Tag Archives: business news

Merck ends its vaccine development; Google offers its offices for vaccination sites

CVS completes first round of vaccination at 8,000 U.S. nursing homes

A CVS pharmacy manager prepares a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine dose at the Soldiers’ Home in Holyoke, Massachusetts, December 29, 2020.

Hoang ‘Leon’ Nguyen | The Republican | Pool | via Reuters

CVS Health completed administering the first round of Covid-19 vaccination at roughly 8,000 U.S. nursing facilities, Reuters reports.

Administration of second doses was underway and expected to be completed within four weeks.

CVS Pharmacy has administered nearly 2 million doses to date but has a capacity for 20 million to 25 million shots a month, the company told Reuters, adding that its long-term care vaccination effort remains on track.

Terri Cullen

U.S. doesn’t know how much Covid vaccine it has, says CDC chief

The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned on Sunday that the federal government doesn’t know how much coronavirus vaccine there is available to the country, adding yet another complication to the new administration’s efforts to mitigate the crisis, reports CNBC’s Amanda Macias.

“I can’t tell you how much vaccine we have, and if I can’t tell it to you then I can’t tell it to the governors and I can’t tell it to the state health officials,” CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told “Fox News Sunday.”

“If they don’t know how much vaccine they’re getting not just this week but next week and the week after they can’t plan. They can’t figure out how many sites to roll out, they can’t figure out how many vaccinators that they need, and they can’t figure out how many appointments to make for the public,” Walensky said.

President Joe Biden has set a goal for the country to administer 100 million vaccines in the president’s first 100 days.

Fred Imbert

Merck ends its Covid vaccine program, citing inferior immune responses

A Merck sign in front of the company’s building in Summit, New Jersey.

Getty Images

Merck said it will end development of its two Covid-19 vaccines, Reuters reports.

In early trials, two of the company’s vaccines generated immune responses that were inferior to those seen in people who had recovered from Covid-19, as well as those reported for other Covid-19 vaccines, according to Reuters.

The drugmaker said it plans to focus its pandemic research on treatments, with initial efficacy data on an experimental oral antiviral expected by the end of March, the wire service said.

Terri Cullen

Google to open vaccine sites at its U.S. offices

American multinational technology company Google logo seen at Googleplex, the corporate headquarters complex of Google and its parent company Alphabet Inc.

Alex Tai | SOPA Images | LightRocket | Getty Images

Google will make some of its own facilities available to open new coronavirus vaccination sites in the U.S.

The company said it has partnered with health clinic chain One Medical and public health authorities to open vaccine sites in Los Angeles; San Francisco; Kirkland, Washington; and New York City. The tech giant also plans to open vaccine centers abroad.

Google also committed $100 million in advertising grants to the CDC Foundation, World Health Organization and nonprofits, as well as a $50 million investment aimed at helping public health agencies reach underserved communities with vaccine information.

Google said it will start including Covid-19 vaccination locations in Google Search and Maps in the coming weeks, starting with Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. The information will include details like whether an appointment or referral is required and if the location has a drive-thru.

—Ryan Browne

Read CNBC’s previous live coverage here:

Read original article here

What happened when one Chinese city shut down after new Covid outbreak

Volunteers in protective suits disinfect in a residential area of Tonghua, China on January 24, 2021.

Visual China Group | Getty Images

BEIJING — One small Chinese city’s rush to control the coronavirus has left some residents without food, and some officials without jobs.

The fallout shows the extreme lengths to which local Chinese authorities will go to try to contain the coronavirus. While new cases in China so far this year remain far below that of other countries, the stringent prevention measures can quickly cause greater disruptions to work and daily life.

After a spike in Covid-19 cases in mid-January, Tonghua city, about a 10 hour drive northeast of Beijing, announced on Wednesday that no one could leave the city. Authorities added that all apartment complexes were essentially locked down.

People stuck at home and with little time to stock up on food turned to smartphone-based delivery apps, but many complained online that they couldn’t get their orders, according to posts on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter.

On Saturday, the local Communist Party discipline and inspection commission dismissed three officials for their poor performance in the oversight of the pandemic situation, state media said. Eleven other officials received severe warnings, the report said.

Then on Sunday, Tonghua city apologized to its roughly 500,000 residents for “untimely” delivery of daily necessities and general inconveniences. The city added there was a severe shortage of workers but sufficient food.

More than 11,000 people left mostly angry comments on a national state media post about the apology on Weibo. Some users described how they or neighbors were going hungry and hadn’t received their orders for three or four days.

