Updated at 2/9/2021, 1: 38: 01 PM BST
Mamta Badkar and Leila Abboud
Beauty group Coty said weak make-up demand from consumers stuck at home during the pandemic resulted in a bigger than expected quarterly sales drop.
The New York-based company’s revenues fell 16 per cent from a year ago to $1.42bn in the crucial holiday quarter ended December 31. The decline was slightly bigger than the drop to $1.43bn forecast by Wall Street analysts, according to a Refinitiv survey.
Shares fell as much as 15 per cent in pre-market trade before trimming their losses to trade 5 per cent lower.
“The consumer business was soft everywhere at the end of last year because of lockdowns and stores closures” that make it difficult for consumers to try on and buy makeup, Sue Nabi, chief executive, said.
Sales at Coty’s mass market division, which includes brands such as Covergirl, fell 23.3 per cent. The company said the segement remained “challenged, largely due to lower demand for colour cosmetics stemming from fewer usage occasions and reduced in-store traffic, particularly amid additional waves of Covid”. Online sales grew at a double-digit pace during the quarter, however.
Revenues at the prestige division, which includes brands such as Miu Miu and Philosophy, also declined, albeit by a less steep 11.1 per cent. Travel retail accounted for about half the decline at its luxury division, though online sales rose by more than 40 per cent.
The decline was particularly steep in Europe, Middle East and Africa, where revenues fell 21.9 per cent. They dipped 7.2 per cent in the Americas and 13 per cent in Asia-Pacific.
Overall, Coty’s net loss widened to $252.3m, equivalent to 36 cents a share. That compared with a loss of $21.1m or 3 cents a share in the year ago quarter.
Adjusted for one-time items, the company reported earnings of 17 cents a share.
Coty also increased its cost savings target to $300m for the fiscal year from $200m previously.
Harry Dempsey
AstraZeneca’s chief executive has sought to allay fears about the efficacy of its vaccine against new strains of coronavirus after South Africa postponed the rollout of the jab following the results of a clinical trial.
While he described the results of the study, which suggested the vaccine had limited effectiveness in preventing mild cases against the variant that has spread in South Africa, as a concern, Pascal Soriot said on Tuesday that he was confident the jab prevented severe disease triggered by the mutated strain.
“Of course it is a concern,” Soriot said of the results of a limited phase one trial on young adults. It found that the company’s vaccine, developed with Oxford university, had low efficacy rates against milder illness with the 501Y.V2 variant.
However, addressing the World Health Organization, he noted: “The efficacy against the disease varies according to the severity of the infection.”
Pitching the jab’s role in the WHO’s scheme to ensure equitable access to vaccines, he said: “The protection conferred by the vaccines far outweighs the risk to vaccines from potential new variants”.
AstraZeneca’s vaccine is yet to receive emergency use approval from the WHO. The pharmaceutical company could supply as many as 300m doses to 145 countries in the first half of this year, Soriot said.
Philip Georgiadis
The aviation industry has called for an urgent plan out of the travel restrictions unveiled by the UK government as it warned the outlook was darkening for a sector that has endured a year of disruption.
On Tuesday, Matt Hancock, the health secretary, confirmed a scheme under which all arrivals into the country would need to take tests on the second and eighth days after arrival, adding to a host of other restrictions on travel.
The country’s airlines and airports said in a joint statement that the new measures “add a further barrier to viable air travel” and said they should be reviewed on a fortnightly basis.
Lockdowns and travel restrictions have sent air traffic to near its lowest levels since last spring. There were 796 flights into and out of UK airports on Monday, just 15 per cent of normal levels, according to data from Eurocontrol, which co-ordinates air traffic management.
“A two-week review clause is essential to ensure that the current complex, blanket set of measures are rolled-back as soon as it is safe to do so. International travel must also be part of the prime minister’s forthcoming roadmap out of lockdown,” AirlinesUK and the Airport Operators’ Association said in a joint statement.
Jim Pickard
Matt Hancock, the UK health secretary, has confirmed that people coming to the country will have to take Covid-19 tests soon after entry for the first time since the crisis began a year ago.
Hancock announced a new scheme under which all arrivals into the country will need to take tests on the second and eighth days after arrival – in addition to producing a negative test result within 72 hours before departure.
“We must strengthen our defences,” he told the House of Commons. “Everyone has a part to play in making our borders safe.”
