(Reuters) – Thailand, Australia and Israel eased international border restrictions significantly on Monday for the first time in 18 months, offering a broad test of demand for travel worldwide amid the pandemic.
DEATHS AND INFECTIONS
* Eikon users, see COVID-19: MacroVitals for a case tracker and summary of news
EUROPE
* Leaders of the world’s 20 biggest economies endorsed in Rome a global minimum tax aimed at stopping big business from hiding profits in tax havens, and also agreed to get more COVID vaccines to poorer nations.
* Britain will send 20 million vaccine doses to developing countries by the end of this year in what Prime Minister Boris Johnson will tell other world leaders is a much needed step to speed up the post-pandemic economic recovery.
AMERICAS
* U.S. President Joe Biden tested negative for COVID-19 on Sunday, the White House said.
* U.S. states with the highest adult vaccination rates against COVID-19 are planning a big push to get children inoculated compared to states where hesitancy remains strong, potentially widening the gaps in protection nationwide, public health officials and experts said.
* Mexico’s health ministry said it had received nearly 6 million AstraZeneca vaccine doses as pressure grows on the government to widen its vaccination roll-out to include children.
ASIA-PACIFIC
* Australia eased its international border restrictions for the first time during the pandemic, allowing some of its vaccinated public to travel freely and many families to reunite, sparking emotional embraces at airports.
* New Zealand will extend coronavirus curbs for another week in its largest city of Auckland, but ease some after that, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said, with the country logging another day of record new infections.
* A declassified U.S. intelligence report saying it was plausible that the pandemic originated in a laboratory is unscientific and has no credibility, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said in a statement on Sunday.
* Indonesia has approved the Sinovac Biotech vaccine for children aged 6-11, its food and drug agency said, following the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for younger children.
* Hong Kong is dropping a provision for most consular staff to serve quarantine at home, opting for hotel stays instead, as it doubles down on some of the world’s toughest coronavirus curbs, hoping to sway mainland China to open the border with the city.
MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA
* The United Arab Emirates has approved for emergency use the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine for children aged 5-11, the health ministry said in a statement carried by state media.
* The European Commission suspended funding for its COVID-19 operations to the World Health Organization’s programmes in the Democratic Republic of Congo due to concerns over the U.N. agency’s handling of a sexual abuse scandal.
MEDICAL DEVELOPMENTS
* Takeda Pharmaceutical, the Japanese partner for Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine, is preparing to seek regulatory approval for a roll-out in Japan early next year, its top executive said.
ECONOMIC IMPACT
* World stocks kicked off a big week for central bank meetings near record highs, helped by bets of fiscal stimulus in Japan and undeterred by concerns of interest rate hikes that have instead hit bonds hard.
* China stocks closed lower on Monday as recent outbreaks in the country weighed on consumption, tourism and the broader services sector.
* Australian home prices raced to new heights in October, piling pressure on the central bank to open the door to an interest rates rise well before the current projection of 2024.
(Compiled by Federico Maccioni and Sherry Jacob-Phillips; Edited by Shounak Dasgupta and Angus MacSwan)
