Updated at 1/11/2021, 1: 13: 21 PM BST
Sara Germano in New York
The National Basketball Association said it will postpone two scheduled games amid positive coronavirus cases among teams and is also meeting today with officials from its players’ association to discuss updating health and safety regulations for the league’s nascent season.
Monday’s game between the New Orleans Pelicans and the Dallas Mavericks will be postponed, as well as Tuesday’s game between the Boston Celtics and the Chicago Bulls. Those games follow the postponement of Sunday’s game between the Celtics and the Miami Heat.
No make-up dates for such games have been announced, but the NBA has attempted to build in flexibility to its 2020-2021 season, which began in late December. Only the first half of games for the season were released, running through March, with the league anticipating it may need to make up games due to pandemic postponements.
Joshua Chaffin in New York
New York governor Andrew Cuomo pleaded for patience and also suggested the federal government was to blame as the state struggles to ramp up what has been a plodding vaccination roll-out programme.
“I understand millions of people want the vaccine today. But, we must be patient — even though it is an impatient time,” Mr Cuomo said in his annual state-of-the-state address.
Even though the state has only vaccinated a tiny fraction of the population, New York has been forced to discard unused doses because of stringent rules about who can receive them. Mr Cuomo has come under criticism for threatening fines both for hospitals that give the vaccine to people who have not been deemed eligible — as well as for those that move too slowly.
The state has begun to loosen its policies in recent days, opening eligibility for the vaccine to a wider population.
But Mr Cuomo argued in his speech on Monday that the problem was the federal government, which is sending the state 300,000 doses per week. At that rate, he said, it would take 14 weeks just to vaccinate those in the first phase, which covers healthcare workers, police, teachers and the elderly, among others.
“I believe the new federal administration will see the vaccine supply increase — and we will be ready for that increase,” he said.
In the meantime, Mr Cuomo expressed his determination to try to keep the economy open, saying: “We simply cannot stay closed until the vaccine hits critical mass. The cost is too high. We will have nothing left to reopen.”
The governor also addressed the crisis in the commercial real estate sector, with office vacancies rising sharply in New York City and rents plummeting. Mr Cuomo endorsed an idea that is increasingly under discussion by city authorities and developers to use the crisis to repurpose office buildings.
“We should convert vacant commercial space to supportive and affordable housing and we should do it now,” he said.
Jude Webber in Mexico City
Several prominent restaurant chains were opening in Mexico City on Monday in defiance of official rules restricting them to take-away services only, saying they would go under if they stayed shut much longer.
“Fisher’s – we’re open,” tweeted a fish restaurant chain, adding: “Now, more than ever, we need your support.” #WeOpenorWeDie, a hashtag created by Manolo Ablanedo, a partner in Fisher’s, was trending on the social media network.
“Our restaurant industry is a source of jobs, not of infection,” said Sonora Grill group, another restaurant chain, in a flyer posted on social media. It says opening will allow it to compete with street food stalls, which are open, but it will ensure the highest security and hygiene protocols.
“Dear guests, we cannot give up. We say to the authorities: we cannot allow ourselves to die,” Sonora Grill added.
Mexico City authorities have said they will impose unspecified sanctions on restaurants that open.
“We don’t know what the sanctions will be but more than 500 restaurants in Mexico City will be opening from today because we can’t survive any longer and the only other option to survive is to fire waiters and chefs,” Mr Ablanedo told Radio Fórmula.
Mexico City’s hospitals are almost at breaking point – 92 per cent of general hospital beds and 86 per cent of ventilator beds are full – as Latin America’s second-biggest economy battles a second surge in infections, including one confirmed case of the virulent B.1.1.7 strain. Mexico has confirmed 133,706 deaths and 1,534,039 infections to date.
Restaurant staff protesting in Mexico City
Mamta Badkar in New York
Cruise operator Carnival reported a preliminary net loss of $2.2bn for the fourth quarter on Monday, as sailings were largely suspended during the coronavirus pandemic.
The Miami-based company, which has extended a pause on US voyages until the end of March, said it ended the fiscal year with $9.5bn in cash and “have the liquidity in place to sustain ourselves throughout 2021, even in a zero-revenue environment”.
Carnival said its cumulative advance bookings for the first half of 2022 are ahead of 2019, before the pandemic began and cruises were paused, “despite minimal advertising or marketing”.
For now, the company has resumed limited operations in Italy and Germany with its Costa and Aida brands and is working towards resuming operations in Asia, Australia, the UK and US over the course of this year.
“With the aggressive actions we have taken, managing the balance sheet and reducing capacity, we are well positioned to capitalise on pent-up demand and to emerge a leaner, more efficient company, reinforcing our industry-leading position,” chief executive Arnold Donald said.
Since March, the cruise operator has raised $19bn and sped up the removal of 19 less efficient ships.
Carnival shares slid less than 1 per cent on Monday after declining 57 per cent last year.
Naomi Rovnick and Henry Sanderson
Wall Street opened lower, following a selloff in Europe, as China reported more than 100 new coronavirus cases for the first time since July and investors bet on US stimulus spending changing the outlook for inflation.
The benchmark S&P 500 fell 0.9 per cent in early dealings. The technology focused Nasdaq Composite, which hit a fresh record high last week, dropped 1.5 per cent.
In Europe, the Stoxx 600 share index fell 1.1 per cent.
The dollar, as measured against a basket of currencies, rose 0.5 per cent. US government bonds, which are sensitive to inflation expectations, continued a selloff that began last week when the Democratic Party took control of the Senate and president-elect Joe Biden vowed to spend trillions of dollars to help the US economy recover from the pandemic.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury, which moves inversely to its price, rose 0.02 percentage points to 1.13 per cent, having crossed 1 per cent last week for the first time since March.
Elsewhere in markets, copper prices fell 3 per cent to $7,879 a tonne on Monday following the news of rising Covid-19 cases in China, the world’s largest consumer of the red metal. The strong dollar also added pressure on copper, since it makes the metal more expensive to foreign consumers.
Copper touched $8,238 a tonne on Friday, its highest level since 2013 on the back of optimism about a wave of “green stimulus” in the US after the Democratic Party won control of Congress.
Anna Gross
Tens of millions of people in the UK will receive the Covid-19 vaccine by the spring and all adults will be offered it by the autumn, according to the government’s vaccination plan, announced on Monday.
The aim is to administer 2m doses of the vaccines a week by the end of January, at over 2,700 vaccine sites.
All residents and staff in more than 10,000 case homes will also be offered a vaccine by the end of the month, and every person in England will be able to receive a jab within 10 miles of their home, the government said. For a small number of very rural locations, mobile teams will be deployed to bring the vaccine to them.
The 2,700 vaccination sites will include 206 active hospital sites, 50 mass vaccination centres, at locations such as sports stadiums and conference centres, and around 1,200 local vaccination sites, including GPs and community pharmacies.
