Long positions in the U.S. dollar is now considered the most crowded trade, according to a survey conducted by the Bank of America with global fund managers, but the greenback is likely near a peak, the bank said.
The bank surveyed 67 fund managers managing $997 billion assets under management from the United States, United Kingdom, Continental Europe and Asia from October 6 to 11.
The response represents a shift from early August as fund managers surveyed became more concerned about interest rates in September, according to the Bank of America note.
The latest survey bodes ill for the U.S. dollar DXY, as the equity rally this year has partially corrected and bond yields risen, after earlier making it to the most crowded trade, according to the bank’s strategists.
“We believe USD is near the peak, further strength requires a change in narrative,” the strategists wrote.
The ICE U.S. Dollar Index DXY,
which measures the greenback’s strength against a basket of rivals, has slightly pulled back from its highest close in 11 months at 107 reached on Oct. 3, according to FactSet data. The index is mostly flat on Friday at around 106.6.
Strong economic data in the U.S. coupled with a relatively more hawkish Federal Reserve than other major central banks, could be the most likely reason to support further strength in the dollar, according to the fund managers surveyed.
BofA Global Research
Meanwhile, the biggest downside risk to the greenback is if the U.S. economy sees a hard landing which will prompt the Federal Reserve to cut its policy interest rates.
BofA Global Research
Respondents of the survey think that rate cuts are currently underpriced, and they think the Fed is likely to cut rates the most among major central banks.
“This should erode faith in USD strength, and suggests that USD longs may indeed be vulnerable,” the strategists noted.
Business activity in the eurozone weakened in July, falling further below the level that marks contraction, data from a purchasing managers’ survey showed Monday.
The HCOB Flash Eurozone Composite PMI Output Index–which gauges activity in the manufacturing and services sectors–fell to an eight-month low of 48.9 in July, from a downwardly revised 49.9 in June.
The reading also fell below expectations of economists polled by The Wall Street Journal, who expected the PMI to come in at 49.7.
Voters are more interested in another Joe Biden administration than any third-party option or Donald Trump in 2024, according to polling data from Monmouth University.
In another Biden vs. Trump election, a combined 47% of voters say they would definitely or probably vote for President Biden and 40% of voters would definitely or probably vote for ex-President Trump. But majorities would not vote for either Biden or Trump, the poll found.
The electorate is seemingly disheartened with these two choices, but they’re not exactly enticed by a third-party option, either.
Biden still had more support than Trump, even when a third-party “fusion ticket” with one Democrat and one Republican was added to the mix, Monmouth found.
With a fusion ticket as an option, 37% of respondents would definitely or probably vote for Biden whereas 28% would definitely or probably vote for Trump. Thirty percent of respondents would entertain voting for the fusion ticket.
Democrats have expressed concern that a third-party ticket would siphon votes from Biden and spoil his chances in 2024. The presence of a third-party fusion ticket detracts votes from both Biden and Trump, but not enough for the ticket to be a “spoiler,” the polling report said.
Support for a fusion option declines when actual candidates are named on the ticket.
When the poll introduced a potential ticket of Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin and Republican former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, 44% of respondents definitely would not vote for the option. Only 2% of respondents definitely would vote for the hypothetical Manchin-Huntsman ticket.
Manchin and Huntsman headlined a town hall on Monday hosted by the nonprofit No Labels, which is pursuing ballot access to enter a “unity” ticket, similar to the Monmouth poll’s fusion ticket, in the 2024 race. The event heightened speculation that Manchin could have presidential aspirations for 2024.
If 2024 turns out to be a Biden vs. Trump vs. Manchin-Huntsman race, Biden would likely get 40% of the vote, Trump 34% and Manchin-Huntsman 16%, the poll found.
“Some voters clearly feel they have to back a candidate they don’t really like. That suggests there may be an opening for a third party in 2024, but when you drill down further, there doesn’t seem to be enough defectors to make that a viable option,” Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth Polling Institute, said.
As the fight between bosses and workers over returning to the office keeps entering new rounds, new data show how much in-office attendance ramped up last year — especially for white-collar workers with high levels of education.
But even still, the return to the office has been two different stories for men and women. From 2021 to 2022, men spent more time at the workplace while women spent the same amount of time working from home year-over-year.
Last year, 34% of workers said they worked from home at least part of the time, according to the annual Bureau of Labor Statistics survey of how Americans spend their time.
That was down from the 38% of employed people who said the same in 2021 — and a deeper look into Thursday’s data reveals an even more pronounced, but uneven, reduction in the number of people who are working remotely.
