Coronavirus: Vaccination slowdown puts Biden’s July 4 goal in jeopardy - as it happened

Royal Caribbean has announced that cruises from its Miami and Texas ports will recommence over the next six weeks, bringing to an end more than a year of suspension due to the pandemic.

The next stage of the cruise line operator’s summer “comeback” will begin on July 2 in Miami, while the first voyage from Texas will depart Galveston on August 15.

The company said it would have 12 of its ships sailing by the end of August across the Bahamas, Caribbean, Alaska and Europe “before a full-fleet return by year’s end”.

In late May, Royal Caribbean announced the first step of its US summer comeback and said that cruises to Alaska would recommence on July 19, and depart from Seattle rather than Vancouver.

Michael Bayley, chief executive said on Friday that 90 per cent of holidaymakers booking with the company are either vaccinated of planning to get vaccinated in time for their cruises. 

He also thanked Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor, and the mayors of Miami-Dade and Broward counties, “for their steadfast support of our industry and for providing access to vaccines to the thousands of crew on our ships off the eastern seaboard.”

DeSantis in April said Florida would sue the federal government and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to allow cruise ships to resume sailing “immediately”. Local media reported earlier this week that mediation between the state and the CDC had failed.

Walmart will close its US stores on Thanksgiving Day for the second year in a row, after the pandemic forced retailers to rethink how they manage the holiday sales rush.

Arkansas-based Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, called the move a “‘thank you’ to associates for their continued hard work during the pandemic”. It said Black Friday hours will be announced at a later date.

Target said earlier this year that it plans to close its stores on Thanksgiving again, the first sign that retailers might dial back doorbuster deals beyond the pandemic.

Last year, several leading retailers shut their doors for the holiday to keep crowds at a minimum and give employees a breather. Instead, they chose to roll out deals online well before the traditional kick-off to the shopping season. Walmart split Black Friday into three separate sales events in 2020, with the first in early November.

Store traffic on Thanksgiving and Black Friday had already been on the decline before the pandemic, as consumers did more of their holiday shopping online.

The pace of daily inoculations in the US has slowed to levels that, one month from a July 4 deadline, are jeopardising Joe Biden’s vaccination goal for American adults.

The latest figures from the top US public health agency showed that aboutt 163m Americans over the age of 18 had received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine as of 6am on June 4. That, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is equivalent to 63.2 per cent of the adult resident population, implied to be about 258m.

The president wants 70 per cent of residents aged 18 and over to have had at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine by July 4. Hitting his target would require a further 18m adults to receive their first dose within the next month — a rate of about 585,000 first-dose jabs a day until Independence Day.

According to the CDC, the seven-day average of daily first doses, which includes both adults and adolescents, was 511,742 for the week ended May 30, the most recent date for which figures are available.

The seven-day average of total doses administered (including second shots) in the US has fallen to a pace of almost 1.03m a day for the week ended May 30. Rates picked up in the week after the CDC on May 14 relaxed mask guidelines for fully vaccinated people, but have broadly been in decline since hitting a peak of 3.3m a day in mid-April.

Missing Biden’s vaccination target may not be a complete indictment of the US’s rollout, particularly given population size. The percentage of its total population that has received one or more doses, 50.9 per cent, ranks 13th in the world, according to the FT’s vaccine tracker, while its proportion of fully vaccinated residents, at 41.2 per cent, ranks sixth.

In an effort to boost take-up rates weeks away from July 4, the White House this week teamed up with Anheuser-Busch for an offer that would see the brewer give everyone over the age of 21 a free beer (or similar) if the country reached Biden’s target.

Several states, representing a wide range of vaccine rollout progress, have already commenced vaccine lotteries, pledging million-dollar grand prizes, college scholarships and even guns for vaccinated residents.

As of Friday, 12 states have administered at least one dose to 70 per cent of their adult populations.

Although vaccination rates have been in decline since mid-April, recent low figures may be explained by the public holiday on May 31. Throughout the pandemic, data released after the weekend or public holidays are often lower owing to reporting delays or facility closures.

This post was updated following the release of June 4 data from the CDC

About three in 10 Americans who lost their job during the pandemic have no plans to re-enter the workforce this year and those who do face “steep barriers”, according to a survey from the US Chamber of Commerce. 