The government has enlisted a workforce of 80,000 professionals to run the campaign and a further 200,000 people have volunteered to help out.
Matt Hancock, the UK’s health and social care secretary, said: “The next few months will present a significant opportunity to turn the tide of battle against Covid – I am looking forward to watching these plans bring more reassurance and hope back to people’s lives after a difficult year.”
Two days after parts of Madrid were coated with 50-60cm of snow, roads in much of the capital remain impassable
Daniel Dombey in Madrid
Spain has called on citizens to stay at home following a record-breaking winter storm that has hit the country as the national and Madrid governments have resisted imposing a second coronavirus lockdown, despite rising infections.
The storm, dubbed Filomena, has produced Madrid’s biggest snowfall for at least 50 years, while temperatures could plummet to their lowest in the capital since the second world war. Two days after parts of Madrid were coated with 50-60cm of snow, the most since at least 1971, roads in much of the capital remain impassable.
The BioNTech-Pfizer coronavirus vaccine was being distributed “with total normality”, Spain’s interior minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said at a news conference on Monday.
A supply flight to Madrid however was diverted to the Basque city of Vitoria. About 10 “urban zones” were suffering from power cuts.
A Madrid jail has been left without water or heating, a medical workers union has complained that some of its members have been stranded at primary care clinics since Friday and personnel at Madrid hospitals have worked shifts of up to 48 hours.
Salvador Illa, health minister, has hailed a young doctor who walked 17km through the snow for his shift at Madrid’s Puerta de Hierro hospital.
The authorities said they have cleared many main highways: the storm has also badly hit regions such as Zaragoza, Aragon and Castile-La Mancha. Local and national officials expressed fears that some of the biggest tests are yet to come, with Madrid’s lowest temperatures since 1945 set to turn the snow into ice.
“This is not over,” Mr Grande-Marlaska said. “It is necessary to avoid any [non-essential] travel.”
Officials in the Madrid region, which is relatively unused to snow, warned that residential streets may not be unblocked until at least the weekend.
Mamta Badkar in New York
Video game retailer GameStop reported a drop in sales during the holiday period as store closures in response to government coronavirus-related restrictions as well as the company’s shift to ecommerce weighed down on revenues.
Net sales fell 3.1 per cent year-on-year in the nine-week period that ended on January 2 to $1.77bn. Still, same-store sales, or those in stores open at least a year, rose 4.8 per cent and ecommerce sales quadrupled.
The Texas-based company’s bricks-and-mortar-centric business model, which has been criticised by investors in recent years, has come under pressure during the pandemic as local governments ordered stores to close in areas with a resurgence in infections and as it experienced “lower store traffic, particularly later in December, due to the significant impacts of Covid-19”.
Moreover, an 11 per cent decrease in the company’s store base because of its planned reduction of physical stores alongside limited supply of new XBox and Playstation gaming consoles weighed down on sales.
Shares in GameStop climbed 13 per cent on Monday after the video game retailer agreed with investor Ryan Cohen’s RC Ventures to appoint three new board members with ecommerce experience, including Mr Cohen.
Demand for video games has surged as people spend more time at home during the pandemic. GameStop, which experienced “unprecedented demand for recently launched gaming consoles”, expects these products will drive sales this year as “console availability from our suppliers improves later in the year”.
Jasmine Cameron-Chileshe
About 2.4m coronavirus jabs have been administered to 2m people across the UK, Boris Johnson confirmed on Monday.
Speaking during a visit to the Ashton Gate stadium in Bristol, Mr Johnson praised the work of the NHS but urged against complacency, adding: “The worst thing now would be for us to allow success in rolling out the vaccine programme to breed any kind of complacency about the state of the pandemic.”
His comments follow warnings from England’s chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, that the UK was experiencing the “worst point of the epidemic in the UK”, with about one in 50 people suffering from the virus.
“What we are doing here in Bristol today is launching the first of the mass vaccination centres,” Mr Johnson said. “We will have 50 of these by the end of the month. That’s in addition to the 233 hospital sites, the 1,000-plus GP sites and around 200 community pharmacies and we will be ramping them all up.”
When asked whether the government would be able to vaccinate all four priority groups by the middle of February, Mr Johnson said that while it was a “massively stretching target”, he believed that it was “achievable”. He also said that about 40 per cent of the over 80-year-olds in the UK have now been vaccinated.
UK prime minister Boris Johnson watches vaccinations being administered at Ashton Gate stadium in Bristol, England
Hannah Kuchler
Regeneron has called for urgent action to figure out more effective ways to get its antibody treatment, which received US emergency approval in November, to more Covid-19 patients.
George Yancopoulos, chief scientific officer of Regeneron, said it needs to work much more closely with the government to solve the “problem”.
“We know every day there are hundreds of thousands of people getting infected,” who could benefit from antibody therapies, Mr Yancopoulos said.
“It could slow down the very significant progression of these people into hospitals,” he told a JPMorgan healthcare conference.
He added that it was “very important” now as these people are not being helped by vaccination and said it would help relieve pressure on the healthcare system.
The antibody cocktail, taken by US president Donald Trump when he had coronavirus, should work against the new variants from the UK, South Africa and Canada, he said.
The company is working on additional treatments in case the virus mutates further.
The US Food and Drug Administration issued an emergency use authorisation for the antibody cocktail for the treatment of mild-to-moderate Covid-19 patients at high risk of developing severe symptoms, such as people older than 65 and those suffering from chronic conditions.
Leila Abboud
French drugmaker Sanofi is studying the possibility of helping manufacture rival Covid-19 vaccines after delays in developing its own jab.
The company confirmed on Monday that it was studying the “technical feasibility” of using its manufacturing capacity to help make Covid-19 vaccines for other pharmaceutical companies whose jabs are further along in development.
French industry minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher told Europe 1 radio on Friday that the government had asked Sanofi to examine whether a “technology transfer” via some sort of contract manufacturing agreement was possible.
Such a move could help boost production of much-needed inoculations as the pandemic continues to rage in Europe. As vaccination campaigns get under way, concerns have emerged about how to secure enough doses for everyone who needs them.
Three other French contract manufacturers had already been enlisted to help make Covid-19 jabs, the minister added: Recipharm for Moderna, Delpharm for BioNTech/Pfizer and Fareva for CureVac. “We are working on it,” she said of enlisting Sanofi to help.
Separately, Sanofi announced a deal of up to $1.45bn to buy UK biotech Kymab. The acquisition is the fourth since Paul Hudson took over as chief executive at the French pharmaceutical group in September 2019, and advances his strategy of pushing Sanofi further into the fast-growing market for treatments for immune disorders.
Cambridge-based Kymab is studying the use of a new monoclonal antibody drug known as KY1005 for the treatment of eczema, a skin condition.
Read more here.
