Omicron
India's new COVID-19 infections hit 8-month high, total tally above 38 mln
India's COVID-19 tally rose to 38,218,773 on Thursday, as 317,532 new cases were registered during the past 24 hours across the country, showed the federal health ministry's latest data.
This is the seventh consecutive day when more than 200,000 new cases and the first day when over 300,000 new cases were registered in a day in the country in more than eight months.
Read: India reports 258,089 new COVID-19 cases
Besides, as many as 491 deaths were recorded since Wednesday morning, taking the death toll to 487,693.
Currently there are 1,924,051 active cases in the country with an increase of 93,051 during the period. This is the 23rd consecutive day when the number of active cases rose amid the third wave in the country.
A total of 35,807,029 people have recovered and been discharged from hospitals so far, with 223,990 new recoveries.
Read: India extends ban on political rallies till Jan 22
Meanwhile, the country's Omicron tally has reached 9,287, as an increase of 3.63 percent was seen since Wednesday. Most of the Omicron cases have been reported from the states of Maharashtra, West Bengal, Rajasthan and Delhi.
Omicron exposes inflexibility of Europe's public hospitals
A World Health Organization official warned last week of a “closing window of opportunity” for European countries to prevent their health care systems from being overwhelmed as the omicron variant produces near-vertical growth in coronavirus infections.
In France, Britain and Spain, nations with comparatively strong national health programs, that window may already be closed.
The director of an intensive care unit at a hospital in Strasbourg is turning patients away. A surgeon at a London hospital describes a critical delay in a man's cancer diagnosis. Spain is seeing its determination to prevent a system collapse tested as omicron keeps medical personnel off work.
“There are a lot of patients we can’t admit, and it’s the non-COVID patients who are the collateral victims of all this,” said Dr. Julie Helms, who runs the ICU at Strasbourg University Hospital in far eastern France.
Read:Tsunami threat recedes from huge Pacific volcanic eruption
Two years into the pandemic, with the exceptionally contagious omicron impacting public services of various kinds, the variant’s effect on medical facilities has many reevaluating the resilience of public health systems that are considered essential to providing equal care.
The problem, experts say, is that few health systems built up enough flexibility to handle a crisis like the coronavirus before it emerged, while repeated infection spikes have kept the rest too preoccupied to implement changes during the long emergency.
Hospital admissions per capita right now are as high in France, Italy and Spain as they were last spring, when the three countries had lockdowns or other restrictive measures in place. England's hospitalization rate of people with COVID-19 for the week ending Jan. 9 was slightly higher than it was in early February 2021, before most residents were vaccinated.
This time, there are no lockdowns. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, a population health research organization based at the University of Washington, predicts that more than half of the people in WHO Europe's 53-country region will be infected with omicron within two months.
That includes doctors, nurses and technicians at public hospitals.
About 15% of the Strasbourg hospital system’s staff of 13,000 was out this week. In some hospitals, the employee absentee rate is 20%. Schedules are made and reset to plug gaps; patients whose needs aren’t critical must wait.
The French public hospital's 26 ICU beds are almost all occupied by unvaccinated patients, people ”who refuse care, who refuse the medicine or who demand medicines that have no effectiveness," Helms said.
She denied 12 requests for admission early in the week, and 10 on Wednesday night.
"When you have three patients for a single bed, we try to take the one who has the best odds of benefiting from it,” Helms said.
In Britain, like France, omicron is causing cracks in the health system even though the variant appears to cause milder illness than its predecessors. The British government this month assigned military personnel, including medics, to fill in at London hospitals, adding to the ranks of service members already helping administer vaccines and operate ambulances.
At the Royal Free Hospital in London, Dr. Leye Ajayi described a patient who faced delays in his initial cancer diagnosis.
“Unfortunately, when we eventually got round to seeing the patient, his cancer had already spread," Ajayi told Sky News. "So we’re now dealing with a young patient in his mid-50s who, perhaps if we’d seen him a year ago, could have offered curative surgery. We’re now dealing with palliative care.”
Nearly 13,000 patients in England were forced to wait on stretchers more than 12 hours before a hospital bed opened, according to figures released last week from the National Health Service.
Britain has a backlog of around 5.9 million people awaiting cancer screenings, scheduled surgeries and other planned care. Some experts estimate that figure could double in the next three years.
