Latest news on coronavirus cases and vaccines

President Joe Biden is poised to meet his goal of delivering 100 million Covid-19 vaccine shots in his first 100 days in office as early as Thursday, a senior administration official told NBC News.

The president reached the goal ahead of schedule, the official said. Biden was sworn in as the 46th president of the United States on Jan. 20, about 57 days ago.

Biden is scheduled to make an announcement on the “state of vaccinations” later Thursday where he may discuss the milestone.

Health experts say the president’s goal of 100 million shots in 100 days was an attainable benchmark. After a slower-than-expected rollout under former President Donald Trump, the pace of vaccinations in the U.S. has rapidly increased, averaging about 2 million to 3 million shots per day.

—Berkeley Lovelace Jr.

Delta Air Lines CEO says demand is on the rise and that the carrier aims to turn a profit in the third quarter of this year.

But the business faces several challenges.

“Fuel prices are up about 30% since the start of the year and we are incurring necessary costs to build back our business,” Ed Bastian said in a staff memo. “In addition, the recovery to date has been led by leisure travelers. We know that our core business customers will be slower to return, and international travel will likely be the last segment to fully recover.”

Bastian and other airline chiefs this week said bookings have climbed more in March after a difficult January and February and that demand for summer travel is strengthening sending stock prices to pre-pandemic highs.

—Leslie Josephs

In the U.S., 22% of the population has received at least one dose of the Covid vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Come May, all adults will be eligible to receive the vaccine.

There are three vaccines for Covid approved by the Food and Drug Administration for emergency use, from drugmakers Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson. Experts say you should take the vaccine that you can get.

The process of finding appointments to receive Covid vaccines varies depending upon your state. The CDC’s VaccineFinder tool is a good starting point to find providers and pharmacies near you that have the vaccines. President Joe Biden announced that there will be a federally-run vaccine appointment website ready to use by May.

Common side effects to the vaccines include pain near where the vaccine was injected, redness and soreness, as well as fatigue, headache, chills, fever and nausea, which can last up to a few days.

It takes a few weeks for the body to mount an immune response after getting the vaccine. A person is considered “fully vaccinated” for Covid two weeks after receiving the second dose of a two-dose vaccine (such as those developed by Moderna and Pfizer) or two weeks after getting the single-dose J&J vaccine, according to the CDC.

The CDC recently said people who are fully vaccinated can visit with other people who are also fully vaccinated, as well as some unvaccinated people indoors without wearing masks or social distancing, according to the guidelines.

—Cory Stieg

Lorcan Phelan, owner of the James Joyce Pub and the Irish Times Pub in Long Island, New York, joins CNBC’s “Worldwide Exchange” to discuss what the past year has been like for bars and restaurants, a year after the first shutdowns happened in the state.

Lyft said Thursday it’s continuing to see recovery in its rideshare business and expects that to continue through the rest of the year.

The company announced that last week was its best week, in terms of rider volume, since lockdowns began last March. It also posted positive year-over-year growth in daily rideshare ride volume for the first time in a year on Wednesday.

Lyft now expects to post positive weekly rideshare growth on a year-over-year basis and every subsequent week through the end of the year (barring a significant worsening of coronavirus conditions). Additionally, starting next week, the company said it expects its rideshare ride volume to grow in excess of 100% year-over-year as it begins “to lap the significant impact of Covid-19 on our business a year ago.”

Lyft’s update comes about two weeks after it reported in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that improving trends will allow it to narrow losses in the current quarter by more than expected. The company said it expects to manage its adjusted EBITDA loss in the first quarter to $135 million, from the $145 million to $150 million it previously forecast.

—Jessica Bursztynsky

First-time claims for unemployment benefits totaled 770,000 for the week ended March 13, compared with the 700,000 jobless claims expected by economists surveyed by Dow Jones, reports CNBC’s Jeff Cox.

The unexpected jump comes as the labor market tries to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic, which saw large swaths of the economy shut down and more than 22 million Americans join the unemployment line a year ago.

—Melodie Warner 

Dr. Margaret Harris, a spokesperson for the World Health Organization, says the public health body always knew vaccine distribution would be a “major problem.”

The U.K. government’s so-far successful immunization program is facing questions over whether it’s about to face a shortage in the supply of coronavirus vaccines.

“We have less supply than we might have hoped for the coming weeks but we expect it to increase again later,” Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick told the BBC on Thursday.

“The vaccine rollout will be slightly slower than we might have hoped but not slower than the target,” he said. “We have every reason to believe that supply will increase in the months of May, June and July.”

A flurry of reports in the British media has said the U.K.’s rollout could hit some turbulence. It’s been widely reported that delivery of millions of doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca shot being produced by the Serum Institute of India could be held up by four weeks.

Britain is also facing possible disruptions to supply if the EU goes through with a proposal to withhold exports of vaccines made in the bloc while its own program lags. Supplies of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, that the U.K. is also using in its vaccination program, come from Belgium.

—Holly Ellyatt