Many user comments noted an inability to place orders on Eleme, a food delivery app backed by Alibaba. The company did not immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment.

Nasdaq-listed Dada, a grocery delivery company which saw a surge in growth during the lockdowns of the initial coronavirus outbreak last year, said neither of its two apps operate in Tonghua city.

Covid-19 first emerged in late 2019 in the Chinese city of Wuhan. Chinese authorities shut down more than half the country in February 2020, and the outbreak stalled domestically within several weeks. Meanwhile, the virus accelerated its spread overseas in a global pandemic.

In the last two months, new domestically transmitted cases have emerged in China amid cold winter weather and a continued trickle of visitors from overseas. The northeastern province of Jilin where Tonghua city is located has become the third-hardest hit region, reporting 273 new confirmed coronavirus cases for January alone.

Read original article here

Evergrande’s electric car unit gets funding to compete with Tesla, Nio in China

Evergrande Group Chairman Xu Jiayin attends Evergrande New Energy Auto Global Strategic Partners Summit on November 12, 2019 in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province of China.

VCG | Visual China Group | Getty Images

GUANGZHOU, China — Shares of the electric vehicle unit of Chinese property giant Evergrande surged as much as 67% on Monday after the company raised significant funding through a new share sale.

China Evergrande New Energy Vehicle Group surged to an all-time-high of 50 Hong Kong dollars before paring some of those gains. Shares of the company closed at 45.35 Hong Kong dollars.

The stock rocketed after the Chinese electric car company issued 952.38 million shares to six investors at a price of $27.30 Hong Kong dollars and raised net proceeds of 26 billion Hong Kong dollars ($3.35 billion).

The funding is another sign that China’s electric car market is heating up, and Evergrande could pose a challenge to Tesla as well as domestic rivals such as Nio and Xpeng Motors.

Last year, Evergrande showed off six new electric vehicles under a brand called Hengchi, with the hope of starting production this year. The company has not sold a single car yet.

In September, the company raised around 4 billion Hong Kong dollars through the sale of shares to investors including Chinese internet giant Tencent and ride-hailing service Didi.

China Evergrande New Energy Vehicle Group is also preparing for a listing on Shanghai’s Nasdaq-style Science and Technology Innovation Board, or the Star Market.

China’s electric car companies have been aggressively raising capital to ramp up production and take a lead in the competitive market.

Xpeng Motors raised $1.5 billion in an initial public offering in the U.S. last year and this month secured a credit line of 12.8 billion yuan ($1.98 billion).

This month, BYD — the Chinese electric carmaker backed by American billionaire Warren Buffett — said it raised 29.9 billion Hong Kong dollars through the issuance of new shares.

Read original article here

Government does not know how much Covid vaccine the U.S. has

WASHINGTON – The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned Sunday that the federal government does not know how much coronavirus vaccine the nation has, a complication that adds to the already herculean task before the Biden administration.

“I can’t tell you how much vaccine we have, and if I can’t tell it to you then I can’t tell it to the governors and I can’t tell it to the state health officials,” CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told “Fox News Sunday.”

“If they don’t know how much vaccine they’re getting not just this week but next week and the week after they can’t plan. They can’t figure out how many sites to roll out, they can’t figure out how many vaccinators that they need, and they can’t figure out how many appointments to make for the public,” Walensky said.

In a dig at the Trump administration, Walensky said the lack of knowledge of vaccine supply is indicative of “the challenges we’ve been left with.”

Read more: Biden surgeon general pick says U.S. racing to adapt against new Covid strains

President Joe Biden has set a goal to administer 100 million Covid-19 vaccine shots within his first 100 days. The Biden administration has been repeatedly pressed on whether that target is ambitious enough given the severity of the pandemic.

Walensky acknowledged that the U.S. must vaccinate people faster, but she said the nation faces supply constraints. Production will increase after the first 100 days, Walensky said, and the expected introduction of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine will also help ease supply problems.

“We are really hoping that we’ll have more vaccines and that will increase the pace at which we can do the vaccinations,” Walensky said.

White House chief of staff Ron Klain said the nation also faces distribution problems because the Trump administration, which started the program, did not have a clear plan.

“The process of distributing the vaccine, particularly outside of nursing homes and hospitals, out into the community as a whole did not really exist when we came into the White House,” Klain told MSNBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday.

“So, the process of getting that vaccine into arms, that’s the hard process, that’s where we are behind as a country and that’s where we are focused in the Biden administration on getting that ramped up,” he added.

White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci, who served in the Trump administration, said Sunday the Biden target of 100 million doses in 100 days is not a final number.