A minority of travellers to England, coming from 33 countries on a government “red list”, will from Monday have to stay in hotels for a 10-day government-mandated quarantine. The government is in talks with the Welsh, Scottish and Northern Ireland administrations to set up similar schemes.
Hancock announced that the government has now struck deals with 16 hotels to provide 4,600 rooms for the new quarantine system. That is only a fraction of the estimated 28,000 that are needed over the first month of the scheme. Some hotel operators have been deterred by the government’s refusal to block-book entire venues while only offering to pay for the rooms that are used.
Foreigners from the 33 red list countries are already banned from coming into the UK. British residents, however, can return home from them if they take part in the supervised hotel quarantine.
Hancock said that these individuals will have to book through an online platform – which goes live on Thursday – and pay £1,750 for hotel, transport and testing.
The health secretary also announced £1,000 fines for any international arrival who failed to take a mandatory test. Likewise, there will be a new £5,000 fixed penalty notice – rising to £10,000 – for arrivals who refuse to go to a quarantine-designated hotel.
The Financial Times has been your guide to the coronavirus pandemic since the outbreak of Covid-19 was first detected more than 12 months ago.
Here are some of the developments we were reporting on a year ago today:
• The coronavirus death toll surpassed that of the 2002-03 Sars outbreak. China’s National Health Commission said 89 people had died as a result of the coronavirus epidemic over the previous 24 hours, setting a record for fatalities in such a time period.
• Businesses in China were set to remain closed despite the government’s efforts to restart the world’s second-largest economy after the outbreak.
• North Korea clamped down on trade and travel, as one of the world’s most reclusive nations isolated itself even further in its efforts to stem the spread of the virus.
• As Singapore intensified its response to the outbreak, ride-hailing leaders Grab and Gojek found themselves on the front lines of efforts to contain infection.
• Chinese energy executives warned that oil consumption in the country in February could be 25 per cent lower than a year earlier. Oil prices had tumbled more than 15 per cent since the beginning of 2020 to trade at about $55 a barrel.
For all the latest on the pandemic, visit the FT’s pandemic title page.
Harry Dempsey
Peter Ben Embarek, the leader of the World Health Organization investigation into the origin of Covid-19, has given reasons why he believes that it is “extremely unlikely” that the virus came from a Wuhan laboratory.
While “accidents do happen” in labs, they are “extremely rare”, said the WHO food safety scientist as he summarised the findings of the investigation taking place in Wuhan.
The evidence he cited included the absence of research or publications on the particular virus strain by nearby labs, which he said would be likely if one of them possessed it; discussion with staff at the labs; hearing about staff health monitoring programmes; and visits to some of the laboratories.
A site inspection at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the focus of theories that the coronavirus was leaked, showed that it was “very unlikely that anything could escape from such a place”, Ben Embarek added.
Harry Dempsey
The chairman of the World Health Organization investigation into the origin of Covid-19 said that it was most likely that the virus in humans originated from an intermediary animal species, as he cast strong doubt on the idea that the virus came from a Wuhan laboratory accused of being the source.
Peter Ben Embarek, a food safety scientist at the WHO, said the investigation had been considering four hypotheses of how the virus began: a direct jump from animals to humans; transmission through an intermediary animal species; transmission via frozen products; and through a laboratory in Wuhan.
“Our initial findings suggest that the introduction through an intermediary host species is the most likely pathway and that will require more studies,” he said at a press conference in Wuhan. He added that more study would also be needed into the possibility of circulation via the cold-chain or origination through direct transmission.
It is “extremely unlikely” that the virus originated from a Wuhan virology laboratory, which has become the focus of theories suggesting a leak was responsible for the pandemic, he added.
There have been doubts whether the investigation would throw up any big findings on the question of the virus’s origin given Beijing’s tight grip on the visit, the time limitations placed on fieldwork and the fact that the investigators arrived more than a year after the virus was detected in Wuhan. Embarek acknowledged the limited progress made via the field trip.
“Did we change dramatically the picture we had beforehand? I don’t think so,” he said. “Did we improve our understanding? Did we add details to that story? Absolutely.”
There was no evidence that the virus spread widely in Wuhan or elsewhere before December 2019, he said. However, virus clusters in Wuhan were present in the early stages of the outbreak not only in the Huanan Seafood Market, long suspected as the source of the virus, but also other parts of the city.