These hurdles are viewed as intruding on the ability of the 9.3m unemployed workers to regain employment, the survey, in partnership with the Sports & Leisure Research Group, found. The business lobby group polled just over 500 Americans who became unemployed during the pandemic. 

The Chamber points to “inflated unemployment benefits, lack of childcare access, skills gaps, and an overall lack of available workers” as reasons for “exacerbating this challenge for workers and employers across America”.

About 30 per cent of workers have no plans to re-enter the workforce this year, the survey found, and 13 per cent “never expect to return to work”.

Forty per cent of survey respondents report to “have altered their livelihoods’‘ during the pandemic, with 20 per cent switching to work part-time. Meanwhile, 10 per cent have become self-employed and 10 per cent retired, according to the business organisation. 

Nearly half of the newly unemployed respondents said they are not actively or not very actively looking for a new job, while about one-third are strongly active in the search. 

“We call on elected leaders at the federal and state level to take immediate action to address this workforce crisis, beginning with increasing access to affordable childcare, investing in rapid job skilling, and right sizing unemployment benefits,” Neil Bradley, US Chamber executive vice-president and chief policy officer, said in a June 4 statement.

The Singapore Grand Prix has been cancelled for the second year in a row owing to pandemic restrictions that have recently been introduced by the city state.

The Formula One race, famous for being held during the night, was due to take place from October 1 to 3, but the organisers said in a statement on Friday it would no longer be going ahead “due to ongoing safety and logistic concerns brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic”.

Colin Syn, deputy chairman of Singapore GP, said: “To cancel the event for a second year is an incredibly difficult decision, but a necessary one in light of the prevailing restrictions for live events in Singapore.”

The move marks another cancellation of a leading event the country had been due to host, with the World Economic Forum announcing last month it had cancelled an in-person gathering planned for August. Soon after, the International Institute for Strategic Studies also said it scrapped plans for its Shangri-La Dialogue, a high-profile annual defence summit to be held on June 4.

Many sporting and live events over the world, including the Tokyo Olympics and the tennis at Wimbledon, were cancelled in 2020 owing to the coronavirus pandemic.

Ong Ling Lee, director for sports at the Singapore Tourism Board, said the board understood the decision to cancel this year’s F1 race, “given the unpredictable Covid-19 situation around the world” and that the move prioritised the health and safety of all participants, fans and the public.

Nobody can take away the three days I spent with my 21-year-old daughter in Catalonia last weekend. We wandered about, got lost, swam in the Mediterranean, enjoyed gin-and-tonic sundowners at the water’s edge, savoured local dishes and chatted to bar staff.

A university graduate last year, Sophia has been teaching English at a school in independence-minded Tàrrega since September and this was my first opportunity to share some of her experiences.

Tourism and visits to local landmarks were low on the agenda but the stakes and my stress levels were high.

That is because Spain is on England’s “amber” travel list in the UK government’s “traffic-light system” for overseas travel that was unveiled last month, which means people on their return have to quarantine for 10 days.

To my £54 return flight to Barcelona, I added £143 for two private polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests to take at home on the second and eighth days after my return to England. The rules also demanded I test negative for Covid-19 in the 72 hours before my flight back.

The laboratory in Barcelona had a two-hour window on Sunday. An urgent service to receive the result in time to fill in my passenger locator form and check in to my flight added €30 to the standard €100 price tag.

Anticipating a crush, I arrived at a Barcelona airport two hours before my 6:30am flight on Monday. I noticed many fellow travellers getting stopped, questioned and being made to fill out forms.

Once back, I have not left the confines of my home. The Home Office has come knocking to check on me and the Test and Trace service has called a number of times.

This week’s decision to remove Portugal from the more lenient “green” list has prompted a race home for those who have until 4am on Tuesday to sidestep quarantine. It mirrors a similar rush last year when Portugal was added to the travel corridor list on August 22, a fortnight after we visited, but was removed on September 12.

No other EU country is on that list, which is made up of 11 territories that include Australia and New Zealand, both of which are closed to most arrivals, Iceland, which only allows the fully vaccinated or immune, and other far flung islands such as Tristan da Cunha and the Falklands.

If I break the quarantine rules I am liable to face a fine of up to £10,000; last year the penalty was as much as £1,000 in England.

It seems, as I anticipate another 10-day quarantine next month after a family trip to Portugal, that the stakes are so much higher this year.

In fact, the only thing that feels the same is the dog will be bored from the lack of a walk.

