World Coronavirus Dispatch: Taiwan stocks see worst rout as curbs weigh

Brazil's infants dying in large numbers, Australian bankers flee Wall Street to head home, and other pandemic-related news across the globe

Taiwan's stocks world's worst performing this month as curbs weigh

Taiwan stocks slumped, extending their biggest rout in more than a year, as the government tightened restrictions on people and businesses to control its worst outbreak of the coronavirus. As the country reported a record 206 new local cases, the benchmark index sank 8.4 per cent last week on concern about the impact on growth, turning Taiwan stocks into the world’s worst performers so far this month. Travel and consumption-linked companies were among the big losers in the market. Read more

Let's look at the global statistics

Global infections: 163,084,128

Global deaths: 3,379,534

Nations with most cases: US (32,940,909), India (24,965,463), Brazil (15,627,243), France (5,939,019), Turkey (5,117,374).

Source: John Hopkins Coronavirus Research Center

Bankers flee wall street, head home to virus-free Australia

One lasting impact of pandemic is that it has forced people everywhere to rethink about life and work. Nowhere is the trend more evident than in the finance industry. Australian bankers are dumping plum jobs in New York and returning home. For the first time since the Second World War, more Australians are returning home than leaving. Australia’s success at containing the virus has coupled with once-in-a-decade disruptions in the investment banking market in the country to create optimal conditions for returning home. Read here
 

Babies and small children in Brazil are dying in large numbers

Covid is ravaging Brazil, and, in a disturbing new trend that experts are trying to understand, it appears to be killing babies and small children at an unusually high rate. Since the start of the pandemic, more than 434,000 people are confirmed to have died of the deadly disease in the country. Among them, 832 were children aged 5 and under, according to the health ministry. The number is likely substantially larger, because a lack of widespread testing means many cases go undiagnosed. Even though comparable data is scarce, the picture in US tells us about the death rate among children where 139 children aged 4 and under have died. Read here

Australia’s stranded cricketers touch down in Sydney two weeks after IPL suspended

The majority of Australia’s stranded cricket group has returned home after a charter flight carrying the IPL players, coaches and broadcasters touched down in Sydney. Most of the 38-strong group, who went to the Maldives following the postponement of the lucrative Twenty20 tournament due to the Covid crisis, arrived on a flight paid for by the BCCI. The group has entered New South Wales’s quarantine system, where they have reportedly been spread across a number of different hotels and where they will stay for the next two weeks. The arrangement is believed to also have been organised and paid for by the BCCI. Read here