Najmeh Bozorgmehr in Tehran
Iran expects to import the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab through third countries while steering away from US vaccines as they are too costly and difficult to store, a senior health official said.
The head of the council that certifies Iranian doctors and is responsible for healthcare said importing the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccines “was never on our agenda because they are expensive and need a cold chain” for storing and transportation that Iran does not have. US biotech group Moderna also has a vaccine.
The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine however is affordable and produced in other countries rather than only in the UK, Iran Medical Council boss Mohammadreza Zafarghandi told reporters in Tehran.
Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Friday banned the imports of US and UK vaccines.
“We can buy [the same] vaccine from Russia and India where it is also produced,” he said, in what could be the Iranian health sector’s way of skipping the ban.
Dr Zafarghandi teamed up with three other senior doctors to send an open letter to President Hassan Rouhani on Sunday and called for the vaccination to be kept away from politics.
Iran has recorded 56,262 deaths, the highest toll in the Middle East. It plans to procure vaccines from the World Health Organization’s Covax programme, which will mean buying from other countries and producing domestically.
“Vaccination is a scientific-health issue with no place for political discussions,” Dr Zafarghandi said. “Our people like other people in this region deserve to have access to vaccines otherwise we will lag behind regional countries.”
Henry Foy in Moscow
Russia has begun trials of a one-shot coronavirus vaccine that its developers believe could be used to meet export demand.
State-run Gamaleya Institute, which developed the country’s flagship two-dose Sputnik V vaccine, has begun trials on 150 people to test the efficacy of administering just one shot, dubbed “Sputnik Lite”.
The single jab would be marketed for export, the head of the country’s sovereign wealth fund, which has financed Sputnik V’s development, said on Monday.
Kirill Dmitriev, head of the fund, said its efficacy could be as high as 85 per cent.
“Sputnik Lite could be an effective temporary solution for many countries passing the peak of novel coronavirus infections and trying to save as many of the lives of their citizens as possible,” said Mr Dmitriev in a statement.
Gamaleya Institute has begun trials on 150 people to test the efficacy of administering just one shot
Sarah Provan
Gilead Sciences, the California-based biotech group that produces remdesivir, has upgraded its full-year profit and sales guidance, reflecting demand for the drug that was administered as part of President Donald Trump’s coronavirus treatment.
The company’s latest forecast for its sales is between $24.3bn and $24.35bn, up from guidance given in October of a $23bn-$23.5bn range, based on preliminary fourth-quarter earnings.
Gilead might also post a profit for the year. It has increased its earnings per share guidance to a range of -8c to 2c. Previously it had guided investors to expect a loss of up to 25c.
The improved outlook came on the back of a surge in Covid-19 cases, prompting hospitalisation and treatment rates to be higher than expected.
Higher research and development costs for 2020 reflect clinical trial and manufacturing expenses due to the use of remdesivir as a Covid-19 treatment. Initially claimed as a Covid-19 “wonder drug”, experts are now divided on whether remdesivir has a role at all in the treatment of coronavirus.
The share price rose 0.8 per cent in pre-market trading.
Athenians flocked to beaches around the city over the weekend
Kerin Hope in Athens
Greece’s kindergartens and primary schools re-opened on Monday while shops, restaurants and bars remained closed after the government decided to extend the coronavirus-related lockdown for one more week.
Education ministry officials played down the risk of virus transmission by younger pupils. Secondary schools will stay closed at least until January 18, with classes continuing to be held remotely, they said.
Several members of the government’s pandemic advisory committee warned last week against re-opening schools, citing worries of a fresh spike in coronavirus infections after the New Year holiday.
The rolling daily average of Covid-19 infections and the number of fatalities have declined by around two-thirds during the 10-week lockdown.
But cases in Athens and the surrounding Attica region have increased because strict rules intended to curb the spread of the virus are not being followed, according to public health officials.
“During the first lockdown [in March] the measures were properly observed. This time people’s attitude is more relaxed than it should be,” said a health ministry official.
Athenians flocked to beaches around the city over the weekend amid springlike weather with temperatures above 20C. Some went swimming or fishing in defiance of lockdown rules.
People arriving at Athens airport this week are being tested for Covid-19 on arrival and required to self-isolate for seven days. Another negative test will be needed before they will be allowed to move around the city, health authorities said.
Greece reported 445 new cases and 36 deaths from Covid-19 on Sunday, bringing the overall number of cases to 144,738. The death toll hit 5,263.
Naomi Rovnick
European equities will recover to pre-pandemic levels by the end of next year, Goldman Sachs has forecast.
In a research note, Goldman strategists led by Sharon Bell predicted companies on the Stoxx 600 index of leading European shares would achieve 40 per cent earnings growth, on average, this year.
The Stoxx, the Goldman team said, would then trade at around 430 points by the end of this year, up from a current level of 410 points and taking the index almost back to its February 2020 peak.
The index remained highly valued, having risen around 20 per cent to a forward price-to-earnings ratio of about 17.9 times, the Goldman team noted.
Backing up their call, however, the Goldman team wrote:
We expect earnings growth to take over as the main driver of returns as we transition from the hope to the growth-driven phase of the cycle. We forecast 40 per cent EPS growth in 2021 and 12 per cent in 2022.
A rotation by fund managers into so-called value stocks – shares in economically sensitive businesses such as banks, oil and basic resources – should also increase investment in European equities, the Goldman team said.
They added that the UK’s FTSE 100 index “looks attractive with a dividend yield above most other developed markets”, and a high concentration of shares in commodities companies, which would benefit from a global economic rebound.
Camilla Hodgson
The US dollar continued to regain lost ground on Monday, while European stock markets were soft after their best week since November.
The dollar, as measured against a basket of peers, gained 0.3 per cent in morning dealings in London, putting it 0.4 per cent higher for the year. The currency has been lifted since US Treasury yields rose last week, on bets that Democratic control of Congress would mean more stimulus for the US economy, feeding inflation.
The dollar lost about 7 per cent last year after interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve reduced the appeal of dollar assets and encouraged investors into riskier bets, such as the euro and China’s renminbi.
Analysts said they expected the dollar rally to be short lived, with rates set to remain low for the foreseeable future, and a further fiscal boost pledged by president-elect Joe Biden.
Lee Hardman, a currency analyst at MUFG, said rising US yields were “triggering a temporary shake out of elevated short US dollar positions”, which had increased significantly over the past month.
The euro, which has rallied strongly in recent months, slipped 0.25 per cent against the dollar on Monday to $1.2187, while Britain’s pound lost 0.4 per cent against the currency to $1.3508.
European equities snapped last week’s winning streak to post losses across the board as the worsening pandemic drew investors’ attention. The region’s benchmark Stoxx 600 index fell 0.4 per cent in early trading, as did London’s FTSE 100, while Germany’s Dax lost 0.7 per cent.
Read more here.
