George Russell, Sarah Provan, Harry Dempsey, Alistair Gray
Updated at 2/12/2021, 9: 11: 50 AM BST
Simeon Kerr in Dubai
Dubai Airports said traffic dropped 70 per cent in 2020 compared with a year earlier, but higher than expected passenger numbers in the fourth quarter had restored “confidence”.
The number of people travelling through the Gulf travel hub fell to 25.9m last year, reflecting “the most difficult circumstances the travel industry has ever faced”, said Paul Griffiths, chief executive of the state-owned group.
After a difficult second quarter, when commercial traffic ground to an almost complete halt in April at Dubai International, the world’s busiest airport, business picked up in the second half.
Almost 2.2m people travelled through Dubai in December as people fled lockdowns for the relatively open city.
Dubai now serves 142 destinations on 56 airlines, which is three-quarters the number of carriers that served the emirate before the pandemic.
The most popular destination country in terms of 2020 passenger numbers was India, at 4.3m, followed by the UK at 1.89m and Pakistan at 1.86m.
Joseph Cotterill in Johannesburg and David Pilling in London
South Africa’s pause of its rollout of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine in response to concern about a local coronavirus variant sparked global debate — and shone a spotlight on how the country’s science has become vital to understanding where the pandemic may go next.
South Africa’s government last week delayed the rollout after an initial finding that AstraZeneca’s vaccine failed to protect against milder Covid-19 infections involving the 501. V2 variant. It will now use Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine to start inoculations instead.
The South African suspension was based on a relatively small local trial of the AstraZeneca vaccine that did not examine effects on severe disease or death. Other vaccines have shown good protection against severe illness including the variant and AstraZeneca has said it is confident its vaccine performs similarly.
Read more here
Benjamin Parkin in New Delhi
Maharashtra, home to the Mumbai metropolis, has reported a steady increase in new Covid-19 infections over the past week even as Indians revel in a steep national decline.
The number of new infections in the western state, home to more than 100m people, crossed 4,000 on Sunday for the first time in a month from a low of below 2,000 at the start of February.
Mumbai has recorded a 40 per cent increase in the past five days as compared to the start of the month, according to the Mid-Day newspaper.
Kerala, a southern state which was praised for its early handling of the pandemic, has recorded more than 5,000 cases a day this year.
People stand in a queue to receive a dose of Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin vaccine at Sanjeevan Hospital in the Daryaganj neighbourhood of Old Delhi
Both states have contributed to the bulk of India’s continued new Covid-19 infections, despite a precipitous national decline from nearly 100,000 a day in September.
Remaining restrictions have largely been lifted, with streets, shops and eateries packed once again as lockdown-weary Indians seek to return to pre-pandemic normality.
Experts have postulated that the country could be approaching a form of herd immunity after antibody surveys showed that the virus had spread widely, through as much as half of the population in some urban centres.
But they warn new waves are possible, particularly with India’s vaccination drive off to a slow start. Authorities in Mumbai, which for much of the pandemic was India’s Covid-19 hotspot, have been particularly hesitant about fully reopening.
Kadhim Shubber, Nicholas Megaw and Max Harlow in London
OakNorth, the SoftBank-backed UK lender that once boasted of its perfect lending record, has incurred close to £100m in defaults largely as a result of soured loans to property developers, according to analysis by the Financial Times.
The defaults, stemming from just 10 borrowers, will serve as a test of the proprietary credit underwriting platform that has made OakNorth one of Europe’s most highly valued start-ups.
Many of the defaults have followed the coronavirus pandemic, though OakNorth’s biggest default to date was on £41m lent to a luxury property developer that went bust in 2019.
Read more here
George Russell in Hong Kong
Israel on Sunday took a step towards introducing legislation that would enable local authorities to receive the names and other details of residents who have not yet been vaccinated.
The country’s cabinet approved the proposal, which was supported by the National Security Council, at its coronavirus pandemic meeting,
“We will submit to the Cabinet quick legislation to allow local authorities to receive data on those who have not been vaccinated in order to encourage them to be vaccinated and save lives,” said Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister. “
The legislation is expected to be controversial due to privacy considerations. Orit Farkash-Hacohen, tourism minister, said the proposal contained “precedents we have to be careful with”.
