Coronavirus: $100k up for grabs among Best Buy’s vaccinated employees — as it happened

Best Buy is launching a sweepstakes to incentivise employees to get the Covid-19 vaccine.

Twenty store employees from across the country will be eligible to win $5,000 each upon showing proof of vaccination, in addition to one winner from Best Buy’s corporate offices in Richfield, Minnesota. 

“The best reason to get the Covid-19 vaccine is to avoid contracting the virus yourself and to prevent the spread of Covid-19 to your family, friends, co-workers and community,” Best Buy said in a note to employees on Monday. “The second-best reason is that any Best Buy employee could be one of 21 winners across the company to win $5,000!”

Employees at the US electronics retailer have until July 22 to become fully vaccinated to enter the sweepstakes. The company previously announced paid time off for workers to allow them to get vaccinated, in addition to time off related to any side effects from the shots. 

“The choice to be vaccinated is entirely yours and the company is not requiring it,” the note to Best Buy’s 100,000 employees said.

Other companies have incentivised employees to get vaccinated. In February, Target announced that it would offer employees up to four hours of pay, two hours for each vaccine dose. The company also said it would pay for Lyft rides for its US employees to take to their vaccine site, an offering that came before Lyft partnered with the White House to offer free rides to all individuals seeking transportation to get the shot.

Walmart offered $75 cash bonuses, while Albertsons and Kroger announced $100 bonuses for vaccinated employees.

Nevada will soon become the latest state to offer an incentive programme aimed at encouraging more people to get a Covid-19 shot amid a slowdown in vaccination rates across the US.

Governor Steve Sisolak did not detail what incentives the state will offer but said on Tuesday he expects to announce more information on the programme in the next week.

States have offered cash, lottery tickets, scholarships and even guns in hopes of getting more shots into the arms of their residents. The rate of vaccinations has slowed to levels last seen in late January, raising the odds that the rollout will miss Joe Biden’s goal of having at least 70 per cent of adults inoculated with one or more doses by July 4.

The US has administered about 1m doses per day over the last seven days, down from a peak of 3.4m in mid-April, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

More than 164m Americans over the age of 18, or 63.8 per cent of the adult population, have received at least one shot as of Tuesday. Fifty-three per cent of adults are fully vaccinated.

Nevada ranks 32nd out of 50 states with 58.3 per cent of its adult population vaccinated with at least one dose.

West Virginia, which ranks 45th with 49.8 per cent of adult residents vaccinated, has sought to boost inoculation levels through a cash lottery and other prizes including custom rifles, pickup trucks and hunting and fishing licences. Governor Jim Justice said 70,000 West Virginians have registered for the giveaways.

Anthony Fauci, White House chief medical adviser, said on Tuesday the US needs to continue vaccinating more people to keep the Delta variant from becoming the dominant form of coronavirus in the country.

The Delta variant, which was first discovered in India and has made up a majority of new infections in the UK, currently accounts for around 6 per cent of US cases, according to Fauci.

Despite more reports of mental health and substance use disorders and greater access to tele-health services, the number of people being treated has not caught up to pre-pandemic levels.

McKinsey & Co. considers behavioural health to be an “indirect” and “unexpected pandemic consequence”, according to a report by the consultancy.

New data shows that behavioural health utilisation continues to be below expected levels despite tele-health adoption in the US growing 25 times between 2019 and 2020. Utilisation for mental health and substance use services dropped by 8 per cent in 2020 compared to the year prior and has not yet rebounded. 

McKinsey has not modeled projections for expected utilisation but “given the high rates of depression and anxiety reported...one would have expected behavioural service utilization to be on par or higher than pre-Covid rates”, the company said. 

As of March, 37 per cent of claims-based behavioural health visits were tele-health sessions, which was higher than pre-pandemic levels. Psychotherapy and evaluation and management (E&M) visits both rose 14 per cent above 2019 levels. Assessments and testing declined 33 per cent during the pandemic and still remain 7 per cent below 2019 levels, according to McKinsey, which analysed claims from provider clearinghouses.

“On the demand side, consumers may be avoiding in-person care and many may have lost their health insurance coverage due to unemployment,” says Erica Coe, partner and co-leader of McKinsey’s Center for Societal Benefit Through Healthcare. “On the supply side, many providers were operating at reduced capacity, putting further pressure on the system where there was a shortage in the provider workforce to begin with even before Covid-19.”

Coe attributes the greatest decline in utilisation to “services that are not well-suited for virtual care” such as drug screenings or medication-assisted treatments. 

Last September, McKinsey’s Center for Societal Benefit through Healthcare estimated that the pandemic could drive a near 50 per cent increase in the prevalence of behavioural health conditions across the US. 

Coe notes that, generally, mental and substance use disorders were undertreated before the Covid-19 pandemic, with only half of people with mental health needs and 10 per cent of those with substance use disorders receiving treatment.

Nearly half a million vaccine appointments were booked in England in the five hours after eligibility was widened to 25 to 29-year-olds, indicating high levels of pent-up demand among younger groups. 

By midday on Tuesday, bookings had already outpaced the whole of Monday by more than two-fold. 

NHS chief executive Sir Simon Stevens welcomed the “Glastonbury-style rush”, adding that it “[suggested] strong enthusiasm for vaccination amongst people in their twenties”. 

The UK boasts some of the lowest levels of vaccine hesitancy worldwide. An Office for National Statistics survey from February found just 6 per cent of UK adults expressing hesitancy, but this figure rose to 15 per cent among 16 to 29-year-olds. 

Since early May, under-40s have been offered the BioNTech/Pfizer jab instead of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine where possible, following recommendations from the UK’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation.

The JCVI decision was based on a risk-benefit calculation after reports emerged about extremely rare cases of blood clots, mainly in younger people, after the AstraZeneca shot.

2.3m under-30s in England, or about a quarter of the total, have already received one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine. The UK ranks fifth worldwide for its first dose vaccination rates.

Counterfeit accounts or “bots” operating on Facebook were responsible for spreading vast amounts of misinformation on the effectiveness of masks in slowing the spread of coronavirus, research has found. 

