Category: Health

Here are the top news, trends, and analysis investors need to get their trading day started:

1. Dow is added to Tuesday’s record closing

The S&P 500 hit its first close above 3,700 as Wall Street got off to a good start in December in continuation of the November rally. So far this year, which included a monumental slump into coronavirus lows in March, the Dow is up 5.7%. the S&P 500 gained almost 14.6%; and the Nasdaq was up over 40%, driven mainly by technology stocks that benefited from the home economy during the pandemic.

2. DoorDash should begin trading with technical IPOs

A Doordash sticker is seen on a window at the Mallenche Mexican Grill in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn on December 4, 2020 in New York City. Food delivery startup DoorDash Inc is expected to increase its US IPO to $ 3.14 billion.

Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images

DoorDash will debut on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday. The U.S. grocery shipping company valued its IPO Tuesday night at $ 102 per share, above its revised target range of $ 90 to $ 95. The offer gives DoorDash a value of around 38 billion US dollars. DoorDash marks the first IPO in a wave of consumer tech late in the year that includes Airbnb’s expected debut Thursday.

Robinhood online stock trading app, favored by younger investors and gaining newfound popularity during the pandemic, has selected Goldman Sachs to lead preparations for an IPO, people familiar with the matter told Reuters. The offer could be worth more than $ 20 billion next year.

3. The Trump administration offers $ 916 billion for business stimulus talks

The U.S. Capitol building after a rainstorm on Capitol Hill in Washington, December 4, 2020.

Tom Brenner | Reuters

The Trump administration jumped back into Capitol Hill talks on new Covid-19 incentives. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin made an offer of $ 916 billion late Tuesday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The California Democrat said the White House plan would provide direct payments to Americans, but eliminate a $ 300-a-week unemployment benefit hike backed by non-partisan negotiators working to reach a limit of $ 908 billion that was released last week.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday recommended lifting legal protections for corporations from state and local government Covid lawsuits and roadblocks and passing a law spanning the areas of the agreement. The Kentucky Republican said the more difficult problems could be resolved after the new year.

4. Vaccine developments dominate the headlines from the UK to the UAE

People with a history of “significant” allergic reactions should not receive the coronavirus vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, the UK drug authorities said on Wednesday. The UK, which launched its mass vaccination campaign on Tuesday, became the first country to approve the Pfizer vaccine.

As the FDA prepares to meet on Thursday with Pfizer’s emergency application and Moderna’s next week, the United Arab Emirates health authorities said data from human studies with a Chinese vaccine showed 86% effectiveness. It is unclear how this rate was calculated. The UAE began Phase 3 human trials of the experimental vaccine in July, which was approved for healthcare workers there in September.

Developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University, the coronavirus vaccine is the first whose late-stage study results have been independently reviewed and published in a peer-reviewed medical journal. The study, published Tuesday in The Lancet, confirmed an average effectiveness of 70%. It also confirmed 62% effectiveness for two full doses and 90% effectiveness for half the dose and then the full dose.

5. The Supreme Court rejects the GOP’s offer to reverse Biden’s win in Pennsylvania

A police barricade outside the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC on Monday, December 7, 2020.

Al Drago | Bloomberg | Getty Images

The Supreme Court denied a Republican motion to reverse President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in Pennsylvania. The Supreme Court rejected a petition from Trump ally Mike Kelly. Pennsylvania Republican legislature argued that virtually all of the state’s postal ballot papers were illegal. The action completes one of President Donald Trump’s last remaining avenues to dismiss the results of the 2020 election in court, although some far-fetched legal cases are still pending.

Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit directly with the Supreme Court to invalidate the results of the presidential elections in four swing states that helped secure Biden’s victory over Trump. The lawsuit, which legal experts were quick to dismiss as political theater, alleged “unlawful election results” in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin and Michigan.

– The Associated Press contributed to this report. Follow all developments on Wall Street in real time with CNBC Pro’s live market blog. Find out about the latest pandemics on our coronavirus blog.

Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a board member at Pfizer, told CNBC on Tuesday that the Trump administration had rejected the company’s offers to provide additional doses of its coronavirus vaccine to the US in 2021.

The government agreed to a contract with Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech for 100 million doses of their Covid-19 vaccine in July if it was found to be safe and effective. The Food and Drug Administration will meet on Thursday to review the companies’ emergency application. Gottlieb spoke before the agency released the companies’ clinical trial data on Tuesday that didn’t reveal any specific safety concerns.

If approved, Pfizer’s entire shipment of vaccines made at its Michigan manufacturing facility in December and the first quarter of 2021 will go to the US, Gottlieb said on Squawk Box. Under the July deal, the government could purchase an additional 500 million cans.