She said any data transfer should focus on residents aged 50 and over.
Israel’s cabinet also approved a proposal to allow up to 2,000 people to enter the country daily through Ben-Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv.
Zynga’s ‘High Heels!’ is the most downloaded iPhone app in the US
Patrick McGee in San Francisco
Zynga, the mobile gaming company that has the most downloaded iPhone app in the US, is again on the hunt after six acquisitions in the past five years.
But while its recent buys — including a $1.8bn deal last year for Turkey’s Peak Games — have been focused on mobile-only, Zynga chief executive Frank Gibeau said there were more opportunities for Zynga to acquire young teams as it pushed “further afield” into games that could be played on multiple devices.
The long view indicates that Zynga expects rapid growth even if Covid-19 — whose effects clearly helped the gaming market — wanes and people return to the workplace.
Read more here
George Russell in Hong Kong
The Russian research centre that developed the Sputnik V vaccine said it had completed phase 2 clinical trials of its “light”, single-dose version, Russian media reported.
Alexander Gintsburg, director of the Gamaleya National Research Centre for Epidemiology and Microbiology, said the Sputnik V Light vaccine would not be used in Russia.
“[Sputnik V Light] consists of only the first dose of the [Sputnik V] vaccine [and] will be used in the countries that are currently incapable of developing similar vaccines and that are short of funds to purchase vaccines that are being developed in other countries,” Gintsburg said in an interview with the Rossiya-24 television channel.
He said Sputnik V Light reduces the likelihood of severe forms of the disease.
Adam Samson in London and Mamta Badkar in New York
Investors poured a record $58bn into stock funds last week while slashing their cash holdings, in the latest sign of the fervour sweeping global financial markets.
Technology-focused funds were at the centre of the surge, with net inflows reaching an all-time high of $5.4bn in the week to Wednesday, according to EPFR data collated by Bank of America. The US had the lion’s share of overall stock inflows, at $36.3bn. Investors also piled $13.1bn into global bond funds while pulling $10.6bn from their cash piles.
Investor bullishness has been stoked by hopes that Covid-19 vaccines are speeding up the fightback against the pandemic and that US president Joe Biden’s $1.9tn stimulus proposal will help the economy recover from the coronavirus-driven recession.
Read more here
George Russell in Hong Kong
Detroit’s mayor fears the US city will return to the poverty and despondency of the 2013-14 bankruptcy if a stimulus package is not passed soon.
Mike Duggan said at the White House that years of rebuilding, which have helped the once-blighted Motor City attract Amazon, LinkedIn, Google and financial technology startups, are in danger if the city cannot plug a $350m budget gap.
“If you haven’t been to Detroit in the last seven years, there has been enormous progress,” said Duggan. “We had billions of dollars in investment from General Motors, from Ford, from … Stellantis [and] huge numbers of jobs in the fintech industry, with Quicken.”
The mayor urged rapid passage of the US administration’s $1.9tn stimulus package — dubbed America’s Rescue Plan — to fight the coronavirus pandemic.
“But when we solve the health issues, there will still be other issues facing us,” said Duggan. “And this is where America’s Rescue Plan makes such a difference.”
The mayor said without federal help, “that plywood is going back up and we’re going to have boarded commercial districts, as we did seven or eight years ago”.
He said 1,000 Detroit municipal employees are still on partial layoff. “And the problem is going to get worse in the summer”.
George Russell in Hong Kong
US drug manufacturer Moderna said the Canadian government has bought 4m more doses of its Covid-19 vaccine, bringing its total order to 44m.
Health Canada authorised the Moderna vaccine for the immunisation of people 18 years of age and older in December.
Ottawa announced that it had negotiated an accelerated delivery schedule for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, and will receive all 40m doses by September 30, the same schedule as the Moderna jabs.
“We remain fully on track to ensure that every eligible Canadian who wishes to be vaccinated will be able to do so by the end of September,” said Anita Anand, public services and procurement minister.
George Russell in Hong Kong
Genomic sequencing showed the Covid-19 variant known as B.1.1.7, first detected in the UK, in two cases that emerged in New Zealand earlier this month, officials said on Monday.