More than one quarter of men in 2022 said they spend at least some of their working time at home, while 41% of women said they had work-from-home in their job schedule. One year earlier, it was a different story for men, but not for women. Over one-third of men, 35%, said working from home was part of their routine while 42% of women said the same.
It may be a reminder of the juggle that women face between their personal and professional lives. For example, in homes with children under age 6, women spent just over an hour each day caring for their children while men in those households spent half that amount. That breakdown was unchanged between 2022 and 2021, the data showed.
Meanwhile, the return-to-office trend accelerated for more educated workers from 2021 to 2022. In 2021, 60% of people with at least a bachelor’s degree said they did some of their work from home. In 2022, the share fell to 54% doing some work from home.
When the pandemic shut down offices and other workplaces, people with higher levels of education often had greater chances of being able to stay home while they worked.
That dynamic is still at play now, although the differences between groups are becoming less stark. Last year and in 2021, the share of people with no college degree who said they worked from home at least some of the time stayed below 20%.
It’s unclear what was driving highly-educated workers to spend more time in the office between 2021 and 2022, said Stephan Meier, a Columbia Business School professor who chairs the school’s management division. Some of it could be attributed to return-to-office policies, but it might also be due to growing comfort with vaccination and public-health measures as the pandemic continued, he said.
“What I would care about is who goes to the office and who doesn’t want to go to the office,” he said.
The overall change in numbers is not “a major shift,” said Meier, who teaches students and executives about the future of work. “What those numbers show to me is that the war on remote work is not over.”
The year-over-year decline fits with the trends that Nicholas Bloom, a professor of economics at Stanford University, is seeing in his own research analyzing where people say they are working these days. Even if there’s less remote work happening, Bloom said, his research shows the “rate of decline is itself declining.”
Bloom thinks the rate of remote work may bottom out next year. “I predict longer-run, from 2025 onwards, this will start to rise again as remote-work technology — hardware, software, [virtual reality, augmented reality], etc. — gets better and continues the long-run rise of [working from home].”
Between May and December 2020, Bureau of Labor Statistics research showed, 42% of employed people said they spent least some of their time working from home as COVID-19 upended daily life.
As a whole, the BLS survey on how Americans use their time paints a picture of a slow return to the office — but not necessarily a return to the way things were before COVID-19.
Before the pandemic, 24% of workers said they spent some of their time working from home, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
This year, office foot traffic has edged higher, but the rise is incremental and uneven. Earlier in June, average weekly office occupancy surpassed 50% for the first time in three months, according to an ongoing gauge from Kastle Systems, a security-technology provider.
One week later, the company’s barometer of average occupancy across 10 major cities dropped back below 50%. In the data from early June, Tuesdays tended to be the busiest days for offices, and Fridays were the slowest.
Meier said he wouldn’t be surprised if next year’s time-use survey reveals even less time spent working from home. But this is a transitional moment in which businesses are figuring out the particular version of hybrid work duties and office setups that work for them, he said.
“Personally, I do think there is something magical about being in person,” Meier said. “Does it need to be five days a week? Absolutely not.”
Americans’ discontent with the size of their federal income-tax bill is at a two-decade high, according to a new poll — even though Congress hasn’t passed any direct income-tax increases in recent years.
One month after the 2023 tax season’s conclusion, 51% of respondents in a newly released Gallup poll said their income taxes were not fair. That’s up from 44% last year and marks a record high since 1997, when Gallup’s pollsters started asking how people felt about their income-tax bills.
Meanwhile, 46% of people said they were paying a fair amount of income tax. That basically matched the dim mood over two decades ago, in in 1999, when 45% said that they were paying a fair amount.
Six in 10 poll participants said their federal income taxes were “too high,” pollsters said. 2001 was the last time that share of people felt the same way, Gallup said.
Gallup pollsters spoke with more than 1,000 people, doing their field work through most of April.
The poll comes during a fierce debate about whether the wealthiest taxpayers, as well as corporations, are paying enough in taxes. The Biden administration has been pressing for higher tax rates on high earners. A Democratic-controlled Congress last year passed a law with an $80 billion funding infusion for the IRS over a 10-year span in part to launch more audits of rich individuals and corporations.
Many Americans walked away from tax season with income-tax refunds that were smaller than a year ago. That’s due, at least in part, to the end of pandemic-era boosts to certain credits, tax experts have previously told MarketWatch.
