(Reuters) – Australia’s biggest state will exit a snap five-day COVID-19 lockdown after reporting no cases for five straight days, as the national cabinet decided to lift the temporary caps on citizens returning from overseas from the middle of this month.
DEATHS AND INFECTIONS
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EUROPE
* France has registered four cases of the coronavirus variant first detected in Brazil, although its prime minister dismissed the possibility of a new national lockdown for now.
ASIA-PACIFIC
* South Korea on Friday granted conditional approval to Celltrion Inc’s COVID-19 antibody treatment, drug safety minister Kim Gang-lip said.
* A panel of South Korean advisers has urged caution over the use of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine for people older than 65, citing a lack of data, the food and drug safety ministry said on Friday.
* New Zealand said it will start receiving refugees again this month, nearly a year after it shut its borders to stop the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.
AMERICAS
* Panama’s government is seeking 3 million doses of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine against COVID-19 for 1.5 million people, hoping to receive them by March, a letter of intent signed by the country’s Health Ministry showed.
* Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers renewed his COVID-19 emergency health order and statewide mask mandate on Thursday, shortly after the state’s Republican-controlled legislature voted to repeal his earlier order requiring face coverings in public places.
* Brazil’s prosecutor-general has opened a preliminary investigation into its president and health minister for possible negligence in response to a COVID-19 outbreak in Manaus city.
* China reported the fewest new COVID-19 cases in over a month, official data showed, suggesting that the latest wave of the disease is subsiding ahead of the key Lunar New Year holiday period set to begin next week.
MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA
* Israel has extended its third COVID-19 lockdown to Sunday, at which point nationwide curbs will be eased slowly.
MEDICAL DEVELOPMENTS
* The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is planning a rapid review process for quick turnaround of new COVID-19 booster shots if variants of the coronavirus emerge against which the vaccines do not provide protection, the agency’s top official said on Thursday.
* Pfizer Inc has withdrawn an application for emergency-use authorization of its COVID-19 vaccine in India that it has developed with Germany’s BioNTech.
* Johnson & Johnson said on Thursday it has asked U.S. health regulators to authorize its single-dose COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use, and it will apply to European authorities in coming weeks.
* The World Health Organization’s COVAX initiative aims to start shipping nearly 90 million COVID-19 vaccine doses to Africa in February, while China said it would donate 100,000 doses to the Congo Republic and forgive $13 million in public debt.
ECONOMIC IMPACT
* The U.S. Senate, in the throes of a marathon debate over the shape of President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus aid plan, voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to exclude upper-income Americans from a new round of direct payments to help stimulate the economy.
* U.S. job growth likely rebounded in January as authorities began easing COVID-19 restrictions on businesses with the ebbing pace of infections.
* Indonesia’s gross domestic product fell slightly more than expected in the fourth quarter and suffered its first full-year contraction in over two decades in 2020.
* Japan’s coincident indicator index fell for the second straight month in December, the Cabinet Office said, and a COVID-19 state of emergency in areas including Tokyo threatens to weigh on economic growth.
(Compiled by Amy Caren Daniel; Edited by Shounak Dasgupta)
