Hello folks! Our readers in New South Wales will be pleased to know you’ll be allowed to visit friends from Friday. Sadly, still no pub.

Coronavirus restrictions are being ever so slightly relaxed in New South Wales. As of Friday, two adults are allowed to make a visit to someone’s home “on the basis of care, on the basis of reducing social isolation and everybody’s mental health”. Basically, you’ll be allowed to visit people in small numbers.

The announcement followed the easing of some restrictions in states and territories including Queensland, Western Australia, and the Northern Territory. For example, Queensland is now allowing residents to shop for non-essential items while Western Australia is letting up to 10 people attend weddings. It seems that Australia’s success in flattening the curve is leading governments to tentatively give us more freedoms ahead of schedule.

American airline investor Indigo Partners approached three of Virgin Australia’s major shareholders about buying a controlling stake in the airline 18 months, according to the SMH. This suggests the Arizona-based fund is a serious contender to pick up the collapsed airline. Virgin’s first creditors’ meeting will be held on Thursday.

We’re seeing more and more companies rapidly try to adapt to the ‘new normal’ of food delivery. Next cab off the rank: Instagram. The Facebook-owned social media platform is now letting restaurants add buttons and stickers, which directly link to their food delivery platform of choice – including Uber Eats, Deliveroo and DoorDash.

While retail has obviously seen a massive shakeup thanks to the coronavirus and the associated lockdowns, some are finding benefits. Accent Group, the owner of companies including The Athlete’s Foot, Hype DC and Platypus, has seen a massive rise in online sales during the coronavirus pandemic. It reported, prior to the store closures, the group would make around $250,000 a day. This has jumped to between $800,000 and $1.1 million a day in the last two weeks of April. The company has turned its shops into ‘dark stores’ for fulfilling online orders to cope with the influx in demand.

The economic power of the states and territories has shuffled somewhat amid the changes imposed by the pandemic. Victoria and Tasmania have tied first in the Commonwealth Bank’s assessment of the state economies – the first time Tasmania has taken out the top rank in 11 years. New South Wales meanwhile has slid to fourth place, with the ACT’s strong labour market securing it third.

Zip co-founder Peter Gray told us he expects smaller buy now, pay later companies will bite the dust amid the coronavirus shutdowns. He said companies with little differentiation to their main competitor – big dog Afterpay – wouldn’t have the fundamentals to see out the storm. He also gave us a look at how customer spending habits have changed. “Places like Bunnings, Officeworks, and Kogan are all performing really strongly and there’s definitely been a shift to online. Before around 65% of transactions were online shopping, we’ve seen that jump north of 80%,” Gray said.

A report in the AFR this morning suggests young workers who have been laid off are taking advantage of the government’s super withdrawal scheme to completely clean out their accounts. And, realistically, why wouldn’t you? Drawdown data obtained by the AFR indicated a lower average rate than might be expected, which experts suggested could mean a number of people were taking out everything they had.

New analysis suggests the world may be underreporting the number of coronavirus deaths. That’s according to a report from the Financial Times, which compared how many more people died – from any cause – in early 2020 than in a normal year. This gives a picture of the scale of the pandemic that doesn’t rely on virus-specific data from national health authorities, which are likely undercounting. By those numbers, the coronavirus death toll could be as much as 60% higher than currently reported.

You may have seen reports all over the joint that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was believed to be dead. Not so, says South Korea. On Monday, South Korea’s unification minister dismissed the speculation, saying the country had “enough intelligence to confidently say that there are no unusual developments” in North Korea.

BONUS ITEM

Here’s one of those things you don’t really think about. In the US, beer is expiring in untapped kegs around the country and breweries are taking the hit after ramping up production for events in March that proved to be a bust because of the coronavirus outbreak.

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