The Lisbon government has suggested that the UK align its Covid-19 travel regulations with the EU’s planned digital vaccination certificate.

The proposal is aimed at averting the kind of travel chaos caused by Portugal’s abrupt removal on Thursday from England’s quarantine-free travel “green list”.

Augusto Santos Silva, foreign minister, said he would like to see the UK and other non-EU countries authorise non-essential travel on the basis of proof of Covid-19 vaccination, immunity or negative tests results.

“The UK does not currently consider any EU country safe for non-essential travel,” he told state broadcaster RTP. “Perhaps the problem does not lie with the EU, but in the criteria applied by the British authorities.”

Portugal, which currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency, is a leading proponent of the EU’s digital travel certificate, which Santos Silva said was scheduled to be launched on July 1.

“We would very much like the UK, the US and other countries to apply the same principles and methods,” he said. “People need to be able to plan their holidays weeks and months in advance.”

Airlines and travel agents have reported a wave of cancellations since the UK announced that it was switching Portugal from “green” to “amber” under its traffic light system of travel guidelines. Passengers returning to England from Portugal after 4am on Tuesday will have to self-isolate for 10 days.

The UK partly justified its decision by concern over a mutation of the Covid-19 Delta variant, first identified in India. Santos Silva said only 12 cases of this mutation had been identified in Portugal, making it “statistically irrelevant”.

He added that Portugal’s current Covid-19 test positivity rate was 1.2 per cent, well below the EU authorities’ recommended 4 per cent threshold for safe travel.

Booking Holdings, parent of Priceline, Kayak and OpenTable, will return $110m in Covid aid that it received from governments where it operates.

Booking chief executive Glenn Fogel disclosed to employees Friday that the decision to accept assistance, most of which was from the Dutch government, came at a time when its business was “severely impacted and the timing and pace of the recovery of the travel industry was very uncertain”, according to a filing with the SEC. 

But, the company with a market capitalisation of about $94bn, has reversed its decision after being “encouraged by the improving booking trends in certain countries in recent months”.

The announcement comes days after Booking was criticised by Dutch lawmakers for Booking’s executive pay levels. Although Booking is US-based, its largest subsidiary Booking.com is based in Amsterdam. 

Fogel’s total pay package topped $7.1m  in 2020, while finance chief David Goulden’s overall pay totalled nearly $24m for the year, the majority of which came in the form of stock awards and includes a retention bonus, regulatory filings show.

“The urgency of managing the company through the pandemic” was cited in the company’s April 20 proxy statement as a reason that “the compensation committee recognised that retention incentives were particularly important in 2020”.

Since 2011, Booking has received 90 per cent or higher support among shareholders on its annual advisory say-on-pay vote. In 2020, support topped 95 per cent, according to figures from compensation consultancy Farient Advisors.

Canada’s economy shed more jobs than expected last month as the country introduced more stringent restrictions to battle a third wave of coronavirus infections.

Employment fell by 68,000 in May with nearly all of the decline attributed to part-time work, Statistics Canada said on Friday. The decline was steeper than the 20,000 job losses that economists had estimated and followed a drop of 207,000 in April.

The latest losses increased the unemployment rate slightly, from 8.1 per cent to 8.2 per cent.

Large parts of the country have remained locked down to combat the pandemic, which has killed more than 25,000 Canadians so far.

Alberta and Manitoba both introduced restrictions that closed in-person dining and other recreational facilities, while Nova Scotia entered a province-wide shutdown in late April.

Still, economists expect hiring to rebound as restrictions are eased. Since the data for the May employment report was compiled, rules have been relaxed in some provinces.

Quebec has ended its nightly curfew and resumed outdoor dining, while Ontario’s stay at home order was lifted early this month.

French prime minister Jean Castex has unveiled a colour-coded system that will apply from June 9 to control travel to and from the country during the pandemic, with EU members among those classed as “green”, most other countries including the UK and the US as “orange”, and those with severe outbreaks such as India and South Africa as “red”.

Travellers from green countries such as Germany, Singapore and Australia need a negative PCR test before arrival only if they have not been vaccinated. Those from orange nations who have not been vaccinated will require an essential reason to come as well as a negative test in advance, and will have to self-quarantine for seven days on arrival.

Infections, hospitalisations and the number of people in intensive care with Covid have fallen sharply in France and across Europe in recent weeks, with 8,161 new confirmed cases and 70 further hospital deaths recorded on Thursday.

