Coronavirus: NRA cancels annual meeting due to Covid case surge in Houston - as it happened

The National Rifle Association announced it has cancelled this year’s annual meeting, which was due to take place in Houston, owing to the elevated rates of Covid-19 in the city.

The decision to scrap all associated events and meetings that were scheduled to take place from September 3 through 5 was made due to “concern over the safety of our NRA family and community”, the gun rights advocacy group said on Tuesday.

Organisers said they would provide future notification regarding a rescheduled date for the annual meeting of members, but this now marks the second year in a row the event has been cancelled due to the pandemic.

“We make this difficult decision after analyzing relevant data regarding Covid-19 in Harris County, Texas,” the NRA said in a statement, referring to the area around Houston.

Organisers acknowledged that attendees would return home to family, friends and colleagues right across the US, “so any impacts from the virus could have broader implications.”

Harris County and the city of Houston have, together, reported case numbers in excess of 2,000 new infections on at least half of days over the past month, according to county data. Those are the area’s highest levels since late January, when it was overcoming the worst of a winter surge that pushed new cases to more than 4,000 a day.

The Houston-based Texas Medical Center says that about two-thirds of its overall intensive care unit beds are currently occupied, with 28 per cent of them being used by Covid-19 patients. However, the rising number of patients has caused it to use up all of its lower-level ICU capacity in so-called Phase 1 and Phase 2.

Texas is reporting the second-highest daily volumes of cases in the US, after Florida. The pair rank second and third in the US by population. On a per capita basis, Texas ranks 12th in the country, with an average of about 58 new cases per 100,000 people a day over the past week, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.

Concerns about rising coronavirus case and hospitalisations in other parts of the country have prompted some entertainers to cancel concerts and event organisers, such as the Kansas City Federal Reserve, to switch planned meetings over to virtual formats.

Goldman Sachs will require proof of vaccination from all staff and clients entering its offices, as vaccine mandates proliferate across the US public and private sectors after the BioNTech-Pfizer Covid-19 jab received full regulatory approval.

A Goldman spokesperson said the requirement would apply to any individual entering its offices from September 7, and that any employees who are not fully vaccinated would be expected to work from home. 

It will also require masks to be worn in its buildings’ common areas from Wednesday, whether or not people are vaccinated. From September 7 it will include fully vaccinated staff in its mandatory weekly Covid-19 testing programme, which currently applies to unvaccinated or partially vaccinated staff.  

Goldman’s decision came a day after the Food and Drug Administration approved the Pfizer shot and President Joe Biden called for businesses and government leaders that had been waiting for such a decision to require vaccinations of their employees.

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New York governor Kathy Hochul said she wants to require that teachers get vaccinated or tested weekly for Covid-19, in addition to implementing a new statewide school mask mandate on her first day at the helm.

Hochul made the announcement in an inaugural address after formally replacing Andrew Cuomo as governor on Tuesday.

The moves come amid battles in the US over forcing students to wear masks in school, punctuated this week by a new lawsuit in Missouri challenging local mask mandates. Some states, including California and New Jersey, have made it a requirement for teachers to get Covid-19 shots or submit to regular testing.

“We need to require vaccinations for all school personnel, with an option to test out weekly, at least for now,” Hochul said. However, in order to do this in New York, “we need partnerships with all levels of government, and I’m working now on getting this done,” she added.

Hochul also said she was “immediately directing” New York’s health department to make universal masking a requirement for anyone in school buildings. More school-related policies will be announced later this week, according to the governor.

Before leaving office, Cuomo had called for school districts to implement a vaccine-or-test policy and left it up to local officials to decide whether to set rules on face coverings.

Thus far, only New York City has issued a vaccine mandate for teachers and other school personnel. Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the mandate on Monday, after previously saying school staff would have to get vaccinated or tested weekly.

Following the US Food and Drug Administration’s full approval of the BioNTech/Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine, New Yorkers “can expect new vaccine requirements,” Hochul said, “and more on that soon.”

Missouri’s attorney-general has launched legal action against school districts in the state, one of the summer hotspots for the Delta variant of Covid-19, that have set mask requirements for students and teachers.

Eric Schmitt announced he filed a class-action lawsuit on Tuesday, challenging a mask mandate that had been introduced by education officials in the city of Columbia.

“Forcing schoolchildren to mask all day in school flies in the face of science, especially given children’s low risk of severe illness and death and their low risk of transmission,” Schmitt said in a statement. 

“We filed this suit today because we fundamentally don’t believe in forced masking, rather that parents and families should have the power to make decisions on masks, based on science and facts,” he continued.

The lawsuit names Columbia Public Schools, the Board of Education for the school district of Columbia and its board members, and the superintendent for Columbia Public Schools as defendants.

The lawsuit adds to a growing pile of legal challenges to mask mandates that have sprung up across the US. A Tallahassee judge is midway through a three-day hearing pitting pro-mask parents against Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s executive order prohibiting schools and local officials from setting face covering rules.

Last week, the Texas Supreme Court declined to hold up Governor Greg Abbott’s ban on mask mandates, a move that (for the time being) allows some school districts and local officials to set their own face covering requirements. Arkansas lawmakers earlier this month voted against a bill that attempted to overturn a state law prohibiting schools from setting mask rules, but one county judge subsequently issued a preliminary injunction to temporarily block the state from enforcing its ban on mask mandates.

Faced with a summer surge in infections fuelled by the Delta variant, officials in St Louis county announced a universal mask mandate for Missouri’s most populous metropolitan area. This move became the subject of legal challenges, as well as criticism from governor Mike Parson, who said at the time that universal mask mandates “reduce the incentive of getting the vaccine”.

