Total Covid-19 cases
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109,272,534Deaths
2,409,820Air France-KLM warns of more pain to come after €7.1bn loss
David Keohane in Paris
Air France-KLM has warned that there is more pain to come for the Franco-Dutch carrier as the fallout from the pandemic pushed it to an annual €7.1bn net loss.
The struggling airline warned of a “challenging” first quarter and a deeper hit to earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation than the loss of €407m in the fourth quarter as the coronavirus crisis ravages the travel industry.
Air France-KLM expects to fly 40 per cent of its pre-crisis capacity in the first three months of the year as restrictions on travel keep people at home.
Ben Smith, chief executive, said the pandemic was “the most severe crisis ever experienced by the air transport industry”.
A year into the pandemic, the sector and its stretched balanced sheets are facing another summer in which tourists are unable to fly, raising the prospect of additional state support.
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Petcare and vitamin sales boost Nestlé’s growth
Judith Evans
Nestlé, the world’s largest food company, enjoyed a jump in sales last year as a petcare boom and vitamin purchases by health-conscious consumers strengthened in the coronavirus pandemic.
Sales growth, calculated on an organic basis, ticked up to 3.6 per cent for 2020 from 3.5 per cent a year earlier, as robust sales of Purina petcare products and supplements sold by its Health Science division helped compensate for the lower sales of “on the go” products such as chocolate and bottled water.
While Nestlé has not had an acceleration in sales to match rival Kraft Heinz, which last week reported 6.3 per cent sales growth — calculated on an organic basis, which strips out the effects of acquisitions and divestitures — the Swiss group far exceeded the 1.9 per cent delivered by Unilever.
The health science division benefited from a spike in sales of consumer vitamin and mineral supplements under brands such as Garden of Life, Pure Encapsulations and Persona, as people sought to boost their immunity, Nestlé said.
But the largest contributor to its growth was the Purina petcare division, partly thanks to the rising popularity of Purina Pro Plan, which caters to pets with health conditions.
Litigation and writedowns push Credit Suisse to fourth-quarter loss
Sam Jones
Credit Suisse reported a fourth-quarter loss of SFr353m ($393m) as credit writedowns and provisions for litigation eroded modest gains in underlying performance at the bank.
The results mean Credit Suisse’s net income for 2020 was down 22 per cent year-on-year to SFr2.7bn ($3bn), with revenues flat at SFr22.4bn.
Write-offs related to underperforming loans and defaults tripled to an 11-year high, the bank said on Thursday, reaching SFr1.1bn. This was driven by the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic.
During the last three months of the year, the bank also booked a loss of SFr414m related to its ownership of hedge fund York Capital Management and SFr757m in litigation costs. Both hits to profit were previously disclosed by the bank.
The numbers, reported in results on Thursday morning, are nevertheless comfortably ahead of analysts’ expectations, which had a consensus forecast for a SFr566m loss in the fourth quarter leading to a net income of just SFr2.45bn for the year.
“Despite a challenging environment for societies and economies in 2020, we saw a strong underlying performance across Wealth Management and Investment Banking, while addressing historic issues,“ said chief executive Thomas Gottstein.
Indonesia to punish vaccine dodgers with fines and sanctions
Stefania Palma in Singapore
Indonesia is making Covid-19 vaccinations compulsory for eligible individuals and will punish those who fail to participate in the country's inoculation drive, in what may be the first time a government has made the jab mandatory.
Eligible people who will not take the vaccine are subject to punishments including fines as well as suspension or termination of social assistance or government services, according to an amendment of a presidential decree released last week. These penalties will be imposed by institutions, ministries or regional governments.
South-east Asia's largest economy has struggled to contain the pandemic and counts the highest number of cases and deaths in the region at 1.2m and 34,000, respectively.
Jakarta launched its vaccination programme last month and seeks to achieve herd immunity by inoculating 181.5m people, or approximately 70 per cent of the world's fourth largest population. Indonesia has so far vaccinated around 1.2m, of which 600,000 have received the vaccine's second dose.
The country faces potential resistance to the jab. A survey carried out in October by LaporCovid-19, a citizen data initiative, showed that 69 per cent of about 2,100 Indonesian respondents were uncertain about taking the vaccine.
Airbus forecasts aircraft deliveries to hold steady
Alice Woodhouse in Hong Kong
Airbus said it expects deliveries of commercial aircraft to hold steady at 2020 levels this year, as it withheld its dividend and described a “volatile environment” due to the pandemic.
The European aerospace manufacturer delivered 566 commercial aircraft in the 12 months to the end of December, down from 863 aircraft in 2019.
For the full year, Airbus reported an operating loss of €510m for 2020, while revenues fell 29 per cent to €49.9bn.