The coronavirus reproduction rate has edged above one in England as infections rise across the country.

According to government data, the so-called R value is between 1.0 and 1.2, meaning every 10 infected people will pass the virus on to between 10 and 12 others.

Last week, the range for the R value was between 0.9 and 1.1. Data suggest the R rate is highest in the north west of England.

The number of infections is either stable or growing slightly each day. The daily growth rate of the virus is estimated to be between 0 and 3 per cent.

The figures come as ministers weigh up whether to loosen coronavirus restrictions further, with the fourth and final stage of England’s “roadmap” out of lockdown scheduled for June 21.

Despite the higher infection levels, the rollout of vaccines has helped keep hospitalisations and deaths at low levels.

The US economy created 559,000 jobs last month as the unemployment rate fell to 5.8 per cent, suggesting the labour market has gained some strength amid fears that worker shortages were holding the economic recovery back.

The non-farm payrolls data released by the US labour department on Friday was slightly worse than economists’ expectations of about 650,000 employment gains, but marked an improvement over the 278,000 jobs posted in April.

The figures were released at a pivotal moment for the US economy, with growth rebounding strongly thanks to the lifting of pandemic restrictions across the country and hefty fiscal stimulus, while triggering a burst of inflation.

Meanwhile, businesses have been complaining that they are struggling to rehire workers to cope with surging demand, prompting them to raise wages in a bid to attract new employees. 

The April jobs report had fallen dramatically short of economists’ expectations and well below the pace of employment creation in March, raising fears that widespread labour shortages could permanently afflict the US economic recovery. 

That weakness raised the stakes for the May report, which was being closely watched for evidence that the sluggishness of hiring in April was a warning sign of a broader problem - or a temporary phenomenon tied to the lingering impact of the virus, school closures and government transfers, that would ultimately be resolved. 

Read more here

The US is donating 1m doses of the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine to Mexico, which will be used on 18 to 40-year-olds in the north of the country near the US border, foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard said.

Kamala Harris, US vice president, informed Mexico of the donation on Thursday ahead of her trip to Guatemala and Mexico next Tuesday and Wednesday.

Mexico has so far administered almost 32m vaccines of different types to nearly 23m people – a quarter of the adult population – and this week hit the milestone of 1m doses per day on one occasion. The ramp-up of Mexico’s vaccine programme appears to have helped president Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s approval ratings ahead of important mid-term elections on Sunday.

By speeding up vaccinations in the north of the country with the extra Johnson & Johnson shots, border activities would be able to return to normal sooner, Ebrard said. The border has been closed to most non-essential activities except trade for months.

The US drugs regulator has authorised the injection of Regeneron’s Covid-19 treatment, making it easier for patients to be given the drug.

Doctors had been administering the treatment via intravenous infusion before the change in authorisation announced on Friday.

Regeneron’s antibody drug, which was hailed by Donald Trump last year, is authorised for use in people with mild to moderate coronavirus symptoms and those facing a high risk of developing severe illness.

“Unfortunately, to date only a fraction of patients eligible for antibody treatments have received them, which we hope will change based on this updated FDA authorization,” said George Yancopoulos, president of Regeneron. 

The Food and Drug Administration also halved the dose needed from 1200mg to 600mg. Regeneron said the drug remained effective against the Gamma and Beta variants, first identified in Brazil and in South Africa respectively.

The number of people testing positive for Covid-19 across the UK jumped in the week to May 29, driven by a steep rise in cases in England and Wales, according to the Office for National Statistics.

In England 85,600 people — about one in every 640 — tested positive for coronavirus, up from one in 1,120 people the week before.

In Wales, the proportion of people infected with coronavirus also leapt from one in 3,850 people to one in 1,050.

But in Scotland, where 13 council areas are under tighter level-two restrictions, the proportion of infected individuals fell from one in 630 people to one in every 680 over the same period. The spread of infection remained flat in Northern Ireland, according to the ONS infection survey.

In a sign that the Delta variant — blamed for a surge in infections India — is becoming dominant in the UK, cases of the Alpha variant first identified in Kent were overtaken by those associated with other strains.

Sarah Croft of the ONS stressed that infections “remain low” across the country, adding that the evidence pointed to “an increase in England in cases compatible with the Delta variant”. 

