Geoffrey Smith 

Investing.com – European stock futures fell early Friday as investors hoped for an end to the pandemic.

The Christmas holiday season has begun in many countries, such as Spain, Germany and Italy. Markets remain open only for half the days that the U.K. France, Poland, or the Benelux Countries are closed.

At 2:30 AM ET (7:30 GMT), the points were down 21 percent or 0.3% while French points were down 9.5% or 0.1%.

It was probably due to a handover from Asia where Covid-19’s strict zero tolerance policy has led to one of the most restrictive lockdowns the country has ever seen in the past 18 months. This occurred in Xi’an. Chinese officials are determined to see that Beijing’s Winter Olympics goes as planned in the New Year.

Countries that have accepted the inevitable spread of the Omicron strain have seen signs that it is much less deadly than the previous ones. U.K. authorities cite data showing that Omicron has a 70% lower chance of causing hospitalizations than previous illnesses and vaccinations.

Also, new data has been gathered from South Africa, the first country to have this strain idenitified. The Omicron wave may be less severe than in the past. There is already a 25% drop in the 7-day mean for new Omicron infections from Deember 16th. Three weeks ago, Omicron’s first detection was made.

In corporate news, U.K. engineering group Babcock International (LON) Earlier, it announced that the U.K. business had been sold for 50,000,000 pounds. Carmat French producer of heart implant prostheses (PA:) will soon be under spotlight after it announced that it has identified the root cause of the issue with its prostheses. It is the first step in a process to resume their use in the U.S. Carmat stock have fallen almost 40% from earlier in the year.

The euro at $1.1322 was the direction of foreign currency markets.