(Reuters) – A federal judge in Florida said on Monday a U.S. mask mandate on public transportation is unlawful, overturning the Biden administration’s efforts to curb a recent rise in COVID-19 cases.
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.
ASIA-PACIFIC
* Manufacturers including Tesla began preparing to reopen their Shanghai plants as China’s most populous city speeds up efforts to get back to normal after a nearly three-week COVID shutdown.
* India’s tally of daily COVID-19 cases nearly doubled on Monday from the previous day to more than 2,000 for the first time in a month, government data showed, and the southern state of Kerala reported a big jump in deaths.
* Talks on Taiwan buying the child version of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine have stalled as Pfizer does not have the right to sell it and BioNTech and its Chinese partner do not make it.
* Almost all residents of Indonesia’s most populous island of Java have antibodies against COVID-19, owing to a combination of prior infection and vaccination against the virus, a government-commissioned survey showed.
* South Korea lifted almost all of its COVID-19 precautions in a major step towards a return to normal life as the Omicron variant recedes and daily infections retreated to a more than two-month low of fewer than 50,000.
EUROPE
* Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi has tested positive for COVID-19 and ministers will replace him on a trip to Africa this week for deals to cut his country’s reliance on Russian gas, his office said.
AMERICAS
* The U.S. CDC said it had dropped its “Do Not Travel” COVID-19 recommendations for about 90 international destinations.
AFRICA AND MIDDLE EAST
* Africa is experiencing its longest-running decline in weekly COVID-19 infections since the start of the pandemic, the World Health Organization said.
MEDICAL DEVELOPMENTS
* A Japanese Health Ministry committee said it has approved Novavax Inc’s COVID-19 vaccine, setting the stage for full approval of the country’s fourth shot for the coronavirus.
* Reports of two patients who found relief from long COVID after taking Pfizer Inc’s antiviral Paxlovid, including a researcher who tested it on herself, provide intriguing evidence for clinical trials to help those suffering from the debilitating condition, experts and advocates say.
ECONOMIC IMPACT
* The International Monetary Fund expects members to make “significant” pledges of support for its newly approved Resilience and Sustainability Trust during the IMF-World Bank spring meetings beginning this week.
(Compiled by Sherry Jacob-Phillips and Krishna Chandra Eluri; Edited by Shounak Dasgupta and Sriraj Kalluvila)