In November, scientists at University of California, Los Angeles and University of Pennsylvania identified 563 Facebook groups in which a link to a paper suggesting that masks offer some protection against the virus had been posted.

They then analysed all of the content, human and automated, posted to the groups in the five days following the paper’s publication.

Groups were labelled as either “most” or “least affected by automation” based on how many identical links were posted on their feeds seconds after appearing elsewhere — a telltale sign of bot activity.

Among posts made to the 169 “most affected” groups, the researchers found that 20 per cent claimed masks harmed the wearer, and that 50 per cent made “conspiratorial claims” about the trial mentioned in the paper. 

In contrast, among posts made to the least affected groups, 8.5 per cent claimed masks harmed the wearer, while a fifth of posts made conspiratorial claims. 

“The dangers of misinformation spreading on social media during the Covid-19 pandemic are known,” the researchers said.

“However, software that allows individuals to generate automated content and share it via counterfeit accounts to amplify misinformation has been overlooked, including how automated software can be used to disseminate original research while undermining scientific communication.”

“Greater enforcement of rules by social media companies,” as well as legislation penalising those behind counterfeit accounts, was required to limit the spread of misinformation, they concluded.

Football fans have been told that they can use vaccine passports to attend group matches at Wembley Stadium at the delayed Euro 2020 international football tournament this month.

It is the first time that spectators will be able to use vaccine passports to enter a stadium for a UK sports event.

Uefa, the sport’s governing body in Europe, has said that UK-based fans aged 11 and above must prove they are at “low risk” of transmitting the virus should they wish to be admitted to Wembley.

UK-based fans will be required to prove that they have had two doses of a coronavirus vaccination at least 14 days before match day. Alternatively, fans can provide proof of a negative lateral flow test to be admitted to football matches.

England is scheduled to play Croatia on June 13, followed by a match against Scotland five days later. Czech Republic plays England on June 22. All three of England’s matches will take place at Wembley.

However, fans attending Hampden Park in Glasgow are not required to provide evidence of vaccination or a negative test. Fans at both venues must wear masks and stay at least 1m metre apart.

The rate of Covid-19 incidences among US adults has decreased since the rollout of the vaccine. 

In a new report, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analysed numbers before and after the US began to administer the vaccine in mid-December when the Food and Drug Administration authorised use of the BioNTech/Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine. 

The weekly Covid-19 rate reached its peak in late December and has since declined. 

Looking at incidence rates for April and May, compared with November and December, the number of Covid-19 cases dropped 40 per cent. 

Additionally, the number of emergency room visits fell 59 per cent, hospitalisations declined 65 per cent and the number of deaths caused by coronavirus dropped 66 per cent. 

“The greater decline in Covid-19 morbidity and mortality in older adults, the age group with the highest vaccination rates, demonstrates the potential impact of increasing population level vaccination coverage,” the CDC said on Tuesday. 

Even so, the number of vaccines being administered since mid-April has “steadily declined”, the CDC said. 

“These results suggest that tailored efforts by state and local jurisdictions to rapidly increase vaccine coverage among all eligible age groups could contribute to further reductions in Covid-19 cases and severe outcomes,” the CDC said. “Such efforts include effectively communicating the benefits of vaccination, ensuring equitable access and convenience, empowering trusted messengers, including primary health care providers, and engaging communities.”

Areas with high levels of the Delta variant of coronavirus need more vaccine doses, Greater Manchester’s mayor said after the UK government announced extra support to large parts of northwest England to cope with the fast-spreading virus.

Andy Burnham said the conurbation of 2.8m people had asked Whitehall for thousands of extra doses to accelerate inoculations over three weeks.

Richard Leese, deputy mayor, admitted it would mean slowing the vaccination campaign in areas with low rates but said: “If we don’t contain it here, it will spread to other places. Let us contain it here.”

He said there was no “in principle” objection from ministers but admitted that national supplies of the Pfizer vaccine used for under-40s were tight.

Health secretary Matt Hancock told MPs that the government would fund a rapid response team, extra testing, military support and supervised testing in schools and new emergency vaccination centres but made no commitment to extra doses.

The enhanced support given to Blackburn with Darwen and Bolton will be extended to Greater Manchester and Lancashire.

Cases in Bolton, which received extra vaccines, have fallen from 452.1 per 100,000 people in the week to May 20 to 319.6 per 100,000 in the week to June 3.

US job openings climbed more than expected to a record high in April, underscoring concerns about labour shortages as the economy pushes ahead with reopening.  

Job openings reached a high of nearly 9.3m in April, the highest on records dating back to December 2000, according to the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (Jolts) released on Tuesday. 

That was up from 8.3m last month and more than double the level a year ago. It also surpassed economists’ expectations of 8.3m. 

Job openings increase by the most in accommodation and food services and durable goods manufacturing industries. While educational services reported a decline in job ads

The number of hires reached 6.1m, up only modestly from the month before. The sectors with the most number of hires were accommodation and food services, which added 232,000 positions in April, and the federal government, which added 10,000 jobs. 

Construction lost 107,000 jobs, while durable goods manufacturing lost 37,000 and educational services lost 32,000. 

Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, said the data in conjunction with jobs numbers that have already been released for May “are telling a pretty similar story that there’s pick-up in demand and the supply of workers are increasing to meet that demand.

“It’s going to take a little while, but things are moving in the right direction.”

Total separations climbed to 5.8m from 5.4m the month before, according to the Jolts report. Within separations, the quits rate, or the rate at which people voluntarily leave their jobs, was at 2.7 per cent, up from 2.5 per cent in March. This rate is seen as a gauge of workers’ confidence in the labour market and their ability to find a new job.

Gould viewed the quits rate as a positive sign that professionals are “feeling more optimistic about leaving their jobs for better opportunities and they may be finding better matches in the labour market at faster rates”.

The number of pupils off school because of Covid-19 rose sharply in England at the end of last month, according to government statistics that show localised spread of the Delta variant first identified in India is causing severe disruption to education. 

Covid-related pupil absence in state schools increased to 1.8 per cent across England on May 27 having hovered at about 1 per cent since the beginning of the summer term, figures released on Tuesday by the Department for Education show.

