Coronavirus: Florida court ruling reinstates governor’s ban on school mask mandates — as it happened

A ban preventing Florida schools from implementing mask mandates is back in effect, an appeals court ruled on Friday.

The decision continues the back-and-forth between Governor Ron DeSantis, who supports parents’ rights to choose whether to mask their children, and educators and other parents who believe a lack of uniform protections puts students and school staff at risk during the pandemic.

The First District Court of Appeal ruled on Friday that a Tallahassee judge should not have lifted an automatic stay earlier this week that had temporarily halted the enforcement of the state’s mask ban, Associated Press reported.

The decision reinstates the stay, with the appeals court judges noting that a stay is presumed when a public officer or agency seeks a judicial order to be reviewed by a court of appeal.

DeSantis said in a tweet there was “no surprise here” that the appeals court “restored the right of parents to make the best decisions for their children.”

Last month, circuit court judge John Cooper decided the governor and Florida’s education department had exceeded their authority in banning school districts from requiring students to wear masks in schools. Subsequent appeals to that decision triggered an automatic stay on the Tallahasee-based judge’s order.

Cooper ruled on September 8 that he saw “no harm” to the state in setting the stay aside, meaning authorities would not be able to prevent schools from implementing mask mandates unless or until his order was overturned by a higher court.

Charles Gallagher, the attorney representing parents challenging DeSantis, said he was “disappointed” by the ruling from the appeals court and “will be seeking pass through jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of Florida since this matter involves statewide issues.”

Unvaccinated individuals are five times more likely to be infected, and more than 10 times as likely to die from Covid, than those who have had their jabs, according to the top US public health agency.

Between April and mid-July, more than 90 per cent of cases, hospitalisations and fatalities associated with Covid-19 were reported among individuals who were not fully vaccinated, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed in a study published Friday.

“Those who were unvaccinated were about 4.5 times more likely to get Covid-19, over 10 times more likely to be hospitalised, and 11 times more likely to die from the disease,” Rochelle Walensky, CDC director, said on Friday.

The study examined more than 600,000 Covid-19 cases in 13 US jurisdictions, more than 38,000 hospitalisations and more than 6,700 deaths. During the period covered by the study, the prevalence of the Delta variant in the US rose to more than 90 per cent by mid-July from less than 1 per cent in early April, and the percentage of fully vaccinated Americans increased to 54 per cent from 19 per cent.

The highly contagious Delta strain became the predominant in the US after the week of June 20, the CDC said. During the final month of the study, researchers observed that “the percentage of fully vaccinated persons among cases increased more than expected for the given vaccination coverage and a constant [vaccine efficacy].”

Walensky told a press briefing the agency would “continue to do all we can to increase vaccination rates across the country” but that the CDC has “shown study after study that vaccination works.”

In an encouraging sign, though, trends in new Covid-19 infections, hospital admissions and deaths have all eased over the past week, a period that included the Labor Day long weekend.

The seven-day average for new cases is down 12.7 per cent to 136,558 compared with a week ago, Walensky showed in updated CDC data. The average rate of new hospital admissions slid 4.1 per cent to 11,754 a day and the seven-day average of deaths was down 11.3 per cent to 1,077.

BioNTech will, in coming weeks, seek approval for the use of its coronavirus vaccine in children as young as five, its co-founders said.

The German biotech, which partnered with Pfizer to bring the world’s first-ever mRNA vaccine to market, began trials with the US pharmaceutical giant in March to test the jab’s efficacy in children aged 11 and under.

The companies also plan to seek approval for Covid jabs for children between six months and two years of age later this year.

“Over the next few weeks we will file our trial results in five to 11 year olds with regulators across the world and will request approval of the vaccine in this age group, also here in Europe,” BioNTech’s chief medical officer Oezlem Tuereci told the German daily, Der Spiegel.

Tuereci, who co-founded BioNTech with her husband, Ugur Sahin, the company’s chief executive, said they planned to adjust jabs to a lower-dose pediatric version of its current vaccine, which is currently approved in children as young as 12.

“Things are looking good, everything is going according to plan,” Sahin told Spiegel.

A day earlier, Moderna announced it had begun testing its vaccine, also an mRNA-based jab, in children aged six to 11 years old. It is also developing a jab for infants, Moderna said.

The Biden administration’s proposed Covid-19 vaccination mandate for medium- and large-sized businesses is expected to come into effect within weeks, according to a top White House official.

President Joe Biden on Thursday announced new measures to combat the pandemic in the US. Among these was a request to the Ocupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha), an agency of the labour department that makes US health and safety regulations, to draw up rules requiring companies with 100 or more workers to force their employees to either be vaccinated against Covid-19 or tested at least once a week before coming to work.