Both backdrops might be at play in the public mood on taxes, observers noted, and political affiliation could have something to do with these changes, Gallup said. Only one-third of Republicans said their income taxes this year were fair, for example — that’s down from 63% in 2020, the last full year of the Trump administration.
The change in Republican sentiment could be why there was a heavy swing since 2020, when 59% said their taxes represented a fair number. In 2020, 56% of political independents said their taxes were fair, and that percentage fell to 45% a few years later. Among Democrats, meanwhile, the 63% saying their taxes were fair was virtually unchanged over that span.
Republicans “are certainly more frustrated now with Biden in office,” said Jeff Jones, senior editor of the Gallup poll. “But they are even more frustrated than they were when Obama was in office.”
Democrat Joe Biden campaigned in 2020 on pledges to raise taxes on corporations and households earning over $400,000 a year and not on those making less than that. So far, the president has not been able to turn proposals like a billionaire’s minimum tax or a higher top tax rate into law.
The real tax-policy fight brewing in the background is the 2025 expiration of Trump-era tax cuts, experts have said.
In the sweeping 2017 tax-code overhaul, Congress reduced five of seven income-tax brackets and boosted commonly used features of the tax code, including payouts for the child tax credit and the standard deduction. But some of those tax cuts were scheduled to sunset, while others were permanent.
Another potential shaping the mood on taxes is the broader economy and recent tax season, Jones said. One possibility, he noted, is that some people are getting pushed to higher tax brackets with pay raises meant to keep up with inflation. (Tax brackets are adjusted annually to account for inflation.)
While inflation is still pinching wallets, tax refunds are lower than they were a year ago.
Refunds averaged just over $2,800, and that’s down more than 7% from a year earlier, according to IRS data through May 12.
For his part, Lawrence Zelenak, who teaches tax law at Duke University, thinks the current darkening public mood “is largely a response to the disappearance of all the temporary pandemic-related tax relief,” he said.
In 2020 an estimated 60% of households ended up with no federal income-tax liability because they were making less and bringing in more through direct cash assistance from the federal government, according to Tax Policy Center estimates.
By 2022, an estimated 40% of households wouldn’t face any federal income tax, according to the nonpartisan think tank — which is more in line with levels seen before the pandemic.
Refunds during 2022 got a kick from extragenerous payouts including the child tax credit, the child- and dependent-care credit and the earned-income tax credit.
Most taxpayers also got a chance to shave their tax bill with a temporary change that let them take the standard deduction and also write off a portion of their charitable donations. But the credits reverted to their prepandemic size, and the deduction on cash donations subsequently went away.
“With the end of the pandemic tax relief, many people have seen their income-tax liabilities go up, and it’s not surprising they see that as unfair,” Zelenak said. “So it may be the change more than the absolute level of tax.”
The pandemic opened the floodgates to telehealth. Now, many patients and doctors are curbing their enthusiasm for virtual care.
Four out of five primary-care doctors who had video visits with patients during the pandemic would prefer to provide just a small portion of care or no care at all via telemedicine in the future, according to a survey designed and analyzed by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and published last month in Health Affairs, a peer-reviewed journal. And 60% of the doctors surveyed…
The U.S. manufacturing sector contracted in December at the steepest pace since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic as demand remained subdued and production weakened, data from a purchasing managers survey showed Tuesday.
The S&P Global U.S. manufacturing PMI decreased to 46.2 in December from 47.7 in November, posting the lowest reading since the initial Covid-19 lockdown period in May 2020 and unchanged from the preliminary reading.
The index suggests factory activity shrank in December for a second consecutive month as any reading below 50.0 indicates contraction.
The contraction in activity was led by faster downturns in output and new orders, and companies attributed weak client demand to increasing economic uncertainty and high inflation, the report said.
“The manufacturing sector posted a weak performance as 2022 was brought to a close,” said Sian Jones, senior economist at S&P Global.
Concerns about the economic outlook turned firms more cautious in terms of hiring, and December saw job creation increasing only slightly and largely linked to skilled hires, she said.
Weaker activity at year-end led to easing price pressures, according to the survey. Both input and output inflation moderated at factory gates, and supply-chain bottlenecks were less apparent than earlier in the year.
“Slower upticks in inflation signal the impact of Federal Reserve policy on prices, but growing uncertainty and tumbling demand suggest challenges for manufacturers will roll over into the new year,” Ms. Jones said.
Write to Xavier Fontdegloria at xavier.fontdegloria@wsj.com
Restaurants are set to become the biggest winners of a holiday season that could turn out to be the most normalized since the onset of the pandemic.