UK medical regulators have given approval for the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine to be given to 12- to 15-year-olds, paving the way for the country to inoculate school-aged children.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency said on Friday it had concluded a safety review, one week after the EU’s regulator also gave the green light.

June Raine, MHRA chief executive, said in a statement that the regulator had concluded that the vaccine was “safe and effective” in the age group. “The benefits of this vaccine outweigh any risk.”

Following the thumbs-up from the MHRA, the UK’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation will advise whether the inoculation programme against Covid-19 will be extended to the cohort.

More than 2,000 children aged 12-15 years were studied as part of clinical trials. No cases of Covid-19 were identified from seven days after the second dose in the vaccinated group, compared with 16 cases in the placebo group.

“These are extremely positive results,” said Sir Munir Pirmohamed, chair of the Commission on Human Medicines.

Of the 200 people tested for coronavirus after arriving in the UK from Portugal over a two week period last month, 3 tested positive, data from the Department of Health show.

The figures cover the period between May 6 and May 19 and made up part of a “dynamic risk assessment methodology” which was used by the Joint Biosecurity Centre to inform the UK government’s decision on Thursday to remove Portugal from its “green list” of foreign holiday destinations.

The country will shortly move to the “amber list”, meaning that returning passengers have to self-isolate for 10 days on their return, and take two polymerase chain reaction (PCR) coronavirus tests during that period.

Portugal recorded 30 new cases per 100,000 residents between May 18 and May 24, figures from the World Health Organisation show. The country has administered a total of 57 doses of vaccine per 100 residents, according to the Financial Times’s vaccine tracker.

Eurozone retail sales fell more than expected in April after stores across the region were hit by tightened Covid-19 restrictions.

The volume of retail sales fell 3.1 per cent compared with the previous month, according to Eurostat. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast a less steep decline of 1.2 per cent.

The drop was driven by a 5.1 per cent decline in sales of non-food products, such as furniture and clothing, reflecting the closure of many non-essential retailers in April.

The sharpest contraction among the largest economies was in France, where sales fell 6 per cent compared with the previous month. They also fell sharply in Germany.

Claus Vistesen, chief eurozone economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said the figure “isn’t pretty”. However, he added that sales were likely to have been stronger in May, when new coronavirus cases fell sharply and restrictions were relaxed in several jurisdictions.

In another positive development, the reading for March was revised up 0.6 percentage points, to 3.3 per cent growth.

Bert Colijn, senior economist at ING, said: “Even with weaker April sales, we can still expect quarterly growth in retail sales to be very strong.”

UK construction activity showed “a phenomenal acceleration in growth” last month, boosted by a record jump in new orders, according to the latest survey.

The IHS Markit/Cips UK construction purchasing managers index rose to 64.2 in May, from 61.6 in the previous month and the strongest in nearly seven years.

The reading was well above the 50 mark, which indicates a majority of businesses reporting an expansion compared with the previous month, and was higher than the 63.2 forecast by economists polled by Reuters.

The industry posted “a phenomenal acceleration in growth” as new orders filled in at the fastest rate for almost a quarter of a century, said Duncan Brock, group director at the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply.

Construction companies attributed the surge in order books to demand for residential building work and high levels of confidence about the near-term economic outlook.

House building was the best performing category of construction activity in May, followed by commercial work. The latest increase in work on commercial projects was the steepest since August 2007, reflecting demand following the reopening of customer-facing areas of the UK economy.

However, Tim Moore, economics director at IHS Markit, which compiles the survey, noted there were “widespread reports” citing shortages of construction materials and wait times from suppliers lengthened considerably compared with those seen during April.

“Imbalanced supply and demand led to survey record increases in both purchasing prices and rates charged by subcontractors,” he added.

The UK should share a fifth of its available stock of coronavirus vaccines with other countries or risk facing variants against which jabs and other treatments no longer work, two public health experts have said in a letter addressed to the prime minister.

Sir Jeremy Farrer, director of the Wellcome Trust, and Steven Waugh, executive director of Unicef UK, called on G7 countries, which they said had “secured the majority of existing supplies”, to commit to sharing 1bn vaccines this year.

Ministers from the seven countries are set to meet for talks in London on Friday. Farrer and Waugh said decisions made at the summit “will define the 21st century”.

Having secured enough jabs to fully vaccinate its entire population “twice over”, the UK should share at least 20 per cent of available doses by August, they said.

