�鶹Ů��

The World Health Organization (WHO) on Sunday reported more than 183,000 new coronavirus cases globally in the last 24 hours. The number is the largest single-day increase in coronavirus cases by count, according to The Associated Press. The most new cases were recorded in the Americas, making up 116,041 of the new cases, according to the WHO report. (Klar, 6/21)

The World Health Organization reported a record increase in global coronavirus cases on Sunday, with the total rising by 183,020 in a 24-hour period. The biggest increase was from North and South America with over 116,000 new cases, according to a daily report here Total global cases are over 8.7 million with more than 461,000 deaths, according to the WHO. (6/21)

California and some other large states are experiencing a sharp climb in new coronavirus cases just weeks into a gradual economic reopening, filling hospital beds and intensive care units in an uneven surge that many public health officers predicted months ago. Last week, Texas, Florida, Arizona and at least seven other states reported their highest weekly infection-rate averages. But there is little sign that states are reconsidering politically popular decisions to open the economy. In parts of California, where more than 5,000 have died of the virus, people will be allowed to see movies in theaters this weekend for the first time since the stay-at-home orders began in early March. (Wilson, 6/21)

The first wave of coronavirus in the US isn't over. Nearly half of states are reporting a rise in new cases and some continue to break records in their daily reported cases. In the South, officials say more young people are testing positive. And across the US, experts continue to repeat warnings highlighting the need for social distancing and face covers. (Maxouris, 6/22)

More than 120,000 people have now died from coronavirus in the United States, according to an NBC News tally, which shows that over 2.2 million people have been infected across the country. The grim figure was reached hours before President Donald Trump told a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma that he wanted to "slow the testing down," on Saturday. The White House later said he was joking. (van Hagen, 6/21)

The number of deaths per day from the coronavirus in the U.S. has fallen in recent weeks to the lowest level since late March, even as states increasingly reopen for business. But scientists are deeply afraid the trend may be about to reverse itself. “For now, it’s too soon to be reassured that deaths are going down and everything’s OK,” said Dr. Cyrus Shahpar of Resolve to Save Lives, a nonprofit organization that works to prevent epidemics. (Johnson and Forster, 6/18)

President Donald Trump said Saturday he’s asked his administration to slow down coronavirus testing because robust testing turns up too many cases of COVID-19. Trump told supporters at his campaign rally that the U.S. has tested 25 million people, far more than any other country. The “bad part,” Trump said, is that widespread testing leads to logging more cases of the virus. “When you do testing to that extent, you’re going to find more people, you’re going to find more cases,” Trump said. “So I said to my people, ‘Slow the testing down, please.’ They test and they test.” (Freking, 6/21)

"You know testing is a double-edged sword," Trump said while complaining about press coverage of his handling of the virus. Claiming the US has now tested some 25 million people, he added: "Here's the bad part ... when you do testing to that extent, you're going to find more people; you're going to find more cases. So I said to my people, slow the testing down please." It was a stunning revelation given that nearly 120,000 people have died in the United States from the coronavirus and medical experts have long said that testing is critical to identifying cases, tracing them and stopping the spread of the virus. (Reston, 6/21)

Speaking on CNN's "State of the Union," top White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said Trump's comment "was tongue-in-cheek." "Come on now. Come on now. That was tongue-in-cheek. Please," Navarro said. "I know it was tongue-in-cheek. That's news for you, tongue-in-cheek."Navarro later called the comment "a light moment" for Trump "in a rally." (Smith, 6/21)

The president's remark appeared to be in jest and came during a lengthy riff on the coronavirus. But he has previously made similar remarks indicating he believes widespread testing, which is recommended by public health experts, can be problematic because it leads to higher case counts. (Samuels, 6/20)

Trump said his actions in blocking travelers from China and Europe had helped save “hundreds of thousands of lives.” But he said the “radical fake news” media had not given him credit for doing what he called “a phenomenal job” responding to the outbreak. (6/21)

He referred to the disease caused by the novel coronavirus as the “kung flu.” He called racial justice demonstrators “thugs.” He attacked efforts to take down Confederate statues as an assault on “our heritage.” And in an ominous hypothetical, he described a “very tough hombre” breaking into a young woman’s home while her husband is away. President Trump has long used his raucous rallies to road test potential campaign themes and attack lines. And while much attention on his Saturday night appearance in Tulsa focused on the sparse turnout for his first rally since the pandemic ended mass gatherings, Trump’s litany of racially offensive stereotypes sent a clear signal about how he plans to try to revive his flagging reelection effort. (Del Real, 6/21)

The president, who had been warned aboard Air Force One that the crowds at the arena were smaller than expected, was stunned, and he yelled at aides backstage while looking at the endless rows of empty blue seats in the upper bowl of the stadium, according to four people familiar with what took place. ... Exactly what went wrong was still being dissected on Sunday. But a broad group of advisers and associates acknowledged to one another that Mr. Trump had not been able to will public opinion away from fears about the spread of the coronavirus in an indoor space. (Haberman and Karni, 6/21)

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Sunday that Americans are owed answers about President Trump's claim during his rally on Saturday that he asked aides to “slow the testing down.” Pelosi called for answers from the White House coronavirus task force members who are expected to testify in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Tuesday. “The American people are owed answers about why President Trump wants less testing when experts say much more is needed,” she said in a statement. (Coleman, 6/21)

President Trump’s Saturday night remark that he asked officials to “slow the [coronavirus] testing down" sparked harsh rebukes from experts and frustration from his own staffers, who say it undercuts their efforts to reassure Americans as the disease surges around the country. The president’s comment, which came on the same day that eight states reported their highest-ever single-day case counts, drew a chorus of criticism from congressional Democrats and public health officials, who worry the president is more concerned with saving face than combating the pandemic. (Abutaleb, Telford and Dawsey, 6/21)

Trump has made similar remarks in the past, but never as explicitly and from as large a platform as on Saturday night. The White House has since said multiple times that the president was joking. "Come on. It was a light moment," Navarro said. There have been more than 2 million cases of coronavirus diagnosed in the United States, causing more than 120,000 deaths. (Choi, 6/21)

In his first mass rally in months, President Trump touched on everything from the coronavirus pandemic to military spending to former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the presumptive Democratic nominee. Here’s a fact-check. (Qiu and Epstein, 6/20)

President Donald Trump is focused on optics -- and on grievances. The realities of rally attendance sting inside a campaign focused on making the candidate proud. But Trump's heralded return to the campaign trail could be remembered for something the president said rather than how many people showed up. Trump said Saturday night in Tulsa that he has done a "phenomenal job" controlling COVID-19 -- which he at one point called by the racist term "Kung Flu" -- and complained that testing was making him look bad. (Klein and Parks, 6/22)

The White House is taking a new position on the coronavirus pandemic: a daily count of 750 deaths is a testament to the federal government’s successful pandemic response. On Wednesday, when U.S. health officials reported nearly 27,000 new Covid-19 cases, President Trump said in a television interview that the virus was “dying out.” He brushed off concerns about an upcoming rally in Tulsa, Okla., because the number of cases there is “very miniscule,” despite the state’s surging infection rate. In a Wall Street Journal interview Wednesday, Trump argued coronavirus testing was “overrated” because it reveals large numbers of new Covid-19 cases, which in turn “makes us look bad,” and suggested that some Americans who wear masks do so not only to guard against the virus, but perhaps to display their anti-Trump animus. (Facher and Joseph, 6/18)

Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said Sunday that the U.S. is doing a "great job" at reopening during the coronavirus pandemic, even as rising caseloads across the country have prompted concern from public health officials. In an interview on NBC News' "Meet the Press," Wolf praised the "dramatic steps" he said President Donald Trump took to slow the spread of the virus. And he said guidance from the White House coronavirus task force is helping put states in positions to open "in a safe and reasonable way." (Kamisar, 6/21)

Despite rising numbers of coronavirus infections, acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf said Sunday that states are reopening in “a safe and reasonable way. ”Wolf said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the White House task force worked day and night to issue guidance for a careful economic reopening: “And I think that’s what we’re seeing.” (Dugyala, 6/21)

Culture wars have been part of American politics for decades. Hot-button issues like immigration, family values and respect for the American flag can get a more powerful reaction from voters than dry debates over taxes or Medicare. But at a time when the country continues to deal with the COVID-19 crisis, an economic recession and, above all, heightened levels of racial unrest, the culture wars are changing, and Trump, who has always relished a fight over white identity and culture is struggling to adjust. (Liasson, 6/20)

A solid majority of Americans disapprove of President Donald Trump's handling of the coronavirus, even as he returned to the campaign trail with a rally Saturday night that marked his first major event since the pandemic began, a new ABC News/Ipsos poll released Sunday finds. His approval now stands at 41%, similar to the 39% approval rating he received the last time the question was asked in a poll two weeks ago. Trump's disapproval now stands at 58%, compared to 60% last time. (Karson, 6/21)

A White House adviser said Sunday that the Trump administration is preparing for a possible second wave in the coronavirus pandemic this fall, as 29 states and U.S. territories logged an increase in their seven-day average of new reported case numbers after many lifted restrictions in recent weeks. White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said Sunday that the Trump administration is preparing for a possible second wave, but he rejected the suggestion that a second wave has already taken hold. (Shepherd, 6/22)

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said Sunday that the Trump administration is preparing for a second wave of coronavirus infections. “We are filling the stockpile in anticipation of a possible problem in the fall. We are doing everything we can beneath the surface, working as hard as we possibly can,’’ Mr. Navarro told CNN. “You prepare—you prepare for what can possibly happen. I’m not saying it’s going to happen, but of course you prepare.’’ (Leary and Gershman, 6/21)

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said Sunday that the Trump administration is preparing for the possibility that a second wave of Covid-19 could hit the United States in the fall. "We are filling the stockpile in anticipation of a possible problem in the fall. We are doing everything we can beneath the surface, working as hard as we possibly can," Navarro told CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union." Asked by Tapper if the administration is preparing for a second wave in the fall, Navarro replied, "Of course." (Stracqualursi, 6/21)

Public health experts warned on Sunday that the coronavirus pandemic is not going away anytime soon. They directly contradicted President Trump’s promise that the disease that has infected more than two million Americans would “fade away” and his remarks that disparaged the value of evidence from coronavirus tests. A day after Mr. Trump told a largely maskless audience at an indoor rally in Tulsa, Okla., that he had asked to “slow down the testing” because it inevitably increased the number of confirmed coronavirus cases, infectious disease experts countered that the latest rise of infections in the United States is real, the country’s response to the pandemic is not working and rallies like the president’s risk becoming major spreading events. (Gorman, 6/21)

What’s all this talk about a “second wave” of U.S. coronavirus cases? In The Wall Street Journal last week, Vice President Mike Pence wrote in a piece headlined “There Isn’t a Coronavirus ‘Second Wave’” that the nation is winning the fight against the virus. Many public health experts, however, suggest it’s no time to celebrate. About 120,000 Americans have died from the new virus and daily counts of new cases in the U.S. are the highest they’ve been in more than a month, driven by alarming recent increases in the South and West. (Stobbe, 6/21)

The White House coronavirus task force has been out of public view as President Donald Trump has shown an urgency to move past the pandemic, downplay recent surges in Covid cases in some states, and get Americans back to work. But the nation's top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, has been warning Americans about the risk of further spread of the virus. (Howard and Stracqualursi, 6/18)

Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, said Wednesday that lockdowns meant to stem the spread of the coronavirus saved “millions of lives” in an interview... "[I]f you look at the data, now that papers have come out literally two days ago, the fact that we shut down when we did and the rest of the world did, has saved hundreds of millions of infections and millions of lives," he [said]. (Budryk, 6/18)

Vice President Mike Pence has overstated the amount of coronavirus-related medical equipment distributed by a Trump administration program on multiple occasions, according to public data from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In an Opinion article published by The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, Mr. Pence praised the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus, and singled out Project Airbridge, a public-private partnership championed by Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser. (Ballhaus, 6/19)

Right before President Donald Trump unveiled punitive measures against China on May 29, he inserted a surprise into his prepared text. “We will be today terminating our relationship with the World Health Organization,” he announced during a press conference in the Rose Garden. Most of the president’s top aides — and even some of his Cabinet secretaries — were blindsided. Just 11 days earlier, Trump had sent an ultimatum threatening to withdraw from the WHO if reforms were not enacted in 30 days. (Rotella, Bandler and Callahan, 6/20)