The US labour secretary, Marty Walsh, would oversee the rule-making process with Osha, Jeff Zients, head of the White House’s coronavirus task force said on Friday.

The administration anticipates that will arrive “in the coming weeks” and then be enforced at those affected companies with 100 or more workers, Zients said during a press briefing.

Companies that refuse to follow the vaccine mandate face “significant enforcement actions” from Osha, Zients said. “They could include fines up to $13,600 per violation,” he continued, which is in line with the agency’s standard penalty for breaches.

One administration official said it would be up to Osha to decide what constitutes a single violation.

Additional reporting by Kiran Stacey in Washington

The US Department of Transporation is investigating 20 airlines for failing to provide customers with timely refunds after carriers canceled or changed flights during the pandemic.

The transportation department on Friday said it received a record 102,561 aviation consumer complaints last year and an additional 22,357 complaints in the first half of 2021. Over the 18-month period 84.3 per cent of the complaints were about refunds.

By comparison, in the five years preceding the pandemic, the department received an average of 17,420 aviation consumer complaints a year, with refund complaints accounting for about 8.25 per cent of the total.

Earlier this summer travellers were left stranded at airports after Spirit and American Airlines cancelled hundreds of flights citing weather, systems outages and well labour shortages.

The transportation department said it would issue two enforcement notices on airlines’ obligations to provide refunds. It also said it is beginning investigations into 20 carriers for failing to provide refunds in a timely manner and that it would issue a formal complaint against Air Canada “seeking a substantial fine for extreme delays in refunds”.

The department is also planning a new rule that would boost protection for passengers if they choose not to fly because of government restrictions.

The announcement from the transportation department came a day after US carriers cut their revenue forecasts as they expect travel demand to cool in the coming months due to uncertainty related to the spread of the Delta variant of Covid-19.

Daily hospital admissions for Covid-19 in Wales are higher than at any point since March and the situation is likely to deteriorate further in the coming weeks, first minister Mark Drakeford has warned.

A total of 41 people were admitted to hospital with the virus on Wednesday, the latest government data show. Daily admissions peaked at 207 in April last year.

Drakeford said on Friday that modelling suggested Wales could soon be heading for about 100 admissions a day.

“Those people will enter an NHS that is already under intense pressure,” he said. “Our health and care staff are exhausted”.

The seven-day average for new daily cases reached 2,324 on September 1, up from 1,581 a fortnight before.

Drakeford added that the country should expect 3,200 new cases every day as the latest wave continued towards its peak.

More than 84 per cent of over 16s in Wales have received two doses of vaccine, and Drakeford urged others to come forward.

Canada’s labour market continued to heal at the end of summer, nearing pre-pandemic levels, as easing restrictions fuelled hiring.

The economy added 90,200 jobs in August, Statistics Canada said on Friday. That was fewer than the 100,000 jobs economists had forecast. Hiring was driven by the hospitality and food services industries as well as the culture and recreation industries.

The unemployment rate fell more than expected to 7.1 per cent, from 7.5 per cent in July.

“By the August reference week, most jurisdictions in Canada had implemented the final or near-final stages of their public health reopening plans,” Statistics Canada said in its report.

Indoor locations, including restaurants, recreation facilities and retail stores reopened with varying degrees of capacity restrictions. Moreover, on August 9, for the first time since the start of the pandemic, Canada reopened its land borders to fully vaccinated US travellers “expanding potential clientele for businesses in tourist areas”.

The strong job gains helped bring employment close to pre-pandemic levels, however, “the unchanged level of hours worked is further evidence that third-quarter GDP growth is likely to be weaker than we originally assumed”, said Stephen Brown, economist at Capital Economics.

The reproduction — or R — rate of infections in England has remained flat over the past week, according to government estimates.

According to the UK Health Security Agency, the R value in England is estimated to be between 0.9 and 1.1, which means every 10 people infected with the virus would be expected to pass it on to between 9 and 11 others. The figure was unchanged from last week.

Meanwhile, the number of new infections in England is either shrinking by up to 1 per cent or growing by up to 1 per cent every day according to the latest government estimates. 

Last week, the growth rate was estimated at between -2 and 2 per cent daily.

The R value and growth rate are lowest in London, where every 10 people infected with the virus are expected to pass it on to between 8 and 10 others. The city’s growth rate is estimated at between -2 and 0 per cent.

The wholesale cost of US goods and services rose more than expected last month as supply chain bottlenecks and labour shortages fuel inflation.

The producer price index rose 0.7 per cent month-on-month in August, the labour department said, following a 1.1 per cent increase in July. That exceeded economists’ expectations for a 0.6 per cent rise.