“It is really a floor and not a ceiling,” Fauci told CBS’ “Face The Nation”. “It is going to be a challenge. I think it was a reasonable goal that was set. We always want to do better than the goal that you’ve set.”

Those 100 million injections will cover about 67 million people, Fauci said, some of whom will have received the required two doses while others will have received only one dose. So far, the U.S. has administered nearly 22 million doses, far below federal targets.

The need to vaccinate as many people as possible has taken on new urgency as the coronavirus mutates. Fauci said the Covid-19 vaccines currently on the market may not be as effective against new strains.

Biden’s surgeon general pick stressed on Sunday the U.S. is in a race to adapt against the new variants.

“The virus is basically telling us that it’s going to continue to change and we’ve got to be ready for it,” Dr. Vivek Murthy said during an interview with ABC News’ “This Week.”

“So the bottom line is, we’re in a race against these variants, the virus is going to change and it’s up to us to adapt and to make sure that we’re staying ahead,” Murthy said.

When asked if the U.S. is in a race against time before a Covid variant emerges that renders the vaccines ineffective, Walensky said Americans need to get inoculated when they have the opportunity and adhere to mitigation strategies to deny the virus opportunity to circulate.

“I would say we’ve been in a race all along,” Walensky said. “The more virus that is out there, the more virus that is replicating, the more likely that we are going to have mutations and variants.”

Read original article here

Schumer says House will deliver Trump impeachment article to Senate on Monday

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) displays a signed an article of impeachment against President Donald Trump at the U.S. Capitol on January 13, 2021 in Washington, DC.

Stefani Reynolds | Getty Images

The House will deliver the impeachment article against former President Donald Trump to the Senate on Monday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Friday.

The action will start the process for the second trial the ex-president has faced for charges of high crimes and misdemeanors. While Trump has already left the White House, the Senate can vote to bar him from holding office again if it chooses to convict him.

The House earlier this month charged Trump with inciting an insurrection against the government by inflaming a mob that overran the Capitol on Jan. 6. The riot, which disrupted Congress’ count of President Joe Biden’s electoral win, left five dead, including a Capitol police officer.

The Senate will need 67 votes to convict Trump. If all 50 Democrats support conviction, they will need 17 Republicans to join them.

Speaking after Schumer, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., expressed concerns that Trump would not have enough time to mount a defense. He had asked the House to send the article on Thursday to ensure “a full and fair process.”

Trump has hired South Carolina attorney Butch Bowers to defend him during the trial. The nine impeachment managers who will make the House’s case are Democratic Reps. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, Diana DeGette of Colorado, David Cicilline of Rhode Island, Joaquin Castro of Texas, Eric Swalwell and Ted Lieu of California, Stacey Plaskett, the delegate for the U.S. Virgin Islands, Madeleine Dean of Pennsylvania and Joe Neguse of Colorado.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who would not say Thursday when her chamber would transmit the article to the Senate, argued the managers would not need to prepare as much evidence for the second trial as they did for the first last year.

“This year, the whole world bore witness to the president’s incitement, to the execution of his call to action, and the violence that was used,” the California Democrat told reporters Thursday.

Schumer said he has spoken to McConnell about “the timing and duration of the trial,” but did not give any details about how long it will last. The Democratic leader aims to balance impeachment with confirmation of Biden’s Cabinet members and passage of a coronavirus relief bill.

“The Senate must and will do all three,” he said Friday.

The first trial Trump faced last year for charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress lasted about three weeks. The Republican-held Senate acquitted him.

Schumer downplayed GOP concerns that Democrats would rush through the trial after a rushed process in the House, which impeached Trump only a week after the insurrection.

“It will be a full trial. It will be a fair trial,” he said.

McConnell has not indicated whether he will vote to convict Trump. On Tuesday, he said the rioters “were provoked by the president and other powerful people.”

Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania both called on Trump to resign while he still held office. Neither has said how they plan to vote on conviction.

Murkowski said in a statement earlier this month that the House responded to the Capitol attack “swiftly, and I believe, appropriately, with impeachment.”

Subscribe to CNBC on YouTube.

Read original article here

Tesla CEO donates to carbon capture technology prize

GRUENHEIDE, GERMANY – SEPTEMBER 03: Tesla head Elon Musk talks to the press as he arrives to to have a look at the construction site of the new Tesla Gigafactory near Berlin on September 03, 2020 near Gruenheide, Germany. Musk is currently in Germany where he met with vaccine maker CureVac on Tuesday, with which Tesla has a cooperation to build devices for producing RNA vaccines, as well as German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier yesterday.

