Coronavirus: Fed’s Powell pledges support ‘for as long as it takes’ — as it happened

The pandemic has changed how many of us think about age. 

In the “BC” era — before coronavirus — plenty of us were kidding ourselves that 60 is the new 40. I certainly was: I planned to work forever, and indulge my taste for camel trekking in the Gobi desert well into my dotage.

But within weeks of the emergence of Covid-19 in the west a year ago, it was pretty clear that, at least from a pandemic point of view, 60 was more like the new 80. Sixty-odd-year-olds like me, however fit we thought we were, found ourselves on the bulging right-hand side of Covid-19 death graphs by age, where the risk of dying was highest. 

I saw the American national conversation subtly shift toward portraying anyone over 60 as having one foot out of the door. Employment-discrimination lawyers, academics who study ageing and advocates for American seniors say this began to affect seniors in the workplace. Some employers began using Covid-19 as an excuse to get rid of older workers, bringing back younger workers from furlough faster than older ones.

According to a report from The New School’s Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis, unemployment rates for workers 55 and over exceeded those for mid-career workers during the pandemic, the first time such a gap persisted for six months or longer in nearly 50 years. Some 3m older American jobs were lost by this January due to the pandemic recession, the centre found.

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Arizona’s state-run vaccination sites will open their doors to any resident over the age of 16 beginning on Wednesday, joining other states in taking another step toward an unrestricted rollout of coronavirus shots.

Anyone in that age group can book appointments for the state’s vaccination sites located in Maricopa, Pima and Yuma counties. Maricopa County is home to Phoenix, the fifth-largest city in the US.

“Given a thorough review of vaccination data, anticipated vaccine supply, and current demand among prioritized groups, now is the time to take this critical next step,” Governor Doug Ducey said.

Vaccination sites not run by the state have separate eligibility requirements.

Alaska was the first state earlier this month to expand its vaccine rollout to all adults who wished to get the shot. Other states have followed with plans of their own to allow any adult to sign up.

Tennessee became the latest state to do so on Monday. Governor Bill Lee announced that all adult residents will qualify no later than April 5. The state expanded eligibility to people over the age of 55 and other residents who work in certain fields last week.

Spain has relaxed the rules for administering the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, allowing its use for people up to 65. Previously the jab’s use in the country was banned for people over 55.

The move follows the suspension last week of AstraZeneca vaccinations by several European countries, including Spain, Italy, France and Germany, amid concerns about a small number of cases of thrombosis among vaccinated people. On Thursday, however, the EU drugs regulator, the European Medicines Agency, concluded that the jab was “safe and effective”.

Spain is due to resume giving AstraZeneca jabs on Wednesday this week – a pause that Carolina Darias, health minister, explained would allow the country to revise age guidance for the vaccination. The revision had originally been expected before the thrombosis scare flared up.

As of Monday, Spain has administered just under 1m of 1.9m AstraZeneca vaccines it has received. Overall, the country has administered 6.3m doses of the three vaccines it has in its possession, of which 5m correspond to the BioNTech/Pfizer jab and 328,000 to the Moderna vaccine.

Jay Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, vowed to keep providing monetary support to the US economy “for as long as it takes”, saying the American recovery was “far from complete” especially for low-wage workers in sectors hardest hit by the pandemic.

In prepared testimony released ahead of a hearing before the House financial services committee on Tuesday, Powell cited the recent progress in the economic outlook, which caused central bank officials to sharply upgrade their US gross domestic product growth forecast to 6.5 per cent this year. But the Fed chair cautioned:

The sectors of the economy most adversely affected by the resurgence of the virus, and by greater social distancing, remain weak, and the unemployment rate — still elevated at 6.2 per cent — underestimates the shortfall, particularly as labour market participation remains notably below pre-pandemic levels.

We welcome this progress, but will not lose sight of the millions of Americans who are still hurting, including lower-wage workers in the services sector, African-Americans, Hispanics, and other minority groups that have been especially hard hit.

Powell said the economic situation had vastly improved since the beginning of the pandemic, suggesting the Fed’s intervention was still warranted. The central bank is holding interest rates close to zero and purchasing $120bn of debt per month.

“While the economic fallout has been real and widespread, the worst was avoided by swift and vigorous action — from Congress and the Federal Reserve, from across government and cities and towns, and from individuals, communities, and the private sector,” Powell said.

“More people held on to their jobs, more businesses kept their doors open, and more incomes were saved. But the recovery is far from complete, so, at the Fed, we will continue to provide the economy the support that it needs for as long as it takes,” he added. 

The US reached a new milestone in its rollout of coronavirus vaccines, giving out more than 125m doses since inoculations began late last year.

The nation has administered 126.5m doses in total, an increase of about 2m from the previous day, according to data published on Monday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The figures also showed that 82.7m Americans, equal to 24.9 per cent of the overall population, have received one or more shots so far.

Nearly one-third of the adult population has at least one dose, including 69 per cent of all seniors. More than 42 per cent of people in the 65-and-up age group are fully vaccinated with either Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot vaccine or two shots of the Moderna or BioNTech/Pfizer jabs.

Vaccinations in the US have accelerated, boosted by an increase in supply over time and a higher number of distribution sites across the country. Many states are expanding eligibility to more residents with the goal of allowing any adult to register for a shot by the start of May.

The number of doses administered jumped by more than 3m on back-to-back days for the first time over the weekend.

The daily tally has surpassed 3m only two other times, according to a Financial Times analysis of CDC data. There have been 2.49m new doses reported per day over the past week.

