Gary Jones, Alice Woodhouse, Sarah Provan, Oliver Ralph, Harry Dempsey, Harriet Clarfelt
Updated at 1/6/2021, 7: 12: 19 AM BST
Matthew Vincent
Up to 4,000 financial services groups are at a heightened risk of failure because of the coronavirus pandemic, the UK regulator has warned, and nearly a third of these “low resilience” businesses could cause harm to consumers.
In an industry-wide survey of the impact of Covid-19, the Financial Conduct Authority said on Thursday that insurance, payments and e-money, and investment management groups had suffered a decrease in their available cash, borrowings and liquid assets during the spring lockdown.
Of the 23,000 solo-regulated companies studied, six in 10 said they expected the coronavirus crisis to have a negative impact on their net income. Most of these expected the impact to be between a 1 and 25 per cent reduction but almost 700 firms said that income would fall by more than three-quarters.
“A market downturn driven by the pandemic risks significant numbers of firms failing,” said Sheldon Mills, the FCA’s executive director of consumers and competition. “These are predominantly small and medium-sized firms and approximately 30 per cent have the potential to cause harm in failure.”
Read more here.
Harriet Clarfelt
Discount store chain B&M posted strong sales growth for its third quarter ending December, as it opened 16 new B&M-branded shops in the UK net of two closures and created 500 new jobs.
Sales for the FTSE 100 group, which has benefited from its status as an essential retailer during the coronavirus pandemic, rose more than a fifth at constant currencies during the 13 weeks to Boxing Day. This marked a significant increase from growth of a tenth in the same period a year earlier.
B&M’s UK stores were behind that improvement, with sales growth of more than a quarter. The B&M UK business now comprises 673 shops with plans to open 18 more in the fourth quarter.
Meanwhile, the group’s Heron food business posted growth of 8 per cent to £103m. Revenues for its ‘Babou’ and B&M France businesses dipped 1.4 per cent in the third quarter.
Like a number of supermarkets and other retailers deemed essential, B&M said in December that it would forgo business rates relief granted by the government to offset the blow dealt by Covid-19.
The group has narrowed its profit guidance for the 2021 financial year to reflect the voluntary payment of roughly £80m in business rates, projecting adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of £540m-£570m.
B&M will pay a special dividend of 20p a share, or £200m overall, on January 29.
Shares in B&M are up more than a third over the past 12 months. The group entered the FTSE 100 index last autumn.
Philip Georgiadis
Ryanair warned it will carry even fewer passengers than forecast this financial year after slashing its winter flight schedules in response to the new wave of lockdowns and travel restrictions in the UK and some other European countries.
The low-cost carrier said it now expects to run few, if any, flights from the UK and Ireland from the end of January until restrictions on movements are eased.
As a result, Ryanair has revised down its passenger forecast for its financial year, which runs to the end of March, from below 35m to between 26m to 30m passengers, less than a fifth of the 149m it carried in the previous year.
The airline does not expect the “material” reduction in its flight schedules to impact its profitability, as the quiet flights would have been lossmaking anyway.
But the changes illustrate how the winter season is turning out to be even worse than expected for Europe’s beleaguered airlines, and that Ryanair is not immune to the pressures the industry is under.
Ryanair also called on the British and Irish governments to speed up their vaccination programmes and said “vaccinations rather than lockdowns is the way out of this Covid-19 crisis”.
Alice Hancock
Mitchells & Butlers, the UK’s largest listed pub group, has said that it is considering an equity raise as it warned that prolonged lockdowns meant that it could not forecast how or when it would be able to trade again.
Neither the timing, size or terms of a capital raise have been announced but in a statement on Thursday, the company said it was “prudent” to explore a fundraising while “the future facing the hospitality sector remains extremely uncertain”.
Trading in the three months to January 2, which included both a national lockdown in England and the crucial Christmas period, was 67.1 per cent below 2019’s levels. Across pubs that were able to trade, sales were 30.1 per cent down on the same period last year.
M&B operates 1,700 pubs across the UK under brands including Toby Carvery, Harvester and Nicholson’s.
All pubs in England are currently closed until February at the earliest under the latest lockdown rules.
In December, M&B chief executive Phil Urban told the FT that 2020 had been a “heartbreaking” year and chastised the government for not providing greater financial certainty for businesses.
