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The Covid-19 pandemic dramatically altered the small business landscape in the U.S., boosting some while crushing others.

For Ayana Morris and Siree Morris, it represented an opportunity: They co-founded drive-in movie theater Newark Moonlight Cinema. But even as vaccinations have some people returning to their pre-Covid ways, the Morrises told CNBC they have plans to expand their small business.

The pop-up theater, one of the few black-owned theaters in the country, screens classics and cult favorites with a focus on highlighting African American filmmakers and actors. Moonlight Cinema hosted more than 20,000 cars at its inaugural site during 2020. It’s capitalizing on pandemic-related distancing protocols even as indoor movie theaters and entertainment venues get back on their feet with vaccines now widely available in the U.S.

“We’re able to allow our patrons to naturally social distance … you can be with the people that you’re already quarantining with, you feel comfortable with the people you live with,” Ayana Morris said. “You come down in your car, and you have a great experience watching a movie.”

Appearing Wednesday on “The Exchange,” the Morrises said they plan to expand the cinema’s outdoor entertainment experience by adding more films and branches and enhancing its concession business. 

Moonlight Cinema, which has several sponsors including Amazon and Prudential, is operating Wednesday through Sunday until Oct. 31. It shows films on two 800-square-foot viewing screens that will play different movies simultaneously, with audio transmitted through each car’s radio. 

Ayana Morris said she would like to see the drive-in movie theater experience “modernize” beyond Covid.

“I know that movie theaters are a thing, drive-ins are a thing,” she said. “I think a nice combo of indoor-outdoor experiences is the smart way to go in the 21st century.”

Target said Wednesday that it will offer workers new perks: a debt-free way to get a college degree and payments for graduate programs.

Starting this fall, the wholesaler said it will cover the cost of tuition, fees and textbooks for part-time and full-time workers seeking a qualifying bachelor’s degree from more than 40 institutions. It will also fund advanced degrees, with up to $ 10,000 paid annually for masters programs at these schools.

The National Retailer is the newest company to offer perks to attract applicants in a competitive job market. With the move, Target joins other retailers and restaurant chains – including Chipotle and Starbucks – that offer programs that help employees pay for college. Walmart recently announced that it would cover the full cost of tuition and books for its employees after previously paying $ 1 a day.

At Target, employees in stores, distribution centers and US headquarters qualify on their first day. Target pays the full cost of 250 business-focused programs such as computer science, information technology, and business administration. If an employee chooses a different specialty or is pursuing a college degree, Target pays up to $ 5,250 for non-Masters degrees and up to $ 10,000 for Masters degrees each year as direct payments to the academic institution.

Target plans to invest $ 200 million in the education program over the next four years. It developed the program with Guild Education, a company that manages business education support programs. Participating schools include the University of Arizona, Oregon State University, the University of Denver, and Morehouse College.

American backstroke Olympian Ryan Murphy told CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith” that doping remains a huge problem in the sport, and that there’s not enough being done to combat it. 

“In the U.S. you can see exactly how many times myself or any of my teammates have been drug tested, and it’s not like that in other countries,” said Murphy. “We simply have no idea what they are or are not doing in terms of fighting doping.”

In Tokyo, Murphy won a gold medal in the 4×100 medley relay, a silver in the 200m backstroke and a bronze in the 100m backstroke, bringing his own Olympics career medal count to six.

On the heels of Murphy’s silver medal swim in the men’s 200-meter backstroke, Murphy placed a spotlight on doping concerns when he told reporters, “It is a huge mental drain on me throughout the year to know that I’m swimming in a race that’s probably not clean.”

Murphy clarified to host Shepard Smith that he “didn’t call out a single athlete, or a single country, and that is how it was taken, and that is a little bit disappointing.” 

Murphy told Smith that he’s confident in Travis Tygart, CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, and FINA’s new executive director Brent Nowicki, when it comes to pushing swimming forward and away from doping.  

“Travis Tygart has been talking about this for years now, he’s someone that spends every day on this subject, and if he’s someone that’s saying that potentially races aren’t clean, that’s an opinion I listen to, and then also, the new executive director of FINA, that’s the governing body of swimming internationally, he told me to my face that he believes we have a long way to go in terms of cleaning up our sport from doping, so those two guys are really well-versed on this subject,” said Murphy. “They’re really motivated to clean-up our sport and really motivated to push our sport forward.” 

