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 Germans expect to spend less
One third of Germans expect to splash less cash on durable goods in
future and the same proportion sees their financial situation
worsening over the next 12 months as the coronavirus crisis bites, a
poll showed.
That is having an impact on consumption, with one quarter cancelling
vacations and 7% planning to postpone purchases of products like
clothing, cars or luxury goods, the Nuremberg-based GfK market
research group said.
Getting out from under the doona
Australia laid out a three-step road map to ease social distancing
restrictions on Friday, aiming to remove all curbs by July and get
nearly one million people back to work.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said it will be up to Australia's
various states and territories to decide when to begin implementing
each stage. Each step will likely be separated by a four-week
transition.
"You can stay under the doona forever. You'll never face any
danger," Morrison told reporters, using an Australian word for
quilt. "But we've got to get out from under the doona at some time."
Plague, weather, war and the UK economy
For anyone pondering how the coronavirus is about to deliver the
British economy's worst year in modern history, only a handful of
things have wrought such severe and sudden damage in the past:
weather, war and pestilence.
The Bank of England on Thursday put forward an "illustrative
scenario" that saw a plunge in output of 14% in 2020 - albeit
followed by a 15% bounce-back in 2021 - the worst hit to the economy
in more than 300 years.
Two very bad years stand out in Britain: 1706, a year of weak
harvests and weak trade, when the economy contracted by around 15%,
and 1709, the year of the "Great Frost", when the economy shrank by
13%.
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Lessons unlearned
As the coronavirus spread through the Diamond Princess cruise ship with
passengers dying in what became one of the first hot spots outside China,
Japanese authorities issued no warnings to the Costa Atlantica cruise ship
docked at another Japanese port.
The Costa Atlantica now hosts one of Japan's biggest clusters of the coronavirus,
with a quarter of the more than 600 people then onboard infected.
Public health experts say a lack of additional measures on cruise ships after
the Diamond Princess outbreak, toothless coronavirus legislation and a
nationwide paucity of virus testing combined to allow the outbreak on the ship
to blossom.
Suntanning with plexiglass screens
Santorini beach bar owner Charlie Chahine is not a fan of the plexiglass screens
that have been added around the lounge chairs at his establishment, but if that
is the way it has to be for tourists to return, then that is what he is doing.
Businesses on Greece's most popular holiday island are adopting all kinds of
hygiene measures, anxious for the season to start.
"We don't want this, but if this is necessary, and if this is what people's
safety depends on, such a construction or any such construction - we want to
work, we want to get going," said Chahine.
Bookings in June last year were at 70%, while now they hover at 30% at most,
vice president of the Santorini Hotel Association Andreas Patiniotis said.
(Compiled by Karishma Singh and Nick Tattersall; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)
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