On a year-on-year basis PPI jumped 8.3 per cent, a record high, according to Bloomberg data.

So-called core PPI, which strips out volatile items such as food and energy, rose 0.6 per cent from the previous month and 6.7 per cent year-on-year, ahead of economists’ expectations.

Labour and materials shortages have come up against strong demand during the pandemic, driving up production costs for businesses.

The Federal Reserve has come under pressure to remove policy support to fend off higher inflationary pressures. Policymakers are closely watching inflation data as well as the labour market as they assess when to begin winding down their massive pandemic stimulus programme.

Seven in 10 UK businesses seeking to hire extra staff are struggling to do so as a result of changes to immigration rules and a pandemic-induced exodus of EU workers, the head of the British Chambers of Commerce has said in a letter to the government.

In its second-quarter economic survey, the BCC said that, of the 52 per cent of businesses across all sectors that attempted to recruit, 70 per cent experienced difficulties taking on staff.

Shevaun Haviland warned on Friday that proposed medium-term solutions to “critical” levels of staff shortages, including an acceleration of HGV driver training, upgrading the skills of the domestic workforce and improvements to supply chain efficiency, were unlikely to fix the issue.

She called on the government to add HGV drivers to the shortage occupation list, which would allow foreign hauliers to win an exemption from post-Brexit immigration rules, and for more frequent reviews of the system to ensure it remained “reflective of national shortages”. 

“Without action, businesses will struggle to operate and consumers will face rising prices or limited options,” Haviland said.

Difficulties hiring staff, particularly in the food processing, hospitality and logistics sectors, had coincided with rising prices for raw materials, she added, placing an additional burden on businesses that have had balance sheets “stretched to breaking point” during the pandemic.

The government should work with the BCC and other stakeholders to convene a summit to identify “longer term solutions”, Haviland said.

Covid-19 infections in the UK are nearing the peak of the previous spike in July, according to the Office for National Statistics, as Scotland recorded its highest infection rate in the whole pandemic.

Around 950,500 people across the UK were infected with Covid-19 in the week ending September 3, an increase of 7 per cent on the week before when just above 890,000 people had the virus.

The infection level is just below the late July peak of 951,700 infections, which was the highest level since early February.

The surge in infections was driven by a jump in transmission of the virus in Scotland after schools reopened.

One in 45 people in Scotland had Covid-19 in the week to September 3, up from one in 75 people in the week to August 28. Scottish infection rates are now higher than they were during the winter wave.

In England, one in 70 people had the virus, the same as the week before. One in 65 people tested positive in Wales in the week to September 3, up from one in 110 people a week earlier.

In Northern Ireland, one in 60 people were infected in the week to September 3, up slightly from one in 65 people in the week to August 28.

Sarah Crofts, head of analytical outputs for the survey, noted that Scotland’s infections had “[reached] a new highest recorded level”.

“Infection trends across the UK remain mixed,” she added. “England’s level overall picture masks a continued increase in the North East and a recent decrease in the North West.”

Russia’s central bank raised interest rates for the fifth time in a row on Friday and signalled a willingness to do so again to curb surging inflation.

The Bank of Russia increased the key rate 25 basis points to 6.75 per cent, a slightly lower rise than predicted by economists in Reuters and Bloomberg surveys who had forecast a 50 basis-point move.

The lower rise indicated central bank governor Elvira Nabiullina was beginning to wind down Russia’s rate cycle following a 100 basis-point increase in July, the largest since the country’s 2014 financial crisis.

The central bank said it was moving to tame inflation, which has become a major issue ahead of parliamentary elections next week amid soaring food prices and slumping real incomes.

Russia’s economy returned to pre-pandemic levels in the second quarter of this year, which the central bank said had a “significant impact” on inflation as demand began to outstrip supply.

“In these conditions and given high inflation expectations, the inflationary risk balance has shifted to the upside,” the central bank said. “This could lead to a longer deviation of inflation ahead of the target.”

Nabiullina, who told the Financial Times in July she was considering lowering the 4 per cent inflation target, has been one of the most prominent central bankers to warn of inflationary risks as the global economy emerges from the pandemic crisis.

Last week, the central bank said that spiralling inflation could lead to a global crash akin to the 2008 financial crisis, as higher interest rates prompted investors to dump risky assets, particularly on emerging markets with high levels of foreign-denominated debt.

The bank said it considered the scenario unlikely and predicted that inflation would begin to slow in the fourth quarter of this year, before returning to its 4 per cent target in 2022.

The UK competition regulator has told the government to enforce higher standards on its portal for booking Covid-19 travel tests and remove companies that fail to comply as part of its recommendations to crack down on providers. 