In a statement on Thursday, he said: “Mitchells & Butlers was a high performing business going into the pandemic and with the support of our main stakeholders I have every confidence that we can emerge in a strong competitive position once the current restrictions on us are lifted.”
Jonathan Eley
J Sainsbury said same-store sales grew 9.3 per cent in the nine weeks to Jan 2 and that underlying pretax profit for the full year was now expected to be £330m, some £60m above its previous forecast.
In an unscheduled trading update, the UK’s second-largest food retailer said that sales in grocery, general merchandise and clothing had been stronger than expected, helped by customers bringing shopping forward and a modified strategy around Black Friday.
Online grocery sales more than doubled in the weeks leading up to Christmas, while the profitability of its ecommerce services improved.
The revised profit figure includes the £410m impact of forgoing the UK government’s business rates relief, and is less than the £586m reported last year due to the costs of hiring additional staff to cope with the coronavirus pandemic.
Total sales growth, excluding fuel, for the company’s third fiscal quarter was 6.8 per cent, above the 5.2 per cent reported in the second quarter but not as high as the 8.5 per cent generated in a first quarter that included several weeks of elevated demand ahead of the UK’s first lockdown.
Valentina Romei
Germany’s industrial sector showed unexpected resilience in November with strong orders, providing a source of growth for the eurozone’s largest economy despite tightening coronavirus restrictions.
In November, German manufacturing orders increased 2.3 per cent over the previous month, while the pace for October was revised up to 3.3 per cent, official statistics showed. The November reading was much stronger than the 1.2 per cent contraction forecast by economists polled by Reuters.
The monthly increase brings manufacturing orders to 4 per cent above February levels, before the first pandemic restrictions began.
The eurozone’s largest economy is struggling with higher levels of infections and restrictions than in the spring, which are putting the brakes on activity in large parts of the services sector.
On Wednesday, the country registered a record number of over 1,000 deaths related to the virus and during the week, German’s national lockdown has been extended and toughened, including the closure of the schools.
However, unlike in the spring, the country’s large export-led manufacturing sector has supported the economy through the autumn.
November’s increase was supported by both domestic orders, which were up 1.6 per cent over the previous month, and international orders with a 2.9 per cent increase.
Robin Harding in Tokyo
The number of new Covid-19 cases in Tokyo surged to a daily record of 2,447 as the national government prepared to declare a state of emergency later on Thursday.
Most alarmingly, the jump in cases marks a sharp acceleration from the previous record of 1,591 on Wednesday and the levels around 500 a day in late December, suggesting rapid spread of the disease over new year holidays.
The government’s medical advisory council met on Thursday morning to approve a state of emergency that will be declared soon in Tokyo and the three surrounding prefectures of Kanagawa, Saitama and Chiba.
Under the state of emergency, restaurants will be asked to close at 8pm with offices shifting to telework, but schools are expected to stay open for the time being.
Mehul Srivastava in Tel Aviv
When coronavirus came to the Holy Land last spring, Israelis and Palestinians suffered alike as dysfunctional governments imposed harsh lockdowns that crippled their economies and hospitals on both sides filled with patients.
Then last month, Israel began the world’s speediest coronavirus vaccination campaign, handing out first jabs of a two-shot BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine to more than 1m citizens. Millions more are planned.
Next door, in the West Bank, occupied by the Israeli military, and in Gaza, blockaded by the same forces, millions of Palestinians waited for their turn. They are still waiting.
The stark disparity is not just an illustration of the inequities that await the global rollout of Covid-19 vaccines, with wealthy nations racing ahead of poorer ones to immunise their citizens.
It is, Palestinians said, an inevitable outcome of a half-century of occupation, leaving nearly 5m people dependent on Israel and the international community for the aid, logistics and co-ordination that a large-scale immunisation programme requires.
Read more here
Erika Solomon in Berlin, Kiran Stacey in Washington, Leila Abboud in Paris, Davide Ghiglione in Rome
Signs that a relatively high number of healthcare workers are unwilling to receive the coronavirus vaccine in some parts of Europe and the US have alarmed politicians and health experts, as countries struggle to contain a surge in infections and carry out mass vaccination.
A poll released in mid-December caused surprise in Germany — the country that has been at the forefront of the race for a vaccine with biotech company BioNTech — by showing that half of surveyed nurses did not want to be vaccinated, along with a quarter of doctors.