The results from these cases do not link directly to any other positive cases detected in New Zealand to date, a health ministry statement said.
ESR, New Zealand’s major government research institute, is now conducting a scan of the international genome database to see if there is a match.
“This result reinforces the decision to take swift and robust action around the latest cases to detect and stamp out the possibility of any further transmission,” the ministry said.
Lee Bushell, new owner of Birmingham Bank, wanted to create a lender that could use local knowledge to make better decisions
Nicholas Megaw in London
A wave of start-ups are attempting to revive regional banking in the UK, decades after most of the country’s original local lenders were swallowed up by consolidation.
Last month Birmingham Bank became the first to get a full banking licence after acquiring one of the UK’s smallest existing banks from the British Independent Retailers Association.
Andy Street, Conservative mayor of West Midlands, said Birmingham Bank reflected a growing confidence about the city and would provide reassurance to local businesses as the economy recovers from the coronavirus pandemic.
Read more here
George Russell in Hong Kong
A machine-learning algorithm estimates that the number of Covid-19 cases in the US since the pandemic began is nearly triple the official figures, according to a new model.
The algorithm, described in a study published in Plos One, estimated that on February 4, more than 71m people in the US – 21.5 per cent of the population – had contracted Covid-19.
That figure compares with the 26.5m confirmed cases identified by the Covid Tracking Project on February 4.
The algorithm estimated that 7m people had current infections and were potentially contagious on that day.
Jungsik Noh, assistant professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, led the team that developed the algorithm and was the lead author of the study.
“The estimation of the actual fraction of currently infected people is crucial for any definition of public health policies, which up to this point may have been misguided by the reliance on confirmed cases,” Noh wrote.
Andrew Jack in London
As universities closed their classrooms and companies adjusted to the disruption of the coronavirus pandemic last year, PepsiCo’s chief learning officer, Molly Nagler, had to scrap plans to send executives to programmes at Wharton School and Yale School of Management.
But rather than dismiss executive education as impractical, unaffordable or unjustifiable during a crisis, Nagler doubled down and negotiated online alternatives for the US-based food and drinks group.
“We tend to use the in-person, campus-based programme for executives to create a differentiated experience and expose them to cutting-edge thinking and research,” she said. “We’ll still use the campus for elite experiences but less than before because of the expense and the challenge to get everyone in one place.”
Read more here
A young woman has her temperature checked at the hospital in Kenema, Guinea
George Russell in Hong Kong
The west African nation of Guinea on Sunday declared its first outbreak of Ebola in five years, exacerbating stresses in a healthcare system already stretched by Covid-19.
The health ministry said seven cases had been identified, including three that were fatal.
They all occurred in N’Zérékoré prefecture in the country’s south-east, near the border with Liberia. The victims included a nurse at a health centre in the town of Goueké.
The ministry said the cases had been isolated and Guinea had requested international assistance.
Guinea’s healthcare system has already been overwhelmed with more than 15,000 cases of Covid-19. The pandemic’s death toll stands officially at 84 in the nation of 12.7m people.
George Russell in Hong Kong
Singapore’s economy continued to contract in the fourth quarter, according to data released on Monday, but at a slower pace than the previous quarter, as manufacturing, wholesale trade and finance grew as the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on the city-state faded.
The south-east Asian country’s gross domestic product declined by 2.4 per cent in the fourth quarter from a year earlier, according to revised data released by the Ministry of Trade and Industry.
The contraction was an improvement from the 5.8 per cent shrinkage in the preceding quarter, the ministry said.
On a quarter-on-quarter seasonally adjusted basis, the economy expanded by 3.8 per cent, following the 9 per cent growth recorded in the previous quarter, official data showed.
The ministry said it would maintain its GDP growth forecast for 2021 at 4-6 per cent.
“We raise our 2021 GDP growth forecast to 5.5 per cent,” said Brian Tan, Barclays analyst in Singapore.
Hawker’s apprentice Lim Wei Keat displays chickens at a food stall in Singapore
Manufacturing grew by 10.3 per cent year-on-year, extending the 11 per cent expansion in the third quarter.