The government should toughen up the basic rules and requirements that private providers must adhere to in order to be listed on its site, and remove any that do not meet those standards, the Competition and Markets Authority said in a letter to health secretary Sajid Javid.

The CMA said in the letter on Friday that the government should “ensure a comprehensive monitoring and enforcement programme for retail test providers is set up, with appropriate sanctions”.

The update comes after the watchdog last month launched an urgent review of the PCR testing market in response to a request from the government. At the time, the regulator said it would explore what “immediate actions” the government could undertake to crack down on exploitative behaviour in the testing market.

There is a risk of a “race to the bottom” or for providers to compete on grounds other than high clinical quality, with potential public health consequences, said Andrea Coscelli, CMA chief executive, in a statement.

On Friday, the regulator laid out eight recommendations and said “competition alone will not deliver the right outcomes for consumers from the PCR testing market”. 

Regulators stopped short of telling the government to impose a price cap on PCR tests, which currently range in cost from tens to hundreds of pounds. Instead, it said the government should be “prepared to re-evaluate this position if other measures it decides to take do not improve market outcomes”.

The UK demands travellers take at least one PCR test on arrival in England and lists more than 400 private providers on its website to choose from. Some are accredited while others are self-assessed.

Consumer groups urged the government to set out plans to implement the recommendations and ensure reliable and affordable tests are available.

“Meanwhile, the regulator must continue to come down strongly on any providers not following the rules,” said Rory Boland, travel editor at Which?, a non-profit consumer organisation.

Sarah Gilbert, the Oxford university vaccinologist who helped develop the Covid-19 jab with AstraZeneca, has stressed that the shortage of vaccines worldwide should override any decisions individual countries make over booster shots.

“We simply don’t have enough,” Gilbert told BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour on Friday. “If we have enough doses to vaccinate everybody in the world with two doses, we wouldn’t be having to have the discussions about should we use them in one country or another.”

She said that inoculation against Covid-19 was a “global issue not a local” one. The situation was exacerbated by questions over vaccine availability, expiry dates and the feasibility of transporting them, she added.

“It is not a simple decision: if we had more vaccines manufactured in many parts of the world, we wouldn’t have the shortage supply and wouldn’t be facing these decisions,” said the professor.

Some countries have only 2 per cent of their population protected against Covid-19, which shows “clearly we’re not doing anything like enough to control the spread of the virus in those countries and it makes the whole world vulnerable”, she said.

Her comments come as the UK awaits a decision from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, which advises health departments, on launching a booster programme.

She backed advice to give boosters to the vulnerable but stressed that the timing of any such programme was important and had to be considered “very carefully”.

“It’s really clear that people with compromised immune systems benefit from having a third dose of the vaccine,” she told Radio 4. “That doesn’t mean that is going to apply to everybody.”

Structural changes to the UK’s labour market caused by Brexit and the pandemic mean consumers should expect less choice in supermarkets and restaurants, the head of the Food and Drink Federation has said.

“The just-in-time system that has sustained supermarkets, convenience stores and restaurants . . . is no longer working,” Ian Wright told the Institute for Government on Friday. “And I don’t think it will work again.”

The UK faced “permanent shortages” of staff in the food distribution sector, Wright said, adding that supply chain issues were “going to get worse”.

That did not mean the country was about to run out of food and other goods, Wright said. He warned, however, that the days of consumers being able to expect “every product they want . . . all the time” in shops and restaurants were “over”.

The farm-to-fork supply chain that usually employs about 4m people was missing 500,000 workers, he said. HGV drivers, thousands of whom have left the UK because of Brexit, Covid-19 or a combination of the two, were unlikely to return soon.

Many of those who stayed had started working as distribution drivers in other sectors in what Wright described as “nicer, better paid jobs”. Others had decided to retire.

“That is a structural change that will not reverse itself,” he said.

The World Health Organization’s European branch has called on countries to adopt a “one health” policy, which would encompass human, animal and environmental health in the wake of the pandemic.

The recommendation was one of several made in a report published on Friday by the WHO’s Pan European Commission on Health and Sustainable Development, which was chaired by former Italian prime minister and EU commissioner Mario Monti.

“As this decade dawned the world faced a monumental and unsolicited stress test — the Covid-19 pandemic,” said Monti during a press conference on Friday.

“Our political, economic and social systems have catastrophically failed to manage the defining crisis of our time,” he added.

Monti also asked for the “risks and returns around innovation and development to be shared between the private and the public sectors” and called for the creation of a global health and finance board at the G20.

Hans Kluge, WHO regional director for Europe, said in a statement: “We can’t allow another pandemic to bring the world to its knees and must do everything in our power to prevent a catastrophe on the same scale from happening again.”

The fifth cricket test match between England and India, due to start in Manchester on Friday, has been cancelled after several members of the visiting side tested positive for Covid-19.