Premier League clubs have refused to release their football players for overseas World Cup qualifier games in countries that are on the UK’s red list.

The decision by the clubs, and supported by the English Premier League, will affect 60 players across 19 clubs that were due to travel to 26 so-called red list countries next month.

The UK government requires a 10-day hotel quarantine for nationals and residents returning from its red list of 60 countries with high infection rates. Despite “extensive discussions” the government has not granted quarantine exemptions to athletes returning from these countries, and the League said that without exemptions, players would end up missing matches.

“If required to quarantine on return from red list countries, not only would players’ welfare and fitness be significantly impacted, but they would also be unavailable to prepare for and play in two Premier League match rounds, a Uefa club competition matchday and the third round of the EFL Cup,” the League said in a statement.

The clubs voiced their dissatisfaction with Fifa, international football’s governing body, following its decision to add two additional days of qualifying matches at Conmebol, its regional confederation for South America.

“This places additional international obligations on players from that region, to the detriment of their availability to represent their clubs. Fifa was urged to work with all stakeholders to ensure an agreeable conclusion can be reached on the issue,” the League added.

The number of US states on Chicago’s travel advisory list has topped 40, with most of the country experiencing high levels of Covid-19 transmission.

Colorado, Maryland, Nebraska and South Dakota were added to the list on Tuesday, taking the total number of states on the city’s advisory to 43.

The advisory requests unvaccinated travellers from so-called “orange list” states to obtain a negative Covid-19 test no more than 72 hours prior to arrival in Chicago or undertake a 10-day quarantine. States make the orange list if their daily infection rates exceed a threshold of 15 cases per 100,000 people.

The seven states yet to make the list are Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont. Washington DC also remains off the advisory. 

Officials in Illinois’ most populous city last week announced that an indoor mask mandate would be reinstated because new daily coronavirus cases had topped 400. Today, the seven-day average stood at 454, an increase of 7 per cent from a week ago, according to city data, while the population-adjusted rate is 16.8 new infections per 100,000 people a day.

UK government advisers are set to recommend third doses of Covid-19 vaccines for immunosuppressed people from September as part of a “targeted” booster programme, which will later be rolled out to elderly patients.

Over-70s who are not clinically vulnerable will have to wait longer for boosters, as guidance for that group is unlikely to be issued imminently.

A person close to the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, which advises the UK government on its Covid vaccine strategy, told the Financial Times that “somewhere between nobody or small numbers” will be getting booster doses in September.

“It will probably be a targeted booster programme, which includes specific vulnerable people,” they added. “It’s definitely not going to be a blanket thing in September, if at all.”

One plan under discussion would see over-70s offered a third dose a certain number of months after their second dose, similar to recommendations made by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. If the UK were to opt for an eight month gap between the second and third dose as the CDC has done, most over-70s would have to wait until December to receive their third dose.

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Sales of newly built homes in the US rose for the first time in four months.

Sales of new single-family homes rose 1 per cent in July from the previous month to an annualised rate of 708,000, the census bureau said on Tuesday. That exceeded expectations for 700,000, according to a Reuters survey of economists.

The housing market surged last year as Americans working remotely took advantage of lower mortgage rates to seek roomier dwellings away from large cities during the pandemic. However, the resultant record high home prices and lean inventory had in recent months begun to take some of the momentum out of the housing market.

Tuesday’s report showed inventory edged higher, with 367,000 new homes for sale at the end of last month, representing a 6.2 months supply at the current sales pace, up from 6 in June.

The median price of new homes sold in July rose more than 5 per cent month-on-month to a record $390,500 -- prices were up 18.4 per cent from a year ago.

“While demand for new homes remains strong, high prices and backlogs in construction will temper sales in the months ahead,” Nancy Vanden Houten, economist at Oxford Economics, said.

More than a third of South Africa’s workforce was jobless in the second quarter, according to data published on Tuesday that illustrated the struggles of Africa’s most industrialised economy to shake off the impact of the pandemic.

Official unemployment rose to 34.4 per cent in the three months to the end of June, the highest since the jobless survey began and up from 32.6 per cent in the first quarter — about 7.8m people in all.

The statistics set out the scale of the economic crisis facing President Cyril Ramaphosa and his African National Congress as they try to reopen the economy despite a slow pace of Covid-19 vaccinations, structural weaknesses such as poor access to education, and the consequences of infighting in his own party.

Business groups estimated that tens of thousands of jobs were put at risk last month in the country’s worst post-apartheid unrest.

A power struggle in the ANC over the jailing of former president Jacob Zuma led to arson and attacks on infrastructure in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, regions that drive half of South Africa’s gross domestic product. Hundreds died in the unrest.

Economists warned that joblessness would worsen in the third quarter because of fallout from the disorder and recent lockdown measures to control coronavirus.

The Scottish government on Tuesday unveiled plans for an independent judge-led inquiry into the handling of the coronavirus pandemic that it said would begin work before the end of this year.

The strategy is likely to raise pressure on Boris Johnson, UK prime minister, to bring forward his plan for a statutory inquiry from the currently proposed spring 2022.

Examination of the handling of the pandemic will be sensitive for governments across the UK, which has suffered higher death rates than many other wealthy European nations.

Johnson has shrugged off calls to accelerate his plans for an inquiry that were outlined in May.

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Gennova Biopharmaceuticals has inched closer to developing India’s first messenger RNA-based Covid-19 vaccine, as infections in the South Asian nation decline.

India found that the drugmaker’s mRNA-based vaccine was “safe, tolerable, and immunogenic” after an initial trial, a statement from the government said on Tuesday.

“After establishing the safety of our mRNA-based Covid-19 vaccine candidate HGCO19 in a Phase I clinical trial, Gennova’s focus is to start [a] Phase II/III pivotal clinical trial,” said chief executive Sanjay Singh. 