Assuming no further disruptions to the global economy and aviation, the company said it expects to deliver the same number of commercial aircraft in 2021 as last year and targets an adjusted operating profit of €2bn.
“Many uncertainties remain for our industry in 2021 as the pandemic continues to impact lives, economies and societies,” said Guillaume Faury, Airbus chief executive officer.
Pandemic-related travel restrictions and a drop in demand have hit the airline industry, pushing both Airbus and rival Boeing to slash production.
Airbus said last month that it would increase production of its A320 family of aircraft more slowly than expected from 40 to 45 a month by the end of this year.
‘Horrifying’ death toll prompts calls to prioritise jabs for England’s disabled
Sarah Neville and Federica Cocco in London
People with disabilities in England should be given priority for vaccination against Covid-19, according to leading charities, after official data showed that they accounted for 60 per cent of all deaths from the disease last year.
Describing the data as “both illuminating and horrifying”, James Taylor, executive director of strategy for Scope, which campaigns for disability equality, said: “What they show is that there is an urgent need for the government to prioritise disabled people now.”
This week, health officials announced that they were moving an extra 820,000 people up the vaccination priority list, including some with severe or profound learning disabilities who will be elevated into the sixth of the government’s top nine groups for receiving the jab.
But campaigners said this did not include those with mild or moderate learning disabilities, who are at equal risk of dying from the disease.
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Decision to scrap Covid subsidy fills struggling Australians with dread
Jamie Smyth in Sydney
Ebanie Fletcher has relied on Australia’s Covid-19 wage subsidy to support her family for almost a year. But the flight attendant is worried about her future following Canberra’s decision to scrap the A$80bn ($62bn) scheme next month as the economy recovers faster than expected.
The Conservative government said the A$1,000 ($775) fortnightly JobKeeper payments were no longer needed because of its adept handling of the pandemic, which has enabled the economy to bounce back from its first recession in almost 30 years.
But trade unions and businesses are urging Canberra to extend JobKeeper, which has supported 3.5m people through lockdowns and border closures that have wiped out companies and cost jobs.
“Covid is still a massive issue for aviation with borders still closed,” said Fletcher, whose husband also works as a flight attendant at Virgin Australia. “JobKeeper was a lifeline for us. We may now be forced into redundancy.”
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Chinese lunar new year shopping goes online amid pandemic measures
Alice Woodhouse in Hong Kong
Chinese consumer spending grew by more than a quarter over the lunar new year, despite travel curbs and calls to avoid traditional large holiday gatherings.
Retail and catering sales rose 28.7 per cent year on year to Rmb821bn ($127.2bn) over the week-long break, according to figures from the Ministry of Commerce. That was a 4.9 per cent increase on 2019.
Authorities had called on people to avoid travel and reduce numbers at celebratory meals following a series of coronavirus outbreaks in the north of the country at the start of the year.
The ministry said online sales surged amid efforts to avoid spreading the virus that meant many were celebrating virtually.
Restaurant or meal deliveries were particularly popular, with some food delivery platforms reporting a two-fold increase in sales. Food delivery was particularly popular in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Chongqing.
With overseas travel out of the question, Chinese citizens stuck to domestic trips.
And the country’s box office reported a new record for the lunar new year holiday, pulling in Rmb70bn. For the first month and a half of 2021, the country’s cinemas took in Rmb100bn, the ministry said, equivalent to half the sales in 2020. Chinese cinemas are a rare bright spot for the industry as much of the rest of the world’s theatres remain shut.
Indian companies urge New Delhi to let them help with vaccine drive
Stephanie Findlay and Amy Kazmin in New Delhi
India’s private sector is urging the government to let business bolster New Delhi’s faltering Covid-19 inoculation campaign, as technical glitches and vaccine scepticism slow down the drive.
New Delhi has set an ambitious target of inoculating 300m people by August, including health workers, frontline workers and those older than 50.
But problems with the government’s CoWIN vaccination app, muted uptake and limited government capacity have constrained the campaign, with only 8.8m doses administered since the rollout began a month ago.
At this rate, it will take nearly three years to vaccinate even the initial target group.
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New Zealand stress tests jab plan before weekend rollout
Gary Jones in Hong Kong
An end-to-end dry run of New Zealand’s Covid-19 vaccination programme proved successful yesterday, the government said, and is ready to be rolled out in days.
“The trial run took place in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch yesterday afternoon, ahead of the vaccination programme formally kicking off on Saturday,” said Chris Hipkins, the Covid-19 response minister.
Phase one of the programme will target border workers, who will receive the BioNTech/ Pfizer vaccine.
“Testing included things such as vaccines being dropped and technology systems being temporarily unavailable, and included the arrival of a thermal protection box used to transport the vaccine to validate the safe and secure handover process,” Hipkins said.
