Updated at 2/3/2021, 4: 13: 23 PM BST
Matthew Rocco
Football fans should steer clear of Super Bowl parties this weekend, the head of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned.
Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, advised that fans host virtual gatherings rather than traditional Super Bowl parties with family and friends. “Please watch the Super Bowl safely, gathering only virtually or with the people you live with,” Dr Walensky said on Wednesday during a press briefing.
The CDC recently published guidance online that said gathering only with members of the same household is the “safest way” to watch the Super Bowl, the National Football League’s championship game.
“If you do have a small gathering with people who don’t live with you, outdoors is safer than indoors,” the CDC said.
Health officials had advised Americans to limit gatherings during the holiday season in an effort to slow the spread of coronavirus. Some states have since loosened restrictions on indoor gatherings and businesses, encouraged by a slowdown in new infections and hospitalisations.
In New Jersey, governor Phil Murphy announced on Wednesday that indoor capacity for restaurants, gyms and other businesses would expand to 35 per cent from the current limit of 25 per cent beginning on Friday.
The Super Bowl will be played on Sunday between the Kansas City Chiefs, last season’s champion, and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. About 25,000 fans are expected to be in attendance in Tampa, including 7,500 vaccinated health care workers. The NFL said it will provide all fans in attendance with free kits that include masks and hand sanitiser.
Peter Wells in New York
New York City’s health commissioner has tested positive for coronavirus.
David Chokshi, one of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s top health advisors and a regular participant in his pandemic press conferences, said in a message on Twitter on Wednesday morning he had recently been tested for coronavirus and received a positive diagnosis.
Dr Chokshi said he had “mild symptoms, but they are manageable” and had been in contact with New York City’s Test and Trace Corps to make sure anyone who had been potentially exposed could be offered relevant services and care.
“This is a reminder — if we ever needed one — that Covid is still with us and we all must continue to wear masks, wash our hands, socially distance and stay home if feeling ill.”
Responding to questions from the media at his regular press conference on Wednesday morning, Mr de Blasio said he had spoken to Dr Chokshi and that he and his family were “doing well”. The mayor added that he had “not seen him in person for a while”.
Dr Chokshi had yet to be vaccinated for coronavirus, Jay Varma, senior advisor for public health to the mayor’s office, said in response to reporters’ questions. Dr Varma said that he and the health commissioner had been discussing when they should get vaccinated and had chosen to “wait our turn in line out of respect to other people” while balancing this against their own risks, given neither of them have direct patient care responsibilities.
Dr Varma said Dr Chokshi had been volunteering at a vaccine clinic and “had planned to get [the vaccine]” after completing a requisite number of shifts, which is one way a city employee can become eligible for vaccination.
Mr de Blasio said he has not been vaccinated and plans to receive his shot when his age group is made eligible. New York governor Andrew Cuomo has said he, too, will wait until he is eligible. President Joe Biden and Vice-president Kamala Harris have both received their first shots, making them the highest-profile leaders in the US to be vaccinated.
Dr Chokshi said he had “mild symptoms, but they are manageable”
Oliver Ralph
The UK has delivered a first dose of Covid-19 vaccine to 10m people, the health secretary said on Wednesday afternoon.
Matt Hancock said that it was a “a hugely significant milestone in our national effort against this virus”.
The first person to be inoculated was Margaret Keenan, who received the BioNTech/Pfizer jab in December. Since then, the UK has also been inoculating people with the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine.
The government is aiming to vaccinate all people in priority groups by mid-February.
Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson and Stefania Palma
The World Economic Forum has delayed its annual meeting by another three months, citing “the international challenges in containing the pandemic”.
The group, which usually gathers political and business leaders in Davos each January, had already changed the date and location of its meeting several times and held a virtual conference last week, but it had planned to convene in Singapore in May.
On Wednesday it announced that it was pushing the date back again, to August 17-20, noting that current travel restrictions including quarantine requirements had “made planning difficult for an in-person meeting in the first half of the year”.
The WEF’s annual meeting has been seen by many of its usual attendees as a test case for the broader conferences industry, which has struggled to make the same revenues from the digital events to which most organisers have switched.
“A global leadership summit needs the participation of all global stakeholders,” said Klaus Schwab, the WEF’s founder and executive chairman.
Singapore’s ministry of trade and industry said in a statement the WEF had proposed to reschedule the event “in light of global travel restrictions and the international challenges in combating the virus at this stage”.
The city-state has largely contained the pathogen, with the daily number of locally transmitted cases remaining in the single digits or zero.
Matthew Rocco
The US services sector grew at its quickest pace in nearly two years in January, a sign that its rebound from the coronavirus crisis continued to pick up steam.
The Institute for Supply Management’s index measuring activity in the services sector rose to 58.7 last month, compared with 57.7 in December and representing the third consecutive month that growth has accelerated.
It was the index’s strongest reading since February 2019, buoyed by demand that strengthened to a level last seen in the summer. The report also showed that hiring rebounded from a month of contraction in December.
Economists had anticipated a slower rate of expansion at the start of the year, estimating a January reading of 56.8. Readings above 50 indicate growth, while anything below that threshold marks a contraction.
The recovery in the vast services sector, which includes battered leisure and hospitality groups, slowed in the autumn at a time when much of the US was grappling with a resurgence of coronavirus cases.
While state and local Covid-19 restrictions continued to impact companies negatively, respondents’ comments in the January survey were “more optimistic about business conditions and the economy”, according to Anthony Nieves, chair of the ISM services business survey committee.
Andrew Hunter, senior US economist at Capital Economics, said the further rise in the services index “suggests the wider economy remains resilient to the recent wave of virus cases”.
An index tracking employment rose last month to 55.2 from 48.7. New orders climbed to a reading of 61.8, its best mark since July, from 58.6 in December.
Breaking news
Sam Jones in London
Switzerland has unexpectedly declined to authorise the use of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, becoming the only country in continental Europe to do so, as it called for more information on the jab.
The Swiss medical regulator cited a lack of data to reach firm conclusions on efficacy for the Covid-19 shot. Approval of the vaccine had been widely expected by many in Switzerland.
“For the vaccine from AstraZeneca, the data available and evaluated to date are not yet sufficient for approval,” SwissMedic said on Wednesday. “In order to obtain additional data on safety, efficacy and quality, data from new studies are required.”
The verdict follows the Anglo-Swedish company’s shot receiving authorisation for use across the EU — of which Switzerland is not a member — by the bloc’s regulator last Friday.
But controversy has continued to dog its rollout on the continent. France, Germany, Italy, Sweden and Poland have advised against its use for people over a certain age. A political row over its delivery has raged, after AstraZeneca told the EU it would not be able to make delivery of its anticipated number of doses.
SwissMedic said it was specifically waiting on results from two further clinical trials in North and South America. Once the data is available, it said it could come to a final decision swiftly.
Despite its extremely well resourced medical sector — the wealthy alpine country spends more per capita on healthcare than any other in Europe — Switzerland has been relatively slow to vaccinate.