Liang Wannian, the lead Chinese epidemiologist on the investigation team, said evidence suggests the virus jumped from bats or pangolins to an intermediary before infecting humans.
Valentina Romei
About one in six children in England and Wales has spoken to someone they have never met in person and 5 per cent have later met up with someone they had only spoken to online, raising concern over the increased time young people are spending online during the pandemic.
In the year to March, largely before the Covid-19 pandemic, almost nine in 10 children aged 10 to 15 years said they went online every day, the Office for National Statistics said on Tuesday.
Children have spent more time online during the coronavirus pandemic as many schools have closed and mobility has been restricted, making online safety for the young a more pressing concern.
Three-quarters of British parents report their children’s screentime climbed to an average of nine hours a day at the height of lockdown, nearly double the amount before the coronavirus outbreak, a separate survey of 5,000 parents has shown.
While the majority of children reported only speaking to or exchanging messages with people online whom they knew in person, 17 per cent of them spoke with someone they had never met before. The figure is equivalent to nearly 700,000 children.
An estimated 5 per cent of children, equivalent to about 212,000 children aged 10 to 15 years, met up in person with someone they had only spoken to online in the previous 12 months. Meeting up with strangers after online contact was more common among boys than girls.
Sarah Provan
The director of the Oxford Vaccine Group has sought to soothe unease over the AstraZeneca vaccine after South Africa postponed the rollout of the jab following the results of a clinical trial.
South Africa had planned to distribute the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab this month, but the government said at the weekend it would wait until it received clearer guidance from scientists over its efficacy against a variant first detected in the country.
A limited phase one trial on young adults found that the vaccine had low efficacy rates against milder illness with the 501Y.V2 variant.
Andrew Pollard, who led the clinical trials for the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine in the UK, Brazil and South Africa, on Tuesday recognised there was “clearly a risk of confidence in the way that people may perceive it”.
But he added: “I don’t think there’s any reason for alarm today.”
“All vaccines everywhere in the world, where they have been tested, are still preventing severe disease and death,” Pollard told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“We are going to see new variants arise, and they will spread in the population,” he added. “As long as we have enough immunity to prevent the severe disease, hospitalisations and death, then we’re going to be fine.”
He said the variant that is most prevalent in the UK population could be prevented with the vaccines available and stressed the importance to individuals of getting inoculated against Covid-19.
Alistair Gray
Millions of UK consumers have turned to online food shopping for the first time under the latest lockdown restrictions, doubling e-commerce’s share of the grocery market.
One in three British households purchased groceries via the internet last month and spent a combined £1.4bn, figures from NielsenIQ, a data analytics company, on Tuesday showed. Almost half the households, or 4.1m, had never done so before.
The surge brought the online share of the UK grocery market to 16 per cent, an increase from 8 per cent over the same time last year and surpassing a previous peak in June, when online grabbed a 14 per cent share.
Spending in bricks-and-mortar supermarkets was about the same as it was the same period a year ago, at £7.3bn. Total grocery spending rose 10.6 per cent thanks to the online boom and spending diverted from eating out.
Martin Arnold in Frankfurt
A rebound in German exports helped the country’s economy to avoid a recession at the end of 2020, although it was not enough to prevent the biggest fall in outbound trade for more than a decade last year.
Despite increasingly strict coronavirus restrictions, German exports recorded their eighth consecutive monthly increase in December and were 2.7 per cent above the same month of the previous year, according to data published by the Federal Statistical Office on Tuesday.
However, the rebound was not enough to offset the initial impact of the coronavirus pandemic last year, leading to a 9.3 per cent fall in German exports over the whole of 2020 – the biggest decline since an 18.4 per cent drop after the financial crisis in 2009.
Meanwhile, China overtook France as Germany’s second-largest export market behind the US last year. Exports from Germany to the UK fell 15.9 per cent. Overall, including imports, China replaced the US as Germany’s biggest trading partner in 2020.
Imports to Germany fell 7.1 per cent last year, with a 9 per cent drop in goods and services flowing from the rest of the eurozone offsetting a 5.6 per cent rise in imports from China.
“The revival of the traditional German growth driver, exports, came at the right moment and helped avoid a contraction of the economy in the final quarter of 2020,” said Carsten Brzeski, head of global macro research at ING.