“Growth was supported by output expansions in the electronics, biomedical manufacturing, precision engineering and chemicals clusters, which more than offset output declines in the transport engineering and general manufacturing clusters,” the ministry said.
The construction sector contracted by 27.4 per cent year-on-year due to declines in
both public sector and private sector construction works, an improvement from the 52.5 per cent contraction in the third quarter.
The wholesale trade sector grew by 1.8 per cent year-on-year, a turnaround from
the 5 per cent contraction in the third quarter, the ministry added.
“The economy is on a recovery path after the strong rebound in Q3 and the trough registered in Q2,” said Irvin Seah, economist at DBS. “However, the pace of growth has slowed, as this V-shaped recovery turns into a square root shaped trajectory.”
Seah said Singapore had entered a normalisation process. “As economic activities gradually resume to norm, growth momentum will naturally revert to a more sustainable pace.”
Hudson Lockett in Hong Kong
The Nikkei 225 breached the 30,000-point mark for the first time since 1990 on Monday, leading Asia-Pacific stocks higher Japan reported better-than-expected economic growth on the back of strong global demand.
Equity benchmarks across the region rose, with South Korea’s Kospi index up 1.6 per cent and Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 rising 0.9 per cent.
Bourses in China and Hong Kong were closed for the lunar new year holiday, while US markets will be closed Monday for Presidents’ Day.
In Japan the benchmark Topix index rose 0.7 per cent while the Nikkei jumped 1.2 per cent to the highest level in three decades after new data showed the country’s economy grew 3 per cent in the fourth quarter, markedly more than analysts expected.
“[The] recovery should get another shot in the arm from the rollout of vaccines”, said Marcel Thieliant, senior Japan economist at Capital Economics.
A man walks past an electronic quotation board displaying share prices on the Tokyo Stock Exchange on Monday
Thieliant added that while export growth for goods was set to slow, services exports “remain very depressed and will pick up as travel restrictions are eased.”
Futures markets tipped US equities to rise when trading resumes on Tuesday, with the S&P 500 set to gain 0.3 per cent. The FTSE 100 was expected to rise 0.7 per cent.
In currencies, the offshore renminbi edged up 0.1 per cent to Rmb6.411 per dollar, its strongest level since June 2018. Both it and the more tightly regulated onshore rate have notched substantial gains against the greenback as China’s economy continues to outpace the rest of the world.
Oil prices climbed as attention in the US shifted to passing an economic stimulus package that could boost demand. Brent crude, the international benchmark, rose 2 per cent to $63.66 a barrel, while US marker West Texas Intermediate rose 2.3 per cent to $60.84.
Bitcoin also fell 2 per cent to $46,911, paring gains made last week after two major US financial groups announced new cryptocurrency projects.
Anna Nicolaou in New York and Christian Shepherd in Beijing
China’s box office was off to a roaring start during the crucial Lunar New Year holiday while the majority of cinemas remain closed in North America, underscoring the diverging fates of the world’s two largest film markets.
By 7pm on Friday in Beijing, Rmb1.7bn ($260m) worth of cinema tickets had been sold, according to booking service Maoyan, with 10 major homegrown films set for release during the holiday period.
While cinemas in the US and Europe remain largely empty as the pandemic drags on, China’s box office has recovered sharply as movie attendance has returned to nearly normal levels.
Read more here
Gideon Long in Bogotá
Martín Vizcarra, Peru’s former president, is embroiled in a growing vaccine scandal that has already claimed two senior ministers, amid allegations that he and his wife were inoculated against coronavirus months before jabs were available to health workers and the public.
Pilar Mazzetti, health minister, and Elizabeth Astete, foreign minister, have both resigned over the issue. Mazzetti’s replacement, Oscar Ugarte, was sworn in over the weekend. He is the fifth health minister the Andean nation has had since the pandemic began.
Mazzetti quit over allegations that Vizcarra and his wife Maribel Díaz Cabello jumped the queue and received the vaccine produced by China’s Sinopharm late last year.
Vizcarra confirmed he had indeed received the jab on October 2 but said it was as part of a clinical trial. However, on Saturday, the university conducting the trial in conjunction with Sinopharm issued a statement saying that neither Vizcarra nor his wife were part of it.