“We need to focus on why performance has continued to fall and struggle for years and build the solutions to drive improvement in both the short and long term,” said Dr. Tim Cooksley, president of the Society for Acute Medicine.
Having the capacity to accommodate a surge is crucial, and it’s just this surge capacity that many in Europe were surprised to learn their countries lacked. The people in a position to turn that around were the same ones dealing with the crisis daily.
In the midst of the first wave, in April 2020, WHO’s Europe office put out a how-to guide for health systems to build slack into their systems for new outbreaks, including identifying a temporary health workforce.
“Despite the fact that countries thought they were prepared for a pandemic that might come along, they were not. So it’s building the ship as it sails,” said Dr. David Heymann, who previously led the World Health Organization’s infectious diseases department.
But France had been cutting back hospital beds — and doctors and nurses — for years before the pandemic. Building it back up in a matter of months proved too much when the current wave infected hospital staff by the hundreds each day. Even allowing symptomatic COVID-19-positive health workers to report for work hasn’t been enough.
Read:France eases entry rules for vaccinated travelers from U.K.
Britain's NHS Confederation, a membership organization for sponsors and providers, says the public health service went into the pandemic with a shortage of 100,000 health workers that has only worsened.
The first wave of the pandemic pushed Spain's health system to its limit. Hospitals improvised ways to treat more patients by setting up ICUs in operating rooms, gymnasiums and libraries. The public witnessed, appalled, retirees dying in nursing homes without ever being taken to state hospitals that were already well over capacity.
After that, the Spanish government vowed not to let such a collapse happen again. Working with regional health departments, it designed what officials call “elasticity plans” to deal with sudden variations in service demands, especially in ICUs.
The idea is that hospitals have the equipment and, in theory, the personnel, to increase capacity depending on the need. But critics of government health policy say they've warned for years of inadequate hospital staffing, a key driver of the difficulty delivering care in the current wave.
“The key thing is flexibility, having flexible buildings that can expand, having staff that are flexible in terms of accepting task shifting, having flexibility in terms of sharing loads more of a regional structure,” said Dr. Martin McKee, a public health professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Ultimately, though, McLee said: “A bed is an item of furniture. What counts is the staff around it,” McKee said.
Helms, the Strasbourg intensive care doctor, knows that all too well. Her unit has space for 30 beds. But it has only enough staff to care for the patients in the 26 beds currently occupied, a situation unlikely to change quickly after omicron burns through the region.
In the same hospital's infectious diseases unit, frantic schedulers are borrowing staff from elsewhere in the facility, even if it means non-COVID-19 patients get less care.
“We’re still in the middle of a complex epidemic that is changing every day. It’s hard to imagine what we need to build for the future for other epidemics, but we’re going to have to reflect on the system of how we organize care,” said Dr. Nicolas Lefebvre, who runs the infectious diseases unit at the Strasbourg hospital.
He said Europe is prepared to handle isolated outbreaks as it has in the past, but the pandemic has exposed weakened foundations across entire health systems, even those considered among the world's best.
Frédéric Valletoux, the head of the French Hospital Federation, said policymakers at the national level are acutely aware of the problem now. For 2022, the federation has requested more resources from nursing staff on up.
“The difficulty in our system is to shake things up, especially when we're in the heart of the crisis,” Valletoux said.
Global Covid cases top 323 million
The overall number of Covid cases has now surpassed 323 million, with a spike in cases of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus across the world.
According to Johns Hopkins University (JHU), the total case count mounted to 323,140,074 while the death toll from the virus reached 5,528,794 Saturday morning.
The US has recorded 64,897,237 cases so far and 849,172 people have died from the virus in the country, the university data shows.
India reported 264,202 new Covid-19 cases Friday, as the tally rose to 36,582,129 in 24 hours, as per the federal health ministry's latest data.
Besides, 315 fatalities due to the pandemic since Thursday morning took the total death toll to 485,350.
Also read: WHO: Record weekly jump in COVID-19 cases but fewer deaths
Brazil, which has been experiencing a new wave of cases since last January, registered 22,933,289 cases as of Friday while its Covid death toll rose to 621,063.