Maja Hitij | Getty Images

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has announced that he is donating $100 million towards a prize for the best technology that can capture carbon dioxide.

Musk, who overtook Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to become the world’s richest person this month, made the announcement on Twitter late Thursday, saying he would share more details next week.

“Am donating $100M towards a prize for best carbon capture technology,” Musk tweeted to his 42.7 million followers.

Carbon capture is the process of trapping waste carbon dioxide either directly from the air, or just before it gets emitted from factories and power plants.

With the latter, the first step is often to install solvent filters on factory chimneys, which catch the carbon emissions before they’re released into the Earth’s atmosphere. Once captured, carbon dioxide can then be shipped or piped somewhere it can’t escape from (often deep underground) to prevent it contributing to global warming.

Most of the captured carbon dioxide remains underground, but some of it can also used to make plastics and fizzy drinks.

Why is carbon capture needed?

Global carbon dioxide emissions have soared over the last 100 years, leading to unprecedented global warming and climate change.

There are currently around 20 carbon capture, usage and storage (CCUS) projects operating commercially worldwide, according to the International Energy Agency.

The agency said that 30 new projects had been agreed since 2017, but stressed that many more were needed to prevent carbon emissions from raising the temperature on Earth by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

The IEA believes CCUS projects could reduce carbon emissions by almost a fifth, while also slashing the cost of tackling the climate crisis by 70%. Adapting heavy industry to run on clean energy is relatively difficult and expensive compared to installing carbon capture systems.

U.S. President Joe Biden has pledged to put more of a focus on cutting emissions than his predecessor and said he wants the U.S. to be carbon neutral by 2050.

‘Plant more trees’

The prize that Musk has said he will contribute to is connected to the Xprize Foundation, TechCrunch reported, citing an anonymous source. The foundation is a nonprofit that puts on competitions to promote and support innovation.

According to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index, Musk has a total net worth of $201 billion, while Bezos has $193 billion. Microsoft founder Bill Gates is the next wealthiest person, with a total net worth of $134 billion.

Musk recently asked his Twitter followers what he should do with his money.

“Critical feedback is always super appreciated, as well as ways to donate money that really make a difference (way harder than it seems),” he tweeted Jan. 8.

Read original article here

Eurozone Flash PMIs January 2020: Business activity shrinks again

A man over 75 years receives a coronavirus (Covid-19) vaccine shot in Strasbourg, France.

Anadolu Agency | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

LONDON — Business activity in the euro zone fell to a two-month low in January, preliminary data showed on Friday, on the back of stricter coronavirus-related lockdowns.

The region is grappling with growing Covid-19 infection rates and tighter restrictions as new strains of the virus spread, causing further economic pain.

Markit’s flash composite PMI for the euro zone, which looks at activity across both manufacturing and services, dropped to 47.5 January, versus 49.1 in December. A reading below 50 represents a contraction in activity.

Chris Williamson, chief business economist at IHS Markit, said a double-dip recession for the euro zone was looking “increasingly inevitable.”

“Tighter Covid-19 restrictions took a further toll on businesses in January,” he said in a statement.

“Output fell at an increased rate, led by worsening conditions in the service sector and a weakening of manufacturing growth to the lowest seen so far in the sector’s seven-month recovery.”

European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde acknowledged on Thursday that the pandemic still posed “serious risks” to the euro zone economy.

In addition to the new Covid variants, there are also concerns over a slow vaccination roll-out across the European Union.

“In this environment ample monetary stimulus remains essential,” Lagarde said. The ECB decided at a meeting on Thursday to keep interest rates and its wider stimulus programs unchanged for now, having boosted its support in December.

The ECB expects the euro zone’s GDP (gross domestic product) to expand by 3.9% in 2021, and 2.1% in 2022. This is after a contraction of 7.3% last year. However, these forecasts are dependent on the evolution of the pandemic.

France hires more

Earlier, France’s business activity data also came in at a two-month low, reflecting the imposition of stricter curfews across the country. The country’s composite PMI for January was 47, making a contraction.

However, French businesses hired more employees in January — the first increase in job figures in almost a year.

“The fact that firms have returned to recruitment activity points to some confidence in an economic recovery in the second half of this year,” Eliot Kerr, economist at IHS Markit said, in a statement.

In Germany, business activity managed to grow slightly in January, with the flash composite output index coming in at 50.8. However, the reading represented a seven-month low for Europe’s economic engine.

Phil Smith, associate director at IHS Markit, highlighted a slower momentum in manufacturing activity in the country, and a continued hit to the services sector during January.

