Moderna Vaccine Granted Full Approval By FDA: Live Covid Updates – The New York Times

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The Food and Drug Administration granted full approval on Monday to Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine, the second-most widely used in the United States and the second to receive full regulatory approval.

The vaccine, which can be administered to adults and has been shown to be highly effective at preventing virus infections and severe cases of Covid-19, has been in use for more than a year under an emergency-use authorization. That rigorous standard lets federal regulators allow use of the shot in a public health emergency before they complete a longer and more detailed review. The vaccine received emergency-use authorization in December 2020.

The full approval of Moderna’s vaccine, which was widely expected, came roughly five months after the company said it had finalized its application for regulators, and after Pfizer and its partner BioNTech, the makers of a similar vaccine, won federal approval in August for use in people 16 and older. That approval set off a cascade of vaccination mandates from institutions that had eagerly awaited the more exhaustive review.

The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is cleared for use in people 5 and older, and could be authorized for even younger children in the next few months.

More than 204 million doses of the Moderna vaccine have been administered in the United States so far, and nearly 75 million people across the nation have been fully vaccinated with it, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“While hundreds of millions of doses of Moderna Covid-19 vaccine have been administered to individuals under emergency use authorization, we understand that for some individuals, F.D.A. approval of this vaccine may instill additional confidence in making the decision to get vaccinated,” Dr. Janet Woodcock, the acting F.D.A. commissioner, said in a statement on Monday.

More than 38 million extra shots of the vaccine have also been administered, according to the C.D.C. Fully vaccinated adults became eligible for Moderna booster shots in the fall. The C.D.C. now considers three doses of the vaccine, with a third dose given five months after the second, to be an “up to date” regimen for most adults. Some people with weakened immune systems recently became eligible for fourth doses.

The new approval also allows Moderna to market its vaccine under the name Spikevax, and gives more latitude to physicians to prescribe use of the shot. Controls on how the vaccine is administered were tighter under emergency use authorization.

Dr. Peter Marks, who oversees the agency’s vaccines office, said in a statement that the review involved an independent verification of Moderna’s analysis of its vaccine’s effectiveness; a separate F.D.A. analysis of the data; and a “detailed assessment” of the manufacturing procedures for the vaccine.

Like the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, the Moderna shot has been tied to serious but rare heart-related side effects — myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle, and pericarditis, or inflammation of the lining around the heart. Those conditions can also arise from Covid-19, and are typically mild. The side effects have been shown to be especially prevalent in young men.

Concerns over those side effects led federal regulators to continue reviewing Moderna’s application for use of the vaccine in adolescents. Moderna is also studying use of its vaccine in children.

The F.D.A. said on Monday that it had conducted a “rigorous evaluation” of the side effects and determined that there was increased risk within a week after a second dose, particularly in men aged 18 to 24. Available short-term follow-up data suggested that symptoms had resolved in most people, the agency said. Regulators conducted a benefit-risk analysis that showed the benefits of the vaccine still outweighed the risks for all adults.

Regulators significantly sped up the amount of time they typically take to fully approve a vaccine, shaving months off a process that experts have said is enormously complex and time-consuming, requiring large teams of F.D.A. reviewers.

Before it approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, the F.D.A. came under intense pressure from some public health experts, who accused the agency of an overly plodding review that compromised momentum in the national vaccination campaign. Public polling at the time showed that some Americans would be likelier to get the shot if it were fully approved.

The Omicron wave is now receding in states where the extremely contagious variant arrived later, and some governors are saying it’s time for pandemic-fatigued Americans to try to restore a sense of normalcy and learn to live with the virus.

The United States remains in a precarious position, as hospitals are overstretched and daily deaths are above 2,500 and rising. Case counts are now declining in some interior states, including Arizona, Utah, Colorado, North Dakota, Louisiana and Mississippi, where Omicron swept through more recently, and while new cases are falling nationally, too, they remain far higher than in any other period of the pandemic. And the spread of an Omicron subvariant that appears to be even more contagious has some experts warning that it could take longer than expected for the winter wave to wane.

The daily average of U.S. cases remains about 519,000 a day — more than double the worst statistics from last winter. Hospitalizations, which lag cases, seem to have peaked nationally, though they remain higher than last winter’s peak. Deaths, which lag more, are also at record levels in some states.

In a few states, like Washington and Montana, cases are still rising.

A few state leaders said Sunday that while more variants and, inevitably, another surge remain a threat, Omicron has brought the country closer to the endemic stage of the virus.