The England and Wales Cricket Board said in a statement that India was unable to field a team “due to fears of a further increase in the number of Covid cases inside the camp”.

“We send our sincere apologies to fans and partners for this news, which we know will cause immense disappointment and inconvenience to many,” the ECB said.

Toyota has cut its annual production target by 3 per cent after a Covid-19 resurgence in south-east Asia disrupted microchip supply chains.

The downgrade came less than a month after the world’s largest carmaker by sales volume said it was slashing its global production by 40 per cent in September.

The persistent rise in coronavirus cases and lockdowns in Vietnam and Malaysia has caused bottlenecks in supply chains for chips and other car components, triggering turmoil in production lines across the global car industry.

In August, the company said it would cut output by 360,000 units this month but stuck to its full-year target. On Friday, it revealed that it was reducing production by another 70,000 vehicles in September and by 330,000 units in October. As a result, the company now expects to build 9m vehicles by the end of the year to March 31, instead of the 9.3m vehicles it forecast earlier.

“Although our plants and suppliers are taking thorough quarantine and vaccination measures in response to the pandemic in south-east Asia, the spread of Covid-19 infections remains unpredictable, making it difficult to maintain operations due to lockdowns at various locations,” the company said in a statement.

The UK’s culture secretary Oliver Dowden has rebuffed calls to prioritise sending excess Covid-19 vaccines abroad over administering booster shots at home, claiming that the UK can already meet its commitments to other countries.

Dowden’s comments to Sky News on Friday came in response to an interview in The Telegraph with Sarah Gilbert, who helped develop the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine. Gilbert told the UK daily that administering a third dose to the general public was unnecessary and said that instead jabs should be sent to countries where a smaller proportion of the population had been inoculated.

“I don’t think we need to boost everybody. Immunity is lasting well in the majority of people,” she said.

Dowden told Sky News it was not an “either or” decision, however.

“There’s a range of opinion amongst scientists; that’s why we have the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation to give us the authoritative advice, and we will follow that advice,” he said on Friday.

The JCVI is expected to report back to the government in the coming days.

“In terms of support for other countries, we’re committed to 100m jabs going by 2022,” Dowden said. “We’ve already delivered 9m so it’s not an ‘either or’; we’re doing both of those things.”

Other countries, including Israel, have begun administering third jabs, so the UK is no outlier, he said.

The recovery at UK restaurant group Fulham Shore has accelerated, with sales rising sharply over the past three weeks as tourists and office workers have returned to city centres.

The company, which owns Franco Manca and The Real Greek, said on Friday that revenues in the three weeks to September 5 were 27 per cent higher than in the same period in 2019. That is an increase on the 8 per cent growth rate in the eight weeks to August 15.

“We are very encouraged by the accelerating revenue growth trends during recent weeks despite continued challenging trading conditions,” said chair David Page. 

The hospitality industry has been hammered by the pandemic. Restaurants across the UK were forced to close during lockdown and the sector has been hit by severe staffing shortages after thousands of workers returned to their home countries or moved into other jobs.

The UK government launched its “hospitality strategy” in July, aiming to boost revenue in the sector by relaxing constraints on the sale of alcohol and allowing venues to add seated dining areas in outdoor locations.

“We continue to see a number of exciting growth opportunities and are on course to open 10 locations during the current financial year, with more than 150 additional sites in our medium-term plans,” said Page.

The UK economic rebound slowed to a crawl in July as consumers spent less in stores and a shortage of raw materials hit the construction sector.

Output rose 0.1 per cent compared with the previous month, the Office for National Statistics said on Friday, which is slower than the 1 per cent expansion in June and lower than the 0.6 per cent expansion forecast by economists polled by Reuters. The economy remained about 2.1 per cent smaller than in February 2020, before the first coronavirus restrictions.

“The recovery is now entering a tougher phase,” said Andrew Goodwin, chief UK economist at Oxford Economics, with many risks remaining in the coming months, including the scaling back of government support, and shortages of components and labour that represent a growing constraint on activity.

Services output remained broadly flat in July even as arts, entertainment and recreation activities grew 9 per cent, boosted by sports clubs, amusement parks and festivals, reflecting the easing of restrictions on social distancing from July 19.

The UK is preparing to become the first big country to administer “mix and match” coronavirus vaccines for its booster programme, according to senior government figures.

Many Britons are expected to have a different vaccine to their first two jabs for the third, booster dose, on the basis that it would provide better protection against Covid-19, said the government insiders.

Ministers want to press ahead with an autumn booster campaign after separate studies from Oxford university and the team behind the Zoe Covid app found that the protection against symptomatic infection provided by the BioNTech/Pfizer and the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccines waned four to six months after second doses. 