Those worries came back to the fore this week when the head of one German state said only a third of healthcare workers in his state were willing to get the jab.
A high degree of reluctance among medical staff has also been observed in other parts of Europe and in the US. In France, 76 per cent of senior care home staff said they did not want to get vaccinated, according to a poll of 2,000 such workers carried out last month.
Read more here
Jamie Smyth in Sydney
Australia is accelerating its Covid-19 vaccine programme following criticism from some health experts about delays and growing concerns about the threat posed by new virus strains from the UK and South Africa.
However, the government said on Thursday it was not seeking emergency authorisation of vaccines or “cutting corners” in distribution — a strategy being pursued by some nations facing a deadly third wave of Covid-19.
Scott Morrison, Australia’s prime minister, said vaccinations of vulnerable groups would begin in mid-to-late February, rather than late March as initially planned. Health workers, border security personnel and care home residents would be at the front of the queue, with a target of reaching 4m people by the end of March and half of the adult population by mid-year.
“Australians want a swiftly developed and administered vaccine but more importantly they want a safe one and they don’t want any corners cut,” said Mr Morrison. “Doing that is critical to public confidence in the vaccine … So we haven’t gone to emergency vaccination arrangements.”
Jude Webber in Mexico City
Mexico on Wednesday reported a new daily record increase in Covid-19 infections and deaths, with 1,165 new fatalities confirmed and 13,345 new cases.
Overall, Mexico has confirmed 129,987 deaths and 1,479,835 cases of coronavirus. However, excess mortality data and low testing point to a far higher toll than has been confirmed by the government.
On October 7, Mexico reported a higher death tally but that was a result of an adjustment to the official figures. Not all deaths reported every day correspond to the previous 24-hour period.
“Based on data presented by the government on mortality between March 15 and November 21, 2020, compared with the same period in previous years, we estimate that as of today, Mexico has 328,203 excess deaths,” said Andrés Tapia in a tweet. The medical student at Mexico’s Unam university has been following the Covid pandemic in Mexico.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador earlier defended his coronavirus tsar, Hugo López-Gatell, who has come under fire over photographs showing him maskless and on holiday despite government calls for people to stay at home.
Edward White in Seoul
South Korea will require incoming foreigners to present negative coronavirus tests as the country continues to grapple with its worst virus outbreak since the outset of the pandemic.
South Korea’s coronavirus transmission rate has shown early signs of stabilisation in recent days, after the country implemented its strictest-yet social-distancing restrictions late last year.
Health officials in Seoul reported 870 new virus cases on Thursday, marking the third straight day of cases below 1,000 and a decline from more than 1,200 cases reported at Christmas.
Still, officials remain on edge over the spread of coronavirus variants, prompting Seoul to require all foreign passengers to present a negative Covid-19 test result, obtained within the previous 72 hours, on their arrival into the country.
Testing rates have remained at high levels by the country’s own standards, at around 100,000 each day. A programme of testing all the country’s prisoners for the virus is now under way after an outbreak at a Seoul prison.
Clive Cookson in London and Joseph Cotterill in Johannesburg
The new coronavirus variant linked to a surge in Covid-19 cases in South Africa is not only more infectious than previous forms of the virus but could make some vaccines less effective.
Scientists racing to understand the new strain said they still expected the current crop of approved vaccines to work but were worried that a specific mutation, also identified in a new variant in Brazil, could affect the way the virus responds.
“At this moment, we think that a vaccine could be a little less effective,” Professor Tulio de Oliveira, of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, who is leading South Africa’s scientific effort to understand the 501Y.V2 strain, told the Financial Times. “[But] between all the varieties of vaccines that are coming to the market, we still have strong belief that some of them will be very effective.”
The mutation in question, called E484K, changes the “receptor binding domain” — a key part of the spike protein that the virus uses to enter human cells. This is also an important site at which neutralising antibodies induced by infection or vaccination bind to the virus.
Read more here
Christian Shepherd in Beijing
Northern China’s Hebei on Thursday reported that 120 individuals had tested positive for coronavirus in the province, after its capital declared “wartime” measures to halt the country’s largest new outbreak in months.