“Pfizer offered the US government an additional grant from this facility on several occasions, basically the second quarter grant, only after the interim dates were released and we knew this vaccine appeared to be effective,” he told Gottlieb, who previously headed the FDA in the Trump administration from 2017 to 2019.

Gottlieb, whose comments corroborate a Monday New York Times report, believes the U.S. government likely turned down Pfizer’s offer because it wanted to ensure it diversified the number of companies it has option contracts with.

For example, there is an agreement for 100 million doses of Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine. The Massachusetts-based biotech company has developed the only other vaccine currently awaiting FDA approval. Johnson & Johnson also signed a deal with the Trump administration for 100 million doses of its coronavirus vaccine in August.

“I think they are betting that more than one vaccine will be approved and that there will be more vaccines on the market,” said Gottlieb. “And maybe that could be why they didn’t get that extra $ 100 million option agreement that wouldn’t necessarily have required them to pay any money. It was just an agreement that they would buy those vaccines. Pfizer has it so done. ” went ahead and made some deals with other countries to sell them some of this vaccine in the second quarter of 2021. “

CNBC reached out to the Department of Health and Human Services to comment on Gottlieb’s comments. In a statement later posted on Twitter, an HHS spokesman said the department remains “confident that we will have enough doses in our portfolio of multiple vaccines for every American who wants a vaccine by the end of the second quarter of 2021.”

“We have and are negotiating additional doses with Pfizer,” the statement also said. However, the HHS spokesman said the Trump administration’s vaccine development program, Operation Warp Speed, has never “turned down an offer from Pfizer for any number of millions of fixed-delivery, fixed-quantity doses.”

On Tuesday, people in the UK became the first to receive the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine outside of a clinical trial after UK regulators gave approval last week. The UK government has ordered 40 million doses of the vaccine, which is enough for 20 million people since it takes two shots.

President Donald Trump signed an ordinance on Tuesday seeking to give Americans priority over Covid-19 vaccines his administration has launched. The government has given billions of dollars to drug makers to help develop and manufacture vaccines.

“I don’t know what the judicial authorities are. I suspect there are authorities that the administration could invoke that would violate some agreements that Pfizer or other companies may have made with other countries,” Gottlieb said before the Signing.

“But remember that the countries the vaccine has been sold to are our close allies. That makes an offer [Michigan] Plant coming to the US in the second quarter. It’s just not the full range, “he added.” Some of this was promised to other countries after being offered to the United States several times. “

Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a CNBC employee and a member of the boards of directors of Pfizer, the genetic testing startup Tempus, and the biotech company Illumina. Gottlieb is also co-chair of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings and Royal Caribbean’s Healthy Sail Panel.

The intensive care unit and the pulmonologist Dr. Vin Gupta told CNBC that for the next two months in the US, everyone should be in a “disaster mindset” as Covid-19 cases explode across the country.

“Doctors in the reserves, US Air Force reserves, we haven’t used all of our skills, we should use those resources – military, National Guard, as you call them, emergency ID cards for anyone properly trained in critical care,” Professor at the institute for University of Washington health metrics and assessment said Monday evening. “We need all hands on deck here.”

According to the Covid Tracking Project, there were 102,148 people in hospitals across the country with coronavirus as of Monday. New Mexico hospitals have reached the point where they may need to start rationing care. The state is likely to be the first to fill all beds in the intensive care unit during the pandemic. Now they are overloaded. Per Covid, the fourth highest in the nation, there are more than 43 people per 100,000 in the hospital, according to the Covid Tracking Project.

Gupta told The News with Shepard Smith that care rationing was actually spreading to other regions across the country. “This is a fact of life, and one of the reasons we believe that by the end of February about 500,000 Americans will lose their lives because we take care of the care and people can’t get the care they need.” the magnitude they need considering how out of control this pandemic is. “

The Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation modeling projects project 538,893 deaths from Covid-19 by April 1.

To save life, governors are using hospitalization and ICU capacity as key metrics to set new restrictions.

On Monday, Democratic New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that parts of the state would close when hospitals are 90% full. He also said indoor dining in New York City may close soon.

At least 33 million people in California are regionally locked after ICU capacity fell below 15% in some regions. California Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom said the appointment would take at least three weeks.

Gupta, an NBC medical worker, described what he called “common sense” of encouraging people not to travel by bus or plane, minimizing gatherings and stopping eating indoors. “Unfortunately, I think these are the parameters that we have to adhere to,” he said. “Do I think they are draconian? I think they are common sense and I think if we can stick with these things we will be able to mitigate the transmission until vaccines are used in the near future.”