Naomi Rovnick
European airline shares underperformed on Monday as analysts warned that a global travel recovery would be far from smooth, with aviation bosses struggling to work out how much capacity to add in the crucial summer holiday season.
German airline and package holiday group Tui was the worst performer on the European Stoxx 600 share index, falling more than 7 per cent, while British Airways and Iberia owner IAG dropped more than 2 per cent. The Stoxx was down 0.4 per cent.
“The winter trading environment is still very tough and cash preservation remains key,” analysts at Barclays warned in a research note, “but airlines will not wish to be underprepared for the return of demand if vaccine deployment is successful.”
They added: “The ramp-up of operations may be just as complex as the wind-down was.”
Global flights were 45 per cent lower in December compared with the same month in 2019, analysts at Citi said, citing proprietary tracking data.
Europe was the worst affected region, with flights 62 per cent lower, while early indications signalled the slowdown had intensified in January, Citi said.
British budget carrier easyJet said on Monday it had secured a £1.4bn state-backed bailout to bolster its finances during the pandemic.
“Investors tend to fight shy of industries where government cash is involved, or available in size if required, as it can mean money is allocated in ways that do not necessarily generate good returns on investment,” said Russ Mould of wealth manager AJ Bell. “Issues such as sovereignty or employment take precedence.”
Last week, Tui launched a rights issue to raise almost €545m to reduce its debt and fund its operations during Europe’s coronavirus lockdowns.
Travel by Chinese citizens during the upcoming lunar new year holiday was likely to be curtailed by a spike in coronavirus cases in the country, Ernan Cui of research house Gavekal said.
“With all levels of the government now on higher alert, travel and leisure activities in the forthcoming holiday period are unlikely to fully rebound to pre-Covid levels,” Ms Cui said.
In December, 1.1m went through Heathrow airport, down 82.9 per cent compared with the same time a year ago
Sarah Provan
London Heathrow, which last year was overtaken by Charles de Gaulle in Paris as Europe’s busiest airport, suffered a 73 per cent fall in passengers over 2020 while cargo took a 28 per cent hit as coronavirus lockdowns and border closures hit the airport.
Loss-making Heathrow is campaigning for the business rates relief that many other industries have benefited from to help it recover from the pandemic.
During 2020, a loss of 58.8m passengers led to 22.1m people travelling through Heathrow. In December, 1.1m went through the airport, down 82.9 per cent compared with the same time a year ago, as a new strain of Covid-19 took its toll on air travel.
Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, which has four runways against Heathrow’s two, had been growing faster than the London hub before the pandemic. It took the top slot in October, about 18 months earlier than expected. Frankfurt and Amsterdam airports are also gaining ground on the London hub.
“The past year has been incredibly challenging for aviation,” chief executive John Holland-Kaye said. “While we support tightening border controls temporarily by introducing pre-departure testing for international arrivals, as well as quarantine, this is not sustainable. The aviation industry is the cornerstone of the UK economy but is fighting for survival.”
He added: “We need a road map out of this lockdown, and a full waiver of business rates.”
Brexit has exacerbated Heathrow’s problems, as December was the last month of tax-free shopping in Britain. The UK has become the only country in Europe not to offer duty-free goods to international visitors, which “threatens to hinder economic recovery and cost livelihoods”, the airport said on Monday.
Chris Whitty, chief medical officer, said: ‘We are at the worst point of the epidemic in the UK’
George Parker and Jim Pickard
Chris Whitty, chief medical officer, has warned that England is facing a health emergency unless people obey the new lockdown, as seven mass vaccination centres prepared to open this week to tackle Covid-19.
Prof Whitty said that the NHS risked being overwhelmed unless rules were strictly observed, as Boris Johnson weighed ways of toughening enforcement of the third national lockdown.
“We are at the worst point of the epidemic in the UK,” he said, adding that there were now 30,000 people with Covid-19 in the NHS system and that number was still rising.
“There’s a very high chance if you meet someone unnecessarily they will have Covid,” he said, in a rare tour of media studios. Ministers hope that Prof Whitty’s appearance will help to persuade people to stay at home.
“We think it remains the case it’s much lower transmission outdoors,” he said, but added but that longer exposure to people – for example at market stalls – remained a risk. One in 50 people in the UK have the virus.
“This is a serious problem and it is rising in every part of England,” he told BBC Breakfast. “The next few weeks are going to be the worst weeks of this pandemic in terms of numbers into the NHS.”
Sarah Provan
UK retailer JD Sports has upgraded its full-year profit expectations after “robust” demand during its second half, which includes the crucial pre-Christmas months November and December, even as a number of its stores were closed due to the coronavirus lockdown.
Same-store sales in the 22-week period to January 2 rose 5 per cent from the same period a year earlier as shoppers switched online with ease.
The FTSE 100 group forecasts full-year pretax profit to January 30 to be “at least” £400m, which will be “significantly ahead of market expectations”. The average consensus, the group said, is about £295m.
“It is clear that operational restrictions from the Covid-19 pandemic will also be a material factor through at least the first quarter of the year to January 29 2022,” it said in a statement on Monday.
“The process to scale down activity in stores and scale up the digital channels, often at extremely short notice, presents significant challenges,” it added.
The uncertain outlook in the UK, however, with stores likely to be closed until at least Easter means that the group’s “best estimate” for its full-year pre-tax profit to January 29 2022 will be 5 per cent to 10 per cent ahead of the current year.
The group has sought to bolster its position in the US market, acquiring last month the privately owned Shoe Palace for $681m.
George Hammond
British Land, one of the UK’s largest commercial landlords, has collected less than half the rent due from retailers on its estate, as tightened coronavirus restrictions force many businesses to close.
The company, which owns the Broadgate estate and a section of Paddington in London, said on Monday that it had received just 46 per cent of the rent owed by retailers for the three month period from December 25.
Almost three quarters of British Land’s retail tenants were open in the four weeks leading up to Christmas, but restrictions brought in to limit the spread of coronavirus since then have forced the majority to close.
Rent from previous quarters has continued to trickle in throughout the year, and the landlord has now received close to three quarters of what it was owed for the three month periods from June and September.
British Land’s office tenants have fared better through the pandemic, paying 95 per cent of the total rent owed for the December quarter.
Christian Shepherd and Yuan Yang in Beijing
China has reversed a decision to bar the entry of a 10-member World Health Organization team investigating the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.
The National Health Commission said the team would arrive in China on January 14 and cooperate with Chinese experts, state media reported on Monday.
Last week, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, said he was “very disappointed” after China earlier blocked the arrival of the virologists.
“Two members [of the team] had already begun their journeys and others were not able to travel at the last minute,” Dr Tedros said.
He added that the WHO had been in contact with Chinese officials who said they would expedite the visa approval procedure.
Stephanie Findlay in New Delhi
India’s coronavirus inoculation drive will start on Saturday, government officials said over the weekend, with prime minister Narendra Modi describing it as a “landmark step forward in fighting Covid 19”.
