Coronavirus: US seven-day average of new cases drops below 100,000 — as it happened

The arthritis drug tocilizumab saves lives and accelerates recovery in patients admitted to hospital with Covid-19, a UK trial has confirmed. The Recovery trial run by Oxford university studied 4,000 people who needed oxygen therapy but were not in intensive care. Tocilizumab cut patients’ mortality risk by about 15 per cent.

The global rollout of jabs has gathered pace with more than 150m administered but the EU’s inoculation rate has stuttered, according to the Financial Times vaccine tracker. Israel and the United Arab Emirates steam ahead with their programmes while the UK and the US are frontrunners among countries with larger populations.

The governor of Ireland’s central bank, Gabriel Makhlouf, has warned insurance companies not to avoid paying out to customers for business interruption claims. Disputes have erupted around the world since the start of the pandemic over whether policies should pay out for business losses.

First-time claims for US unemployment benefits fell to 793,000 last week, as the labour market showed modest signs of improvement as it tries to rebound from the winter surge in cases.

PepsiCo expects to increase sales this year after demand for snacks and sodas from housebound consumers helped the food and drinks company produce a bigger than anticipated rise in revenues in the last three months of 2020.

More than half of the UK adult population is exhibiting financial vulnerability in the wake of Covid-19, according to data from the UK regulator. Some 27.7m UK adults were showing characteristics of vulnerability including poor health, low financial resilience or recent negative life events in October, according to the Financial Conduct Authority’s Financial Lives Survey.