Thousands of flights cancelled globally as Omicron mars Christmas weekend - CNA

NEW YORK: Commercial airlines around the world cancelled more than 4,300 flights over the Christmas weekend, as a mounting wave of COVID-19 infections driven by the Omicron variant created greater uncertainty and misery for holiday travellers.

Airline carriers globally scrapped at least 2,366 flights on Friday (Dec 24), which fell on Christmas Eve and is typically a heavy day for air travel, according to a running tally on the flight-tracking website FlightAware.com. Nearly 9,000 more flights were delayed.

The website showed that 1,616 Christmas Day flights were called off worldwide, along with 365 more that had been scheduled for Sunday.

Commercial air traffic within the United States and into or out of the country accounted for more than a quarter of all the cancelled flights over the weekend, FlightAware data showed.

Among the first US carriers to report a wave of holiday weekend cancellations were United Airlines and Delta Air Lines, which scrubbed nearly 280 flights combined on Friday alone, citing personnel shortages amid the surge of COVID-19 infections.

COVID-19 infections have surged in the United States in recent days due to the highly transmissible variant Omicron, which was first detected in November and now accounts for nearly three-quarters of US cases and as many as 90 per cent in some areas, such as the Eastern Seaboard.

The average number of new US coronavirus cases has risen 45 per cent to 179,000 per day over the past week, according to a Reuters tally.

New York reported more than 44,000 newly confirmed infections on Friday alone, shattering that state's daily record. At least 10 other states set new one-day case records on Thursday or Friday.

Rising hospitalisations were hitting healthcare systems especially hard in the US Midwest, with intensive care units in Indiana, Ohio and Michigan bracing for the worst even as they remain under pressure from an earlier wave of Delta variant cases.

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2021-12-25 00:02:00Z
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UK study on Covid-19 variant Omicron bolsters evidence of lower hospital risk - The Straits Times

LONDON (BLOOMBERG) - Omicron appears to be less severe but more contagious than any other Covid-19 strain to date, a British government study concluded, bolstering research that has shown a lower risk of hospitalisation from the fast-spreading variant.

People infected with Omicron are 50 per cent to 70 per cent less likely than those infected with Delta to be admitted to hospitals, the UK Health Security Agency said on Thursday (Dec 23).

Patients infected with Omicron are also 31 per cent to 45 per cent less likely to arrive at emergency departments than those infected with Delta.

The agency's data came with an important caveat: While a booster shot improves protection against Omicron, its effectiveness starts to wane more rapidly than with Delta and is 15 per cent to 25 per cent lower starting 10 weeks after the third dose.

The agency also cautioned that the new variant is so infectious that it could still produce significant numbers of severe cases.

The findings build on studies released a day earlier with similar assessments of Omicron's lower hospitalisation risk - a rare reassurance for a variant whose transmissibility is fast overtaking Delta's.

Researchers in Scotland found Omicron was associated with a two-third lower risk of hospitalisation compared to the earlier variant, while a South African study pegged the reduction of hospitalisation risk at 80 per cent.

Another study, from an Imperial College London team working with a larger data set, found that people infected with Omicron were almost half as likely to need an overnight hospital stay.

Separate developments related to prevention and treatment added to the moment of optimism in a pandemic that has killed almost 5.4 million people worldwide and sickened millions more. A third dose of AstraZeneca's Covid-19 vaccine significantly boosted neutralising antibodies against Omicron, according to lab studies at the University of Oxford.

A separate study involving a booster made by China's Sinovac Biotech - producer of one of the most world's most widely used Covid-19 vaccines - did not fare as well.

That shot did not produce sufficient levels of neutralising antibodies to protect against Omicron, according to lab test results published on Thursday.

The research suggests that people who have received Sinovac's shot, known as CoronaVac, should seek out a different vaccine for their booster.

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2021-12-23 23:22:30Z
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Omicron may double risk of getting infected on planes, IATA says - The Straits Times

MONTREAL (BLOOMBERG) - Aircraft passengers are twice or even three times more likely to catch Covid-19 during a flight since the emergence of the Omicron variant, according to the top medical adviser to the world's airlines.

The new strain is highly transmissible and has become dominant in a matter of weeks, accounting for more than 70 per cent of all new cases in the US alone.

While hospital-grade air filters on modern passenger jets make the risk of infection much lower on planes than in crowded places on the ground such as shopping malls, Omicron is rapidly spreading just as more travellers take to the skies for year-end holidays and family reunions.

Business class may be safer than more densely packed economy cabins, said Dr David Powell, physician and medical adviser to the International Air Transport Association, which represents almost 300 carriers worldwide.

As before, passengers should avoid face-to-face contact and surfaces that are frequently touched, and people sitting near to each other should try not to be unmasked at the same time during meals, he said.