The Financial Times has been your guide to the pandemic since the first outbreak was detected. Here are some of the developments we were reporting a year ago today:

• Giuseppe Conte, then the Italian prime minister, ordered all businesses in the country apart from grocery stores, banks, pharmacies and post offices to shut temporarily

• Spain reported that almost 400 people had died as a result of the virus in 24 hours, bringing the death toll to more than 1,700

• Australia unveiled its third economic stimulus package in the space of 10 days as cases of the virus surged, bringing the total value of support measures to A$189bn ($109bn)

• Vietnam began barring entry to all foreigners, including people of Vietnamese descent, after a spike in new coronavirus cases was traced back to people arriving from abroad

• Donald Trump said he had “activated” the National Guard, the reserve forces of the American military, to help the hardest-hit states, including California, New York and Washington, grapple with the coronavirus outbreak 

• The president of the Saint Louis Federal Reserve said the US jobless rate could reach 30 per cent in the second quarter as economic activity ground to a halt because of the pandemic

• Shinzo Abe, then the prime minister of Japan, acknowledged for the first time that a delay to the summer’s Olympics was likely

• German chancellor Angela Merkel was forced to self-quarantine after coming into contact with a doctor with coronavirus.

• UK prime minister Boris Johnson urged the public to stay at least two metres apart in public places as part of social distancing efforts, as the number of deaths rose to 281

For more on the pandemic, visit the FT’s coronavirus home page

Hungary is the first EU country to approve two new vaccines for emergency use.

The surgeon-general on Monday announced that Budapest had approved China’s CanSino Biologics jab, along with the Indian version of the Oxford/AstraZeneca inoculation, Covishield.

Hungary has administered the second-highest number of vaccine doses relative to population in the EU, but the number of new infections continues to rise in a third wave of the pandemic that is seriously challenging central Europe. If both new vaccines are approved by Hungary’s National Health Centre, the total number of vaccines approved in Hungary will be seven, including China’s Sinopharm vaccine and Russia’s Sputnik V. 

“We are in a race against time,” surgeon-general Cecilia Muller said Monday during a news conference. 

“We will overturn the four corners of the world for as many doses of proper efficient and safe vaccines as possible,” she added, although information surrounding the procurement of the two new jabs was not shared.

Muller said that 16 per cent of Hungary’s population have received at least one dose of a vaccine, even as hospitalisation rates due to Covid-19 are at a record high. About 3.3m people have registered to be vaccinated in Hungary, which has a population of 10m. On Friday, prime minister Viktor Orban said that once 2.5m receive the inoculation, the country can start to ease its strict lockdown and nightly curfew. 

More than 10,000 UK policyholders affected by January’s Supreme Court judgment on Covid-related business interruption insurance claims have already received at least an interim payment, with the total paid out so far topping £470m.

However thousands of businesses are still waiting for their insurers to come to a decision, despite an order from the regulator that claims should be dealt with quickly.

The Financial Conduct Authority, which brought the test case on behalf of 370,000 affected policyholders, released the first batch of data on Monday based on submissions from insurers – setting out how many claims relating to the case had been accepted and paid.

The data marks the first stage of resolution to a bruising dispute between some insurance providers and their small business clients over whether business interruption policies should pay out for pandemic-related losses. Even industry executives concede the episode has done damage to the sector’s reputation.

For 8,177 of the claims, where final settlements had been agreed and paid, a total of £280m had been paid out, the FCA said. For 2,030 further claims that have not been settled, but where an interim payment has been made, the total paid out by the start of this month was £192m.

According to the data, the insurer with the most amount of pending business interruption claims is Hiscox, at 4,239. The insurer recently said it regretted “the uncertainty and anguish” that disputing claims had caused. It was followed by MS Amlin, which has 3,224 pending claims and Axa, which had 2,109.

Covea Insurance topped the list for agreed and paid-out settlements, with 2,294 policies resolved. AXIS Managing Agency had settled and paid out in respect of 1,547 policies, and Allianz had done so for 1,459.

New Yorkers over the age of 50 will be able to get a coronavirus shot starting on Tuesday, becoming the latest state to expand the pool of eligible residents.

Governor Andrew Cuomo, who announced the move on Twitter, said during a separate event on Monday that vaccine production is expected to ramp up over the coming weeks. His remarks followed positive trial results for Oxford/AstraZeneca’s shot released earlier today, with the company now preparing to apply for regulatory approval.

States across the US have expanded eligibility for coronavirus vaccines. More than two-thirds of American seniors have already received at least one shot, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most states have also been vaccinating other groups of people based on occupation or medical conditions.

Governors anticipate an increase in supply, including Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot vaccine, which received emergency authorisation from the US Food and Drug Administration in late February.

Florida on Monday began allowing residents who are 50 years old and over to sign up for the vaccine, just one week after lowering the age threshold to 60. Governor Ron DeSantis said last week all adults will “definitely” be eligible before May 1 and “maybe much sooner than that”.

New York, the fourth-most populous state, has administered 37,894 doses per 100,000 people, according to data published by the CDC on Sunday. That ranks ahead of California but behind Florida, which leads the five biggest states with a rate of 38,118 doses per 100,000 residents.

In New York, 12.4 per cent of the population is fully vaccinated, compared with 13.3 per cent in Florida, 12.6 per cent in California and 10.8 per cent in Texas.

The European Central Bank has accelerated the weekly pace of its emergency bond-buying programme to its highest level for over three months in an attempt to counter the recent sell-off in eurozone debt markets.

The ECB bought €21.1bn of bonds under its pandemic emergency purchase programme (PEPP) in the week to March 17 — up from €14bn a week earlier and above the €18bn weekly average since the programme started last year, data released on Monday showed.

The quickening of bond-buying by the ECB was widely expected after it announced earlier this month that its purchases under the €1.85tn scheme would be “conducted at a significantly higher pace” in the coming three months.

Markets were largely unmoved following Monday’s announcement, which was broadly in line with analysts expectations. The Italian 10-year bond yield slipped as much as 0.01 percentage points to 0.659 per cent. German 10-year bunds were steady at around minus 0.3 per cent. Yields fall as prices rise.

Christine Lagarde, ECB president, said in a blog post on Monday that the central bank could adjust the pace of PEPP purchases “at any point in time in response to potential changes in market conditions” to achieve its goal of maintaining “favourable financing conditions”.

She said the ECB would measure its progress using “a joint test that appraises the prevailing financing conditions against the euro area’s economic and inflation outlook.” It has just over €900bn of capacity left under PEPP, its main crisis-fighting tool, which is due to run until at least March 2022.