Situation in Bangladesh
Bangladesh reported six more Covid-19 linked deaths and 4,378 more cases of infections in 24 hours till Friday morning, as the deadly infections kept escalating in the country, according to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
With the fresh cases reported after testing 30,366 samples, the daily positivity rate surged to 14.66 percent from Thursday’s 12.03 percent during the 24-hour period, the directorate said.
The country last logged 4,698 cases on August 26 last year along with 102 deaths in 24 hours while the positivity rate was 13.77 percent.
Also read: Covid surge in Bangladesh: 5,000 get infected in just one week
The fresh numbers took the country’s total fatalities to 28,129 while the caseload mounted to 1,609,042 Friday.
Among the new deceased, two were men and four women. Three of them were from Dhaka division while two died in Chattogram and another in Rajshahi divisions.
The mortality rate remained static at 1.75 percent during the 24-hour period.
The recovery rate slightly declined to 96.47 percent with the recovery of 351 more patients during the 24-hour period.
Bangladesh’s total tally of Omicron cases reached 33 with detection of nine more cases till Wednesday, according to GISAID, a global initiative on sharing all influenza data.
On December 9 last year, Bangladesh again logged zero Covid-related death after nearly three weeks as the pandemic was apparently showing signs of easing.
The country reported last year’s first zero Covid-related death in a single day on November 20 along with 178 infections since the pandemic broke out in Bangladesh in March 2020.
Bangladesh reported the highest number of daily fatalities of 264 on August 10 last year, while the highest daily caseload was 16,230 on July 28 in 2021.
India reports 264,202 new COVID-19 cases, tally rises to 36,582,129
India reported 264,202 new COVID-19 cases on Friday, as the tally rose to 36,582,129 during the past 24 hours, showed the federal health ministry's latest data.
This is the second consecutive day when more than 200,000 daily cases were registered across the country in over eight months.
Read: 9 dead in India train accident
Besides, 315 deaths due to the pandemic since Thursday morning took the total death toll to 485,350.
There are still 1,272,073 active COVID-19 cases in the country with a rise of 154,542 active cases during the past 24 hours. This is the 17th consecutive day when the number of active cases rose in the country.
Read:Man tests Covid positive on return from India
A total of 34,824,706 people have been cured and discharged from hospitals so far, out of which 109,345 were discharged during the past 24 hours.
Meanwhile, the country's Omicron tally has reached 5,753, seeing an increase of 4.83 percent since Thursday. Most of the Omicron cases have been reported from the states of Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Delhi.
Tough Covid curbs back in Bangladesh amid Omicron scare
People have to wear masks everywhere, including shops and shopping malls, and maintain social distance, as the tough Covid-19 restrictions imposed by the government took effect on Thursday.
In an effort to slow down the virus transmission, the government on Monday imposed the harsh restrictions in the wake of Omicron outbreak and the overall Covid situation in the country.
The Cabinet Division issued a notification in this regard on January 10.
Read: Dhaka division logs highest 43.68% of Covid-linked deaths: DGHS
Besides, buses will operate at half of their capacities from Saturday and at the previous fare, said the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA).
“Buses will carry 50 per cent passengers but the fare won’t be hiked this time,” said BRTA director Md Sarwar Alam.
The decision was taken at a meeting with the leaders of transport owners and workers on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Bangladesh Railway has decided to operate trains at half of their capacities from January 15 (Saturday) in an effort to ensure social distancing during train journeys as Covid-19 cases are on the rise in the country.
The Bangladesh Railway also brought some changes in issuing and booking tickets.
The fresh restriction includes—
• All kinds of public gatherings, including social programmes, political and religious events will remain suspended until further notice.
• People have to wear masks everywhere, including shops, shopping malls, markets, hotels and restaurants. Otherwise, s/he will face legal action.
• The mask use should be ensured in all places, including offices and courts, and mobile court drives will be conducted to prevent the violation of health guidelines.
• People should show their Covid-19 vaccination certificates while taking food in restaurants and staying in residential hotels.
• Students above 12 would not be allowed at educational institutions without having Covid-19 vaccination certificate after a designated date to be fixed by the Education Ministry.
• Increasing the number of screening at all ports, including land-ports, airports and maritime ports. The crewmembers of ships should not be allowed to go outside while arriving at a port while only truck drivers are allowed to enter land ports with trucks. Besides, visitors along with foreign-bound passengers should not be allowed to enter airports.