Vizcarra responded with a statement on Sunday, saying the university’s declaration “causes me great surprise”. He said he had not revealed his role in the Sinopharm programme at the time because, as he was president, it would have “put at risk” the normal roll-out of the trial.
Former Peruvian president Martín Vizcarra speaks to the media in Lima
Vizcarra led Peru when the pandemic first hit. He was impeached in November over unproven corruption allegations but his replacement lasted less than a week in the midst of nationwide protests over the way he had assumed power.
The country is now under the leadership of Francisco Sagasti, interim president, who has vowed to guide it through to an election scheduled for April. On Sunday night he confirmed he had accepted Astete’s resignation after she admitted receiving a shot of the Sinopharm vaccine last month before it was available to health workers.
Ugarte, 76, becomes the latest in a long line of Peruvian health ministers. When the pandemic began, a surgeon, Elizabeth Hinostroza was in the job. Vizcarra replaced her with Víctor Zamora, an expert in public health. He was forced out by congress after four months and Mazzetti took over.
When Vizcarra was impeached she lost her job and was replaced by Abel Salinas, but he lasted just three days before Mazzetti was recalled.
Peru has been one of the worst-hit countries in Latin America by the pandemic and at one point had the highest death rate per head anywhere in the world. The country of 32m people has recorded more than 1.2m cases and nearly 44,000 deaths.
Last week it started vaccinating health workers with the Sinopharm vaccine.
George Russell in New York
New York City plans to wait until the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is available to inoculate residents over the age of 65 living at home, the mayor said.
Bill de Blasio said the city would initiate a programme under which medical personnel would visit the houses and apartments of homebound seniors.
“The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is an easier vaccine. It does not require as much refrigeration and it’s one shot only,” he told reporters.
The mayor said initially the city would vaccinate 25,000 home health aides. “That will protect the seniors and the aides alike.”
De Blasio said the J&J vaccine was expected within “just a few weeks”.
Robin Harding in Tokyo
Output in Japan grew by 3 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2020 over the previous three-month period, as the country recorded a strong comeback from Covid-19.
Real gross domestic product in the final quarter of the year was ¥542.7tn, just 1 per cent lower than the ¥548.8tn recorded in the final quarter of 2019.
The figures reflect a period before Japan went back into a state of emergency in January, however, so output is likely to fall again this quarter.
For the year as a whole, output in 2020 fell by 4.8 per cent compared with 2019.
Consumption rose by 2.2 per cent in the fourth quarter, business investment rose 4.5 per cent and exports picked up 11.1 per cent.
“The strong rise in GDP in the fourth quarter left output just 0.5 per cent below pre-virus levels,” said Marcel Thieliant, senior Japan economist at Capital Economics.
“I think that output will be broadly flat in the first quarter of 2021 and rise more strongly this year than almost anyone anticipates,” he added.
A customer wearing a protective mask picks up food from a restaurant in San Francisco
George Russell in Hong Kong
US states reported just over 72,000 cases on Sunday, well down from about 90,000 on Saturday.
There were 1,363 deaths, according to a Covid Tracking Project analysis of data.
“The case declines that we’ve seen have been massive since mid-January, falling far more than the number of tests reported,” the CTP noted in its analysis.
However, the rate of decline varies sharply among states.
“South Carolina, for example, has been declining more slowly than other states and now has the most cases per capita over the last week,” the analysis noted.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the daily number of cases has declined by 69 per cent from a national peak of 314,093 cases reported on January 8.
Emma Agyemang in London
When British pilots at Emirates returned to the UK from the Middle East last year after losing their jobs because of the pandemic, they had little hope of finding more work in aviation amid a global travel shutdown.
To compound their difficulties, many now also face big and unexpected tax bills, having moved from a low-tax location back to Britain. Those who earned £80,000 in a year now face a bill of about £20,000, according to Max Porter, a tax consultant specialising in expatriate finances.
The pandemic has disrupted every area of life, and expatriate workers are no exception. As well as those made redundant, people have been displaced because of sickness, quarantine, cancelled flights or closed borders.