"The relative risk has probably increased, just as the relative risk of going to the supermarket or catching a bus has increased," said Dr Powell, former chief medical officer at Air New Zealand, who spoke to Bloomberg News on Tuesday (Dec 21) about flying during the pandemic.

What are the risks of infection during a flight?

Whatever the risk was with Delta, we would have to assume the risk would be two to three times greater with Omicron, just as we've seen in other environments. Whatever that low risk - we don't know what it is - on the airplane, it must be increased by a similar amount.

What should passengers do to minimise the risks?

Avoid common-touch surfaces, hand hygiene wherever possible, masks, distancing, controlled-boarding procedures, try to avoid face-to-face contact with other customers, try to avoid being unmasked in flight, for meal and drink services, apart from when really necessary. The advice is the same, it's just that the relative risk has probably increased, just as the relative risk of going to the supermarket or catching a bus has increased with Omicron.

For a two-hour flight, it's pretty easy to say, 'just keep your mask on the whole time'. But if it's a 10-hour flight, it becomes pretty unreasonable to ask people not to eat and drink. What most airlines have been doing is encouraging, but not insisting, on customers trying to stagger their mask-off periods a little bit.

In simple terms, two people masked have minimal transmission from one to the other. If one of you removes your mask, then that person's at greater risk of transmitting and at slightly greater risk of receiving. But if both of you remove then obviously, there's no barrier there and you can freely transmit one to the other.

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2021-12-23 02:42:14Z
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Intel facing China backlash after Xinjiang statement - CNA

SHANGHAI: US chip maker Intel is facing a backlash from China after telling its suppliers not to source products or labour from the northwestern region of Xinjiang.

Intel said it had been "required to ensure that its supply chain does not use any labour or source goods or services from the Xinjiang region" following restrictions imposed by "multiple governments".

The United States has accused China of widespread human rights abuses in the predominantly Muslim region of Xinjiang, including forced labour. Beijing has repeatedly denied the claims.

The Global Times, a nationalist tabloid run by the ruling Communist Party's People's Daily stable of newspapers, branded Intel's statement as "absurd", adding that the company - which earned 26 per cent of its total revenues from China in 2020 - was "biting the hand that feeds it".

"What we need to do is to make it increasingly expensive for companies to offend China so their losses outweigh their gains," the newspaper said in an editorial.

Netizens also expressed anger at Intel's letter.

On China's Twitter-like Weibo microblog service, singer Karry Wang said he would no longer serve as brand ambassador for Intel, adding in a statement that "national interests exceed everything".

Many Weibo users also called on Chinese citizens to boycott Intel, with one posting under the name "Old Catalan" saying, "Must resist, do not buy!"

Multinational companies have come under pressure as they aim to comply with Xinjiang-related trade sanctions while continuing to operate in China, one of their biggest markets.

The Global Times said in its editorial that multinationals "should be able to endure, properly handle and balance pressure from all parties".

Intel could not immediately be reached for comment.

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2021-12-23 00:44:00Z
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Despite consumption hit, China to stand fast on tough COVID-19 curbs - CNA

BEIJING: China's strict COVID-19 policy is weighing on consumption and rattling foreign firms, but its effectiveness and the imperative to maintain stability heading into a sensitive year mean Beijing will stick to its approach, experts say.

China has reported just one COVID-19 fatality this year, retaining a tough line even as many other countries ease restrictions, imposing targeted shutdowns and travel curbs even when they disrupted local economies.

Avoiding major outbreaks is especially critical in a year when Beijing hosts both the Winter Olympic Games and the once-every-five-years Communist Party Congress, where President Xi Jinping is expected to clinch a third term as party secretary.

Beijing has been eager to burnish its record on tackling COVID-19, which a government white paper has described as among the "most important achievements" of its governance model - and often points out the high death tolls elsewhere, especially the United States.

"Stability is the number one priority next year," said Dan Wang, chief economist at Hang Seng Bank (China). "Relaxing the zero tolerance policy will not help that goal."

The rapid emergence of the Omicron variant, already causing many countries to backtrack or pause reopening plans, will most likely reinforce Beijing's position. China has reported several imported Omicron cases and one locally transmitted case.

China "cannot let its guard down to the slightest degree" against the new variant, Lei Zhenglong, an official at the National Health Commission (NHC), said on Monday (Dec 20).

The international spotlight will be on Beijing when the Winter Games kick off on Feb 4, before the October Party Congress provides the political highlight of the year.

ESPN reported on Tuesday that the National Hockey League will not send its players to compete in the men's ice hockey tournament at the Olympics because of COVID-19 concerns.

Experts, meanwhile, have expressed concern about the number of older people who remain unvaccinated and the efficacy of the vaccines in use in the country, which has yet to approve foreign vaccines such as those made by Pfizer and Moderna.