SwissMedic has approved the BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna coronavirus vaccines.
Bern separately announced on Wednesday it had signed an agreement to increase its supply of Moderna doses by 6m to 13.5m for delivery this summer.
Colby Smith
The Treasury department has opted against increasing the size of its long-dated US government debt auctions for the first time since the coronavirus outbreak caused widespread economic damage, as it awaits more clarity about the potential for further stimulus.
On Wednesday, the agency outlined its plans to gradually moderate the pace of issuance from the record levels set in 2020, having ramped up auction sizes dramatically since April and socked away a record stockpile of cash.
“Treasury believes that these changes have created sufficient capacity to address near-term projected borrowing needs,” it said in a statement.
As part of its plan to borrow $274bn between January and March — about $853bn less than what was projected in November — it will sell $126bn of debt maturing in three, 10 and 30 years next week and gradually increase the supply of inflation-linked securities. The Treasury also announced it would scale back its issuance of bills, which mature in one year or less, having boosted auction sizes to record levels last year in order to fund the stimulus programmes passed by Congress.
The Treasury left open the possibility that it may need to adjust its plans, however, should another significant fiscal stimulus package pass in short order. President Joe Biden has put forward a $1.9tn programme, but it has garnered criticism from Republicans.
“Treasury continues to face uncertain and sizable borrowing needs due to expenditures associated with the government’s response to Covid-19 as well as the impact of the pandemic on economic activity and government receipts,” the agency added on Wednesday. “As always, Treasury will continue to evaluate the fiscal outlook and assess the need to make adjustments to auction sizes.”
Analysts said the Treasury’s approach reflected its commitment to draw down its record cash balance, which currently sits at $1.6tn, rather than issue new debt to cover expenditures. On Monday, the agency set an end-of-March cash balance target of $800bn. By the beginning of July, it is aiming for $500bn.
Market participants expressed some concern that too swift a drawdown could create some market dislocations, however.
“If the Treasury does indeed shrink its [cash balance] by reducing short-term bill issuance, that could squeeze short-term rates to zero,” said Guy LeBas, chief fixed income strategist at Janney. “The Fed does not want that.”
Harry Dempsey
The World Health Organization-backed mechanism for equitable vaccine distribution laid out on Wednesday plans to allocate more than 330m coronavirus jabs to 145 nations that include some of the world’s poorest in the first half of 2021.
India and Pakistan, each set to receive 97m and 17m doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, were some of the biggest planned recipients under the Covax scheme, which many have feared could be a failure as rich nations rush ahead in securing inoculations.
The initiative, backed by Gavi and Unicef, aims to cover 3.3 per cent of the total population in the 145 nations it plans to deliver to by the end of June, which it says will be enough to cover health workers in those countries. It is targeting to increase coverage of participating countries to 20 per cent of their populations by the end of the year through a total of 2bn doses.
The scheme is mainly relying in the early stages on AstraZeneca’s jab, which the WHO is expected to approve this month, and the BioNTech/Pfizer shot, which it authorised at the end of 2020. It will receive a comparatively smaller volume of the Pfizer vaccine.
Infrastructure of the recipient countries has been taken into account, given that the Pfizer vaccine must be kept at very low temperatures.
Other nations scheduled to receive more than 10m doses included Nigeria, Brazil, Bangladesh and Indonesia. Canada, South Korea and New Zealand were some of the richer nations set to receive vaccines through the scheme in the first half of the year.
Anna Gross
The head of the Test and Trace system in England said that “none of us were able to predict” the emergence of viral mutations and new strains of Covid-19, as she fought back against questioning from politicians that she had missold the impact the programme would have in 2020.
Greg Clark, member of parliament for Tunbridge Wells, questioned Baroness Dido Harding about whether it had been a mistake to justify her request to the government for £15bn last September by saying it would prevent a second lockdown.
“Test and trace is only one of the elements, it’s not a single silver bullet,” said Baroness Harding, head of Test and Trace. “Between that business plan being published, we’ve seen the virus mutate, the new variant emerge which was something that none of us were able to predict.”
Alan McNally, a professor of microbial evolutionary genomics at Birmingham University, responded on Twitter: “I did indeed know with near biological certainty that SARS-CoV-2 would mutate and variants would emerge”.
Baroness Harding also admitted that around a fifth of daily contacts traced – equating to roughly 20,000 people a day – are not self-isolating, in response to questioning about the failure of the programme to get people to abide by quarantine rules.
Baroness Harding also set out an ambition to halve the time it takes to carry out genetic sequencing of new variants of the disease, to identify outbreaks more rapidly.
She said: “As we speak today genomic sequencing takes circa eight days. We’re looking to…. reduce that down considerably. I’d like to be able to halve it over the course of the next few weeks,” she added.
Alistair Gray
Versace sales held steady in the weeks leading up to Christmas despite the coronavirus crisis piling pressure on the retail industry, pushing up shares in the luxury fashion brand’s New York-listed owner Capri Holdings.
Demand for autumn and winter collections ordered online helped the Milan-based brand to sales of $195m in Capri’s fiscal third quarter. That’s similar to the amount generated in the same period in 2019. Foreign exchange however flattered the performance, with Versace’s revenues down almost 7 per cent on a constant currency basis.
Capri’s shares over the past 12 months have risen about 43 per cent in New York. They were recently 6 per cent higher in pre-market trade.
The earnings report from Capri, which has 1,280 stores worldwide, showed a broad divergence between its labels and by geography.
Versace’s revenue rose 39 per cent in the Americas and 11 per cent rise in Asia, but fell 22 per cent in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Sales fell sharply at Versace’s stablemates, Michael Kors and Jimmy Choo. Total revenue across the group dipped 17 per cent to $1.3bn, a shallower decline than the previous quarter, while net income slid 15 per cent to $178m.
Mamta Badkar in New York
US private sector employment rebounded at the start of the year as the labour market continued its uneven recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.
Non-farm private employers added 174,000 jobs in January, according to payroll processor ADP on Wednesday. That topped economists’ expectations for a gain of 49,000, according to a Reuters poll, and followed a loss of 78,000 the previous month.
“The labour market continues its slow recovery amid Covid-19 headwinds,” said Ahu Yildirmaz, vice president and co-head of the ADP Research Institute. “Although job losses were previously concentrated among small and midsized businesses, we are now seeing signs of the prolonged impact of the pandemic on large companies as well.”
The report showed medium sized businesses, which employ between 50-499 employees, created the most jobs at 84,000. Small and large businesses added 51,000 and 39,000 jobs respectively.
The bulk of hiring was concentrated in the service-providing sector, which created 156,000 jobs, while manufacturing added 19,000.
The data come ahead of this week’s official jobs report which is expected to show the US created 50,000 jobs in January, following a 140,000 drop in December.
The pandemic delivered a massive blow to the labour market as about 18.3m Americans remain on unemployment aid and the US has 9.8m fewer jobs than it had in February.
January was the deadlist month for the pandemic in the US as more than 95,000 people died from Covid-19. A number of states began to reintroduce restrictions at the end of last year as cases began to surge again.