“We’re not going to manage this to zero,” Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey, a Democrat, said to Chuck Todd on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “We have to learn how to live with this.”

Public health experts say the next phase of the virus in the United States will depend on what variants emerge and whether a sluggish vaccination campaign picks up speed. Herd immunity to the coronavirus, experts say, is unlikely to be achieved.

The spread of an Omicron subvariant is yet another reminder of the unpredictable path the pandemic could take next.

Scientists warn that the new member the Omicron viral family, known BA.2, could drag out the Omicron surge in much of the world. So far, BA.2 doesn’t appear to cause more severe disease, and vaccines are just as effective against it as they are against other forms of Omicron. But BA.2 does show signs of spreading more readily.

“This may mean higher peak infections in places that have yet to peak, and a slowdown in the downward trends in places that have already experienced peak Omicron,” Thomas Peacock, a virologist at Imperial College London, told The Times’s Carl Zimmer.

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the chief Covid adviser to President Biden, recently offered words of cautious optimism, saying he believed outbreaks could become much more manageable in the coming months — to a point where “they’re there, but they don’t disrupt society.”

As Omicron declines, Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, a Republican, said the United States should move toward treating the virus as if it’s endemic, but remain vigilant. He acknowledged that more variants are inevitable and called on the federal government to help states ramp up testing capacity and access to treatments.

“That’s where the federal government needs to step up,” he said on “Meet the Press.” “Let’s take advantage of this going down to be prepared for what’s around the corner.”

Roni Caryn Rabin, Carl Zimmer and Maggie Astor contributed to this report.

— Ron DePasquale

Not only has a “shadow” wave of violence against women emerged during the coronavirus pandemic, but women who experienced financial hardship as a result of the pandemic were also more likely to be abused by their partners, according to a study released on Monday by Australian researchers.

The survey of 10,000 women age 18 and older was conducted between February and April 2021 by Australia’s National Research Organization for Women’s Safety, a research and policy group. It asked the women about their experiences during the first 12 months of the pandemic.

It found that those with high levels of financial stress were “much more likely” to have experienced physical violence, as well as emotional abuse, for the first time in their relationships, compared with those who were economically secure. The researchers also found that violence was more likely in relationships where there was financial disparity.

“Within intimate relationships where the partners have similar levels of earning power, or the woman is the primary breadwinner, some abusers may be using sexual violence as a way of exerting control over their partner,” Rick Brown, the deputy director of the Australian Institute of Criminology, which collaborated on the study, said in a statement.

More than 40 percent of the women surveyed said they were “anxious about their financial situation,” while more than 30 percent had been temporarily laid off, lost their job, had to reduce their hours or take a pay cut, according to the report.

Australia has imposed some of the harshest pandemic measures in the world, with international borders closed and major cities locked down for several months. Researchers described those measures as creating a pressure-cooker situation that has helped contribute to violence against women.

“This finding,” they said in the report, “is consistent with research which suggests women have been more negatively impacted by the pandemic than men.”

A report published last year by U.N. Women, a United Nations organization dedicated to gender equality, found that the pandemic had made women feel more vulnerable to abuse, sexual harassment and violence, which was in turn harming their mental health and emotional well-being.

Forty-five percent of women surveyed in 13 countries reported that they or a woman they knew had experienced some form of violence since the start of the pandemic, and the women who said this were 1.3 times more likely than the others surveyed to report greater mental and emotional stress. The countries surveyed were Albania, Bangladesh, Cameroon, Colombia, Ivory Coast, Jordan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Morocco, Nigeria, Paraguay, Thailand and Ukraine.

Global roundup

A high-level Hong Kong official who attended a birthday party with members of the local political elite just as the city was entering a new wave of coronavirus infections resigned on Monday, saying he did “not set the best example during the recent outbreak.”

Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s chief executive, singled out the official, Caspar Tsui, the home affairs secretary, for the most flagrant behavior among officials who attended the party.

More than 200 people attended the Jan. 3 birthday event for Witman Hung, a local delegate to China’s National People’s Congress, including 15 senior officials and 20 members of Hong Kong’s Legislature. Hong Kong has managed to keep the coronavirus largely contained through strict quarantines and social distancing policies, but the party was held as the Omicron variant had already begun spreading through the city.

The party guests ate, drank wine and sang karaoke for hours at a tapas restaurant. Several were photographed not wearing masks. The officials’ indifference to pandemic precautions stirred anger among Hong Kong residents, who have experienced two years of restrictions.

