(Bloomberg) — South Korea is set to ease curbs on private gatherings for three weeks starting Jan. 17 in the lead-up to the Lunar New Year early February. The government will allow up to six people, from the current 4, Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum said Friday.
Covid infections in New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state, should start hitting a plateau next week, though it would be at a relatively high level of patients in hospitals and intensive care units, a health official said. The U.K. will soon abandon Covid passes, the Times reported.
The U.S. Supreme Court blocked the centerpiece of President Joe Biden’s push to get more people vaccinated, rejecting an Occupational Safety and Health Administration rule that would have required 80 million workers to get shots or periodic tests. New York City Mayor Eric Adams said he is considering a temporary remote option for the city’s public schools, in a stark reversal of his position.
Key Developments:
- Virus Tracker: Cases top 319.1 million; deaths pass 5.5 million
- Vaccine Tracker: More than 9.6 billion shots administered
- U.S. Spotlight: Covid hospital admissions show omicron spreading to West Coast
- China’s Covid absolutism is making it a no-go zone for airlines
- Vaccine mandates and backlash in U.S., Austria, Italy: QuickTake
- What we know about the omicron variant now: QuickTake
U.K. Set to Abandon Covid Passes (8:14 a.m. HK)
Health Secretary Sajid Javid has decided Covid-19 certification is no longer needed as the Omicron wave subsides in the U.K., the Times reports, citing an unidentified government source. There was always a very high threshold for the policy of requiring proof of vaccination or a negative test to enter large events in England, and it appears that within a couple of weeks that threshold will no longer be met, according to the government source.
South Korea Extends Help to Small Businesses (7:51 a.m. HK)
The government plans to allocate extra budgetary support to small business owners and merchants hit by the spread of the coronavirus, and a proposal will be presented to lawmakers before the Lunar New Year holidays later this month, Prime Minister Kim said. While officials prepared to ease private gathering rules, they said closing hours for cafes and restaurants would remain unchanged at 9 p.m.
New South Wales Infections to Plateau (7:37 a.m. HK)
“We are starting to become increasingly confident that we will see a plateauing next week and that is pleasing, but that plateauing is obviously still at a relatively high level of COVID patients in our hospitals and in our ICUs,” New South Wales Health deputy secretary Susan Pearce told reporters Friday.
Hospitalization rates are significantly lower with omicron strain infections compared with delta, and hospital stays are shorter, she added. There are 2,525 Covid cases admitted to hospitals, including 184 people in intensive care. There were 29 deaths in the latest reporting period, the highest since the start of the pandemic. The vast majority of young people admitted to ICU with Covid are unvaccinated, the state’s chief health officer Kerry Chant said.
Canada to Bar Entry of Unvaccinated Truckers (6:42 a.m. HK)
Canada is standing by its plan to impose a vaccine requirement on all truckers entering from the U.S. starting Saturday, despite worries it could undermine supply chains and damage the economy. In a statement Thursday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government confirmed plans to deny entry into the country of unvaccinated truckers if they’re foreign nationals. Meanwhile, unvaccinated Canadian drivers will lose an exemption from testing and quarantine requirements.
U.S. Nurses Protest Worsening Workplaces (5:25 p.m. NY)
Chicago nurses joined colleagues across the country Thursday to protest against working conditions that they say have rapidly deteriorated as hordes of Covid-19 patients push hospitals to the limit.
The protests, organized by National Nurses United, a labor union boasting 175,000 members nationwide, was part of a jam-packed day of action across 11 U.S. states and Washington, D.C. today “to demand the hospital industry invest in safe staffing, and to demand that President Biden follow through on his campaign promise to protect nurses and prioritize public health,” according to the union. In Chicago, members are still working and the action was part of their bargaining process, but other branches are striking.
Delta, American Cut Regional Flights (5:17 p.m. NY)
Delta Air Lines Inc. and American Airlines Group Inc. are cutting regional flights over the next few months due to pilot shortages, extending a lingering effect from the early days of the coronavirus pandemic.
Delta has cut back by as much as 25% for the first half of this year, the Atlanta-based carrier said on an earnings call Thursday. American has dropped 580 March flights at its wholly owned Piedmont Airlines and an undisclosed number this month and next at regional partners SkyWest Inc. and Mesa Air Group Inc.
Colorado Needs Hospital Capacity: Governor (4:26 p.m. NY)
In his state of the state address Thursday, Colorado Governor Jared Polis said he will propose a three-year plan to “stabilize our health-care workforce.”
Colorado’s hospital capacity was pushed to the brink during last year’s wave of the deadly delta variant, and state official last week issued an order permitting emergency medical services to ration care as ambulance crews fall ill with the omicron variant.
