will pick up something from the wildlife, but that you dont give something back to them.

He acknowledged that research precautions with wildlife will have a very small effect, given the greater number of people who hunt wildlife or come into contact in other ways. Education efforts are underway to try to change some of those practices; in addition that, he said, researchers should set some kind of standard.

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Can Humans Give Coronavirus to Bats, and Other Wildlife? - The New York Times

LSU senior linebacker Travez Moore shared his experience with coronavirus on Twitter on Tuesday morning. He is thought to be the first Tigers football player to speak publicly about his experience with the virus during a pandemic that has shut down large parts of the country and altered the direction of every sport.

The 6-foot-4 Bastrop High graduate said he lost significant weight, dropping from 256 pounds to 229. He said he lost his appetite and had difficulty breathing. He lost senses of taste and smell, both of which are symptoms of the virus.

"Bro coronavirus is real," wrote Moore, who recorded three tackles, a half tackle for loss and half a sack in 2019.

Multiple LSU football players tested positive for coronavirus when the team first reported to campus on June 8. The total number of cases began with a group of five to six players, a source said, andSports Illustrated reportedat least 30 of LSU's 115 players were quarantined because they either tested positive or had contact with a player who tested positive.

Orgeron later said that reported numberwas too high and that the team's case numbers are "way down."At last week's Baton Rouge Rotary Club meeting, Orgeron said "I think we have two guys right now," that have tested positive for the virus.

Health and safety concerns have been addressed by such leadership. The Southeastern Conference announced in mid-July that players who opted to sit out the fall season would not lose their scholarships an action recommended by the league's athletic directors and approved unanimously by the league's presidents and chancellors.

Orgeron said at the Rotary Club meeting that no LSU players have chosen to sit out this season because of health concerns.

"None of our players have talked about that," Orgeron said. "I know that they have the option. Our players are eager to play. These guys are elite. These guys want to win championships. They believe in each other. I don't expect much of that to happen."

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LSU's Travez Moore issues warning after coronavirus experience; virus 'is real' - The Advocate

FORT WORTH (CBSDFW.COM) The widow of a Texas man who died of COVID-19, blamed President Donald Trump and Gov. Greg Abbott in her husbands obituary for his needless death.

David Nagys obituary calls out President Trump and Gov. Abbott in his obituary published in the Jefferson Jimplecute on July 30.

Dave did everything he was supposed to do, but you did not, his widow Stacey Nagy wrote. Shame on all of you, and may Karma find you all!

Houston Chronicle web producer Jordan Ray tweeted an image of the newspaper obituary.

David Nagy was 79 and died in the intensive care unit at Christus Good Shepherd Hospital in Longview, Texas on July 22.

He suffered greatly from the ravages of the COVID-19 virus and the separation from his much loved family who were not allowed at his bedside, the obituary said.

He left being his wife, five children and numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

David Nagys family members blame his death and the deaths of all other innocent people, on Trump, Abbott and all of the other politicians who did not take this pandemic seriously and were more concerned with their popularity and votes than lives, his widow wrote. Also to blame are the many ignorant, self-centered and selfish people who refused to follow the advice of the medical professionals, believing their right not to wear a mask was more important than killing innocent people.

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Texas Widow Blames President Trump, Gov. Abbott In Husbands Obituary For Coronavirus Death: Shame On All Of You - CBS Dallas / Fort Worth

On 1 July, the UN Security Council adopted a resolution calling for a global COVID-19 ceasefire, as the Secretary-General had urged months earlier. Their appeal has fallen flat. Council members should use their August downtime to look at how it might still do some good.

Just over a month ago, on 1 July, the UN Security Council passed a resolution addressing COVID-19 that looked hugely ambitious on paper. Echoing an earlier initiative by UN Secretary-General Antnio Guterres, Resolution 2532 centres on a call for all parties to armed conflicts to engage immediately in a durable humanitarian pause lasting 90 days in response to the pandemic. This document will earn a footnote in histories of the UN, as it is the first time the Council has advocated such a global ceasefire. But beyond that, it seems unlikely to be widely remembered, as its practical effects have been all but nil. Only one conflict party Colombias National Liberation Army or ELN has explicitly cited the resolution in offering to suspend hostilities and the Colombian government rejected the overture. Elsewhere, governments and armed groups engaged in fighting have shown no sign of heeding the Councils call.

Resolution 2532s lack of impact to date is disappointing in part because, earlier in the pandemic, it briefly looked like the Council could lend momentum to Secretary-General Guterres aspirational but worthy ceasefire effort, and so play a part in the global response to COVID-19. Guterres first floated the ceasefire idea in late March, and he declared that armed groups in almost a dozen countries had responded positively by early in April. Yet rather than seizing the moment to back the initiative, the Council stumbled into three months of fighting about it, while many of the armed groups that welcomed the UN appeal resumed hostilities.