Failing to do so would increase the chances of more potentially vaccine-resistant variants emerging around the world.

The World Health Organization-backed Covax scheme, which many countries are relying on for access to Covid-19 vaccines, is 190m doses short of where it needs to be, Farrer and Waugh said.

About 1m people in the UK were experiencing “long Covid” symptoms at the start of May, according to an estimate from the Office for National Statistics.

More than half of those self-reporting symptoms, including fatigue, shortness of breath, muscle aches and brain fog, said the condition was adversely affecting their day-to-day activities.

Almost 200,000 people said their daily life had been severely limited by the persistent symptoms.

But reports of long Covid have fallen slightly from March 6, when the ONS estimated there were 1.1m self-reported cases across the UK.

Long Covid symptoms were most prevalent in people aged between 35 and 69, particularly women living in deprived areas and people with an existing disability.

More than 350,000 people first had or suspected they had Covid more than a year ago.

Taiwan on Friday raised its full-year growth forecast by 0.8 percentage points to 5.46 per cent, despite an outbreak of Covid-19 which forced a soft lockdown that is set to hit domestic consumption.

The cabinet’s statistics office said gross domestic product was expected to grow faster than previously expected because exports are booming and because the economy had grown by almost 9 per cent in the first quarter, up from an earlier estimate of 8.2 per cent.

“All indicators for domestic consumption rose in the first four months of the year, only after the outbreak of the latest epidemic wave in mid-May . . . the retail, restaurants and tourism will definitely be hit hard,” it said in a statement. “Assuming that the epidemic can be effectively controlled in the third quarter . . . we forecast that domestic consumption will grow 2.75 per cent, 0.99 percentage points less than previously predicted.”

The soft lockdown has yet to show a clear effect. Taiwan reported 472 new local infections on Friday. Although that was less than on the two previous days, health authorities are now conducting mass tests among the 7,000 staff of a company where several migrant workers were found to be infected, which could drive numbers up again in the coming days.

Japan delivered 1.2m Oxford/AstraZeneca jabs to Taiwan on Friday, offering relief from a vaccine shortage Taipei has partly blamed on Chinese obstruction.

The donation has been condemned by Beijing. Wang Wenbin, China foreign ministry spokesman, criticised Japan last week for its plan to send the jabs, saying it had reduced vaccine assistance to “a tool of political self-interest”.

The slow rollout of its vaccination programme has exacerbated Taiwan’s first large-scale local outbreak of Covid-19, undermining the unity with which the country had tackled the pandemic.

Only 2.4 per cent of the 23.6m population has been vaccinated after Taiwan received fewer than 1m of the more than 15m doses ordered from AstraZeneca and Moderna.

China has tried to exploit the shortage by publicly offering vaccines while opposing international support for Taiwan, which it claims as part of its territory.

For its part, Taiwan has accused China of interfering in its attempts to secure the BioNTech/Pfizer jab from BioNTech directly.

Read more here.

Norway’s government forecasters have predicted the central bank will increase interest rates in September in a move that would make it the first the major western country to raise borrowing costs since the pandemic struck.

The coronavirus vaccination campaign and economic reopening have increased the likelihood of a rate rise in three months’ time, Statistics Norway said on Friday.

The first increase — to 0.25 per cent — would “most likely” be in September, two years after Norway last raised its borrowing costs.

The forecasters then expect them to rise gradually, with the headline rate reaching 1.75 per cent in 2024 as the economy recovers.

The pandemic “will continue to restrict activity in the months ahead, but the economy now seems to have reached a turning point”, said Thomas von Brasch, researcher at Statistics Norway. “The abnormally low zero interest rate will quickly become untenable.”

Before the pandemic, Norway had been almost alone among major economies with a hawkish monetary policy.

By September 2019, the central bank had raised its rate four times over the previous 12 months and indicated it was more likely to increase than to cut in 2020.

However, the pandemic and ensuing oil price collapse obliged the Scandinavian economy to make an about-turn and cut to zero in May last year.

Economic activity in Norway was about 3 per cent lower in March this year than in February 2020. Mainland Norway’s gross domestic product is expected to rise 3.1 per cent this year, the statistics office said.

All adults will have been offered one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine by early August, the Norwegian Institute of Public Health has said.

“The stage is therefore set for the economy to pick up sharply,” Von Brasch said. “The recovery will be particularly strong in the labour-intensive industries, which have been hit hard by the infection control measures.”