Read more here
Robin Harding in Tokyo
Japan is set to start inoculations against Covid-19 on Wednesday after finally approving the Pfizer vaccine over the weekend.
Vaccinations will start with medical personnel and then move on to the elderly.
Local governments will send out vouchers to each age group as they become eligible, and then they will make their own appointments with vaccine clinics.
Japan’s vaccination campaign is about two months behind other countries because of the time needed to complete local clinical studies, which check that vaccines produce a similar level of antibodies when used in Japan.
AstraZeneca expects to complete its filing with the Japanese regulators by mid-March, but Moderna only began its local study recently, and it will be several months before it can file for approval.
That means Japan is heavily dependent on supplies of the Pfizer vaccine from the company’s facilities in Belgium and the US.
George Russell in Hong Kong
One new locally acquired Covid-19 case was confirmed in the Australian state of Victoria on Monday, as the state struggled under a renewed five-day lockdown.
There have been 17 positive infections identified as a result of a case found in a quarantine hotel last week.
Most of Victoria was put into a hard lockdown on Friday and authorities said they hoped it would be lifted after the five-day period.
“Everyone would like an answer about Wednesday night but we have to see what happens today and the next day,” said Daniel Andrews, the state’s premier.
“It won’t just be the mathematics — the quantity — it will also be qualitative judgments,” he added.
Another new case was found in a returned traveller in hotel quarantine.
Miles Johnson in Rome
Mario Draghi has been sworn in as Italy’s new prime minister after forming a national unity government that faces the tough task of marshalling a recovery from the Covid-19 crisis.
On Saturday, Draghi, a former president of the European Central Bank, was officially appointed by Sergio Mattarella, Italy’s head of state, in a ceremony held in the Italian presidential palace in Rome.
One of Europe’s most highly regarded public officials, Draghi was unexpectedly called in by Mattarella earlier this month after the previous coalition collapsed in the middle of the latest pandemic wave.
Read more here
Mario Draghi, Italy’s prime minister, chairs his first cabinet meeting at the Chigi Palace
George Russell in Hong Kong
More British adults approve of their government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, extending to higher political support for the Conservative party in an apparent “vaccine bounce”, an opinion poll has found.
The poll found 62 per cent signalled approval of the UK’s vaccine rollout programme, rising from 60 per cent a fortnight ago and just 47 per cent four weeks ago.
The ruling party has a 5-point lead over the opposition Labour Party, the Opinium Research poll found, up from 3 points two weeks ago. The Tories would receive 42 per cent of a vote held now while Labour would get 37 per cent.
The poll found that 80 per cent of respondents would accept a Covid-19 vaccine if offered one, while 14 per cent would not. A majority — 58 per cent — fear that mutations and new strains would render jabs less effective.
“The Conservatives may be finally seeing a vaccine bounce as they take their first clear lead over Labour after months of the two parties level pegging and exchanging statistically insignificant leads,” said Adam Drummond, Opinium’s head of political polling.
Opinium Research carried out an online survey of 2,006 adults on February 11-12.
Anna Gross and Sebastian Payne in London
UK scientific advisers have questioned whether a “big wave of infection” should be allowed to flow through the country’s population once the most vulnerable groups in society have been vaccinated against coronavirus, in comments which may reopen the contentious debate around herd immunity.
With prime minister Boris Johnson preparing to set out the road map for lifting England’s Covid-19 lockdown on February 22, the scientists have warned a national discussion will soon be needed on the level of risk people are prepared to accept from the virus in the future.
“There will be a massive debate about whether we should allow a big wave of infection once we’ve vaccinated all the over-50s,” one influential member of the government’s Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling told the Financial Times.
Read more here.
George Russell in Hong Kong
Australia on Monday suspended its travel bubble with New Zealand after Auckland was put into a three-day lockdown in response to three new community Covid-19 cases.
Professor Paul Kelly, Australia’s chief medical officer, said the decision was made after an urgent meeting with the chief health officers of the three states open to New Zealand flights.
“It was decided at this meeting today that all flights originating in New Zealand will be classified as ‘red zone’ flights for an initial period of 72 hours from 12.01am on February 15,” Kelly said in a statement.