But Klaas Knot, head of the Dutch central bank and ECB governing council member, indicated PEPP could be wound up earlier than expected if the pandemic was contained quickly and the economy rebounded strongly. “If we make good progress with vaccinations, that moment will come somewhere later this year,” Knot said.

The Philippines reported a record daily number of coronavirus cases on Monday.

Total cases increased by 8,019 in the past 24 hours to 671,792, with Quezon City and Manila the hardest hit regions. Monday was the third time in four days that the Philippines has posted a record number of daily cases.

More than 120 healthcare facilities across the country have reached a ‘critical’ occupancy rate of above 85 per cent according to figures from the Department of Health, though the number of weekly deaths attributed to the virus has been falling since late January.

In a statement on Saturday, the department urged the public to stay at home. It also said that anyone experiencing mild symptoms should seek help at an isolation facility to ensure hospitals have enough available beds.

There have been more than 12,000 deaths linked to Covid-19 in the Philippines - the second-highest death toll in south-east Asia after Indonesia.

Sales of previously owned homes in the US fell more than expected in February to a six-month low as tight inventory curbed housing activity, but sales remained above pre-pandemic levels.

Completed transactions on existing homes fell 6.6 per cent in February to an annualised rate of 6.22m, the lowest since August, the National Association of Realtors said on Monday. Economists had expected a smaller 3 per cent drop to 6.5m units.

The housing market had been a bright spot for the US economy through much of the pandemic. Americans sought out roomier dwellings as they worked from home, and record low mortgage rates further fuelled housing demand.

Lawrence Yun, chief economist at NAR said he expected this year’s sales to exceed those in 2020 as vaccinations accelerate. “Many Americans have been saving money and there’s a strong possibility that once the country fully reopens, those reserves will be unleashed on the economy,” he said.

The median home price rose 15.8 per cent from a year ago to $313,000 last month as prices rose in every region. Housing affordability had weakened and though stimulus packages were expected to help some, housing stock needed to rise to keep prices in check, Yun said.

Cruise operator Carnival has postponed the planned restart of voyages on its Italy-based Costa line because of the spread of coronavirus in Europe.

Costa had planned to run one of its ships from late March and another from early May, but those two dates have been pushed back to early and mid-May respectively.

“The decision has been taken in consideration of the restrictions still in place in Italy and other European countries to contain Covid-19,” Carnival said in a statement. “Such measures do not allow the company to offer the best cruise vacations to its guests, especially for what concerns the experience ashore.”

Infections have been growing across Europe in recent weeks. Earlier this month prime minister Mario Draghi launched a fresh set of lockdown measures.

Carnival said that when Costa sailing resumes, there will be a safety protocol on board. This includes limited capacity, swab tests for all guests and crew, physical distancing on board and use of face masks when necessary.

More than 1.5m passengers travelled through US airports in a single day over the weekend, the highest since March a year ago, signalling that vaccination success is fuelling demand for air travel.

The US Transportation Security Administration on Monday said it had screened 1.5m passengers on Sunday, the highest since March 13 last year, and nearly 4.4m travellers since Friday.

The airline industry and travel have been devastated by the coronavirus pandemic over the past year but a ramp-up in vaccinations and a decline in cases and hospitalisations has unleashed pent-up demand.

Air travel has also benefited from the spring break, as college students travel during the academic recess that marks the unofficial end of winter. Miami-Dade County in Florida issued a countywide daily curfew from midnight to 6am until further notice to curb crowds.

US airline chiefs have recently expressed optimism, with the heads of big carriers like United and Delta predicting cash burn will slow as more passengers venture out.

This contrasts with Europe where rising coronavirus cases have accelerated doubts over the summer holiday season. Air traffic in Europe is about two-thirds lower than at the same point in 2019, according to Eurocontrol data.

The number of jobless people in Portugal rose almost 37 per cent in the year to February, with the Algarve holiday region registering a 74 per cent increase as the coronavirus pandemic hit the vital tourism sector.

The total number of unemployed rose to almost 431,900 last month, reflecting a loss of more than 116,000 jobs since February 2020, the Employment and Professional Training Institute said on Monday.

February’s figures, the highest since May 2017 when Portugal was recovering from a deep recession, showed the pandemic has wiped out more than the number of jobs created over the previous two years.

Services were hit hardest, with the number of unemployed increasing by more than 70 per cent in the holiday accommodation and restaurant sector and almost 44 per cent across the services industry as a whole.

Real estate, transport and warehousing were also badly affected, with increases of more than 50 per cent in the number of unemployed.

The number of people staying in tourist accommodation in Portugal fell by more than 60 per cent last year. Tourism accounts for about 15 per cent of national output and provides 9 per cent of the country’s jobs.

The unemployment rate rose 0.3 percentage points in 2020 to 6.8 per cent.

Vladimir Putin will be vaccinated against Covid-19 on Tuesday, the Russian president has said, ending months of speculation over whether he would receive a jab in a country where the rate of inoculation has been hampered by widespread reluctance among citizens.

Russia has vaccinated 6.3m people with at least one dose of vaccine, including 4.3m who have had both doses, Putin said at a televised government meeting on Monday. He added: “By the way, I myself intend to do it tomorrow.”

The Kremlin has since December insisted that Putin intended to get the jab but has given no reasons for why he was waiting.

His vaccination could help promote the use of Sputnik V and other Russian approved jabs. The vaccine is widely available to all age groups for free, but only 30 per cent of Russians are willing to take it, according to a poll published by the independent Levada Center this month. Nearly two out of six respondents said Covid-19 “was created artificially and is a new form of biological warfare”, according to the survey.

Putin also said that while he was encouraged by the strong demand for Sputnik V from foreign countries, manufacturers should ensure that Russian citizens are a priority. The president said that 20.1m doses of Sputnik V had been manufactured in Russia so far.

He also criticised comments from the EU’s internal market commissioner who on Sunday said the bloc had no need to use Sputnik V alongside EU-produced jabs.

“This is a strange statement,” Putin said. “When we hear such statements from officials, the question arises: whose interests are protected and represented by such people? The interests of some pharmaceutical companies or citizens of European countries? What are they doing? Lobbying?”