Robin Harding in Tokyo
Covid-19 tests, two weeks of restricted movement and a ban on cheering for athletes await attendees at the Tokyo Olympics as the organisers laid out a “playbook” to enable the games to go ahead.
Violators risk being kicked out of the games while the rules will apply even to those who have been vaccinated against the virus, said a document sent to international sports federations on Wednesday,
The guidelines suggest that disputes about coronavirus tests and hygiene violations could become a big feature of Tokyo 2020 and show the extreme measures the organisers are taking to avoid cancelling the games.
With such tough measures for participants, it is increasingly unlikely that international fans will be able to attend the Tokyo Games, which were postponed from 2020 to this summer. A decision about spectators is expected in the next couple of months.
George Parker
Boris Johnson has defended his decision not to impose more far-reaching Covid-19 quarantine restrictions at Britain’s borders, claiming he did not want to “cut off this country”.
Keir Starmer, Labour leader, cited advice by the Sage scientific committee that only the closure of the border would be fully effective in stopping new variants of the disease reaching the UK.
But Mr Johnson told MPs that Sage had not recommended such a move, nor did he think it wise to seal the borders of a country that imported 75 per cent of its medicines and 45 per cent of its food.
Speaking at prime minister’s questions in parliament, Mr Johnson said: “It’s not practical to completely close off this country as he seems to be suggesting.” He said Britain had some of the toughest quarantine rules in the world.
Anna Nicolaou
Spotify posted better than forecast subscriber additions in the December quarter, propelling the streaming service to 155m paying customers at year-end.
But the company issued conservative guidance for 2021, warning that it faced “substantial uncertainty” due to the “unknown duration of the pandemic”.
For the full year of 2021, Spotify predicted it would reach between 172m and 184m subscribers, an addition of between 17m and 29m of its most lucrative customers.
This would mark a slowdown from 2020, when the streaming service added a record 30m subscribers.
Shares in Spotify dropped more than 6 per cent in pre-market trading.
The company’s quarterly results were rosier: Spotify added 11m subscribers in the three months to the end of December, eclipsing both Wall Street forecasts and its own guidance. Revenue grew 17 per cent from a year ago to €2.2bn.
Arthur Beesley in Dublin
Ireland has reported a sharp rise in unemployment to 25 per cent in January as the country’s third national lockdown left hundreds of thousands of workers jobless.
The unemployment rate, up from 19.4 per cent in December, is the highest for more than six months. Although Ireland entered the pandemic in almost full employment with a 4.8 per cent jobless rate last February, unemployment had surged to 30.5 per cent by April.
The rate came down in the second half of 2020 as the economy partially reopened. But stringent new restrictions since Christmas to tackle Covid-19 infections closed hospitality, retail and construction businesses — prompting another round of layoffs.
Over 479,000 workers are on special Covid-19 unemployment benefits, in addition to over 189,000 claimants of regular unemployment benefits. Another 315,200 are on special government wage subsidies.
The restrictions have been prolonged until March 5, more than one month longer than the government had planned.
Martin Arnold in Frankfurt
Inflation in the eurozone has shot up to its highest level since before the coronavirus pandemic hit last year, ending a five-month spell of falling prices and raising doubts about whether the European Central Bank will require more stimulus.
Headline consumer price inflation in the eurozone hit an 11-month high of 0.9 per cent in January, from a fall of 0.3 per cent in December, according to a flash estimate by Eurostat on Wednesday. Economists polled by Reuters had only expected a 0.5 per cent rate.
The fastest jump in eurozone inflation for over a decade was fuelled by a combination of one-off factors rather than a revival in underlying demand, as many shops, schools and leisure companies remain closed under the coronavirus lockdown.
The reversal of a temporary reduction in German value added tax at the start of this year played a role in boosting prices, as did higher energy costs and supply chain disruptions that have raised container shipping prices for companies.
Analysts said clothing and footwear prices were expected to be higher in January compared with a year ago due to the lack of seasonal sales while many non-essential stores are closed in countries such as German and France.
Core inflation – stripping out traditionally more volatile energy and food prices – accelerated from 0.2 per cent in December to 1.4 per cent in January.
The annual revision in the weightings of products used to calculate inflation also pushed up average prices, as more weight was given to products that have become more expensive, such as food, and less to products that have become cheaper, such as packaged holidays.
The ECB forecast in December that price growth would rise from 0.3 per cent in the first quarter of this year to 1.5 per cent in the fourth quarter, before falling back to 1.2 per cent a year later — still below its target of below but close to 2 per cent.
But analysts say that inflation could rise faster than the central bank expects if coronavirus vaccinations allow restrictions to be lifted and economic activity rebounds this summer. This could pose a communication problem for the central bank, which would need to explain why its huge stimulus package was still needed to support the economy.
Bethan Staton
Economic activity in the UK last month fell at its sharpest rate in eight months, placing the economy at risk of a first-quarter contraction, as a survey showed businesses have suffered throughout a third national lockdown.
The IHS Markit/CIPS UK services PMI for January was 39.5, down from 49.4 in December, and 41 per cent of survey respondents said they had seen a decline in output during the month.
Although the figure was slightly higher than a flash reading released last month, it still indicated the fastest rate of decline since May.
The UK economy is “on course to contract sharply” in the first quarter, said Tim Moore, economics director of IHS Markit, as closures led to “shrinking demand for business services and a ripple effect of corporate spending cutbacks”.
Responses from business leaders showed staffing numbers fell for the 11th consecutive month in January, and job shedding intensified compared with the previous month. Volumes of new work decreased, and business from abroad declined at a steeper pace than domestic sales.
News of a vaccine, however, pushed optimism for future growth among managers to its strongest since May 2014.
“Businesses remain confident that pent-up demand and an easing of pandemic restrictions will provide a springboard to recovery later this year,” Mr Moore said.
Christian Shepherd in Beijing
China has pledged 10m doses of its home-developed coronavirus vaccines for the World Health Organization’s Covax scheme to inoculate low-income countries, as much of the developing world has turned to Beijing in an attempt to secure scarce jabs.
The Chinese foreign ministry did not give a timeframe for delivery of the vaccines but said at a press briefing on Wednesday that they were being supplied in response to WHO calls for high-risk groups worldwide to be vaccinated within 100 days from mid-January. The Covax initiative aims to deliver 2bn doses in total this year.
Beijing has promised to fill gaps in Covid-19 vaccine supply across the developing world as part of a charm offensive to strengthen diplomatic ties in regions underserved by the United States and other western powers.
Many nations have begun receiving shipments of jabs from state-owned Sinopharm or Beijing-based Sinovac, a private company, despite lingering concerns about the efficacy of their vaccines and the transparency of the developers, which have yet to release detailed trial data.
China’s foreign ministry on Monday said it was also providing vaccines as aid to 13 developing countries, including Nepal, the Philippines, Myanmar, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe and Equatorial Guinea.
Leila Abboud in Paris
French advertising group Publicis slowed the decline in its revenues in the fourth quarter, helped by a return to growth in the US, its biggest market, where demand for its digital marketing has been strong.