Mrs. Lam said that Mr. Tsui stayed at the party for close to two hours, did not wear a mask when required and did not use an official contact tracing app. His conduct was especially egregious because of his role in fighting the pandemic, including attending high-level prevention planning meetings on Dec. 31 and the morning of Jan. 3., Mrs. Lam said.

“His conduct has brought the Hong Kong government into disrepute and has created a negative perception among the general public,” she said.

Mrs. Lam said that two other officials who did not have pandemic prevention roles would be given verbal warnings for other transgressions. (One attended the party for four hours and drank too much to recall whether he wore a mask, while the other went to work before submitting to a mandatory test.) Twelve other officials who attended for brief periods and followed other rules would not be punished, Mrs. Lam said.

All the guests were sent to quarantine after two people who attended were later found to be infected with the coronavirus. Many, however, had their isolation cut short after one case turned out to be a false positive.

On Thursday, Hong Kong recorded 164 new coronavirus infections, its highest single-day total. The numbers have eased somewhat in recent days, dropping to 81 new cases on Sunday.

In other global news:

• The Australian curler Tahli Gill has been cleared to compete in the Winter Olympics after initially testing positive for the coronavirus upon landing in Beijing this past weekend, in a sign of hope for athletes who are flagged as positive upon arrival for the Games. Ms. Gill contracted the coronavirus several weeks ago in Canada. In statement released on Monday, the Australian Olympic Committee said that she had since returned two negative tests — on Sunday and Monday — and would be allowed to compete. “We are greatly relieved,” Ms. Gill and her teammate, Dean Hewitt, said in the joint statement. “This experience is not going to define our Olympic campaign.”

Downing Street suffers from a culture of “excessive” workplace drinking that led to social gatherings during pandemic lockdowns, according to a highly anticipated report from a British government investigation released on Monday.

The document described leadership failures in the office of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, though it did not directly implicate Mr. Johnson in wrongdoing, leaving that judgment to a separate police investigation. That may give him some political breathing room, but it is unlikely to dispel the cloud of what has become a career-threatening scandal.

The report, by a senior civil servant, Sue Gray, was scrubbed of its most potentially damaging findings at the request of London’s Metropolitan Police, which launched their own investigation of the lockdown breaches last week. So abridged was the document released on Monday that the Cabinet Office characterized it as an “update” of Ms. Gray’s investigation rather than as a report.

Still, even in its redacted form, the report painted a troubling portrait of a work culture at Downing Street, where staff members held alcohol-fueled gatherings with colleagues during a period when the government was urging the public to avoid socializing, even with close friends and relatives. Accusations of double standards have engulfed Mr. Johnson’s government and threatened his grip on power.

“At least some of the gatherings in question represent a serious failure to observe not just the high standards expected of those working at the heart of government, but also of the standards expected of the entire British population at the time,” Ms. Gray said in one of her general findings.

“There were failures of leadership and judgment by different parts of No. 10 and the Cabinet Office at different times,” she continued. “Some of the events should not have been allowed to take place. Other events should not have been allowed to develop as they did.”

Ms. Gray took particular aim at the regular drinking at these events. “The excessive consumption of alcohol is not appropriate in a professional workplace at any time,” she wrote, adding that government agencies needed “a clear and robust policy in place covering the consumption of alcohol in the workplace.”

The prime minister had shored up his position somewhat in recent days, and the findings released on Monday did not immediately appear to pose a fresh threat to him. But at a minimum, they raised hard questions about the operation Mr. Johnson and his senior aides have put together at Downing Street.

Mr. Johnson, who addressed Parliament about the report on Monday, has been scrambling to avoid a vote of no-confidence in his leadership by Conservative lawmakers. Such a vote would be called if 54 members submit confidential letters demanding it. That threshold has not yet been met, and it was unlikely that the details released Monday would lead to a flood of new dissidents.

Indeed, Downing Street moved swiftly to change the subject. Mr. Johnson, eager to drape himself in a statesman’s mantle, scheduled a phone call with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Monday to discuss the mounting tensions in Ukraine. He will visit the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, on Tuesday.

Britain has been staking out a more assertive policy on Ukraine in recent weeks. But Mr. Johnson has been forced to cede much of the spotlight to his foreign secretary, Liz Truss, and defense secretary, Ben Wallace, while he grappled with the mutiny inside his Conservative Party over the party scandal.

Later in the week, the government will release a report on its “leveling up” program, the blueprint to bolster economically blighted parts of the country’s north, which is the centerpiece of its legislative agenda.