The National Institutes of Health said Saturday that it had stopped two clinical trials of hydroxychloroquine, the malaria drug that President Trump promoted to treat and prevent the coronavirus, one because the drug was unlikely to be effective and the other because not enough patients signed up to participate. The agency halted a trial that had aimed to enroll more than 500 patients after an independent oversight board determined that the drug did not appear to benefit hospitalized patients. The same day, the N.I.H. said it had closed another trial — of hydroxychloroquine and the antibiotic azithromycin — because only about 20 patients had enrolled in the planned study of 2,000 people. (Thomas, 6/20)

Swiss drugmaker Novartis (NOVN.S) is halting its trial of malaria drug hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) against COVID-19 after struggling to find participants, it said on Friday, as data emerged from other studies raising doubts about its efficacy. (Miller, 6/19)

Researchers backed by the European Union have requested clinical trials to study the potential of an osteoporosis drug, raloxifene, as a potential treatment for the novel coronavirus. The Exscalate4CoV research consortium virtually screened more than 400,000 molecules for possible efficacy as an antiviral treatment with a supercomputer and then analyzed 7,000 specimens that showed potential through laboratory and biological tests, according to Politico. (Budryk, 6/18)

Earlier this week, researchers in the United Kingdom announced preliminary results from a clinical trial that showed a low-cost steroid called dexamethasone appeared to lower the risk of death in patients with COVID-19. The researchers said the anti-inflammatory drug reduced the number of deaths in COVID-19 patients on ventilators or oxygen alone by one-third. (Simon, 6/20)

Bellus Health, a small Canadian drug maker, is seeking to develop a potential blockbuster medicine for chronic cough that could surpass a competing drug from Merck. Now, it’s nearing the completion of a mid-stage clinical trial that will serve as a pivotal test of whether it can pull that off. Here are five things to know about the Bellus drug, its Phase 2 study, and expectations heading into the results. (Feuerstein, 6/22)

Shares of Biogen fell Thursday after a federal court judge ruled in favor of generic drug maker Mylan in a patent case involving the biotech’s top-selling multiple sclerosis drug, Tecfidera. The U.S. District Court in West Virginia declared invalid Biogen’s so-called “514” patent protecting Tecfidera from generic competition. The ruling gives Mylan the right to launch its own version of Tecfidera within days, although Biogen said Thursday that an appeal will be filed. (Feuerstein, 6/18)

Way back in January, Thermo Fisher Scientific (TMO), the world’s largest maker of scientific tools, monitored the speedy sequencing in China of an unnamed coronavirus that would soon blaze around the world. Gearing up to produce diagnostic test kits and keep hospitals and labs supplied with the instruments to read them, the Waltham, Mass.-based company raced to deliver 5 millions tests per week by mid-April, as did two other giants in biopharma, Roche (RHHBY) and Abbott (ABT). (Cooney, 6/19)

Three-quarters of the people who got Finch Therapeutics’ microbe-based pill for potentially deadly C. difficile infections appeared to be cured, an improvement over rates for the current standard treatment, the company announced Friday. Finch’s announcement makes it the second microbiome company to announce positive results for a microbe-based drug this year. But it is the first to do so with an oral treatment; Rebiotix, announced that its Phase 3 trial for an enema-based therapy succeeded in early May. (Sheridan, 6/19)

For years, the pharmaceutical industry has maintained that the costs to develop medicines accounts for rising prices. But a new analysis contends that expenses for at least one crucial component of drug development — the clinical trials — are actually modest. (Silverman, 6/18)

The U.S. Small Business Administration and Treasury Department announced Friday that they would release a data set showing which businesses received many taxpayer-funded Paycheck Protection Program loans, walking back an earlier stance that all of the business names would remain hidden because the Trump administration considered them proprietary. The disclosures will include the names of recipients who received loans of more than $150,000 and it will also reveal a dollar range for each loan, such as whether it was between $1 million and $2 million. Precise dollar amounts will not be disclosed, the Trump administration said. (Gregg and Stein, 6/19)

The Trump administration has relented to public pressure and pledged to provide more details about which small businesses received loans from a $600 billion-plus coronavirus aid program. But government watchdogs say even more transparency is needed to get an accurate picture of who was helped, and who was left out. Under pressure from Democratic lawmakers and government watchdogs, the Treasury Department and the Small Business Administration said Friday they would disclose the names of small business owners who received $150,000 or more in forgivable loans. (D'Innocenzio, 6/21)

The coronavirus will push debt levels in the world’s richest nations up by almost 20 percentage points on average this year, credit rating agency Moody’s said on Monday, almost double the damage seen during the financial crash. A new report by Moody’s looked at 14 countries from the United States and Japan to Italy and Britain and assessed how coronavirus-induced economic slowdowns would scar their finances. (6/22)

Black workers with bachelor’s degrees continued to lose jobs in May, even as the relaxing of coronavirus restrictions led to job gains for white professionals. White college graduates gained almost 900,000 jobs in the first sign of an economic recovery between April and May, while their black counterparts lost 200,000 jobs, according to a Stateline analysis of federal employment data. (Henderson, 6/22)

An unprecedented expansion of federal aid has prevented the rise in poverty that experts predicted this year when the coronavirus sent unemployment to the highest level since the Great Depression, two new studies suggest. The assistance could even cause official measures of poverty to fall. The studies carry important caveats. Many Americans have suffered hunger or other hardships amid long delays in receiving the assistance, and much of the aid is scheduled to expire next month. Millions of people have been excluded from receiving any help, especially undocumented migrants, who often have American children. (DeParle, 6/21)

The ballot is deployed to replace the bullet, to decide peacefully who will lead, to resolve divisive issues and to empower individual citizens. Whether by voice or shards of pottery in ancient Greece, by ball, by corn and beans, lever and gear machines or touch screens, ballots were often cast in public until the United States and many other nations adopted the Australian model and allowed people to vote in private. (Tackett, 6/21)

President Donald Trump called mail-in voting the biggest threat to his reelection and said his campaign's multimillion-dollar legal effort to block expanded ballot access could determine whether he wins a second term. In an Oval Office interview Thursday focusing on the 2020 election, the president also warned his party in blunt terms not to abandon him and cast Hillary Clinton as a more formidable opponent than Joe Biden, despite Biden's commanding lead in polls. (Isenstadt, 6/19)

Joseph R. Biden Jr. voted for the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, blocking federal recognition of same-sex marriages. Two years earlier, he voted to cut off federal funds to schools that teach the acceptance of homosexuality. In 1973, Mr. Biden, in an off-handed response to a question, wondered if homosexuals in the military or government were potential security risks. But today, Mr. Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, has so completely identified himself with positions embraced by L.G.B.T.Q. leaders that his history on gay rights has faded into the mist. If he is elected president, said Chad Griffin, a political consultant and longtime gay rights leader, Mr. Biden, the former vice president, will be the “most pro-equality president we have ever had.” (Nagourney and Kaplan, 6/21)

Chief Justice John Roberts is under the microscope as the Supreme Court prepares to issue its first major ruling on abortion rights in the Trump era, which will give the clearest indication yet of the court’s willingness to revisit protections that were first granted in Roe v. Wade. The tie-breaking vote may rest with Roberts, and the case stands to test his role as the court’s new ideological center as well as his allegiance to past rulings. (Kruzel, 6/21)

The Supreme Court will be announcing a decision in a major abortion case soon, and while it's centered on one state law, another question has come up in the case that could have massive consequences for the future of abortion laws in America. June Medical Services v. Russo is a challenge to a Louisiana law requiring abortion providers have admitting privileges with a nearby hospital, an agreement between a doctor and a hospital that allows a patient to go to that hospital if they need urgent care. However, last year, shortly before the Supreme Court agreed to take on the case, Louisiana brought another question to the table, on the issue of third-party standing. (Svokos, 6/21)

When Louisiana native Kim O'Brien decided to have an abortion in 2011 because her pregnancy had severe complications, she was unaware of the difficulties she would face -- including traveling to another state -- to get the care she is legally entitled to through Roe v. Wade. Now, nine years later, O'Brien, 43, is part of an abortion case before the U.S. Supreme Court that has the potential to dramatically change the landscape of abortion access across the United States, particularly in Louisiana, where the case originates. (Kindelan, 6/21)

The Trump administration Friday moved forward with a rule that rolls back health care protections for transgender people, even as the Supreme Court barred sex discrimination against LGBT individuals on the job. The rule from the Department of Health and Human Services was published in the Federal Register, the official record of the executive branch, with an effective date of Aug. 18. That will set off a barrage of lawsuits from gay rights and women’s groups. It also signals to religious and social conservatives in President Donald Trump’s political base that the administration remains committed to their causes as the president pursues his reelection. (Alonso-Zaldivar, 6/19)

Kaiser Health News: KHN’s ‘What The Health?’: SCOTUS, Trump Collide Over Transgender Rights

Transgender people have had a head-spinning week. First, the Trump administration issued long-promised rules rolling back the Obama administration’s protections against discrimination in health care. But just three days later, the Supreme Court, in a 6-3 ruling authored by conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch, said that gay and transgender people are protected by the nation’s core employment anti-discrimination law, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. (6/18)

In law enforcement, they’re referred to as “nonlethal” tools for dealing with demonstrations that turn unruly: rubber bullets, pepper spray, batons, flash-bangs. But the now-familiar scenes of U.S. police officers in riot gear clashing with protesters at Lafayette Park across from the White House and in other cities have police critics charging that the weaponry too often escalates tensions and hurts innocent people. (Neumeister and Hays, 6/21)

Kaiser Health News: Fractured Skulls, Lost Eyes: Police Often Break Own Rules Using ‘Rubber Bullets’

Megan Matthews thought she was dying. “I thought my head was blown off,” said Matthews, 22, who was hit in the eye with a sponge-tipped projectile fired by law enforcement at a May 29 protest in Denver. “Everything was dark. I couldn’t see.” Matthews, a soft-spoken art major who lives with her mother, had gone to the demonstration against police brutality carrying bandages, water bottles and milk so she could provide first aid to protesters. (Szabo, Hancock, McCoy, Slack and Wagner, 6/19)

Thousands of people gathered for rallies and marches around the Bay Area on Friday to demonstrate against racism and police brutality and participate in a nationwide “day of action” marking the end of slavery in the United States. The biggest of the day’s events was in Oakland, where a peaceful protest along the waterfront closed the Port of Oakland for the day. A smaller but still spirited group in San Francisco urged city officials to defund the Police Department and redistribute the resources into community programs. (Bauman and King, 6/19)

The New York Police Department on Sunday suspended a police officer who was involved in the arrest of a black man in Queens, after cellphone video of the encounter showed the officer appearing to use an illegal chokehold. The encounter on the Rockaway boardwalk Sunday morning took place only days after the City Council passed a law making the use of a chokehold by the police a criminal offense. It also comes as protesters have marched against police brutality for weeks in New York City and across the nation. (Southall and Zaveri, 6/21)

A national coalition to address the challenges of the working poor released a sweeping legislative platform in a three-hour virtual rally on Saturday, including proposals to address mass incarceration, health care and wealth inequality. The policy agenda by the coalition, the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, seeks to offer a concrete road map for tackling the systemic injustices that have captured the nation’s attention in recent weeks after the police killing of George Floyd. (Eligon, 6/20)

The liberal push to "defund the police" has drawn predictable scorn from conservatives and resistance from more moderate Democrats, including the party’s presumptive presidential nominee, Joe Biden. But there’s a more significant obstacle to the growing movement on the left: Democratic politicians in the country’s deep-blue cities. Many of the cities with the highest number of law enforcement per capita on the payroll are urban areas with progressive mayors — including many women and people of color — and Democratic majorities on the city council. That means local leaders in cities like Washington, New York and Atlanta have the power to limit funding for some of the nation’s largest police forces and reallocate that money for programs to shrink the wealth gap and provide stable housing, access to jobs and health care. (McCaskill, 6/19)

The Los Angeles Board of Education next week will consider phasing out the school police, essentially eliminating the department over the next four years, a proposal that comes after more than a week of intensifying demands to do so by student advocacy groups and the leadership of the teachers union. Two other competing school board resolutions also call for a review of police operations, but not an outright termination of the department. (Blume, 6/18)

Protesters and sheriff’s deputies engaged in a tense standoff Sunday evening over the officer-involved shooting of a Gardena man, with authorities using what appeared to be tear gas to disperse a small group who had broken off from the otherwise peaceful demonstration. “We don’t want to see your children hurt,” someone announced from a sheriff’s helicopter that circled overhead, urging families to leave so that they were not exposed to pepper spray or tear gas and to protect themselves from troublemakers. (Mejia, Do and Newberry, 6/21)