The company’s shares climbed more than 6 per cent in early Paris trading on Wednesday to their highest since September 2019. The advance brings their gains for the year to 14 per cent. They have more than doubled since their 2020 low that was struck in March.
The world’s third-biggest advertising holding company by revenue limited the damage wrought by the coronavirus pandemic last year by cutting costs on everything from salaries to travel.
Publicis signalled a measure of confidence by proposing a €2-per-share dividend for 2020, from the €1.50 paid the previous year and just below its pre-pandemic levels.
Arthur Sadoun, chief executive, acknowledged that Covid-19 was still exacting a toll and making it impossible to give sales guidance for this year.
“The first quarter of 2021 is basically the fifth quarter of 2020, so it will be negative,” he said, adding that the second quarter would be likely to show growth given the easier year-on-year comparisons.
Revenue in the fourth quarter fell 3.9 per cent on an organic basis, a metric closely followed by investors that strips out the impact of currency movements and acquisitions, to reach €2.59bn. This was an improvement on the third-quarter organic sales contraction of 5.6 per cent and ahead of analysts’ expectations.
Read more about Publicis slowing fourth-quarter sales decline
Valentina Romei
Italy’s services sector activity contracted less than expected in January, as coronavirus restrictions continued to weigh on the country’s hard-hit economy.
The IHS Markit purchasing managers’ index for Italian services rose to 44.7 in January from 39.7 of the previous month, based on businesses’ views of the development of their activity.
The reading was much better than the 39.5 forecast by economists polled by Reuters, but was still below the 50 mark which indicates a majority of businesses reporting a contraction.
Lewis Cooper, economist at IHS Markit, said: “Italy’s service sector remained mired in a downturn into 2021, although the latest contraction in services activity was much softer than those recorded in the closing months of last year.”
Output was limited by tight coronavirus restrictions, as well as weak demand with new orders continuing to fall.
Italian service providers faced rising costs while continuing to provide discounts to customers to stimulate sales. In January, they trimmed their staffing levels again.
On Tuesday, official statistics revealed that Italy’s economy shrank the most among the eurozone major economies in the final three months of 2020 on a quarterly basis, reflecting a long period of tough tier-based regional restrictions.
A slower vaccine rollout than in the UK clouds Italy’s economic recovery. However, Covid-19 infections are falling and Italy’s president will meet Mario Draghi, former president of the European Central Bank, later on Wednesday to ask him to form a new national unity government, possibly avoiding elections and instability.
The easing of Italy’s service sector downturn contributed to pushing the final reading for the eurozone to 45.4, marginally up from 45 in initial estimates. At 47.8, the eurozone composite index was also better than previously thought.
Chris Williamson, chief business economist at IHS Markit, said: “A contraction of GDP therefore looks likely in the first quarter, though on current trends this should be modest in comparison to the falls seen in the first half of 2020.”
Countries ranked by composite PMI:
– Germany: 50.8, 7-month low
– France: 47.7, 2-month low
– Italy: 47.2, 3-month high
– Spain: 43.2, 2-month low
– Ireland: 40.3, 8-month low
Martin Arnold in Frankfurt
Spain’s services sector suffered a sharp decline in activity last month as businesses in the retail, leisure and hospitality sectors were hit by restrictions to contain the coronavirus pandemic and the disruption caused by heavy snowstorms.
The IHS Markit Spain purchasing managers index for services, a measure of the health of the sector, slumped to 41.7 in January, from 48 in the previous month.
The figure was below the 45.3 forecast by economists polled by Reuters, and marked the sixth consecutive month that the reading has been below 50, which indicates a majority of businesses reporting a contraction in activity.
“It was a tough start to 2021 for the Spanish service sector,” said Paul Smith, economics director at IHS Markit.
Spanish services companies reported their seventh month of falling new business volumes, rising operating costs and a sharp drop in exports, prompting more job cuts, IHS Markit said. The situation was “exacerbated by recent snowstorms, which reportedly further weighed on market activity”.
Manufacturing activity in Spain slid back into decline at the beginning of this year, underlining the economy’s weak start and adding to expectations that the eurozone will suffer a double-dip recession this winter.
Spain’s economy has been the hardest hit of any eurozone country by the pandemic and it contracted 11 per cent last year, its worst postwar recession. While the country eked out growth of 0.4 per cent in the final three months of last year, most economists expect output to shrink again in the first quarter.
Stefania Palma in Singapore
Singapore has issued an interim authorisation to use Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine in individuals aged 18 and above.
A review of clinical data showed “the safety profile of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine was generally consistent with other registered vaccines used in immunisation against other diseases”, said the Health Sciences Authority in a statement.
Singapore will start administering the jab in March.
This is the second coronavirus vaccine authorised by the city state, after the BioNTech/Pfizer jab.
More than 175,000 people had received the first vaccine dose as of Tuesday. Singapore, which has largely contained the virus, aims to vaccinate all citizens and long term residents by the third quarter of 2021.
Richard Milne, Nordic and Baltic Correspondent
Denmark is to launch a coronavirus passport by the end of this month and aims to have a full digital version working by the summer as it tries to reopen society and help business and culture return to normal.
Morten Bodskov, Denmark’s acting finance minister, said on Wednesday morning that the government would launch a passport by the end of February showing whether somebody had been vaccinated to help business travel recover in particular.
He hoped a fuller, digital solution could come within three to four months to help allow a gradual reopening of Danish society, including cultural life such as concerts, sporting events and indoor performances.
“It is absolutely crucial for us to restart Danish society so that companies can get back on track,” he added.
Mads Nipper, chief executive of renewable energy company Orsted, told the Financial Times he welcomed news of the coronavirus vaccine passport.
“If we can ensure critical resources can travel to crucial geographies without quarantine, then that’s a positive,” he said. He argued it was most important to allow the company’s experts to travel.
The Danish government did not give full details of how the passport would work but said it would be developed in conjunction with business and cultural organisations as well as in line with demands from the EU.
It would be something travellers could have on their mobile phones to show they have been vaccinated, added Mr Bodskov. Details such as if a person has tested positive for antibodies could be added later.
Harry Dempsey
The UK health secretary said that the government has a “high degree of confidence” that the Oxford/AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine works for all ages, after a significant number of European health authorities recommended against its use in older patients.
“We’ve clearly both looked directly at the impact of this vaccine on the over 65s and the scientists looking at the impact of the vaccine on people’s response in the labs,” Matt Hancock said on BBC Breakfast on Tuesday.
He added that: “It means that we have a high degree of confidence that this vaccine works for all ages.”
His comments come a day after public health agencies in Sweden, Poland and Austria put limits on the age of people allowed to receive the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab, raising fears that the vaccine might not be as efficacious in people who are over 65.
Mr Hancock said that the Oxford/AstraZeneca data released on Tuesday, which suggested the jab helped to reduce hospitalisations and to lower transmission of the virus, should reassure everyone that the jab works effectively.