Cases of the Delta variant, first identified in India, are doubling across the UK about every 9 days, according to a leading epidemiologist who warned that the partial easing of lockdown restrictions last month would accelerate its spread.

Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London said that data on the B.1.617.2 variant — which is estimated to be about 60 per cent more transmissible than the Alpha variant first detected in Kent — was “pointing this week in a more negative direction than last week”.

“But we haven’t fully seen the effect” of the reopening of pubs and restaurants for indoor dining in England on May 17, Ferguson told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Friday. “That will manifest as a very marked increase in cases”.

A study by Public Health England released on Thursday found that the Delta variant is associated with a much higher risk of hospitalisation compared with the Alpha variant for people who are unvaccinated.

“Most people being hospitalised with this variant or any Covid variant are unvaccinated,” Ferguson said, “so it’s clear the vaccines are still having a substantial effect”.

The UK government has defended its decision to reimpose at short notice mandatory quarantine on travellers from England who have been to Portugal, saying it needed to act quickly to minimise potential risks from a new coronavirus strain detected in the country.

Residents already in Portugal have been given until 4am on Tuesday to return before the country is removed from the UK’s “green list” of overseas destinations, introducing costly requirements including a 10-day quarantine.

Robert Jenrick, cabinet minister, told Sky News on Friday that he recognised the decision would be “disappointing and frustrating for some people”.

But he added: “We were very clear from the outset that if you do choose to go on holiday to countries on the green list, those countries are being reviewed every three weeks.”

As well as having to go into isolation, travellers who miss the deadline will have to take an additional test in the UK eight days after their return. “Green list” travellers need to test on day 2 but not on day 8.

Those who wish to return in time to avoid the tougher regime not only might have to rebook flights but would also need to arrange tests at short notice.

While “green list” testing requirements are less stringent than “amber list” rules, a test still needs to be taken and a negative result received in the three days before departure.

The decision was announced during a public holiday in Portugal for Corpus Christi.

Jenrick said that “there was always a risk with a fast-moving situation, with new variants”.

Officials are particularly concerned about a mutation of the Delta variant that was first identified in India, as they have yet to establish if current vaccines are effective against it.

Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser has called on China to release the medical records of nine people whose illnesses might provide vital clues into whether Covid-19 first emerged as the result of a lab leak.

Dr Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, or NIAID, told the Financial Times that the records could help resolve the debate over the origins of a disease that has killed more than 3.5m people worldwide.

The records in question concern three researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology who reportedly became sick in November 2019, and six miners who fell ill after entering a bat cave in 2012. Scientists from the Wuhan Institute of Virology subsequently visited the cave to take samples from the bats. Three of the miners died.

Shi Zhengli, the institute’s leading expert on coronaviruses, has previously denied there were any infections at the lab — a claim Fauci did not dispute, but said should be investigated further.

Read more here.

Shoppers returned to UK high streets and retail parks last month as Covid-19 restrictions were eased, but visitor numbers are still well below pre-pandemic levels according to data published on Friday.

Total UK footfall was 28 per cent lower in May than it was in the same month in 2019, which is a 12 percentage-point improvement from the figures in April, the British Retail Consortium said.

As in previous months, shoppers were more likely to return to retail parks than to high streets or shopping centres.

Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the BRC, said that visitor numbers had been helped by vaccinations and the easing of restrictions.

However she warned: “Many high streets have an increasing number of vacant shops, and many retailers still face significant and mounting debts, and with £2.9bn in unpaid rents built up over the pandemic. The government should ringfence these lockdown rent debts to provide the breathing space for footfall and cash flows to recover.”

The risk of catching Covid-19 is substantially reduced for up to 10 months following a first infection, according to new research led by University College London.

The study, which was published in medical journal Lancet Healthy Longevity, looked at Covid-19 infections between October and February among more than 2,000 care home residents and staff.

Researchers found that residents with a previous infection were 85 per cent less likely to be infected during the four-month period than those who had never had the virus.

Staff with past infections were 60 per cent less likely to be infected again.

“This was a unique opportunity to look at the protective effect of natural infection in this cohort ahead of the rollout of vaccination,” said senior author Dr Laura Shallcross of University College London.

“An important next step is to investigate the duration of immunity following natural infection and vaccination and to assess whether this protective effect is maintained against current and emerging variants,” she added.

