I'm Carl Kintanilla. You're listening to CNBC's Tech Check. Our show is live weekdays at 11 a.m. Eastern. Listen in. We are seeing a major sell-off to end the week. Good Friday morning and welcome to Tech Check. I'm Deirdrebozo with Julia Borsson and David Faber. Carl and John have the morning off. Today, red on the screen, new COVID variance, sends stocks tumbling. Equities dropping across the board, continuing the shakiness that we have seen this week.

Travel names, airlines, cruises, hotels, they are getting crushed this morning, but are there

opportunities to buy the dip?

Plus the other side of that trade, vaccine makers and work from home stocks get a boost, Julia.

And this new variant is where we will start. Meg Terrell

has those details. Meg, what's the latest? Well, Julia, we are waiting to hear from the World

Health Organization as a special committee meets to determine whether to give this a Greek

letter variant name, which would mean it's a variant of interest or

of concern. This after researchers in South Africa have raised their level of concern about this

variant, as they've seen an increased spread in cases in that country. Now, what's particularly

concerning about this variant is that it has more than 30 mutations on the spike protein,

some of which are known and have been associated with increased transmissibility and the

potential to evade the protections from vaccines or prior infection. They call it an unusual

constellation of mutations. Still, some of these variants, their mutations aren't known yet.

And so their effect really isn't understood.

So whether that confers to more severe disease or less severe disease, that's just not known at this point.

Now, we've been checking in with the vaccine makers.

Both Moderna and Biotech and Pfizer tell us that they are already looking at this very closely and have told us they can update the vaccines very quickly if they need to. Within two weeks, Biontec says it expects lab data to tell us whether this is really an escape variant, one that can really evade the protections of the vaccines.

Guys, what we've seen before with concerning variants like beta, for example, is that the vaccines

can be less effective, but they still do provide some protection. There's also worry about

the antibody drugs, particularly regenerons and Eli Lilly's. Some, like from Veer Biotechnology, are thought to potentially be able

to hold up better here. That still will need more confirmation. Finally, the antiviral drugs that are

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