(Bloomberg) — Citigroup Inc. will require all U.S. employees be vaccinated as a condition of their employment, fueling the battle over vaccine mandates being proposed by President Joe Biden. Florida sued the administration over rules requiring federal contractors to be inoculated, in a wave of Republican pushback against the president’s orders to fight the pandemic. Missouri joined states barring the mandates’ enforcement. 

As Australia prepares to open up after more than a year of closed borders, New Zealand’s indigenous Maori criticized their government’s plan to re-open once 90% of the population is vaccinated because inoculation rates among the indigenous group are far lower, leaving them vulnerable. China’s latest flare-up has now affected almost half its provinces.

China reported 51 local Covid-19 infections on Friday, with the virus now found in nearly half of the 31 provinces on the mainland. Heihe, a town that borders Russia in northeastern China, found nine more cases after four infections earlier this week prompted a lockdown of the city of 1.58 million people.

Most of the new infections are still in Inner Mongolia and Gansu in northwestern China, where authorities also locked down two cities. Beijing reported two more cases, as the Chinese capital tries to contain community transmission set off by residents returning from the northwestern hotspot.

South Korea will ease social distancing measures next week, as the nation tentatively tries to return to normal raise even as new Covid-19 cases have edged up to more than 2,000 a day. Private gatherings of as many as 10 people will be allowed in Greater Seoul and up to 12 elsewhere from Monday regardless of vaccination status. For “high risk” areas such as cafes and restaurants, unvaccinted groups of four can meet. 

“We must, slowly and carefully, restore our ordinary lives that have been taken away from us,” Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum said in a COVID-19 response meeting. More than 73% of the nation’s population is now fully vaccinated.

Colorado will move monoclonal antibody treatment for Covid-19 out of hospitals to a fleet of five mobile clinics to free up capacity at inundated health-care facilities, Governor Jared Polis said.

The first mobile clinics — stationed on buses — will hit the road Monday, Polis said. Colorado is also examining other alternatives, such as crisis standards of care rationing, to free up hospital capacity if needed.

Missouri joined several Republican-led states in opposing President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate, calling it unconstitutional and barring state enforcement against businesses or individuals who refuse. 

“The Biden administration’s vaccine mandates undermine and deny Missourians’ their right to make personal health decisions and to speak through their elected representatives,” Governor Mike Parson said in press statement. He issued an executive order defying the mandates and has pledged to challenge them in court. 

The Biden administration’s highly anticipated vaccine mandate rule for private-sector employers will allow businesses to force workers who refuse to get the Covid-19 shot to pay for required weekly tests and masks, two sources familiar with the matter said.

The emergency rule, which will apply to companies with at least 100 employees and is expected to be released next week, will give employers the option of paying for testing and masks for unvaccinated workers or compelling those employees to foot the bill themselves, according to the sources, who requested anonymity because they didn’t have approval to discuss the rulemaking.

About a fifth of Wyoming’s state prison population has Covid, the Casper-Star Tribune reported. Half those cases were asymptomatic but about 65% of people testing positive are fully vaccinated, the newspaper reported, citing the state Department of Corrections. Prisons cases hit a record earlier this month, with 222 people testing positive in one week. 

Wyoming is facing one of the U.S. worst outbreaks, as the delta variant continues its spread through the northwest. The state also has one lowest rates of vaccination, with 50.6% of people receiving at least one dose compared with the U.S. average of 66.5%, according to the Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker. 

Nearly a third of New York Police Department cops are still unvaccinated ahead of the city’s Friday deadline.

The Police Benevolent Association, which represents 24,000 cops in the most populous U.S. city, said 10,000 of the roughly 35,000 uniformed NYPD officers have not gotten the shot. Last week, Mayor Bill de Blasio eliminated the test-out option and said all city employees must receive their first vaccine dose by Oct. 29 or face unpaid leave. 

The union is fighting the mandate in court, but a judge has refused to block it in the meantime. It’s not clear what effect the drop in staff will have on the operations of the nation’s largest police force, but de Blasio on Thursday sought to assure New Yorkers they will be safe. 

Citigroup Inc. will require all U.S. employees be vaccinated against Covid-19 as a condition of their employment, citing new orders from President Joe Biden. 

