Raphael Stevens

In this articleWBACVSRADA woman enters a CVS Covid-19 vaccine site in Monterey Park, California on April 27, 2021.Frederic J. Brown | AFP | Getty ImagesWalgreens, CVS and Rite Aid are offering same-day appointments for Covid-19 vaccines, as the companies try to keep up momentum as the pace of inoculations per day slows.On Monday, Walgreens announced it will provide same-day appointments at stores beginning on Wednesday. The company is also activating mobile clinics in underserved neighborhoods of Chicago that allow people people to walk up and get a shot. The mobile clinics, which resemble a van or a trailer, will expand to other cities, too, said Rina Shah, group vice president of pharmacy operations at Walgreens.CVS began same-day appointments as of April 23, with customers able to schedule a vaccine in as little as an hour before, company spokesman Mike DeAngelis said. And Rite Aid said it’s allowing walk-in vaccines on a limited basis.The three drugstore chains are emphasizing flexibility and convenience as they try to reach people who are busy, hesitant or challenged by other barriers, such as lack of transportation or the internet. The U.S. is averaging 2.4 million reported vaccinations per day over the past week, as of Sunday, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, down from a peak of 3.4 million reported shots per day on April 13. That number has fallen off, even as all adults in every state are eligible.Zoom In IconArrows pointing outwardsIn an interview, Shah said Walgreens has seen demand vary by region. In some parts of the country, she said appointment slots fill up quickly and in others, there are plenty of openings. With more doses ready to use and more people who qualify to be vaccinated, drugstores are better positioned to help, she said.Widespread vaccinations will get the U.S. closer to “herd immunity” — the point when Covid-19 can’t spread easily or quickly because most of the population has immunity, Shah said.”As soon as we get to herd immunity, then we’re in a much better place as a nation,” she said. “Then, we can determine, ‘Is a booster needed? Is it not? How do we get back to our normal lives and not be nervous or at risk of hospitalizations or deaths?'”Some medical experts and scientists have expressed doubts about when — or if — herd immunity is possible, but have encouraged vaccinations to try to reach that goal.Zoom In IconArrows pointing outwardsCVS and Walgreens also have opened community-based clinics at sites like YMCAs, churches and nonprofits. The companies are signing contracts with major employers for on-site clinics, similar to during flu season.CVS said it has given shots to a wide variety of Americans through contracts with Delta Air Lines, the city of Philadelphia and the New York Shipping Association, among others.Walgreens has contracts with more than 100 employers including Apple and Amtrak.”We are seeing an uptick in employers wanting to make sure all of their employees are covered and they can get back to work,” Shah said.Walgreens has administered more than 15 million Covid vaccines and CVS has administered more than 10 million. Rite Aid has given over 2.5 million vaccines as of April 15, Jim Peters, its chief operating officer, said on its earnings call.Along with speeding along a return to work and more typical life, the vaccine effort is also a way for the drugstores to make money, draw foot traffic and build customer loyalty. More

In this articleFORDBMW-DEFSolid Power’s 22-layer, 20Ah all solid-state lithium metal cell compared to the company’s first-generation 10-layer, 2Ah cell.Solid PowerDETROIT — Ford Motor is increasing its investment in EV battery start-up Solid Power with hopes of starting to integrate the next-generation batteries into its electric vehicles by the end of this decade.Ford, which initially invested in the company in 2019, led a $130 million funding round in Solid Power with BMW and Venture capital firm Volta Energy Technologies, the companies announced Monday.Solid Power makes so-called solid-state batteries, which don’t use the liquid electrolyte found in the conventional lithium-ion batteries currently used to power most electric vehicles. The batteries can be lighter, with greater energy density that provides more range at a lower cost. But they are currently more costly than lithium-ion batteries and early in development.Under the new agreement, Ford and BMW will receive automotive-capable battery cells from Solid Power for testing and integration into its future vehicles starting next year. The Series B investment round will allow the company to expand in-house manufacturing capabilities and positions, Solid Power CEO Doug Campbell said in a release.Hau Thai-Tang, Ford’s chief product platform and operations officer, said the automaker believes the industry will start transitioning from lithium-ion batteries to solid state over the next decade. He declined to disclose Ford’s total investment in solid-state batteries but said it’s “significantly smaller” than lithium-ion at this time.”We think it’s realistic that by the end of this decade, there’s a good chance that this is something we can go into production with,” he told CNBC during an interview.BMW said it also expects to have solid-state batteries in production EVs by the end of the decade. A demonstrator vehicle featuring the technology is expected before 2025, according to a company spokesman.The investment announcement comes less than a week after Ford said it would invest $185 million in a new battery lab as a step toward manufacturing its own battery cells for electric vehicles. That’s in addition to plans to put $22 billion into vehicle electrification from 2016 through 2025.Ford’s new facility will not be a full battery cell production facility like Tesla has. General Motors recently announced $4.6 billion in investments in two U.S. battery cell production plants with LG Energy Solution. More