“In parallel, Gennova is investing in scaling up its manufacturing capacity to cater to the nation’s vaccine requirements,” he added.

Gennova Biopharmaceuticals will evaluate the efficacy of its vaccine in as many as 15 locations after gaining approval for phase 2 and three trials from the drugs controller general of India.

The South Asian nation reported 2.3 daily cases of coronavirus per 100,000 people on August 22, according to the Financial Times’ tracker, down from a high of 28.6 average cases in May.

India will join the Australian state of Victoria in moving towards launching its homegrown messenger RNA vaccine following the acquisition, unveiled on Tuesday, of a NanoAssemblr machine, which processes nanoparticles into final liquid drug form.

Iran’s daily deaths from Covid-19 surpassed 700 for the first time on Tuesday as public wrath over insufficient vaccines intensifies.

The health ministry said on Tuesday that 709 coronavirus patients had died over the past 24 hours, following another record on Sunday, when 684 people died. The number of confirmed cases rose to 40,623, one of the highest caseloads since the pandemic began. 

Iran has reported 103,357 Covid-related deaths, the highest in the Middle East, leaving many outraged at the Islamic republic’s vaccination policy. Critics have accused the country’s leaders of deliberately slowing imports of vaccines to promote domestically produced jabs, supplies of which have often failed to be delivered on schedule. 

Iran’s leaders had vowed not to import American vaccines such as the BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna jabs.

Officials now say those vaccines can be imported from European states, amid an acceleration of the inoculation campaign in recent weeks. Only 7.6 per cent of the 85m-strong population have been double jabbed.

The World Health Organization said in a statement over the weekend that Iran “is now willing to accept more vaccines from multiple sources”.

“We encourage appropriate information sharing by the government of Iran with international agencies to facilitate further co-operation in order to save the lives of the vulnerable people,” it continued.

Best Buy expects revenues to grow faster this year than it previously anticipated, as back-to-school shoppers and remote workers fuel summer sales of laptops, tablets and wireless routers.

Resilient demand for consumer devices helped the electronics retailer post a 19.6 per cent year-on-year increase in comparable sales for the three months to the end of July. Analysts had pencilled in a smaller jump of 17.2 per cent.

Corie Barry, chief executive, said demand remained strong as shoppers sought out new technology for working, entertaining and cooking. Government stimulus, including child tax credit payments that first went out in July, as well as higher wages and savings levels have supported consumer spending, she added.

Overall revenue also grew about one-fifth to $11.8bn from $9.9bn. Sales were up 24 per cent from two years ago.

Best Buy predicted that comparable sales will rise 9-11 per cent in the current fiscal year, up from its previous outlook of 3-6 per cent.

Several of its retail peers including Walmart, Target and Macy’s have boosted their sales forecasts this month in a sign that consumer demand for goods is holding up despite a rebound in the leisure and hospitality sectors. Retailers have reported a strong start to the back-to-school shopping season.

Best Buy has benefited from the rise in remote and hybrid working arrangements brought on by the pandemic, even with demand beginning to cool off amid Covid-19 vaccinations and office reopenings. Customers have spent on computers, monitors, printers and wireless products, in addition to other electronics like televisions, video games and kitchen appliances, as they spend more time at home.

“We now serve a much larger install base of consumer electronics with customers who have an elevated appetite to upgrade due to constant technology innovation and needs that reflect permanent life changes, like hybrid work and streaming entertainment content,” Barry said.

Greece has cracked down on the unvaccinated, who will face restrictions and test demands, after figures show that nine out of 10 patients in hospital with Covid-19 are yet to receive a jab.

Private and public sector workers, who have not been vaccinated or who have recently recovered, will from September 13 have to take one or two antigen tests a week at their own cost, health minister Vasilis Kikilias said on Tuesday. 

Greece has provided tests for free and will continue to do so for the vaccinated. The unprotected will have to pay €10 for each one.

Those who fail to comply face suspension and employers will have the right to know if their staff are vaccinated or have been tested. 

Face masks will be obligatory indoors for everyone. Only the vaccinated or the recently recovered will be able to enter indoor restaurants and entertainment spaces. Venues such as cinemas, theatres, museums, and archaeological sites will demand proof from the unvaccinated of a negative rapid test result 48 hours before the visit.

“These measures are not punitive,” Kikilias said. “They are our duty to all those who went through 18 months of the pandemic carefully, [and] those who lost their shops, jobs, and had to work from home to protect themselves.”

About 53 per cent of the population is fully vaccinated, far from the target set by the government during the winter, when it said it hoped to have vaccinated 70 per cent of residents by the summer. 

France’s Haute Autorité de Santé, the national health authority, has endorsed the government’s plan to give booster jabs against Covid-19 to the over-65s and other vulnerable people from October. 

The decision on Tuesday, which is dependent on European Medicines Agency approval of boosters, will in most cases mean a third jab six months after an initial vaccination with two doses.

The vaccinations will be administered in co-ordination with the regular influenza inoculation campaign for the elderly. 

The World Health Organization has said there is no need for boosters in developed countries given that most people in the world remain unvaccinated and the doses are required elsewhere. 

France is undergoing a “fourth wave” of Covid-19 cases and hospitalisations driven by the highly infectious Delta variant, but the daily number of cases appears to have peaked.

Nearly 72 per cent of the population over 12 have received a double dose of the vaccine, a similar level to that in the UK.

France will join a list of other countries, such as the US, UK and Germany, that have signalled the possibility of offering booster shots to at least elderly and vulnerable people in the autumn. Israel, which has one of the highest vaccine coverages in the world but has recently been beset by a rise in cases, has begun to administer a third jab to its citizens.