That’s according to a new Mastercard SpendingPulse survey released on Monday, which showed spending at dining establishments surging 15.1% over the 2021 holiday period. Total retail expenditures for the Nov. 1–to–Dec. 24 period in 2022 rose 7.6%, with in-store spending up 6.8% and online spending up 10.6%.
Restaurant spending beat out several other categories, such as apparel, where spending was up 4.4% from 2021, and electronics and jewelry, where a respective 5.3% and 5.4% less were spent, and department stores, which saw spending rise 1%.
“This holiday retail season looked different than years past,” said Steve Sadove, senior adviser for Mastercard and former CEO and chairman of Saks Inc. “Retailers discounted heavily but consumers diversified their holiday spending to accommodate rising prices and an appetite for experiences and festive gatherings postpandemic.”
Government data for November showed consumer spending was up just 0.1%, reflecting cautiousness among households and price cutting by retailers to lure those hesitant shoppers in. But the data also showed more spending on holiday recreation and travel, expected to go in the books as a busy season even if deadly winter storm may have wreaked havoc on the plans of many Americans over the Christmas weekend.
Of course, even as some merrymakers felt confident enough to make more plans and see more friends and family this year, the virus of course continues to cause illness and death. The U.S. reported 70,000 newly diagnosed cases for the first time since September on Thursday, while 422 people died of COVID-19 on Wednesday.
The Mastercard SpendingPulse data measure in-store and online retail sales for all payment forms and are not inflation-adjusted.
As for the companies that might be benefiting from that increased traffic, the year-end cheer probably won’t be enough to make a dent in what has been a difficult year with would-be consumers juggling worries over inflation, rising interest rates and a war in Europe.
The Invesco Dynamic Leisure & Entertainment exchange-traded fund PEJ, +0.79%,
whose holdings include Chipotle Mexican Grill CMG, +0.32%,
McDonald’s MCD, +0.68%
and First Watch Restaurant Group FWRG, +0.42%,
has gained 6.5% to date in the fourth quarter and is down 20% for the year as of Thursday. The broad benchmark S&P 500 SPX, +0.59%
is poised for a nearly 20% loss in 2022.
The numbers: Consumer sentiment improved slightly in October to 59.9, though Americans perceptions of the economy remained historically negative as a weak stock market and ongoing inflation weighed on their finances.
The University of Michigan’s gauge of consumer attitudes added 1.3 index points from 58.6 in September, and was up slightly from an initial reading of 59.8 earlier in the month.
Economists were expecting at a reading of 59.8, according to a Wall Street Journal poll.
Big picture: While the rate of inflation is no longer worsening, steady price increases for key items like food and shelter continue to weigh on the American mood.
“With sentiment sitting only 10 index points above the all-time low reached in June, the recent news of a slowdown in consumer spending in the third quarter comes as no surprise,’ wrote the survey’s director, Joanne Hsu, in a Friday note.
“While lower-income consumers reported sizable gains in overall sentiment, consumers with considerable stock market and housing wealth exhibited notable declines in sentiment, weighed down by tumult in those markets,” she added. “Given consumers’ ongoing unease over the economy, most notably this month among higher-income consumers, any continued weakening in incomes or wealth could lead to further pullbacks in spending that would reinforce other risks of recession.”
Key details: A gauge of consumer’s views of current conditions rose in October to 65.6 from 59.7 in September, while an indicator of expectations for the next six months fell to 56.2 from 58 last month.
Market reaction: U.S. stocks were trading mixed Friday morning, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +2.59%
TK and the S&P 500 TK SPX, +2.46%.
The numbers: Consumer sentiment rose slightly to 59.8 in October even as Americans’ expectations for inflation worsened, according to a Friday survey.
The University of Michigan’s gauge of consumer attitudes added 1.2 index points from 58.6 in September.
Economists were expecting a reading of 59, according to a Wall Street Journal poll.
Consumer expectations for inflation over the next year rose to 5.1% from September’s one-year low of 4.7%, while expectations for inflation over the next 5 years ticked up to 2.9% from 2.7% last month.
Big picture: Americans are facing rising costs for key items like food and shelter as well as the impact of higher interest rates and the growing chance of a serious economic slowdown.
“Sentiment is now 9.8 points above the all-time low reached in June, but this improvement remains tentative, as the expectations index declined by 3% from last month,” wrote Joanne Hsu, director of the survey, on Friday. “Continued uncertainty over the future trajectory of prices, economies, and financial markets around the world indicate a bumpy road ahead for consumers.”
