Good morning. Travel is ticking back up, and “vaccine passports” could play a big role. |
 | | Travelers checking in for flights at Los Angeles International Airport in February.Patrick T. Fallon/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
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The state of summer vacation |
With Covid vaccinations underway, many people are wondering about travel. |
The C.D.C. has recommended that Americans, even those who have been fully vaccinated, not travel yet. Case numbers have been rising in the U.S., and variants are spreading. But the reality is that many people who have received the vaccine are booking flights and trips again. |
Though this summer likely won’t see travel at prepandemic levels, and many places remain closed, “bookings for almost everything are up,” Tariro Mzezewa, a Times reporter who covers travel, told me. |
“Travel will go beyond the road trips of last summer,” she says. “Vaccinated people will be more comfortable being around other people.” |
Expect to show some sort of proof — either of a negative test or of vaccination — when traveling. “You should be planning on showing your negative test or staying home if you don’t have one,” Tariro says. |
The European Union, for example, has announced plans for the Digital Green Certificate, a so-called vaccine passport that countries can use to verify a person’s health status and allow free travel across the bloc. |
The concept of a vaccine passport isn’t new: To travel to certain countries, for example, you already need inoculations against yellow fever and other diseases. |
The travel industry and tech companies have been working on ways to streamline digital credentials for years, and during the pandemic some have started to repurpose that technology to show proof of vaccination. “It isn’t far off in the future,” Tariro says. |
“Some think a coordinated, nationwide vaccine passport system could help us get back to a semblance of normal life and speed up economic recovery,” Rebecca Heilweil wrote in Recode. “But this seems unlikely.” |
 | | A woman showing her “Green Pass” at a bar in Tel Aviv last month.Amir Levy/Getty Images |
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In Israel, a possible vision of the postpandemic future is on display. More than half of Israelis have received both vaccine shots, and cases have dropped by 90 percent. The economy has reopened with help from a “Green Pass,” an entry ticket to society. |
The pass isn’t being widely used for international travel — Israel is still closed to foreign visitors out of fear of variants — but it offers access to restaurants, concerts and more. Newspapers and commercials in Israel are already advertising summer getaways for the fully vaccinated in countries that have agreed to take them, including Greece, Cyprus and Georgia, according to Isabel Kershner, a Times correspondent in Jerusalem. |
 | | Receiving a Moderna Covid-19 vaccine in Detroit this week.Cydni Elledge for The New York Times |
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- Infections and hospitalizations in Michigan have risen sharply in recent weeks, giving it more recent cases per capita than any other state. Officials blame a more contagious variant and a premature return to prepandemic behaviors. “It makes me shudder,” a local health officer said.
- The Biden administration announced an advertising campaign to promote the vaccines in communities where hesitancy remains high.
- In London, bereaved families are filling a wall along the River Thames with 150,000 hand-painted red hearts — one for each life lost to Covid in Britain.
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 | | Interstate 10 split a neighborhood in New Orleans in the 1960s, claiming dozens of Black-owned businesses.Erika Goldring/Getty Images |
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- Nancy Reagan waged a private campaign to help end the Cold War, the Washington Post columnist Karen Tumulty writes in an excerpt from her forthcoming book about the former first lady.
- Easter is more than a celebration of spring, Esau McCaulley, a biblical scholar, writes in The Times.
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Lives Lived: Bibian Mentel was a six-time Dutch snowboarding champion when she lost a leg to cancer. She was soon back on the slopes, competing against able-bodied snowboarders, and she won a gold medal seven months after her surgery. Mentel has died at 48. |
 | | The Yankees opened their season against the Blue Jays yesterday.Amr Alfiky/The New York Times |
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Navigating the new baseball season |
The most noteworthy thing about this season of Major League Baseball, which began yesterday, is that it’s somewhat normal. After the pandemic forced major changes last year, including a 60-game schedule, the league is returning to a standard 162 games and fans are back in the stands. |
Here are three things to watch for this year. |
Lots of home runs. For the past five years, home runs have been flying into the stands in record numbers, and pitchers aren’t happy. To address it, the league has introduced a baseball that is less springy. Still, during spring training, batters hit it out of the park at the highest rate yet, according to The Ringer. |
The best get better. The Los Angeles Dodgers have been to three of the last four World Series, and won it last year. And they seem to keep getting stronger: Over the winter they added pitcher Trevor Bauer, who won the National League Cy Young Award last year. Bill Plaschke of The Los Angeles Times has high expectations: “This season they’re going to be the best team in baseball history.” |
Pandemic disruptions. The league has already postponed a game because of Covid — the opening day matchup between the Mets and the Nationals. As the season goes on, expect the virus to complicate things: Players could miss days, and teams may have to reschedule games. |
 | | Romulo Yanes for The New York Times. Food Stylist:Vivian Lui |
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Whether you’re craving a thriller, a spy documentary or a music history lesson, each of these podcasts can be enjoyed in one big listen. |
We hope you’ve enjoyed eight weeks of bonus games in The Morning. (And let us know what you thought of all four games — Daily Aha, Big Picture, Ditloids and Bee Plus — in this survey.) |
Enjoy our final Bee Plus below, and find its answer in the P.S. |
The pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was photograph, and the answers to yesterday’s Bee Plus were goth and rap. Here is today’s puzzle and Bee Plus — or you can play online. |
BEE PLUS: A word in today’s answer list is also the name of a country. Remove a letter, and the remaining letters in order will spell the name of a plant. In addition, the name of the country is fully hidden inside the name of another plant (9 letters). What are the names of the country and the two plants? |
Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you Monday. — Claire |
P.S. A documentary series based on The Times Magazine’s “The 1619 Project” will debut on Hulu. The Academy Award-winning filmmaker Roger Ross Williams will produce the series. |
P.P.S. The answers to today’s Bee Plus were China, chia and echinacea. |
Today’s episode of “The Daily” is about Biden’s infrastructure plan. On “Still Processing,” a conversation about “Promising Young Woman,” sexual assault and justice. |
Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com. |
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