Goods stocked in UK shops have dropped to a record level as global supply disruptions hit the retail sector just as demand has recovered.

Stock levels in relation to expected sales across the UK retail sector slid to an undersupply of minus 21 per cent this month, the lowest since records began in 1983, a monthly survey conducted by the CBI, the employers’ organisation, showed on Tuesday.

That represents a fall of 4 percentage points on the previous month and a swing from February’s peak of 22 per cent, which indicates oversupply, the survey said.

Stock shortages are particularly bad in the motor trade, which reported a score of minus 45 as a result of the global shortage of microchips. Across the distributive sector, expectations for the next three months are worse than the assessment of the current situation, suggesting that stock shortages are not expected to be resolved soon.  

The proportion of deliveries from suppliers accounted for by imports also fell at one of the fastest rates in the survey’s history.

Alpesh Paleja, CBI lead economist, said that operational challenges were “biting” in the sector.

“Disruption is being exacerbated by continued labour shortages, with many retailers reliant on younger employees currently awaiting their jab.”

The survey, conducted between July 28 and August 16 across 104 businesses, showed a recovery in retail sales, which grew at the sharpest pace since December 2014. Orders growth hit a record high.

Milkshake taps at McDonald’s restaurants in the UK have run dry as supply chain bottlenecks afflict many popular high-street outlets.

Bottled drinks and milkshakes are “temporarily unavailable in restaurants across England, Scotland and Wales”, McDonald’s said in a statement on Tuesday. It blamed “supply chain issues”, which it said were affecting “most retailers”.

In late July, the managing director at the UK’s largest milk processor said that a shortage of lorry drivers meant some supermarkets were missing out on deliveries.

Other UK vendors have also reported shortages of key ingredients in recent weeks. 2 Sisters Food Group, one of the UK’s largest chicken producers, said last week that it was suffering a “chronic” shortage of staff to process birds, leaving clients including Nando’s short of meat.

The company said post-Brexit immigration restrictions had left its workforce depleted. About 60 per cent of the poultry industry’s 40,000 workers come from the EU, leaving it exposed to post-Brexit immigration changes.

The Independent first reported that the US fast-food chain had no milkshakes or bottled drinks available in its British outlets.

Tokyo is preparing to open the 2020 Paralympic Games, a fortnight after the main summer games ended, even as Covid-19 spreads across Japan.

Japan reported 17.8 daily cases of coronavirus per 100,000 people on August 22, according to the Financial Times’ tracker, up from a low of 1.1 average cases in June.

A record 4,403 athletes across 162 delegations, including six that make up the Paralympic Refugee Team, will compete in Tokyo in 22 sports.

The opening ceremony will begin at 8pm local time and will have no public spectators. Organisers have adopted digital tools in an effort to connect audiences and athletes.

“Tokyo 2020 will be the most digitally connected Paralympic Games ever,” said Natalia Dannenberg-Spreier, IPC head of brand and engagement.

Viewers will be able to trigger behind-the-scenes cameras during Tuesday’s ceremony using #SamsungXParalympics on Twitter to “get a peek backstage before athletes come out for the parade of nations”.

Tokyo’s summer Olympic Games last month had to contend with rising infections but was widely deemed a success. The Paralympic Games will end on September 5.

Deaths from Covid-19 in England rose almost 10 per cent within a week between early and mid-August, while the hospital toll was the worst since the second wave of infections.

The week ending August 13 showed a 9.6 per cent rise in England, or 550, of deaths that mention coronavirus on the certificate, compared with 502 a week earlier, the Office for National Statistics said on Tuesday. Covid-19 accounted for 5.5 per cent of all deaths in England and Wales in mid-August.

The total number was 14 per cent above the five-year average. Overall England and Wales registered 10,372 deaths in the week and 11,793 in the UK as a whole.

Deaths from Covid-19 in hospitals, at 468, were the worst since late March.

The number of UK houses and flats sold plunged last month after buyers completed their purchases early to take advantage of the stamp duty holiday, official data showed.

The provisional, seasonally adjusted estimate of UK residential transactions in July was 73,740, or 63 per cent lower than in June when it spiked to 198,400, data from HM Revenue and Customs showed on Tuesday.

HMRC noted that taxpayers completed property transactions earlier to take advantage of the tax break, which began to be phased out from the end of June. “Since then, an expected but noticeable decrease has been observed within provisional July 2021 UK residential transactions statistics,” it stated.  

From July 1, the threshold up to which buyers in England avoid paying stamp duty decreased from £500,000 to £250,000. From October, thresholds will revert to the levels charged before the introduction of the measure in July 2020, which was designed to stimulate the housing market following the first coronavirus lockdown.

Scott Taylor-Barr of Shropshire-based mortgage broker Carl Summers Financial Services said that the drop in the number of property transactions in July “was inevitable”.

“The rest of the year will likely see a further slowdown, as the second phase of the stamp duty holiday ends and people start to gear up for Christmas,” he said.

But others disagree. “The early signs are that September is gearing up to be another monstrously busy month with buyers poised and waiting for the traditional influx of listings after the summer holidays,” said Rhys Schofield, managing director at Derbyshire-based Peak Mortgages and Protection.

About 40 per cent of 16- and 17-year-olds in Scotland have received their first shot of Covid-19 vaccine, government data show.

Drop-in clinics began offering the Pfizer jab to 16- and 17-year-olds in the second week of August, “in line with the latest advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation”, Scotland’s health secretary Humza Yousaf said at the time.

Just over 8 per cent of the age group have received two doses of vaccine, while 39.6 per cent have been administered one, data from Public Health Scotland show. Almost 74 per cent of 18- to 29-year-olds have had one shot, with 40 per cent having had two jabs.