Mr Modi said on Twitter that “brave doctors” and other frontline health workers will be prioritised.
An estimated 30m people will be inoculated in the first phase followed by 27m people 50 or older, and those under 50 with comorbidities, said officials.
India has the world’s second-highest number of coronavirus infections, though its active caseload has fallen in recent weeks.
The country has recorded more than 10.4m infections and 151,000 deaths, a toll lower than that of the US or Brazil.
A volunteer sprays hand sanitiser on pilgrims on their way to an annual Hindu festival at the confluence of the river Ganges and the Bay of Bengal
New Delhi has approved two vaccines for emergency use. One by Serum Institute, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, which is locally producing AstraZeneca’s vaccine, called Covishield. The other is made by Bharat Biotech, which has developed its own vaccine called Covaxin.
Bharat Biotech’s approval has been met with criticism by experts who say that the company and government has not released enough data on its trials.
Its trials in Bhopal, the capital city of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, have also come under scrutiny after a participant died in December.
“The volunteer passed away nine days after the dosing and preliminary reviews by the site indicate that the death is unrelated to the dosing,” said Bharat Biotech in a statement on Saturday.
“We would like to reiterate that we conduct our clinical trials in compliance with the study protocol … as well as with all applicable statutory provisions and the focus at all times is on patient safety.”
George Russell in Hong Kong
The Seychelles launched its Covid-19 vaccination programme on Sunday, using Chinese-made vaccines donated by the United Arab Emirates.
The country’s president, Wavel Ramkalawan, was the first to be inoculated.
He said the UAE had agreed to donate 50,000 doses of the Sinopharm vaccine when he visited Abu Dhabi in December 2020.
“This is testimony of the excellent friendly ties that exist between the two nations,” the president said in a statement.
The Seychelles is an archipelago of more than 100 islands in the Indian Ocean, with a total population of about 100,000.
Jamie Smyth in Sydney
Royal Dutch Shell has resumed shipping gas cargoes from the largest floating structure ever built following a year-long technical disruption that has damped industry appetite for floating liquefied natural gas technology.
The restart of the 488-metre-long Prelude facility is a welcome boost for Shell as it coincides with a record surge in LNG prices fuelled by a cold snap in Asia.
The remote location of the facility — 475km off Australia’s west coast — and its technical complexity, compounded by Covid-19 restrictions, have added to Shell’s challenges in restarting operations, said analysts.
Read more here
Edward White and Kang Buseong in Seoul
South Korea’s daily rate of new coronavirus cases fell to a one-month low, spurring hopes the country’s toughest social distancing measures since the pandemic’s outset will soon be eased.
Health officials in Seoul reported 451 cases on Monday, marking a decline from a daily transmission rate above 1,200 around Christmas.
While Monday’s result also reflects fewer tests carried out over the weekend, the country’s daily number of new cases has stabilised throughout January.
The current distancing rules, which include restricting gatherings to no more than four people and have dented the economic recovery in Asia’s fourth-biggest economy, are due to remain in place until January 17.
Further tougher measures, which have forced the closure of many restaurants and bars and public spaces in the greater Seoul area, will also be reviewed this week.
Moon Jae-in, South Korea’s president who has been under pressure over the latest virus resurgence, on Monday pledged that coronavirus vaccines will be free for the country’s 52m people.
George Russell in Hong Kong
Indonesia will kick off its national vaccination campaign on Wednesday, a senior minister told state-owned media on Monday.
Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, coordinating minister for maritime affairs and investment, told the Antara news agency that the effects of the inoculation programme would be visible within three months.
“While we start on Wednesday national vaccination and I think that after three months there will be quite a good impact,” he was quoted as saying.
Mr Luhut, speaking at an event in Bali, rebuked local authorities over low levels of testing. “I hope Bali will recover soon,” he said.
“Please tighten the supervision of the implementation of swab and rapid antigen tests,” he told deputy governor Tjokorda Oka Artha Ardhana Sukawati.
Indonesia plans to vaccinate 1.3m health workers first then move on to those in the working-age population.
Jakarta is hoping that vaccinating 181m people, or two-thirds of its population, will be enough to promote herd immunity.
The south-east Asian archipelago will first roll out the Chinese-made vaccine produced by Sinovac.
Alice Woodhouse in Hong Kong
Singapore Airlines Group struck an optimistic note as it reported passenger and cargo figures for December as demand “continued to gradually return” following the hit to air travel from the pandemic.
Strict border controls and quarantine requirements as well as a resurgence of the virus in the northern hemisphere limited the demand, the airline said.
The group carried 85,200 passengers across Singapore Airlines, Silkair and its low cost carrier Scoot, in December, down 97.6 per cent compared with the same period in 2019. That was an improvement from the 61,400 passengers carried in November.
Passenger numbers for Singapore Airlines fell 96.5 per cent year on year. The airline was running at 78 per cent lower capacity than a year ago, despite increasing the number of routes flown to 39 cities from 36 a month earlier.
SIA forecasts passenger capacity of 25 per cent of pre-pandemic levels by March 31
The group added 46 per cent more capacity in December compared with November, it said.
“In line with Singapore’s progressive re-opening, as well as the gradual vaccination of the population across the world, we expect to see a measured expansion of the passenger network,” it said.
The group forecasts passenger capacity is expected to reach about 25 per cent of pre-pandemic levels by the end of March, serving 45 per cent of its pre-crisis destinations. This in turn will help the group meet strong demand for cargo, it said.
Cargo traffic fell 25.5 per cent as capacity dropped by more than 50 per cent.
The group said it has been preparing to distribute vaccines in 2021, calling this the “one of the biggest and most complex public-private logistical tasks in recent history”.
Jude Webber in Mexico City
Mexican restaurant owners, crippled by weeks of closures due to the coronavirus pandemic, staged a noisy protest in the capital on Monday.
Demonstrators were invited to bang pots and pans at 10am near the National Palace, where President Andrés Manuel López Obrador holds a daily morning news conference.
Bashing pots – known as a cacerolazo – is a traditional form of Latin American protest.
Waiter Luís Ángel García González delivers a takeout order to a customer at the Condesa branch of La Casa de la Yeya in Mexico City
Restaurant owners have complained that Mexico City’s return to lockdown just before Christmas, in which they can only provide take-away food, is killing their livelihood.
Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum has said restrictions in the capital, where hospital occupancy is 92 per cent and beds with ventilators are 86 per cent occupied, will continue for now.
On Sunday, officials confirmed a 56-year-old British man, who flew to Mexico City from Amsterdam and then to the northern state of Tamaulipas just after Christmas, was the first known case of the highly contagious B.1.1.7 variant of Covid-19.
The man has been put on a ventilator in a hospital.