A final decision by the government on its booster plan will be made once the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, an advisory body, has made a recommendation.

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Vietnam is to reopen the tropical island of Phu Quoc to foreign visitors from next month, tourism authorities have said, as the country looks to revive its travel industry.

Located in the south-east of the country, some 10km off the coast of neighbouring Cambodia, Phu Quoc would be accessible for a trial period of six months, the government said in a statement issued late on Thursday.

Visitors would need to be fully vaccinated and have recently tested negative for the coronavirus, and would arrive via chartered or commercial flights. Vietnam would fully vaccinate all residents on Phu Quoc before opening to outsiders, the tourism ministry said.

Foreign arrivals to Vietnam slumped from 18m in 2019 — when tourism revenue topped $30bn — to 3.8m last year, according to government data. “The prolonged pandemic has seriously hurt the tourism industry,” Nguyen Van Hung, Vietnam’s tourism and culture minister, said.

Shares in Top Glove, the world’s biggest rubber-glove maker, rose on Friday after the Malaysian company said it had been allowed to resume sales to the US. 

US Customs and Border Protection, which had banned gloves made by the company in March this year over alleged forced labour, had dropped the ban, it said in a statement. 

Top Glove’s Malaysia and Singapore-listed shares rose on Friday morning in Asia in response, up 2.6 and 4.5 per cent respectively. 

The Malaysian maker of personal protective equipment had been one of the world’s biggest corporate beneficiaries of the pandemic. In the 12 months to April its surging share price pushed up the fortune of Lim Wee Chai, Top Glove’s founder and chair, threefold to $3.5bn. 

But shares took a hit as the pandemic situation improved globally thanks to vaccine rollouts. 

In March, US customs authorities ordered the seizure of Top Glove’s products on arrival at American ports over allegations the company used forced labour. The US has now found the company’s merchandise is no longer likely to be made with the use of forced labour.

The busy skies above Spain’s Balearic Islands spell good economic news for southern Europe — after a disastrous 2020 season, its tourist industry is on the path to recovery.

July’s tally of 2.4m air passengers to and from Mallorca, the biggest of the island chain, was more than double the number in the same month in 2020, although it was still more than 40 per cent down on pre-pandemic 2019.

In the old town of Ciutadella in neighbouring Menorca, tourists queued for tables at dozens of restaurants every night as they waited to dine on local delicacies such as stuffed aubergine and lobster stew.

The influx of visitors is a huge relief for the archipelago, which suffered a 24 per cent slump in GDP last year as coronavirus restrictions prevented holidaymakers from travelling.

“Things have gone much better than we expected five months ago,” said Maria Frontera, head of the Mallorca hotel association, adding that about 90 per cent of her members were open for business in August, more than double the proportion in May.

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Collaborating in the post-pandemic workplace requires new tech and management skills.

More than a year and half since the coronavirus pandemic began, vaccines may offer a way out of the crisis. But the impact on the world of work is unlikely to fade.

Those hoping for a return to office life as it was are likely to be disappointed. The reality is that work will be marked by hybridity, using technologies that once played second fiddle to face-to-face communication.

Making the most of this will require employers to shift their thinking on what it means to stay connected, and to consider how best to deploy technology. Endless teleconferences and passive-aggressive emails are not enough to navigate the new world of work.

The semi-return to the office poses several challenges, says Ashok Krish, global head of digital workplace at Tata Consultancy Services. Some, such as varying levels of connectivity, are obvious. Others are equally important but perhaps less evident.

“We are now all working in a mode that maximises our individual productivity,” says Krish, “which means it becomes harder to co-ordinate and bring people together at the same time, being present and be willing to contribute.”

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European aviation may be on the cusp of a new order. The revelation on Thursday of a bid by Wizz Air for rival budget carrier easyJet marks the first sign of a potential wave of consolidation in the region’s airline industry as it emerges from the pandemic.

The rejected offer highlights the tale of two carriers, both ambitious and hoping to expand. But Wizz has been by far the most aggressive through the crisis, while easyJet also unveiled a new £1bn-plus rights issue to help bolster its balance sheet for the post-Covid world.

Other airlines are also jostling for position in what could be a fundamental reshaping of Europe’s fragmented airline market that had already experienced a clutch of bankruptcies before the coronavirus crisis. British Airways, for example, has asked unions to back a plan to make sweeping changes to its short-haul Gatwick operations to match easyJet’s more flexible and seasonal model.

In short, airlines are looking beyond the pandemic to prepare for a new business cycle, said Ross Harvey, an analyst at Davy Research. “The major carriers are now moving to position themselves for the post-Covid world,” he added.