Of the adult population, 80 per cent, or 3.5m people, have been double jabbed.

Germany has revised up its second-quarter growth figures as lockdown restrictions eased, boosting consumer spending, though supply chain issues weighed on the economy.

Gross domestic product rose 1.6 per cent in the quarter to June, better than the 1.5 per cent initial estimate that the national statistics agency gave on July 30. GDP remains 3.3 per cent below pre-pandemic levels. The economy had contracted 2 per cent in the previous quarter.

“Final consumption expenditure” in the second quarter was “markedly up compared with the beginning of the year”, thanks to a relaxation of Covid-19 restrictions, the statistics agency said on Tuesday. 

Household consumption increased 3.2 per cent compared with the first quarter, adjusted for price, seasonal and calendar effects, while government final consumption expenditure rose 1.8 per cent.

Yet the rebound was “weaker than in many other eurozone countries as the manufacturing sector suffered from supply chain problems”, said Carsten Brzeski, head of macro research at ING.

“Three factors will determine the outlook for the German economy: the Delta variant, supply chain frictions and inflation,” he added.

Wood has posted a decline by more than a fifth in first-half revenue, blaming the coronavirus pandemic, but the UK consulting and engineering group is confident it can return to growth in the second six months of the year.

Second-quarter revenue, however, reflects improving momentum, it said in a statement on Tuesday, with “relatively robust renewables activity and improving demand in conventional energy markets, partly offsetting lower activity in process and chemicals, as larger projects reached completion”.

Shares in the company dropped more than 4 per cent in early London trading. They have slid 28 per cent this year.

Wood blamed the coronavirus pandemic for squeezing revenue in the January-June period by 22.9 per cent to $3.2bn. The group included a $74m impact of the disposals of its nuclear and industrial services businesses.

The outlook improved in the second quarter, the company said, with “continued momentum” in consulting. Wood’s order book in June rose 18 per cent from December to $7.7bn. It closed its Paris office.

Wood expects its revenue in the second half of the year to be $3bn and full-year revenue to be in the range of $6.6bn to $6.8bn. Its full-year outlook was unchanged, with increased activity in consulting expected to partly offset lower activity elsewhere. It expects to return to growth from the past 12 months.

“The first half of 2021 reflects improving momentum in activity in the second quarter and a strong margin improvement,” said chief executive Robin Watson.

Trading momentum and growth in orders “underpin our confidence in delivering a stronger second half, which will reflect a return to growth”, he added.

Adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, before exceptional items, fell 14 per cent to $262m from $305m. Its first-half loss came to $11m, the same as the earlier period.

Almost 5,000 cases of coronavirus have been linked to a surfing and music festival in Cornwall, despite strict entry requirements implemented at the door, a local councillor has said.

Boardmasters festival, which was held between August 11 and 15, was allowed to go ahead under the UK government’s relaxed rules even as Cornwall reports some of the highest rates of Covid-19 in England.

About 634 per 100,000 residents of the south-west county were estimated to have the virus in the week to August 18, compared with a national average of 327 per 100,000, government data show. Some 4,700 people are thought to have picked up Covid-19 while at the festival, Cornwall council has said.

“We’ve got very high case rates throughout the whole of the county at the moment, probably related to the very infectious Delta variant and the huge migration we’ve seen this summer with people coming down to holiday with us,” councillor Andy Virr told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Tuesday.

Among the cases linked to the festival, “73 per cent are in the 16- to 21-year-old age group”, Virr said. Those infections had not yet translated into hospital admissions or deaths, he added.

Because the festival — which required either proof of “natural immunity following a positive PCR test”, a negative lateral flow test or evidence of double vaccination to get in — was permitted under government rules, “there was very little option we had in terms of cancelling”, Virr said.

The result of the Yokohama mayoral election has cast another shadow over Japan’s ambitions to build massive casino resorts, a drive that was already under strain due to the withdrawal of interest by key foreign players amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

Takeharu Yamanaka, a former professor at Yokohama City University, will become mayor on August 30. He said on Monday that he intended to make a declaration “at an early stage” that Yokohama, next to Tokyo, would not apply to join the bidding process to host a casino.

The central government has said it will award up to three cities a licence to host so-called integrated resorts, which combine hotels, casinos, entertainment complexes and conference centres.

Yamanaka, who was backed by opposition parties, campaigned on an anti-casino platform. His victory heralds the end of the city’s bid to host one of the gambling resorts, many observers say.

“It seems almost impossible for Yokohama to move forward with the election of Yamanaka-san,” Brendan Bussmann, a partner at gambling industry consultants Global Market Advisors, told Nikkei Asia.

“The anti-[integrated resort] movement is fully planted into the immediate future of Yokohama, as seen with the mayor-elect’s firm stance on the issue,” he added.

Yokohama earlier this year solicited business proposals from industry players. Two consortiums, one led by Genting Singapore and another by Hong Kong-based Melco Resorts & Entertainment, submitted plans to the city. 

When Japan legalised casinos in 2018, many industry insiders believed the country had a chance of becoming the world’s second-biggest casino destination after Macau, with some parties announcing they would spend $10bn developing an integrated resort. 

But the pandemic clouded the outlook for facilities designed to lure huge numbers of guests.

“We have seen tremendous progress over the past several years as cities like Osaka, Wakayama and Nagasaki continue to push forward with their development plans,” Bussmann added. “The pandemic has not helped matters, but this still remains a strong opportunity for investment and economic growth.”

The Australian state of Victoria moved closer to launching homegrown messenger RNA vaccine production with the arrival of a key piece of equipment, the government said on Monday.

