Aussie extends gains on improved risk appetite

The Australian dollar rose on Tuesday, on improved risk appetite and optimism about the promising coronavirus vaccines.

The American biotech firm Moderna announced yesterday that it is working on developing a new vaccine to preventing the new Covid-19 strain that was recently identified in South Africa, after confirming that its current vaccine is effective in preventing the virus and its new strain that was discovered in Britain.

This vaccine will be distributed alongside other promising vaccines by major drug companies, led by the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, AstraZeneca's vaccine, and the Russian vaccine "Sputnik".

Johns Hopkins University reported that the number of Covid-19 infections rose to more than 100 million cases worldwide, with a death toll of more than 1.1 million victims.

As of 16:08 GMT, AUD/USD rose 0.4% to 0.7744, after hitting a high of 0.7755 and a low of 0.7668.