Covid live updates: Pfizer explores ways to fight new variants; 20 million Americans are fully vaccinated

President Joe Biden said Thursday there have been 50 million Covid-19 vaccines administered in the U.S., putting the administration on target for its goal of 100 million vaccinations in 100 days.

“My team has worked very hard with vaccine manufacturers, Pfizer and Moderna, to ensure we have enough supply for all adult Americans by the end of July,” Biden said.

Biden said on the campaign trail he would push to have 100 million vaccines administered during his first 100 days in office. It has been 36 days since Biden’s inauguration.

However, Biden warned “cases and hospitalizations could go back up with ne variants as they emerge,” while urging Americans “this is not the time to relax.”

—Christian Nunley

A new study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found residents of a skilled nursing facility were possibly reinfected with the coronavirus, and their experiencing during the second infection was worse than the first.

The study, published in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, studied two separate outbreaks that occurred three months apart at a facility in Kentucky. Five residents tested positive during both outbreaks while testing negative multiple times in between, suggesting they were reinfected with the virus.

Those residents experienced worse symptoms the second time around compared with the first, researchers found, suggesting “the possibility that disease can be more severe during a second infection.” Though Covid-19 reinfections are expected, they are generally rare, the CDC says.

“The findings of this study highlight the importance of maintaining public health mitigation and protection strategies that reduce transmission risk, even among persons with a history of COVID-19 infection,”  wrote Alyson Cavanaugh, one of the researchers who led the study.

—Noah Higgins-Dunn

Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a member of Pfizer’s board, told CNBC the company is taking a dual-track approach to boosting its Covid vaccine offering against new virus variants.

The first approach is through a follow-up study that examines whether a third booster dose of its current vaccine formulation provides additional protection, Gottlieb said on “Squawk Box.” While actual data is needed, Gottlieb said he expects one more dose would be helpful against the mutations.

The second method that Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech is looking at involves tweaking the vaccine’s construction and delivering that modified version as a third dose, according to Gottlieb.

“What you want to do is not necessarily develop a vaccine that is particular against [B.1.351], the change that we saw in South Africa,” said Gottlieb, who led the Food and Drug Administration under former President Donald Trump. “What you want to do is develop a protein sequence that is sort of a consensus sequence and bakes in enough of the changes that we’ve seen across the world that you have a vaccine that is protective no matter what the virus manages to do against itself.”

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 and biotech company Illumina. He also serves as co-chair of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings’ and Royal Caribbean’s “Healthy Sail Panel.

—Kevin Stankiewicz

In the second half of the year, Best Buy said it expects fewer consumers to buy home theaters and new laptops as they spend money on travel and dining out again.

The retailer exceeded Wall Street’s earnings expectations for the fourth quarter, but missed on revenue expectations and reported slowing sales. It forecast an even slower rate for the coming year, with same-store sales expected to decline by as much as 2%. The high-end of its outlook shows same-store sales growing by up to 1%.

Chief Financial Officer Matt Bilunas said there will still be demand for technology, but it will take a backseat to other spending priorities as the pandemic fades.

—Melissa Repko

More than 2.5 million people around the world have died from Covid-19, according to data compiled by John Hopkins University. The United States has recorded the most fatalities so far at 506,500.

Daily global deaths are significantly lower than the pandemic peak of 17,843 deaths recorded on a single day in January. Still, more than 12,000 global deaths were recorded Wednesday, according to JHU.

—Rich Mendez

As the Covid-19 pandemic enters its second year and people continue to work and attend school through videoconferencing software like Zoom, researchers from Stanford and other schools are starting to closely study how videoconferencing affects people on a psychological level.

They’re looking at whether extended eye contact can be stressful and whether interface aspects like whether the little box that shows the user, like a mirror, is unnatural.

Ultimately, there are five easy steps anyone can take to make their videoconferencing more natural, researchers say.

—Kif Leswing

Moderna said Thursday it expects to generate $18.4 billion in sales from its Covid-19 vaccine this year.

The U.S. drugmaker also said its chief medical officer, Tal Zaks, will leave the company in late September. The company said it has retained Russell Reynolds “to recruit for a new CMO with global and commercial experience.”

The news comes a day after the company said it was expecting to produce at least 700 million Covid vaccine doses this year. It also said it expects to produce up to 1.4 billion Covid vaccine doses in 2022. Moderna has a deal with the federal government to deliver 300 million doses and has shipped about 55 million doses to the U.S. to date.

–Berkeley Lovelace Jr.

This week, the Biden administration announced that for two weeks starting Wednesday, the smallest businesses would have priority in applying for forgivable loans through the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program.

That was exciting news for eligible firms with fewer than 20 employees.

At the same time, the administration announced key changes to the program that won’t take place until the first week of March, leaving some small business owners confused about when they should apply for loans. The changes also raised questions for certain borrowers about how much they’d be eligible for.

“It’s déjà vu all over again,” said Megan Gorman, an attorney and managing partner at Chequers Financial Management in San Francisco, adding that the uncertainty reminds her of the first PPP rollout in April 2020. “Are [small businesses] willing to go through a process which is going to play out as they apply?”

—Carmen Reinicke

For many Americans, the coronavirus pandemic has meant taking emergency financial actions to stay afloat.

A CNBC + Acorns Invest in You survey found that 40% of Americans have taken an emergency financial action during the pandemic, including tapping into emergency savings, borrowing money from family or friends, and visiting a food bank.

The survey was conducted by SurveyMonkey between Feb. 1-8 among a national sample of 6,182 adults.

The survey also found that those most impacted by the coronavirus pandemic were more likely to take emergency actions than others — nearly one-quarter of Black women and 17% of Latinas borrowed money from family or a friend, compared to 9% of white men.