FINA did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment. 

Tygart sent the following statement to CNBC via email:

“Unfortunately, we’ve seen this horror film already – where the Russian state-sponsored doping program walks free and Russia wins while the IOC and WADA leaders attempt to pull the wool over the world’s eyes by claiming Russia is ‘banned.’ All can now see this ‘ban’ once again for the farce that it is. It is barely a ‘rebrand’ and will do nothing to stop the corruption in Russia and likely will embolden others willing to win by any means. This surely has to serve as yet another call for a new, honest global anti-doping system that lives by the Olympic values and has the courage to stand up for fair sport. It’s a doomed system that allows, as it has here, one nation to make a mockery of the Games by their thirst for medals over values.”  

Of course, it is not fair to call into question any individual athlete’s performance and all are presumed innocent unless and until proven otherwise. The world including athletes from Russia has been let down and deserve better. The leaders and sport authorities in Russia who have escaped consequence have failed their athletes by perpetrating the original fraud beginning years ago and continuing to cover-up that fraud. We have called for all tests on individual athletes in all sports from all countries be made public as our U.S. athletes tests results are, but especially Russia given its proven corrupt system. The world deserves to know whether anything has really changed in Russia and how many more times at the world’s biggest stage we are going to potentially re-watch this fraud.”  

The Russian Olympic Committee did not immediately return CNBC’s request for comment.

A nurse will give a syringe to the FEMA-sponsored COVID-19 vaccination site at Valencia State College on the first day the site resumes offering the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

Paul Hennessy | LightRakete | Getty Images

CVS Health has discontinued Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose Covid-19 vaccine in its pharmacies and only makes vaccinations available in about 10% of its retail locations, the company told CNBC on Wednesday.

The drugstore chain said it made the change in the past few weeks. Customers can still get the syringes at nearly 1,000 MinuteClinic locations in 25 states, and Washington DC MinuteClinics are located in some of the company’s drug stores and provide medical care and other services such as diagnostic tests and vaccines.

CVS pharmacies will continue to offer the two-dose vaccines Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna Covid nationwide, according to CVS spokesman Mike DeAngelis. He declined to say how many pharmacies were affected by the change, however said it would help with vaccine supply to the drugstore chain.

CVS has more than 9,900 retail locations according to its 2020 annual report.

J&J did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request to comment on the change.

J & J’s vaccine was touted as a blessing by federal health officials when it was approved by the FDA in late February because it only requires one dose and can be stored at refrigerator temperatures for months. Since then, it has suffered from poor public perception of its overall effectiveness, concerns about rare side effects, and production delays.

For some Americans, concerns about the one-shot vaccine have increased with the advent of the Delta variant, which can spread more easily and cause more serious illness than the original coronavirus. Some people have even gone so far as to look for an extra dose not yet recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This week, San Francisco health officials announced they would allow patients who received a J&J vaccine to have a second vaccination from Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna.

The change by CVS will affect the availability of the recordings for many Americans. J & J’s vaccine is already not getting as much uptake in the US as mRNA vaccines.

According to the CDC, approximately 13.5 million doses of the J&J vaccine had been administered in the US by Tuesday. This compares to a combined total of 333.6 million doses for the vaccine from Pfizer and Moderna.

Dr. Paul Offit, who served on advisory boards for both the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration, said J & J’s vaccine really “suffered” after federal health officials urged states in April to suspend vaccination “as a precaution.” “While examining six women who developed a rare but severe bleeding disorder, said

The recommended break was lifted 10 days later after U.S. officials determined that the benefits of the vaccinations outweigh their risks.

“I think the public is hearing that the vaccine is going off the market for a while and it’s just hard to get past that scarlet letter,” said Offit, also director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

The company and U.S. health officials have claimed the single-use vaccine is safe and highly effective, particularly against serious illness, hospitalizations, and death. J&J reported last month that new research found that its vaccine was effective against the highly contagious Delta even eight months after being vaccinated.

– CNBC’s Nate Rattner contributed to this report.