Following the UK’s virus-led activity restriction measures, Northern Ireland joins in the stay-at-home orders to tame the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. That said, updates concerning international travel and remote learning for schools are yet in the pipeline.
Read: AUD/USD: Risk off triggers pullback to sub-0.7700 area, covid woes in focus
On the other hand, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo confirms the state’s first case of the covid strain found in Britain. Late in December 2020, California, Colorado and Florida have already registered the presence of the covid variant found in the UK.
FX implications
Although the virus variant found by the UK has comparatively lesser infection pace than the one traced from South Africa and has a wider presence off-late, both the covid strains pour cold water on the face of vaccine hopes and heavy the risks. The same pushed Wall Street benchmarks to mark losses over 1.0% each by the end of 2021’s first trading day.