Dr. Peter Hotez, co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital, says that the U.S. is “in for a tough ride” as new Covid variants spread across the country. 
“Because they’re more transmissible, it means more Americans will become infected, so even though we’ve had a slight decrease in the number of new cases … the expectation now, it’s going to go back up because of these new variants,” said Hotez in a Thursday evening interview on “The News with Shepard Smith.” “More people are going to get infected, start overwhelming hospital systems again, and possibly the death rate will start to go up, both from a combination of more new cases in general and also they may have slightly higher mortality rates just from the variant just by the nature of the variant.”

Health officials in South Carolina confirmed two cases of the dangerous, highly transmissible South African strain of Covid. The officials said the cases do not appear to be connected and are not linked to any recent travel. Dr. Zeke Emanuel, a member of President Joe Biden’s Covid Advisory Board, said that’s why the South African strain is so concerning. 
“This is worrisome because these two individuals have no evidence of travel, and so it does mean that the variant from South Africa, which is more worrisome than even the British variant, is about and in the community,” said Emanuel.  
Hotez told host Shep Smith that the new strains are even more problematic because “we haven’t been looking.” 
“We’ve been so profoundly underperforming in genomic sequencing, which is how we pick up these U.K, South African, Brazilian variants, so we know they’re in South Carolina, but they could be elsewhere,” said the dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that the U.K. variant, also known as B117, could be dominant in the U.S. by the spring. Hotez said that the key to protecting the population was vaccinating people at a quicker rate. 
“The bottom line is we’re going to have to find a way to vaccinate the American people faster than the current projections,” said Hotez. “One, in order to reduce hospitalization and death, but also to get ahead of these variants. If we can vaccinate three-quarters of the American population, we could potentially interrupt transmission and prevent some of these new variants from becoming dominant.” More

A health care worker holds an injection syringe of the phase 3 vaccine trial, developed against the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic by the U.S. Pfizer and German BioNTech company, at the Ankara University Ibni Sina Hospital in Ankara, Turkey on October 27, 2020.
Dogukan Keskinkilic | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

The announcement earlier this week that an effective coronavirus vaccine has been developed was given a rapturous welcome by global markets, but UBS Chairman Axel Weber cautioned that even with a vaccine, it will take time for the global economy to get back to pre-crisis levels.
“Going forward, I’m not pessimistic. I mean, eventually we’ll get through this. But we should not be under the illusion that it will happen fast, it will take some time,” Weber told CNBC’s Joumanna Bercetche Tuesday.

“It would be at least a year to go back to pre-crisis levels of GDP (gross domestic product). It’ll take another year or two to be anywhere near getting unemployment and pre-crisis growth back and so it would be quite a long recovery that we’re facing,” he said as UBS holds a virtual European conference this week.

Hopes that life, and the economy, could get back to normal sooner rather than later got a huge boost on Monday when U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and German firm BioNTech announced that their coronavirus vaccine was more than 90% effective in preventing Covid-19. Pfizer’s CEO and Chairman Dr. Albert Bourla hailed the development as “a great day for science and humanity” and stock markets around the world soared.
The optimism around the announcement was tempered with a dose of reality given the likely difficult logistics of mass production and transportation of a vaccine, particularly when time is of the essence in terms of saving lives and livelihoods.   
The Pfizer vaccine requires two doses per person and based on current projections, only 25 million people could be vaccinated by the end of the year; Pfizer and BioNTech said they expect to produce up to 50 million vaccine doses in 2020, and up to 1.3 billion doses in 2021.  The world population is estimated to be around 7.5 billion and there could be wranglings over which countries receive the vaccine first, although governments in Europe, the U.K. and the U.S. have already bought millions of doses.
Asked about his reaction to the vaccine, Weber said while “it was definitely good news,” it would take time to roll out vaccination programs at a domestic and global level. The expectation is that Covid-19 vaccines will be given to those in health and service occupations first, as well as the most vulnerable members of society, before it’s rolled out to the rest of the population.

“We’ve been waiting for some good news for some time now … And the latest news has been really taken well by the market. But you know, you have to take this with a grain of salt,” Weber cautioned.
“The disappointing part of the news was that the much lower than expected number of vaccinations that can be produced in a year, and if you look at the rollout, that will happen, it’s going to take some time, ’til we move to roll this out.”
Asked what the vaccine means for the Swiss lender’s forecast for 2021, Weber was cautiously optimistic.
“You know, if dispensing that way … actually has an impact on economic activity, it will eliminate some tail risks, and some of the human suffering will be much improved as a result of it. But it’s a long haul (before) we get anything that is close to what people call mass immunity,” he said. More

Nike’s stores might be temporarily shut due to COVID-19, but the sportswear giant is getting more people to sweat during stressful times. With many gyms like Equinox shut down, people are turning to its apps, and that is helping boost its e-commerce business.  “During a time of adversity around the globe, we’ve had to adjust […] More

Nearly empty roads are seen during the first workday of the statewide “Stay-at-Home” order in Chicago, Illinois, the United States on March 23, 2020. Joel Lerner | Xinhua News Agency | Getty Images More states are ordering residents to stay at home during the coronavirus crisis, as the COVID-19 outbreak worsens in the U.S.  A […] More

A man navigates his boat next to Cruise Ships docked at the port of Long Beach during the COVID-19 Coronavirus pandemic on April 11, 2020 in Long Beach, California.
Apu Gomes | Getty Images

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday extended its ban on passenger cruising from U.S. ports through Sept. 30, citing “ongoing” coronavirus outbreaks aboard ships.
The CDC’s no-sail order was previously due to expire on July 24. The Cruise Line International Association, which represents the largest cruise lines in the world, announced last month that its members had agreed to suspend operations until Sept. 15. 