Key details: A gauge of consumer’s views of current conditions rose in October to 65.3 from 59.7 in September, while an indicator of expectations for the next six months fell to 56.2 from 58 last month.
Market reaction: U.S. stocks were trading mixed Friday morning, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -1.34%
posting gains and the S&P 500 SPX, -2.37%
index showing slight losses.
Hotter-than-expected consumer-price index readings have triggered some of the stock market’s biggest one-day selloffs in 2022, serving to focus investor attention ahead of the latest measure of retail inflation on Thursday.
The September CPI reading from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which tracks changes in the prices paid by consumers for goods and services, is expected to show an 8.1% rise from a year earlier, slowing from an 8.3% year-over-year rise seen in August, according to a survey of economists by Dow Jones.
The S&P 500 SPX, +0.23%
is down 24.7% year to date through Tuesday, according to Dow Jones Market Data. Most of the single days that are responsible for the decline occurred on or around CPI reports or Fed-related events, said Nicholas Colas,co-founder of DataTrek Research, in a note on Monday. Two of the S&P 500’s nine largest down days this year have come on days when CPI data was released, he noted.
Without those nine down days, the S&P 500 would have been up 8.6% year-to-date through the end of last week, Colas wrote.
For example, the S&P 500 recorded its biggest daily percentage fall since June 2020 last month on CPI reporting day, when the large-cap index shed 177.7 points, or 4.3%. On June 13, the S&P slid 3.9% and ended in a bear market after the May inflation report came in hotter than expected, with CPI hitting a 40-year high. Three days later, the index dropped 3.3% following what was then the Federal Reserve’s largest rate hike since 1994.
“Every time we see large selloffs it means investor confidence has collided with macro uncertainty,” warned Colas. “History shows that valuations suffer when this happens repeatedly. As we see further equity market volatility, keep your expectations for valuations modest. They will bottom when macro news is greeted with a rally that sticks, not one that fades away a few days later.”
Bloomberg reported that JPMorgan’s analysts led by Andrew Tyler expect the stock market to tumble by 5% on Thursday if the inflation gauge comes in above August’s 8.3%. If the result is in line with the consensus, the S&P 500 would fall about 2%. On the flip side, the team forecast any softening inflation below 7.9% will spark an equity rally where the index may jump at least 2%.
However, Aoifinn Devitt, chief investment officer at Moneta, said the market would take the top-line number and react to it.
“I would expect to see a similar reaction to what we saw from Friday’s jobs report, which was a positive number that translates into a negative stock-market reaction,” Devitt told MarketWatch via phone. “Stock prices have adjusted. Earnings have adjusted, so there’s already been this kind of managing of expectations (which) leads me to take up some of this and try to be on the upside for some of these stocks, just because so much of the bad news is already there.”
The September inflation report is expected to show the headline CPI continued moderating as gasoline and commodity prices fell to the February level. But future expectations may have changed after OPEC+ announced last week its decision to cut production by 2 million barrels a day, which may have “lagging effect (on inflation data)“, according to Devitt.
Meanwhile, shelter costs and medical care services, which have been at the core of inflationary pressures and are sticky, are expected to increase by 0.7% on a monthly basis. The core CPI is expected to be running at a year-over-year pace of 6.5%, up from 6.3% in August.
“The bulls are desperate for signs that inflation is set to roll back to the Fed’s target — they may be mistaken, and while headline inflation is expected to fall thanks to a decline in energy, the Fed’s focus has shifted towards core CPI,” said Chris Weston, head of research of Pepperstone, in a Tuesday note.
“This is why core CPI will unlikely roll over anytime soon and why the Fed has made it clear they will hike further and leave the fed fund rate in restrictive territory for an extended period,” he wrote.
U.S. stocks finished mostly lower on Tuesday with the Nasdaq Composite dropping 1.1%, while the S&P 500 shed 0.6% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +0.38%
edged up 0.1%. Stock-index futures pointed to a higher start Wednesday.
About half of the American public has heard little or nothing about the new COVID-19 bivalent booster, a new survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation has found. The new booster targets the omicron variants that have become dominant around the world.
One in five of those surveyed said they had heard “nothing at all” about the new boosters. Some 17% said they had heard “a lot” about the boosters, while 33% said they had heard “some” about the new shots. About a third said they’d already gotten the new booster or intended to do so as soon as possible.