• Public transport, including buses, trains and launches can operate at half of their capacities while drivers and helpers of all modes of vehicles should have Covid-19 vaccination certificates.
• Passengers coming from abroad should show Covid vaccination certificates and should undergo Rapid Antigen tests upon arrival.
• Imams will make people aware about the health guidelines and the use of masks in all mosques during the 'khutba' of Jum'a prayers and the deputy commissioners and UNOs concerned will ensure that.
• Health and Family Welfare Ministry will take necessary steps to ensure Covid-19 vaccination and accelerate the activities of booster dose. The Information and Broadcasting Ministry will assist them in publicity.
• In the case of any special situation in any place, the local administration can take steps in consultation with the authorities concerned.
3 more Omicron cases detected in Bangladesh; cases now stand at 33
Three more cases of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus have been detected in Bangladesh, taking the total tally to 33 till Wednesday, according to GISAID, the global database for genomic data on the coronavirus.
These three were detected with Omicron at the Genome Centre of Jashore University of Science and Technology (JUST).
Among the new cases, two of the patients are Indian nationals -- a man aged 30 and a woman aged 41 -- while another is Bangladeshi man, 25, hailing from Kushtia, confirmed Jashore Civil Surgeon Dr Biplob Kanti.
Civil Surgeon Dr Biplob said the Indian citizens came to visit Bangladesh and tested Omicron positive while leaving the country following a Covid test at the immigration of Benapole port.
READ: Omicron surge in India slams travel through Benapole land port
Later, the data of the three people detected with Omicron has been submitted to the GISAID database, said JUST Vice-Chancellor (VC) Md Anwar Hossain.
Earlier, nine more Omicron cases were detected in the country on Monday.
On December 11, Bangladesh reported its first two cases of the Omicron variant in two members of the Bangladesh women cricket team.
They had returned from Zimbabwe after taking part in the ICC Women's World Cup qualifiers. The event was, however, called off midway due to the surge of Omicron.
The GISAID findings were based on the data submitted by the Institute for Developing Science and Health Initiatives (ideSHi) in Dhaka.
READ: Omicron drives a surge in Bangladesh, cases now stand at 30
Working in partnership with the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), Institute of Epidemiology Disease Control and Research and icddr,b, the infectious diseases laboratory at ideSHi has begun processing Covid-19 test samples from patients across Bangladesh.
DU alumni centenary reunion prog deferred
Dhaka University Alumni Association (DUAA) has decided to defer its centenary reunion programme in the wake of the newly imposed restrictions over the rising Omicron cases of Covid.
The decision to suspend the programme slated for January 13 and 14 was taken as the government has imposed restrictions on public movement and other activities, the association said in a statement.
When the Covid situation eases, the programme will be scheduled again, it said.
Also read: All DU students to get smart ID cards by next February, say authorities
On Monday, the Cabinet Division issued a notification imposing restrictions to control the Covid-19 spread that will take effect on January 13.
All kinds of public gatherings, including social programmes, political and religious events will remain suspended until further notice, it said.
Also read: 12 DU students get Sitara Parvin Award
Besides, public transport services, including buses, trains and launches, can operate only at half of their capacities while drivers and helpers of all modes of vehicles should have Covid-19 vaccination certificates, said the notice.
Omicron drives a surge in Bangladesh, cases now stand at 30
Nine more cases of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus have been detected in Bangladesh, taking the total tally to 30 till Monday, according to GISAID, the global database for genomic data on the coronavirus.
Earlier, 11 more Omicron cases were detected in the country on Friday.
On December 11, Bangladesh reported its first two cases of the Omicron variant in two members of the Bangladesh women cricket team.
Read: Covid cases in Bangladesh mark a sharp rise by 115% in one week: DGHS
They had returned from Zimbabwe after taking part in the ICC Women's World Cup qualifiers. The event was, however, called off midway due to the surge of Omicron.
The GISAID findings were based on the data submitted by the Institute for Developing Science and Health Initiatives (ideSHi) in Dhaka.
Working in partnership with the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), Institute of Epidemiology Disease Control and Research and icddr,b, the infectious diseases laboratory at ideSHi has begun processing Covid-19 test samples from patients across Bangladesh.