With Council members looking forward to an August lull in business especially after the tedium of months of online meetings it is time for them to take stock of what the Councils halting reaction to the pandemic reveals about the body, and to consider how the Secretary-General and Council members might still salvage something useful from Resolution 2532.

A Trivial Process

The Councils disarray over the novel coronavirus has certainly been a setback for its aspirations to address non-traditional security threats, as UN officials term a grab bag of challenges including pandemics, climate change and organised crime.

The Council has engaged to some degree with these challenges in the post-Cold War era, first taking up health in the context of HIV/AIDS in 2000 and then climate change starting in 2007. With a handful of exceptions, its work in these areas has been fairly tentative, and some current members of the body would like to see it take a more active role. Belgium and Germany have, for example, prioritised climate change, while Estonia has made cybersecurity its flagship issue. But these members face considerable pushback from China and Russia, which insist that the Council should concentrate on more traditional peace and security issues, and the present U.S. administration, which has a particular dislike for talk of climate change. In July, Germany decided to drop proposals for a resolution focusing on climate security authorising a UN envoy to tackle the subject after the U.S. promised to veto it.

Of these non-traditional threats, pandemic response has often seemed to be the most promising area, aside from organised crime, for Security Council action. In 2014, otherwise a difficult year of UN diplomacy over Syria and Ukraine, the Council united around a resolution endorsing international efforts to stamp out Ebola in West Africa. Through 2019 and 2020, the Council monitored a further Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo where UN peacekeepers worked with health experts to get aid into volatile regions. Prior to COVID-19, Germany clairvoyantly signalled that it wanted to use its Council term to spur discussion of pandemics, a personal priority for Chancellor Angela Merkel, as well as climate change.

Yet COVID-19 demonstrated at least two significant weaknesses concerning its policy tools and major power politics in the Councils capacity to deal with global health crises.

First, as a practical matter, the Councils toolkit is still limited. As the pandemic spread, it was not entirely evident what the Security Council could concretely do about it, beyond expressing concern. In 2014, the Councils tools for dealing with Ebola in West Africa were pretty clear. The UN had peacekeepers in Liberia who could assist with logistics and other aspects of the medical response, as well as a significant humanitarian and development presence in the other two countries affected by the disease, Guinea and Sierra Leone. By throwing its weight behind use of these UN assets to counter the disease, and encouraging member states to pledge additional resources to the effort, the Council added urgency to the global response to Ebola, while the U.S. largely coordinated the successful effort to contain the outbreak. (It helped that the U.S. and China worked collaboratively to fight the disease, rather than lobbing political grenades at each other as they have in the COVID-19 era.)

By contrast, COVID-19 presents a threat of a different scale and nature. As of March, there were reported cases on every inhabited continent. In most places where it struck early, like Iran and Italy, there was little if any UN humanitarian or security presence, reducing the Security Councils ability to forge a response. Had a major power launched a global effort to marshal resources to meet the crisis, as the U.S. did with Ebola in 2014, the Council might have lent its political heft to supporting that. But that did not happen: Washington sat on the sidelines and its biggest competitor, Beijing, did not step into its shoes.

Lacking many of the options that had been available to the UN in the Ebola crisis, the Council members spent early April tussling over the scope of any potential resolution. All agreed that the Council should endorse efforts by UN peace operations to help tackle the disease in their areas of deployment a task that the blue helmets undertook even without Council urging, while trying to avoid spreading the disease themselves. But while Tunisia, which led discussions among the ten elected Council (E10) members, initially envisaged a broad resolution with passages calling for international cooperation on public health issues, including training medics and developing a COVID-19 vaccine, the majority of diplomats felt that the Council should not (in the words of one European official) bite off more than it can chew by commenting on non-security-related matters.

It was against this backdrop that both the E10 and the five permanent (P5) Council members, led by France, began to focus on Guterres call for a global ceasefire as a well-defined flagship topic that both served the purposes of pandemic response and clearly fell within the bodys remit of preserving international peace and security. Although some of the P5, including Russia, the UK and the U.S., made it clear that they would not sign onto any text curtailing their conduct of counter-terrorism operations (and indeed Resolution 2532 contains caveats allowing them to fight on), nobody was fundamentally opposed to the ceasefire idea.