Regarding other countries’ decision to hold back from recommending the vaccine for use in all ages, Mr Hancock said: “It’s hard enough being responsible for the health system in one country during the pandemic, let alone for everybody else’s.”
Harry Dempsey
Research on the efficacy of the Oxford/AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine “categorically supports” the UK’s strategy to leave 12 weeks between the first and second dose, the health secretary said.
Data released on Tuesday showed a single dose is 76 per cent effective from three weeks to 12 weeks after the injection. The findings, from an analysis of trial data in a yet to be peer-reviewed paper, boost the scientific evidence behind the UK’s decision to delay second doses and vaccinate large numbers of people quickly.
“The really good news embedded in it is that it not just reduces hospitalisations,” Matt Hancock said in an interview on Sky News, “but it also reduces the number of people who have Covid at all, even asymptomatically, by about two-thirds.”
Mr Hancock added: “It categorically supports the strategy that we’ve been taking of having a 12-week gap between the doses because it shows the strength of the protection you get is in fact slightly enhanced.”
The data on AstraZeneca’s jab come, however, as research by the University of Cambridge suggests that BioNTech/Pfizer’s vaccine only provides enough protection after a second dose against the E484K mutation that was seen in the variant first detected in South Africa and that has sprung up in virus strains in a handful of locations across England.
That has prompted the government to set up “surge testing” in areas where cases of the mutation have been detected.
“It is absolutely critical where we find them, we absolutely stamp on it,” Mr Hancock said.
He added that the government was working on plans for quarantine hotels for people arriving from countries deemed to present a high risk.
Kana Inagaki in Tokyo
Sony boosted its annual guidance for the second time in three months as a pandemic-driven gaming boom led to a blockbuster launch for its new PlayStation 5 console.
The Japanese entertainment group revealed on Wednesday that it had sold 4.5m units of the PS5 since its November 12 release, which led to a 40 per cent year-on-year increase in quarterly revenue for its gaming division.
The figure put it well ahead of an estimated 2.4m units of the Xbox Series X sold by rival Microsoft since its November 10 release, according to market research firm GamingSmart.
While the PS5’s initial marketing costs weighed on profits, families with more time on their hands increased spending on gaming software. Boosted by the strong performance of its PlayStation division, Sony said its operating profit rose 20 per cent from a year earlier to ¥359.2bn ($3.4bn) for the October to December quarter.
Sony also raised its operating profit forecast for the full year ending in March by 34 per cent to ¥940bn.
Farhan Bokhari in Islamabad
Pakistan began its first Covid-19 inoculation drive on Wednesday, aiming to vaccinate at least 70m people or about a third of its population by the end of the year in its most ambitious healthcare campaign.
In the first phase, which is expected to end next month, healthcare professionals will be targeted.
The campaign began a day after prime minister Imran Khan witnessed the first jab, given to a doctor with a Chinese vaccine produced by Sinopharm.
China, Pakistan’s closest foreign ally, has stepped in to helping the country battle the coronavirus pandemic. Beijing has given half a million Sinopharm vaccines, which were flown to Islamabad on Sunday aboard a Pakistan air force cargo plane.
Ahead of Wednesday’s launch, Mr Khan urged all health workers “to get vaccinated because they are the ones who are most exposed to risk”.
Vaccines imported by the end of this year will include supplies from AstraZeneca and Russia’s Sputnik V, senior government officials said.
Donato Paolo Mancini in Rome
The UK’s GlaxoSmithKline and Germany’s CureVac are to develop a new generation of mRNA Covid-19 vaccines to tackle emerging variants that have so far shown some degree of resistance to existing jabs.
In a joint statement on Wednesday, the companies said they would work on a joint approach to address “multiple emerging variants” in a single jab. The deal is worth a total €150m, the companies said.
GSK will also help manufacture up to 100m doses of CureVac’s vaccine candidate through its manufacturing facilities in Belgium. CureVac’s vaccine is currently undergoing the last phases of testing.
The companies are targeting introduction of the variant-specific vaccine in 2022, subject to regulatory approval.
Last July, GSK bought close to 10 per cent of CureVac, though the deal did not target its current Covid-19 products.
Nicholas Megaw
Santander, the eurozone’s largest retail bank, reported its first ever annual loss on Wednesday, but said it was optimistic about this year should inoculation campaigns be successful.
The bank was expected to report a loss due to writedowns and loan provisions that had been announced in the first half of the year, but the figure was exacerbated by a further €1.1bn charge related to a planned restructuring in its British and European businesses in the fourth quarter.
However, its preferred underlying measure of profitability was slightly above its own forecast, at €5.1bn, and the bank predicted a rebound in profitability in 2021.
“We will not let down our guard, but I define my view as one of realistic optimism,” said Ana Botín, Santander executive chairman.
Santander said it expects to generate an underlying return on tangible equity of between 9 per cent and 10 per cent this year, compared with 7.4 per cent in 2020.
Santander’s Latin American and North American units showed the strongest performance, offsetting weakness in Spain and the UK. Revenues in the fourth quarter held up better than expected, climbing 1 per cent year on year after excluding the impact of currency movements.
Santander said it will pay a dividend of 2.75 cents per share, the maximum allowed under limits introduced by the European Central Bank in December.
Philip Georgiadis
Ryanair has been criticised by the UK’s advertising watchdog for presenting a misleadingly optimistic view of whether summer holidays will be possible this year in a campaign urging customers to “jab and go”.
The low-cost Irish airline has been forced to pull the adverts, first broadcast in December, which feature images of syringes and people enjoying holidays without social distancing. The campaign became the third most complained about of all time.
The Advertising Standards Authority said the implication that people would be vaccinated in time to go on holiday at Easter or in the summer, and that vaccination would allow people to travel without restrictions, was misleading.
This week, Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary said Easter would be a “write-off” but held out hopes for travel during the summer.
“The ASA’s ruling flies in the face of the UK’s successful vaccine rollout, however, even though this ruling is baseless, Ryanair will comply with it and the Jab & Go adverts will not run again,” a spokesperson said.
Michael Pooler, Clive Cookson and Carolina Pulice
A more transmissible strain of coronavirus linked to an explosion of infections in the Amazonian city of Manaus is believed to be spreading throughout Brazil, where it could become the main variant, according to scientists.
Researchers revealed last month they had detected the P. 1 lineage of Sars-Cov-2 in the remote rainforest municipality, where oxygen supplies recently ran out as the health system has been hammered by a surge in Covid-19 cases. The variant has also been registered in São Paulo, as well as in several other countries.
Specialists who spoke to the Financial Times said there was now a risk of the strain taking hold more broadly throughout Latin America’s largest nation, which has recorded 225,000 deaths from coronavirus, the second highest behind only the US.
“I believe that this variant has everything to become dominant in the coming weeks or months. It wouldn’t surprise me if it was already widespread,” said Felipe Naveca, virologist and researcher at the Leônidas & Maria Deane Institute, a unit of the Fiocruz research body in Amazonas state.
“From the point of view of being more transmissible, it’s almost an absolute certainty,” Dr Naveca said.