Meanwhile, the positive cases of Coronavirus have increased by 115 per cent in Bangladesh over the last one week compared to the previous week, says the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
Read:Covid surge in Bangladesh: Daily positivity rate jumps to 6.78%
“As many as 6,300 new Covid cases have been reported in one week which is 3,376 more than the previous week,” said DGHS Director Prof Nazmul Islam in the regular DGHS briefing on Sunday.
During the period, he said, 23 Covid patients have died, which is 15 per cent higher than the previous week.
China’s Tianjin on partial lockdown after omicron found
The numbers are small, but the major port of Tianjin may be facing China’s first local outbreak of omicron of any size, less than a month before the Winter Olympics open in nearby Beijing.
State broadcaster CCTV said the government has divided Tianjin and its 14 million residents into three levels of restrictions, starting with lockdown areas where people are not allowed to leave their homes at all. In control areas, each household is allowed to have one family member leave to buy groceries every other day, while in prevention areas, people must remain inside their immediate neighborhoods.
Buses and trains from Tianjin to Beijing have been suspended and people are being told not to leave the city unless they have pressing business.
The city began mass testing of all its residents on Sunday after a cluster of 41 children and adults tested positive for COVID-19, including at least two with the omicron variant. Officials said the virus has been circulating so the number of cases could rise.
China has stepped up its strict zero tolerance strategy in the runup to the Olympics, which open Feb. 4. The Chinese capital is 115 kilometers (70 miles) northwest of Tianjin and many people regularly travel back and forth by car or on a high-speed rail link that takes less than one hour.
Read: China orders lockdown of up to 13 million people in Xi’an
Elsewhere, millions of people are being confined to their homes in Xi’an and Yuzhou, two cities that are farther away but have larger outbreaks traced to the delta variant. Residents of Xi’an have been under lockdown for more than two weeks, but the number of new cases in the city of 13 million fell to just 15 on Monday in a sign that restrictions could soon be lifted.
Another 60 cases were reported Monday in Henan province, two of them of the omicron variant, found in the city of Anyang and apparently brought from Tianjin by a college student on Dec. 28, state media outlet The Paper reported. The provincial capital of Zhengzhou has been conducting mass testing and closed its schools. Another 24 cases were reported in the city on Monday.
The first two cases confirmed in Tianjin were a 10-year-old girl and a 29-year-old woman working at an after-school center. Both were infected by the omicron variant. In subsequent testing of close contacts, 18 others tested positive and 767 tested negative as of Saturday night.
Those infected include 15 students from 8 to 13 years old, the after-school center staff member and four parents. The citywide testing is to be completed over two days. Tianjin has also closed some subway stations on two lines to try to prevent further spread.
Read: Netherlands 'going into lockdown again' to curb omicron
China had reported about a dozen omicron cases previously, most among people who had arrived from abroad and were isolated. In one case in mid-December, the infection was not detected until after the person had completed two weeks of quarantine, and it spread to a few close contacts in the southern city of Guangzhou.
Omicron explosion spurs nationwide breakdown of services in USA
Ambulances in Kansas speed toward hospitals then suddenly change direction because hospitals are full. Employee shortages in New York City cause delays in trash and subway services and diminish the ranks of firefighters and emergency workers. Airport officials shut down security checkpoints at the biggest terminal in Phoenix and schools across the nation struggle to find teachers for their classrooms.
The current explosion of omicron-fueled coronavirus infections in the U.S. is causing a breakdown in basic functions and services — the latest illustration of how COVID-19 keeps upending life more than two years into the pandemic.
“This really does, I think, remind everyone of when COVID-19 first appeared and there were such major disruptions across every part of our normal life,” said Tom Cotter, director of emergency response and preparedness at the global health nonprofit Project HOPE. “And the unfortunate reality is, there’s no way of predicting what will happen next until we get our vaccination numbers — globally — up.”
First responders, hospitals, schools and government agencies have employed an all-hands-on-deck approach to keep the public safe, but they are worried how much longer they can keep it up.