Melbourne-based drugmaker IDT has taken delivery of a A$1m ($720,000) NanoAssemblr machine, which processes nanoparticles into final liquid drug form, sterilises the product and fills vials with the mRNA vaccines.

The equipment will manufacture more than 150 doses for phase 1 clinical trials of Australia’s first locally developed mRNA coronavirus vaccine. The machine is made by Vancouver-based Precision Nanosystems.

The trials are due to start in the next few months in a collaboration among IDT, the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity and the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences.

British Columbia’s government said on Monday that proof of vaccination would be required to attend certain social and recreational settings and events from September 13.

People aged 12 and older in the province would be required to show proof to enter indoor ticketed sporting events, indoor and patio dining in restaurants, fitness centres, casinos, conferences and weddings. 

“Vaccines are our ticket to putting this pandemic behind us,” said John Horgan, premier. “British Columbia has one of the strongest vaccination rates in Canada with 75 per cent of eligible people now fully vaccinated, but there is still more work to do.”

A website will be provided where residents will be able to confidentially access their proof of vaccination, the government said. 

The global Covid-19 pandemic should not dampen investor appetite in Africa, a Singapore business forum on investing in the continent was told this week.

Tharman Shanmugaratnam, senior minister in the city-state, urged Singapore investors to take both a short- and long-term view of the African investment climate.

“Africa is quite different,” he said. “It is an environment which is not dominated by large players — it is an open field.”

The continent remains an investment destination of choice despite the challenges, according to attendees at the Africa Singapore Business Forum, which ends on Tuesday.

Shanmugaratnam urged Asian investors to look beyond the pandemic and “get a foothold [and] get the right partners” in Africa.

Trade between Singapore and Africa has been growing steadily over the past five years, with the south-east Asian city-state now among the top 10 investors in the continent. 

More than 100 Singaporean companies operate across 50 African countries in the oil and gas, consumer, digital, agri-business and trade sectors.

“You cannot ignore African markets,” Akinwumi Adesina, African Development Bank president, told the forum. He said renewable energy, such as mini- and micro-grids, solar power, infrastructure and logistics were sectors with high potential.

Ontario’s government announced on Monday it would spend another C$169m ($133m) to extend temporary wage rises for healthcare support workers.

The extension to October 31 — the third since its introduction last year — is designed to help stabilise staffing levels and support frontline health care workers in Canada’s most populous province.

The extension covers about 158,000 workers and translates into pay increases of C$2-3 per hour for employees of public hospitals, aged care homes and childcare centres, among others.

“Since the outset of the pandemic, personal support workers and direct support workers have been critical in supporting some of our most vulnerable patients,” said Christine Elliott, Ontario’s deputy premier and health minister.

As California Street meets Van Ness Avenue, a little girl peers up the hill at the cable car headed in our direction. “It’s slower than a snail!” she yells. That’s unfair. No snail I’m aware of has a top speed of nine and a half miles per hour.

Riding San Francisco’s cable cars is a joy that until August had been out of bounds since March 2020 when they were taken off the streets as coronavirus set in. It was the longest break in service since 1982, when the system was halted for rebuilding, following decades of penny-pinching. 

The first time people rode on these cars — the oldest system in the world — was in 1873. Since then, I can tell you with great confidence that everyone who has ridden a San Francisco cable car has fallen in love.

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Indonesia will begin a staggered unlocking of its economy from Tuesday as cases continue to decline, the south-east Asian country’s president said, according to state-owned media. 

The country’s crucial export-oriented industries will be allowed to operate at full capacity from Tuesday. Shopping centres, dine-in restaurants and places of worship will also see a restricted re-opening, Joko Widodo said in a YouTube video posted on Monday evening. 

Lockdowns in a number of regions will also be eased, he added. 

“The Covid-19 pandemic is not over yet, and some countries are currently experiencing a third wave with a significant addition of cases,” said the president, known as Jokowi. “Therefore, we must remain vigilant and the government is trying hard to implement the right policies to control this pandemic.”

Indonesia has seen Covid-19 cases decline by 78 per cent since July 15, the president said, adding that the country has administered 90.59m vaccine doses. 

On Monday, the country’s health ministry said that booster shots would be offered to healthcare workers but not to the general public, the national news agency Antara reported.

“Vaccines are given to the public only for the first and second doses,” Antara quoted a health ministry spokesperson as saying. “Only health workers directly working in health facilities can receive a third dose.”

Canada’s Prince Edward Island expects school districts to prepare for a near-normal return to school in September, although mask wearing will be recommended but not mandatory, the provincial government said on Monday.

Authorities said Canada’s fourth wave of Covid-19, driven by the more transmissible and virulent Delta variant, and the inability for students under the age of 12 to be vaccinated at this time, face masks will be recommended for staff, students and visitors “when transitioning through school buildings”.

However, the province will allow masks to be removed when seated in classrooms.

Masks are recommended for staff in classrooms when physical distancing is not possible and for staff and students on school buses, the government said. 

“The combined efforts of students, teachers, families, administrators and school staff helped make last school year a success,” said Natalie Jameson, the province’s education and lifelong learning minister. “Cases of Covid-19 within our schools were kept minimal and were quickly addressed.”

She said enhanced cleaning and disinfection, regular hand washing and screening and managing symptoms of Covid-19 would be critical in the return to school.

Three new cases were reported in Prince Edward Island — including a 10-year-old child — on Saturday, bringing the provincial total to 224 since the pandemic began.

No Covid-19 deaths have been recorded in the province of 150,000 people.

Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippine president, on Monday appealed to disgruntled healthcare workers not to quit over an unpaid pandemic allowance promised to them last year, official media reported.