“Intention is somewhat higher among older adults, one of the groups most at risk for serious complications of a coronavirus infection,” the authors wrote. “Almost half (45%) of adults ages 65 and older say they have gotten the bivalent booster or intend to get it ‘as soon as possible.’”
Source: Kaiser Family Foundation
The news will likely disappoint health experts who cheered the regulatory authorization of the new boosters in August. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted emergency-use authorization to boosters developed by Moderna MRNA, +1.36%
and by Pfizer PFE, -0.07%
and German partner BioNTech BNTX, +1.53%
for use in people aged 12 and older who have had an initial series of a COVID vaccine, including those who have already had one or more booster doses.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is recommending that all adults get one of the bivalent boosters at least two months after completing a primary series of shots. So far, some 7.6 million people in the U.S. have received it, according to the CDC.
Once again, the country’s partisan divide is evident, with 6 in 10 Democrats saying they’ve already had the shot or will get it soon, compared with 1 in 8 Republicans.
“Notably, 20% of Republicans say they will ‘definitely not’ get the new COVID-19 booster dose, while a further 38% of Republicans are unvaccinated or only partially vaccinated and therefore not eligible for the new updated COVID-19 booster dose,” the survey authors said.
In the U.S., known cases of COVID are continuing to ease and now stand at their lowest level since late April, although the true tally is likely higher given how many people are testing at home, where data are not being collected.
The daily average for new cases stood at 47,569 on Thursday, according to a New York Times tracker, down 26% from two weeks ago and now at the lowest level since late April. Cases are rising in 14 states and are sharply higher in several. Montana leads the count with a 75% rise in the last two weeks, followed by Washington with a 48% rise. Cases are up by double digits in Rhode Island, New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and New Jersey.
The daily average for hospitalizations was down 13% to 28,639, while the daily average for deaths was down 11% to 407.
The new bivalent vaccine might be the first step in developing annual COVID shots, which could follow a similar process to the one used to update flu vaccines every year. Here’s what that process looks like, and why applying it to COVID could be challenging. Illustration: Ryan Trefes
• The U.K. is the only G-7 country whose economy is smaller now than before the pandemic, the Guardian reported, citing data released Friday by the Office for National Statistics. The ONS released figures showing that rather than the economy being 0.6% larger than it was in February 2020, a combination of a deeper recession during the pandemic and a weak recovery had left it 0.2% smaller. All the other major economies in the G-7, including France and Italy, recovered strongly enough to be larger than they were in February 2020.
• Taiwan is the latest country to end mandatory COVID quarantines for people arriving from overseas, the Associated Press reported. Officials said that beginning Oct. 13, the previous weeklong quarantine requirement would be replaced with a seven-day self-monitoring period. A rapid antigen test will still be required upon arrival, but people showing no symptoms will be allowed to take public transportation.
• Germany’s health ministry is warning of a rise of COVID cases heading into the fall and is urging older people in particular to get a second booster shot, the AP reported separately. Other European countries such as France, Denmark and the Netherlands are also recording an increase in cases, German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach told reporters in Berlin. “We are clearly at the start of a winter wave,” he said.
COVID-19 lockdowns, corruption crackdowns and more have put China’s economy on a potential crash course with the U.S. and the rest of the world, the Wall Street Journal’s Dion Rabouin explains. Illustration: David Fang
• The first Chinese mRNA-based COVID vaccine has received government approval — in Indonesia, the New York Times reported. The shot, developed by Walvax Biotechnology 300142, +0.49%,
Suzhou Abogen Biosciences and the Chinese military, was cleared this week by Indonesia for emergency use. Countries all over the world, including Indonesia, have embraced mRNA vaccines, and they are considered among the most effective vaccines that the world has to offer. But more than two years into the pandemic, they are not yet available in China, which has relied on an increasingly draconian “zero-COVID” approach to keep cases and deaths from the virus low.
• Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church and a supporter of Russia’s war on Ukraine, has tested positive for COVID-19, the church’s press service said on Friday, Reuters reported. The church said Kirill, 75, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, had canceled all his planned trips and events and had “severe symptoms” requiring bed rest and isolation. It said his condition was “satisfactory.”
The U.S. leads the world with 96.3 million cases and 1,059,291 fatalities.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tracker shows that 225.3 million people living in the U.S., equal to 67.9% of the total population, are fully vaccinated, meaning they have had their primary shots. Just 109.9 million have had a booster, equal to 48.8% of the vaccinated population, and 23.9 million of those who are eligible for a second booster have had one, equal to 36.6% of those who received a first booster.
