Covid live updates: CDC warns against travel due to the highly contagious U.K. variant

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is asking Americans to postpone their travel plans after a newly released investigation found Minnesota residents who were infected with a highly contagious Covid variant had histories of domestic and international travel before displaying symptoms.

The CDC and Minnesota health officials identified eight Covid-19 cases with the variant first identified in the U.K., known as B.1.1.7, between Dec. 18 and Jan. 11. After follow-up investigations, the Minnesota Department of Health found that six of those people had recent travel histories.

Two people had traveled to West Africa and one had traveled to the Dominican Republic two weeks before illness onset. Three additional people had traveled to California two weeks before their illness, where one of them tested positive and quarantined before returning to Minnesota, the CDC found.

So far, there are at least 1,277 Covid-19 cases with the B.1.1.7 variant in 42 states, according to the CDC’s most recent data.

—Noah Higgins-Dunn

Medical supply distributor Henry Schein has a unique view on the pandemic and the recovery. Henry Schein CEO Stanley Bergman joined CNBC’s “Squawk Box” to give his insight on how to improve the vaccine rollout in the United States.

Disney’s Hong Kong theme park is set to reopen on Friday.

Hong Kong Disneyland has been closed three times in response to spikes in coronavirus cases in the last year, with the most recent closure going into effect on Dec. 2, 2020.

Like previous reopenings, the park will implement a number of safety precautions including mandatory mask-wearing, social distancing and increased sanitation measures. Attendance at the parks will also be capped in accordance with local government guidance.

The park will be operated five days a week, closing on Tuesday and Thursdays, the company said. All guests will be required to provide their contact information to the park in the event of an outbreak that requires contact tracing.

Currently, only Disney parks in Shanghai, Tokyo and Florida are open. Disneyland Paris and Disneyland in California remain closed indefinitely due to government restrictions. These closures and capacity restrictions have weighed heavy on Disney’s bottom line.

The company said the Covid outbreak cost its parks, experiences and products segment around $2.6 billion in lost operating income during the December quarter, the fourth quarter in a row that the company reported this kind of loss. Its revenue for this division fell 53% to $3.58 billion in the fiscal first quarter.

—Sarah Whitten

The U.K. is set to be the first country to run a Covid-19 “human challenge” study, following approval from the country’s clinical trials ethics body.

The first Covid-19 human challenge trial will see up to 90 volunteers, aged 18 to 30 years, exposed to Covid-19 “in a safe and controlled environment to increase understanding of how the virus affects people,” the British government said in a statement Wednesday.

Researchers are calling on healthy young people, who are at the lowest risk of complications resulting from coronavirus, to volunteer for the study. Volunteers will be compensated for the time they spend in the study, which is set to begin within a month.

—Holly Ellyatt

TransferWise co-founder Taavet Hinrikus launched a new venture looking to tackle the coronavirus pandemic.

Called Certific, Hinrikus’ new company aims to improve the experience of testing for the coronavirus remotely from home. Certific’s app verifies users’ identities and instructs them on how to take Covid-19 tests with trained doctors at the ready to verify the test result and provide certification.

It’s only available for individuals and businesses in the U.K. for now, but Hinrikus hopes to expand it to other countries over time. Certific also plans to integrate vaccine information further down the line. This could pave the way for vaccine passports to prove people have had the vaccine and get them back to work and play.

—Ryan Browne

Russia and China are both seen adopting a transactional approach to one of the world’s most in-demand commodities in order to secure foreign policy gains, prompting analysts to warn that the concept of vaccine diplomacy is here to stay.

Agathe Demarais, global forecasting director at the Economist Intelligence Unit, told CNBC via telephone that Russia, China, and to a lesser extent India, are betting on providing Covid vaccines to emerging or low-income countries to advance their interests.

“In the past, although it is actually still the case, we saw that China launched the Belt and Road Initiative, we saw that Russia did a number of things especially in the Middle Eastern countries with nuclear power plants, and vaccine diplomacy is a new brick in the whole edifice of their attempt to bolster their global standing,” Demarais said.

In total, 26 countries including Argentina, Hungary, Tunisia and Turkmenistan, have authorized Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine. China’s queue of clients for Covid vaccines includes Brazil, Indonesia, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates, among others.

—Sam Meredith

New York Attorney General Letitia James sued Amazon.com over its handling of worker safety issues around the Covid-19 pandemic at two of the retailer’s warehouses, Reuters reports.

James on Tuesday charged Amazon with “flagrant disregard” of the steps needed to protect workers from Covid at two of its New York City warehouses — a Staten Island fulfillment center and a Queens distribution center, according to Reuters.

The complaint comes days after Amazon filed its own lawsuit seeking to block the New York AG from regulating its workplace safety response to the pandemic. Amazon said the company operates in an area that is already governed by federal law.

—Terri Cullen

Ahold Delhaize CEO Frans Muller talks with CNBC about the Dutch grocer’s full-year 2020 results and the outlook for 2021 amid the continuing coronavirus pandemic.

U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is among several officials proposing a global “pandemic treaty” to ensure more transparency about future pandemics. The call comes amid unease over China’s reluctance to share information about the coronavirus outbreak.

The proposed international treaty on pandemics would have countries agree to share data around outbreaks, establish a global pandemic early warning system and build a network of zoonotic disease research hubs looking at how viruses can jump from animals to humans.

The U.K. and the U.S. have voiced concern over the level of access that was afforded to a World Health Organization mission to China, aimed at discovering the origins of the novel coronavirus that first appeared in Wuhan in late 2019.

China has said that it cooperated fully with the WHO team and has also repeatedly stressed that the coronavirus could have originated elsewhere.

—Holly Ellyatt

Covid updates: Democrats move to pass relief bill; air travel hits 36-year low