Alice Woodhouse in Hong Kong
Authorities in Beijing have tightened restrictions on ride-hailing and taxis in the city’s Shunyi district after a driver tested positive for the virus.
The driver for an unnamed ride-hailing platform had been in contact with 144 passengers, according to a report by state news agency, Xinhua.
Taxi and ride-hailing drivers who live in Shunyi, a district of nearly 1m people in the city’s north-east, will not be permitted to operate and platforms must avoid providing rides to and from the district.
An outbreak in Hebei, the province south of Beijing, has alarmed authorities, prompting restrictions on travel to and from the capital.
Beijing reported one locally transmitted coronavirus case on Monday.
Jim Pickard, Sebastian Payne and Anna Gross in London
The number of UK vaccination “mega-centres” at locations such as sports stadiums and conference halls will be increased sevenfold in the coming weeks under plans being drawn up by the government.
Boris Johnson has so far announced seven such supercentres at sites including the Excel Centre in London, Millennium Point in Birmingham and Ashton Gate stadium in Bristol.
But the prime minister intends to set up 50 centres as soon as possible, according to Whitehall figures.
Read more here
Passengers queue for buses at the Paranaque terminal in Manila
John Reed in Bangkok
Manila’s city government has closed a deal to buy 800,000 units of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine under a deal with the British drugmaker, as authorities scramble to make up for lost time in securing Covid-19 jabs.
Mayor Francisco “Isko Moreno” Domagoso’s office announced the deal on Monday, saying it was a tripartite agreement with AstraZeneca, the Philippines’ National Task Force against Covid-19, and the country’s health department.
The news comes amid growing criticism of president Rodrigo Duterte’s administration for its delays in securing vaccines, and a day after the Philippines announced it had secured 30m doses of the vaccine developed by US drugmaker Novavax, its biggest such deal to date.
The Philippine populist leader was embarrassed last month by news that members of his security group were vaccinated against Covid-19 using smuggled vaccines, which government officials justified as necessary to protect the 75-year-old leader’s health.
The Philippines has been south-east Asia’s second hardest-hit country by the pandemic after Indonesia, reporting more than 486,000 cases to date and 9,398 deaths from the disease.
Manila sits at the heart of the country’s largest urban centre, which has been under varying degrees of lockdown since March 2020.
Yuan Yang in Beijing
China’s coronavirus cases have surpassed 100 for the first time since last July, as the outbreak in northern Hebei province continues to grow.
On Monday, China’s National Health Commission reported 103 new symptomatic cases the previous day, of which 18 were from people entering the country.
In addition, the country identified 76 asymptomatic cases.
Nearly all of the 85 new domestic symptomatic cases were in Hebei province, which borders Beijing.
Local governments around the country have started implementing epidemic controls aimed at travellers from China’s north, such as quarantine and testing.
Last week, Beijing’s municipal government told residents not to travel unnecessarily for the forthcoming lunar new year holidays, fearing further spread.
Laura Noonan and Robert Armstrong in New York
A strong end to 2020 has paved the way for America’s top banks to buy back more than $10bn of their shares in the first quarter, as the loan losses of the pandemic year recede and capital markets fire on all cylinders.
JPMorgan Chase is expected to lead the way with buybacks, spending about $3.2bn on its own shares by the end of March, based on analysts’ forecasts compiled by the FT. The remaining $7.4bn or so is spread across Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo.
The banks voluntarily halted share repurchases last March, as the pandemic threatened a steep recession and catastrophic loan losses. The Fed’s June stress tests banned buybacks until the end of 2020 and capped dividends at a level linked to recent profits and payouts.
Read more here
Food prices steadied from the November drop caused by the falling cost of pork
Alice Woodhouse in Hong Kong
Chinese consumer prices rebounded in December while factory gate prices fell at their slowest rate since the coronavirus outbreak took hold in the country.
Consumer prices rose 0.2 per cent year on year last month, bouncing back from the first drop in more than a decade in November, according to official figures.
Economists polled by Reuters had forecast prices would rise 0.1 per cent, from a 0.5 per cent fall in November.
Food prices steadied from the drop seen in the preceding month thanks to falling pork prices, rising 1.2 per cent.
“Consumer prices may slip back into deflation over the next couple of months due to a jump in pork prices a year ago but this should prove temporary,” said Julian Evans-Pritchard, senior China economist at Capital Economics.
“With economic activity set to remain strong and underlying inflation likely to continue rising, we think the [central bank] will tighten policy this year,” he added.
Factory gate prices fell at a slower pace. Producer prices dipped 0.4 per compared with a year earlier, the smallest drop since the combined January-February reading in 2020.
A Reuters poll had predicted a 0.8 per cent drop.
George Russell in Hong Kong
US states on Sunday reported record-breaking seven-day averages of new coronavirus infections and Covid-19-related fatalities, according to new data.
More than 223,000 new cases were detected in the 45 states reporting figures on Sunday, the Covid Tracking Project announced.
“Even without reports from five states today, the seven-day averages for new cases and deaths are higher today than at any other point in the pandemic,” CTP said in its initial analysis.
There were at least 129,229 hospitalisations across the country.
More than 22m positive cases have been identified in the US since the pandemic began. The death toll rose by at least 1,999 to 365,597.
The true number of new infections is probably much higher because reported caseloads tend to be lower on the weekends due to delays gathering data.
Among the most affected states, New York recorded 151 deaths.
Governor Andrew Cuomo also noted that the health department detected three new cases of the UK B.1.1.7 variant.
Two cases were reported in rural Saratoga County, with an additional case in Nassau County, part of the New York City metropolitan area.
Sebastian Payne in London
The UK government is fearful that the latest lockdown in England is not being strictly observed and may have to be tightened to thwart the rapid spread of a new variant of Covid-19 and avoid the NHS becoming overwhelmed.
But government insiders insisted on Sunday that the immediate priority was to enforce existing measures instead of introducing further restrictions, which would anger Conservative MPs and some ministers.
Boris Johnson, the UK prime minister, announced a third lockdown for England last Monday, which includes a legal stay-at-home order and the closure of schools and universities, all non-essential shops, and pubs and restaurants.
Read more here
The Hong Kong & Kowloon Ferry Company vessel Sea Speed berths at Lamma
George Russell in Hong Kong
A Hong Kong ferry company said it would test all its staff from Monday after a coxswain was found to be positive for coronavirus at the weekend.
Two engineers and a seaman also tested positive.
The Hong Kong & Kowloon Ferry Company said the coxswain regularly worked on routes to Lamma and Peng Chau, two outlying islands.
The islands have a combined population of about 15,000 people and have largely avoided infections since the pandemic began.
However, both islands are popular destinations at weekends, with crowded ferries bringing visitors from elsewhere in Hong Kong to their nature trails and restaurants.
The coxswain also operated routes to Hei Ling Chau, a restricted detention and drug rehabilitation centre, and an employee-only service to a construction site.
