Headlines
• New Zealand enters new national lockdown
• Japan extends state of emergency for Tokyo and seven other prefectures
• MHRA approves the Moderna vaccine for 12-17 year olds
• UK wage growth 7.4% YoY
• More than 50 container ships queuing for China’s second largest port, Ningbo
World news
• New Zealand will go into a national lockdown after detecting one case of the Delta variant in the community today. The country will be at alert level four – the country’s highest level of lockdown – for three days from midnight tonight, and the regions of Auckland and Coromandel for 4-7 days.
• Japan has extended its state of emergency in Tokyo and the prefectures of Ibaraki, Tochigi, Gunma, Shizuoka, Kyoto, Hyogo and Fukuoka. The current state of emergency had been due to end on 31 August, but will now remain in place until 12 September. Another ten prefectures will be put under less strict “quasi-emergency” measures. Under the latest restrictions, restaurants will have to close early and stop serving alcohol, in exchange for a subsidy. The government will also request occupancy limits at department stores and ask people to reduce the number of times they go to crowded areas.
• More than 50 container vessels are queuing at Ningbo port, China’s second largest marine port, up from 28 on 10 August. Warehousing and trucking into the terminals is suspended after an outbreak of coronavirus. Nominal twenty[1]foot equivalent unit (TEU) capacity for vessels mooring at Ningbo dropped from 168,520 TEU to 103,064 TEU from 11 to 16 August, a decline of 39%.
• Across England and Wales, Coronavirus accounted for around 5% of all deaths over the week ending 6 August, according to analysis by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
• India has administered more than 8.8 million vaccines in the past 24 hours. So far the country has administered 554 million doses, giving at least one dose to about 46% of adults. Only about 13% of the population has had two doses.
• The UK regulator (MHRA) has approved the Moderna vaccine for 12-17- year-olds
• Almost 124,000 people are waiting more than three months for NHS tests, including MRIs, colonoscopies and heart scans in 2021, compared with 5,675 in 2019.
• NHS statistics for the week ending 8 August showed just 76.5% of people presenting at A&E departments across Scotland are being seen to within four hours.
• The number of UK workers on payrolls rose by 182,000 between June and July. This is 201,000 lower than before the pandemic, according to the ONS.
• The UK unemployment rate fell to 4.7% in the three months to June, while the annual growth in average pay was 7.4%.
• Macau will allow venues including cinemas, gyms and bars to reopen from tomorrow.