Mr. Johnson hopes to mollify Conservative lawmakers, many of whom were swept into Parliament in 2019 on the strength of Mr. Johnson’s “Get Brexit done” campaign slogan but who have grown disillusioned with him, particularly in the wake of disclosures about pandemic socializing at Downing Street.

The Omicron variant has dampened the plans of tens of millions of people across several Asian countries to travel during the Lunar New Year, as officials battle the pandemic for a third year.

Observed this year on Feb. 1, Lunar New Year falls just as many countries are seeing surges in coronavirus cases. Omicron is becoming the dominant variant in countries like South Korea, which expects up to 90 percent of its cases to be Omicron-related by the end of February.

Before the pandemic, as many as three billion trips were made over the holiday in China — often described as the world’s largest annual migration. People visit their hometowns or go on vacation.

Once again this year, there will be far fewer trips, with travel regulations and pressure from governments restricting the exodus.

“Large gatherings will have to wait a little longer, as the Omicron variant has forced us to maintain strict measures,” said Singapore’s prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, in a statement about the holidays. “We must continue to exercise social responsibility and take precautions.”

Singapore has reported a 457 percent increase in daily cases over the past two weeks, according to Our World in Data. The city state’s Ministry of Health said it expects “cases to double every two or three days.” In December, Singapore and Malaysia temporarily halted ticket sales for airplanes and buses in response to the rise of Omicron, even for those who were fully vaccinated.

Chinese citizens are under strict government surveillance, with a color code system restricting their movements and making travel difficult. The country’s “zero Covid” approach has led to lockdowns across various cities.

In January, Beijing officials reported the city’s first Omicron case and called for an immediate lockdown in one neighborhood. With the Olympics just around the corner, China has decided not to sell tickets to most domestic or international spectators.

On Sunday, Beijing reported its highest case count in 18 months, just days before the Games.

South Korea has not placed a travel ban on its citizens, but it has repeatedly urged them to refrain as much as possible from visiting relatives and going on vacation.

Although the country has fully vaccinated 85 percent of its population, according to Our World in Data, it reached a record case count of 17,532 over the long Lunar New Year weekend, which started on Saturday and will last through Wednesday.

Several countries that had put in place strict international travel restrictions will continue moving toward a gradual reopening of their tourism industries.

Vietnam has been slowly reopening to international visitors. Certain destination spots have already opened up, and the country will be fully accessible to travelers in April.

Indonesia lifted a ban on travelers from 14 countries in mid-January, allowing people from any country to visit if they quarantine upon arrival. “Learning from the surge of the Omicron variant cases in various countries, the government has made adequate preparations to deal with it,” President Joko Widodo said in a statement on Friday.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada has tested positive for the coronavirus after an exposure last week. He said on Twitter that he was not feeling ill.

He said later in an online news conference that two of his three children had also tested positive.

Mr. Trudeau has been isolating since last Thursday, when he learned that he had been exposed. He revealed his own positive test result in a statement posted to social media on Monday morning, and added that he would “continue to work remotely this week while following public health guidelines.”

Several Canadian news outlets reported that Mr. Trudeau and his family were relocated out of their official residence in Ottawa, the capital, by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police over the weekend as thousands of protesters converged on the city.

The police force declined to comment on those reports, citing security concerns.

Loosely organized trucker convoys traveled across the country to Ottawa to protest vaccine mandates, attracting supporters and millions of dollars in donations along the way. They gathered in front of Canada’s Parliament building on Saturday, clogging downtown streets, with cars and pickup trucks outnumbering the heavy trucks that initially made up the convoys.

Some protesters carried Canadian flags held upside down, traditionally a signal of dire distress or danger. At least one flag had swastikas drawn on it.

“Hate can never be the answer,” Mr. Trudeau said in the virtual news conference. “Over the past few days, Canadians were shocked and frankly, disgusted, by the behavior displayed by some people protesting in our nation’s capital.”

Some protesters were still in the area on Monday, and the Ottawa police said they expected “major traffic, noise and safety issues.”

Mr. Trudeau, who is fully vaccinated and received a booster dose at the beginning of January, planned to participate in his scheduled events remotely on Monday, including a question period in the House of Commons.

It is not the first time Mr. Trudeau has had to conduct his duties from home. His wife, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, came down with flulike symptoms in March 2020 and later tested positive for the coronavirus. As his wife isolated in one part of their home, Mr. Trudeau became the full-time caretaker to his three children, cleaning up and doing laundry, though cooked meals were dropped off.

