Moderna Inc (MRNA.O) said late on Monday Australia’s drug regulator Therapeutic Goods Administration provisionally approved its mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, Spikevax, for use in children aged six months to five years.

ASIA-PACIFIC

Japan’s Shionogi & Co Ltd (4507.T) said on Tuesday it started a clinical trial of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate among children aged five to 11.

Mainland China reported 776 new coronavirus cases for July 18, of which 237 were symptomatic and 539 were asymptomatic, the National Health Commission said on Tuesday.

A handful of COVID-19 infections have forced the northern Chinese port city of Tianjin to shut many entertainment venues and some kindergartens and tutoring agencies, the latest big city to fight nascent clusters.

North Korea is on the path to “finally defuse” a crisis stemming from its first acknowledged outbreak of COVID-19, the state news agency said, while Asian neighbours battle a fresh wave of infections driven by Omicron subvariants.

EUROPE

The European Medicines Agency on Monday started reviewing a low-dose version of BioNTech (22UAy.DE) and Pfizer’s (PFE.N) COVID-19 vaccine for use in children between the age of six months and four years.

Use of public transport in Europe remains below pre-pandemic levels on average, ING bank said in a report on Monday, with significant differences between countries, including higher use in Germany and France due to government policies.

An estimated 3.5 million people in Britain had COVID-19 in the latest week of available data, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said on Friday, up nearly 30% on the 2.7 million recorded in the previous week.

AMERICAS

A new wave of COVID-19 cases and rising hospitalizations ahead of an October election are creating fresh headaches for Quebec’s government, which says it has no plans to reintroduce mask mandates in the Canadian province despite calls by some doctors to do so.

MEDICAL DEVELOPMENTS

Patients hospitalized with COVID-19 whose blood flows less freely than normal are at higher risk of death from complications, a U.S. study showed. The findings indicate that measurement of blood viscosity, or blood thickness, should be a regular part of these patients’ medical work-up, the researchers said.

ECONOMIC IMPACT

U.S. home builder sentiment plummeted in July to its lowest level since the early months of the pandemic, as high inflation and the steepest borrowing costs in more than a decade brought customer traffic to a near standstill.

Asian shares slipped on Tuesday, following overnight declines on Wall Street, and the dollar hovered below last week’s peak, but traders’ main focus was approaching central bank meetings and the early stages of the U.S. earnings season.