Hebei, which neighbours Beijing and the port city of Tianjin, found 51 symptomatic and 69 asymptomatic cases on Wednesday, the majority of which were in the provincial capital of Shijiazhuang. The municipal government on Wednesday halted trains and buses in and out of the city, closed off housing compounds to non-residents and banned gatherings.
Health authorities have pledged to administer RNA tests for the virus to all Shijiazhuang residents. As of Wednesday evening, swab samples had been collected from 2m out of the city’s population of 10m.
Since bringing spread of the virus largely under control in March, China has adopted strict lockdowns and mass contact tracing, quarantines and testing to stem even small-scale outbreaks of Covid-19.
The last outbreak on a similar scale to that in Hebei was in October in Xinjiang, in the northwest of the country.
Officials have warned of the need for additional vigilance against relapses in the winter months leading up to the lunar new year, when hundreds of millions plan to travel across the country to visit family.
Alice Woodhouse in Hong Kong
Daniel Andrews, the premier of the Australian state of Victoria, has called for tighter rules on overseas arrivals to reduce the risk of the highly infectious UK variant taking hold in the country.
Mr Andrews pointed to highly infectious variants coming out of the UK and other parts of the world that have an R0 — the number indicating how many other people are infected on average by a coronavirus carrier — of 4.
“So many parts of the world are on fire when it comes to this virus, and now with these new strains that are much more infectious than that which we’ve been dealing with,” he said. “If that gets in here and gets away from us, there’ll be no pulling that up.”
Mr Andrews said he will put forward plans to the national cabinet to test workers at quarantine hotels housing overseas arrivals daily.
Workers at quarantine hotels in Victoria are tested daily for the virus following breaches that sparked outbreaks in the state in July.
There are 38 active cases in the state of Victoria, with no new infections reported on Thursday.
Gideon Long in Bogotá
Peru has clinched deals to buy 38m doses of coronavirus vaccine from China’s Sinopharm and 14m doses from Anglo-Swedish provider AstraZeneca, the president said on Wednesday.
In a televised speech, President Francisco Sagasti said the first 1m doses from Sinopharm would arrive this month, allowing a vaccination programme to begin. The rest would be delivered later in the year, with the AstraZeneca doses reaching the Andean nation only in September.
The Peruvian government has come in for criticism over its perceived tardiness in securing vaccine supplies. It has been talking to Pzifer about buying nearly 10m doses of its vaccine, but the talks have stalled over waivers in the contract that would ensure the US company is not held responsible for problems arising from its use.
In addition, Peru has signed a deal to buy 13.2m doses of vaccine through the Covax facility that has been set up by the World Health Organization to ensure poorer countries get access to Covid-19 vaccines.
Peru has been one of the countries worst hit by coronavirus. Its death rate — at more than one for every 1,000 citizens — is the highest anywhere in Latin America, although the pandemic has shown signs of easing in recent weeks.
Kiran Stacey in Washington
The Trump administration is urging state governors to be more flexible regarding who is allowed to receive coronavirus vaccines as doses continue to pile up in freezers across the country.
Alex Azar, the US health secretary, said on Wednesday that he wanted state leaders to allow wider access to the vaccines, amid signs that much of the country is struggling to get doses to people even after the shots have been distributed.
His comments are likely to fuel tensions between the federal government and individual states, with leaders on both sides accusing each other of bearing the blame for long delays in administering vaccinations.
Federal officials have become frustrated in recent days with what they say is the overly prescriptive way some states are interpreting national vaccination guidelines, which recommend that healthcare workers and those in care homes should receive priority.
Read more here
Peter Wells in New York
The US on Wednesday reported its second-biggest daily increases in coronavirus cases and deaths since the start of the pandemic, while hospitalisations hit a record for the fourth day running.
States reported 243,346 coronavirus cases over the past 24 hours, according to Covid Tracking Project data, an increase second only to the January 2 record of nearly 279,000.
A further 3,793 deaths were attributed to coronavirus, the biggest daily increase in fatalities since a record 3,903 on December 30.
Over the past week, the US has averaged 218,220 infections, a record rate, and 2,657 deaths a day, which is about 13 below its December 22 peak.
For the first time since November 17, 49 states had seven-day averages of new cases that were higher than a week ago, according to a Financial Times analysis of Covid Tracking Project data.
In 11 of those states — including Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, New York and Texas — average case rates were at record highs.