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Gary Jones in Hong Kong
With migrants and the jobless frequently being targets for human traffickers globally, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime said on Tuesday that economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic has exposed millions more to the risk.
Almost 50,000 victims of human trafficking were reported in 2018 by 148 countries, but the actual number of victims could now be “far higher”, the UNODC said.
“Millions of women, children and men worldwide are out of work, out of school and without social support in the continuing Covid-19 crisis, leaving them at greater risk of human trafficking,” Ghada Waly, UNODC executive director, said in a statement.
The UNODC’s Global Report on Trafficking in Persons identified two types of tactics employed by traffickers: “hunting”, or actively pursuing a victim, typically on social media, and “fishing”, when perpetrators post job advertisements and wait for potential victims to respond.
Daniel Thomas in London
The UK government has become a shareholder in a toilet maker, a broadband provider and a company that helps make reusable cups as part of the Treasury’s foray into the venture capital market through one of its coronavirus support schemes.
Last weekend the government closed business applications to the Future Fund, the state scheme devised by chancellor Rishi Sunak that has provided convertible loans worth more than £1bn on a combined basis to more than 1,000 British start-ups.
These loans automatically turn into minority equity stakes for the Future Fund in the companies at their next funding rounds, unless investors request to be repaid.
Read more here
Jude Webber in Mexico City
Mexico has approved Russia’s Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine on the day that results of its Phase 3 clinical trials were published in medical journal The Lancet. The results indicate that the vaccine is nearly 92 per cent effective.
“Cofepris [Mexico’s health regulator] has just authorised emergency use of the Sputnik V vaccine … so now it can be imported and used,” Hugo López-Gatell, Mexico’s coronavirus tsar, told a news conference. “This is encouraging. We have another vaccine in our arsenal.”
Earlier, Dr López-Gatell said that Mexico expected to receive 400,000 doses of the Sputnik V vaccine in February, 1m doses in March, 6m in April and 16.6m in May.
Mexcio has begun vaccinating frontline health workers, as well as some teachers, with the BioNTech/Pfizer jab but deliveries are on hold while the drug maker retools its plant in Belgium.
Mexico on Tuesday prepared to rollout its vaccination plan to the over 60s. It launched a website where they can sign up for an appointment to receive a jab, but the system swiftly crashed.
Mexico has confirmed 159,533 deaths and 1,874,092 cases but low testing and high excess deaths indicate the true figures could be more than double those levels. So far, 677,539 vaccine doses have been administered in Mexico.
Fergus Ryan
The Australian cricket team has postponed its tour of South Africa this month because of the coronavirus wave that has swept across the African nation.
A more contagious variant first detected in South Africa was blamed for a rapid rise in new cases that began in December. More than 1.4m cases have been reported in South Africa and almost 45,000 deaths. However, the number of new cases has fallen significantly and on Monday President Cyril Ramaphosa announced the easing of some lockdown restrictions.
Nick Hockley, Cricket Australia’s interim chief executive, said his country’s team planned to tour at a later date but the decision appears to have rankled the South Africans.
Cricket South Africa pointed out that they had already safely hosted Sri Lanka in Pretoria in a biosecure environment and that the Pakistan women’s team was playing a series of matches in Durban.
Graeme Smith, South Africa’s director of cricket, said that “to be informed of CA’s decision at the 11th hour is frustrating”.
Australia’s last tour of South Africa was mired in controversy over what became known as “Sandpaper gate”. Australian skipper Steve Smith and his deputy David Warner were banned from playing cricket for 12 months for their part in a plot to illegally alter the condition of the ball. South Africa won the series 3-1.
Yuan Yang in Wuhan and Christian Shepherd in Beijing
The World Health Organization team investigating the origins of the coronavirus on Wednesday visited the Wuhan virology institute that is a focal point of theories suggesting a lab leak is responsible for the pandemic.
The heavily guarded team of experts was escorted from the cordoned-off wing of their hotel to the Wuhan Institute of Virology by a delegation including plainclothes security as well as foreign ministry staff.
Peter Daszak, a team member and head of EcoHealth Alliance, a non-governmental organisation, told waiting press the team were “asking all the questions that need to be asked”.
The global team of epidemiologists, zoologists, virologists and public health experts is tasked with resolving the politically charged question of how Sars-Cov-2, the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, first began infecting humans.
Many critics of Beijing, such as Mike Pompeo, former US secretary of state, have argued that the Wuhan outbreak may have accidentally leaked during experiments on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a claim that both the institute and China’s government have fiercely denied.
Gary Jones in Hong Kong
The spread of Covid-19 has had a “profound” impact on the diagnosis and treatment of cancer around the world, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday.
The health body said 50 per cent of governments have had “cancer services partially or completely disrupted because of the pandemic”.
“Delays in diagnosis are common. Interruptions in therapy or abandonment have increased significantly,” said André Ilbawi, from the WHO’s Department of Noncommunicable Diseases, adding that this would likely have an impact on the number of cancer deaths in coming years.
“Healthcare professionals have been under great stress to deliver services and there are significant reductions in research and clinical trial enrolment. To state it simply, the consequences of the pandemic on cancer control efforts have been profound.”
In 2020, the number of people diagnosed with cancer globally reached 19.3m, with 10m dying, Mr Ilbawi said. The most common form of the disease is breast cancer, with 2.3m new cases in 2020 representing almost 12 per cent of the total.
According to WHO data, the economic burden of cancer worldwide is growing. Its cost in 2010 was estimated at $1.16tn.
Alice Woodhouse in Hong Kong
A series of testing and lockdown actions in Hong Kong on Tuesday night yielded no confirmed infections after officials defended the measures as crucial to bringing down infections ahead of the lunar new year.
Three areas of the city were sealed off with residents and people in businesses required to take a coronavirus test. In total, 2,170 people were tested for the virus with no confirmed cases, the second consecutive night that no new infections were found through the lockdown operations.
Samples from Jordan, a densely populated area of Kowloon, need further verification, a government statement said.
Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s chief executive, defended the actions in a press conference on Tuesday, after no new cases were found in a similar operation on Monday night.
Ms Lam said that public health efforts are designed to be preventive and finding no new cases was a positive development.
Hong Kong recorded 24 local coronavirus infections on Tuesday.
Gary Jones in Hong Kong
New Zealand’s medicines regulator Medsafe has provisionally approved the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for roll-out, starting with frontline border workers. It is the first vaccine to be approved in the Pacific nation.
“The provisional approval of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is a positive step in New Zealand’s fight against Covid-19,” said Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. “It means we can now begin preparations for the first stage in our vaccination roll-out.”
Provisional approval means the pharmaceutical company must meet conditions laid down by Medsafe, including supplying more data from its clinical trials around the world as they progress. This will happen at the same time as the vaccine is rolled out.
“Medsafe’s decision is the culmination of a rigorous assessment process over many months to ensure the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is safe and effective to use here,” said Ms Ardern.
Critics had warned that a slow vaccine rollout would undermine New Zealand’s success in eliminating local transmission of the virus as it is still vulnerable to imported infections.