“The geography of use of the Russian Sputnik V is actively growing. Even despite the deliberate discrediting of our vaccine, various misinformation, sometimes outright fables, more and more countries around the world are showing interest in our vaccine,” Putin said

Putin personally approved the state-backed Sputnik V jab in August before it had completed full trials, adding that his own daughter was one of the people who had participated in initial trials.

French labour minister Elisabeth Borne has been hospitalised as a result of “respiratory symptoms” from Covid-19 but her health is “in the process of improving”, her office announced on Monday.

Borne, 59, is one of seven senior French government figures, including President Emmanuel Macron, to fall victim to the disease since the pandemic began a year ago. Roselyne Bachelot, the 74-year-old culture minister, said on Saturday that she too had caught the virus.

France is in the throes of a third wave of infections and tightened coronavirus restrictions for more than 20m people, including residents of Paris, from the weekend.

The other ministers who caught the virus were finance minister Bruno Le Maire, trade minister and previously culture minister Franck Riester, former environment minister Brune Poirson and housing minister Emmanuelle Wargon.

Lord Eddie Lister, Boris Johnson’s fixer and close ally, has travelled to India as part of an effort to secure millions of doses of AstraZeneca vaccines vital to the UK’s fight against coronavirus.

Lister and international adviser David Quarrey met India’s foreign secretary Harsh Shringla in New Delhi on Monday to “discuss bilateral relations and outcomes” for Johnson’s planned visit to the country in April, according to India’s Ministry of External Affairs.

Lister, a Conservative peer and the UK prime minister’s special envoy for the Gulf, is expected to travel from there to Pune where he will visit the Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer and a producer of the AstraZeneca jab, said a person with knowledge of the talks.

“Eddie Lister is making a personal trip on his way to Pune to help resolve this,” the person said. “He [Lister] wants doses but the Indian government is stalling because in parliament they are questioning why are we exporting the vaccines.”

Whitehall insiders confirmed that Lister would visit the Serum Institute this week to try to broker a deal on delivery of the UK’s AstraZeneca doses.

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US government bonds stabilised on Monday after their longest losing streak since 2018.

The yield on the 10-year US Treasury fell 0.06 percentage points to 1.677 per cent, reflecting a pick-up in price. The calm start to the trading week follows seven weeks of rising yields and comes despite the US Federal Reserve’s announcement on Friday that it would not extend a loosening of bank capital requirements that had previously supported the market.

Earlier in the week, the Fed had reiterated that it intended to keep stimulus flowing even in the event of a pick-up in inflation.

“The markets are digesting what the Fed said last week . . . The Treasury yield is elevated from where it has been in the past, but it’s not the near vertical climb that we have seen recently,” said Dean Cheeseman, portfolio manager at Janus Henderson.

The rise in yields has led to volatility in tech-heavy Nasdaq stocks indices. Futures tracking the Nasdaq 100 rose 0.6 per cent on Monday, while those for the S&P 500 fell 0.1 per cent. 

In Europe, the region-wide Stoxx 600 fell 0.2 per cent at the opening bell. The UK’s FTSE 100 lost 0.1 per cent and Germany’s Xetra Dax dropped 0.3 per cent.

Europe’s rollout of Covid-19 vaccines hit a roadblock last week after wrangling over the efficacy and availability of the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab. France recently imposed a new four-week lockdown in Paris, while Italy announced a new lockdown over Easter.

“The only way to get a handle on these more virulent strains is to do a lockdown and that has a knock-on effect on the economy,” said Cheeseman, adding that impediments to the rollout of Covid-19 vaccines would be particularly detrimental to tourism-dependent nations in southern Europe.

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Junior lawyers and consultants are warning they are suffering burnout after working longer hours in isolation during the pandemic, sparking fears of an exodus from the biggest global law and advisory firms.

Soaring demand for legal and corporate advice during the Covid-19 crisis and a global shift to remote working have resulted in a growing mental health problem among younger professional workers, according to senior partners.

Lawyers said the fast pace of work was no longer balanced by social interaction and face-to-face team work, causing some to reconsider their career path. Senior lawyers said they were already seeing departures at the junior end of the profession.

“I do think it will lead to people leaving,” said Ben Tidswell, chair at law firm Ashurst. “We’re really worried about it, and not just as a retention issue but as a welfare issue.”

Similar pressures are being felt across financial services companies. Last week a group of first-year investment banking analysts at Goldman Sachs told management they had been working an average of 95 hours per week and suffering from insomnia and anxiety.

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The developers of Russia’s Covid-19 vaccine have accused the EU’s internal market commissioner Thierry Breton of “hubris” and anti-Russian “bias” after he said the bloc had no need to use the jab.

“We have absolutely no need of Sputnik V,” Breton, who is head of the EU’s vaccine distribution initiative, told TF1 television on Sunday evening. Use of Sputnik V has become a controversial issue in the EU, after Hungary and Slovakia issued emergency approval for the jab before the bloc’s medical regulator gave it the green light.

“Commissioner [Thierry Breton] is clearly biased against the Sputnik V vaccine just because it is Russian,” Sputnik V’s developers said in a post on Twitter. “We hope that facts will help [him] to have less hubris and be less biased.”

“Biases lead to failures. And Breton’s failures are clear to many people in EU,” they added.

Moscow has sought to promote exports of Sputnik V to EU countries over the past two months.

Sputnik V’s developers said Breton’s comments would pressure member states to individually approve the Russian jab and not wait for approval from the central European Medicines Agency.

“[Breton] believes all is great with EU vaccinations and Sputnik V is not needed. Are Europeans happy with Breton’s vaccination approach?” the tweets continued.

Shares in European airlines and other travel companies tumbled in early trading on Monday, as rising coronavirus cases on the continent accelerated doubts over the summer holiday season.

British Airways owner IAG slid as much as 15 per cent after the market opened before recovering to trade 7 per cent lower, while low-cost rivals easyJet and Ryanair each fell 7 per cent. Travel group Tui was down 6 per cent.

Concerns have intensified that the UK will prolong its ban on non-essential international travel well into the critical summer season for airlines, depriving carriers of revenue following more than a year of disruption. Analysts expect most major European airlines to need new cash if this summer is a write-off.

