World Coronavirus Dispatch: New York's subway businesses in deep trouble

Dubai ruler gets vaccinated, Philippines posts first export rise in 7 months, Furlough leaves 2 million Britons earning less than minimum wage and other pandemic-related stories across the globe

Dubai ruler latest in VIP in UAE to be vaccinated: The Vice President and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates has become the latest high-ranking official in the country to receive a coronavirus vaccine.

Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the ruler of the UAE emirate of Dubai, said he was vaccinated on Tuesday. Foreign Minister Abdullah Bin Zayed said he took the vaccine last month. Phase 3 trials for a vaccine developed by China’s Sinopharm Group Co. started in the UAE in July and the country granted emergency approval for its use in healthcare workers in September. Read more here

Let’s look at the global statistics:



Total Confirmed Cases: 47,348,215
 


Change Over Yesterday: 463,512
 


Total Deaths: 1,212,844
 


Total Recovered: 31,553,116

Nations hit with most cases: US (9,379,600), India (8,267,623), Brazil (5,566,049), Russia (1,661,665) and France (1,461,391)

Source: Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Research Center 

Furlough leaves 2 million UK employees earning less than minimum wage: Median annual pay for full-time employees — a measure that was largely unaffected by the pandemic — was £31,461 in the tax year to April 2020, 3.6 per cent higher than the previous year, the Office for National Statistics said. But in April — when 8.8 million were furloughed, and many more were working reduced hours — median weekly pay across all jobs was 0.9 per cent lower than a year earlier after adjusting for inflation. Read more here

Peru reopens its biggest tourist attraction, Machu Picchu: The Incan citadel is the country’s biggest tourist attraction, nestled in the mountains near Cusco, and its shuttering has hampered the local economy. The Peruvian government said it would reopen the ruins at 30 per cent capacity with biosecurity protocols, dropping admissions from thousands of people daily to 675. Read more here

Philippines posts first export rise in 7 months: Philippine exports grew 2.2 per cent in September from a year earlier, the first monthly rise since February, as the government gradually reopened the pandemic-hit economy, government data showed on Wednesday.

Imports shrank 16.5%, the weakest pace since February. Read more here

Ikea says second round of lockdowns will have less impact on its business: Martin van Dam, CFO of Inter Ikea, the main company in the Ikea retail empire, told FT that sales were being hit by some stores being closed after a strong “old-fashioned school start” in September and October. “This lockdown is incomparable to the first one. The big thing is we don’t stop production. There are slower sales, but there is not the inefficiency of the first lockdown,” he said. Read more here 

Specials 

Lung damage found in Covid dead may shed light on 'long Covid' – study

A study of the lungs of people who have died from Covid-19 has found persistent and extensive lung damage in most cases and may help doctors understand what is behind a syndrome known as ‘long Covid’, in which patients suffer ongoing symptoms for months. “The findings indicate that Covid-19 is not simply a disease caused by the death of virus-infected cells, but is likely the consequence of these abnormal cells persisting for long periods inside the lungs,” said Mauro Giacca, a professor at King’s College London who co-led the work. The research team analysed samples of tissue from the lungs, heart, liver and kidneys of 41 patients who died of Covid-19 at Italy’s University Hospital of Trieste between February and April 2020. Read more here

Pregnant women with Covid-19 are more likely to need intensive care, a new C.D.C. study finds

While most pregnant women infected with the coronavirus have not become severely ill, the new caution is based on a large study that looked at tens of thousands of pregnant women who had Covid-19 symptoms. The study found they were significantly more likely to require intensive care, to be connected to a specialized heart-lung bypass machine, and to require mechanical ventilation than nonpregnant women of the same age who had Covid-19 symptoms. Most importantly, the pregnant women faced a 70 per cent increased risk of death, when compared to nonpregnant women who were symptomatic. The study from the CDC examined the outcomes of 409,462 symptomatic women ages 15 to 44 who tested positive for the coronavirus, 23,434 of whom were pregnant. Read more here

New York City’s underground subway businesses are in deep trouble
For over a century, the New York City subway has served as the backbone of the city’s economy, shuttling riders to workplaces and tourists to famed sightseeing spots. At the same time, the system spawned its own economic ecosystem of businesses sustained by the millions of people traipsing through stations every day. But when the pandemic decimated ridership, those establishments lost almost all their customers, dealing a blow at least as devastating, if not worse, as the pain the outbreak has inflicted on businesses above ground. The number of transit-linked businesses, from newsstands and hot dog vendors to florists and shoe shiners, had already been in steady decline as print newspapers lost favor and tighter regulations meant to make the subway system cleaner and less cluttered shut down stores. Now the prolonged period of low ridership has made the situation even worse. Read more here 

Here are 5 things to know about holiday travel

The market research firm Destination Analysts found in a recent Coronavirus Travel Sentiment Index Study, a weekly survey of 1,200 Americans, that 28 per cent expected to travel for the holidays. In the same survey, 53 per cent said they had travelled for the holidays last year. Here are five things we know about holiday travel. Read more here