In Bolton, where cases of the Delta variant have soared in recent weeks, 21 per cent of primary school pupils and 31 per cent of secondary pupils were absent for Covid-related reasons on May 27.

In Blackburn and Darwen, another Delta variant hotspot, 15 per cent of primary and 13 per cent of secondary pupils were absent.

The highest rate of absence was in North West England with 4.2 per cent. That compared with a low of 0.6 per cent in the South West. In Yorkshire and the Humber, 2.3 per cent of pupils were absent for Covid -related reasons, while in London and the North East the figure was 1.8 per cent. 

Geoff Barton, general secretary of the National Association of School Leaders, said the figures showed the Delta variant was causing disruption to education in the worst-hit areas as pupils were forced to self-isolate. 

“This situation highlights the fact that the utmost caution is needed in the weeks ahead before any further easing of Covid restrictions,” he said.

The use of aspirin to treat people with Covid-19 has little effect on the mortality of a patient, debunking the theory that it made a difference, a study has found.

Between November and March this year, Oxford university researchers studied nearly 15,000 patients hospitalised with Covid-19 to assess the effects of aspirin.

The five-month Recovery trial gave 7,351 patients a daily dose of aspirin and compared their reaction with 7,541 who did not take any.

The results showed no evidence that aspirin treatment reduced mortality, which one investigator called “disappointing”. 

Seventy-five per cent of those who took aspirin were discharged from hospital, similar to the 74 per cent who did not take it and recovered.

The results were insufficient to justify using aspirin for Covid-19 patients, said joint chief investigator Peter Horby.

“In patients hospitalised with Covid-19, aspirin was not associated with reductions in 28-day mortality or in the risk of progressing to invasive mechanical ventilation or death,” Horby said.

The study was undertaken to explore earlier associations that aspirin increased the chances of a patient’s survival.

“There has been a strong suggestion that blood clotting may be responsible for deteriorating lung function and death in patients with severe Covid-19,” said fellow chief investigator Martin Landray.

“Aspirin is inexpensive and widely used in other diseases to reduce the risk of blood clots so it is disappointing that it did not have a major impact for these patients,” Landray added.

The US monthly trade deficit narrowed for the first time this year in April as the recovery in the global economy fuelled demand for American products and services.

The overall trade gap in goods and services fell 8.2 per cent to $68.9bn, the commerce department said on Tuesday. The deficit had widened to a record $75bn in March.

Exports rose 1.1 per cent to $205bn — the highest since January 2020 — while imports slid 1.4 per cent to $273.9bn.

The report showed the deficit with China decreased by $7.1bn to $32.4bn, while the deficit with the EU slipped by $1bn to $16.1bn.

The overall trade deficit is expected to widen again with domestic demand forecast to climb as the US pushes further with its reopening in response to declining coronavirus cases and rising vaccinations.

“The trade deficit is poised to widen further as the fiscally powered, consumer-driven recovery in the US runs ahead of the global economic rebound,” said Mahir Rasheed, economist at Oxford Economics.

The Mastercard Foundation will put forward $1.3bn over the next three years to purchase Johnson & Johnson vaccines for at least 50m people in Africa in a “game-changing” initiative.

In partnership with the continent’s Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, whose head called the initiative a “game changer”, the jabs will be mainly manufactured in South Africa.

They will be bought at the price that was previously agreed to between J&J and the African Union.

The AU’s vaccine acquisition trust in March secured access to 220m J&J vaccines at a discounted price to be supplied starting in the third quarter of this year.

The agreement was to be expanded to an extra 180m doses, of which the Mastercard Foundation, one of the largest private foundations in the world with an asset base of $39bn, said on Tuesday it would pay for 50m of them.

More than 80 per cent of Mastercard’s funds will buy and deliver jabs, aiming to help meet the AU’s goal of vaccinating at least 60 per cent of Africa’s population by the end of next year.

The announcement was made on Tuesday alongside the presidents of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the chair of the AU, and the head of Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

“The battle against Covid-19 in Africa will only be won through the power of partnerships and co-operation, partnerships that will enable the continent to immunise at least 60 per cent of its population,” John Nkengasong, director of the Africa CDC, told the Financial Times.

Only 2 per cent of the continent’s 1.3bn people has been vaccinated, Nkengasong said earlier.

“We expect that these vaccines will start to be available and roll out in August,” said Reeta Roy, chief executive of the Mastercard Foundation.  “We will also be supporting the deployment of vaccinations to millions more individuals across the continent.”

The remaining 20 per cent of the funding will focus on the AU’s vaccine manufacturing plan.

Some countries, with poor infrastructure and limited capacity for transporting, storing and administering the jabs, have faced logistical challenges and expiry dates.

A gauge of US small business optimism slipped in May for the first time in four months, weighed down by labour shortages and concerns about price pressures as the US economy reopens.

The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) optimism index slid to 99.6 in May from 99.8 the previous month, a report on Tuesday showed.

“The labour shortage is holding back growth for small businesses across the country,” said NFIB chief economist Bill Dunkelberg. “In addition, inflation on Main Street is rampant and small business owners are uncertain about future business conditions.”

The report showed the net share of owners raising prices increased 4 points to 40 per cent — the highest reading since April 1981.

Earlier this month the NFIB’s jobs report showed that 48 per cent of small business owners were unable to fill job openings — the fourth consecutive month setting a new record high reading for unfilled job openings.

The overall optimism index — an unweighted average of 10 sub-indices — was also depressed by an 11 point decline in the economic expectations component that is “very sensitive to political developments”.

Ian Shepherdson, economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said that it could have been depressed by the Biden administration’s plans to pay for its infrastructure bill by reversing some of the Trump era tax cuts.

The US recovery has been constrained by labour shortages and other supply chain bottlenecks as a result of the pandemic. These shortages have been exacerbated by strong demand as the economy reopens, though economists expect this to ease over time.

The UK government has agreed to a “strengthened package of support” to help tackle the rise of the Delta variant of coronavirus in Manchester and Lancashire.

“Working with local authorities, we are providing a strengthened package of support based on what’s working in Bolton to help Greater Manchester and Lancashire tackle the rise in the Delta variant that we are seeing there,” health secretary Matt Hancock told MPs on Tuesday.