Shares of Norwegian Cruise Line finished the day down more than 15%. Royal Caribbean stock dropped over 7% and shares of Carnival Corp. traded nearly 10% lower at the market close. 
The coronavirus pandemic has rocked all three companies particularly hard as it’s brought global travel to a trickle. All three companies have been operating with low or no revenue since mid-March, when the trade group said its members would suspend operations. Shares of Norwegian are now down more than 73% on the year while Royal has dropped over 59%. Shares of Carnival Corp., the largest cruise operator in the world, have tumbled over 68% since Jan. 1. 
The CDC said it’s been in touch with all three companies as well as the trade group and other cruise operators, including Disney, in assessing their plans to resume operations safely. The CDC said all proposals it initially received from cruise operators have been “incomplete” and “did not fully meet all the requirements” laid out in the health agency’s April 15 no-sail extension order.
As of July 10, a cruise ship operator that owns one cruise ship in U.S. waters submitted a plan that met all of the CDC’s criteria, Redfield said: Bahamas Paradise Cruise Line. The agency added that some operators have expressed intent to “temporarily withdraw all ships remaining in U.S. waters.”
As of April 29, the CDC had received plans from seven cruise companies, representing 110 ships, the agency said. But as of July 10, operators had reduced the number of ships they proposed to operate in U.S. waters to 49, the CDC said, “with some operators choosing to temporarily withdraw all ships remaining in U.S. waters.”

The agency specifically said that Carnival Corp. informed the CDC on May 24 and again on June 3 that it does not expect to have any of its ships in U.S. waters until the expiration of the no-sail order. Therefore, the CDC said it is halting its review of Carnival’s proposal to resume sailing in the U.S.
The CDC added that it remains concerned about a number of elements of the companies’ return-to-sailing plans, including failing to close self-serve buffets, gyms and salons. 
In extending the ban on Thursday, CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield said that data collected by the agency shows at least 2,973 Covid-19 infections or Covid-like illnesses as well as 34 deaths came from cruise ships since the CDC started tracking the data earlier this year.
“These data have also revealed a total of 99 outbreaks on 123 different cruise ships, meaning that 80% of ships within U.S. jurisdiction were affected by COVID-19 during this time frame,” Redfield wrote in the letter. “In addition, 9 ships still have ongoing or resolving COVID-19 outbreaks on board.”
Redfield wrote that current scientific evidence suggests that cruise ships present a greater risk of transmitting Covid-19 than other settings. He cited a study published in the Journal of Travel Medicine that said the basic reproduction rate, a number epidemiologists use to calculate the number of new cases expected from each infected person, was 14.8 aboard the Diamond Princess, one of the first cruise ships to experience an onboard outbreak. 
That means that every infected person aboard the Diamond Princess was estimated to pass it on to nearly 15 other people, on average. 
“This reproduction rate is approximately four times higher than the R0 of the original epicenter of the outbreak in Wuhan, China…,” Redfield wrote. “Cruise ship conditions amplified an already highly transmissible disease.”

The CDC said “several instances of potential non-compliance” with the no-sail order has made it more difficult for cruise companies to submit appropriate plans to safely resume sailing. Redfield said the agency wrote a letter to cruise companies on May 11 saying that the agency is aware of allegations of non-compliance. The CDC said only the trade group and two companies responded in writing to the letter: Royal Caribbean and Virgin Voyages.
The agency then wrote individual letters addressing allegations of non-compliance to Norwegian Cruise Line and Disney Cruise Line, the agency wrote. The CDC noted that a number of companies have taken “tentative steps to advance their public health response.”
The agency specifically called out Royal Caribbean’s and Norwegian Cruise Line’s joint “Healthy to Sail Alliance,” which is co-chaired by former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb and former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt, who served as secretary of Health and Human Services under former President George W. Bush. Other members of the panel include infectious disease specialist Dr. Michael Osterholm and former CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding.
“We have been in contact with the CDC. The panel has been in contact with the CDC,” Royal Caribbean CEO Richard Fain told CNBC’s Seema Mody in an interview last week on “Squawk on the Street.” “They’re well aware of it and they have reacted warmly to it, so I’m actually quite positive that we’re doing exactly what we should do.”
“And as soon as we can provide definitive proof that it is safe to go on a cruise, and that’s what the panel’s mission is, they’ll be back,” Norwegian CEO Frank Del Rio said last week. More