The protests since the death of George Floyd are being hailed by many as a watershed moment that might ultimately bring about an end to police brutality and systemic racism. But the high hopes are also tangled up in dark fears that the current uprising will eventually die down and will end up being just one more missed opportunity. Nelba Marquez-Greene, 45, has seen it before. After her 6-year-old daughter, Ana Grace, was killed, along with 25 others, in the 2012 mass shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, she'd hoped that tragedy would mark a turning point. She poured herself into protesting and lobbying for meaningful change. (Smith, 6/21)

Determined to challenge racial stereotypes, scores of fathers gathered Sunday morning with their children, other relatives and friends at the National Museum of African American History and Culture for a walk to celebrate black fatherhood and commemorate those who were killed by police. On a cloudy and muggy Father’s Day in the nation’s capital, hundreds convened at the site on the Mall to deliver a myth-busting message. They wanted the world to know that they have pride in their families and work hard to nurture them. They shouted the names of their male ancestors, and they showed off their own children .Then they marched through the streets of Washington, as so many have in recent weeks, to demonstrate against racism and police brutality. “Black lives matter! Black dads matter! My dad matters!” the crowd chanted. (Boorstein and Anderson, 6/21)

While three of California’s biggest local police unions are taking out full-page newspaper ads promising to back reforms, other law enforcement organizations have pumped more than $2 million into a November ballot measure that would partially overturn laws that some call models for reforming the criminal justice system. Police unions have contributed more than half the nearly $4 million raised for the Reducing Crime and Keeping California Safe Act campaign. The ballot initiative would roll back provisions in three measures that were aimed at reducing the state’s prison population, including Proposition 47, a voter-approved 2014 initiative that reclassified several felony crimes as misdemeanors. (Garofoli, 6/18)

Kaiser Health News: Injured And Uninsured, Protesters Get Medical Aid From LA Doctor

It wasn’t Deon Jones’ fractured cheekbone or even his concussion that most worried Dr. Amir Moarefi. He was most concerned that Jones could go blind. “He sustained a rubber bullet direct injury to the cheek, which broke his zygomatic bone, which is your cheekbone, literally about an inch and a half from his eye and about another inch and a half from his temple,” Moarefi said. The death of George Floyd led to a national wave of protests against police brutality and racism. Law enforcement’s attempts to control impassioned, mostly peaceful crowds has included tactics often deemed “less than lethal,” such as tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets. (Fortier, 6/19)

Coronavirus infections have rapidly increased among Latinos in the past two months, outpacing other racial and ethnic minorities. Latinos make up a disproportionate share of the cases in nearly every state, and are more than four times higher than their share of the population in some states. That’s raising alarms for doctors and public health officials as they see hospitalizations on the rise. The doctors "had never seen such a large number of people who speak Spanish in the intensive care unit,” said Dr. Viviana Martinez-Bianchi, a Duke professor and physician who has tracked hospitalizations of Latino patients in Durham County, N.C. Although they were young to middle-aged — a group that is not usually at high risk for serious illness, many patients were very ill and had delayed seeking help, she said. (Barron-Lopez, 6/18)

A Hispanic immigrant working at a fast-food restaurant in North Carolina is rushed to the hospital after she contracts COVID-19. A sickened Honduran woman in Baltimore with no health insurance or immigration status avoids the doctor for two weeks and finally takes a cab to the hospital and ends up on oxygen. As the coronavirus spreads deeper across America, it’s ravaging Latino communities from the suburbs of the nation’s capital to the farm fields of Florida to the sprawling suburbs of Phoenix and countless areas in between. (Cano, Snow and Anderson, 6/19)

California is among the more than a dozen states that have seen a rise in coronavirus cases as cities continue to reopen amid the pandemic. Medical professionals like Dr. Don García in Los Angeles are sounding the alarm over one group in particular — the disproportionate number of Latinos who have contracted the disease. (Acevedo, 6/19)

Under the scorching Florida sun, Adriana Enrique picks fresh fruit and vegetables every day. Bearing the responsibility of being the only provider for her family and being deemed by the federal government as “essential," Enrique is among a demographic that new data suggests is bearing a disproportionate share of coronavirus cases. (Romero, 6/19)

Four months into a pandemic that has disproportionately devastated Black, Latino, and Native American communities, leading minority health experts within the Trump administration remain conspicuously quiet and have conducted minimal outreach to communities of color. The directors of two federal minority health offices, as well as the government’s $336 million health disparities research institute, have not conducted TV or radio interviews since the pandemic began in early 2020. None has testified before Congress, or appeared at a White House coronavirus task force meeting or public press briefing. (Facher, 6/22)

In recent weeks, there has been increased recognition of the profound health disparities unmasked by covid-19. A new Brookings Institution report finds that in some age groups, death rates for African Americans and Hispanic Americans are as much as six times higher than for white people. Policymakers are rightly discussing the complexity of the overlapping crises of racism and covid-19, but we don’t have time to wait. Here are eight concrete steps we can take now to reduce the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on people of color. (Leana S. Wen, 6/19)

The argument began as soon as Charlie Mai and his brother, Henry, announced their plans to attend a Black Lives Matter protest that evening in D.C. Their father was not having it. Glenn Mai, a retired FBI agent, had been raised in Dallas by Chinese immigrants who had taught him that he would succeed if he just worked hard. “Chinese culture is very much about working within the system,” Glenn, 54, said, and during decades in law enforcement, he’d come to believe the system worked. (Trent, 6/21)

As calls for racial justice continue on Boston streets, conversations have shifted to what’s next. That’s true inside hospitals as well, where the life-long effects of racism play out every day. (Bebinger, 6/19)

Chicago's largest hospitals and clinics officially named racism a public health crisis today. In an open letter—coincidentally shared on Juneteenth, a holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the U.S.—36 organizations committed to improving health equity across the city. In addition to supporting programs that help people of color find healthcare jobs, each organization is pledging to provide anti-racism training for staff and create new policies that promote equity, among other commitments. (Goldberg, 6/21)

In the weeks before the competitive Democratic primary in Virginia's 5th Congressional District, candidate Cameron Webb wasn't sleeping much. "I'm in the four to five-hour range," he said in a phone interview. But it wasn't nerves. It was the week of night shifts he'd just wrapped up at the hospital. (Haslett, 6/20)

The test kits for detecting the nation’s earliest cases of the novel coronavirus failed because of “likely” contamination at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, whose scientists did not thoroughly check the kits despite “anomalies” during manufacturing, according to a new federal review. The review, conducted by two Department of Health and Human Services lawyers, also said there was “time pressure’’ at the CDC to launch testing, and “lab practices that may have been insufficient to prevent the risk of contamination.’’ The lawyers, from the department’s general counsel’s office, were not named. (Willman, 6/20)

Since May, the Trump administration has paid a fledgling Texas company $7.3 million for test tubes needed in tracking the spread of the coronavirus nationwide. But, instead of the standard vials, Fillakit LLC has supplied plastic tubes made for bottling soda, which state health officials say are unusable. The state officials say that these “preforms,” which are designed to be expanded with heat and pressure into 2-liter soda bottles, don’t fit the racks used in laboratory analysis of test samples. Even if the bottles were the right size, experts say, the company’s process likely contaminated the tubes and could yield false test results. (McSwane and Gabrielson, 6/18)

In the wake of the massive turnout at anti-racism demonstrations around the country, public health officials are encouraging protesters to get tested for the coronavirus. As purely precautionary testing has become more common, some insurance companies are arguing they can't just pay for everyone who's concerned about their risk to get tested. Lynne Cushing of Nashville, Tenn., says she had been pretty strict about social distancing until the recent protests, which she felt compelled to attend. (Farmer, 6/19)

Kaiser Health News: As Problems Grow With Abbott’s Fast COVID Test, FDA Standards Are Under Fire

In mid-May, the Food and Drug Administration issued a rare public warning about an Abbott Laboratories COVID-19 test that for weeks had received high praise from the White House because of its speed: Test results could be wrong. The agency at that point had received 15 “adverse event reports” about Abbott’s ID NOW rapid COVID test suggesting that infected patients were wrongly told they did not have the coronavirus, which had led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans. The warning followed multiple academic studies showing higher “false negative” rates from the Abbott device, including one from New York University researchers who found it missed close to half of the positive samples detected by a rival company’s test. (Pradhan, 6/22)

Verily Life Sciences, a sister company of Google, scrambled to introduce a free coronavirus-screening site for the public and set up testing locations in March after President Trump made an off-the-cuff announcement about the program. It had a rocky start, but has since helped more than 220,000 people get tested in 13 states. Now, the company has its sights set on employers. It is introducing a health screening and analytics service for businesses trying to safely reopen during the pandemic. (Singer, 6/18)

A weekly coronavirus testing regime using a “no-swab” saliva test is being trialled in Southampton, southern England, and could result in a simpler and quicker way to detect outbreaks of the virus, the British government said on Monday. “Saliva testing could potentially make it even easier for people to take coronavirus tests at home, without having to use swabs,” said Health Secretary Matt Hancock. “This trial will also help us learn if routine, at-home testing could pick up cases of the virus earlier.” (6/22)

Kaiser Health News: Easy To Say ‘Get Tested.’ Harder To Do. Here’s How.

Will Bondurant decided to get tested for COVID-19 after attending three racial justice demonstrations over a five-day period in San Francisco, where he lives. The first, on June 3, “was the scariest and most risky from the point of view of COVID infection,” said Bondurant, 31. Although most wore masks, participants were jammed in, unable at times to maintain the recommended 6-foot distance, he said. Bondurant did not have any COVID symptoms but went for the test because he had a meeting scheduled the following weekend with a friend in his late 70s. (Wolfson and Galewitz, 6/22)

Roughly half of the patients Zufall Health Center serves in New Jersey are uninsured. But requirements to get federal payment for COVID-19 testing and treatment for those patients have given Zufall CEO Eva Turbiner pause. New Jersey has the second-highest number of COVID-19 deaths in the country, but the state hasn't yet taken steps to ensure COVID-19 testing and treatment for uninsured patients are readily reimbursable by Medicaid. Healthcare providers can apply for federal reimbursement, but the claim forms ask for Social Security numbers that Zufall doesn't always collect. (Cohrs ,6/19)

The Trump administration has yet to distribute nearly one-third of the funds provided by Congress for coronavirus testing and contact tracing, leading Senate Democrats say. The Department of Health and Human Services has neither spent nor detailed how it plans to spend $8 billion out of a $25 billion pot to be used for stemming the virus’s spread through diagnostic and antibody testing and contact tracing, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) charge. The funds were provided as part of the fourth pandemic relief bill passed by Congress at the end of April. (Winfield Cunningham, 6/21)

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission made it clear that employers can't force workers to take COVID-19 antibody tests, as businesses begin grappling with how to safely reopen amid the pandemic. The federal group that enforces anti-discrimination laws said in a new post on Wednesday, however, that business leaders can require workers to take a viral test to determine whether they are actively infected. (Flaherty and Thorbecke, 6/18)

New York City’s ambitious contact-tracing program, a crucial initiative in the effort to curb the coronavirus, has gotten off to a worrisome start just as the city’s reopening enters a new phase on Monday, with outdoor dining, in-store shopping and office work resuming. The city has hired 3,000 disease detectives and case monitors, who are supposed to identify anyone who has come into contact with the hundreds of people who are still testing positive for the virus in the city every day. But the first statistics from the program, which began on June 1, indicate that tracers are often unable to locate infected people or gather information from them. (Otterman, 6/21)

Michael Osterholm, director for the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said it is “wrong” to hear that Trump administration officials don’t want to have coronavirus testing in the U.S. “To hear the fact that, we don't want to do testing, is wrong. Absolutely, we should be testing as much as possible,” Osterholm said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” (Klar, 6/21)

There has been an exponential increase in fatalities and catastrophic injuries among healthcare workers, which has nearly doubled the number of Occupational Health and Safety Administration investigations, according to a Modern Healthcare analysis. More than 130 of the 202 OSHA investigations at hospitals, nursing homes, doctor's offices, home health agencies and rehabilitation centers in April were related to fatalities and catastrophes, up more than 4,300% from three out of 117 investigations in April 2019, an analysis of federal and state OSHA data revealed. (Kacik, 6/19)

House Democrats unveiled this week that their more than $1.5 trillion infrastructure proposal includes $30 billion for hospitals and other healthcare providers. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said she expects the proposal will pass the House before July 4. The White House has expressed interest in securing a major infrastructure package before the 2020 election, but many Senate Republicans aren't supportive of the idea. (Cohrs, 6/19)

