Latest on the worldwide spread of the coronavirus

Latest on the worldwide spread of the coronavirus

(Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden continues to test negative for COVID-19 but is suffering its lingering effects, the White House press office said on Tuesday, after he coughed repeatedly through a speech on the South Lawn. 

DEATHS AND INFECTIONS

* Eikon users, click on COVID-19: MacroVitals for a case tracker and summary of news.

ASIA-PACIFIC

* Strong winds from Tropical Storm Mulan are expected to whip across the South China Sea towards Hainan Island on Wednesday, raising the possibility of disruption to mass testing on the holiday island that is grappling with a big COVID-19 outbreak.

* Shanghai reported zero new domestically transmitted coronavirus cases for Aug. 9, the same as a day earlier, the city government said on Wednesday.

* Mainland China reported 1,094 new coronavirus cases for Aug. 9, of which 444 were symptomatic and 650 were asymptomatic, the National Health Commission said on Wednesday. 

EUROPE

* The European Medicines Agency has started a rolling review of a variant-adapted vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech. 

* Residence permits issued for the first time in the European Union climbed close to pre-pandemic levels last year, with Poland leading the bloc due mostly to work-related immigration while France largely attracted students, the bloc’s statistics office said on Tuesday. 

* British workers are spending more time working from home compared with pre-pandemic times despite the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions, according to official data released on Tuesday that offered a glimpse of what the ‘new normal’ looks like. 

ECONOMIC IMPACT

* Asian shares fell and the dollar steadied on Wednesday as investors waited for a key U.S. report on inflation to provide hints to the Federal Reserve’s plans for future monetary tightening.

* China’s factory-gate inflation eased to a 17-month low in July, defying global cost pressures as slower domestic construction weighed on raw material demand, although consumer prices picked up pace, driven mostly by tight pork supplies. 

* Japanese wholesale prices rose 8.6% in July from a year earlier, data showed on Wednesday, slowing from the previous month’s pace in a sign inflationary pressure from higher fuel and raw material costs was easing. 

* Lenovo Group (0992.HK), the world’s biggest maker of personal computers, reported flat revenue for the April to June quarter when many Chinese cities were hit by COVID-19 lockdowns, marking its most subdued result in eight quarters. 

* U.S. vaccine maker Novavax’s shares slumped nearly 31% on Tuesday as falling demand for its COVID-19 shot from low- and middle-income nations led the company to cut its annual revenue expectation by half.