“As a result of this, all people arriving on such flights originating within this three-day period will need to go into 14 days of supervised hotel quarantine.”
The states, New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria, will determine how to manage people who have already arrived in Australia from New Zealand and who may pose a risk of transmitting the Covid-19 virus.
George Russell in Hong Kong
A UN agency said it would provide $180.4m to revitalise pandemic-hit food production and distribution systems in six countries in west and central Africa.
The Rome-based International Fund for Agricultural Development said the project would “strengthen the resilience” of rural communities affected by conflicts, climate change and the current Covid-19 pandemic in the Sahel countries — Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger — and Senegal.
The pandemic has exacerbated an area which has seen long-standing armed conflict, particularly in border areas. “Terrorist attacks are frequent and often affect non-military targets,” said Nadine Gbossa, IFAD’s regional director for west and central Africa.
The project is designed to enhance business partnerships between farmers and pastoralists through training initiatives and by strengthening cross-border markets for agricultural inputs and produce, the agency said.
Marketplaces and rural infrastructure, including roads and small-scale irrigation, will be improved under the project. Market information systems and cashless exchanges should enable secure transactions at borders, IFAD said.
Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand prime minister, provides a pandemic update on Sunday
George Russell in Hong Kong
New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern on Sunday ordered a three-day lockdown for the country’s largest city after officials said they had identified three new community cases in an Auckland household.
Chris Hipkins, the country’s Covid-19 response minister, said a couple and their daughter from the suburb of Papatoetoe tested positive.
The mother works for airline services company LSG Skychefs, working with laundry and packing and preparation of food at Auckland’s international airport.
There was no risk to her passing on the virus to crew or passengers through laundry or food, said Dr Ashley Bloomfield, director-general of health.
Hipkins said the mother developed symptoms and requested a test for herself and her daughter. “She did the right thing,” the minister said.
Under the lockdown, Auckland residents are encouraged to work from home, while schools will be open for the children of essential workers only. Businesses and schools remain open elsewhere.
Bloomfield said the woman’s “border-related workplace” suggested her infection was related to an imported case, but health officials were checking to see if there was any community transmission.
George Russell in Hong Kong
The US reported optimistic Covid-19 case numbers at the weekend, as data showed that since Friday the number of people hospitalised decreased by nearly 15,000 and no states reported an increase of 10 per cent or more.
“The reported new cases, people hospitalised and new deaths decreased again this week,” the Covid Tracking Project noted in its analysis. “This week had the fewest reported new cases since October, and the fewest deaths of any in 2021.”
US states reported just over 90,000 cases on Saturday, down from 101,000 on Friday, and leaving the seven-day average under six digits for the first time since November 2 2020.
However, analysts said the declines were yet to result in any noticeable returns to offices and factories.
“Declining cases and rising vaccinations are yet to spur a return to the workplace — traffic at offices and other workplaces has been flat since spring,” said Ryan Preclaw, investment sciences analyst at Barclays in New York.
A customer wears a face mask while shopping ahead of Valentine’s Day at the Southern California Flower Market in Los Angeles
The CTP data identified 2,303 deaths on Saturday, down from 2,918 on Friday.
The daily data does not take into account at least 2,500 additional deaths in Ohio as part of that state adjusting for under-reported deaths.
More than 137,000 people have died of Covid-19 in the US in 2021, CTP said, while there are 69,283 people in US hospitals with the virus.
The most recent deaths recorded include 2,500 additional fatalities in Ohio as part of that state adjusting for under-reported deaths.
Among the most populous states, California recorded 8,842 new cases and 408 deaths in the most recent 24-hour period, while New York identified 8,755 cases and 125 fatalities and Texas reported 8,045 new infections and 257 deaths.
Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington and Donato Paolo Mancini in Rome
The White House has called on China to hand over data from the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic and expressed “deep concerns” about a World Health Organization fact-finding mission to Wuhan.
After a four-week visit to Wuhan, the Chinese city where the pandemic is believed to have emerged, the WHO this week said it was “extremely unlikely” that the pathogen had leaked from a Chinese laboratory — a theory the Trump administration had promoted without providing evidence.
