On the COVID-19, the British government plans to roll out the vaccine from AstraZeneca and Oxford University. In the U.S, government officials want to cut the doses of the Moderna vaccine to speed up the immunization rate.

In physical trading, the demand for gold remained weak in major Asian markets during the holidays.

In a related development, the holdings of the largest gold-backed exchange-traded fund in the world, SPDR Gold Trust, rose by 0.08% last Thursday to 1,170.74 tons.