“We can’t let our society and our economy be impacted by hospital capacity,” Polis said. Colorado’s positivity rate is 30%, the highest of the pandemic, state health officials reported Wednesday.
Boston Sewage Suggests Omicron Peak (4:18 p.m. NY)
The surge in infections may have hit a peak in the Boston area amid a steep decline of viral signals in wastewater.
Data from Boston-based Biobot Analytics, a startup that monitors Covid levels in sewage, showed that the virus concentration in the city’s wastewater samples is down more than 50% from its recent peak. The drop-off is the most dramatic to date, according to Biobot President and co-founder Newsha Ghaeli, after virus signals shooting up 10 times compared with levels a year ago.
Nebraska AG Challenges Omaha Mask Rule (3:48 p.m. NY)
As the omicron variant sickens people across the U.S., the attorney general of Nebraska filed a lawsuit challenging an indoor mask mandate in Omaha.
Attorney General Doug Peterson says the local order “conflicts with applicable state law,” the Omaha World-Herald reported Thursday. The indoor mask mandate will remain in effect until a court hearing Monday, the newspaper said. The state’s positive-test rate is above 36%, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
NYC Mayor Weighs Remote Schooling (3:38 p.m. NY)
New York City Mayor Eric Adams said he is considering a temporary remote option for the city’s public schools, in a stark reversal of his position to keep kids learning in person.
“The safest place is in school and I’m going to continue to push that,” Adams said during a press briefing on Thursday. “But we have to be honest. A substantial number of children’s parents aren’t bringing them to school. I have to make sure children are educated.”
Only about 70% of the city’s 1 million students have been attending classes since schools reopened after the winter break on Jan. 3. On Wednesday, attendance was about 76% and schools reported over 6,500 cases among students and 1,000 among staff, according to city data.
Top Court Blocks Biden Vaccine Rule (2:34 p.m. NY)
The U.S. Supreme Court blocked the centerpiece of President Joe Biden’s push to get more people vaccinated amid a Covid-19 surge, rejecting an Occupational Safety and Health Administration rule that would have required 80 million workers to get shots or periodic tests.
The court allowed a separate rule to take effect requiring shots for workers in nursing homes, hospitals and other facilities that receive Medicare and Medicaid payments from the federal government.
Norway Eases Curbs (2:23 p.m. NY)
Norway is scaling back some of its infection restrictions as it moves into a new phase of the pandemic.
The omicron variant has pushed infection rates to records, and the country now needs to ready itself to tolerate living with the virus, Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store told reporters on Thursday.
Restaurants and bars will be able to serve alcohol again before 11 p.m., while high schools and colleges can allow more interaction between students.
Omicron Hits U.S. Small Firms (1:54 p.m. NY)
The surge of omicron cases is having a direct hit on U.S. small businesses, which employ almost half of the country’s private-sector workforce.
The share of small firms that reported a decrease in revenue rose to 33% in the week ended Jan. 9, according the U.S. Census Small Business Pulse Survey. That’s the highest since February last year.
Millions of Vaccine Doses Risk Going to Waste (1:40 p.m. NY)
Hundreds of millions of vaccine doses purchased by wealthy countries are at risk of going to waste, a new analysis shows, while large parts of the world remain unprotected amid the spread of the omicron variant.
About 240 million doses purchased by the U.S., U.K., Japan, Canada and the European Union are expected to go unused and expire by March, London-based analytics firm Airfinity Ltd. said Thursday in a report. The number of potentially wasted doses could climb to 500 million by that point if other countries receiving donated doses don’t have enough time to administer them, it said.
Cases Hit Record for U.S. Nursing Home Staff (1 p.m. NY)
Covid-19 cases among U.S. nursing-home workers jumped almost tenfold in recent weeks as the omicron variant raced through America’s senior-care facilities.
A record 57,000 nursing-home workers tested positive during the week ending Jan. 9, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, up from about 6,000 the week ending Dec. 19.
Cases are also spiking among nursing-home residents. About 32,000 residents tested positive last week, close to the previous peak in late 2020. While deaths have also increased, much of the nursing-home population is vaccinated, and the death rate is about one-tenth what it was last winter.
Africa Needs Sixfold Rise in Shots: WHO (12:25 p.m. NY)
The number of Africans being inoculated against Covid-19 needs to climb to 34 million people a week, from 6 million currently, if the least vaccinated continent is to reach the World Health Organization’s target of 70% of its people fully covered by mid-year.
While vaccine supplies to the continent have improved recently, slow rollouts are hindering efforts to reach this goal, Alain Poy, head of the WHO’s vaccine preventable disease program in Africa said in a briefing Thursday.
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