HKKF said in a statement that it “immediately cleaned and sterilised all vessels, piers, public areas and facilities”.
Alice Woodhouse in Hong Kong
A three-day lockdown imposed on the Australian city of Brisbane to forestall the spread of the UK strain of coronavirus will be lifted as planned after no new cases were reported.
The strict measures were introduced in greater Brisbane on Friday after a woman who worked in a quarantine hotel tested positive for the highly contagious UK strain.
“This is the best news we could have hoped for,” Annastacia Palaszczuk, Queensland premier, said in a tweet. “Thanks for stepping up and looking after each other, Queensland.”
Measures such as mask wearing in public places will continue after lockdown restrictions are eased on Monday evening.
Australia, which reports daily cases in the single digits, is anxious to prevent fast-spreading variants from overseas from taking hold on its shores.
On Friday, it announced plans to further limit arrivals to the country and accelerated its planned vaccine rollout.
Alice Woodhouse in Hong Kong
Asia-Pacific equities diverged at the start of a new week after US stocks shrugged off job losses and violence in Washington to record their biggest weekly gain since November.
The Kospi in South Korea climbed 2 per cent while the S&P/ASX 200 in Australia dipped 0.3 per cent. Japanese markets are shut for a holiday.
Figures released later in the morning on Chinese consumer and producer prices will give pointers on the state of the world’s second-largest economy.
The S&P 500 added 0.5 per cent on Friday, notching its best week since November. That was despite the country losing 140,000 jobs as non-farm payrolls missed expectations for 71,000 new jobs.
S&P 500 futures fell 0.2 per cent.
George Russell in Hong Kong
The World Health Organisation and Russia will hold talks in late January over using the Sputnik V vaccine in emergencies, Russian state media reported on Monday.
Sergei Glagolev, a government adviser, told the Rossiya-1 television channel that “expert consultations” between WHO and Russian health officials would be held online “after January 20”, according to the Tass news agency.
More than 1.5m people have already been inoculated with the Sputnik V vaccine, the Russian Direct Investment Fund said on Sunday, adding: “The vaccine causes no severe allergy.”
Sputnik V has been supplied to or ordered by Kazakhstan, Serbia, Belarus, Argentina and Bolivia, RDIF said.
Jude Webber in Mexico City
The official spokesman for Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who attends the president’s daily news conferences, has tested positive for Covid-19.
Jesús Ramírez Cuevas wrote on Twitter that he felt well and was working from home, and was following health protocols.
Mr López Obrador has in the past brushed aside fears that he could become infected himself, despite touring the country whenever possible, including this weekend, and not wearing a face mask.
Mexico has recorded four consecutive days of record infections.
The country has reported a total of 1,524,036 infections and 133,204 deaths since the start of the pandemic.
However, low testing and high excess mortality data suggest the official figures are large underestimations.
Mexico City’s hospitals are currently 90 per cent full.
Separately, the northern state of Tamaulipas confirmed a case of the new B.1.1.7 variant in a 56-year-old man who had arrived from out of the country via Mexico City on December 29.
Conor Hyde, chief executive of Hyde Irish Whiskey, looks to grow sales in Japan
Nana Shibata in Tokyo and C K Tan in Shanghai
Irish whiskey distillers, reliant until now on coronavirus-hit Europe and the US, have sniffed opportunity in Asia, according to Nikkei Asia.
Walsh Whiskey entered the Asian market early 2020 to expand its core brands, Writers’ Tears and The Irishman.
“Asia does appear to have better control of Covid-19 than other regions globally,” said Bernard Walsh, managing director. “That relative stability helps new products like ours.”
Walsh joins other Irish whiskey producers vying for the lucrative Asian market, such as Hyde Irish Whiskey. “Japan represents an exceptionally large whiskey market,” said Conor Hyde, chief executive.
Read more here
George Russell in Hong Kong
Pope Francis’s personal doctor has died from complications due to Covid-19, the Vatican announced at the weekend.
Fabrizio Soccorsi, 78, was undergoing cancer treatment at the Gemelli University Hospital in Rome.
He had been the Roman Catholic leader’s physician since 2015.
Soccorsi graduated from Sapienza University of Rome in 1968.
He was previously head of internal and specialist medicine at San Camillo Forlanini hospital in Rome.
A Brewdog pub in Newcastle is locked shut
George Russell in Hong Kong
Pubs in England and Wales closed down in 2020 at a slower rate than in the previous year, despite the effects of lockdowns and trading restrictions imposed by the coronavirus pandemic.
Altus Group, a property consultancy, said a net 443 pubs shut in 2020, compared with 473 in 2019. In 2018, 914 public houses closed down.
“Pubs and restaurants bore the brunt of coronavirus restrictions in 2020 but proved remarkably resilient,” said Robert Hayton, head of property tax at Altus.
He attributed the slower rate of closings to “government interventions such as furlough, grants, rates relief and liquidity in the form of cheap loans”.
Pubs in England and Wales are receiving a one-year business rates holiday worth £768.12m and were eligible for £557.94m in grant funding.
Last week the Treasury said that one-off top up grants again linked to business rates would be provided to help closed retail, leisure and hospitality businesses negate the economic impact of the third national lockdown.
George Russell in Hong Kong
Jim Bob Moffett, the billionaire oilman who created mining giant Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold, has died from complications of Covid-19, the University of Texas said over the weekend.
The Louisiana-born geologist turned businessman attended the university on a football scholarship and later became a major donor.
In 1981, Moffett put together one of the then largest US corporate mergers, combining McMoRan Oil & Gas and Freeport Minerals.
Hannah Kuchler in New York
Vaccine makers and medicine regulators are sketching out plans in case the mutating coronavirus turns vaccine development into a game of cat and mouse.
Just weeks after leading manufacturers secured the first regulatory approvals, mutations in the virus have forced scientists to re-test their Covid-19 vaccines and prepare to tweak their formula should the shots prove less effective.
At the same time, regulators are considering how they could fast-track new approvals and whether they could use the seasonal flu jab as a model to authorise revised versions without requiring long trials.
Read more here
George Russell in Hong Kong
A poll has found that 72 per cent of the UK public think the government has not acted fast enough to control the coronavirus.
The public appear to prefer harsher official reactions, with 64 per cent saying they wanted a government that “quickly puts lockdown measures in place, even if that means that sometimes measures are put in place that didn’t need to be”.
Just 25 per cent agreed that they wanted a government that “tries the hardest they can to not put lockdown measures in place, even if that means sometimes decisions are made later than they would otherwise have been”.
Nearly half — 48 per cent — disapprove of the government’s overall handling of the pandemic, the Opinium Research poll found, the highest number since the start of November, while 31 per cent approve.
For prime minister Boris Johnson, 36 per cent approve of his personal handling of the pandemic, while 46 per cent disapprove.