Public health guidelines have changed recently in several provinces, including Ontario, where Ottawa is located. Ontario now requires vaccinated people who test positive for the virus to isolate for at least five days after the onset of symptoms, a household contact or a positive test; earlier in the pandemic, the minimum was about 14 days.

Close to 78 percent of Canadians are fully vaccinated, according to federal public health data, and 88 percent of people who are 5 and older have received at least one dose of vaccine.

Ian Austen contributed reporting from Ottawa.

The Austrian government ended its lockdown for unvaccinated people on Monday, even as it experiences a record number of daily coronavirus cases and prepares to approve a vaccine mandate for adults later this week.

Karl Nehammer, the Austrian Chancellor, announced last week that the restrictions would end because the strain on hospitals from cases of the Omicron variant was less severe.

Starting Monday, unvaccinated Austrians will no longer be confined to their homes. But they still cannot enter nonessential shops, restaurants and cultural institutions for another two weeks.

The rule, which was introduced in mid-November, was one of the first lockdown restrictions in Europe that targeted people who were neither vaccinated nor had recovered from Covid. But as cases continued to rise, the government announced a broader 20-day lockdown for the entire population a week later. A general vaccine mandate was also announced at that time.

The upper house of Austria’s Parliament is expected to pass a bill later this week that will make vaccinations mandatory for almost everyone aged 18 and over. Starting March 15, officials will be authorized to do routine checks of vaccination status.

People who fail to produce proof of vaccination could face fines as high as 3,600 euros, or about $4,000.

Austria’s vaccination rate is currently 73 percent. Last week Austrian authorities registered a record 38,423 new daily cases.

Around half a million children in England will become eligible for a first dose of a coronavirus shot on Monday, as the National Health Service extends its vaccine rollout to children ages 5 to 11 who are considered most at risk of contracting the virus.

Those children who are deemed clinically vulnerable, or who live with someone who has a weakened immune system, will be offered a low-dose form of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in two shots, set eight weeks apart.

The pediatric formulation of the Pfizer vaccine contains one-third of the adult dose and was approved by the British medicine regulator last month.

Britain in December 2020 became the first country in the world to kick off a mass coronavirus vaccination campaign, but expanding the program to children has happened at a slower pace. It began offering a first dose to children aged 12 through 15 in September last year and the authorities have not yet made any decision on when all children aged 5 through 11 will become eligible for a first dose.

Since November 2021, the United States has fully vaccinated more than five million children in the 5-to-11 age group, though health experts are concerned that the rate of vaccination for children has stalled.

The number of children in England testing positive for the coronavirus increased from the start of this month to the week ending Jan. 22, according to the latest figures from Britain’s Office for National Statistics, with the highest percentage of cases in children ages 2 to 11. That has happened despite a drop in overall cases since Britain’s daily caseload peaked at over 190,000 at the beginning of this month, a surge fueled by the Omicron variant.

“We know vaccines give significant protection against severe illness from Covid — including the Omicron variant, so it is important that our youngest and most at-risk get protected,” the deputy lead for the N.H.S. England vaccine program, Dr. Nikki Kanani said in a news release on Sunday.

New York City officials said Sunday that they were launching a program for residents to get antiviral Covid pills delivered directly to their homes for free, though supplies of the drugs remained limited.

Mayor Eric Adams announced that oral antiviral pills would be made available for free, same-day at-home delivery starting Sunday for eligible New Yorkers who receive a prescription. According to a statement from the mayor’s office, treatments will be prioritized to New Yorkers who test positive for the coronavirus and are at higher risk for severe illness as supplies are still restricted.

“We want to make sure that no one with Covid has to move throughout the city,” Mr. Adams said during a news conference at Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx on Sunday. “We want to bring it to you and we want you to take advantage of this.”

The city will provide Paxlovid, developed by Pfizer, and molnupiravir, developed by Merck. Both drugs will be distributed by Alto Pharmacy, a telehealth prescription medication provider the city has partnered with.

The treatments have been authorized by the Food and Drug Administration, which said that those who are 12 and older and vulnerable to severe illness from Covid are eligible for Paxlovid, and adults who are vulnerable are also eligible for molnupiravir.

Although both treatments have been shown to reduce the risk of severe illness and death from Covid, the F.D.A. has said molnupiravir is much less effective and should not be considered as a first choice for treatment, as it could come with possible safety risks.