“We can’t be deaf and blind to what’s going on outside the United Kingdom”, Ben Wallace, defence secretary, told Sky News over the weekend, referring to a surge in cases in continental Europe.

Wallace’s comments came after Mike Tildesley, a member of the government’s Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling, told the BBC that international travel was unlikely this summer for the “average holidaymaker” because of the risk of introducing new coronavirus variants to the UK.

The UK has begun a trial of a coronavirus “variant test” that will ascertain which Covid-19 strain an infected person has, with results within 48 hours.

The tests could halve the time it takes to identify if a positive Covid-19 sample contains a variant of concern, which takes up to five days for genomic sequencing.

Trials of the technology, known as “genotype assay testing”, are being carried out at NHS Test and Trace laboratories, the Department for Health and Social Care said.

The care minister, who warned the EU against “vaccine nationalism”, said the test would “establish whether a positive test is one of the known variants of concern”.

“Vaccine nationalism, the threat or the speculation about limiting supply, doesn’t do anybody any good,” Helen Whately told Sky News on Monday as she urged Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, not to block exports of vaccines to the UK .

Prime minister Boris Johnson plans to urge EU national capitals this week to veto a suggestion from Brussels that would block AstraZeneca jabs to the UK.

London has laid claim to millions of doses that are produced at a Dutch factory but the commission says they should be used in the EU.

The UK government plans to relax coronavirus restrictions by mid-June in its four-step “roadmap out of lockdown”, but only if its “assessment of the risks is not fundamentally changed by new variants of concern”.

Pupils have returned to school while in a week’s time six people, or two households, will be able to meet outside in private gardens.

The UK has vaccinated more than 27.6m, or more than half the adult population, with at least one dose.

Kingfisher expects sales growth to slow down at the end of the year, warning that it will become difficult to match the booming demand for do-it-yourself products during lockdown as well as the “uncertainty” over economic trends.

The group, which operates the B&Q and Screwfix brands in the UK, said on Monday that it expected “distinct performances in the two halves of the coming year” with low double-digit sales growth in the first six months of its financial year.

Sales were up 7 per cent to £12.3bn in the year ending January, Kingfisher said, while pre-tax profits jumped 44 per cent to £756m, adjusted for one-off items related to property.

Kingfisher said that “while the exceptional demand we have seen over the last year may moderate as vaccines are rolled out and restrictions for our customers become less prevalent, the Covid crisis has established longer-term trends that are clearly supportive for our industry”.

It expects the trend of home-working to endure, turning people’s homes into a “hub” for life and work.

The company proposed a final dividend of 8.25p per share. It comes after the cancellation of last year’s dividend as the group was initially forced to close all stores when the pandemic broke out.

Kingfisher did, however, benefit from a surge in spending on homes and gardens, and online sales more than doubled last year, now making up just under a fifth of total sales.

Deliveroo has set a price range for its flotation, with the food delivery group targeting a market capitalisation of between £7.6bn and £8.8bn, as it seeks to invest in growth opportunities.

The company said on Monday that it would sell shares at between £3.90 and £4.60. At the midpoint of the range, the equity would be valued at £8.2bn.

Around 384m shares will be sold in the initial public offering, worth £1.6bn at the midpoint of the price range. Of that, around £1bn has been earmarked for the company itself with the rest going to existing investors who are selling shares.

The company, which has benefited from lockdown demand for takeaways, plans to use the proceeds to invest in growth opportunities.

The total value of transactions on its platform more than doubled compared with the same period last year, the group said in a trading update for the first two months of 2021.

AstraZeneca’s US clinical trial of its Covid-19 vaccine developed with Oxford university has shown 79 per cent efficacy at preventing symptomatic disease and 100 per cent efficacy against severe or critical disease and hospitalisation.

Twenty per cent of participants in the trial were over the age of 65 and the jab showed 80 per cent efficacy in these older participants, the results showed on Monday.

This US trial involved 32,449 people, including141 symptomatic cases of Covid-19.

The vaccine was well tolerated, the pharmaceutical group said, and the independent data safety monitoring board identified no safety concerns related to the vaccine.

In particular it reviewed the thrombotic events, including cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, which have caused concern across Europe, with the assistance of an independent neurologist.

The monitoring board found no increased risk of thrombosis or events characterised by thrombosis among the 21,583 participants receiving at least one dose of the vaccine. The specific search for CVST found no cases in this trial.

Ann Falsey, professor of medicine at the University of Rochester and a principal investigator for the trial, said: “These findings reconfirm previous results observed in [earlier] trials across all adult populations but it’s exciting to see similar efficacy results in people over 65 for the first time.

“This analysis validates the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine as a much-needed additional vaccination option, offering confidence that adults of all ages can benefit from protection against the virus.”

Mene Pangalos, executive vice-president, BioPharmaceuticals R&D, said: “These results add to the growing body of evidence that shows this vaccine is well tolerated and highly effective against all severities of Covid-19 and across all age groups.

“We are preparing to submit these findings to the US Food and Drug Administration and for the rollout of millions of doses across America should the vaccine be granted US emergency use authorisation.”

The international shipping industry is warning that unvaccinated seafarers threaten to tip the global supply chain into deeper crisis as countries introduce vaccine requirements at their borders.

Of the world’s 1.7m seafarers, 900,000 are from developing nations, where vaccines might not be available for all until 2024, according to the International Chamber of Shipping, a trade association.

Guy Platten, secretary-general of ICS, said it had received reports that three ports in China had prevented sailors from disembarking because they had not received a specific Covid-19 vaccine, foreshadowing a potential repeat of last year’s welfare crisis for seafarers and the challenges to rebooting international travel.

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Renesas Electronics, one of the world’s largest makers of chips for the automotive industry, has warned that a fire at one of its factories could have “a massive impact” on global semiconductor supplies and halt production for at least a month.

The timing of Friday’s fire at the advanced chip facility in Japan could not come at a worse time for carmakers, which were already wrestling with widespread disruption to supply chains caused by the Covid-19 pandemic as well as the US cold snap that led to mass blackouts in Texas. 