Pleading with Americans to wear three-layer masks everywhere in public, Gupta added that there was “compelling data” for people 55 and older that suggest wearing the extra layer of face shield with a three-layer blue mask be safer.

United States President Donald Trump speaks during a ceremony to present wrestler Dan Gable with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC on December 7, 2020.

Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty Images

President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order on Tuesday to ensure that U.S. efforts to help other countries vaccinate their populations against Covid-19 are less of a priority than domestic vaccinations, a senior government official told NBC News.

The executive order will be in line with President America First’s foreign policy, the official said. The plans for the Executive Order have already been announced by Fox News. The official said the order will include a framework for sourcing vaccines overseas “once we have made sure we are meeting the needs of the American people”.

CNBC has not examined the proposed text of the Executive Ordinance, which could prove largely symbolic.

The official said the foreign aid delivery schedule will be supply and demand, but is expected to start in the second quarter. President-elect Joe Biden will take office on Jan. 20 and is likely to shape his own policy for the receipt and distribution of Covid-19 vaccines, potentially limiting the impact of Trump’s command.

Also on Tuesday, a Covid-19 summit with vaccine manufacturers, drug distributors and government officials will take place in the White House, the medical news agency STAT reported.

Trump has largely ignored the growing coronavirus crisis over the past few weeks despite a surge in infections and a rising death toll exceeding 2,000 deaths a day, instead focusing on legal efforts to scrap the November presidential election results .

However, the signing will take place at a particularly critical stage in vaccine development.

Trump will sign the order just days before Thursday’s Food and Drug Administration meeting to review a promising vaccine from Pfizer and German drug maker BioNTech.

This vaccine can be approved for use by the end of this week. The FDA will meet on December 17th to discuss another Moderna candidate.

While some particularly at-risk Americans may be vaccinated soon after the vaccines are approved, officials warn that it will be months before anyone who wants a vaccine gets one.

Minister of Health and Human Services Alex Azar predicted on Sunday that vaccines are unlikely to be available to everyone applying for a vaccine by the second quarter.

The Trump administration signed a deal this summer to buy 100 million doses of Pfizer’s vaccine, if it works, enough to supply 50 million Americans.

On Monday afternoon, the New York Times reported that the government had rejected an offer from Pfizer for additional doses at the time.

The paper reported, citing unnamed individuals who are familiar with the matter, that the company may have limited vaccines supply due to its commitments to other countries and may not be able to supply additional vaccines to the US until June.

A spokesman for HHS, pressured by the Times whether the government missed the opportunity to buy more Pfizer’s vaccine, said: “We are confident that we will receive 100 million doses of Pfizer’s vaccine, as agreed in our contract and beyond that, we have five other vaccine candidates. “

A Pfizer spokesman told the Times that “the company cannot comment on confidential discussions with the US government.”

The White House and HHS did not immediately provide details of the executive order. Pfizer and BioNTech have not returned any emails seeking comment.

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The U.S. Department of Homeland Security under Secretary Chris Krebs speaks to reporters from the DHS Election Operations Center and the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC) in Arlington, Virginia, USA, on November 6, 2018.

Jonathan Ernst | Reuters

WASHINGTON – The former head of the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said Sunday that opponents have attempted to steal intellectual property related to the coronavirus vaccine.

“With the big four, Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, we’ve seen to some extent that all four countries are espionage or espionage and try to obtain intellectual property related to the vaccine,” said Chris Krebs, former CISA Director on CBS “Face the Nation”.

“What we’d been thinking through at CISA was not just the vaccine developers, but their entire supply chain trying to really look for those critical vulnerabilities,” said Krebs.

“So it’s not just about Moderna and some of the others who are developing the vaccine – it’s about their supply chains, distribution channels and public health facilities,” he said. “These are the people we need to keep providing cybersecurity support from the national security community and the private sector.”

IBM released a report last week that found a global phishing campaign targeting the Covid-19 cold chain, part of the supply chain that keeps vaccines at low temperatures during storage and transportation. CISA encouraged organizations associated with Operation Warp Speed, the US vaccination program, to review the IBM report for possible indicators that may have compromised them.

Krebs, the former head of the KAG, was responsible for leading efforts to protect the US elections. He was fired by President Donald Trump in two tweets last month.

Trump said Krebs made a “highly inaccurate” statement on the security of the 2020 presidential election.

Trump, who has not yet conceded President-elect Joe Biden, claimed the election was fraught with “massive inadequacies and fraud.” Twitter tagged the president’s tweets with a warning that the election fraud allegation is controversial.

Krebs had previously said there was no evidence that the elections were compromised by foreign interference.

“It is time for the leaders of the national security community, the Republican Party, to stand up, accept the results, and move forward,” said Krebs, a lifelong Republican.