Kana Inagaki in Tokyo
Nissan and Honda raised their annual profit guidance on Tuesday as the two Japanese carmakers cut costs to buck a decline in vehicle sales caused by the pandemic-triggered global chip shortage.
Nissan, Japan’s second-largest carmaker and owned 43 per cent by France’s Renault, trimmed its vehicle sales forecast for the fiscal year ending in March by 3.6 per cent from its earlier projection, while rival Honda cut its target 2.2 per cent.
Both blamed a semiconductor shortage that was sparked by the sudden rebound in global car sales towards the end of last year, which led to a shortfall in crucial components and has forced carmakers worldwide to idle plants.
The companies said they did not expect the chip shortage to have a big impact on the new financial year starting in April.
“By May or June next [fiscal] year, the whole world should be out of this crisis,” Ashwani Gupta, Nissan’s chief operating officer, said at an online news conference.
The two Japanese groups have offset the negative impact from the Covid-19 slowdown and chip shortage with aggressive cost cutting. Honda said it spent less on marketing as lockdowns forced the group to switch to online events for product launches and motors shows.
As a result, Japan’s third-largest carmaker raised its full-year net profit forecast by 19 per cent to ¥465bn ($4.4bn).
For the fiscal year ending in March, Nissan also trimmed its net loss forecast to ¥530bn from ¥615bn, citing steady progress with its turnround plan.
Sarah Provan
Micro Focus, one of Britain’s largest technology companies, raised a goodwill impairment charge to $2.8bn as it completed the first year of a three-year turnround plan but reinstated its dividend.
The IT group on Tuesday reported a 9 per cent decline in full-year sales to $3bn for the year ended October 31, in line with expectations and showing a mild improvement compared with the 11 per cent fall posted in the first half. The group is to reinstate its dividend, recommending a final payout of 15.5 cents per share.
The group in the first half said it had written down almost $1bn of goodwill, blaming the coronavirus pandemic for disruption and greater uncertainty.
Shares in the FTSE 250 software group rose 2 per cent in early London trading on Tuesday. They have dropped about 35 per cent over the past 12 months but have picked up 16 per cent since the start of 2021.
Micro Focus, once valued at nearly £12bn, has struggled since buying Hewlett-Packard’s software business in 2017 for £8.8bn.
The group’s exceptional charge was driven by changes in its “trading performance and overall environment” when compared with the projections that it produced at the time of the HPE Software acquisition. It blamed the $1bn writedown in its first-half numbers in July on the coronavirus pandemic creating disruption and greater uncertainty.
Adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation came to $1.2bn, compared with $1.4bn a year earlier as the group cut costs.
Victor Mallet in Paris
The French economy remained stable in January with activity running at 5 per cent below pre-crisis levels, the same as in December and an improvement on November’s 7 per cent shortfall, the central bank said in its latest monthly business survey.
“There was little change in industry, services and construction but activity remains badly affected for hotels and the restaurant trade,” the Banque de France said, noting the nationwide night-time curfew that runs from 6pm to 6pm.
The bank’s survey is based on reports from 8,500 businesses between January 27 and February 3. Those surveyed expect activity in February to remain at roughly the same level as in January, with a very slight decline in services, although uncertainty remains over whether the government will need to impose another lockdown.
According to the national statistics institute Insee, the French economy shrank 8.3 per cent last year as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, a sharp reversal from the 1.5 per cent growth in 2019 but a better performance than the government’s revised budget forecasts.
Najmeh Bozorgmehr in Tehran
Iran started coronavirus vaccinations on Tuesday by injecting the first dose of Russia’s Sputnik V to the son of the country’s health minister to reassure people about its safety.
“My father would not have let me have this vaccine if there was any problem with it,” said Parsa Namaki, the son of health minister Saeed Namaki. “I insisted,” he added, “in case it can have any impact to help build public trust”.
He was speaking in a video call with President Hassan Rouhani after his inoculation was broadcast live on national television.
Iran banned imports of vaccines developed in the US and UK last month on government’s fears about their risks and producers’ alleged intentions to test those jabs on Iranians.
Many Iranian citizens and doctors questioned the health ministry’s choice of Russian vaccine and its safety.
About 100 members of the Medical Council of the Islamic Republic of Iran, an influential body that certifies Iranian doctors and has been leading criticisms against politicisation of vaccines, said last week that the Russian vaccine was “unjustifiable and risky”. In a statement, they called on the government to buy the world’s best vaccines.