The second Council weakness that the episode highlighted is that, even when confronting a true global threat like the virus, policy is often beholden to politics. While everyone could get behind a global ceasefire in theory, it was not anyone's overwhelming priority, and China and the U.S. in particular had bigger point-scoring goals to pursue. The U.S. saw the resolution as a chance to try to assign China responsibility for the disease (at first demanding that any Security Council text refer to Wuhan virus) while refusing to accept even a passing reference to the World Health Organization (WHO) after President Donald Trump suspended funding to that body in April. Chinas immediate priority was to block any implicit or explicit criticism of its handling of the disease, but it also saw an opportunity to embarrass the U.S. for abandoning the WHO and cast Washington as a spoiler on the Council. While Chinese and U.S. officials in New York were ready to compromise on an indirect reference to the WHO in May, Washington nixed this deal, killing off further Council discussions of COVID-19 until late June.

The basic reason that the Security Council underperformed in the face of COVID-19 was, therefore, exactly the reason the Council underperforms on many issues: big power tensions. This fact hardly went unnoticed in New York. Some Council members favoured calling a vote on the COVID-19 resolution in early May, to see if either Beijing or Washington would really veto it. France, which had led P5 discussions of the process, demurred, along with Tunisia. One diplomat observed that the whole process was trivial, as both China and the U.S. placed throwing political punches above securing a resolution, while other Council members did not feel strongly enough about the idea to challenge them.

While France and Tunisia eventually found a formula for referring to the WHO that everyone could accept, the whole episode was discouraging for those who would like to see the Council do more to address non-traditional threats. It left the sense that the Council presently has neither a solid policy framework for dealing with pandemics on the scale of COVID-19 or their security implications nor the collective political will necessary to tackle such challenges.

What Now?

With Resolution 2532 wrapped up, the Council has turned to other matters, although none is a cause for celebration. July saw Russia succeed in pressing to reduce the number of crossing points for humanitarian assistance into rebel-held areas of Syria to just one; by 2021, the number is likely to be zero. The main topic of conversation around the Council these days is the possibility that the U.S. will force a major crisis among the P5 in the coming months by demanding the renewal of sanctions on Iran. New York-based diplomats are aware of the pandemics ongoing challenges, of course. They have heard sobering reports from UN officials on the diseases potential to spark food crises, which could in turn lead to violence. But there is little sign that Council members will use Resolution 2532 as a starting point for initiatives to address particular conflicts or even engage the UN Secretariat on how to follow up.

Can any good still come out of the Secretary-Generals call or out of Resolution 2532? Back in April, when it still seemed possible that the Council could move quickly to a resolution, Crisis Group argued that it could have two main benefits. The first, as noted above, was simply to send a positive political signal about the main UN powers unity in the face of the pandemic. This nod, we argued, might also encourage those conflict parties that signed onto the Secretary-Generals ceasefire idea early to maintain their cessations of hostilities. Whether or not the gambit would have worked and there are, of course, strong reasons to doubt that it would have the Council missed that chance.

But we also suggested in April that a Council resolution could have a second, more procedural, benefit, noting that it could create a formal framework for Guterres to monitor and update the Council on ceasefire implementation. The idea was not so much that the Council would use its enforcement powers such as sanctions to compel states or guerrillas to honour COVID-19 ceasefires. It could, however, offer the Secretary-General a platform to report on where conflict parties were taking real steps to contain the virus and where others were failing to do so.

This idea may still be salvageable: Resolution 2532 does offer Guterres a platform, requesting that he provide updates to the Security Council on the UN efforts to address the COVID-19 pandemic in countries in situations of armed conflict or affected by humanitarian crises. This matter is partly technical: the Secretary-General will need to keep the Council up to date on how peacekeeping operations, political missions and other actors are adapting to the virus. But with a bit of creativity, he can also interpret this mandate as permitting him to talk far more generally with Council members about how the pandemic is affecting the international security landscape. After all, it is clear that the coronavirus is not merely a pathogen causing a health crisis but also is a catalyst for economic shocks that can (as we have already seen in Lebanon) lead to political crises and disorder. It is not clear how the disease will play out region by region and so far it has not been quite as destructive in some weak countries as seemed likely in March but it would be a brave ambassador at the UN who would bet that the health, economic and social fallout from COVID-19 will not lead to more political instability.

Secretary-General Guterres should take an expansive view of his mandate to report on COVID-19 to the Council offering Council members early warnings of potential virus-related crises and conflicts based on UN economic and humanitarian analysis as well political reporting. If the Secretary-General feels uncomfortable about calling out specific states in writing, he can also offer these warnings orally in closed meetings.

To date, the Council has proved ill prepared to respond to a global challenge on the scale of COVID-19. Secretary-General Guterres cannot resolve the rifts among the P5 that severely hamper the Council. But he can at least use Resolution 2532 as the basis to warn Council members of the pandemics evolving security implications, in the hope that they will respond a little better to the risks it creates than they have so far.

Contributors

Richard GowanUN Director

Ashish PradhanSenior Analyst, UN Advocacy and Research

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Salvaging the Security Council's coronavirus response - World - ReliefWeb