(Reuters) – More than half of U.S. multinational companies in Shanghai have reduced their annual revenue projections due to the recent COVID-19 outbreak in the city, according to a survey by the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai.
DEATHS AND INFECTIONS
* Eikon users, see COVID-19: MacroVitals https://apac1.apps.cp.thomsonreuters.com/cms/?navid=1592404098 for a case tracker and summary of news.
EUROPE
* Germany plans to end mandatory quarantine for most people who catch COVID-19, the health ministry proposed on Thursday, as numbers isolating with the infection top four million.
* Italy reported 73,195 COVID-19 related cases on Thursday, against 77,621 the day before, the health ministry said, while the number of deaths fell to 159 from 170.
AMERICAS
* U.S. Senate negotiators on Thursday were nearing a deal on a $10 billion COVID-19 bill to help the federal government acquire more vaccines and medical supplies as it prepares for future variants of the virus that upended American life.
* CIA Director William Burns has tested positive for COVID-19 and will work from home and quarantine for five days before returning to the office, the U.S intelligence agency’s public affairs office said on Thursday.
* More than a third of high school students surveyed in the United States experienced stress, anxiety or depression, and nearly a fifth said they seriously considered suicide during the pandemic, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday.
* Much of Canada is facing a fresh COVID-19 wave just as authorities ease measures meant to curb the spread of the virus, emboldened by a brief drop in cases and relatively high vaccination rates.
ASIA-PACIFIC
* China’s commercial hub of Shanghai ground to halt on Friday after the government locked down most of the city’s 26 million residents to stop the spread of COVID-19, even as official numbers put local cases falling for the second day in a row.
* China reported 1,827 confirmed coronavirus cases for March 31, the national health authority said on Friday, compared with 1,839 a day earlier.
* India’s Maharashtra state, home to Mumbai, will make wearing masks optional from April 2 after a steep fall in the number of active cases and deaths from COVID-19 in recent days.
* Pakistan has disbanded the National Command and Operations Center, which was overseeing the country’s COVID-19 response, as infection numbers were at the lowest since the start of the outbreak, the prime minister said.
MEDICAL DEVELOPMENTS
* As governments prepare to live with COVID-19, some are questioning how much to rely on drugmakers to adapt vaccines to ward off future virus variants amid signs of tension between companies and regulators over the best approach, according to several sources familiar with the matter.
ECONOMIC IMPACT
* China’s factory activity slumped at the fastest pace in two years in March, as the domestic COVID-19 resurgence and the economic fallout from the Ukraine war triggered sharp falls in production and demand, a business survey showed on Friday.
* Japan’s manufacturing activity grew at a faster pace from the prior month in March as domestic demand got a lift from the waning impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
* Most Asian factories saw activity slow in March, as slumping Chinese demand and rising raw material costs blamed on the Ukraine crisis added strains to firms already suffering from lingering supply chain disruptions.
* Asian shares fell on Friday following the biggest quarterly drop in global equities in two years, as investors worried about the impact of the Russian-Ukrainian war and rising risks of recession. [MKTS/GLOB]
(Compiled by Rashmi Aich and Shailesh Kuber; Edited by Shounak Dasgupta and Anil D’Silva)