Rouhani told people that all imported vaccines and domestic jabs, which will be produced by the end of spring, would not be risky. He said he had volunteered to receive the first jab but that the health minister chose his son because “he is the most dear to him”.
Iran with 58,536 deaths has the highest official fatality rate in the Middle East to date.
Alice Hancock
Tui said it expected a rebound in summer demand and higher prices thanks to the rollout of vaccines as Europe’s largest tour operator aimed to offset losses that have more than tripled over the winter season.
The Hanover-based travel group said on Tuesday it had received 2.8m bookings for the summer, with average prices up about a fifth as consumers who had saved money during lockdowns searched for holidays later in the year. It plans to run 80 per cent of its normal holiday programme this year.
Bookings for the season were at 56 per cent of the level received at the same time for summer 2019, however.
Fritz Joussen, chief executive, said a “high savings rate” across the EU meant “the scope for consumer spending is high”.
“The significant increase in spending on booked travel reflects this very clearly,” he said, adding that he hoped vaccinations would lead to “the restoration of basic freedoms” including travel.
The company reported revenues in the three months to the end of December down 88 per cent from €3.85bn to €468m, however, as it battled ongoing lockdowns and travel bans across its key European markets.
It fell to a loss in underlying earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of €698m – more than tripling its losses compared with the same period last year, before the pandemic hit.
Tui said it had reduced monthly cash outgoings to about €300m from its previous expectations of up to €450m a month. The company said it had liquidity of €2.1bn at the beginning of February, in part thanks to a recent €500m rights issue and a third tranche of state-backed funding.
Jonathan Eley
Ocado said it would pour £700m into new projects for its technology clients in 2021 and warned that it expected to incur “significantly higher” legal costs amid a patent row with rival AutoStore.
The company is building dozens of automated fulfilment centres similar to the three facilities in the UK that handle its own retail joint venture. Two more warehouses for third-party clients will open in the first half of this year.
Full-year group earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation were £73m, up from £43m a year earlier but £10m below an average of analyst forecasts compiled by the company, partly due to heavy investment.
Group sales rose by a third to £2.3bn.
Underlying profit at Ocado Retail, its ecommerce joint venture with Marks and Spencer, was well ahead of forecasts at £148m against £40m a year earlier as customers turned in large numbers to shopping online for their groceries during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Christian Shepherd in Beijing
Automotive sales in China rose 34.6 per cent year on year in January, extending the world’s largest car market’s rapid recovery from a coronavirus-induced slump.
Data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) released on Tuesday showed year-on-year rises across almost all segments.
That included a 285.8 per cent jump in battery-powered and hybrid cars, in part due to soaring deliveries from Chinese electric car startups such as Nio, Xpeng and Li Auto.
Since July last year, China’s electric car market has sped out of a year-long sales slump and reached record figures for the year, although the segment only accounts for a little more than 5 per cent of total deliveries.
The Chinese car market’s faster-than-expected recovery — CAAM initially estimated a 10 per cent decline in sales for 2020 — has made it a rare bright spot for global automakers from Volvo to Volkswagen that face weak demand in Europe and North America.
CAAM data for last year show that sales over the 12 months declined by 1.9 per cent compared with 2019, in part thanks to growth in commercial vehicle sales such as trucks.
Passenger vehicle sales fell 6 per cent for the year. Shipments for the popular sports utility vehicle segment were especially strong, closing out the year at just more than 2019 levels, while premium car sales grew significantly year on year every month from April to December.
At least 133,055,494 doses of coronavirus vaccines have been administered around the world, data from 83 countries show.
After a year of breakneck research into more than 230 vaccine candidates, seven coronavirus vaccines are now in use in at least one country.
Israel has been the fastest to roll out inoculations. More than a third of its population have already received at least one dose of vaccine.
Check out the FT Visual and Data Journalism team’s vaccine tracker here
Tim Bradshaw and Siddharth Venkataramakrishnan
The NHS contact-tracing app has prevented the transmission of hundreds of thousands of Covid-19 cases in England and Wales, researchers have estimated, in one of the world’s first studies of efficacy of the smartphone-based system developed in conjunction with Apple and Google.
