WaybackWire

NEW DELHI, Wednesday 30 September.—Cinemas, theatres and multiplexes outside containment zones may reopen with up to half their seats filled from 15 October, under the Home Ministry’s Unlock 5 order issued on Wednesday. The guidelines run from 1 to 31 October.

For many street vendors, customers are still too scared to come out. Of 15 street vendors interviewed in New Delhi by the Thomson Reuters Foundation, only three had applied for the government’s 10,000-rupee loan.

“What’s the point of a loan if people are too scared to come out? Who will I expand my business for?” asked Santosh Kumar, a roadside cobbler.

In Imphal, the market of women vendors has not reopened, because the authorities judged its many elderly vendors at high risk. “Financially, we are shattered and that has led to a near mental breakdown with stress and tension building up every passing day,” said K Kunjalata Devi, 64, who sells shawls.

SINGAPORE, Wednesday 9 September.—Weeks after Singapore cleared its dormitories of Covid-19, the more than 300,000 migrant workers who make up much of its low-wage workforce are still largely confined to them, Bloomberg reported.

Since April they have been confined to their residences, with limited exceptions for work. Now residents may also leave for essential errands such as court appearances and doctor’s appointments, while new clusters are emerging in the dormitories.

“Some days I feel very upset and can’t take it,” said Mohd Al Imran, a Bangladeshi worker with a local engineering firm. Of his dormitory, he wrote in a text message: “They treat it like a prison.”

The daily count is now low. The Ministry of Health confirmed 23 new cases by noon on 30 September; three were in the community, all Work Pass holders, and four were imported.

On 10 September the Elections Department said no community cases among voters or election officials had been reported as a result of July’s general election, though longer than usual queues formed at 199 of 1,097 polling stations that morning.

LONDON, Tuesday 8 September.—AstraZeneca has paused vaccinations in its late-stage trials of the vaccine it is developing with the University of Oxford, widely seen as a front-runner, after one participant fell ill.

“This is a routine action which has to happen whenever there is a potentially unexplained illness in one of the trials, while it is investigated, ensuring we maintain the integrity of the trials,” said AstraZeneca spokeswoman Michele Meixell.

In Geneva on 21 September, WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said almost 200 vaccines were in clinical and pre-clinical testing. “We have no guarantee that any single vaccine now in development will work,” he said, making the case for COVAX, which aims to have 2 billion doses available by the end of 2021.