
Headlines
• New Zealand lifts lockdown, apart from in Auckland.
• Italy announces booster vaccine for vulnerable citizens
• Japan to buy 150m doses of Novavax
• British employers plan 11% less job cuts in August vs July
• Hanoi extends restrictions for two weeks
World news
• New Zealand will ease restrictions in all regions outside of Auckland from midnight.
• Hanoi has extended restrictions for a further two weeks.
• Chilean health authorities have approved the use of the Sinovac vaccine for children aged six years and older.
• Travellers arriving in Hong Kong from China will no longer need to quarantine.
• Japan has agreed to buy 150m doses of Novavax’s coronavirus vaccine, with Japanese firm Takeda expecting to manufacture the formula for distribution early next year.
• The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (an amalgamation of 35 labour unions representing 189,000 people) has accused employers of infringing workers’ rights by making them take the vaccine or face being fired and saying there is no law providing for compulsory vaccinations.
• Italy’s health minister has announced that third doses of vaccine will be made available to groups of “clinically vulnerable” people this month.
• The rate of registered suicides in England has returned to pre -pandemic levels following disruption to coroners’ inquests, provisional figures from the ONS suggest. There were 10.4 registered suicides per 100,000 people in the first half of 2021. The suicide rate in the second quarter of 2021 was statistically significantly higher than the rate in the second quarter of 2020, when there were 7.0 registered suicides per 100,000.
• The government of the Philippines has backtracked on its plans to replace stay-at-home orders in the capital Manila. The strict lockdown was supposed to end after today, but will now continue another week to 15 September.
• University Hospital Southampton NHS Trust told staff that frontline workers at Southampton General Hospital who have declined a vaccine will be redeployed to other roles.
• Indonesia’s daily positivity rate dropped below the WHO’s benchmark standard of 5% this week for the first time, an indicator the country’s second wave could be easing. The positivity rate peaked at 33.4% in July, driven by the Delta variant.
• Figures published by the Insolvency Service show that British employers planned 12,687 job cuts in August, a fall of 11% since July.
• Halifax has said the cost of a typical home rose 0.7% in August to £262,954. This means house prices have risen 7.1% YoY, down from a rate of 7.6% YoY in July.
• A study from China looking at mixing vaccines showed that receiving a booster shot of CanSino Biologics’ vaccine, after one or two doses of Sinovac Biotech’s vaccine, yielded a much stronger antibody response than using the Sinovac shot as a booster.