“All in all, the German economy has made a slow start to the year, and the extension of the current containment measures until at least mid-February means this looks like being the picture for several more weeks to come,” he said.

The German government decided some days ago to extend the national lockdown until Feb. 14.

Read original article here

Former Huawei unit’s first smartphone since being sold

GUANGZHOU, China — Honor, the Chinese smartphone brand formerly owned by Huawei, has launched its first device since being sold off. 

Huawei sold Honor, its budget smartphone brand, in November to a consortium of buyers in China, as a way to help the unit survive in the face of U.S. sanctions.

In 2019, Huawei was put on a U.S. export blacklist called the Entity List which restricted American firms from selling certain components to the Chinese technology giant. This included both semiconductors and software.

Google was forced to cut ties to Huawei, meaning the U.S. search giant’s Android mobile operating system could not be installed on the Chinese firm’s devices. That hurt Huawei’s sales badly in international markets. 

Last year, Huawei sold Honor to Shenzhen Zhixin New Information Technology, a consortium of 30 agents and dealers. At the time, Huawei said that the sale was made so Honor could “make it through this difficult time.”

“Splitting off the Honor team should help it get the components that it needs, although that could still take many months and is never guaranteed, especially given the geopolitical tension in the air,” Bryan Ma, vice president of devices research at IDC said. 

“Nonetheless, the move helps to keep the team engaged with suppliers in the hopes that it can continue with its product development.”

The majority of Honor’s sales come from China. In 2019, Honor shipped 64 million smartphones globally, according to IDC. In the first nine months of 2020, the company has shipped 42 million units. Complete data for 2020 is not yet available.

The V40 

Honor’s new smartphone is called the V40. It boasts a 6.72-inch display and comes in three colors: silver, black and rose gold.

Honor talked up the phone’s graphics processing and touchscreen capabilities, features that enhance gaming on the device, a popular use of smartphones in China.

It has the ability to connect to next-generation 5G mobile networks, a key requirement in China which is the world’s largest market for 5G phones. 

The V40 uses a key 5G chip from Taiwan’s MediaTek, a company which became China’s number one smartphone semiconductor supplier in 2020. 

Honor’s V40 starts at 3,599 yuan ($556) for the 128GB storage option and 3,999 yuan for the 256GB version. It will be released in China but it is unclear if it will be launched internationally. 

“The message they (Honor) want to convey is they inherited a lot from Huawei, no matter if it’s the chipset capability, photography, and R&D (research and development) all the things they got from Huawei devices, they have it all,” Nicole Peng, a mobile analyst at Canalys said. 

“They don’t want to show they are missing the R&D capability that Huawei has. They want to show they still have it and they have a big team in R&D and that is something people were asking when they separated, whether they can maintain that kind of innovation.” 

Read original article here

Thumb injury forces video gamer to retire

Attendees play the Call of Duty: Black Ops III game by Activision Blizzard during the E3 Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, California.

Patrick T. Fallon | Bloomberg | Getty Images

A 25-year-old professional video gamer has been forced to retire due to a thumb injury.

Thomas “ZooMaa” Paparatto announced he’s “taking a step back from competitive Call of Duty” on Twitter.

“This is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to write, I am stepping down and will no longer compete in competitive Call of Duty for the foreseeable future,” he said in a separate blog post.

“It breaks my heart to step away from a game I put my heart and soul into every single day for eight years,” he added. “Tearing up just writing this, but I don’t know what else to do at this point.”

Paparatto plays for an esports team called New York Subliners and he has earned $387,019 from 87 tournaments, according to Esports Earnings. His largest prize from a single tournament came in April 2018, when he won $53,125 in a Call of Duty: Cold War II competition.

The U.S. gamer struggled with weakness in his thumb and his wrist a few years ago while playing a game called FaZe Clan. He had to have surgery as a result.

“Going through that process of getting healthy again was one of the hardest things I ever had to do both physically and mentally, which led to a lot of stress and anxiety,” he said. “Unfortunately, the injury has returned making it really hard for me to compete at the highest level against some of the best players in the world.”

He said that playing through the pain in his hand “just isn’t possible anymore” and that he doesn’t enjoy competing when he can’t be the “ZooMaa everyone knows and loves.”

Fans and fellow gamers shared their support following his announcement. 

Many professional gamers train or compete for over 10 hours a day, and some of them rake in over a $1 million a year in the process. However, the physical and mental strain on the body can sometimes result in health problems.  

Sam Matthews, founder and chief executive of Fnatic, told CNBC in December: “These people are fit and healthy largely, but there’s always an anomaly to the rule.”



Read original article here