Portrait of Daniel Humm, executive chef of Eleven Madison Park restaurant in New York City.Nora Tam | South China Morning Post via Getty ImagesEleven Madison Park is considered one of the finest restaurants in both New York City and the world — and starting next month, it will also be completely meatless and almost entirely vegan.”If Eleven Madison Park is truly at the forefront of dining and culinary innovation, to me it’s crystal clear that this is the only place to go next,” chef-owner Daniel Humm told the Wall Street Journal in an interview published Monday morning.The restaurant, at 24th Street and Madison Avenue, will reopen in-person service June 10 with what the website described as “an eight to ten course menu in the main dining room consisting of entirely plant-based dishes.”More from NBC New York: 80K City Workers Expected Back in NYC Offices MondayNJ Gov. Phil Murphy Vows ‘Major’ Announcement on COVID RestrictionsCuomo Hopeful for Full Reopening of NY Before July 1: ‘Literally, Everything Back to Normal’Humm told the Journal the restaurant will still allow milk and honey for coffee and tea, meaning it won’t be entirely vegan.Either way, the change will potentially have huge repercussions in the world of fine dining, given the restaurant’s prominence. Eleven Madison Park holds three Michelin stars, four stars from the New York Times, seven James Beard awards and a 2017 honor as the best restaurant in the world.Humm told NPR the restaurant’s down time during the pandemic got him thinking about sustainability, and drew him to ultimately make the shift to plant-based food.”The way we have sourced our food, the way we’re consuming our food, the way we eat meat, it is not sustainable,” Humm said in an NPR interview. More

In this articlePFEMRNAJNJDr. Scott Gottlieb said Monday he’s not yet concerned by the number of Americans who have skipped their scheduled second Covid vaccine dose.”We’re not certain that those people aren’t going to eventually come back. They just didn’t come back on time,” the former Food and Drug Administration commissioner said in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”However, Gottlieb said receiving the second Covid shot is necessary to obtain the full protective benefits provided by the vaccines for the months ahead. Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccines require two shots. (Johnson & Johnson’s Covid vaccine, the third cleared for emergency use in the U.S., requires only a single dose.)”My advice to anyone would be that, even if you’re young and there’s evidence that you derive a robust immune response just from that first dose, we don’t know the durability of that response,” said Gottlieb, who sits on Pfizer’s board. “If you really want to get a durable effect from the vaccine, you really should get the second dose.”On Friday, White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said that approximately 8% of U.S. residents who have received the first dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines have not come back for the second shot.”The number of people that so far that we’ve seen not coming back for the second dose is low relative to historical standards or historical norms,” said Gottlieb, who led the FDA from 2017 to 2019 in the Trump administration. For example, he said, the return rate for the Covid vaccine is better than for the two-dose shingles vaccine.Gottlieb acknowledged it’s possible a higher percentage of U.S. vaccine recipients could skip the second shot as more young people get the shot. That is partly because “younger people know that they’re deriving a more robust immune response just from the first dose versus an older individual, who really needs that second dose to derive the full immune protection,” he reiterated.People who so far haven’t returned for the second shot aren’t necessarily doing anything intentionally wrong, Gottlieb added. He complimented the pharmacies that are administrating vaccines for “trying to implement reminders for those patients.””A lot of times it’s just lost to follow-up. It’s not people who are deliberately not coming back,” Gottlieb said. “There are some situations, I’ve talked to people, who are worried about the second dose, the side effects that are purportedly associated with the second dose versus the first dose. But right now, the percentage of people who’ve come back for that second shot is pretty high.”Nearly 105 million people in the U.S., almost a third of the population, have been fully vaccinated, according to the latest data available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 147 million or roughly 44% of the U.S. population have received at least one dose, per the CDC data.Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a CNBC contributor and is a member of the boards of Pfizer, genetic testing start-up Tempus, health-care tech company Aetion Inc. and biotech company Illumina. He also serves as co-chair of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings’ and Royal Caribbean’s “Healthy Sail Panel.” More