Nurses and other frontline workers have threatened mass resignations over delays in payment of a 8.8bn-peso ($160m) special risk allowance.

Harry Roque, Duterte’s spokesman, said the president on Friday ordered the Department of Budget and Management to release the funds within 10 days, according to the Philippine News Agency.

Roque warned that mass resignations would make it difficult for the government to pay any unemployment benefits.

“If they resign, there will be more people without jobs in the time of the pandemic, our problem will worsen if there are more jobless individuals and we do not have additional cash aid to give.”

The Australian government’s pandemic advisers on Monday backed the country’s plans to reopen once it reaches 70-80 per cent vaccine coverage, as its prime minister underlined the need to live with Covid-19.

The Melbourne-based Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity said that maintaining zero cases was not possible.

Higher vaccination rates, coupled with social distancing measures, meant the country could experience just 2,737 cases and 13 deaths a year, it added.

“In an average year of influenza, we would roughly have 600 deaths and 200,000 cases in Australia,” the institute, a joint venture between the University of Melbourne and the Royal Melbourne Hospital, said in a statement issued on Monday. 

“Any death is a tragedy, but our health system can cope with this,” it added.

Australia has in recent weeks underlined the need to accept some level of the virus after pursuing an elimination strategy during most of the pandemic. 

Scott Morrison, prime minister, told reporters on Monday that the country would ease pandemic lockdowns once it reached 70-80 per cent vaccination coverage.

The Doherty Institute cautioned that the full lifting of social distancing measures was not advisable. “We’ve learned from watching countries that have removed all restrictions that there is no ‘freedom day’.”

It added: “We will need to keep some public health measures in place – test, trace, isolate and quarantine – to keep the reproduction number below 1.”

Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund nearly doubled its assets that track environmental, social and governance indices in the 2020 fiscal year, after adding two new ESG indices and investing in more Japanese small-cap stocks.

GPIF’s assets that track its seven selected ESG indices reached ¥10.6tn ($96.7bn) at the end of the 2020 fiscal year, achieving an 86% surge from the previous year’s ¥5.7tn, according to the pension giant’s latest ESG report.

This means that 5.7 per cent of the world’s largest pension fund owner’s ¥186tn assets are now tracking ESG indices. 

Since GPIF first published an annual ESG report in 2017, its ESG assets have grown more than sevenfold, from only ¥1.5tn in the 2017 fiscal year.

Part of the growth of GPIF’s ESG assets can be attributed to the adoption of two new ESG indices in December 2020, the broad-based MSCI ACWI ESG Universal Index and the diversity-themed Morningstar Gender Diversity Index.

Japan’s listed companies are increasing their focus on ESG issues in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a GPIF survey in May.

“The ESG bond market has changed dramatically in response to the global response to Covid-19,” GPIF wrote in its latest report. 

“Issuance of social bonds and sustainability bonds, which are aimed at using funds for activities to mitigate the effects of Covid-19 such as medical institution support, has increased sharply.”

Singapore recorded nearly 100 new Covid-19 cases on Monday — the highest daily total in three weeks — as the city-state announced its 50th coronavirus fatality.

The health ministry confirmed 98 new cases in Singapore, including 94 local transmissions, mostly from a migrant workers’ dormitory.

The dormitory cases were detected after three residents tested positive for Covid-19 during routine testing. The North Coast Lodge dormitory accounted for 62 cases. 

“So far, about 2,200 workers have been swabbed, and testing for the rest of the 3,200 residents is ongoing,” the ministry said in a statement.

“As a precautionary measure, all residents at the dormitory have been placed on [a] movement restriction order,” the ministry added.

The ministry also announced the death of an unvaccinated 86-year-old Singaporean woman. She was the 13th coronavirus-related death this month and the 50th since the pandemic began.

A US donation of nearly 900,000 Covid-19 vaccine doses arrived in Kenya on Monday, boosting the east African country’s efforts to inoculate 10m of its people by the end of the year.

The Moderna shipment, donated by the US government, marks the second vaccine to be introduced in Kenya’s programme, after 2.4m people were jabbed with the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine. 

The Kenyan health ministry said 780,377 people were fully vaccinated as of Sunday. The total population of the country is more than 52m.

“The shipment is the first of the 3.5m doses of vaccines to Kenya by the US government,” Susan Mochache, the country’s principal secretary for health, said in a statement.

She said the UK, Denmark, Greece and France have also donated more than 1.3m doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine.

Kenya is aiming to jab 150,000 people a day if it can maintain supplies of vaccines.

Mochache said the government can ensure it has the capacity to deploy all the vaccines across the country, including the Pfizer jab, which requires ultra-cold storage at minus 70C.

Lixil, one of the world’s largest toilet makers and housing groups, predicts that half of its customers will use its digital showrooms by the end of 2021, as Covid-19 prompts a fundamental shift in how homes are designed and renovated. 

Yugo Kanazawa, Lixil’s chief digital officer, told the Financial Times that consumers combining physical and online showroom experiences will be a permanent feature of the post-coronavirus era.

“It’s not going to reverse,” Kanazawa said, adding that the digital shift will apply to the way the group interacts with its employees and business partners. “It’s not just a Covid-19 thing. It is more permanent now.”

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The head of the World Health Organization on Monday called for a two-month moratorium on administering “booster” doses of Covid-19 vaccines, just days after several countries, including the US, confirmed they are planning to offer third shots.

Speaking at a news conference with Hungarian foreign minister Peter Szijjarto on Monday, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he was “disappointed” that countries had sought to vaccinate their own populations at the expense of others and called into question the effectiveness of booster doses.