“We are concerned that there will be a massive impact on chip supplies,” Hidetoshi Shibata, chief executive of Renesas, said at an online news conference on Sunday. “We will pursue every means possible to minimise the impact.” 

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The Philippines needs stricter measures to control its rapidly rising number of Covid-19 cases, according to the chair of the south-east Asian archipelago’s Senate health committee.

Christopher “Bong” Go, a likely presidential contender in 2022, said authorities should reimpose tough public health rules in Manila and other areas where outbreaks could overwhelm hospitals and clinics.

“Many people have relaxed too much,” he said in a statement on Sunday. “We have to stop the surge of Covid-19 cases, particularly in [Manila].”

He said authorities should balance protecting people’s lives and ensuring that operations of essential public services and industries remained unhampered.

Go added that mass gatherings should be banned, while work-from-home arrangements must be encouraged. He urged families to stay at home and avoid unnecessary travel.

Extreme weather has hindered Sydney’s Covid-19 vaccine distribution, the New South Wales government said on Sunday.

Heavy rain hit Australia’s largest city, forcing evacuations and damaging property.

Flood warnings were in place for about 12 areas in NSW, Australia’s most populous state, as the level of the Nepean river hit a 60-year high.

“It’s not just the rain which is causing the devastation,” Jonathan How, a government meteorologist, told Australia’s ABC News. “It’s strong winds as well.”

Australia plans to deliver vaccine doses to almost 6m people over the next few weeks. 

Michael Kidd, deputy chief medical officer, said the flooding was causing “inevitable” delays to the distribution of vaccines to some parts of NSW.

He could not say how many doses or clinics had been affected.

A UK government edict allowing al fresco dining from April has prompted a scramble to create outdoor seating space, with restaurant and pub operators desperate to claw back revenues lost during lockdown. 

Hospitality businesses across England are planning to open terraces or expand on to pavement areas after ministers ruled that restaurants and pubs could serve customers outside only in the first instance when they are permitted to reopen on April 12. 

Pub company Punch has said it was investing £1m in outdoor space, while the landlord Cadogan, which owns large parts of Kensington and Chelsea, said that it was adding 500 seats to newly pedestrianised streets in the area.

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Workplace accidents in Singapore have returned to pre-pandemic levels as more businesses and factories resume activities, the city-state’s labour ministry reported.

The total number of workplace injuries fell by 18 per cent to 11,350 in 2020 from 13,779 in 2019. Work-related deaths also fell to 30 last year from 39 in 2020 as most factories and construction sites shut down due to the pandemic.

However, the number of workplace injuries reverted to pre-Covid-19 levels by the fourth quarter of 2020, with 3,413 compared with 3,445 in the same quarter in 2019.

The leading causes of injuries continue to be the “slips, trips and falls” and “machinery incidents” categories.

“The escalating injury rate in late 2020 and the spate of accidents in February 2021 is cause for concern,” the Ministry of Manpower said in a statement.

“Companies could be rushing to catch up on project delays following work stoppages and exacerbated by manpower disruptions due to the pandemic,” it added.

The ministry said it would step up inspections, noting that contraventions had been found in more than half of all workplaces visited between mid-December 2020 and mid-March.

“We issued a total of 13 stop-work orders, 264 fines amounting to S$303,000 (US$225,000) and 1,270 notices of non-compliance.”

The top contraventions included fall-from-height risks and poor maintenance of heavy machinery such as excavators, boom lifts and forklifts.

Hungary will accept 680,000 doses of the Russian-developed Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine, the country’s foreign affairs and trade minister said at the weekend.

They would arrive in the next two weeks, Peter Szijjártó wrote on his Facebook page.

He said he finalised the vaccine deal with Russian trade and industry minister Denis Manturov.

Szijjártó said he received a Sputnik V jab on Saturday and Hungary would offer 250,000 first doses this week.

Hungary became the first EU state to receive Sputnik V samples for evaluation. The country’s drug regulator approved the vaccine in February.

New Zealand has postponed the date when the country establishes a “travel bubble” with Australia, prime minister Jacinda Ardern said on Monday.

Originally planned to launch on April 6, Ardern said New Zealand would instead announce “the commencement date” of the quarantine free zone that day.

She said establishing the trans-Tasman zone remains high on the agenda. 

“Our position has always been clear,” she said “It’s not just a priority for tourism and business, but it’s also about reuniting friends and families.”

She said, however, that many New Zealanders remained “nervous” about opening the country’s borders.

“They want us to proceed in the same vein as our overall Covid-19 response — that is with caution.”

Disruption is the goal of many technology start-ups. But, in the education sector, a number of tech ventures are building businesses based on helping — rather than competing with — schools and universities. 

Online education platforms such as Coursera, 2U, Udacity and FutureLearn originally started out with utopian visions of free learning through massive open online courses. But high dropout rates and the difficulties of monetising this learning convinced platforms to form partnerships with universities to run paid-for courses and share the revenue. 

As a business model, it had been gaining traction before the coronavirus pandemic hit. However, the lockdown of campuses and people’s desire to retrain during a time of turbulence in the jobs market has driven up applications significantly in the past 12 months.

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Indoor gatherings in Switzerland can double in size to 10 people from Monday, the country’s federal council has ruled. 

However, authorities said Covid-19 case numbers have been rising since the end of February, and the risk of an “uncontrolled increase in cases is currently too great” to allow any other measures to be eased. 

The council said too few people have been vaccinated to prevent a sharp rise in hospital admissions.

Switzerland has administered at least 1,176,875 doses of vaccines so far, equivalent to about 6.9 per cent of the country’s population.

Due to delivery bottlenecks at Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna, some areas of Switzerland have had to slow down the planned pace of vaccination. 

There have been 580,609 infections and 9,509 coronavirus-related deaths reported in the country since the pandemic began.

The first seasonal workers allowed into Australia since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic began their quarantine at the weekend, the Tasmanian government announced. 

More than 150 workers arrived from Vanuatu to work on farms and in agribusiness in Tasmania and Victoria.

A second flight from the Solomon Islands is scheduled to arrive in Hobart on Tuesday morning, with another 144 workers on board. 