This will include a rapid response team, extra testing, military support and supervised testing in schools, Hancock told the House of Commons.

The Delta variant, first detected in India, was at least 40 per cent more transmissible than the previously dominant Alpha strain, Hancock said at the weekend.

All areas of Lancashire, bar Blackpool, and Greater Manchester will join Blackburn with Darwen and Bolton to obtain enhanced support from central government.

This could include using the army to help with testing and jabs while temporary clinics will be set up to boost capacity as vaccination has been accelerated in areas beyond Blackburn and Bolton, a council source told the Financial Times.

“I want to encourage everyone in Manchester and Lancashire to get the test on offer,” he said. “We know this approach can work. We’ve seen it work in south London and in Bolton in stopping the rise in the number of cases.”

Everyone in Greater Manchester is being urged to get tested twice a week and minimise travel.

Surge testing in south London and Bolton, which had steep rises in infections, helped to locate and isolate specific clusters of the virus. Hundreds of thousands of people were targeted in the operation.

European politicians, and French president Emmanuel Macron in particular, have issued more negative comments about the safety and efficacy of coronavirus vaccines than leaders in any other part of the world, a study has found.

Macron, who in January described the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine as “quasi-ineffective” for over-65s, delivered more negative quotes on jabs than any other world leader between December and March, according to media intelligence provider Carma.

Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, who last year compared coronavirus with “a little flu”, ranked second.

Carma said the report, which aimed to identify factors influencing public trust in vaccines, was based on an analysis of “thousands” of clips and articles taken from “top tier [media] outlets” across 12 countries.

Politicians in the UK, the US and Asia were “consistently positive” about vaccines, Carma said, but “this was not the case” in continental Europe.

Criticism of the AstraZeneca vaccine — which has been linked to a rare blood-clotting disorder among younger recipients and dismissed as ineffective when administered to the elderly — was particularly prevalent among French and German politicians, the report said. In February, German chancellor Angela Merkel said she would refuse to take the jab.

Such comments may have influenced how local media outlets reported the wider rollout of vaccines, Carma said. More than 40 per cent of headlines in France and Germany used emotive rather than factual language when covering the AstraZeneca and Pfizer jabs, for example. That compared with 28 per cent in the UK, 18 per cent in the US, and 11 per cent in Hong Kong. 

The number of new Covid-19 cases in the UK has overtaken both Italy and Germany, as the spread of the Delta variant first identified in India threatens to delay the UK’s emergence from lockdown.

At the beginning of June there were around 7 new cases of coronavirus per 100,000 residents in the UK.

In Italy, there were 3.9 new cases of Covid-19 per 100,000 inhabitants, while in Germany there were 3.6 new cases of coronavirus per 100,000 residents.

The infection rate in the UK is now catching up with those in Spain and France.

The spread of coronavirus in parts of the UK has threatened to set back the last stage out of lockdown on June 21.

The Delta variant of Covid-19 has continued to surge in the UK, but the rise in infections has not yet had a big impact on hospital admissions.

European equities hovered around an all-time high as investors held back from placing further bets ahead of a European Central Bank meeting and US inflation data later in the week.

The Europe Stoxx 600 index added 0.1 per cent in early dealings, while the UK’s FTSE 100 gained 0.2 per cent. Futures markets signalled trading would be equally subdued on Wall Street, with the S&P 500 expected to flatline at the New York opening bell.

“Among market participants there is a wait and see mood,” said Catherine Doyle, investment specialist at Newton Investment Management. “Worries about inflation are preying on investors’ minds,” she added, as well as heightened geopolitical tensions as US president Joe Biden attempted to build a global coalition to deal with shared concerns about China.

European shares have gained ground on US equities in recent months, after coronavirus vaccine programmes picked up following initial delays and lockdown restrictions were eased. Index provider MSCI’s gauge of large-cap shares in eurozone countries has risen more than 9 per cent in the last quarter, in dollar terms, compared with a 6.3 per cent gain for its US counterpart.

Some analysts expect the ECB on Thursday to signal it plans to slow the pace of its emergency bond-buying programme, which has lowered borrowing costs for the region’s companies and governments, in response to improving economic conditions.

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David Beckham, Liam Neeson and Olivia Colman have joined Unicef in calling for G7 economies to send a fifth of their coronavirus vaccines to poorer countries by the end of the summer.

The group of the seven rich countries could send 20 per cent of their jabs abroad without “significant” disruption to their domestic vaccination campaigns, as suggested from data compiled by Airfinity, a UK-based life sciences analytics company, Unicef said in a letter to G7 leaders on Tuesday.

The UN agency said that would amount to 153m doses spread over June, July and August. The jabs would act as a “temporary stop-gap measure” to compensate for the shortfall of 190m doses facing the World Health Organization-backed Covax scheme, it added.

Unicef’s letter, which was also signed by Whoopi Goldberg, Andy Murray and Katy Perry, urged leaders including Joe Biden and Boris Johnson to direct vaccines “to every country, as quickly and equitably as possible”.

“Countries need not choose between fighting the disease at home or fighting it abroad,” said Henrietta Fore, Unicef’s executive director. “We can, and must, do both simultaneously — and immediately.”

Shortages of raw materials, such as semiconductors, metals and wood, are being blamed for a 1 per cent fall in German industrial production in April from the previous month, undershooting the slight growth expected by most economists.

The figures put a damper on expectations of a second-quarter rebound in Europe’s largest economy after it suffered a decline in overall output in the first three months of the year.

“The figures already available for the auto sector suggest a further minus in May, at least for manufacturing, so that in the second quarter the industry sector will not contribute anything to the growth of the German economy despite strong demand,” said Ralph Solveen, economist at Commerzbank.

The output of Germany’s industrial sector in April was hit by a 4.1 per cent monthly fall in construction production and a 3.3 per cent fall in production of intermediate goods, such as steel and wood. These declines offset a 6 per cent rise in energy production.

German industry is enjoying a surge in demand, particularly for exports to China, according to recent purchasing managers’ index surveys. However, its output is increasingly constrained by shortages of many materials, for instance a lack of semiconductors that has caused production delays for carmakers.

