Covid live updates: Lockdown fatigue partly to blame for rising cases, WHO chief scientist says

Air travel demand is ticking higher as more Covid-19 vaccines roll out about a year before bookings plunged at the start of the pandemic.

The Transportation Security Administration screened 1.23 million people at U.S. airports on Sunday, the most since early January, bringing the weekly total to 7.1 people. That’s still just about half the number of people screened during the same week in 2020 but the second-best week of the year after the week ended Jan. 3, which included the days leading up to the New Year’s holiday.

U.S. airlines, whose losses last year topped $35 billion, are starting to prepare for a recovery, including training pilots, buying new planes and even hiring again. Several executives have said they have recently noticed an uptick in bookings.

A rebound to 2019 levels, however, is expected to take years with once-profitable business and international travel likely to take longer to resume.

—Leslie Josephs

The U.S. unemployment rate could fall to 4.1% or even lower by the end of 2021, according to a Goldman Sachs forecast that is the lowest on Wall Street.

A continued boost in hospitality industry jobs, coupled with strong overall economic growth and continued government stimulus, are expected to fuel the jobs boom.

“The main reason that we expect a hiring boom this year is that reopening, fiscal stimulus, and pent-up savings should fuel very strong demand growth,” the firm said in a note.

Though the jobless rate has tumbled from its pandemic high of 14.7% to 6.2%, more than 8 million fewer Americans are at work now than a year ago. Goldman expects the jobs market could see a return to its pre-pandemic level “well ahead” of the end of 2022.

—Jeff Cox

Baxter BioPharma Solutions said it will provide both manufacturing and packaging services for approximately 60 million to 90 million doses of Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine this year.

The manufacturing will take place at Baxter’s facility in Indiana, the company said in a press release.

“We welcome the opportunity to work with Baxter BioPharma Solutions on fill/finish manufacturing for the Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine in the U.S.,” Juan Andres, Moderna’s chief technical operations and quality officer, said in the release. “This additional production will help us continue to scale up our manufacturing capacity in the United States.”

The announcement comes as Moderna works to rapidly build the supply of its vaccine to meet demand in the U.S. The company has an agreement with the U.S. government to provide 300 million doses of its two-shot vaccine, enough to inoculate 150 million Americans.

—Berkeley Lovelace Jr.

“It could transform health in this country, health around the world and the human race,” Walter Isaacson, Tulane professor and an advisory partner at Perella Weinberg Partners, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” about the power of CRISPR technology in health care.

“We are going to be using this technology to make ourselves less susceptible to viruses” such as Covid-19, he said.

CNBC’s Meg Tirrell reports a Duke University analysis shows rich counties, representing about 16% of the world’s population, have purchased more than half of all Covid vaccine doses.

—Melodie Warner 

CNBC’s Bertha Coombs reports on the health care costs for so-called long haulers, or patients with lingering effects from Covid.

—Melodie Warner 

Julie Morita of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation told CNBC coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths are still at high levels in the U.S., and it is “way too early” to be relaxing and congregating in large groups.

A survey from Deutsche Bank has given an insight into how much cash from U.S. stimulus checks might find its way into the stock market.

Responses in the survey showed that half of 25- to 34-year-olds plan to spend 50% of their stimulus checks on stocks, leading the German investment bank to state that “a large amount of the upcoming U.S. stimulus checks will probably find their way into equities.”

Meanwhile, 18- to 24-year-olds involved in the survey planned to use 40% of any stimulus checks on stocks, and those between 35 and 54 years old planned to use 37% of their checks on stock market investment. The over-55s surveyed said they’d put only 16% into stocks.

—Holly Ellyatt

Soumya Swaminathan, chief scientist of the World Health Organization, told CNBC there has been an uptick in Covid-19 cases over the last two weeks. She said the world needs to “double down” on preventive measures to keep the coronavirus under control until there are enough vaccines to contain the virus.

The U.S. accused Russia’s intelligence services of seeking to undermine faith in Covid-19 vaccines developed by U.S. biotech firms Pfizer and Moderna via three online publications, Reuters reported.

The State Department’s Global Engagement Center, which is tasked with countering propaganda and disinformation campaigns, identified the three publications, a spokeswoman said.

In addition to the campaign against Pfizer and Moderna, the Russian outlets are spreading other types of disinformation, including “international organizations, military conflicts, protests, and any divisive issue that they can exploit,” the spokeswoman told Reuters.

“The Department will continue to expose Russia’s nefarious activities online,” she said. “We will also continue to work closely with our allies and partners to provide a global response to countering disinformation.”

—Terri Cullen

Covid updates: Arizona, West Virginia lift capacity limits on businesses; FDA greenlights at-home test