Tasmania agreed to quarantine workers from the Pacific islands in the first half of 2021, with costs to be borne by Victoria and the agriculture industry in both states.

“These workers present a low risk of Covid-19 to our community,” said Guy Barnett, Tasmania’s primary industries and water minister.

Mary-Anne Thomas, Victoria’s agriculture minister, said the arrival of the workers would ease pressure on farmers but urged a long-term solution to rural labour shortages.

“We need to keep working to encourage locals into these jobs – something that the federal government should play an active role in,” she said.

One of the oldest churches in the Philippines shut its doors indefinitely after a parish priest died from Covid-19, a Roman Catholic media outlet announced on Sunday.

San Agustin Church, consecrated in 1607 in Manila’s historic Intramuros district, cancelled services after Father Arnold Santa Maria Cañoza died at the age of 45 on Sunday morning.

According to the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines media office, the church and adjacent convent would be closed from Monday.

“Access to the church and convent will be restricted, and operations at the parish office will also be suspended until further notice,” the parish told the media outlet. “We ask for your understanding and prayers.”

With outdoor dining embedded in urban custom due to the pandemic, Chicago has launched a design initiative to create more vibrant spaces.

Grants of up to $250,000 are being offered for “public way enhancement” including modular designs, landscape elements and other projects to improve community spaces.

Entrants for the Chicago Alfresco project are expected to create designs that would last from six months to three years.

“Chicago Alfresco is part of the city’s broader initiative to open streets and create places for dining, public life, community, arts, culture, walking and biking,” said Lori Lightfoot, mayor. 

“Chicago Alfresco is an integral part of Chicago’s push for more neighbourhood tourism,” she added.

The United Arab Emirates opened Covid-19 vaccinations to virtually all residents over the age of 16 from Monday, in a widening of a programme that already has one of the world’s highest inoculation rates.

The Ministry of Health and Prevention said in a weekend statement that the six-week priority entitlement window for those most at risk of infection is over, allowing the Gulf country to vaccinate other adults.

Those eligible for vaccination can be inoculated free of charge in any of the 205 vaccination locations nationwide.

As of Saturday, the UAE has administered nearly 7.2m doses at a rate of more than 72 per 100 people.

Abdul Rahman bin Mohammed bin Nasser Al Owais, health minister, said that as of Saturday, nearly 73 per cent of citizens and foreign residents over the age of 65 had been vaccinated against Covid-19, and more than 56 per cent of the eligible population had been inoculated.

The UAE has approved four vaccines for emergency use, those made by Sinopharm, Pfizer/BioNTech and Oxford/AstraZeneca, as well as the Russian-made Sputnik V jab. 

Australia will start domestic production of coronavirus vaccines this week, which authorities hope will alleviate a shortfall caused by production delays and an EU block on exports.

The CSL facility in Melbourne is expected to produce more than 1m doses a week of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine under licence.

“We're pushing to get that increased as much as possible,” Brendan Murphy, secretary of Australia’s health department, told a television programme on Sunday. 

“At the moment, we are still on target to give every Australian who wants it a first dose by the end of October.”

Murphy said there was no change in confidence in the AstraZeneca shot, despite suspensions of its rollout in at least 16 European countries. 

“In the UK now, more than 11m people have had the AstraZeneca vaccine. And around the world, many, many millions of people have had the Pfizer vaccine,” he told the Sunday Agenda programme on Sky News Australia. 

“And the data that's coming out of all of those countries is that both vaccines are really good at preventing severe disease, preventing hospitalisation, preventing death and are probably likely to help prevent transmission,” he added

The rollout has been hampered by delays after Australia contracted with AstraZeneca to supply 3.8m doses. “They have only been able to provide 700,000,” Murphy said. 

The EU has threatened to halt exports of AstraZeneca vaccines if the bloc did not receive its promised deliveries first.

“You fulfil your contract with Europe first before you start delivering to other countries,” European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen told the drugmaker in an interview with Germany’s Funke media group on Saturday.

Murphy said AstraZeneca was “very keen” to fulfil its Australian order, “but these countries have, not surprisingly I suppose, been blocking the export”.

The technology used in the BioNTech/Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine could one day be tailored to fight specific cancers, the co-founders of the German biotechnology group told the Financial Times.

The approval of the BioNTech vaccine last year had “opened up the pharmaceutical space” for other mRNA-based vaccines for diseases, including HIV, tuberculosis and cancer, Ugur Şahin said on the final day of the FT Weekend spring festival.

BioNTech is developing “personalised vaccines”, which could tailor jabs for specific tumours, he added. 

Unlike traditional vaccines, messenger RNA, or mRNA, does not use a weakened or inactivated virus to trigger an immune response. Instead, it injects genetic instructions into the body, a method that until last year had never been used in a licensed pharmaceutical.

Ozlem Tureci, Sahin’s wife and co-founder of BioNTech, told science editor Clive Cookson the technology is “a very efficient way to induce different effectors of the immune system”. However a year ago the team were unaware how effective their jab would be at suppressing Covid-19.

“The finding at the end that we observed 95 per cent efficacy to prevent symptomatic disease,” she said on Saturday, “made us very happy.”

The festival on Saturday rounded off its three-day programme of debates, Q&As, interviews and lectures with a dip into lockdown hobbies such as running and gardening as well as poetry and a look behind the scenes at the FT’s editorial debates with editor Roula Khalaf and chief economics commentator Martin Wolf.

Peru has become the latest country to pass 50,000 deaths from coronavirus as Latin America braces for another wave of the pandemic.

The health ministry said the death toll stood at 50,198 over the weekend with more than 1.46m confirmed cases. The Andean nation is the 15th in the world to pass the 50,000-mark.

With a population of 32m, Peru has one of the highest death rates per capita of any country in the Americas.

The country’s health system has been placed under severe strain and it has had to import oxygen from neighbouring Chile.

Peru goes to the polls next month to choose a new president. The authorities have confirmed that voting will go ahead despite the pandemic.

New York City will begin returning high school students to in-person learning on Monday after months of remote education due to the coronavirus pandemic.