In Kansas' Johnson County, paramedics are working 80 hours a week. Ambulances have frequently been forced to alter their course when the hospitals they're heading to tell them they're too overwhelmed to help, confusing the patients' already anxious family members driving behind them. When the ambulances arrive at hospitals, some of their emergency patients end up in waiting rooms because there are no beds.
Dr. Steve Stites, chief medical officer for the University of Kansas Hospital, said when the leader of a rural hospital had no place to send its dialysis patients this week, the hospital's staff consulted a textbook and “tried to put in some catheters and figure out how to do it.”
READ: 10 more Omicron cases detected in Bangladesh
Medical facilities have been hit by a “double whammy,” he said. The number of COVID-19 patients at the University of Kansas Hospital rose from 40 on Dec. 1 to 139 on Friday. At the same time, more than 900 employees have been sickened with COVID-19 or are awaiting test results — 7% of the hospital's 13,500-person workforce.
"What my hope is and what we’re going to cross our fingers around is that as it peaks ... maybe it’ll have the same rapid fall we saw in South Africa," Stites said, referring to the swiftness with which the number of cases fell in that country. “We don’t know that. That’s just hope.”
The omicron variant spreads even more easily than other coronavirus strains, and has already become dominant in many countries. It also more readily infects those who have been vaccinated or had previously been infected by prior versions of the virus. However, early studies show omicron is less likely to cause severe illness than the previous delta variant, and vaccination and a booster still offer strong protection from serious illness, hospitalization and death.
Still, its easy transmissibility has led to skyrocketing cases in the U.S., which is affecting businesses, government offices and public services alike.
In downtown Boise, Idaho, customers were queued up outside a pharmacy before it opened Friday morning and before long, the line wound throughout the large drugstore. Pharmacies have been slammed by staffing shortages, either because employees are out sick or have left altogether.
Pharmacy technician Anecia Mascorro said that prior to the pandemic, the Sav-On Pharmacy where she works always had prescriptions ready for the next day. Now, it's taking a lot longer to fill the hundreds of orders that are pouring in.
“The demand is crazy — everybody’s not getting their scripts fast enough so they keep transferring to us,” Mascorro said.
In Los Angeles, more than 800 police and fire personnel were sidelined because of the virus as of Thursday, causing slightly longer ambulance and fire response times.
In New York City, officials have had to delay or scale back trash and subway services because of a virus-fueled staffing hemorrhage. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority said about one-fifth of subway operators and conductors — 1,300 people — have been absent in recent days. Almost one-fourth of the city sanitation department's workers were out sick Thursday, Sanitation Commissioner Edward Grayson said.
“Everybody’s working ’round the clock, 12-hour shifts,” Grayson said.
The city's fire department also has adjusted for higher absences. Officials said Thursday that 28% of EMS workers were out sick, compared with about 8% to 10% on a normal day. Twice as many firefighters as usual were also absent.
In contrast, the police department saw its sick rate fall over the past week, officials said.
At Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, two checkpoints at the airport's busiest terminal were shut down because not enough Transportation Security Administration agents showed up for work, according to statements from airport and TSA officials.
Meanwhile, schools from coast to coast tried to maintain in-person instruction despite massive teacher absences. In Chicago, a tense standoff between the school district and teachers union over remote learning and COVID-19 safety protocols led to classes being canceled over the past three days. In San Francisco, nearly 900 educators and aides called in sick Thursday.
In Hawaii, where public schools are under one statewide district, 1,600 teachers and staff were absent Wednesday because of illness or pre-arranged vacation or leave. The state’s teachers union criticized education officials for not better preparing for the ensuing void. Osa Tui Jr., head of the Hawaii State Teachers Association, said counselors and security guards were being pulled to go “babysit a classroom.”
“That is very inappropriate,” Tui said at a news conference. “To have this model where there are so many teachers out and for the department to say, ‘Send your kid’ to a classroom that doesn’t have a teacher, what’s the point of that?”
READ: Police HQ issues guidelines to protect force from Omicron
In New Haven, Connecticut, where hundreds of teachers have been out each day this week, administrators have helped to cover classrooms. Some teachers say they appreciate that, but that it can be confusing for students, adding to the physical and mental stress they're already feeling because of the pandemic.
“We’ve already been tested so much. How much can the rubber band stretch here?” asked Leslie Blatteau, president of the New Haven Federation of Teachers.