“We have deep concerns about the way in which the early findings of the Covid-19 investigation were communicated and questions about the process,” Jake Sullivan, national security adviser, said on Saturday.
Read more here
UK ministers will be deployed to encourage the estimated 10 per cent of over-70s yet to be vaccinated against Covid-19 to come forward for their first dose. More than 14m people in the UK have been vaccinated with their first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, while more than 530,000 have received their second dose, data shows.
The World Health Organization has outlined the major threats to Covax, its project to ensure developing countries get their fair share of coronavirus vaccines. The chief obstacle is a $27bn funding gap, which threatens its plan to distribute tests and treatments, according to WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Pupils sit with their laptop computers at St Joseph Catholic School in La Puente, California
US schools can reopen safely without teachers being vaccinated as long as masks are worn and pupils stay six feet away from each other when possible, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said. The US public health authority revealed new guidelines on Friday for how schools can safely reopen with in-person classes.
The UK government’s new border regime to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic came under increasing strain, with its quarantine hotel booking system down for a second day and growing concerns over how the scheme will work. The website went down shortly after its launch on Thursday and was offline for more than 24 hours.
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Lastminute.com, the online travel company, faces legal action from the UK’s competition regulator unless it refunds £1m to customers whose holidays were cancelled last year. The company has seven days to repay 2,600 holidaymakers still waiting for refunds, the Competition and Markets Authority said.
L’Oréal, the world’s biggest cosmetics maker, envisions a boom for beauty once Covid-19 subsides similar to the roaring 1920s that followed the influenza pandemic of 1918. The message came after the company behind brands such as Maybelline, Garnier and Kiehl’s reported stronger than expected fourth-quarter sales.
Customer Sara Roschanzamir checks out L’Oréal products at a Karstadt store in Frankfurt
Disney said the pandemic knocked $2.6bn from its operating income in the most recent quarter, as its theme parks shut or operated at limited capacity. The world’s largest entertainment company warned the pandemic would increase its costs by $1bn this fiscal year, because it has to spend more on safety measures.
Bloomberg News is set to lay off about 90 editorial employees, including senior editors in Europe. Justin Smith, chief executive of Bloomberg Media, said last year that live events made up nearly 15 per cent of revenues for Bloomberg’s news division. However, events have been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic.
George Russell in Hong Kong
NHS staff will begin vaccinating people aged 65 to 69 and those who are clinically vulnerable to Covid-19 infections from Monday, the UK health service said.
Almost 1.2m letters were due to land on doorsteps by Saturday asking people to log on to the national booking service with another 1.2m due to arrive this week, the NHS said in a statement.
Appointments are staggered to allow for social distancing and those who are housebound can be vaccinated at home by general medical practitioners.
Vaccines are being administered at more than 1,500 sites across the country, including cathedrals, mosques, museums and rugby grounds.
David Pilling in London
Countries where the Covid-19 variant first identified in South Africa is dominant are receiving conflicting advice about whether to roll out the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine in a sign of the complex challenge facing public health officials.
John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, said preliminary evidence that the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab might not stop mild and moderate disease linked to the 501.V2 variant meant countries where it was circulating widely should seek alternatives.
“If you have evidence that the 501.V2 variant is dominant . . . in your country, then we recommend that it should not be deployed for the obvious reason that it will have reduced activities in neutralising antibodies,” Nkengasong said.
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George Russell in Hong Kong
Nearly half of all children in Yemen under the age of five will suffer from malnutrition this year, UN agencies estimate, as the Covid-19 pandemic adds to years of armed conflict and economic collapse.
The World Health Organization said nearly 2.3m children are projected to suffer from acute malnutrition in 2021, of whom 400,000 could die if they do not receive urgent treatment.
“Families in Yemen have been in the grip of conflict for too long, and more recent threats such as Covid-19 have only been adding to their relentless plight,” said Food and Agriculture Organization director-general Qu Dongyu.
The WHO said Yemen’s already fragile health care system is facing the collateral impact of Covid-19, which has “drained meagre resources and resulted in fewer people seeking medical care”.
The UN agencies said the Yemen humanitarian aid project remains underfunded, with only $1.9bn of its $3.4bn budget received.
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