Hundreds of vaccinators, who will vaccinate the border workers, are scheduled to receive their jabs on Friday.
UN says Covid-19 vaccination rollout ‘wildly uneven and unfair’
Gary Jones in Hong Kong
The UN secretary-general on Wednesday said providing Covid-19 vaccines to all people is “the biggest moral test before the global community”, with the current situation “wildly uneven and unfair”.
Addressing a virtual meeting of international partners collaborating to achieve equitable vaccine distribution, António Guterres appealed to the UN Security Council to ensure people caught in conflict have access to jabs.
“Just 10 countries have administered 75 per cent of all Covid-19 vaccines,” Guterres said. “Meanwhile, more than 130 countries have not received a single dose. Those affected by conflict and insecurity are at particular risk of being left behind.”
Guterres proposed that the G20 nations form an “emergency task force” to prepare a global vaccination plan bringing together “all those with the required power, scientific expertise and production and financial capacities” to achieve equitable distribution.
Such a task force would work to mobilise pharmaceutical companies and key industry and logistics actors, he added.
Australia's state of Victoria reports no local cases as lockdown eases
Alice Woodhouse in Hong Kong
The Australian state of Victoria reported no locally transmitted coronavirus cases on Thursday as it relaxed a five-day lockdown designed to stem the spread of a highly contagious variant.
A lockdown was imposed on the state last week following an outbreak among staff at a quarantine hotel involving the variant first discovered in the UK.
Around 3,400 people were identified as close contacts of confirmed cases and 212,000 tests were carried out in efforts to cut off the chain of transmission, according to Daniel Andrews, the state’s premier.
As a result of those strict measures, the lockdown rules have been relaxed to allow children to return to school and restaurants and shops to reopen. Limits remain on gatherings at home and in public.
More than 30,000 people were tested for the virus on Wednesday, the state’s health department said. One new case was found in a person returning to Australia from overseas.
US hospitalisations fall to lowest level since early November
Peter Wells in New York
Trends portraying the continued moderation of the pandemic in the US remained in place on Wednesday, with coronavirus hospitalisations hitting their lowest since November and new cases and deaths hovering around the lowest levels in months.
The number of people currently in US hospitals with coronavirus dropped to 63,398, down from 64,533 on Tuesday, according to data from Covid Tracking Project.
That was the lowest number of hospitalisations since November 10. The downward trend has been helped along by big states like California, which on Wednesday reported that hospitalisations fell below 9,000 for the first time since late November.
States reported an additional 66,098 coronavirus infections, up from 56,312 on Tuesday. Monday's single-day increase of 55,077 cases was the smallest since mid-October.
Covid Tracking Project said in a Twitter message that "Weather-related outages in Texas have resulted in significant case and fatality reporting delays" and it was likely that winter storms that have affected vast parts of the country have "partially resulted in artificially low numbers" in other states.
Texas, for example, has reported between 3,000 and 4,000 new and historical infections in each of the past three days, compared to levels of more than 10,000 a week ago.
Authorities attributed a further 2,336 fatalities to coronavirus, up from 1,353 on Tuesday. An increase in the death toll on Monday of 1,078 was the smallest one-day rise since November 30.
Covid infections dropping fast across England, study shows
Clive Cookson and Jasmine Cameron-Chileshe in London
Coronavirus infections are falling fast across England, the latest large survey has found, with positive tests now less than one-third the level reported three weeks ago.
According to the React-1 study led by Imperial College London and published on Thursday, just 0.51 per cent of the randomly selected sample of 85,400 volunteers was infected between February 4 and 13, compared with 1.57 per cent between January 6 and 22.
“It’s very reassuring to see this speed of decline,” said Prof Steven Riley of Imperial. “It is better than we had expected.”
However, the researchers found no evidence that vaccination was yet having an effect on infection. The decline in positive swab tests was no steeper in people over 65, who have received the vast majority of vaccinations so far, than in younger age groups.
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Asia-Pacific stocks muted after Wall Street pause
Alice Woodhouse in Hong Kong
Asia-Pacific stocks had a muted start on Thursday after Wall Street took a breather from a recent rally.
In Japan, the Topix nudged up 0.1 per cent, South Korea’s Kospi dipped 0.1 per cent and the S&P/ASX 200 edged 0.1 per cent higher in Australia. Futures pointed to a 0.2 per cent dip when Hong Kong’s Hang Seng opens later in the morning
On Wall Street on Wednesday, the S&P 500 closed flat while the tech-focused Nasdaq Composite fell 0.6 per cent amid concerns over inflation. Figures released on Wednesday showed US retail sales and industrial production both rose while producer prices also ticked higher.
Threat of new variants sees CDC urge Americans to shun unnecessary travel
Peter Wells in New York
The head of the US public health authority has urged Americans to avoid unnecessary travel in the hope the country could avoid a new surge of coronavirus variants in the spring.
Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said during a video conference with the Journal of the American Medical Association Network on Wednesday that travel was a major reason for the spread of coronavirus variants around the country, giving the example of several cases in Minnesota of a strain first identified in the UK having originated in California.
Asked by Jama Network's John Bauchner whether encouraging national trends such as declining hospitalisations and daily cases might be expected to continue into March and April, Walensky said she would hope for the best but plan for the worst.
CDC models have projected the UK variant, known as B.1.1.7 and believed to be more transmissible than the regular virus, as "likely to be the dominant strain" in the US in coming months, Walensky said.
That could then intersect with a combination of other factors such as states loosening coronavirus restrictions (which is already happening in some places), reduced motivation to be vaccinated as case trends "feel and look a bit better" and, simply, people having "all have had enough" of the pandemic, potentially allowing a new variant to steal a march on the country's efforts to bring the pandemic under control.
"We really really would advocate for not travelling right now," Walensky said.
According to CDC data updated on February 16, there were 1,277 cases of B.1.17 spread across 42 US states. Nineteen cases of a strain first identified in South Africa, known as B.1.351, have been confirmed across 10 states, while three cases of a strain first identified in Brazil, known as P.1, have been confirmed in two states.
BioNTech/Pfizer jab 'less effective against South African strain'
Hannah Kuchler in New York
The BioNTech/Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine appears to be significantly less effective against the virus variant that emerged in South Africa, according to a study published on Wednesday.
The vaccine still works against the strain known as 501Y.V2, but the shot produced only a third of the antibodies than for the original virus, in a lab study using an engineered virus.
The partners said there was “no clinical evidence” that people vaccinated with their Covid-19 shot were not protected against the variant.
But they said they were making investments and talking to regulators so they could seek authorisation for an updated vaccine or a booster shot “once a strain that significantly reduces protection from the vaccine is identified”.
The paper, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, was based on experiments using the blood of 20 vaccine trial participants. The scientists from Pfizer, BioNTech and the University of Texas Medical tested three different genetically engineered viruses, one with all the mutations of 501Y.V2 and two with subsets of the changes.
Brazil’s coronavirus vaccine rollout beset by supply problems
Michael Pooler in São Paulo
Authorities in Rio de Janeiro and several other Brazilian cities have said they would pause some coronavirus jabs because of a shortage of vaccines, as supply bottlenecks threaten to slow the inoculation programme in Latin America’s largest nation.
A number of municipalities including Rio, home to 6.7m people, have in recent days paused first injections — or said they intend to — because of a lack of supply, with priority given to those waiting for a second shot. Salvador, home to almost 3m residents, has suspended first vaccine doses for health workers and the elderly.
“We are waiting for a new delivery from the federal government so we can proceed with the vaccination schedule in our city,” Bruno Reis, Salvador’s mayor, tweeted this week.
Globo, the Brazilian broadcaster, reported that at least five cities had part-suspended vaccinations or planned to do so in the coming days. The vaccination rollout will continue in the country’s most populous city, São Paulo.
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California reports fewer than 5,000 new cases for first time since November
Peter Wells in New York
California on Wednesday reported fewer than 5,000 new coronavirus cases for the first time since early November in a further sign the state is bringing its most recent wave of the pandemic under control.
The health department revealed an additional 4,090 infections, down from 5,692 on Tuesday, and marking the smallest one-day increase in cases since November 3.
While the latest figures may reflect delays in reporting following the long weekend, the sub-5,000 milestone underscores a change in fortune compared to the worst of California's pandemic from mid-December to mid-January, when the most populous state in the US on several occasions reported single-day increases of more than 50,000 cases.
Other closely-watched metrics have also been heading in encouraging directions. The 14-day positivity rate, at 4.1 per cent, is the lowest it has been since mid-November and down from a recent high of 14 per cent in early January.
Hospitalisations, at 8,855, were below 9,000 for the first time since late November, while the number of available intensive care unit beds in the state was at its highest in just over two months.
Deaths, which tend to lag cases and hospitalisations, still remain relatively high. Authorities attributed a further 400 fatalities to coronavirus, up from a seven-week low on Tuesday of 64.
The state has administered 6.4m coronavirus vaccines, according to the health department. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as at February 16 put the total at 6.2m, or 15,719 doses per 100,000 people, which ranks it among the 20 US states with the lowest per capita vaccination rates.
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A top EU court has rejected Ryanair’s legal challenges to government airline subsidies given to its rivals to help them cope with the coronavirus crisis, in a legal victory for the 27-member bloc. Judges at the General Court said that Brussels’ clearance of French and Swedish schemes did not discriminate against competitors to national flag carriers, which had received billions of euros in state aid.
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