It has been five months since the novel coronavirus started infecting Americans. Since then, the U.S. has lost more than 119,000 people to the sickness it causes — COVID-19. So many have been touched by the deaths of family and friends. Here we remember just a few of those who continued working during the pandemic because their jobs called for it and who, ultimately, lost their lives. (6/22)

Kaiser Health News: Lost On The Frontline

A mason who helped repair hospital ceilings, floors, soap dispensers and sharps collectors. An unflappable nurse who loved playing tour guide. These are the people just added to “Lost on the Frontline,” a special series from The Guardian and KHN that profiles health care workers who died of COVID-19. (6/19)

Even as the rate of new coronavirus cases has ebbed across Massachusetts, medical workers say they still face shortages of gear to protect themselves, their families, and their patients. Many are taking matters into their own hands, while worrying that a second wave of infections, which some experts consider likely, would again send them into crisis mode. (Martin, 6/21)

On a chilly afternoon in April, Los Angeles police found an old, disoriented man crumpled on a Koreatown sidewalk. Several days earlier, RC Kendrick, an 88-year-old with dementia, was living at Lakeview Terrace, a nursing home with a history of regulatory problems. His family had placed him there to make sure he got round-the-clock care after his condition deteriorated and he began disappearing for days at a time. But on April 6, the nursing home deposited Mr. Kendrick at an unregulated boardinghouse — without bothering to inform his family. Less than 24 hours later, Mr. Kendrick was wandering the city alone. (Silver-Greenberg and Harris, 6/21)

As more data comes in on nursing homes across the country, the number of COVID-19 cases and suspected cases continues to climb, as the overall death toll figures somehow drop, according to the latest data shared by CMS Thursday. The newest data, current as of June 7, shows that there are more than 107,000 confirmed cases, more than 71,000 suspected cases and just shy of 29,500 COVID-19 deaths in Medicare and Medicaid nursing homes. (Christ, 6/19)

Mark Shaver hadn't seen his 96-year-old mother Betty in months when he hit a breaking point and decided he had to see her. Shaver lived in South Carolina and Betty was in a nursing home in Morgantown, W. Va., when COVID-19 outbreaks began sweeping across the nation. By early March, Gov. Jim Justice requested that nursing homes in the state restrict visitors, blocking any real chance Shaver would have to see his mom in-person. (Martin and Silva, 6/22)

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) called criticism of his handling of COVID-19 patients being sent back into nursing homes "a shiny object" and "pure politics" during an interview with New York's WAMC-AM on Thursday. The interview comes as ProPublica reported earlier this week that more than 6,000 New York nursing home residents have died as a result of the novel coronavirus, about 6 percent of the more than 100,000 nursing residents in the state. (Concha, 6/18)

Atlanta-based SavaSeniorCare is one of five for-profit nursing homes chains targeted in a congressional investigation launched last week to explore the coronavirus crisis in the nation’s long-term care facilities. Rep. James Clyburn, chairman of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, sent Sava’s CEO Jerry Roles a 10-page letter asking detailed questions about the company’s operations and its handling of the pandemic. (Teegardin, 6/21)

State data released this week shows nursing home residents account for one in three of Michigan’s COVID-19-related deaths. According to the latest data, the deaths of 1,976 nursing home residents and 24 employees at facilities across the state were coronavirus-related. Service Employees International Union Healthcare Michigan held the memorial and called for better working conditions at nursing homes. (Anderson, 6/19)

Mask wearing has become a topic of fierce debate in the United States. People opposed to mask mandates have staged protests, and one local health official in Orange County, Calif., quit her job after receiving a death threat for a mask order. Not long after, California Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered Californians to wear face coverings in public. Meanwhile in Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott recently allowed some counties to impose mask mandates on businesses, despite an earlier order forbidding penalties on individuals for not wearing masks. (Godoy, 6/21)

At the BOK Center, where thousands gathered for President Donald Trump's campaign rally Saturday, few of the president's supporters wore masks inside as they stood shoulder to shoulder. Barbara Baccari, 59, of Tulsa, told NBC News that event organizers had asked attendees to put on their masks before entering the arena, but said they were free to remove them once inside. "I think the CDC and the Democrats are escalating the virus. I know it's real, but I think they skew it. I’m not sure masks are even going to protect you," Baccari said, adding that she did not keep her mask on. (Egan, 6/20)

The mayor of Nevada City, in a controversial social media post, suggested that Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recent order for all Californians to wear masks when in public was not legitimate. Mayor Reinette Senum wrote Saturday morning that Newsom’s orders could not be enforced by law, and that no action can legally be taken against offenders. (Moleski, 6/20)

California officials on Thursday mandated mask-wearing in public with few exceptions. "Science shows that face coverings and masks work,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement. “They are critical to keeping those who are around you safe, keeping businesses open and restarting our economy.” (Romero, 6/18)

Airline passengers are encountering a patchwork of rules when it comes to wearing masks on planes and in airports, creating confusion and frustration among customers and companies alike. With no federal law for wearing masks on planes or in airports, airlines are setting their own policies. Some have removed non-compliant passengers and banned them from future flights, as was the case earlier this week when American Airlines removed a pro-Trump activist. (Gangitano, 6/21)

A conservative activist who is an ardent supporter of President Trump was barred by American Airlines on Thursday, one day after he was removed from a flight from La Guardia Airport to Dallas-Fort Worth Airport after he refused to wear a mask. The passenger, Brandon Straka, recorded his exchange with an airline employee on Wednesday after boarding the plane and shared it with several media outlets. (Vigdor, 6/18)

Health experts are worried about whether coronavirus vaccines under development will adequately protect the elderly, sparking efforts to make sure there are shots that can help the vulnerable group. Older adults are especially susceptible to infection by the virus, and at higher risk of falling critically ill and dying, at least partly because their immune systems have lost strength with age. Public-health officials and scientists are concerned that a weakened immune system could also limit the effectiveness of a coronavirus vaccine, just as it has sapped the power of other shots in older people. (Hopkins, 6/21)

On a day in mid-March — as the pandemic began to grip the world — a box from Oxford University arrived at a lab south of Rome. In it, packed with dry ice, were several tiny vials. Each one held a few drops of “seed stock,” a starter kit for the production of a potential vaccine for the novel coronavirus. The company’s job was to turn a few droplets into an amount large enough for 13,000 people — a sufficient quantity to perform ­large-scale trials unfolding on several continents. (Harlan and Pitrelli, 6/20)

Since the onset of the coronavirus outbreak, a vaccine has been widely regarded as the best path toward reopening society and returning to normalcy. Scientists have worked around-the-clock to develop a vaccine even entering late-stage human studies at record speed for the disease that has killed more than 430,000 people worldwide. Yet, despite these Herculean efforts, scientists say a one-time cure-all is unlikely. (Nunez, 6/19)

Chinese researchers have started a second phase human trial of a possible coronavirus vaccine, the Institute of Medical Biology at Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences (IMBCAMS) said on Sunday, in efforts to further assess effectiveness and safety. About a dozen vaccines are in different stages of human tests globally, as the World Health Organization warns the coronavirus pandemic is accelerating and “the world is in a new and dangerous phase.” (6/21)

On a chilly afternoon in April, Los Angeles police found an old, disoriented man crumpled on a Koreatown sidewalk. Several days earlier, RC Kendrick, an 88-year-old with dementia, was living at Lakeview Terrace, a nursing home with a history of regulatory problems. His family had placed him there to make sure he got round-the-clock care after his condition deteriorated and he began disappearing for days at a time. But on April 6, the nursing home deposited Mr. Kendrick at an unregulated boardinghouse — without bothering to inform his family. Less than 24 hours later, Mr. Kendrick was wandering the city alone. (Silver-Greenberg and Harris, 6/21)

As more data comes in on nursing homes across the country, the number of COVID-19 cases and suspected cases continues to climb, as the overall death toll figures somehow drop, according to the latest data shared by CMS Thursday. The newest data, current as of June 7, shows that there are more than 107,000 confirmed cases, more than 71,000 suspected cases and just shy of 29,500 COVID-19 deaths in Medicare and Medicaid nursing homes. (Christ, 6/19)

Mark Shaver hadn't seen his 96-year-old mother Betty in months when he hit a breaking point and decided he had to see her. Shaver lived in South Carolina and Betty was in a nursing home in Morgantown, W. Va., when COVID-19 outbreaks began sweeping across the nation. By early March, Gov. Jim Justice requested that nursing homes in the state restrict visitors, blocking any real chance Shaver would have to see his mom in-person. (Martin and Silva, 6/22)

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) called criticism of his handling of COVID-19 patients being sent back into nursing homes "a shiny object" and "pure politics" during an interview with New York's WAMC-AM on Thursday. The interview comes as ProPublica reported earlier this week that more than 6,000 New York nursing home residents have died as a result of the novel coronavirus, about 6 percent of the more than 100,000 nursing residents in the state. (Concha, 6/18)

Atlanta-based SavaSeniorCare is one of five for-profit nursing homes chains targeted in a congressional investigation launched last week to explore the coronavirus crisis in the nation’s long-term care facilities. Rep. James Clyburn, chairman of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, sent Sava’s CEO Jerry Roles a 10-page letter asking detailed questions about the company’s operations and its handling of the pandemic. (Teegardin, 6/21)

State data released this week shows nursing home residents account for one in three of Michigan’s COVID-19-related deaths. According to the latest data, the deaths of 1,976 nursing home residents and 24 employees at facilities across the state were coronavirus-related. Service Employees International Union Healthcare Michigan held the memorial and called for better working conditions at nursing homes. (Anderson, 6/19)

Hospitals are using dramatic language in their effort to convince Congress to allow more time to repay loans meant to sustain them during the pandemic—arguing, for example, that 25% of hospitals' total payments will vanish once repayment starts. But for many, especially large, well-capitalized companies, the situation isn't as dire as their trade groups would have lawmakers believe. (Bannow, 6/19)

The global consulting firm McKinsey, which has been tapped by the Department of Health and Human Services to help manage and audit billions of dollars in coronavirus relief for hospitals, has worked for at least 10 hospitals and chains that have received federal recovery funds, according to tax records and other public disclosures. McKinsey was hired to help manage the program and establish audit procedures for the funds, according to the contract award, which was granted in late April and is worth $4.9 million. (Lippman and Severns, 6/20)

More providers are taking part in Medicare's largest bundled-payment model relative to its predecessor, but the results of the demonstration probably won't carry over to a larger or different group of providers because participants choose whether and how to participate, CMS' Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation said in a report Friday. According to CMMI, about 22% of eligible hospitals took part in Bundled Payments for Care Improvement Advanced during the first six months of the demonstration. That rate dropped to 13% for BPCI Advanced-eligible hospitals that participated in the earlier BPCI model. (Brady, 6/19)

The COVID-19 pandemic is producing even more evidence that proposed changes to Stark Law and Anti-Kickback Statute regulations can't come soon enough. But the rule changes, which are designed to encourage better care, could be delayed, also thanks to the coronavirus outbreak. For years, the healthcare industry has warned regulators that providers are hesitant to engage in value-based arrangements or coordinate care, in part, because they're worried about running afoul of federal fraud and abuse rules. So federal officials in October proposed a wide range of changes to physician self-referral and safe harbor regulations to improve care coordination and encourage providers to take part in value-based arrangements, among other things. (Brady, 6/22)

Gov. Ron DeSantis acknowledged on Saturday that the rising number of new Covid-19 cases in Florida cannot be explained away by an increase in testing, and announced plans to step up enforcement of social distancing practices in bars and nightclubs. “Even with the testing increasing or being flat, the number of people testing positive is accelerating faster than that,” DeSantis told reporters during a briefing at the state Capitol. “You know that's evidence that there's transmission within those communities.” (Sarkissian, 6/20)

Florida continued to set record-breaking numbers of COVID-19 cases, with an additional 4,049 new cases reported Saturday. There were an additional 40 Florida resident deaths related to COVID-19, according to the state's Department of Health. There are now a total of 93,797 Florida cases with 3,144 deaths related to COVID-19, the Department of Health reported. (Torres, 6/20)

Florida: The state, which broadly began the second phase of its reopening June 5, including movie theaters, bars and other entertainment venues, hit another record number of daily cases, according to data released by its health department Saturday morning. Florida’s total cases have climbed to more than 93,000, and more than 3,100 people have died. The share of people testing positive has also climbed, to about 10% this week from about half that the week prior. Gov. Ron DeSantis said at a press conference that confirmed positive cases were increasingly concentrated among younger people, who were less likely to have severe symptoms, and that the state had ample hospital beds to accommodate a higher number of infections. (Kusisto, 6/20)