“Supply disruption, including the shortage of semiconductors which looks set to drag on for a long while yet, will continue to constrain the recovery,” said Andrew Kenningham, economist at Capital Economics, who forecast that despite the supply constraints, German gross domestic product would still rise 1 per cent in the second quarter.

Equipment hire group Vp said its profit before tax was significantly reduced, but ahead of the company’s expectations, following a year hampered by the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

Vp said on Tuesday that its pre-tax profit before amortisation and exceptionals halved to £23.3m in the year ending March 31.

The construction supplier said the reduction represented an “excellent recovery for the business” after an extremely difficult first quarter, which was affected by national shutdowns. 

“I am pleased to be reporting a set of results that are ahead of our expectations in a year that has seen unprecedented challenges for the business and its customers,” said chairman Jeremy Pilkington.

Despite the fall in profits, Vp recommended a final dividend of 25p per share.

It said it was confident about the rest of the year, with strong conditions in its core markets.

“Looking ahead, the market backdrop for Vp is positive. Our core markets of infrastructure, housebuilding and construction are showing positive signs of sustained growth,” said chief executive Neil Stothard.

The spread of Covid-19 into Taiwan’s electronics factories is threatening to delay semiconductor shipments, according to companies and analysts, raising the prospect of renewed disruption to an industry gripped by a global shortage. 

The country, viewed as a linchpin in the world’s chip supply chain, is suffering from its first large coronavirus outbreak. It has come against a backdrop of escalating warnings about the depth of the semiconductor shortage, which has hit everything from cars to consumer electronics.

King Yuan Electronics, a chip testing and packaging company, said on Monday that it expected an outbreak among its workers to reduce its June output and revenue by up to 35 per cent. Of KYEC’s 7,300 staff, 238 are confirmed to have been infected with Covid-19.

An outbreak among migrant workers in Taiwan has also hit chip packager Greatek, telecoms gear producer Accton and Foxsemicon, a semiconductor equipment maker affiliated with Apple supplier Foxconn.

Taiwan reported 214 new Covid-19 cases on Tuesday, 211 of them locally spread, and 26 deaths. The country has recorded more than 11,000 cases and 260 deaths since the start of the pandemic.

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A decision will only be taken next week on the final stage of Boris Johnson’s road out of lockdown, the UK environment secretary has said.

George Eustice added that, even as cases of the Delta variant surge in the UK, the rise in infections has made no impact on hospital admissions. The strain was first detected in India and is now dominant among coronavirus cases in the UK.

Johnson will decide on Monday whether to go ahead with easing all restrictions in England on June 21, Eustice said.

“The prime minister has always said he’s going to take this a step at a time,” he told Sky News on Tuesday. “We don’t rule anything out.

“If people have the vaccine, particularly the second jab, it does give them immunity to this new strain [the Delta variant],” the environment secretary said

Health secretary Matt Hancock on Monday said that 2 per cent of people hospitalised in England with the Delta variant had received both doses of a vaccine.

“The jabs are working,” he told the House of Commons.

The biggest Covid-19 danger to the Tokyo Olympics is not the thousands of athletes and officials coming from abroad but whether the games lead to greater mobility and socialising among local people, according to experts studying the event.

Although public anxiety in Japan has focused on the 100,000 athletes, trainers, officials and reporters who have begun to arrive seven weeks before the games, epidemiologists said the greatest risk was a change in public behaviour.

Their analysis helps explain why Japan has pushed ahead with the Olympics despite widespread opposition, as Tokyo can limit public mixing if it decides to hold the games without spectators.

“More than the number of people, it’s how they behave. That’s the issue,” said a Japanese health administrator who has seen the official epidemiological advice.

Tokyo and other big cities in Japan remain under a Covid-19 state of emergency, prompting calls from doctors, business leaders and up to 80 per cent of the Japanese public to cancel the Olympics. Slow progress on vaccination means most Japanese remain vulnerable to the disease.

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Melbourne is likely to ease its lockdown this week, officials said, with only two new cases recorded in the Australian city on Tuesday.

Authorities also believe they have tracked down the source of the mystery case that sparked the lockdown.

James Merlino, acting premier of Victoria, of which Melbourne is the state capital, said genomic testing matched the strain to an arrival from Sri Lanka who entered Melbourne’s hotel quarantine on May 8.

Victoria, Australia’s second-most-populous state, was plunged into a lockdown on May 27 to contain a virus outbreak, forcing its 6.4m residents to remain home except for essential business.

Allen Cheng, Victoria’s deputy chief health officer, said Tuesday’s low numbers and the discovery of the hotel quarantine link meant Melbourne was on track for eased restriction on Thursday night.

The lockdown imposed in Victoria irritated Scott Morrison, Australia’s prime minister, who wants to see the economy reopened.

“I make no secret of fact that I want to see restrictions lifted in Melbourne as quickly as possible,” Morrison said on Tuesday. “The case numbers today are, I think, very welcome, and I’m sure that is encouraging to people in Melbourne.” 

Asked if he thought Victoria had reacted disproportionately to a new outbreak, Morrison replied: “I wouldn’t draw that conclusion necessarily, and at the end of the day, that is a judgment for the Victorian government to make.”

Airline executives have issued a rare joint appeal for US president Joe Biden and UK prime minister Boris Johnson to use this week’s G7 meeting to reopen transatlantic air travel after a year of crushing border closures.

They also said they were prepared to back vaccination and testing requirements instead of quarantine to allow this to happen. Showing proof of vaccination to participate in everyday activities has caused controversy in some parts of the US.

The aviation industry has been unsuccessfully pushing for a transatlantic air corridor for a year, but it argues that the high vaccination rates in both the UK and US mean it is now safe to create one.

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Australia has pledged to send 50,000 Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine doses to Fiji after a surge of Covid-19 cases in the South Pacific nation forced authorities to seal off its largest hospital.

Fiji recorded 64 cases on Tuesday after identifying 83 cases on Monday, with the two-day tally representing nearly a fifth of the 751 cases announced since the pandemic began in March 2020.