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New Zealand reported 11 new locally acquired cases of Covid-19 on Friday, down from 13 on Thursday.

All were detected in Auckland, bringing the total number of cases in the Delta outbreak centred on the city to 879.

Some 27 Covid-19 patients are being treated in hospital in Auckland, including four in intensive care.

Speaking on TVNZ’s Breakfast programme, University of Auckland Covid-19 modeller Shaun Hendy said New Zealand’s campaign against the Delta variant had exceeded expectations. “Some time over the next couple of weeks, we will eliminate it,” he said.

New Zealand’s zero-Covid strategy was due to receive a further boost on Friday morning with the scheduled arrival of 250,000 BioNTech/Pfizer vaccines purchased from Spain.

The Australian state of New South Wales on Friday reported 1,542 new locally acquired cases of Covid-19 — the highest daily number since the beginning of pandemic — and nine more deaths, including a man in his 30s.

Gladys Berejiklian, the state premier, said the trajectory of the outbreak was as predicted, and she expected cases to peak in coming weeks.

Noting that 76.4 per cent of the eligible population had already had their first vaccine dose and 43.6 per cent had been fully vaccinated with two doses, she said: “But as health experts have been saying, we are keen to see that first dose rate hit 80 and above and get as close to 90 as possible.”

The state government has said it plans to end lockdown once 70 per cent of eligible adults are fully vaccinated. The reopening of the state is now expected for mid to late October, though some regional areas will be freed from stay-at-home orders from Saturday.

Meanwhile, Victoria state on Friday reported 334 new locally acquired Covid-19 cases and one death.

It was the largest single-day rise in such cases in the state since last year, with most of the new infections in the capital, Melbourne. Other regions in Victoria, with the exception of the Greater Shepparton area, exited lockdown on Friday.

Daniel Andrews, the Victoria premier, said lockdown restrictions in Melbourne would not be eased until 70 per cent of the adult population had received at least one vaccine dose, a goal due to be reached around September 23 at current vaccination rates.

Authorities in the southern Thailand province of Krabi have announced temporary Covid-19 curbs limiting movement to and from the island of Phi Phi, the Bangkok Post reported on Friday.

Access to the island — a popular getaway with both Thai and international tourists — will be limited for a week from Saturday after seven Covid-19 cases were confirmed there, the newspaper said.

Two police officers and five migrant workers at a wastewater treatment construction site were found to be infected, while 36 other workers were awaiting test results.

Phi Phi has a permanent population of fewer than 3,000 people, with many working in the hospitality industry.

Students aged 12 and older in Los Angeles will be required to be vaccinated against Covid-19 if they want to attend in-person classes, making it the largest school district in the US to announce such a mandate.

Board members for the Los Angeles Unified School District voted at a special meeting on Thursday to impose the requirement, with six adult members voting in favour of the motion, one member recusing themselves and one student member voting yes.

The school district is the second-largest in the US, behind New York City, with more than 600,000 students. About 40 per cent will be affected by the vaccination mandate.

A number of colleges and universities around the country have implemented vaccination mandates for staff and students, which in some cases have already been challenged in court. Several states have announced similar requirements for staff in K-12 (kindergarten to 12th grade) schools to be vaccinated, sometimes without an option for regular testing in lieu of showing proof of vaccination. 

LAUSD, however, is the largest school district to take the step of requiring vaccines for adolescent students.

Culver City Unified, a school district in west Los Angeles county, last month announced that all eligible students, alongside teachers and staff, must be vaccinated against — and tested once a week for — Covid-19. That decision may have made it the first school district to enact such a requirement.

“It’s about what’s best for the community as a whole, and sometimes that necessitates challenging decisions,” Kelly Gonez, LAUSD’s board president, said during the meeting.

California in early August became the first US state to require K-12 staff to show proof of full vaccination against Covid-19 or be tested at least once a week, putting it among cities and states with the most stringent vaccination requirements in education settings.

LAUSD has already gone a step further, requiring all staff to be vaccinated as a condition of employment, without offering an option to choose regular testing.

Bill de Blasio, the New York City mayor, said in-mid August he did “not anticipate students having to show proof” of vaccination in order to attend in-person classes. The academic year in the largest school district in the US begins next week.

At present, only the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine has been granted emergency use authorisation by the US drugs regulator for individuals as young as 12.

The EU has removed Japan and five other countries from its safe travel list, meaning tighter Covid-19 controls will be required for visitors to or travellers returning from those countries.

Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Brunei and Serbia were dropped from the list alongside Japan, the European Council said on Thursday. Average daily Covid-19 cases in those countries have risen sharply since June.

Meanwhile, Uruguay was added to the EU’s safe list, which now includes 12 countries. Australia, Canada, Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia are considered safe, among other countries and territories.