Florida is continuing to move forward with its reopening plans, despite having a week of record-breaking spikes in coronavirus cases. And now, one group of experts is warning that the state "has all the makings of the next large epicenter." (Cohen, 6/18)

Less than a quarter of hospital beds for intensive care patients are now available in Florida as the state grapples with a spike in coronavirus cases, data provided by the state revealed on Thursday. There were 1,371 adult ICU spots available out of 6,064 statewide, which is about 22.6 percent, the Agency for Health Care Administration showed in an update posted at 3:32 p.m. ET. (Li, 6/18)

At a congressional hearing in mid-May, a recently ousted federal health official pulled back the curtain on the colossal missteps that had undercut the federal response to the pandemic. Rick Bright had filed a whistleblower complaint charging that he was removed from his post as the deputy assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the Department of Health and Human Services when he urged the vetting of hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malaria drug Trump touted as a cure for COVID-19. (Williams, Morel, Lagos, Switalski, Lewis and Harris, 6/19)

A dozen states have seen record highs of new COVID-19 cases since Friday, an ABC News analysis has found. The states that saw the increase were Florida, Texas, Utah, South Carolina, Nevada, Georgia, Missouri, Montana, Arizona, California, Tennessee and Oklahoma, according to the analysis of state-released data compiled by the COVID Tracking Project. (Deliso and Mitropoulos, 6/21)

The pressure is on for local leaders to respond to regional Covid-19 spikes and records, and some are turning to mask mandates. Statewide, Californians will be required to wear face coverings in indoor public places, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Thursday. To the north, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown announced a similar mandate for seven counties beginning June 24. Similar measures are being considered in North Carolina and Arizona, where Scottsdale Mayor Jim Lane is developing an ordinance with a legal team. (Holcombe, 6/19)

Former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb warned Sunday that coronavirus outbreaks in several states, including Texas, Florida and Arizona, could overwhelm local health care systems if not properly handled. “We’re seeing a resurgence in the south and the southeast, they really never got rid of their epidemics,” Gottlieb said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “A challenge that was once facing some regions of the country is now facing every region of the country, and the worry is they’re going to tip into exponential growth.” (Budryk, 6/21)

William Boyd was at the funeral Saturday morning for a relative who had died after contracting the new coronavirus when he got the call with the news. His brother had also passed away from COVID-19. “The virus is real. It’s real. If they don’t know it’s real, they can come and walk with me to the cemetery,” said Boyd, the owner of a Montgomery car lot. (Chandler, 6/21)

Infectious disease experts expressed alarm Sunday over the pace of new coronavirus infections in several states in the South and Southwest, with one likening the spread in parts of the country to a “forest fire.” At the same time, President Trump’s surrogates insisted he was joking on Saturday when he told rally-goers he had ordered a testing slowdown because the results painted an overly dire picture of the pandemic. (King, 6/21)

The Navajo Department of Health has reported 69 new cases of coronavirus on the Navajo Nation and four more known deaths. That pushes the totals to 6,963 positive COVID-19 cases and 334 known deaths as of Saturday night. Tribal officials also said preliminary reports from 11 health care facilities indicate about 3,470 people have recovered from COVID-19 with more reports still pending. (6/21)

Controversy is stirring in Oklahoma Indian country over decisions made regarding the distribution of about $1.9 billion in federal coronavirus relief funds designated for 38 Oklahoma tribes. The Shawnee Tribe, which is headquartered in Miami, filed a federal lawsuit against U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Thursday, alleging the tribe was shortchanged about $6 million in CARES ACT relief funds. (Ellis, 6/21)

When Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey extended the state's stay-at-home order into mid-May, Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb countered that the policy had gone on long enough. "The numbers don't justify the actions anymore," he told The Arizona Republic in early May. "Three hundred deaths is not a significant enough number to continue to ruin the economy." Lamb said he would talk to residents in the jurisdiction near Phoenix about complying with the order. But he wouldn't criminally enforce it. (Kaur, 6/18)

Days before President Trump's first rally in over three months, on June 20 in Tulsa, city officials and politicians are worried, as the number of COVID-19 cases in Tulsa County rise to record levels. While Trump supporters lined up with their lawn chairs and umbrellas outside the BOK Center in Tulsa, the city's Republican mayor said he will not be attending President Trump's rally on Saturday. (Sganga, Bidar and Watson, 6/18)

As President Trump prepares to hold his first major election rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, this weekend, health experts have issued strong warnings about the coronavirus risks posed to attendees as all of Oklahoma sees a rise in cases. Gov. Kevin Stitt rolled back the state's coronavirus precautions for businesses on May 1, when the state's health department said there were 3,748 total cases. As of June 18, there were 8,908 confirmed cases throughout Oklahoma, according to the health department. (Pereira, 6/18)

As Arizona contends with a record spike in coronavirus cases amid the state's move to reopen, one grief-stricken daughter is pleading for the public and government leaders to take safety more seriously. Lina Washington's father, Robert Washington, died of COVID-19 a week ago, and barely a month after returning to his job as a security guard at the Gila River Hotels & Casinos - Lone Butte in Chandler, Arizona. "My dad called me on May 16 fearing for his safety," she tweeted on Sunday. "He said no one was social distancing and few wore masks." (Gibson, 6/18)

Los Angeles County public health officials on Sunday reported 1,784 new cases of the coronavirus and 11 related deaths. The county now has recorded more than 83,000 cases of the virus and over 3,120 deaths. The continued rise in new cases came amid the first weekend of more businesses sectors reopening, as bars, card rooms and some personal care services were given the green light to resume operations Friday, provided they take certain precautions. (Wigglesworth, 6/21)

From Macy’s “Miracle on 34th Street” store to the World Trade Center’s office towers, New York City hits a key point Monday in trying to rebound from the nation’s deadliest coronavirus outbreak. For the first time in three months, New Yorkers will be able to dine out, though only at outdoor tables. Shoppers can once again browse in the city’s destination stores. Shaggy heads can get haircuts. Cooped-up kids can finally climb playground monkey bars instead of apartment walls. Office workers can return to their desks, though many won’t yet. (Peltz, 6/22)

New York City, the original epicenter of the U.S. coronavirus pandemic, has seen enough progress in its battle against the virus that phase 2 of reopening is slated for next week, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio said. Cuomo said in his daily briefing on Thursday he will officially decide Friday on the reopening, but all indicators point to New York City entering the next stage. (Pereira, 6/18)

New York City will allow companies to reopen their offices on Monday after a three-month lockdown from the pandemic. Few employees seem ready or willing to go back. Most companies are taking a cautious approach. Some are keeping offices closed, while others are opening them at reduced occupancy and allowing employees to decide if they prefer to keep working from home. Mary Ann Tighe, chief executive for the tri-state region at real-estate services firm CBRE Group Inc., said many New York City clients don’t plan on being fully back in the office before Labor Day. And maybe only then if schools have reopened. (Putzier, 6/21)

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said at his coronavirus briefing Thursday that people in states with rising coronavirus cases could get on a plane and land in New York City, "and this could start all over again." "You look at what's going on across the nation and people should be concerned," he said. "You're seeing the virus go up across this country." (Baldwin, 6/18)

Parking garages are hoping for a surge in business as tens of thousands of office workers return to Manhattan during New York City’s reopening, which is expected to enter its second phase Monday. About 10% of white-collar workers, or 130,000 people, could be back by mid-August, according to a survey of firms conducted by the Partnership for New York City, a business group that represents some of the city’s largest private-sector employers. (Berger, 6/21)

As New York City looks to reinvent itself for the post-pandemic era, lower Manhattan offers a few lessons on how to recover from disaster. Once largely a 9-to-5 financial center, the district has changed since the Sept 11, 2001, terrorist attacks into a walkable neighborhood that has more than doubled its residential population. Officials’ determination to transform the area made it more resilient to the sort of economic shocks the entire city now faces: widespread job losses and the threat of people leaving because they don’t feel safe (back then because of terrorism, now because of disease). (King, 6/20)

More than 100 days ago, buildings across New York shut their doors and companies sent their workers home. As the coronavirus pandemic swept across the city, lockdown orders left offices dormant, stores shuttered and streets and sidewalks all but abandoned. On Monday, two weeks after it began easing restrictions, New York City marks another major milestone when it enters a much larger reopening phase, allowing thousands of offices to welcome back employees for the first time since March. (Gold and Closson, 6/22)

After three months off, D.C. residents, apparently, are ready to hit the gym.The 6 a.m. slots at all five Vida Fitness locations are completely booked for Monday, said founder David von Storch, whose facilities are among the businesses that will reopen then as the District joins the rest of the region in the second phase of its coronavirus recovery plan. Phase 2, announced last week by Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D), will also bring the return of indoor dining, retail, camps and worship services — but with strict social distancing requirements. (Chason and Shapira, 6/21)

Coronavirus cases in Texas have surged, and childcare centers are no exception. As of Friday, 410 total cases of coronavirus — 267 staff members and 143 children — had been reported at 318 licensed child care operations across the state, according to the Texas Health and Human Services Commission. That’s a sharp increase from the 339 cases the agency reported Thursday and the 210 it shared with KVUE-TV in Austin on Monday. (Hoyt, 6/19)

Starting Saturday, businesses must start requiring customers and everyone on the premises to wear a mask to contain the spread of COVID-19 as cases continue climbing. Dallas County commissioners voted 3-2 Friday to pass the mask order — which goes into effect at 11:59 p.m. Friday — after a fiery debate. The order follows similar rules put in place in other parts of the state earlier this week. Seven of Texas’ 10 most-populous counties have put face mask orders in place on businesses. (Manuel, 6/19)

For Black-owned businesses, the hurdles are even higher as the economy reopens, especially given the racial wealth gap, the higher unemployment rate during the crisis among African Americans and the lack of access that many minority businesses have to traditional loans, even including the new Payment Protection Program. Already some small businesses lost the battle. About 3.3 million small businesses shut their doors, or 22%, from February until April, according to a report by the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. (Tompor, 6/19)

After five months of tough negotiations, unionized residents, interns and fellows at Michigan Medicine have overwhelmingly ratified a three-year contract that its executive director says is the best since 2013, when the state's right-to-work law went into effect. The contract for 1,300 staffers negotiated with the University of Michigan House Officers Association includes a total salary increase of 8.66 percent along with a 10 percent base pay increase in November they can take as lump sum payment or toward their retirement plan to encourage savings, according to union and hospital officials. (Greene, 6/20)

A new program at a local public defender office will allow thousands of people who can't afford an attorney in Wayne County to get legal help before their first day in court. Leaders with the Neighborhood Defender Service in Detroit say they hope their community intake program announced Friday, on Juneteenth, will level the playing field for their indigent clients, 70% of whom are Black. (Jackson, 6/19)

A federal judge in Kalamazoo has asked the Michigan Supreme Court to clarify Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's emergency powers during the coronavirus pandemic. The request from U.S. District Judge Paul Maloney could cause Michigan's high court to reconsider its earlier rebuff of a request to give speedy attention to constitutional questions raised by Whitmer's use of emergency powers since the pandemic hit Michigan in March. (Egan, 6/19)

As Gov. John Bel Edwards prepares to announce whether Louisiana can continue its phased reopening, the coronavirus is spreading throughout the state, in some places at an alarming clip. At the same time, the state’s public-facing dashboard for statistics related to the virus has been hobbled by a series of data glitches, making it almost impossible to chart the virus’s progress region by region. (Karlin, 6/20)

Maine’s unemployment rate declined slightly in May after more than tripling amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to information released Friday by the state and federal labor departments, though the number doesn’t reflect the true extent of the hardship. The rate declined to 9.3 percent, or by 1.3 percentage points. Cumberland, Franklin, Oxford and Somerset counties all had rates topping 10 percent. The Portland-South Portland area continued to be the most affected by the coronavirus-related downturn, with 84 percent as many jobs in May as there were in February. (Valigra, 6/19)

Health and social services officials told Maine lawmakers on Friday that the coronavirus has caused urgent financial problems as they asked for a share of roughly $1 billion in federal stimulus money to recover from the pandemic. A $2.2 trillion stimulus bill passed by Congress in March gave Maine $1.25 billion for the virus response. The state has committed only $411 million of it so far, with the biggest $270 million chunk going to backfill an unemployment insurance system exhausted by the pandemic. (Shepherd, 6/19)

California lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom could reach a deal on the state budget in the next few hours, Newsom told reporters Friday. “We’re in final throes ... so we’re hoping today,” Newsom said during a trip to Sacramento restaurant Queen Sheba where he helped cook meals for seniors. “There’s a lot of labor negotiations, a lot of pieces, a lot of moving parts. It’s a tough budget for all of us. The magnitude of the shortfall is unprecedented.” Lawmakers approved a budget Monday, the constitutional deadline. But the bill they passed represented agreement only among lawmakers, not with the governor, so negotiations have continued. (Bollag, 6/19)

By some estimates, as many as 1.4 million Georgians may lose employer-sponsored health insurance due to the pandemic. The impact will range from upheaval to ruin. (Hart, 6/21)

The Georgia Senate passed a state budget on a party-line vote Friday that cuts $2.6 billion in spending during the upcoming year. That means in fiscal 2021 — which begins July 1 — $1 billion less would be sent to local districts to fund k-12 schools. Millions of dollars would also be cut from a host of health care programs, forcing staff furloughs in the agency that for the past three months has been fighting the coronavirus pandemic. (Salzer, 6/19)

The fall semester will be a pivotal time for HBCUs as they balance renewed interest in their missions during a time of racial unrest with surviving in the midst of a health crisis. Many administrators anticipate enrollment declines this fall and planned social distancing guidelines due to the coronavirus pandemic may limit how many students can actually take in-person classes. So, even if more students want to enroll, the colleges may have no room for them. (Stirgus, 6/21)

Given that the number of new COVID-19 cases and deaths have declined over the past two weeks, Governor Gina M. Raimondo says Rhode Island could be ready to move to Phase 3 of its re-opening plan by the end of the month. Rhode Islanders got a taste of a return to normal life when the state launched Phase 2 on June 1, which reopened many of the businesses that had been closed during the pandemic, with restrictions. (Milkovits, 6/19)

New data released Friday by the Baker administration reveal the stark racial divide in Massachusetts surrounding illnesses and deaths from COVID-19, providing in more granular details just how significantly and disproportionately the virus has hit Black and Hispanic communities. For instance, the numbers indicate that Hispanic residents make up 12 percent of the population, but their rate of positive cases is nearly 30 percent. (Lazar and Prgnano, 6/19)

A trio of Boston city councilors are proposing a crisis response system that would divert nonviolent 911 calls away from police. Councilors Michelle Wu, Lydia Edwards, and Julia Mejia said the ordinance, filed on Friday, would offer “an alternative response from non-law enforcement agencies.” (McDonald, 6/19)

Chinese authorities suspended chicken imports from a Tyson Foods Inc. TSN -1.25% facility due to what Chinese officials said were Covid-19 infections among the plant’s employees. The suspension issued Sunday covered products that have arrived in China or are about to arrive there, according to China’s General Administration of Customs. The agency’s order didn’t specify how much chicken the Tyson facility supplied, or other details about the products. (Bunge and Craymer, 6/21)

Tyson Foods confirmed to NPR that the announcement pertains to its Berry Street facility in Springdale, Ark., where 227 workers tested positive for the coronavirus earlier this month. All but four of them were asymptomatic, according to Tyson. The company said that tests of its facilities in northwest Arkansas showed that 481 employees, or 13% of 3,748 employees, had tested positive. The company said 455 of those employees (95%) were asymptomatic. (Slotkin, 6/21)

Tyson Foods is looking into reports that China’s customs agency has suspended poultry imports from a Tyson facility in the United States after coronavirus cases were confirmed among its employees. A Tyson spokesman said Sunday that the plant in question is in Springdale, Arkansas. “At Tyson, we’re confident our products are safe and we’re hopeful consultations between the U.S. and Chinese governments will resolve this matter,” wrote spokesman Gary Mickelson in an email to The Associated Press. (Lush, 6/21)

As much of the country presses forward with reopening, a growing number of cities and states are finding that the coronavirus outbreak now has a foothold in a younger slice of the population, with people in their 20s and 30s accounting for a larger share of new coronavirus infections. The demographic shift has emerged in regions with different populations and political approaches to the pandemic – from Washington state and California to Florida and Texas. North Carolina, South Carolina, Arizona, Wisconsin and Colorado also all report clusters that have a larger proportion of young adults than they had previously seen. (Stone, 6/19)

The rising number of COVID-19 cases in states across the country is due in large part to more young people contracting the virus, raising alarms among public health officials. The spikes suggest young adults are both more likely to hold front-line service jobs that put them at risk and more likely to ignore some of the social distancing practices advised by health experts. (Wilson, 6/20)

A cluster of mysterious deaths, some involving infants and children, is under scrutiny amid questions of whether the novel coronavirus lurked in California months before it was first detected. But eight weeks after Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a statewide hunt for undetected early COVID-19 deaths, the effort remains hobbled by bureaucracy and testing limits. Among those awaiting answers is Maribeth Cortez, whose adult son, Jeremiah DeLap, died Jan. 7 in Orange County while visiting his parents. He had been healthy, suffering on a Friday from what he thought was food poisoning, and found dead in bed the following Tuesday, drowned by fluid in his lungs. (St. John and Choi, 6/21)

The psychological fallout from the coronavirus pandemic has yet to fully show itself, but some experts have forecast a tsunami of new disorders, and news accounts have amplified that message. The World Health Organization warned in May of “a massive increase in mental health conditions in the coming months,” wrought by anxiety and isolation. Digital platforms such as Crisis Text Line and Talkspace regularly reported spikes in activity through the spring. And more than half of American adults said the pandemic had worsened their mental health, according to a recent survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation. (Carey, 6/21)

In early March, Zoraida Diaz was coming to twice-weekly yoga classes here at Community Health Resources' offices. She's in recovery from colon cancer and alcoholism while in treatment for severe anxiety and depression. Carla Mitchell showed up for intensive PTSD therapy, happy to be free from her stressful home life and the racist taunts she hears walking in her neighborhood. And Tara Kulikowski, who has schizoaffective and bipolar disorders, lupus and is in recovery from drug addiction, organized craft classes and other activities at CHR's nearby "We Can Clubhouse." (O'Donnell, 6/21)

Mary Grace Sponn loves picnics. For years, Sponn, a Stonington, Connecticut shop owner, has kept everything she needed for outdoor eating – folding chairs and a table, coolers, baskets, utensils and even salt and pepper shakers – at home, ready to be used at parks and open areas. Then, the coronavirus pandemic hit, bringing with it social distancing and other restrictions. Her picnic gear soon turned into a tool kit for maintaining social connections and safety. (Jensen and O'Donnell, 6/18)

Donning a white mask, YMCA counselor Aryan Shal tried to channel calm as he told the kids to imagine pushing a wave. Standing six feet apart, the group giggled as they imitated his movements.The two dozen boys and girls were coronavirus pros. They knew to sit at opposite ends of tables, knew shared toys had to be disinfected first, and knew they shouldn’t suffer through a tummy ache but instead tell an adult right away. “The kids are like, ‘Yeah, this feels a little weird, but we’re still having fun.’ It’s an adjustment, obviously,” Shal, 22, said. (Eunjung Cha, 6/19)

In 1993, after wrapping up her 10th sleepaway summer at Camp Louise, in Maryland, Dr. Megan Wollman-Rosenwald realized that she didn’t want the experience to end. So she found a way to game the system: She went to medical school, then returned in 2016 to her childhood mainstay as an on-site doctor for one week every year. Dr. Wollman-Rosenwald, now a family medicine physician in Olney, Md., has clocked four more sessions at Camp Louise that way. For the past three summers, she has brought along her daughter, Emmy, who is now 9. But this year, the coronavirus barred both of them from returning. (Wu, 6/18)

Aaron McCullough brought his 3-year-old daughter, Ariana, to a playground in a leafy, residential suburb of Rochester, New York, on a day in mid-June when temperatures topped out at 94 degrees. The playground is one of seven spray parks in the city that offer cooling water to area residents whenever temperatures exceed 85 degrees. Except during a pandemic. (Dahlberg, 6/20)

Some gyms at this stage of the coronavirus pandemic are like bar owners anticipating a brawl. They’re ordering their instructors to take it outside.In efforts to meet state regulations, boost business and lure back members wary of exercising indoors with others, these facilities are moving group fitness classes into the fresh air, where, experts say, transmission of the virus is less likely than in enclosed spaces. Still, they’re being cautious and following many of the same guidelines they would indoors. (Lewis, 6/19)

Hundreds of college football players have tested positive since returning to campus for practice. Major League Baseball and NHL teams closed their facilities after detecting outbreaks. And the entire NBA is relocating to a part of Florida that is rapidly emerging as a hot spot. Sports are trying to stage a comeback. The virus is still winning. (Cohen, Robinson and Higgins, 6/21)

High schools across the country are trying to figure out how and when students might return to classrooms this fall. Many are also making sure their star quarterbacks and other athletes will be in shape when they do. While states have been easing the economic and social lockdowns prompted by the coronavirus pandemic, some are now letting high school athletes return for summer workouts before teachers have even figured out how they are going to hold classroom instruction. (Vertuno, 6/22)

Actor, comedian and former CNN host D.L. Hughley announced he tested positive for coronavirus after collapsing on stage during a show in Nashville. Hughley, 57, was suffering from exhaustion after working and traveling during the week, publicist Yvette Shearer said. In an Instagram post, Hughley said the positive diagnosis came after a battery of tests were performed when he was taken to Nashville's Saint Thomas Hospital Friday night after his collapse. (Spells and Moshtaghian, 6/21)

Kaiser Health News: How Those With Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Cope With Added Angst Of COVID

Before the COVID-19 pandemic took hold in the United States, Chris Trondsen felt his life was finally under control. As someone who has battled obsessive-compulsive disorder and other mental health issues since early childhood, it’s been a long journey. “I’ve been doing really, really well,” Trondsen said. “I felt like most of it was pretty much — I wouldn’t say ‘cured’ ― but I definitely felt in remission or under control. But this pandemic has been really difficult for me.” (Lawrence, 6/22)

Wake Sharp got to see his family on Father’s Day -- see them, not hug them, not kiss them, not even shake hands. Because of the terrible toll taken by the coronavirus on older people in nursing homes and other institutions, the 93-year-old Navy veteran and his loved ones had to stay on opposite sides of a plexiglass barrier and talk by phone at the assisted-living home outside San Francisco where he is a resident. (Irvine, 6/21)

More than three months after first suspending cruises from U.S. ports, operators said they will now continue that pause for another two months — if not longer.Cruise Lines International Association, a trade group, said in a statement Friday that its members would voluntarily extend the suspension until Sept. 15 or later if necessary. That’s almost two months after a no-sail order issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is scheduled to lift on July 24. (Sampson, 6/19)

Neelam Kumari Gautam woke up at 5 a.m. with shooting labor pains. Her husband put her gently in the back of a rickshaw and motored with her to a hospital. Then another. Then another. Her pain was so intense she could barely breathe, but none would take her. “Why are the doctors not taking me in?” she asked her husband, Bijendra Singh, over and over again. “What’s the matter? I will die.” Mr. Singh began to panic. He knew what he was up against. As India’s coronavirus crisis has accelerated — India is now reporting more infections a day than any other nation except the United States or Brazil — the country’s already strained and underfunded health care system has begun to buckle. (Gettleman and Raj, 6/21)

On March 31, Andrea Root of Whittier, Calif., gave birth to her first child surrounded by doctors and nurses equipped with thick plastic face shields and multiple face masks who kept their distance, fearful that the 38-year-old was carrying covid-19. Within moments of her son’s birth, doctors whisked him away into the nearby neonatal intensive care unit — a precautionary measure taken to protect the infant from potentially contracting the novel coronavirus from his mother. Dazed, Root began to sob. (Leffler, 6/21)

Does it seem that your migraines are more frequent or worse and more difficult to bear since the pandemic began? That's not just in your head. Doctors say they are now seeing many more complaints from migraine sufferers — often called "migrainers" — and for good reason. "The current setting we're in is certainly quite triggering for people who have migraines. People are worried and they're getting more migraine headaches," said Dr. Rachel Colman, director of the Low-Pressure Headache Program at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. (LaMotte, 6/22)

Overall, knowledge about how COVID-19 spreads was high, with 4,215 of 5,198 people (81%) saying that it can be contracted by touching a contaminated surface, and 4,404 (85%) correctly identifying fever, cough, and shortness of breath as the hallmark symptoms. Only 553 (11%) of 5,198 people said COVID-19 could be spread by sexual contact, and only 257 (5%) said it was a hoax. The largest differences in coronavirus knowledge and behaviors related to race/ethnicity, sex, and age, with black respondents, men, and people younger than 55 years demonstrating less knowledge than other groups. (Van Beusekom, 6/18)

