Today's 5 Stock Ideas: * Rite Aid (RAD) \- A play on coronavirus testing. The company said Thursday it will add another 46 testing sites at its retail locations. The company will now operate about 80 sites across 12 U.S. states. * Cronos Group (CRON) \- An earnings play in the cannabis space. The company will report quarterly results on Friday before the market open. * Take-Two Interactive (TTWO) \- A sympathy play following strong earnings from Activision-Blizzard (ATVI) and EA (EA). * lululemon (LULU) \- A peer play amid upcoming earnings from Under Armour (UA) on Monday morning. * Nautilus (NLS) \- A competitor to Peloton (PTON). Peloton shares were up nearly 20% Thursday morning following quarterly results. See more from Benzinga * Benzinga Pro's Top 5 Stocks To Watch for Wed., May 6, 2020: SNY, GRUB, CLVS, NTDOY, FDS * Benzinga Pro's Top 5 Stocks To Watch For Tues., May 5, 2020: CCL, BYND, TEAM, ROKU, VNO * 'A significant breakthrough has been achieved in finding an antidote to the Corona virus' -Joint Statement By Israeli Ministry Of Defense, Israel Institute For Biological Research(C) 2020 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

Rite Aid (NYSE: RAD) will significantly expand its COVID-19 testing effort with the addition of 46 no-charge testing sites, most of which will operate through its stores’ drive-through windows, beginning May 11, 2020. Rite Aid is also expanding COVID-19 testing criteria at all testing sites to include adults who are not exhibiting any symptoms of the virus, effective immediately in accordance with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance.

The Pandemic Anti-Monopoly Act aims to suspend “risky” mergers and acquisitions during the coronavirus pandemic.

Rite Aid (RAD) closed the most recent trading day at $12.42, making no change from the previous trading session.

Jim Peters speaks to “GMA” about Rite Aid’s drive-through testing and what customers can expect from the experience as well as how they're planning to ramp up efforts.

Today, Rite Aid (NYSE: RAD) announced a new partnership with Instacart, which will allow customers to conveniently order and receive essential healthcare and grocery items delivered directly to their homes during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.

Adults with any of a now-expanded list of coronavirus symptoms can get a self-swab test at 25 stores in eight states.

Coronavirus has made good news few and far between. In the midst of so much global anxiety, it's nice to reflect on the silver linings culminating from this catastrophe. To me, that glimmer of positive news is people taking better care of themselves going forward.

Rite Aid (NYSE: RAD) has expanded COVID-19 testing criteria to include all individuals 18 and older exhibiting any of the following symptoms: fever, cough, shortness of breath, chills, repeated shaking with chills, muscle pain, headache, sore throat, new loss of taste or smell.

If you've been tracking Rite Aid (NYSE: RAD) in recent weeks, you may have noticed an alarming trend. While its competitor Walgreens Boots Alliance (NASDAQ: WBA) remained a relatively attractive value stock in April as stocks rebounded out of the worst market plunge since the Great Recession, Rite Aid has been all over the map. The company's revenue plunged significantly in the 2018 fiscal year, and things just haven't been the same since.