Similarly, for the first time since December 10 there are 41 states where death rates are higher than a week ago. Average fatality rates hit records on Wednesday in Arizona, California and West Virginia.
Hospitalisations hit a record 132,476, with 13 states — mostly in the south and west of the US — reporting their highest levels of coronavirus patients of the pandemic.
For the first time since mid-December, 29 states have hospitalisation rates that are higher than seven days ago.
*This post has been amended to reflect that hospitalisations have hit a record for four days in a row
Alice Woodhouse in Hong Kong
Asia-Pacific equities climbed on Thursday following gains on Wall Street after a Democratic party win in a key US Senate race and despite the storming of the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.
In Japan, the Topix rose 1.3 per cent, the Kospi in South Korea added 1.2 per cent and Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 rallied 1.3 per cent.
In the US on Wednesday, value and small-cap stocks rallied after the Democratic party took control of the Senate in Georgia’s run-off election. The S&P 500 added 0.6 per cent. Those gains sustained even as mobs of pro-Trump supporters stormed the Capitol during the certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s win.
S&P 500 futures were up 0.3 per cent.
Gary Jones in Hong Kong
The Chinese government should stop its campaign against individuals seeking redress for abuses linked to the Covid-19 pandemic, Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday.
“The authorities have harassed and intimidated those who have sought accountability for the government’s initial cover-up of the pandemic and for abuses stemming from lockdowns, including lack of access to medical care and other excessive restrictions,” the international campaign group said in a statement.
Activists and lawyers who have assisted those seeking redress told HRW that strengthened surveillance and the near elimination of anonymity in Chinese messaging apps such as WeChat have helped the authorities to pre-empt activism.
“The Chinese government’s narrative that it has won the Covid-19 ‘war’ is conditioned on silencing those who speak out about failings in the government’s pandemic response and abuses committed under the pretext of stopping the spread of the virus,” said HRW China researcher Yaqiu Wang. “Repressing victims of abuses and their families is a cruel addition to the harm they’ve already suffered.”
HRW highlighted the case of Zhang Hai, whose father died from Covid-19 in February after being infected at a Wuhan hospital, where he was seeking treatment for a broken leg.
“Zhang spoke publicly about his father’s death and filed a lawsuit against the Wuhan government in April, arguing that had the government not downplayed the virus his father would have avoided going to the hospital and would not have been infected,” HRW said.
“Since then, the authorities have continually harassed Zhang. Government minders followed him on the street and his social media accounts were suspended. The police warned him that he would be detained if he kept speaking out.”
Yang Zhanqing, a New York-based activist who has assisted many families seeking redress for lost loved ones, told HRW that members of his China-based family had been summoned by the police for questioning in relation to his activism.
In October, his father was fired from his logistics job at a construction site, Yang said, adding that the government told his relatives that the government considered him to be a “traitor”.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Wednesday that the city would open 12 additional vaccine hubs across the five boroughs.
“From our 24-7 mass vaccination sites to the Vaccine Command Center, we are building the infrastructure we need to vaccinate the highest number of high-risk New Yorkers,” Mr de Blasio said. ‘We’re off to a good start, but with the freedom to vaccinate more New Yorkers and the supplies to get there, we could go even further.”
The first two 24/7 mass vaccination sites will open on Sunday at Bathgate in the Bronx and Brooklyn Army Terminal.
Peter Wells in New York
Florida reported a record single-day increase in coronavirus cases on Wednesday.
Authorities revealed a further 17,783 infections, up from 15,556 on Tuesday and compared to the average over the past week of a record 14,551 cases a day.
The latest daily figure cruised past the record of 16,827 cases reported on December 31, factoring out instances when Florida’s health department has reported multiple days of data in one go following public holidays or data processing system problems.
The Sunshine State’s positivity rate for the latest batch of tests was 12.74 per cent and has remained above 10 per cent for the past six days running.
Since the start of the pandemic, Florida has confirmed 1.4m cases of coronavirus, ranking it behind California and Texas.
Florida was among states in the south and west of the US where coronavirus surged during the summer. Several of those sunbelt states are experiencing another wave at present, with California, Texas and Arizona having reported record hospitalisations and seven-day averages of infections in the past fortnight.