What is it about the eyes that have prompted the repeated coronavirus warnings? Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned again and again. You want to protect your eyes from respiratory viruses for two main reasons. There is a direct connection between the eyes and the nasal passages, which can lead to respiratory infection. And viruses can infect the eyes themselves, which is called conjunctivitis — or pinkeye. (Adama, 6/21)

Akili Interactive Labs proved last week that it could convince the Food and Drug Administration to let it market a treatment delivered through a video game. Now, the Boston-based company has a new challenge — trying to show that a prescription video game can make money. How the game fares commercially could shape the fortunes of the emerging digital therapeutics sector, which is looking to Akili to chart a path for how to persuade doctors to prescribe software-based therapies — and how to convince insurers to pay for them. (Robbins, 6/22)

Jason Thompson lay awake in his dormitory bed in the Marion Correctional Institution in central Ohio, immobilized by pain, listening to the sounds of “hacking and gurgling” as the novel coronavirus passed from bunk to bunk like a game of “sick hot potato,” he wrote in a Facebook post. Thompson lives in Marion’s dorm for disabled and older prisoners — a place he described to ProPublica in a phone call as the prison’s “old folks home” — where 199 inmates, many frail and some in wheelchairs, were isolated in a space designed for 170. As the disease spread among bunks spaced 3 or 4 feet apart, Thompson said he could see bedridden inmates with full-blown symptoms and others “in varying stages of recovery. While the rest of us are rarely 6 feet away from anyone else, sick or not.” (Lind, 6/18)

More than 35% of federal inmates who have tested for coronavirus were positive, according to data from The Bureau of Prisons. The agency says that of its 16,839 tested inmates, 6,060 have tested positive. In total, the BOP has tested more than 18,000 of its 163,441 federal inmates, with results pending in more than 2,300 cases. (Barr, 6/16)

Now 159 prisoners have tested positive for the virus — a figure that has increased tenfold in the last two weeks, according to the state’s web tracker. In addition, more than 30 San Quentin employees have recently been infected. These numbers are likely to climb as the virus races through the aging, overcrowded structure. Interviews with inmates and staffers give a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the confusion and chaos that erupted behind bars as prison executives tried to keep a lid on a disaster of their own making. (Fagone and Cassidy, 6/20)

Two windows, each the size of a brick, show her sunrise and sunset. When the meal cart rolls to a stop outside her vault-like cell door, Ricki Dahlin knows it’s noon. This is how you tell time in the hole at Hiland Mountain Correctional Center. Hidden among the acres of skeletal birch and Christmas tree evergreens outside Anchorage, the prison houses 322 women convicts from across Alaska. Dahlin, a 28-year-old recovering addict, is a regular. (Hopkins, 6/20)

Men should cut back their alcohol intake to one drink per day rather than two, according to an influential panel that is advising the government on new dietary guidelines due out this year. And Americans should also further cut back on added sugars, said the panel of outside experts convened once every five years called the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee. (Bottemiller Evich, 6/18)

Despite the lack of dine-in customers for nearly two and half long months during the shutdown, Darrell Loo of Waldo Thai stayed busy. Loo is the bar manager for the popular restaurant in Kansas City, Mo., and he credits increased drinking and looser liquor laws during the pandemic for his brisk business. Alcohol also seemed to help his customers deal with all the uncertainty and fear. "Drinking definitely was a way of coping with it," says Loo. "People did drink a lot more when it happened. I, myself, did drink a lot more." (Smith, 6/21)

Three months ago, public health officials feared that America would be swamped by Covid-19 like Italy. Today, the U.S. would be lucky to swap its coronavirus crisis for theirs. Italy’s sudden surge of coronavirus in March swamped hospitals, pushed the nation into a strict lockdown and forced its doctors to ration life-saving ventilators. About 200,000 Italians were sickened and 29,000 died from the virus by May 1 alone. Global health officials seized on Italy — as the first country outside of China to be battered by the virus — as a disturbing case study for the rest of the world. In private meetings, White House officials worried that Italy was a preview of the storm about to hit the U.S. health system. (Diamond, 6/22)

More than two-thirds of those new deaths were reported in the Americas. In Spain, officials ended a national state of emergency after three months of lockdown, allowing its 47 million residents to freely travel around the country for the first time since March 14. The country also dropped a 14-day quarantine for visitors from Britain and the 26 European countries that allow visa-free travel. But there was only a trickle of travelers at Madrid-Barajas Airport, which on a normal June day would be bustling. (Wilson and Keaten, 6/21)

Beijing will see a “cliff-like” drop in new cases in the current coronavirus outbreak by the end of this week with efforts to control the spread of infections in the Chinese capital underway, said an expert at the national health authority. (6/22)

At an apartment complex in southern Beijing that is under lockdown, residents could not leave their homes in a gated cluster of low-rise brick buildings. Uniformed security guards and medical workers in protective gear watched the gate. Around the corner in the Baizhifang neighborhood lay a different world. Shops were open. A supermarket was doing a brisk business. Residents came and went and seemed unfazed by a new coronavirus outbreak. “It should not be as serious as last time,” said Johnny Zhao, a resident who wore a white face mask as he walked toward the supermarket. “The government is very experienced now.” (Bradsher and Buckley, 6/19)

Italy’s Health Ministry is asking government advisers to evaluate new World Health Organization recommendations saying that people with COVID-19 can come out of isolation before they test negative for the coronavirus. The WHO last week said patients who spent 10 consecutive days in isolation with symptoms can be released if they are then symptom-free for at least three days. People who don’t develop COVID-19 symptoms can stop isolating 10 days after they first test positive, according to WHO’s revised guidelines. (Winfield, 6/21)

When Finland shut its border with Sweden to stop the spread of coronavirus, it felt to Swedish lawmaker Ida Karkiainen like a throwback to the Cold War. Years of integration between her northern Sweden home town of Haparanda and the conjoined Finnish town of Tornio were frozen at a stroke as fences were put up to split the community along an international border that residents had long worked to erase. (Duxbury, 6/21)

It began with a dry cough, weakness and back pain. For Reagan Taban Augustino, part of South Sudan’s small corps of health workers trained in treating COVID-19 patients, there was little doubt what he had. Days later, hardly able to breathe, the 33-year-old doctor discovered just how poorly equipped his country is for the coronavirus pandemic: None of the public facilities he tried in the capital, Juba, had oxygen supplies available until he reached South Sudan’s only permanent infectious disease unit, which has fewer than 100 beds for a country of 12 million people. (Ajak and Anna, 6/22)

When the skies darkened suddenly over Michael Gatiba's 10-acre farm in Nakuru County, Kenya, what came pouring down stunned him: millions of desert locusts. "It was like a storm," Gatiba, 45, said by telephone. "It was like hail. They covered everywhere. Even there was no sun." That was three months ago. Although Gatiba said he was lucky that the damage from the insects was minimal, he fears that the outbreak that has plagued swaths of Africa, the Middle East and Asia for the past two years will return to ravage his maize and bean crops. (Givetash, 6/22)

In Baghdad’s vast exhibition grounds, masked workers lugged hospital beds into rows for makeshift coronavirus wards, as doctors and officials sounded the alarm Sunday over a surge in virus cases in the capital. The long-dreaded scenario is gripping the country amid a severe economic crisis brought on by plummeting oil prices. But with a widening budget deficit, doctors are running low on medical equipment, including key protective gear. A cap on new hires is also expected to strain the already over-stretched system. (Kullab and Abdul-Zahra, 6/21)

The world saw the largest daily increases yet in coronavirus cases, with infections soaring in India’s rural villages after migrant workers fled major cities. India’s coronavirus caseload climbed by nearly 15,000 as of Monday to 425,282, with more than 13,000 deaths, the health ministry reported. After easing the nationwide lockdown, the Indian government has run special trains to return thousands of migrant workers to their natal villages in recent weeks. (Schmall and Kurtenbach, 6/22)

It hasn’t been the longest, nor has it been the deadliest. But the Ebola outbreak that has ravaged a corner of the Democratic Republic of the Congo for much of the past two years has been one of the most challenging on record. With some long overdue luck, the outbreak will be declared over later this week. (Branswell, 6/22)

Germany’s coronavirus reproduction rate jumped to 2.88 on Sunday, up from 1.79 a day earlier, health authorities said, a rate showing infections are rising above the level needed to contain the disease over the longer term. (6/21)

Health authorities in South Korea said for the first time on Monday it is in the midst of a “second wave” of novel coronavirus infections focused around its densely populated capital, stemming from a holiday in May. (Smith, 6/22)

The coronavirus is spreading in Pakistan at one of the fastest rates in the world, and overwhelmed hospitals are turning away patients. But the government is pushing ahead with opening up the country, trying to salvage a near-collapsed economy where millions have already slid into poverty from pandemic restrictions. Further complicating the dilemma, as the government pins its main hope for stemming the virus’ rampage on social distancing and masks, many in the public ignore calls to use them. (Gannon, 6/22)

Confined to her Paris apartment with three young children, her husband and a dog during the city’s strict eight-week lockdown, Kate Gambey began fantasizing about something she never thought she would: a country house. “I’m such a city girl,” said Ms. Gambey, an American married to a Frenchman. She made Paris her home nearly a decade ago but is now searching for a new home some 30 to 150 miles southwest of Paris. “Right now it’s a question of how and where do we survive this best.” (Bender, 6/21)

Sports leagues around the world have acknowledged that the only way to restart competition is to test all their players for the novel coronavirus. For businesses, the same idea is gaining ground: stepping in with testing where government-run efforts are lagging. In Japan, a telecom magnate, Masayoshi Son, has taken the lead with a combination of antibody and diagnostic tests that offer a model for others as parts of the world look to reopen their economies. (Denyer, 6/21)

Martín Mateo had a cold. Or so he thought: sore throat, body aches, runny nose. “He felt bad but kept working,” said his son, Carlos. The 50-year-old father had labored for decades as a tomatero — a tomato man — at Latin America’s biggest food market.Coronavirus? He didn’t believe in it.Then he started gasping for breath. Within days, he was dead. By then, scores of Mateo’s fellow tomateros also were infected. Workers hoisted yellow signs outside the market reading “High Contagion Zone.” At least 10 tomato men died from mid-April to mid-May. (Sheridan, 6/21)

A study of the wildlife trade in three provinces in southern Vietnam produced startlingly clear confirmation for one of the underlying objections to the wildlife trade in Asia — the trading offers an ideal opportunity for viruses in one animal to infect another. In field rats, a highly popular animal to eat in Vietnam and neighboring countries, the percentage that tested positive for at least one of six different coronaviruses jumped significantly. It increased from 20 percent of wild-caught rats sold by traders, to slightly more than 30 percent at large markets, the next step in the supply chain, to 55 percent of rats sold in restaurants that tested positive. (Gorman, 6/19)

Jeus Joaquin helped New Zealand beat back the coronavirus as the nation’s confirmed cases gradually fell to zero in May. During New Zealand’s 49-day lockdown, the 34-year-old emergency department nurse treated covid-19 patients at Thames Hospital, on the country’s North Island. Essential workers like him were lauded as heroes as New Zealand’s international prestige soared. (New Zealand has since seen three new cases.) But the victory against the virus came at a cost, and Joaquin is among those paying it. (Berger, 6/20)

Europeans are enjoying the gradual easing of coronavirus lockdown measures, but in hospitals they are already preparing for the next wave of infections. Some intensive care specialists are trying to hire more permanent staff. Others want to create a reservist “army” of medical professionals ready to be deployed wherever needed to work in wards with seriously ill patients. (Guarascio, 6/22)

The U.K. government will reduce its two-meter social distancing rule this week, the Health Secretary Matt Hancock confirmed, following intense pressure from the hospitality industry that it makes profitable operations impossible. There have been rumors for weeks that the government would ditch the rule in favor of a shorter distance as is the case in several European countries, but ministers have been reluctant to pre-empt the outcome of a review of the measure. Pubs and restaurants are due to reopen on July 4, but the industry has warned that keeping customers 2 meters apart — a little over 6 feet — to reduce the spread of coronavirus is impossible for many establishments. (Randerson, 6/21)

In the gilded halls of the Palais de Versailles, visitors stop to marvel at the crystal chandeliers, Marie-Antoinette’s brocade-hung four-poster bed and the portraits of Napoleon drawn up to his full — if diminutive — height. Then it’s on to the famous Hall of Mirrors, given a good dusting during the coronavirus lockdown for the first time since 2007, and the gory Gallery of Great Battles that, as a guidebook says, “depicts nearly 15 centuries of French military successes.” (Willsher, 6/21)