(Bloomberg) -- In mid-March, Pete Massaro felt like he was in over his head. The global coronavirus pandemic was spreading quickly through the U.S., and Massaro, an engineer at Verily, the life sciences unit owned by Alphabet Inc., had suddenly been tasked with heading up the company’s efforts to help speed testing people for Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus.  He now had three days to open two drive-through testing sites.It was a tall order. Massaro’s team would have to find suitable locations, staff them, source supplies and figure out how to safely do the tests. Then, adding to the stress, President Donald Trump announced out of the blue that Google, Verily’s sister unit under the Alphabet umbrella, was working on a nationwide system to coordinate testing. While Trump mistook Verily for Google, he also overpromised on the effort behind the fledgling operation, which was to start with only two counties in California. The announcement on March 13 threw Massaro’s team abruptly into the spotlight. After a sleepless weekend, Verily’s project went live on Monday March 16.  “This didn’t feel as serious until it became very serious,” said Massaro, who is director of automation at Verily. “It sort of shook us into action.”In the nearly two months since Trump’s announcement, the pressure hasn't let up.  Verily, along with local health officials, private clinics and large corporations, have scrambled to quickly open thousands of pop-up testing sites across the country in an effort to fill gaps in the American health-care system. But it’s not clear that this patchwork model of testing sites will ever reach the level of testing necessary, or the right people, to ease up on national social distancing requirements and help businesses safely reopen. As of May 4, Verily had facilitated testing for about 42,000 people. That’s a fraction of the nearly 7 million tests done across the U.S. since early January, according to The COVID Tracking Project. But that isn’t nearly up to the 500,000 tests a day experts say the U.S. will need -- at a minimum. Right now, the country is doing about half of that on the most active days. Testing is still limited to people who are ill or part of high-risk populations such as health care workers and nursing home residents. But it will need to expand to include everyone who comes into contact with a person who is positive.Even for a company like Verily, backed by Alphabet with its immense financial and human resources, getting a testing program up and running is extremely complicated. Verily is, at its core, a technology and research company, not a medical facility. Its initial proposal for Covid-19 testing was to create a website to help screen people with symptoms and send them to one of two Verily sites where they could be tested. On its first day in operation, Verily’s website was overwhelmed with applicants. The company tested just 20 people.Since then, it’s moved toward coordinating testing, rather than conducting its own tests or processing the results. Partnering with drugstore chain Rite Aid Corp. and the California Department of Health, Verily is now involved with 37 locations in nine states. Those sites can each do about 250 tests a day. Verily is also looking at mobile and walk-in testing sites to help serve people who don’t have cars or live far from a permanent site. “By scaling to more states and more individual sites, we aim to not only help individuals who need to be tested for Covid-19 but also play a supportive role in driving evidence-driven policy that will successfully manage this health crisis,” a Verily spokesperson said in an email.The U.S.  government is pushing for more testing efforts as it seeks to reopen the economy as soon as possible while hoping to avert a second wave of infection.  Last week  the White House announced that it’s expanding efforts with Rite Aid, Walmart Inc., CVS Health Corp. and Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. to open parking-lot testing facilities nationwide. The administration is helping determine the locations and is offering funding assistance. As the U.S. moves toward creating more long-term testing solutions, CVS Chief Medical Officer Troyen Brennan has said the company expects small, nimble testing sites in vans or kiosks will become more common, rather than places like a shuttered casino and college where the company opened its first testing sites. CVS is planning to expand its operations to offer testing at 1,000 locations, including in its store parking lots and drive-through windows, and eventually hopes to process 1.5 million tests a month.“This is the blunt part of the pandemic response where we put up big tents and try to keep people socially isolated,” he said in an interview last month. The next step is moving past the emergency phases and designing a system that works smoothly all over the country, Brennan said.Finding locations for testing sites can be difficult, especially with social distancing efforts enforced.“We got chased out of a lot of spots,” Massaro said. Local officials had seen news footage of huge crowds of potentially sick people queueing up for tests elsewhere and didn’t want that in their community, he said.Getting enough equipment to do the tests is also still a problem.“Every day is a struggle to match the amount of PPE and swabs you need,” Massaro said, referring to personal protective equipment for health care workers. “That’s the way the world is right now, getting those supplies in place has taken a lot of work.”Diagnostic testing is just one part of a multipronged effort to get people back to work, eating in restaurants and going to school.  Widespread contact tracing, or tracking the disease as it spreads from person to person, will need to be in place to contain new outbreaks, as will antibody tests that help public health officials judge how much a disease has spread within a community and who might be potentially immune to infection. Disagreements between President Trump and state governments over the best approach suggest it’s unlikely a truly coordinated national effort to stop the disease will come together.Still, the private efforts are pushing forward, ramping up testing as best they can on their own. Verily, for instance, has rapidly diverted company resources toward its own testing efforts, sometimes setting up sites virtually overnight.“Scaling the test sites is absolutely doable,” Massaro said. “There’s a lot of innovation happening.”For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

Rite Aid (RAD) closed the most recent trading day at $13.08, moving -1.36% from the previous trading session.

Rite Aid (RAD) reported earnings 30 days ago. What's next for the stock? We take a look at earnings estimates for some clues.

Rite Aid Corp. said Tuesday it has expanded the criteria to allow for more people to be offered self-swab testing at COVID-19, with all adults exhibiting symptoms to be eligible for screening for free.

U.S. pharmacy chains are preparing a big push for flu vaccinations when the season kicks off in October, hoping to curb tens of thousands of serious cases that could coincide with a second wave of coronavirus infections. CVS Health Corp, one of the largest U.S. pharmacies, said it is working to ensure it has vaccine doses available for an anticipated surge in customers seeking shots to protect against seasonal influenza. Rival chain Rite Aid Corp has ordered 40 percent more vaccine doses to meet the expected demand.

The ratings on Cl. AM and Cl. AJ were affirmed because the ratings are consistent with Moody's expected loss plus realized losses. Moody's rating action reflects a base expected loss of 61.1% of the current pooled balance, compared to 55.4% at Moody's last review. Moody's base expected loss plus realized losses are now 19.7% of the original pooled balance, the same as at Moody's last review.

Moody's Investors Service, ("Moody's") today appended General Nutrition Centers, Inc.'s (GNC) probability of default rating of Ca-PD with the "/LD" (limited default) designation as a result of the company's announcement[1] of entering into amendments to extend the springing maturity dates for its term loan facility, FILO credit facility and revolving credit facility until August 10, 2020. The disruption from the coronavirus and its compression of consumer demand will reduce its cash available to internally fund its $159 million convertible notes due August 2020.

Walmart continues to push forward with opening coronavirus testing sites at its stores.

The COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic is taking a terrible toll on human life, straining global healthcare systems and disrupting daily life. It's eliminating American jobs at an unprecedented pace, too.More than 36 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits between March 15 and May 8. The U.S. unemployment rate reached 14.7% in April, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin acknowledged, at its worst, that figure could reach Great Depression levels around 25%. If so, that would equate to job losses several times more than what America suffered during the Great Recession of 2007-08.But if you've suddenly found yourself on the job search, dozens of companies might be looking for you. A few sectors are seeing a huge spike in demand, and as a result, several companies are hiring thousands, tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of workers right now.Employment categories currently seeing a surge in hiring include grocery stores, food delivery services, package delivery drivers, freight trucking, cleaning services, call centers, e-commerce warehouses and logistics, nursing homes, online tutors, manufacturers of popular shelf-stable food products, pharmacies and security services.To help anyone out there trying to find a job, we've compiled a list of 37 of the largest, best-known companies hiring now in response to coronavirus-sparked demand. This list includes what types of job openings are available, how many, and direct links to job application sites. Many of these companies have declared nationwide openings, so there's a good chance that several of these places are hiring near you. SEE ALSO: 11 Things That May Soon Disappear Forever

Some stocks are best avoided. We don't wish catastrophic capital loss on anyone. Imagine if you held Rite Aid...