(Reuters) – Western diplomats have expressed concern about separating children from their parents as part of COVID curbs – a situation that has arisen in Shanghai as the government tries to stamp out the spread of the virus.
DEATHS AND INFECTIONS
* Eikon users, see COVID-19: MacroVitals for a case tracker and summary of news.
EUROPE
* A renewed surge of COVID-19 in Britain has forced airlines including EasyJet to cancel hundreds of flights in recent days as staff sickness levels soar.
* Boris Johnson has not received a police fine relating to breaches of COVID regulations, his spokesman said.
* Sweden will give a fourth shot of vaccine to people aged 65 and above to boost their defences against the disease, the health agency said.
AMERICAS
* The U.S. national public health agency said on Monday the BA.2 sub-variant of Omicron was estimated to account for nearly three of every four coronavirus variants in the country.
* Any World Trade Organization (WTO) agreement on COVID-19 vaccines should include more than just a waiver on intellectual property, Mexico’s representative to the trade body said, in a sign that consensus is proving tough to forge.
AFRICA
* South Africa’s national state of disaster, in place for more than two years in response to COVID-19, will end from midnight local time on Monday, President Cyril Ramaphosa said.
ASIA-PACIFIC
* Shanghai will remain under lockdown as it reviews results of an exercise to test all of its 26 million residents for COVID-19, authorities said on Monday.
* China’s latest response to the Omicron variant is causing a chill that will lay a frost over the country’s budding economic spring. It suggests politicians pushing hardline COVID measures have the upper hand and that more anti-Omicron shock-and-awe may follow.
* China’s transport ministry expects a 20% drop in road traffic and a 55% fall in flights during the three-day Qingming holiday due to a flare-up of COVID-19 cases in the country.
* Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation, welcomed the start of the holy fasting month of Ramadan with a mass prayer at Jakarta’s grand mosque on Saturday, with plateauing coronavirus cases allowing for eased restrictions this year.
MEDICAL DEVELOPMENTS
* Chinese vaccine developer CanSino Biologics(CanSinoBIO) said its potential COVID-19 vaccine using messenger RNA (mRNA) technology has been approved by China’s medical products regulator to enter clinical trials.
* Roche said the U.S. FDA granted priority review to its Actemra/RoActemra for the treatment of COVID-19 in hospitalised adults.
ECONOMIC IMPACT
* Caution prevailed in global financial markets on Monday with talk of more sanctions being imposed on Russia over its actions against Ukraine, while a closely watched part of the U.S. yield curve continued to fuel recession worries. [MKTS/GLOB]
* Five of China’s largest banks have said the country’s lenders face multiple headwinds this year that include the pandemic, global politics and domestic turmoil in the real estate industry.
* Singapore’s central bank is likely to tighten its policy settings at its review this month, the third time in a row, as inflationary pressures intensify due to global supply-side disruptions and an easing of the city-state’s border controls.
(Compiled by Dina Kartit and Alexander Kloss; Editing by Bill Berkrot and Maju Samuel)