Researchers at the Alan Turing Institute and Oxford university have estimated that every 1 per cent increase in app users can reduce coronavirus cases by as much as 2.3 per cent.
The app has sent 1.7m notifications to its more than 21m users telling people to isolate so far. Of those, the Turing/Oxford researchers estimate that about 600,000 cases were averted by the end of December.
Read more here
Amy Kazmin in New Delhi
A new seroprevalence study in India’s southern state of Tamil Nadu has estimated that 31.6 per cent of the 72m residents have been exposed to the virus that causes Covid-19.
The results highlighted how the pathogen has spread far wider than New Delhi officially acknowledges.
India has reported 10.8m coronavirus cases among its 1.4bn people — the world’s second highest tally, after the US — and about 154,000 deaths.
Tamil Nadu, the country’s second most populous state, has reported more than 800,000 infections and 12,000 deaths.
But public health experts said India’s reported case count understates how widely the virus has spread among the population. A nationwide seroprevalence study released by the Indian Council of Medical Research last week estimated that one in five Indians had been exposed to the virus by early January.
The study in Tamil Nadu, carried out between mid-October and late November by the state government and the IDFC Institute, tested 26,640 adults from a representative sample of the population for the presence of antibodies that would indicate past infections caused by the Sars-CoV-2 virus.
The study found wide regional variations in seroprevalence across the state, with the rate as high as 51 per cent in some districts and just 11 per cent in the sparsely populous region of The Nilgiris.
Overall, seroprevalence in urban areas was higher, at 37 per cent, than in rural areas, with 27 per cent.
The study also found seroprevalence was significantly higher in working age people than among the elderly, with those over 75 years having an infection rate of just 25 per cent.
The study implied that at least 22.6m people in Tamil Nadu have been infected with Sars-CoV-2 by November, roughly 36 times the number of reported cases.
Alice Woodhouse in Hong Kong
Macau’s chief executive received a Chinese-developed Covid-19 vaccine on Tuesday morning as the territory began rolling out inoculations.
Ho Iat Seng, alongside other government officials and frontline medics, was given the Sinopharm vaccine as the Chinese territory began administering the jabs, Chinese state media reported.
Macau, the only place where casino gambling is legal on Chinese soil, received 100,000 doses of the vaccine over the weekend.
Neighbouring Hong Kong is awaiting further data from trials for the rival Chinese Sinovac jab before it approves the vaccine for use in the city. It has approved the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine, with delivery expected by the end of this month.
Cliver Cookson and Anna Gross in London
Initial evidence that the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine offered only “minimal” protection against mild to moderate cases of the Covid-19 variant first identified in South Africa has focused global attention on the threat posed by mutations.
Variants have become increasingly prevalent as the Sars-Cov-2 virus has spread around the world infecting more than 100m people. Some of the mutations have made the virus more contagious and better able to escape the immune protection provided by vaccines and prior infection.
The South African study was relatively small and did not assess the effect of vaccination on severe disease or mortality, but the results have already persuaded its government to halt the roll-out of the Oxford/AstraZeneca shot.
Read more about what these variants mean for vaccines here
Alice Woodhouse in Hong Kong
Health authorities in China reported no new locally transmitted cases of Covid-19 for a second day as the country prepared to celebrate the lunar new year.
Strict lockdowns, multiple rounds of mass testing and travel restrictions appeared to have controlled a series of outbreaks in the north of the country that represented the largest surge in infections since early 2020.
There was one person found to be infected with coronavirus who showed no symptoms. The case was found in Heilongjiang, a province bordering Russia that has recorded more than 900 Covid-19 cases so far this year.
China does not include asymptomatic cases in its official tally.
Yuan Yang in Wuhan
The pavement outside Wuhan’s virology institute was lined with security guards and plainclothes officers when the convoy of government cars carrying the World Health Organization team arrived at the home of China’s highest level biosafety laboratory.
With the international press watching on, it was a tense moment for the foreign ministry officials and local government staff last week who have shadowed the scientists since they arrived in January.
As his vehicle was driven past, Peter Daszak, a member of the WHO delegation, wound down the car window to assure the assembled press that the team was “asking all the questions that need to be asked”.
Chinese authorities insist they are co-operating fully with the WHO study into the origins of the Sars-Cov-2 virus that caused the Covid-19 pandemic. But Beijing’s tight grip on the visit, the time limitations placed on fieldwork and the fact they arrived more than a year after the virus was detected in Wuhan have fed doubts over whether they can answer a politically charged and scientifically difficult question.