The Fijian government said a patient at the Colonial War Memorial Hospital in Suva, who had tested positive while admitted, died on Tuesday, prompting officials to cordon off the area. 

“However, it has been determined that his death was caused by the serious medical illnesses for which he had been admitted to the hospital, and not Covid-19,” the government said in a statement.

Four people have officially died from Covid-19 in Fiji.

More than 600 cases have been recorded in a rapidly worsening second wave that is linked to the more infectious Delta strain initially identified in India.

A village in Nadi, near the international airport, has been locked down after more than 100 people attended a funeral, violating restrictions on gatherings.

“We are concerned about recurring incidents of individuals violating established protocols designed to prevent the spread of the virus,” the government statement said. “These breaches are potentially dangerous and endanger the health and lives of all Fijians.” 

There are more than 500 active Covid-19 cases in Fiji, an archipelago of 900,000 people. 

For a decade, the United Arab Emirates has been the Arab world’s most muscular regional actor, deploying its petrodollar wealth and military power to bolster allies and weaken foes.

But after the coronavirus pandemic hit the Gulf state’s economy and underscored its linkages to global trade, its focus was shifting from robust intervention, including militarily, to “economic” diplomacy, two people briefed on the strategy shift said. 

As a result, Emirati diplomats and embassies are being judged more heavily on their ability to attract investment to the oil-dependent nation. “We thought about what is best for the UAE, ” a senior UAE official said. “There’s going to be a much bigger focus on the economy.”

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Canada’s top doctor on Monday called for vigilance even as new coronavirus cases continued to decline.

The latest national data show a continued “downward trend in disease activity”, chief public health officer Theresa Tam said in a briefing.

She said an average of 2,339 cases had been reported daily during the  week to June 3, a 31 per cent decline compared with the previous seven days. 

The test positivity rate had fallen to 3.8 per cent for the week ending May 29, down from 4.7 per cent in the week prior. 

“Until vaccine coverage is sufficiently high to impact disease transmission more broadly in the community, we must sustain a high degree of caution to drive infection rates down to a low, manageable level,” Tam said.

She urged local authorities not to ease restrictions too soon or too quickly where infection rates are higher.

Provincial and territorial data indicate an average of 2,344 patients were being treated in Canadian hospitals for Covid-19 in the seven days to June 3, 19 per cent less than the previous week.

Occupancy of intensive care beds fell 14 per cent and deaths declined 21 per cent week to week, Tam said.

Since the start of the pandemic, there have been 1,392,563 cases and 25,724 deaths reported in Canada.

More than 56 per cent of Canadians have received at least one vaccine dose, but less than 6 per cent of the population is fully inoculated, according to health department data as of June 6.

Ending the Covid-19 pandemic is a priority for Joe Biden as he meets fellow G7 leaders, the US president’s top security aide said on Monday.

“If we can lead the world in ending the Covid-19 pandemic more rapidly . . . the growth we are powering for the American people here at home helps power a global economic recovery,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan said at a White House briefing.

Sullivan said reform of the World Health Organization would also be part of the US agenda. “Some of those reforms are more programmatic and bureaucratic,” he said. “They relate to ensuring greater efficiency and effectiveness in responding to things like the outbreak of Covid-19.”

In a reference to China, Sullivan said the WHO should not fall under the influence of a single country. 

He reiterated calls for a second investigation into the origins of Covid-19, adding that G7 leaders would soon announce an “initiative to provide financing for physical, digital, and health infrastructure in the developing world”.

Sullivan said it would be a “high-standard, climate-friendly, transparent, rules-based alternative to what China is offering”.

Greece will make citizens aged 25-29 eligible to receive coronavirus vaccinations from Thursday, the health ministry said on Monday.

About 6.3m people have so far been inoculated in Greece, including 2.3m who are fully vaccinated.

“The current target is for a wall of immunity against the coronavirus to be reached in Greece this summer,” said Marios Themistocleous, the ministry’s secretary-general.

He said uptake was enthusiastic, with appointments fully booked “within hours” of becoming available.

Greece recorded 808 new infections on Monday, with all but three local transmissions. There were 24 more fatalities.

The country has reported more than 400,000 cases since the start of the pandemic and more than 12,000 deaths.

Just 2 per cent of those hospitalised in England with the Delta variant of coronavirus first identified in India have received both doses of a vaccine, the government revealed on Monday. 

Health secretary Matt Hancock told the House of Commons that out of 12,383 cases of the Delta variant recorded until June 3, 126 were in hospital, or just 1 per cent. Of those admitted, 83 were unvaccinated, 28 had received one jab and just three had had both doses. “The jabs are working,” Hancock said. 

The small number of those suffering serious illness even after being fully inoculated highlighted the effectiveness of the vaccines despite the increased transmissibility of the Delta strain, which Hancock confirmed was at least 40 per cent higher than the previously dominant Alpha strain.

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Washington residents are fretting that their medical records haven’t been passed on to the agency running the north-western US state’s vaccination lottery.

The state has joined several others in offering a vaccine lottery in a bid to reach the 70 per cent immunisation rate that it is hoped will achieve herd immunity in the population. 

The state’s Department of Health said on Monday that it “recognises many people have experienced challenges while trying to confirm their records were transmitted to the Washington State Immunization Information System and they are eligible for the ‘Shot of a Lifetime’ lottery drawing”. 

Officials said many people were not able to verify their Covid-19 vaccine record with the state-run app, MyIR Mobile. Jay Inslee, Washington governor, said the state was working with federal officials to align vaccination data.

Some vaccine providers, such as the US Veterans Administration and the Department of Defense, do not enter records into the state’s immunisation information system. Washington’s Lottery said it has asked for information from these departments and was trying to find alternative methods for people to add their records to the database.

“Unfortunately for this promotion, there is not a single source of data on vaccinations for every single resident of the state,” Washington’s Lottery spokesman Dan Miller said in a statement.

From Tuesday, the Washington state lottery will start with a weekly drawing for $250,000 for four weeks before drawing for a $1m grand prize on July 13. Only adults are eligible to win cash, but prizes including tuition money are offered to those aged 12 to 17.

