(Reuters) – Japan’s wholesale inflation hit a four-decade high in October, following a similar spike in China’s factory gate prices due to supply bottlenecks and rising commodity costs, while Australian jobs suffered a shock fall and the jobless rate jumped as lockdowns plagued the labour market.
DEATHS AND INFECTIONS
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EUROPE
* France is at the beginning of a fifth wave of the epidemic, Health Minister Olivier Veran said.
* Russia’s deaths hit a record in the previous 24 hours, two days after most of its regions emerged from a week-long workplace shutdown.
* People aged under 30 in Germany should only receive the Biontech/Pfizer vaccine as it causes fewer heart inflammations in younger people than the Moderna shot, an advisory committee said.
AMERICAS
* The Americas is facing an impending crisis in routine vaccinations because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Pan American Health Organization said, and vaccinations against the coronavirus are behind where they should be.
* More than 900,000 U.S. children aged 5 to 11 are expected to have received their first COVID-19 shot by the end of Wednesday, the White House said, as the government ramped up vaccinations of younger children.
* U.S. National Institutes of Health scientists played “a major role” in developing Moderna’s vaccine and the agency intends to defend its claim as co-owner of patents on the shot, NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins told Reuters.
* Political leaders in Ontario, Canada have suspended a plan to lift restrictions on the number of people who can congregate in restaurants, bars and other settings, saying a cautious approach was needed with a rise in COVID-19 infections.
ASIA-PACIFIC
* Thailand said it will set aside up to 500,000 doses of vaccines for foreign workers.
* Vietnam will by the end of this month have sufficient vaccines to cover its population, a deputy prime minister said, as the country approved India’s Covaxin vaccine for emergency use.
MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA
* Israel’s pandemic advisory board backed administering Pfizer’s and BioNTech’s vaccine to children age 5-11, as a fourth wave of infections subsides nationwide.
* Bahrain will cancel working with its coronavirus travel red list from Nov. 14.
MEDICAL DEVELOPMENTS
* Brazil’s health regulator Anvisa said China’s CanSino Biologics Inc has applied for emergency use authorization in the country for its COVID-19 vaccine, after its earlier request was cancelled in June.
* The risk of measles outbreaks is high after more than 22 million infants missed their first vaccine doses during the pandemic in 2020, the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned.
ECONOMIC IMPACT
* Inflation fears pressured Asian stocks and buoyed the dollar on Thursday after data overnight showed U.S. consumer prices surged at the fastest pace since 1990 last month, boosting the case for faster Federal Reserve policy tightening.[MKTS/GLOB]
* New Zealand house prices rose in October as an easing in COVID-19 restrictions boosted buyers’ confidence, the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand said on Thursday.
(Compiled by Rashmi Aich and Devika Syamnath; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila and Subhranshu Sahu)