Read more here
Peter Wells in New York
The US on Monday reported the lowest number of new coronavirus infections since October and the smallest daily increase in deaths in two months.
States reported an additional 77,737 new infections, according to Covid Tracking Project data, marking the smallest daily increase in cases since October 27. That was down from the 95,994 new infections reported on Sunday, which was the first time since November 2 that daily cases in the US were below 100,000.
Monday data tend to be lower than other days of the week due to weekend delays in reporting, but the latest figures reflect encouraging signs for the pandemic in the US, where hospitalisations have been on a sustained downward trend and daily death rates appear to be plateauing.
Authorities attributed a further 1,309 deaths to coronavirus, down from 1,475 on Sunday. It was the smallest number of reported fatalities since December 7.
The number of people currently in US hospitals with coronavirus dropped for the 27th day in a row to 80,055. That is the lowest level of hospitalisations since November 18 and a drop of about 40 per cent since a peak in the first week of January.
Only Hawaii had more patients in hospitals compared with a week earlier, according to a Financial Times analysis of Covid Tracking Project data.
Alice Woodhouse in Hong Kong
Asia equities struggled for momentum on Tuesday in the wake of a global rally on optimism for further US stimulus.
The Topix in Japan dipped 0.1 per cent, the Kospi in South Korea added 0.8 per cent, while the S&P/ASX 200 in Australia dipped 0.4 per cent.
Wall Street stocks extended a recent rally on Monday, with the S&P 500 closing up 0.7 per cent at a record. That rise meant the index notched its sixth day of gains, its longest winning streak since August as investors focused on the progress of President Joe Biden’s stimulus package.
Valentina Romei in London
UK consumer spending and retail sales fell in January at the fastest pace since May, suggesting the economy has been hit harder by the current lockdown than November’s restrictions despite people switching to online shopping.
Consumer spending fell 16.3 per cent in January compared with the same month last year, the largest annual drop since the spring, according to Barclaycard data, tracking nearly half of all UK credit and debit card transactions.
The drop was much sharper than the 1.9 per cent fall in November and it is consistent with the economy shrinking more severely than the 2.6 per cent contraction registered during that previous lockdown period.
Read more here
Jude Webber in Mexico City
A senior Mexican health official was fired on Monday after attending the Super Bowl in Florida one day after telling people in his state to stay at home to fight Covid-19.
Carlos Aranza, co-ordinator of the Health Institute of the State of Mexico, had been photographed in the audience at the game.
The image was posted online by Carlos Loret, a prominent journalist. Aranza and an adviser, José Fernando Gil García, were both fired; the state government cited “the officials’ lack of sensitivity in attending a mass sporting event”, according to media reports.
The state, which borders Mexico City, is on red — the highest risk status — under the Mexican epidemiological traffic light system.
On Saturday, Aranza posted a message on his Facebook page urging people in the state to stay at home.
Mexico’s federal coronavirus tsar, Hugo López-Gatell, caused a scandal over the Christmas holidays when he was seen talking on a phone on an aeroplane without a mask and maskless at a restaurant in a popular seaside spot.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador defended him staunchly and López Gatell remained in his post.
Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warned the US would need to vaccinate as many people as possible in the coming weeks to beat the clock on the spread of the more transmissible B.1.1.7 coronavirus variant.
More than 12m people in the UK have been given their first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, health secretary Matt Hancock said on Monday.
Portugal has become the latest country to restrict administering the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine to older people, saying it should only be given to over-65-year-olds when no other vaccine is available.
Facebook announced measures designed to bolster its efforts to push authoritative Covid-19 vaccine information while increasing the range of health-related claims it will remove.
New York City is set to restart indoor dining at restaurants on Friday, two days earlier than previously planned.
Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, back at work on Monday after two weeks convalescing from Covid-19, acknowledged he was given experimental therapies as part of his treatment and ruled out making mask-wearing mandatory to try to curb the spread of the virus.
Delta Air Lines plans to leave middle seats empty through April, sticking with the policy months after rivals have abandoned it.
The coronavirus vaccine developed by China’s CanSino Biologics has shown 66 per cent efficacy in preventing symptomatic cases in the first results from late stage trials, according to Pakistan’s health minister.
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