"We are really excited about this,” said Bill de Blasio, New York mayor, in a weekend statement.

About half of the city’s high schools will be offering in-person learning five days a week to all or a majority of their students.

“With a 0.57 positivity rate, our schools are the safest place to be," said Meisha Porter, NYC schools chancellor.

Porter, formerly the Bronx borough superintendent of education, took the helm of the city’s school system — which has 1m students in 1,800 schools — on March 15.

She was appointed after the abrupt resignation of Richard Carranza, who held the job for three years and clashed with the mayor over desegregation and pandemic policies.

China has sent Niger 400,000 doses of the Sinopharm vaccine to help curb the spread of Covid-19 in the west African nation.

The vaccines, 300,000 antigen tests and supplies of personal protective equipment arrived at the airport in Niamey, the capital, at the weekend, Niger’s health ministry said. 

The ministry said Niger would start rolling out its vaccination campaign from March 27, with politicians, healthcare workers, security forces and citizens aged over 60 given priority. 

Niger has reported 4,918 cases and 185 deaths from coronavirus so far, according to official data issued on Saturday.

Canadian Pacific has agreed to buy Kansas City Southern for $25bn, in what would be the largest deal of the year, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

The Calgary-based railway company has offered to buy the US freight group for $275 per share in a cash and stock offer. CP’s proposal represents a 23 per cent premium on Kansas City Southern’s closing stock price on Friday.

The railway sector was hit hard in the early phase of the pandemic because of restrictions imposed by the US government to contain the spread of the coronavirus.

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Miami Beach was put under a curfew and a state of emergency after police fired pepper balls to disperse crowds of revellers who defied coronavirus safety guidelines at the weekend.

Outdoor restaurant seating was suspended and roads were closed in parts of the city, one of the most popular tourist attractions in the US for annual “spring break” vacations. 

Defying the curfew, hundreds of people spilled into the Miami Beach streets late on Saturday night, prompting police to take aggressive action to break up the crowds.

“Quite frankly, I am concerned that the behaviour is getting more for us to be able to handle,” Miami Beach police chief Richard Clements said at a press conference on Saturday. “Everything that we are focusing on now is public safety.”

The unrest came as Florida passed 2m Covid-19 cases.

Raul Aguila, interim city manager of the popular Florida resort, issued the curfew order after the police expressed “significant concerns” over larger than expected spring break crowds which at times descended into street brawls and property destruction.

The city ordered an 8pm curfew on a designated “high-impact zone” of the most heavily travelled streets, including the popular Ocean Drive, a strip of bars, clubs and restaurants.

Ocean Drive was closed to pedestrian and vehicular traffic, except to residents, hotel guests and employees of local businesses.

All outdoor dining was suspended in the high impact zone while takeout orders had to cease at midnight.

Owners of bars and restaurants told local media they feared the new order could reverse the gains they had made from the spring break crowds to help them bounce back from the pandemic.

Police blocked most traffic on three causeways that connect Miami Beach with the rest of the Miami metropolitan area to keep out new visitors.

Aguila told the Miami Herald that he recommended keeping the emergency measures in place until April 12, or the end of spring break. 

The Miami Beach curfew came days after Florida governor Ron DeSantis, a Republican, suggested the state would ease Covid-19 restrictions further.

Florida’s Department of Health on Saturday announced 5,105 new confirmed cases of Covid-19, bringing the state total to 2,004,362 coronavirus cases since the pandemic began.

Another 64 deaths were recorded, bringing total fatalities to 33,337. Among those who died, 32,713 were residents and 624 were non-residents.

Saudi Aramco stuck by its $75bn dividend pledge despite a 44 per cent drop in 2020 profits after the pandemic triggered lockdowns and travel bans that slashed oil demand, caused crude prices to tumble and weakened margins in its refining and chemicals businesses.

Saudi Arabia’s state energy company on Sunday reported full-year earnings of $49bn, in what Amin Nasser, chief executive, said was an “unprecedented and difficult year”. 

Profits were in line with an analyst net income estimate compiled by the company, but free cash flow slid nearly 40 per cent to $49bn, significantly lower than the level needed to cover the dividend.

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The Tokyo Olympic Games will take place without overseas spectators after Japan decided it would not let them enter the country for fear of spreading Covid-19. Overseas residents will receive a refund on tickets. Rules for domestic spectators and foreign residents of Japan have not yet been decided.

The UK culture secretary has sought to shore up confidence in the Oxford/AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine. “It is very clear there is no need to have any concerns at all,” Oliver Dowden said on Times Radio, adding that the jab has been declared safe by both the EU and UK medical regulators.

Covid-19 cases in the UK have dropped by a fifth in the past week, although the decline has levelled off. On the Zoe app there was an average of 5,470 daily cases of symptomatic Covid-19 each day, down from 5,495 a week before, and 93 per cent lower than the peak of 69,000 at the start of the year.

Berlin’s theatres and opera houses have been dark since November 2020, laid waste by the pandemic. Now a pilot project allowing for a limited number of compliant performances has kicked off, with a showing of Panic Heart, an autobiographical play by Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre, which will run until April 4.

Tony Douglas, the British chief executive of Abu Dhabi-based Etihad, and his team meticulously chart forecasts for the industry’s recovery from rival airlines, investment banks and consultancies, but has watched helplessly as these have all been undone by rising infection rates around the world. 

JD Wetherspoon blamed a record half-year loss on the “economic and social mayhem” caused by Covid-19 restrictions. The pub chain posted a £46.2m loss for the six months to January 31, compared with a pre-tax profit of £57.9m in the year-earlier period. Revenues more than halved to £431m while like-for-like sales fell 53 per cent.

Interactive Investor, the UK’s second-largest fund supermarket, is exploring an initial public offering in London this year on the back of a boom in retail investing. Like the US, trading volumes in Britain have been boosted by the number of people stuck at home during the coronavirus pandemic.

Google announced that it plans to spend $7bn this year on expanding its network of US offices and data centres, saying it still saw value in employees “coming together in person to collaborate”. However, the spending would mark a decline in Google’s recent annual investment in new physical space since the pandemic began.