The proportion who approve of the job Labour leader Keir Starmer is doing on coronavirus is now 41 per cent, up 5 percentage points over December. Those disapproving of Sir Keir’s performance totalled 24 per cent, down 3 points.
Opinium carried out an online survey of 2,003 UK adults on January 6-7.
A woman waits on a Marseille street before a 6pm curfew is enforced on Sunday
George Russell in Hong Kong
French authorities said on Sunday they have detected the more contagious UK variant of the coronavirus in the southern port city of Marseille.
Mayor Benoît Payan said at least seven people had tested positive for the new variant in the city.
“There is a cluster of an English variant of Covid-19 in Marseille and the city is mobilised to stem its spread,” Mr Payan wrote on Twitter.
ARS-Paca, the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur regional health agency, said a case of the British variant of Covid-19 has been detected in the Hautes-Alpes department, north of Marseille.
“The person positive for this variant is part of a French family residing in the UK who came to stay in France during the end-of-year holidays,” the agency said in a statement on Sunday.
ARS-Paca said the person and his contacts have been put into isolation.
George Russell in Hong Kong
The US recorded twin grim records over the weekend when both seven-day average hospital admission rates and daily reported deaths reached a single-day record.
There were at least 130,777 hospitalisations reported across the country on Saturday, according to the Covid Tracking Project.
While that is the fifth-largest number of hospital admissions recorded, it brought the seven-day average to a record 130,050.
The 21,752 deaths over the last week in the US is a new record, as the average number of reported deaths is rising in all regions of the country.
The death toll climbed by at least 3,500 on Saturday alone, according to CTP data.
Of those deaths, California reported a record 695 fatalities and Texas 372.
Health services coordinator Michelle Davies administers the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine to healthcare worker Perla Echavarria at a clinic in Harlingen, Texas
Texas continued to break records, with a record 13,921 cases admitted to hospitals.
There were 17,335 new cases reported in the Lone Star state, with several populous counties seeing records broken.
“Today we break 3,000 new Covid-19 cases for the first time,” said Clay Jenkins, county judge of Dallas County. “This is 350 cases more than we’ve ever seen on a single day before.”
There were 197 new deaths in New York state, CTP data revealed.
North Carolina reported a record 11,581 new cases on Saturday, although the number of cases occupying hospital beds declined. There were another 96 deaths announced.
George Russell in Hong Kong
Poor hygiene was largely responsible for the outbreak of a yeast infection among Covid-19 patients in a Florida hospital, the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention concluded.
In July 2020, the Florida Department of Health was alerted to three Candida auris bloodstream infections and one urinary tract infection in four patients with Covid-19 at the unnamed hospital.
C auris is a multidrug-resistant yeast that can cause invasive infection.
Tests revealed that 35 of 67 patients admitted to the Covid-19 unit tested positive for the yeast.
Eight died within 30 days of screening, but whether C auris contributed to death is unknown, according to research by a team led by Christopher Prestel, a paediatric infectious disease specialist and a CDC epidemic intelligence service officer.
Investigation showed multiple opportunities for contamination of personal protective equipment “through direct contact with the patient care environment or potentially contaminated surfaces such as mobile computers”, the researchers said.
“Mobile computers and medical equipment were not always disinfected between uses, medical supplies — e.g., oxygen tubing and gauze — were stored in open bins in hallways and accessed by [personnel] wearing the base PPE layer, and missed opportunities for performing hand hygiene were observed,” they added.
After the hospital removed supplies from hallways, enhanced cleaning and disinfection practices, and improved PPE practices, no further C auris transmission was detected, the researchers wrote.
George Russell in Hong Kong
New Zealand has detected 19 cases of arriving passengers testing positive for the rapidly-spreading UK strain of coronavirus, the health ministry said on Sunday.
“The number of cases reinforces the need for ongoing vigilance at the border, as Covid-19 continues to accelerate overseas,” a ministry statement said.
Since December 28, those testing positive for the B.1.1.7 strain have arrived in New Zealand from India, the UK, US, Zimbabwe, Austria, Poland, Russia and Ukraine, most via the United Arab Emirates.
All the arrivals are in managed isolation facilities in Auckland or Christchurch.
Philip Georgiadis in London
UK airline easyJet has secured £1.4bn of state-backed funding to help its finances through the disruption to air travel caused by the pandemic.
The low-cost carrier said it has secured a five-year loan from a syndicate of banks and supported by a partial guarantee from UK Export Finance, Britain’s export credit agency.
The airline will continue to look at further funding opportunities, and its chief executive Johan Lundgren said the loan “reflects constructive and collaborative work between easyJet, multiple banks and UK Export Finance”.
Mr Lundgren has been vocal in his calls for greater state support for the British aviation sector, and easyJet has already accepted £600m from the Bank of England’s Covid Corporate Financing Facility.
The UK reported more than 1,300 deaths from Covid-19 on Friday, the highest daily figure since the pandemic began. Sadiq Khan, London’s mayor, said the spread of Covid-19 in London was “out of control”, adding that in some parts of the city one in every 20 people has been infected with the disease.
Indonesia has “lost control” of its coronavirus response, experts have warned, complicating a planned mass rollout of China’s Sinovac vaccine in the world’s fourth most populous country. The south-east Asian nation has been battling one of the region’s most stubborn outbreaks with ineffectual lockdowns.
While Europe suffers under a strict coronavirus lockdown, the airport in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates trade hub, has been rammed as British, French and Russian tourists flooded into what has recently become the world’s most open city, where visitors can enjoy restaurants, bars and even socially distanced raves.
The British government is to roll out mass community testing across England, to detect people who have Covid-19 but show no symptoms. The programme, announced by health secretary Matt Hancock on Sunday morning, will enable all 317 English local authorities to offer rapid testing.
Mike Speiser of Sutter Hill Ventures, which holds a $13.3bn stake in Snowflake
Private investors in Snowflake are collectively sitting on more than $48bn worth of shares. Its software product, which allows companies to remotely store and analyse large data sets, has proven wildly popular in public markets as investors clamour for businesses benefiting from the shift to remote working during the pandemic.
Commerzbank has raised its provisions for bad loans for the second time since November, as Germany’s second-largest bank braces for a bigger hit from the country’s latest lockdown. It is earmarking “at least” €1.7bn for loan losses, an increase of almost a fifth from its previous guidance.
Airbus chief executive Guillaume Faury said he was “cautiously optimistic” about a recovery in aircraft demand as the plane-maker revealed a 34 per cent decline in deliveries during 2020 to 566, Mr Faury said the group still hoped to increase production of single-aisle aircraft in the second half of the year.
The Covid-19 vaccine developed by BioNTech and Pfizer has been shown to work against the highly transmissible variants of coronavirus discovered in the UK and South Africa. Researchers at Pfizer and the University of Texas found that the vaccine can neutralise a virus engineered to contain the N501Y mutation.
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