The Wall Street giant asked staffers to submit proof of vaccination by Dec. 8, and said those who comply will receive $200 as a “thank you,” according to a memo to staff Thursday seen by Bloomberg News. Citigroup set Jan. 14 as the final cut-off for workers to upload vaccine cards, to give unvaccinated staff more time to get shots.

Citigroup told employees in August that anyone returning to offices in the New York area and other major U.S. cities would have to be vaccinated. The new policy expands that requirement to all workers in the U.S. 

The U.K. removed all seven remaining countries from its Covid-19 red list, effectively ending a mandatory hotel quarantine requirement for any arriving travelers.

The highest-risk category will remain in place to protect public health, and U.K. officials are prepared to add countries back if necessary, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said Thursday on Twitter. 

The seven countries — Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Haiti, Panama, Ecuador and Peru, will be removed on Nov. 1, Shapps said.

Florida sued the Biden administration over vaccine mandates for federal contractors, the latest in a wave of Republican pushback against the president’s orders to fight the pandemic.

In a federal lawsuit filed Thursday in Tampa, the state called vaccination requirements for government contractors a “radical intrusion on the personal autonomy of American workers.” It alleges that the administration issued the mandate based on a law that doesn’t give it such power.

Among the defendants is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA, which has a large presence in the state through the Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island. 

New Zealand’s indigenous Maori criticized Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s ambitious plan to re-open to the world once 90% of the population is vaccinated because inoculation rates among the indigenous group are much lower, leaving them vulnerable.

Maori account for 17% of New Zealand’s five million people, but only 49% are fully vaccinated, the lowest rate of any major ethnic group in the country. The Maori Party, which has two members of parliament, has called the approach reckless and  likened it to the Netflix program “Squid Game,” where poor people lose their lives in contests.

“Maori will be blamed for being slow, for being laggards, for being willful. This is not true,” said John Tamihere, chief executive of West Auckland Maori organization the Waipareira Trust. “Those communities are deeply suspicious of anything to do with the state.”

People inoculated against Covid-19 are just as likely to spread the delta variant of the virus to contacts in their household as those who haven’t had shots, according to new research.

In a yearlong study of 621 people in the U.K. with mild Covid-19, scientists found that their peak viral load was similar regardless of vaccination status, according to a paper published Thursday in The Lancet Infectious Diseases medical journal. The analysis also found that 25% of vaccinated household contacts still contracted the disease from an index case, while 38% of those who hadn’t had shots became infected.

New York City said it will temporarily outlaw days off for sanitation workers as needed ahead of anticipated employee shortages stemming from a vaccine mandate that goes into effect next week.

The sanitation department also will require Sunday shifts and move to a 12-hour schedule for workers to “create additional capacity,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a briefing Thursday.

The city last week said it would require all municipal workers to be vaccinated by 5 p.m. Friday and eliminate a test-out option. Those who aren’t vaccinated will be put on unpaid leave. So far, 67% of sanitation workers are vaccinated.

Singapore recorded a total of 3,432 new cases as of noon on Oct. 28, including nine imported infections, down from the record number of 5,324 on the day before, according to the Ministry of Health. 

Some 82 countries at risk of not being able to vaccinate at least 40% of their population by the end of this year — a goal the World Health Organization has set — only because of a lack of supply, WHO senior adviser Bruce Aylward said.

Those 82 countries only need an additional 550 million doses to hit that target. Between now and the end of 2021, about 3 billion doses of vaccine will be manufactured, he added.

“The big question to the G-20 is, are they going to say, ‘here’s where those 550 million doses are going to come from’ because those 20 countries control the global vaccine supply,” Aylward said at a briefing on Thursday. “This is a very solvable problem. The numbers are not daunting. It’s an issue of the will and the manufacturers cooperating to make sure doses go where they’re needed.”

Merck & Co. is planning to make at least 20 million treatment courses of its Covid-19 antiviral next year, on top of 10 million it expects to make by the end of 2021. The company and partner Ridgeback Biotherapeutics LP are seeking U.S. authorization of molnupiravir.

Molnupiravir is highly anticipated because the pill is relatively cheap to make and easy to transport. Merck said the treatment could bring in as much as $7 billion in global sales through 2022, including as much as $1 billion this year if it’s authorized in December.