Wall Street opens higher as travel stocks surge on vaccine roll-out

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 77.54 points, or 0.26 per cent, at the open to 30,123.91

Wall Street's main indexes rose on Monday as travel stocks surged on the launch of a nationwide Covid-19 vaccine campaign, while Alexion Pharmaceuticals jumped on a $39 billion buyout offer from AstraZeneca in one of the year's biggest deals.

Shipments of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine fanned out to distribution points across the United States on Sunday, with injections set to begin on Monday.

The inoculations are seen as pivotal toward ultimately halting the Covid-19 pandemic, which has claimed more than a million lives around the world and brought economic activity to a halt.

"There is no question the market is very optimistic about the