The Hong Kong government has extended a $1bn loan to beleaguered Cathay Pacific Airways for another 12 months, the airline said on Tuesday.

The drawdown period of the bridge loan facility has been extended until June 8 next year. 

The loan was provided as part of a $5bn recapitalisation announced last year to help the airline withstand the industry-wide downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic. 

The airline said it had not used the loan facility in a bid to preserve cash during the worst of the downturn.

“We greatly appreciate the government’s confidence in the airline and its long-term prospects,” Augustus Tang, Cathay chief executive, said in a statement. 

He said the extension would provide more flexibility to manage the airline’s liquidity.

Abu Dhabi is pledging to invest $6bn in the cultural and creative industries as the Gulf emirate seeks to increase its post-coronavirus stimulus spending and diversify away from oil.

Having already committed $2.3bn to projects in the sector, the government of Abu Dhabi — the largest of the seven United Arab Emirates — will plough another $6bn into museums over the next five years as well as make investments in sectors ranging from media, gaming and music to cultural heritage, architecture and the arts.

“In terms of growth, we know creative industries are going to be a major contributor to GDP here in Abu Dhabi,” said Mohamed Al Mubarak, chair of the emirate’s department of culture and tourism.

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President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines on Monday appealed to his people to ensure they received two shots of coronavirus vaccine after data emerged that almost one in 10 were skipping their second dose.

Duterte said that receiving one shot of a two-shot regimen offered less protection. “Please find time to go back and line up,” he urged Philippine citizens.

The president made the appeal after the health department announced that more than 9 per cent of Covid-19 vaccine recipients — about 113,000 people — had missed their schedule for the second jab.

Health department spokesperson Maria Rosario Singh-Vergeire said the percentage would go down as local government units contacted the vaccine recipients.

Messenger RNA vaccines reduce the risk of Covid-19 infection by 91 per cent for fully vaccinated people, according to data released on Monday from a study. 

The findings were obtained from four weeks of data collected by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which published the results on its website.

The CDC said the study of health care workers, first responders, frontline workers, and other essential workers “adds to the growing body of real-world evidence” of the effectiveness of mRNA vaccines. 

“Importantly, this study also is among the first to show that mRNA vaccination benefits people who get Covid-19 despite being fully vaccinated (14 or more days after dose 2) or partially vaccinated (14 or more days after dose 1 to 13 days after dose 2),” the CDC said.

In the new analysis, 3,975 participants completed weekly Sars-CoV-2 testing — the virus that causes Covid-19 — for 17 consecutive weeks (from December 13 2020 to April 10 2021) in eight US locations.

Participants self-collected nasal swabs that were laboratory tested for Sars-CoV-2. If the tests came back positive, the specimens were further tested to determine the amount of detectable virus and the number of days that participants tested positive.

Once fully vaccinated, participants’ risk of infection was reduced by 91 per cent. After partial vaccination, the risk was reduced by 81 per cent. These estimates included symptomatic and asymptomatic infections.

Fully or partially vaccinated people who developed Covid-19 spent on average six fewer total days sick and two fewer days sick in bed, the study said. They also had about a 60 per cent lower risk of developing symptoms.

The mRNA vaccines currently available include those developed by Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech.

Switzerland has sent Sri Lanka a shipment of anti-pandemic supplies as it steps up aid to south Asia.

Swiss Humanitarian Aid dispatched half a million antigen tests, 50 ventilators, 150 oxygen concentrators and testing materials in a 16-tonne package worth SFr3.5m ($3.9m).

Last year, Switzerland provided a SFr1m grant to Sri Lanka to help its efforts to combat Covid-19.

Swiss Humanitarian Aid, an arm of the Swiss foreign ministry, also funded a device for polymerase chain reaction testing at Colombo airport and provided 39,000 test kits to help Sri Lankan migrant workers who had lost their jobs abroad to return home.

The latest aid shipment follows 13 tonnes of supplies sent to India and 30 tonnes of medical equipment dispatched to Nepal in recent weeks.

The head of Carlyle’s Japan business has forecast a surge in private equity deals, as a new post-pandemic business environment and rising pressure on companies to achieve carbon neutrality force a wave of acquisitions and spin-offs. 

Kazuhiro Yamada told the Financial Times that the pandemic was accelerating asset sales and purchases of new technology among Japanese companies that might previously have taken years to make such decisions. 

“Consumer behaviour and [the] business model changed drastically as a result of Covid-19, so companies that were hit have no choice but to carry out structural reforms,” Yamada said. 

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New York City has posted its lowest Covid-19 test positivity rate since the pandemic began, authorities said on Monday.

The rate has fallen to 0.71 per cent, mayor Bill de Blasio said. “We keep setting new and better records, pushing Covid down, down, down. Why? Because of vaccinations.”

The city figure was announced as Andrew Cuomo, New York state governor, announced that the Covid-19 positivity rate in every region had dropped below 1 per cent for the first time since August 19 2020.

De Blasio said 4.4m city residents have received at least their first dose.  The mayor said the city’s attention would now turn to younger people. 

“We’re having a lot of success going out to communities, reaching young people, parents more and more want their kids vaccinated,” he said. 

The mayor said the city would continue to offer incentives to be vaccinated, such as tickets to the Governor’s Ball, gym memberships and staycations.

On Monday, de Blasio announced that 10 six-packs of 30-day unlimited-travel public transit cards would be the latest prize.

The daily Covid-19 vaccination rate in the US has edged higher to start the week, as the number of doses administered since the beginning of the rollout climbed further above the 300m mark.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday reported an additional 1.2m shots. That brought the seven-day average of new doses reported by the agency to about 994,000 per day, up from 958,000 on Sunday and 938,000 on Saturday.

Vaccination rates have slowed since peaking in April at 3.4m doses per day, putting the Biden administration in jeopardy of missing the president’s goal inoculating 70 per cent of all adults with at least one shot by July 4.

The recent uptick in reported vaccinations may not be enough to reverse that trend. Some of the increase is likely to be attributable to data collection catching up following the Memorial Day holiday weekend.

The US reported about 500,000 new doses administered in each of the two days immediately after Memorial Day, the lowest daily tallies since January 20.