For Markus Motschmann of the far-right Alternative for Germany party, the coronavirus lockdown has been a “test run” for dictatorship.

Similarly draconian measures will soon be imposed to deal with climate change, such as driving bans and night-time curfews, he predicted. “Corona was a blueprint,” he said. “It’s the gateway to tyranny.”

Such views could be dismissed as the ravings of a conspiracy theorist. But Motschmann is no crackpot. He is chief physician at a private hospital in the pretty town of Haldensleben in north-east Germany and an AfD candidate in Sunday’s elections in the state of Saxony-Anhalt — a poll whose outcome could reverberate in Berlin and beyond.

The vote marks the last time Germans go to the polls before Bundestag elections in September that bring the curtain down on Angela Merkel’s 16 years as chancellor. As such, it will be an important test for Armin Laschet, leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the man who hopes to succeed her.

Read more here.

Some of the biggest Japanese sponsors of the Tokyo Olympics want organisers to postpone the Games for several months to allow more spectators to attend.

The proposal was made privately over recent weeks, according to people with knowledge of the situation. The request follows growing frustration among some of the 47 Japanese companies that collectively paid more than $3bn to back the Games, making it the most heavily sponsored sporting event in history. 

“I do not think that this proposal will strongly influence the organisers because they seem completely determined to start on July 24,” said a senior executive at one corporate backer.

“But it just makes much, much more sense from our perspective to hold the Games when there are more vaccinated people, the weather is cooler and maybe public opposition is lower.”

Read more here .

Retirement could be delayed for those whose income was harmed by the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a new survey. One in four Americans say they plan to retire later as a result of the pandemic, a number that jumps to 42 per cent among individuals who reported to have lost income during the crisis.

Global food prices have recorded their biggest annual rise in a decade in the latest sign of rising food inflation, which has accelerated during the Covid-19 pandemic. China’s soaring appetite for grain and soyabeans, a severe drought in Brazil and the demand for vegetable oil for biodiesel have driven the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s monthly food price index up 40 per cent in May compared with the same period last year.

The US will donate millions of excess doses of Covid-19 vaccines to countries around the world in an attempt to help battle fresh outbreaks of the pandemic. The Biden administration has previously promised to donate 80m doses, and on Thursday outlined how the first 25m of those would be allocated. South America, Africa, and south and south-east Asia will all receive millions of doses under the plans.

Social mixing in the UK remains well below pre-pandemic levels despite a huge tranche of restrictions being eased in mid-May. John Edmunds, a professor of infectious modelling at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said it was a sign of “residual cautiousness in the population”.

Portugal will be taken off England’s “green list” of foreign travel destinations and no new countries will be added this week, in a significant blow to the leisure industry ahead of the summer season. Airlines had expected at least a handful of destinations to be opened up under the so-called traffic light system for overseas travel. European airline shares dived on Thursday after the news.

The US private sector created jobs in May at the fastest pace in nearly a year, driven by strong gains in leisure and hospitality as the economy pushes ahead with reopening. Non-farm private employers added 978,000 jobs last month, according to a report from payroll processor ADP. That was the biggest month for jobs since June 2020 and topped expectations for 650,000.

An upswing in coronavirus infections among the under-40s has pushed the UK’s R value back above 1, a closely watched study has found. The Zoe symptom-tracking project estimated that R, which measures the number of people to whom each infected person passes on the virus, stood at 1.1 as of last week.

Six asylum seekers won a legal challenge after the High Court ruled that the UK government had acted unlawfully by housing them in a former military barracks that failed to meet minimum living standards. The asylum seekers were housed in Napier barracks in Kent in accommodation that the men’s lawyers claimed was “squalid” and in which there was a Covid-19 outbreak in mid-January.

Taiwan reported another 583 new local Covid-19 infections on Thursday, the second straight daily increase, in an apparent sign that soft lockdown measures imposed more than two weeks ago have so far failed to stop the country’s first sizeable local outbreak. The Central Epidemic Command Centre announced 364 new locally-transmitted confirmed cases plus 219 more from a testing backlog.

The Supreme Court of India has criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vaccine policy, calling it “arbitrary and irrational” that people under the age of 45 are paying for their doses. In an order made public on Wednesday, the country’s top court said that New Delhi’s decision to change the country’s vaccine policy from free, centrally procured doses to “paid vaccination” by states and private hospitals needed to be reviewed.