Easing of Covid travel rules and upbeat retail data should assuage new year blues

Hello and welcome to the working week.

Brace yourselves. The coming seven days will be a struggle as the temperatures chill the bones, the post-festive period comedown continues and people grapple with new year’s resolutions that will test them to the limit.

Across the northern hemisphere, countries have been weighed down by the Omicron coronavirus variant and the Christmas holidays seem an almost distant memory. Diary items this week include inflation updates and details about how climate change has affected (negatively) the weather in the US.

Are there any reasons to be cheerful — apart, of course, from the resumption of The Week Ahead newsletter? Well, yes.

Covid-19 rules are being loosened for British travellers and Belgians needing to self-isolate. Also, pandemic data are being added to daily, increasing our knowledge of how to tackle Omicron and showing that its spread may have peaked in some places.

For English cricket…