Of that trio, seven-day average death rates in California and Arizona have hit records in the past two weeks. Texas and Florida are at least 25 per cent below their peak fatality rates of the summer, according to a Financial Times analysis of Covid Tracking Project data. Coronavirus deaths tend to lag increases in cases and hospitalisations.
On Wednesday, Florida’s health department attributed a further 132 deaths to coronavirus, up from 100 on Tuesday and compared to the average over the past week of 113 a day.
Sarah Neville and Helen Warrell in London
Doctors and public health leaders in the UK have lambasted a lack of transparency over the timing and quantity of Covid vaccine supplies they receive, as fears grow that supply shortages will jeopardise the government’s timetable for immunising the most vulnerable Britons.
With ministers seeking to demonstrate they had the infrastructure to complete some 13m vaccinations in six weeks, the government has announced seven more large vaccination centres, including the Excel centre, which houses the London Nightingale hospital.
However, one senior health leader close to the delivery of the programme complained of a lack of communication between central government and health planners, and those in charge of implementation on the ground.
A number of GPs complained on Wednesday that they had failed to receive promised consignments of vaccine and had to cancel appointments for patients at short notice.
Read more here
Matthew Rocco
The number of Americans who have received at least the first of two doses of a coronavirus vaccine surpassed 5m on Wednesday.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 5.31m people have begun the vaccination process as of Wednesday morning. Of those, 511,635 were in long-term care facilities.
Some federal and state officials have expressed concerns about a slower than hoped process of administering doses in the first weeks of the roll-out. A total of 17.3m doses of the BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have been distributed across the country.
South Dakota, Tennessee, Iowa, Colorado, Connecticut and Montana are among the states that have been quickest to begin vaccinating residents, according to CDC data adjusted for population. Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi are the last three states to have given first doses to fewer than 1,000 people per 100,000.
California reported its second-biggest one-day increase in coronavirus deaths on Wednesday, with hospitalisations hitting another record high and fast-approaching the 23,000-mark. A further 459 deaths in the country’s most populous state were attributed to coronavirus by authorities, up from 368 on Tuesday.
A total of 29 people suffered anaphylactic reactions after receiving coronavirus vaccines in the first week and a half after approval, the US public health organisation has warned. The rate of anaphylaxis among people receiving the Moderna and BioNTech/Pfizer vaccines in the early days of distribution was 11.1 per 1m people, the CDC said — 10 times higher than that experienced after a flu shot.
Ireland has imposed new travel restrictions requiring people visiting from Britain or South Africa to present evidence of a negative Covid-19 test within 72 hours before arriving in the country. The move by Micheál Martin’s government came as it closed schools until the end of January and shut construction sites.
The pandemic hampered fourth-quarter sales of Ford’s critical F-150 truck, with 15 per cent fewer sold than the same period last year. The F-150 has been the bestselling truck in the US for decades, and the carmaker launched a new model in June.
Portugal’s president has begun self-isolating at the height of campaigning for his re-election after one of his closest aides tested positive for coronavirus. His decision came as Portugal reported its highest daily number of Covid-19 infections to date.
The head of Sweden’s civil contingencies agency has offered his resignation after a controversial Christmas trip to the Canary Islands appeared to breach his own authority’s Covid-19 advice. Sweden has been rocked in the past few weeks by a series of revelations about senior officials seeming to go against their own coronavirus recommendations.
Teacher assessments will be used to award GCSE, AS and A Level grades in England this summer, education secretary Gavin Williamson confirmed on Wednesday, saying that the department for education and exam regulator Ofqual had drawn up a “range” of contingency options.
The number of jobs in the US private sector declined for the first time since April, as parts of the country grappled with a resurgence of coronavirus and renewed curbs on businesses. Private-sector employment fell by 123,000 jobs in December, compared with a rise of 304,000 a month earlier, according to a report from payroll processor ADP.
EU regulators have approved US drugmaker Moderna’s vaccine, paving the way for its rollout. The European Medicines Agency gave the greenlight for a conditional marketing authorisation on Wednesday, leaving only the formality of sign-off by the European Commission.
A Spanish genetics laboratory has discovered the new, more highly transmissible variation of Covid-19 first detected in Britain in two patients with no known links to the UK. The Valencia region’s Fisabio Foundation discovered the new variety in samples taken from the patients about two weeks ago.
Comments
Post a Comment