New Zealand will commence roll-out by vaccinating its border workers and the people they live with. Such workers include cleaners, nurses who undertake health checks in managed isolation and quarantine facilities, security staff, customs and border officials, airline staff and hotel workers.
“We expect the first Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines will arrive in New Zealand by the end of the first quarter, but we are making sure everything is in place in case there is an earlier arrival,” said Covid-19 response minister Chris Hipkins. “Once vaccination of our border workers starts, we expect it to be completed within two to three weeks.”
Alice Woodhouse in Hong Kong
Health authorities in China reported 15 new locally transmitted cases of Covid-19 as strict virus control measures ahead of the lunar new year appeared to be successful.
China recorded 12 cases of Covid-19 on Tuesday, the lowest one-day tally this year.
The country has reported almost 2,080 cases of Covid-19 since the start of the year, due to the largest outbreaks since spring last year. Strict lockdown measures, mass testing and travel restrictions were imposed in the north of the country to control the outbreaks.
Jilin province reported eight new Covid-19 cases while neighbouring Heilongjiang, which borders Russia, recorded six, its lowest tally in three weeks. Hebei, a province neighbouring the capital Beijing, reported one new case, following anti-virus measures that included locking down tens of millions of people.
The country also reported that five people had been found to be infected with coronavirus but showed no symptoms. China does not include asymptomatic cases in its official tally.
Gary Jones
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio on Tuesday called for the United States to compel vaccine makers to license their products to domestic pharmaceutical companies, saying: “We need wartime mass production here in America.”
“The United States of America should not care more about patents than we care about people,” Mr de Blasio said in a statement, adding that “it is time to directly compel Pfizer or Moderna to license their vaccine to any pharmaceutical company that can help produce doses”.
“They are already doing this in Europe. Now, we need wartime mass production here in America. Every lab should have the freedom to manufacture the Covid-19 vaccine. New York City has the infrastructure in place to vaccinate millions in the next few months. We just need the supply!”
The statement follows Mr de Blasio’s comments on vaccine patents to MSNBC. Last week the mayor wrote a column for the news service calling for the government to grant more companies the freedom to vaccinate.
“Cities nationwide are doing everything possible to get shots into the arms of our people,” Mr de Blasio said. “But we face the same challenge we’ve faced since the beginning of this crisis: supply.
“We simply don’t have enough doses from the federal government. As of Friday morning, we’ve administered over 742,000 total vaccine doses to New Yorkers. We have less than 37,000 first doses left to administer … in a city of 8.6 million people.”
Anna Gross in London
People who have previously had coronavirus are unlikely to be reinfected for at least half a year, according to new UK research published on Wednesday.
The Biobank study, which included more than 20,000 participants, found that antibodies persisted in 99 per cent of people who had previously been infected with Sars-Cov-2 after three months, and in 88 per cent after six months.
“We have evidence here that antibodies do persist for at least six months,” said Rory Collins, professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of Oxford and principal investigator on the study. The 88 per cent figure was a “conservative estimate”, as the antibody blood tests the researchers used only looked for a specific antibody and missed out other kinds of antibodies and cell memory that could provide immune protection.
Prof Collins said the findings did “support the government’s decision to delay the second dose” of the Covid-19 vaccine, as it suggested that significant and long-lasting protection was conferred when high levels of antibodies were elicited.
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Peter Wells in New York
The US has reported fewer than 1m new coronavirus cases over the past week, the first time since November that the country has been below that threshold over a seven-day period.
The milestone was aided by states reporting an additional 115,619 new infections, according to Covid Tracking Project data on Tuesday. That was the smallest daily increase in cases since November 8 and the third day in a row daily cases have been below 120,000.
Over the past week, the US has reported 973,850 coronavirus cases, which marks the first time since November 13 the country has reported fewer than 1m new infections over a seven-day period.
A further 3,486 fatalities were attributed to coronavirus, according to Covid Tracking Project data. That was up from 1,562 on Monday and marked the highest daily death toll since Friday.
Still, the US has averaged 3,097 deaths a day over the past week, which is the lowest rate in eight days. That gradually declining trend in fatalities is accompanying hospitalisations and cases, which are now at their lowest levels in months.
The number of people currently in US hospitals with coronavirus fell to 92,880 from 93,536. That is the lowest level since late November, and every state except Vermont had fewer coronavirus patients in hospital compared with a week earlier, according to a Financial Times analysis of Covid Tracking Project data.
California, the most populous state, reported fewer than 15,000 hospitalisations for the first time since mid-December.
Alice Woodhouse in Hong Kong
Asia-Pacific stocks extended gains on Wednesday after Wall Street rallied for a second day.
Japan’s Topix was up 0.6 per cent, the Kospi in South Korea added 1 per cent and the S&P/ASX 200 was up 0.9 per cent.
Figures for the Japanese and Chinese service sectors later this morning will give investors pointers on the pandemic recovery in those two economies.
The moves in Asia came after the S&P 500 ended 1.4 per cent higher in the US on Tuesday and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite added 1.6 per cent as Google parent Alphabet and Amazon rose ahead of their results. Both companies beat Wall Street’s expectations.
S&P 500 futures were up 0.2 per cent.
Jamie Smyth in Sydney
New Zealand’s economy is recovering faster than expected from a Covid-19 slump with unemployment falling rapidly and a record surge in new construction jobs in the December quarter.
The jobless rate dropped to 4.9 per cent in the three months to the end of December, down from 5.3 per cent in the previous quarter, as 17,000 people joined the workforce. This follows a sharp fall in the number of employed people in the six months to the end September, when the government imposed tough lockdowns aimed at eliminating Covid-19 from the Pacific nation.
New Zealand’s employment rate of 66.8 per cent in the December quarter remains slightly below pre-pandemic levels but gives it the fifth highest employment rate in the OECD for 15-64 year olds, according to New Zealand’s statistics agency.
Grant Robertson, the country’s finance minister, said the government’s adept handling of Covid-19 had boosted business and consumer confidence. A wage subsidy scheme and pandemic support measures kept people connected to their jobs and supporting businesses and households, he said.
“Construction jobs rose by 21,000 annually, which included those working as plumbers, electricians and roofers. This more than offset the impact of Covid-19 on tourism-related industries,” said Mr Robertson.
The better than expected employment numbers prompted economists to revise their forecasts and predict a cycle of rate cuts by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand. “The improvement in employment and reduction in spare capacity in the labour market wasn’t expected by the RBNZ … We maintain our long held view of no further cuts to the OCR in this cycle,” Citi said in a note.
Ben Udy, economist at Capital Economics, said the labour market was set to tighten much faster than the RBNZ anticipates, “one reason why we expect the bank to begin raising rates by the end of next year”.
Mamta Badkar in New York
Match Group posted upbeat fourth quarter revenues but its disappointing forecast outlined challenges to the online dating and matchmaking business from the coronavirus pandemic.