While the EU’s safe travel list aims to unify rules, the bloc’s 27 member states are free to implement their own border policies.

United Airlines plans to put fewer planes in the air for the US holiday season, showing the far-reaching effects of a slowdown in travel demand that began when the Delta coronavirus variant spread this summer.

Chief commercial officer Andrew Nocella on Thursday said that while would-be travellers were now comfortable booking several months in advance, “we will offer less capacity for Christmas and Thanksgiving than we would otherwise have planned earlier this summer”.

United was one of several US carriers to cut quarterly revenue forecasts on Thursday, owing to a slowdown in customer reservations and rises in cancellations associated with the highly contagious Delta virus strain.

American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, JetBlue Airways, Southwest Airlines and United all said in filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission that demand pulled back in August. For some, the slowdown has continued into September, clouding the outlook for the remainder of the year.

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The Biden administration will demand that companies force their employees to get vaccinated against Covid-19 or submit to weekly testing as part of a new plan that will also result in government workers being fired if they refuse to take the jab. 

The US president announced the new measures on Thursday evening as part of a wider effort to boost flagging vaccination rates and curb the rapid spread of the Delta variant. 

“What makes [the current surge in cases] incredibly more frustrating is we have the tools to combat Covid-19,” Biden said in a speech on Thursday. “But a distinct minority of Americans, supported by a distinct minority of elected officials, are keeping us from turning the corner. 

“These pandemic politics are making people sick, causing unvaccinated people to die. We cannot allow these actions to stand in the way of protecting the large majority of Americans who have done their part and want to get back to life as normal.”

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Kentucky will deploy an additional 300 National Guard members to hospitals around the state to help the facilities combat a surge in Covid-19 hospital admissions that have been fueled by the Delta variant.

Starting on Monday Kentucky will deploy the soldiers and airmen to assist 21 hospitals with non-clinical functions for a maximum of two weeks, Governor Andy Beshear said at a press conference on Thursday. That will bring the total number of Kentucky National Guards deployed in the state to 411.

The move to provide additional assistance comes as 60 of 96 hospitals across the states reported critical staffing shortages. As of Thursday there were only 90 adult ICU beds available in Kentucky, Beshear said. “Every hospital is bursting at the seams and they desperately need help.”

There are currently 2,424 people admitted to hospital with Covid-19 in the state, with 674 in ICU beds and 431 on ventilators, according to data from the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Human Services.

The Delta variant “is very real, it is causing devastation, it is making our hospitals overflow and it is taking the lives of our people,” Beshear said.

Kentucky has reported almost 28,000 new coronavirus cases over the past week, according to data updated on Thursday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Adjusted for population, the daily rate of 89 cases per 100,000 people a day ranks as the second-highest among US states, after South Carolina.

The governor urged Kentuckians to get vaccinated and use face coverings in an effort to curb the spread of the highly transmissible Delta variant. Nearly 2.6m adults in Kentucky have received at least one Covid shot, according to Beshear.

The state has fully vaccinated 49.6 per cent of its population, the 27th-highest level of coverage among states, but below the national average of 53.4 per cent, according to the CDC.

Microsoft has indefinitely delayed plans to bring workers back to its US offices. The tech giant had earmarked October 4 as the first possible day to fully reopen its headquarters in the Seattle metropolitan area and other offices around the country, but told workers on Thursday it was deviating from that plan and would not set a new return date.

The UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency has approved the BioNTech/Pfizer and Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccines for use as booster shots. “We know that a person’s immunity may decline over time after their first vaccine course,” said June Raine, MHRA chief executive. “I am pleased to confirm that the Covid-19 vaccines made by Pfizer and AstraZeneca can be used as safe and effective booster doses.”

Kenya’s economy shrank for the first time in almost 30 years in 2020. The economy of east Africa’s economic powerhouse contracted 0.3 per cent, compared with 5 per cent growth in 2019, treasury secretary Ukur Yatani said Thursday, as the “unprecedented challenge of Covid-19” hit the important tourism sector. The previous time Kenya’s economy shrank was in 1992.

Agnès Buzyn, former French health minister, is facing a possible judicial investigation for “failure to deal with a disaster” over her handling of the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic last year. French media cited judicial sources as saying that she would appear before the Cour de Justice de la République — the special court that deals with government ministers — on Friday.

Officials in many German regions plan to increase pressure on unvaccinated individuals by announcing an end to state compensation for unvaccinated employees who must be quarantined. According to Germany’s Infection Protection Act, a person who cannot work due to a state-mandated quarantine is entitled to compensation for loss of earnings. Germany’s 16 federal states have so far spent around €450m in such compensation, according to local media.