World Coronavirus Dispatch: FPIs fret over virus revival, dump ASEAN stocks

World watches UK's race between vaccine and virus, Six fully-vaccinated people die of Covid-19 in Seychelles, and other pandemic-related news across the globe

Six fully-vaccinated people die of Covid-19 in Seychelles, world's most-vaccinated nation

Seychelles, the country of a little over 98,000 people, had rushed to inoculate most of them in a bid to reopen tourism, the mainstay for its economy. However, infections began climbing in May and there are no signs of subsiding, mainly on account of the highly-contagious delta variant. Recently, the coronavirus has killed six fully-vaccinated people in the country that has inoculated a greater proportion of its people than any other nation. Of those, five had taken Covishield, a version of the AstraZeneca vaccine made in India, and one had been given Sinopharm. Read here

Let's look at the global statistics

Global infections: 182,645,084

Global deaths: 3,955,824

Vaccine doses administered: 3,091,613,411

Nations with most cases: US (33,679,482), India (30,458,251), Brazil (18,622,304), France (5,839,929), Russia (5,472,722).

Source: John Hopkins Coronavirus Research Center 

Foreign investors dump ASEAN stocks

High expectations that inoculations will reopen economies and kickstart the recovery in Southeast Asian nations are being dashed for now as countries struggle to contain the Delta variant. In line with the trend, Foreign funds are dumping Southeast Asian equities for bonds that have attractive yields. Slow vaccine rollout could mean that the selloff is likely to continue. Thailand, the Philippines and Malaysia had combined outflows of $2.7 billion from their equities in the April-June period, the biggest exodus since the quarter ended September 2020, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Read here

Johnson & Johnson vaccine protects against Delta variant, firm says

The Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine is effective against the highly contagious Delta variant, even eight months after inoculation, the company said in a release. It said that, both studies conducted for finding the efficacy of the vaccine against Delta variant, had been submitted for online publication. One of those studies has been accepted for publication in a scientific journal. Both studies are small, and the researchers said they had released the results early because of intense interest from the public. Read here

World watches UK’s race between vaccine and virus

The world is keenly watching the United Kingdom, a leader in vaccination against coronavirus, and probably not for the first time as to how the pandemic unfolds in the country in coming months. There is a great interest worldwide to learn from what happens in the UK. Most obvious is how the Delta variant spreads in the population and what impact different vaccines, and different levels of vaccination, have on cases, hospitalisations and deaths. Countries looking on will want to know who are the people needing hospital care, who needs mechanical ventilation, who dies, and in what numbers. Read here