“There is actually a debate and there is no consensus on whether boosters are effective or not,” said Tedros. “Instead of moving to boosters, it’s better to share with other countries to increase their first or second coverage. That’s why we call for a two-month moratorium.”

Last Wednesday, US officials said third booster vaccines would be available to the public from late September. 

Several other countries, including Israel, the UK and Hungary, have also said they will offer boosters as the world responds to rising caseloads of the Delta variant. 

Tedros said that countries that control the means to produce vaccines — mostly G20 countries — should do more to “lead collectively” and ensure that vaccines are accessible around the world. 

Of the 4.8bn doses delivered globally, 75 per cent were held by just 12 countries, he added. “I’m disappointed,” said Tedros. “We call it vaccine injustice and vaccine nationalism and this is not good.”

Chicago will soon require its public employees to be vaccinated against Covid-19, the city’s mayor said.

Lori Lightfoot announced on Monday that discussions with labour unions have been taking place for “a couple of weeks” and that further details would be announced in coming days.

She underscored that Chicago “absolutely” had to have a vaccination mandate in place.

“It’s for the safety of all involved, particularly members of the public who are interacting with city employees on a daily basis,” Lightfoot said at a press conference.

“It’s important for colleagues to also feel like they have a workplace that is safe,” she added. “So a vaccine mandate from the city will come and we’ll make specific announcements in coming days.”

The mandate for city workers would bring Chicago in line with several other cities and states that have set vaccination rules or mandates for their public employees.

Chicago Public Schools has already set a requirement that all teachers and school employees must be vaccinated by October 15, unless they have a religious or medical exemption.

Earlier on Monday, New York City and New Jersey set similar requirements for school workers.

Nearly 80,000 residents signed up for Minnesota’s $100 vaccine incentive programme, helping to drive up the US state’s inoculation rate over the past month.

The seven-day average for first doses administered was 2,675 one month ago. This week, Minnesota is averaging 4,955 first doses daily.

The programme was particularly popular in counties where the jab rates are lower than the statewide average, said Tim Walz, Minnesota governor. 

Nearly 80 per cent of incentive requests came from Minnesotans under the age of 50, whose vaccination rates trail those of older residents.

“The best way to manage Covid-19 is by vaccinating more of our friends and neighbours,” said Walz. “This programme went a long way toward increasing statewide vaccination rates.”

West Virginia authorities on Monday called for expedited booster shots after the state recorded a rise in Covid-19 “breakthrough” cases involving vaccinated elderly people.

Jim Justice, governor, said he had directed state pandemic response officials to seek federal approval to allow West Virginia to begin administering an extra dose to the state’s most vulnerable citizens as soon as possible.

He said that, over the past eight weeks, West Virginia has seen a 26 per cent increase in breakthrough cases, and a 25 per cent increase in breakthrough cases causing death.

“West Virginians in long-term care facilities and healthcare settings were some of the first people in the nation to be vaccinated,” Justice said.

The federal government said the state would need to wait until September 20 for extra shots, he added.

“There are so many indicators that say we need to move right now,” Justice said. “But right now we can’t get past the legalities of Washington to be able to move right this second.”

Health authorities in Taiwan said on Monday they would strengthen surveillance programmes to reduce the risk of the Delta variant of Covid-19 spreading through its communities.

To enhance community surveillance, the Central Epidemic Command Center said it would distribute home test kits to contracted clinics in cities and counties on August 30. 

“Based on their diagnosis, doctors will provide the home test kits to high-risk individuals who will use the test kits to test themselves and report back their result,” CECC said in a statement.

High-risk personnel at Taoyuan, Taipei, Taichung and Kaohsiung airports would be tested every seven days starting August 30.

The CECC said it would also expand wastewater surveillance, test for antibodies of Sars-CoV-2 — the virus that causes Covid-19 — among blood donors, and upgrade monitoring of imported frozen foods and their packaging.

Joe Biden, US president, ramped up pressure on employers to impose coronavirus vaccination requirements after the BioNTecb/Pfizer jab secured full authorisation from the Food and Drug Administration. Biden said it was crucial to step up inoculations in order to contain the Delta variant of the virus.

Troops returned to Buckingham Palace to perform the Changing of the Guard ceremony for the first time since the coronavirus crisis struck 18 months ago. The popular tourist attraction, which takes place in front of the London palace, was halted in March last year to avoid drawing large crowds.

New Jersey announced new vaccination requirements, specifying that all school staff, as well as state employees, must be fully vaccinated by mid-October. Teachers and staff in New York City’s public schools will also be required to get vaccinated against Covid-19, mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Monday.

The US defence department is preparing to mandate Covid-19 vaccination for all service members, the Pentagon said. John Kirby, a defence spokesperson, said on Monday that military authorities were “preparing actionable guidance” for US forces for making the inoculation mandatory.

EasyJet has turned to one of the City of London’s most experienced chief executives for its new chair, with the airline appointing Stephen Hester to its board as it attempts to emerge from a difficult period. Hester, a former chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland and British Land, will succeed John Barton.

Chevron and Hess are mandating Covid-19 vaccinations for certain groups of employees as the oil and gas industry seeks to combat vaccine hesitancy. Both companies have directed Gulf of Mexico offshore workers to be vaccinated. Chevron will also require some onshore personnel to be jabbed.

London City Airport, a hub for business travel, said many of its corporate customers were optimistic about a “phased return” to normal life as it pointed to “slowly” returning to growth next year. The aviation sector has been “hammered”, said Richard Hill, chief commercial officer at City airport.

The UK has ordered a further 35m doses of the BioNTech/Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine for delivery in the second half of next year as the government prepares to counter possible future mutations of the coronavirus. The latest contract brings the total number of Pfizer shots ordered by the UK to 135m.