Even though 80 per cent of people aged over 60 were vaccinated at the end of November, according to Zheng Zhongwei, another NHC official, that left around 50 million in that age bracket - more than the population of Spain.

Peter Wang, an epidemiology professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland in Canada, said the "relatively low" efficacy for Chinese vaccines and uncertainty of how long their protection could last would most likely make China wary of opening up soon.

Clinical trial-based efficacy readings for the two main Chinese vaccines, manufactured by Sinopharm and Sinovac, ranged between 50 per cent and 83.5 per cent against the symptomatic disease. That is below the 90 per cent-plus figures for shots from Pfizer and Moderna.

Two recent studies showed antibody response from the two vaccines was weaker against Omicron than against some older versions of the virus, but it remains unclear how the variant would affect the vaccines' overall effectiveness.

WORST-CASE SCENARIO

The COVID-19 policies are credited with helping the country's industrial sector by preventing widespread factory shutdowns and keeping the export machine humming.

Booming exports, bolstered by surging demand from goods from COVID-hit and locked-down economies, drove the country's growth in 2021, hitting double-digit growth every month so far.

However, Louis Kuijs, head of Asia economics at Oxford Economics, says the hit to consumption likely now outweighs any benefits.

Retail sales rose just 3.9 per cent in November, well below pre-pandemic trends. The catering and hospitality sectors have been hit particularly hard.

"Nowadays the approach is a net negative for the economy," said Kuijs, noting that other highly vaccinated countries have moved to a "living with COVID" approach that makes growth increasingly resilient to new outbreaks and variants.

Foreign firms have warned that expatriate workers are leaving amid concerns over separation from their families, foreign chambers of commerce have reported, and it is hard to get technicians or executives in to upgrade plants or cut deals.

"In a worst-case scenario we fear there may not be meaningful change until late 2022, or even into 2023," said Joerg Wuttke, president of the European Chamber of Commerce in China.

Quarantine requirements for international arrivals vary but are typically at least two weeks and often longer. The northern city of Shenyang, for example, requires travellers to spend four weeks in quarantine and another month of "health management", during which they are advised not to leave home unnecessarily.

On the other side of the equation, an intolerably high number of deaths could result if China loosens controls immediately without higher vaccination coverage for the elderly, said NHC's Zheng.

China, where the pandemic first emerged in the central city of Wuhan, has officially reported just 4,636 deaths, well below many other countries and a tiny fraction of its population, and relatively few in the country of 1.41 billion have been infected.

Preparing the population for a steep rise in cases would be key when Beijing eventually pivots to opening up, said Hsu Li Yang, a infectious diseases professor at the National University of Singapore.

"You have to prepare for that once you open up, the virus would spread all over the country because it's just almost impossible to contain it," Hsu said, adding that transmission-slowing measures such as isolating infections from healthy people may still be necessary.

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2021-12-22 04:30:49Z
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Five Things You Need to Know to Start Your Day - Bloomberg

Putin warns he’s ready to use his military. McDonald's is forced to ration customers' fries in Japan. Global stocks rebound. Here’s what you need to know this morning.

Vladimir Putin warned he's ready to use his military to counter NATO’s expansion toward Russian borders, but said he hoped for a diplomatic solution to rising tensions as the U.S. said it was ready to discuss his security demands. The Russian president told the German chancellor that Moscow wants "legally enshrined" security guarantees that would bar any NATO advance eastward or the deployment of missiles in countries bordering Russia. The U.S. and Europe accuse Russia of a massive build-up of troops near Ukraine in preparation for a possible invasion as early as next month, something Russia denies. The U.S. and its allies are working on plans to impose painful new sanctions on Russia if it invades Ukraine. 

President Joe Biden said omicron will result in more infections among vaccinated Americans, but with few or no symptoms, while the unvaccinated potentially face a winter of severe illness and death. He said those who had had their shots should proceed with Christmas plans, as the U.S. revealed omicron had become the country’s dominant strain. In the U.K. Boris Johnson put a relatively normal Christmas at the top of his wish, ruling out stricter restrictions before the festivities end. Elsewhere Thailand halted its quarantine-free entry program, dealing a fresh blow to the tourism industry; Singapore found its first omicron cluster; and New Zealand pushed back its border reopening. Meanwhile, back in the States, the FDA is poised to authorize separate pills from Pfizer and Merck to treat higher-risk infected patients as soon as this week.