The Dallas-based company, which owns Hinge and Tinder, said total revenue grew 19 per cent from a year ago to $651m in the fourth quarter, ahead of expectations for $649m, according to a Refinitiv survey of Wall Street analysts.
The number of average subscribers climbed 12 per cent to 10.9m, up from 9.8m in the same period a year ago. Net earnings rose to $140.6m or 48 cents a share, compared with $100.4m or 48 cents a share in the same period a year ago.
“Users continued to turn to dating products to meet people, especially as bars, restaurants and schools closed,” chief executive Shar Dubey said in a letter to shareholders. Match was quick to adapt to pandemic-era dating and people turned to new video chat features in many of the group’s flagship apps that allow them to go on dates without leaving their homes.
But a resurgence in coronavirus cases in the fourth quarter meant some areas performed better than others. The lockdown and the impact from Brexit “meaningfully impacted our first-time subscriber trends at several of our brands”, the company said, while in Japan, where the pandemic’s impact was more muted, Match reported strong new subscriber growth. Signs of recovery in India gave the company “optimism” about subscriber trends as “Covid factors abate”.
Looking ahead, the company forecasts revenue of between $2.75bn to $2.85bn in 2021, compared with analysts’ expectations for $2.84bn, sending shares 5 per cent lower in after-hours trade. For the current quarter, the company estimates revenues of between $645m and $655m, compared with expectations for $647m. The projections reflect some impact from continued effects of the pandemic, the company said.
Still, Ms Dubey noted that macro trends are “encouraging” as vaccines are being rolled-out and as singles are posting positive antibody test results and vaccine confirmations on their dating profiles.
“The value our apps provide will only accelerate when restaurants reopen and we return to a more normal — if still cautious — existence,” she added.
Richard Waters
An unexpected surge of advertising in the final months of last year lifted Google’s revenues far above Wall Street forecasts and boosted shares in parent Alphabet by 8 per cent in after-market trading on Tuesday.
A pandemic-fuelled holiday shopping season dominated by ecommerce, along with a partial return by advertisers who were hit hardest during the health crisis, brought one of the company’s strongest quarters in years, with revenue jumping by 23 per cent.
The rebound capped a volatile year that saw the Google internet business – which makes up more than 99 per cent of Alphabet’s revenue – suffer its first ever quarterly decline, before a recovery that defied even the most optimistic expectations. Alphabet’s revenue grew by 13 per cent for the year as a whole, even as non-digital corners of the global advertising business contracted by an estimated 20 per cent.
A new dependence on ecommerce by retailers lay behind the recovery, with advertisers forced to lean heavily on digital forms of advertising to reach consumers and drive sales. But the final quarter also saw companies in hard-hit sectors like travel start to advertise more actively again after a drought over the preceding six months, underpinning a wider recovery.
The rebound fuelled a 22 per cent increase in Google’s advertising revenue in the final quarter. That was an improvement from the 10 per cent of last year’s third quarter, and the 8 per cent contraction in the second. It also comfortably topped the 16 per cent growth rate seen in the whole of 2019, before the pandemic hit.
Overall, Alphabet reported revenue of $56.9bn, or around $3.8bn more than most analysts had expected in the period. Earnings per share reached $22.30, compared to the $15.90 that had been expected. Earnings came to $15.35 a share a year before, when profits were buoyed by the lack of a tax charge after Alphabet resolved an unspecified tax audit.
Peter Wells in New York
California’s coronavirus hospitalisations fell below 15,000 for the first time since mid-December and are projected to drop by more than half over the next month.
The number of people currently in California hospitals dropped to 14,999, according to data reported by the state health department on Tuesday. It was the first time below the 15,000 level since numbers reported on December 14.
Mark Ghaly, California’s health and human services secretary, at his regular press conference on Tuesday said hospitalisations were currently at 14,221, probably reflecting more up-to-date data.
Dr Ghaly said that based on current infection trends across the state, the number of hospitalisations is projected to drop to 6,557 by March 4.
The number of intensive care unit beds available across the state rose to 1,284, according to health department data, the highest level since early January. ICU bed availability was made a crucial metric in December that determined when broad regions of California would become subject to stay at home orders. Areas such as southern California, which includes hard-hit Los Angeles, and the San Joaquin Valley, spent weeks with no availability of regular ICU beds.
By the start of March, all five regions of California are projected to have more than 30 per cent ICU bed availability, Dr Ghaly said.
An additional 12,064 new infections were reported, down from 15,358 on Monday. That was the fewest number of new cases since late November.
A further 422 fatalities were attributed to coronavirus, double the number reported on Monday and compared to the average over the past week of about 543 deaths a day.
In late January, the encouraging trends in ICU bed usage, hospitalisations and cases paved the way for Governor Gavin Newsom to remove the stay at home order for all counties. As of Tuesday, 54 of California’s 58 counties are still in the purple tier, which imposes the tightest restrictions on business activities and social gatherings.
Although statewide case trends are declining, Dr Ghaly said they still remain high, and urged extra vigilance ahead of the upcoming Super Bowl final in the National Football League and lunar new year celebrations to prevent them from turning into “spreader events”.
Jeff Zients, the White House coronavirus tsar, announced on Tuesday the administration would start sending out vaccine doses directly to pharmacies, with injections expected to start on February 11. Some 1m doses have been allocated to pharmacies, to be delivered in 6,500 locations.
Tom Moore, the second world war veteran who became the face of British civic solidarity during the pandemic, died on Tuesday at the age of 100 after contracting Covid-19. Moore raised £32.8m for charity during the UK’s first lockdown after pledging to walk 100 lengths of his garden to mark his birthday.
The Scottish government will introduce a managed coronavirus quarantine system for all people arriving from overseas. Addressing the Scottish parliament, first minister Nicola Sturgeon described as “inadequate” the UK government’s plans to have supervised quarantine for travellers from only those countries considered to be particularly high risk.
Sweden became the latest European country not to recommend the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine for over 65s due to a lack of test data on its use in older people. Poland, meanwhile, will only use the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine on 18- to 60-year-olds. Dubai has approved the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine for use, receiving its first batch of supplies from manufacturing facilities in India on Tuesday.
United Parcel Service has become the latest logistics group to report higher sales and profits after a boom in online shopping. The Atlanta-based company’s average daily package volume in the fourth quarter climbed 10.6 per cent year on year, while revenues were up across its domestic, international and freight businesses.
Russia’s flagship two-shot vaccine Sputnik V has shown 91.6 per cent efficacy against symptomatic Covid-19 in clinical trials, a Lancet peer review has confirmed, bringing the global total of vaccines whose efficacy is confirmed to be higher than 90 per cent to three.
Pfizer now expects about $15bn in revenue this year from its Covid-19 vaccine developed with BioNTech, pushing up its 2021 guidance. It predicts a profit margin in the high 20s as a percentage of revenue for the Covid-19 vaccine, on an adjusted income before tax basis.
Portugal’s economy contracted 7.6 per cent in 2020, the biggest fall since the country returned to democracy in 1974, as the pandemic caused a record drop in tourism earnings and a sharp fall in private consumption.
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