A car dealer shows a vehicle to customers at a dealership in Jersey City, New Jersey.Angus Mordant | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesChase Weldon spent weeks researching new SUVs to get for his family. To his surprise, he spent even longer attempting to purchase one. Dealer lots were scarce and salespeople, who can sometimes be overly aggressive, weren’t calling him back.”I was working with some dealerships across the country,” said the 44-year-old Colorado resident. “I reached out to probably 30 dealerships. … Of those 30, half got back to me.”Many salespeople who did get back to him said the vehicle he was looking for had already been sold, or they refused to negotiate on price. “It was definitely a different car-buying experience,” he said.That “different” experience may become the norm if dealers and investors have their way.Factory shutdowns starting last spring due to the coronavirus pandemic and occurring now due to a global shortage of semiconductor chips have caused the number of new vehicles available in the U.S. to nosedive.For consumers, the shortage has meant higher prices and spending weeks, if not months, searching or waiting for the vehicle they want. But for automakers and dealers, it has translated to wider, if not record, profits and even selling vehicles before they arrive at dealerships.Demand outpacing supply”The sales pace is faster than the resupply, and we think that that will get tighter going forward,” said Michelle Krebs, executive analyst at Cox Automotive. “We expect these supplies to be tight throughout 2021.”The shortage as well as stronger-than-expected demand from consumers throughout the coronavirus pandemic are keeping sales strong despite the lower inventories.The days of supply of new vehicles on dealer lots across the U.S. is 47 and on its way toward the low-30s, according to Cox Automotive. Some pickups and SUVs are far lower, including single digits, according to the company. That compares to historical days of supply of at least 60, and higher for highly configurable vehicles such as pickups.Georgia-based dealer Mike Bowsher said vehicle stocks at his four General Motors stores are only about 20% of what they typically are due to the shortage.”We’re selling it way up into the pipeline,” he said. “When a truckload shows up, 75% of the truck is already sold.”Bowsher, who head’s Chevrolet’s national dealer council, said he’d take more pickups, but the current environment for profits is unlike anything he’s ever seen.”Everybody’s going to make a lot more money because of it from here on out. I just don’t see it going back to pre-Covid levels,” Sonic Automotive President Jeff Dyke told CNBC, saying “the whole ballgame” has changed in the past year.Publicly traded dealers such as Sonic and AutoNation recently reported record profits in the first quarter. Dealers are saving money by holding less inventory and selling vehicles faster at higher average prices.There’s no question that there is more demand than supply and that is the headline on the new vehicle side,” AutoNation CEO Mike Jackson told investors last month. “We’ve adjusted pricing to reflect that, and you see the improvement in our front-end growth.”Can it last?Automakers for years have tried to thin inventories to boost profits, but that’s more difficult than it sounds.Brands discount and incentivize vehicles to compete for customers. They also have to balance supply and demand with dealers, many of whom are begging for popular truck and SUV models, as well as its workers.Recent contracts between the Detroit automakers and the United Auto Workers provide more flexibility regarding production, but laying off tens of thousands of plant workers can be costly. There’s also a matter of retaining workers and maintaining plants, which can take weeks to restart after a shut down.Ford Motor CEO Jim Farley promised investors Wednesday that the company will run leaner vehicle inventories in the future following reporting a record pretax operating profit and easily beating Wall Street expectations.”I want to make it extremely clear to everyone. We are going to run our business with a lower days’ supply than we have had in the recent past, because that’s good for our company and good for customers,” he said.One upside for customers such as Weldon, who had a vehicle to trade in, is that dealers are offering higher prices for trade-in vehicles.Used car prices have increased as some consumers move from shopping for new vehicles to used due to the lack of inventory and higher prices. It’s actually what Weldon ended up doing after establishing a relationship with a salesperson at a nearby dealership for a used 2018 Toyota Sequoia SUV.”I got the car I wanted through really just educating myself … and taking a deep-dive into the subject,” he said. “It was really about making a relationship with the salesman. … I started to gain some traction on at least having a say in finding the car that I wanted.”– CNBC’s Michael Bloom contributed to this report. More