A global rebound in stocks may continue in Asia on Wednesday as investor sentiment improves after being roiled by uncertainty over the omicron virus strain and stimulus outlook. Futures for Japan, Australia and Hong Kong rose. The S&P 500 snapped three days of declines and the technology-heavy Nasdaq 100 climbed more than 2%. A gauge of Chinese shares traded in the U.S. surged about 7%. Thinner trading volumes heading into the Christmas holidays could exacerbate market swings

China’s crackdown on Taiwanese companies operating on the mainland risks accelerating a gradual decoupling that’s been happening for years due to higher costs and increased local competition. Far Eastern Group was fined $14 million in November for what officials and state media said were environmental, land-use, health and safety violations. But Chinese officials made it clear that the the fines were connected to Far Eastern’s role as one of the biggest donors to the party of Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen. Taiwan’s Economic Minister said the Far Eastern incident had triggered a wave of Taiwanese businesses looking to return home

China plans to ban employers from stating gender preferences in job ads or asking female applicants about their marital and pregnancy status under a proposed overhaul of an almost three-decade-old women’s rights law. While gender discrimination is already broadly illegal in China, current laws are vague and enforcement is poor. Meanwhile in India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has presented controversial new legislation in parliament, seeking to raise the legal age at which women can marry to 21 from 18.

What We’ve Been Reading

And finally, here’s what Tracy’s interested in today

On Monday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sent the lira on a round trip with the unveiling of emergency measures aimed at halting the Turkish currency's stunning slide. My Bloomberg colleague Asli Kandemir has a great explainer of exactly how it's supposed to work over here. But put simply, Turkey is promising to make up for losses incurred by holders of lira deposits should the lira's decline against hard currencies exceed bank interest rates. The hope is that by setting up a floor under the Turkish currency, people will feel more comfortable keeping their lira as opposed to shifting it to dollars or gold (or Bitcoin!) to escape inflation and negative real rates. Using the program, however, comes with one big catch: participants have to agree to lock-up their lira for between three and 12 months.

I've seen lots of different descriptions of Erdogan's new plan, with some arguing that it amounts to a backdoor rate hike and others saying that it looks like a clandestine currency peg. Then there's the DeFi interpretation. There are shades of 'HODL' and (3,3) here, two of the crypto market's biggest memes. The first saying is an enjoiner to encourage people to hold onto their crypto when times are tough (rather than selling), while (3,3) was created by OlympusDAO to describe the game theory behind its OHM coin. With Olympus, people basically stake (deposit) money in order to earn rewards in Ohm. The payouts are highest when everyone stays staked and agrees not to unstake (or withdraw). So (3,3) represents the maximum positive outcome for OlympusDAO participants.

In a similar way, Erdogan's plan works so long as people agree to keep their money locked up and the lira stops falling (unlike with OHM, there are minimum lock-up periods and users will be penalized if they withdraw their money too early). If people don't choose to HODL lira and the currency keeps declining, then Turkey's Treasury could be on the hook for a wider and wider differential between bank rates and hard FX. The concern, as my Bloomberg colleagues have written, is that this places a burden on the budget which could well end up getting monetized and then generate even higher inflation and more withdrawals. In other words, Erdogan just made a very big bet on the power of (3,3).

You can follow Tracy Alloway on Twitter at @tracyalloway.

— With assistance by Tracy Alloway

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2021-12-21 23:36:13Z
CAIiEDqA4B7hORNatWERwRmmV4gqGQgEKhAIACoHCAow4uzwCjCF3bsCMIrOrwM

Thailand reinstates mandatory COVID-19 quarantine over Omicron concerns - Reuters

A waitress waits for customer at a restaurant in Khaosan Road, one of the favourite tourist spots, as Thailand bans entry from eight African countries over the coronavirus Omicron variant, in Bangkok, Thailand, November 30, 2021. REUTERS/Chalinee Thirasupa

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Dec 21 (Reuters) - Thailand will reinstate its mandatory COVID-19 quarantine for foreign visitors and scrap a quarantine waiver from Tuesday due to concerns over the spread of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus.

The decision to halt Thailand's "Test and Go" waiver means visitors will have to undergo hotel quarantine, which ranges between 7 to 10 days.

Meanwhile, a so-called "sandbox" programme, which requires visitors to remain in a specific location but allows them free movement outside of their accommodation, will also be suspended in all places except for the tourist resort island of Phuket.

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"After Dec. 21, there will be no new registrations for 'Test and Go', only quarantine or Phuket sandbox," said deputy government spokeswoman Rachada Dhanadirek.

The announcement came a day after Thailand reported the first case of local transmission of the Omicron variant. read more

It also came weeks after Thailand reopened to foreign visitors in November, ending nearly 18 months of strict entry policies that contributed to a collapse in tourism, a key industry and economic driver that drew 40 million visitors in 2019.

About 200,000 visitors who had previously registered for the quarantine waiver and sandbox programme will still be eligible, said government spokesman Thanakorn Wangboonkongchana.

"This is not to shut off tourists but to temporarily suspend arrivals," he said.

The decision will be reviewed on Jan. 4, he added.

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Reporting by Panarat Thepgumpanat; Writing by Patpicha Tanakasempipat; Editing by Ed Davies

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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2021-12-21 09:13:00Z
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