The US has given out 302.9m shots of the Covid-19 vaccines since December, vaccinating 171.3m Americans – 51.6 per cent of the overall population – in the process. The latest data also showed that 63.7 per cent of adults have received at least one shot, while 53 per cent are fully vaccinated.

The governor of Texas said he planned to sign a bill on Monday that stops businesses in Texas from requiring proof of vaccination — a hurdle for Carnival cruise ships sailing from Galveston’s port.

Governor Greg Abbott said on Twitter that he planned to prohibit “any business operating in Texas from requiring vaccine passports or any vaccine information. Texas is open 100% without any restrictions or limitations or requirements.”

The bill goes into effect as soon as the governor signs it. Compliance may be required for businesses that need state licensing or other public permission to operate.

Carnival plans to require proof of vaccination for cruises starting in July. The company said it was evaluating the legislation.

“The law provides exceptions for when a business is implementing Covid protocols in accordance with federal law, which is consistent with our plans to comply with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidelines,” Carnival noted.

The move by the Republican governor runs counter to the wishes of some big businesses. Besides Carnival, airline executives said on Monday that they would require vaccination proof from passengers if it allows normal travel to resume between the US and UK.

Australia has accelerated its vaccine rollout, as it tries to contain another outbreak in Melbourne.

The country has reported 16 new cases, including five from overseas acquired in hotel quarantine. Eleven new cases have been reported in Victoria, the hardest-hit state. 

Paul Kelly, Australia’s chief medical officer, said nine of the 11 were already in quarantine. “They’re known cases, known contacts of cases, and so they’ve already, during their infectious period, been isolated from the community,” he said.

Kelly said the origins of the Melbourne cluster — the Delta variant that was first identified in India — remained unknown. “Chances are this came across our border,” he said.

The other two cases have been associated with an aged care home in Melbourne. 

Australia reached a milestone of 5m vaccinations on Monday, according to the head of the vaccination rollout programme.

“It took 47 days to get to our first million doses of vaccine administered, and just nine days to get to our most recent million doses of vaccine administered,” said Eric Young, a navy commodore. 

He said the priority were residents in the country’s 2,565 residential aged care facilities, of which 2,163, or 84 per cent, had been fully vaccinated. Only four aged care homes were as yet unvaccinated.

Kelly said Australia would not follow Canada in recommending that the fully vaccinated should not need to quarantine. 

“Canada has a very different epidemiological situation to Australia,” he said. “We have our suppression strategy and no community transmission here in Australia. That’s very different to Canada and most other countries in the world.”

Mexico has received 1m doses of the Sputnik V jab, the seventh shipment of the Russian-made Covid-19 vaccine, Russian state media reported on Monday.

So far, 3.4m Sputnik V doses have been supplied to Mexico, according to the Tass news agency.

The latest delivery boosts the country’s total jab supplies to 43m doses, of which about 34m have been administered, Mexico’s health ministry said.

Mexico has also received deliveries of the Sinovac Biotech, Pfizer/BioNTech, AstraZeneca and CanSino jabs.

Authorities have said they plan to vaccinate all Mexican adult citizens with at least one dose by late October.

Singapore will continue to use only the Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines as frontline weapons against Covid-19, the government said on Monday.

The city-state’s Expert Committee on Covid-19 Vaccination continued to recommend that the two jabs, both messenger RNA-based vaccines, be used in Singapore. 

The committee said the China-developed Sinovac vaccine “has yet to meet the requirements” for an authorisation under Singapore’s Pandemic Special Access Route procedure.

“Additional safety and quality data required to meet the standards of the PSAR evaluation are still pending,” the committee said. 

The health ministry said the Sinovac jab — an inactivated virus vaccine — has also shown variable protection across multiple studies. “The most complete analysis of the vaccine showed a vaccine efficacy of 51 per cent,” it noted.

“The protection of Sinovac against newer variants such as the delta variant and under real-world conditions remains unknown.”

Sinovac has been approved for adults by the World Health Organization under its Emergency Use Listing Procedure. 

“WHO does not recommend it for use in persons below age 18 years,” the ministry said. “As such, it is currently not an option for children and adolescents globally nor in Singapore.”

Narendra Modi, Indian prime minister, has announced that his government will offer Covid-19 vaccines to all citizens for free, reversing a much-derided policy requiring India’s states to buy their own jabs at higher prices. India, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, has for weeks been battling a severe shortage of jabs.

Thousands of British tourists are returning early from their holidays in Portugal after the UK government removed the popular destination from England’s quarantine-free travel “green list”. Passengers returning after 4am on Tuesday will have to quarantine for 10 days and take an extra Covid-19 test.

Wales is to offer over-18s a coronavirus jab by the start of next week, as the principality hits its vaccination target ahead of schedule. “We expect to reach 75 per cent take-up across all priority groups and age groups a month ahead of target,” said First Minister Mark Drakeford on Monday.

House prices in the UK accelerated last month to show the biggest annual rise in seven years. The Halifax monthly house price index showed a 9.5 per cent rise in prices in May from the same month a year earlier, the fastest rate since June 2014, bringing the average UK property to be valued at a record £261,743.

UK travel agents are losing their homes and facing “absolute hardship and desperation” while the government keeps international travel limited to a minimum, the industry trade body Abta warned. Mark Tanzer, chief executive of Abta, said he feared a generation of travel agents would be lost because of the crisis.

Norwegian and Carnival announced plans to resume sailings from US ports this summer, marking the first return of cruises to the biggest market since the pandemic began. Norwegian plans to sail from New York, Los Angeles, Port Canaveral and Miami, while Carnival would resume voyages from Galveston.

Moderna has asked European Union regulators to approve its Covid-19 vaccine for use in teenagers, as the vaccine rollout expands into younger populations. The US pharmaceutical company said on Monday it had applied to the European Medicines Agency for authorisation of its vaccine in 12 to 18 year olds.

Serviced office provider IWG has warned of a delay to its recovery, saying that earnings for this year will be “well below” the level in 2020. “The overall improvement in occupancy has been lower than previously anticipated,” the company said on Monday. IWG said that it still expected a “strong recovery” in 2022.