Though the city’s website said both Paxlovid and molnupiravir were in stock, it was not immediately clear on Sunday how many treatment courses were available, and the mayor’s office did not immediately respond to questions about the city’s supply. Earlier this month, Alto Pharmacy said it had run out of Paxlovid pills within a week after receiving about 1,300 doses in late December. Scarce supplies of the antiviral pills and other Covid treatments have plagued hospitals and pharmacies across the country.

Still, the mayor and the city’s health department officials encouraged New Yorkers to call the city’s Covid hotline to see if they were eligible for a prescription. Dr. Dave A. Chokshi, the city health commissioner, added that New York City was one of the few places in the world to offer same-day delivery for the antiviral pills.

“With these new treatments, and of course, our lifesaving vaccines, we now have the tools to mitigate the worst of Covid-19,” Dr. Chokshi said.

Mr. Adams said Sunday that although Covid cases in the city were still high, the rate of positive tests, hospitalizations and deaths were going down.

The city’s seven-day average test positivity rate was 4.8 percent on Saturday, according to state data, down from over 20 percent during the first week in January.

Mr. Adams credited the declining numbers to the city’s vaccination rate, saying that 85 percent of adults and 50 percent of children age 5 and older were now fully vaccinated.

“New Yorkers are winning,” Mr. Adams said. “We have a lot to do, but let’s be clear: We’re winning.”

The New New World

He visited 28 places in the first 18 days of 2022, including a puppet theater, a few luxury residential compounds and a shopping mall in the heart of China’s equivalent of Silicon Valley.

He didn’t go to any of these places for fun. He was often there in the wee hours when they were deserted, to unload concrete and sand from trucks that weren’t allowed in the city until after midnight. He would be gone before day broke.

The migrant worker, surnamed “Yue,” toiled in obscurity until he tested positive for Covid and the authorities released the extensive details of his movements. After that, he became known as the hardest working person in China.

He was a symbol of the inequalities that are invisible to most middle-class Chinese people, the migrant workers who sweep the streets, pick up the trash and keep big metropolises gleaming. He was also an inconvenient truth to a government that prefers celebrating its success in eradicating extreme poverty, rather than acknowledging the large part of the population still struggling for a better life.

Many social media users contrasted his itineraries with that of another Covid case in Beijing, a young employee at a big state-owned bank. In the first 10 days of this year, she visited four shopping malls, made a purchase at a French luxury store, saw a talk show and went skiing.

The two have become the faces of the haves and the have-nots who live in the same cities but exist in parallel universes. Some people compared Mr. Yue to characters in movies like “The Matrix” and “Parasite” who operate between different realities and social economic classes.

ALBANY, N.Y. — Amid the gloom and economic devastation that the pandemic first brought to New York, state officials introduced a crowd-pleasing salve: the temporary legalization of to-go alcoholic drinks.

The move in March 2020 was seen as a lifeline to a restaurant industry that had been decimated by the virus, and a socially pointed diversion for New Yorkers eager to reclaim a wisp — even in the form of a takeout margarita — of their prepandemic lives.

So when state lawmakers attempted to permanently legalize to-go cocktails last spring, the effort seemed to many like a shoo-in.

And yet, by the time lawmakers adjourned in June, the measure was dead, the apparent victim to a powerful and ubiquitous force in Albany: the relatively discreet but forceful opposition from lobbyists for an aggrieved liquor store industry.

The defeat of the proposal last June is a quintessential story about the indelible impact that well-organized lobbying forces have on even the most unassuming policy proposals in Albany.

It set off a contentious clash between liquor stores and the restaurant industry over who should be allowed to put alcohol in New Yorkers’ hands outside of their premises. In a flurry of activity, their lobbyists took aim at the State Capitol, trade groups started public relations campaigns, and even the union representing state police waded into the debate.

But the time-tested lobbying efforts of the liquor store industry, which appeared to mobilize more swiftly to quell momentum of the legislation, caught the restaurant industry flat-footed. Behind the scenes, the liquor store industry directed tens of thousands of dollars in political donations to state lawmakers, while individual store owners mounted a campaign to pressure their elected officials.

Their primary concern, of course, was money: They made their case that allowing bars and restaurants to sell booze to-go would upend their businesses. But they imbued that contention with public health concerns, arguing that takeout drinks could lead to underage drinking and drunken driving, as well as drinking in public — concerns echoed by some lawmakers.

The battle is set for a second round during the current legislative session, as Gov. Kathy Hochul announced in her State of the State address that she intended to legalize the sale of to-go drinks for bars and restaurants, making permanent a program that ended in June.