In 2013, an 18-month old boy got sick after playing near a hollow tree in his backyard, in a remote West African village. He developed a fever and started vomiting. His stool turned black. Two days later, he died. Two years and more than 11,000 deaths later, the World Health Organization put out a report saying the Ebola outbreak that likely emanated from that hollow tree may have been caused in part by deforestation, led by "foreign mining and timber operations." The tree the boy played near was infested with fruit bats — bats that may have been pushed into the boy's village because upwards of 80 percent of their natural habitat had been destroyed. (Rott, 6/22)

Ned Sharpless is worried. The director of the National Cancer Institute believes the Covid-19 pandemic is posing a danger to cancer patients across a wide spectrum of care and research. People — and their health care providers — are postponing screening measures like mammograms and colonoscopies. Fewer cancers are being diagnosed, and treatment regimens are being stretched out into less frequent encounters. Clinical trials have seen patient enrollment plummet. (Cooney, 6/19)

Over the past few weeks, 23andMe and other genetic testing companies have made headlines for releasing candid statements acknowledging that their field and their products are too white. It’s a problem with which geneticist Tshaka Cunningham is all too familiar. As executive director of the nonprofit Faith Based Genetic Research Institute, Cunningham has traveled widely to speak at Black churches about the value of genetic research. And as co-founder and chief scientific officer of a genetics startup called TruGenomix, he’s working to recruit more diverse cohorts to build a genetic test for gauging risk of developing PTSD. (Robbins, Garde and Feuerstein, 6/19)

New research untangles the complex code the brain uses to distinguish between a vast array of smells, offering a scientific explanation for how it separates baby powder from bleach, lemon from orange, or freshly cut grass from freshly brewed coffee. A single scent can trigger a complex chain of events in what’s known as the olfactory bulb, the brain’s control center for smell. To unravel the intricacies of that process, researchers in the U.S. and Italy turned to a technique known as optogenetics, which uses light to control neurons in the brain. (Isselbacher, 6/18)

Getting the right drug to the right place at the right time has been the leading principle of precision medicine, guided by GPS-like genomic advances to engineer targeted therapies. New research from the Whitehead Institute suggests more traditional chemotherapy drugs could also be fine-tuned to hit smaller targets within cells, possibly boosting their efficacy. (Cooney, 6/18)

Robert Taylor has lived on the banks of the Mississippi River in Reserve, Louisiana, his entire life. Both of his parents worked in the local sugar refinery when plantations made up this stretch of the river between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. But where sugar cane once grew, chemicals now spew from smoke stacks. When the petrochemical industry moved in, the predominantly Black community’s health began to suffer. “We didn't know why. We were just ignorant plantation hands, you know, the descendants of slaves," he said. (Denne, 6/21)

A neurologist who encased his healthy right arm in a pink fiberglass cast for two weeks has shown how quickly the brain can change after an injury or illness. Daily scans of Dr. Nico Dosenbach's brain showed that circuits controlling his immobilized arm disconnected from the body's motor system within 48 hours. But during the same period, his brain began to produce new signals seemingly meant to keep those circuits intact and ready to reconnect quickly with the unused limb. (Hamilton, 6/18)

A new study from China showed that antibodies faded quickly in both asymptomatic and symptomatic COVID-19 patients during convalescence, raising questions about whether the illness leads to any lasting immunity to the virus afterward. The study, which focused on 37 asymptomatic and 37 symptomatic patients, showed that more than 90% of both groups showed steep declines in levels of SARS-COV-2–specific immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibodies within 2 to 3 months after onset of infection, according to a report published yesterday in Nature Medicine. Further, 40% of the asymptomatic group tested negative for IgG antibodies 8 weeks after they were released from isolation. (Roos, 6/19)

As states gradually begin to reopen and some grapple with the consequences of loosened restrictions, experts are peering into what the future with COVID-19 may look like. While viruses are capable of mutating on their own and may evolve over time, experts say it's society's collective actions rather than the virus itself that may determine whether the virus becomes more or less dangerous. (David and Johnson, 6/18)

More than 120,000 Americans have now perished from Covid-19, surpassing the total number of U.S. dead during World War I. Had American leaders taken the decisive, early measures that several other nations took when they had exactly the same information the U.S. did, at exactly the same time in their experience of the novel coronavirus, how many of these Covid-19 deaths could have been prevented? (Isaac Sebenius and James K. Sebenius, 6/19)

SARS-CoV-2, a coronavirus that humans have never before encountered, is causing hundreds of thousands of deaths around the globe. The emergence of new infectious agents is tragically part of the cycle of infectious disease. What is not part of that cycle are the many Covid-19-related deaths that occur because of our systemic failure to employ rapid diagnostic tools, something that health systems have long neglected — to our peril. Many deaths from Covid-19 mirror deaths from sepsis, which are also largely preventable with better diagnostic tools. Sepsis, the immune system’s out-of-control response to infection, often leads to organ failure and death. (Prabhavathi Fernandes and Steve Brozak, 6/22)

As stay-at-home orders ease and cities reopen for business, many doctors and hospital administrators are calling for a quick return of health care to pre-pandemic levels. For months now, routine care has been postponed. Elective procedures — big moneymakers — were halted so that hospitals could divert resources to treating Covid-19 patients. Routine clinic visits were canceled or replaced by online sessions. This has resulted in grievous financial losses for hospitals and clinics. Medical practices have closed. Hospitals have been forced to furlough employees or cut pay. Most patients, on the other hand, at least those with stable chronic conditions, seem to have done OK. In a recent survey, only one in 10 respondents said their health or a family member’s health had worsened as a result of delayed care. Eighty-six percent said their health had stayed about the same. (Sandeep and Jauhar, 6/22)

A new study finds that adding a simple steroid to the treatment of severe Covid-19 cases can significantly reduce deaths. That’s another milestone in the battle against the virus. It shows a path for reducing Covid deaths faster through medical innovation and for keeping the health-care system from being overwhelmed as the epidemic spreads. The U.S., unlike Europe and Asia, seems to have decided not to crush the virus but try to reduce its spread to a controllable level. The 30,000 cases diagnosed each day probably represent no more than 20% of the total infections. It’s a lot of virus, but mostly manageable, for now. It won’t stay that way. (Scott Gottlieb and Mark McClellan, 6/21)

Covid-19 is not a gender- or sex-neutral killer. Men are more likely than women to need intensive care for the disease or die of it. Among health care workers, however, the tables are turned: Women accounted for 73% of the more than 9,000 U.S. health care workers who had been infected with the novel coronavirus by early April. This gender/sex difference has been seen in other countries, and it isn’t because more women than men are on the frontlines of Covid-19 care. The design of personal protective equipment might be to blame. (Saralyn Mark, 6/19)

At the MGM’s Bellagio hotel and casino, patrons are welcomed with branded pouches stocked with hand sanitizer, face masks and a stylus they can use to push elevator buttons. At the Cosmopolitan’s elevated pool, an L.C.D. screen flashes the message, “Face masks are the new tan lines.”In typical Las Vegas style, the hospitality industry is going overboard to make sure visitors feel safe, and to make the precautions the pandemic requires feel luxurious. Visitors can check in using their phones and take advantage of hand- washing stations. On the gambling floors, chips, cards and dice are disinfected between players. (Brittany Bronson, 6/21)

It's quiet in the laboratory, almost peaceful. But I'm holding live SARS-CoV-2 in my hands and this virus is not to be taken lightly. As I dilute the coronavirus to infect cultured cells, I hear the reassuring sound of purified air being blown by my respirator into my breathing space. There are three layers of nitrile and protective materials between me and the virus, and every part of my body is wrapped in protective equipment. Thanks to these precautions and other features of our high containment lab, I'm not nervous about being up close and personal with this dangerous pathogen. (Troy Sutton, 6/22)

That the Chinese government has significant culpability for the global spread of Covid-19 and needs to be held accountable for its misconduct should not be a partisan issue. We already know that the Associated Press has reported the Chinese government concealed critical facts about the emergence of the virus; that local officials silenced voices of warning; and that as a result, actions of Chinese officials most likely deprived the world early on of critical information about the virus' transmissibility and lethality. (James D. Schultz and Sean Carter, 6/20)

Alarming headlines about surging Covid-19 cases in some states dominated the news this week, but there was some good news: A University of Oxford drug trial found that a low-cost steroid can substantially reduce deaths in severely ill patients. As results from more studies roll in this summer, improved treatments could blunt the impact of any second wave. The randomized trial compared 2,100 hospitalized patients who received the steroid dexamethasone at low-to-moderate doses for 10 days with 4,300 controls receiving standard hospital care. Dexamethasone reduced fatalities among patients receiving supplemental oxygen by 20% and by a third among those on mechanical ventilators. The drug had no impact on less sick patients. (6/19)

It is not so much that Americans have given up. Rather, it is that their president has made coronavirus-spreading conduct a test of political loyalty. President Trump gleefully assembled in Tulsa thousands of his followers (albeit far fewer than he hoped). They were apparently too deluded to know they were putting their lives and the lives of their loved ones at risk by cramming into an enclosed arena without masks, just so Trump could bask in the glory of a red-state crowd. (The Post reported, “Oklahoma reported 331 new coronavirus infections Saturday afternoon. The new cases put the state’s rolling average at 281, setting the average high record for the eighth day in a row. (Jennifer Rubin, 6/21)

America needs a national center for infectious disease intelligence whose mission is to monitor trends and provide a real-time interpretation of outbreak data through modeling, biostatistics, and data science. This idea has been bandied about at least since the Obama administration and reiterated recently in Johns Hopkins University’s reports A Road Map to Reopening and Modernizing and Expanding Outbreak Science. Such an agency may cost billions and take time to plan and implement, but we can take the first step now, which is to create a national network of the people and organizations where the essential talent lies. (John M. Drake, 6/21)

If you work for any number of public-facing small businesses — an auto body shop or a dry cleaner or a pizza place — your boss will need you back at work for the business to function, but interaction with customers will likely increase your risk of infection. (Drew Altman, 6/22)

Hospital restrictions on visitors during the COVID-19 era keep away a crucial support system of family and friends. (Nathan Gray, 6/22)

America’s economic and racial inequality, thin social safety nets and fragmented health care system are putting the most disadvantaged people at the greatest risk from COVID-19. Yet, in the midst of this crisis, there are inspiring examples of organizations that are transforming health care through trust-based relationships and community partnerships that provide whole-person care for people’s physical, economic and social needs. (Gary Hirsch and Kate Isaacs, 6/18)

Over the last few months, many patients have been in fear of their cancer journey. This fear had nothing to do with receiving their diagnosis or walking into a screening because of a found lump or increased risk. It wasn’t about dealing with the side effects of their chemotherapy, surgery, or radiation treatment. And, it was not caused by the stress felt when waiting for results from a significant medical test or scan. The fear was caused by our country’s myopic focus on flatting the COVID-19 curve. (Dr. Pat Basu, 6/18)

Like almost every part of the U.S. economy, healthcare providers have faced unprecedented challenges over how to operate during the COVID-19 pandemic. Rising costs and shrinking revenue have left many healthcare providers in a dire financial situation. The direct medical costs of COVID-19 patients are substantially higher than those of patients with other common infectious diseases. COVID-19 patients are more likely to require longer inpatients stays and more resources including intensive care, ventilator care and personal protective equipment. COVID-19 also requires more staff time for infection control. And staff require additional resources including overtime and hazard pay. (Lisa M. Grabert and David C. Grabowski, 6/17)

Some experts are warning of a looming mental health crisis in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic that we are apparently ill-prepared for, and journalists are amplifying this message. Everyone, it seems, is depressed and there is a new health curve to flatten. We believe these warnings are being overdone, and definitely overlook the potential for post-traumatic growth (more on that in a minute). (Jay Behel and Jennifer A. Coleman, 6/22)

A new study shows a steroid, dexamethasone, improves the survival of some COVID-19 patients, especially those with severe forms of the diseases. These include some on ventilators and some who require oxygen. The study enrolled 2,100 participants who received dexamethasone at a low or moderate dose for ten days. The control group was 4,300 patients who received standard care for coronavirus infection. Results show a reduction in risks of dying by 30 percent in patients on ventilators and 20 percent in patients receiving oxygen. (Dr. Ifeanyi M. Nsofor, 6/19)

1920. 2020. A hundred years apart but closer than one might think. In 1920 the world was just recovering from the devastating influenza pandemic that shuttered schools, killed nearly 50 million people and laid waste to the economy. Just like now, an untried cure — aspirin 100 years ago, today hydroxychloroquine — did more harm than good, causing a number of unnecessary deaths. And chillingly, the previous summer, 1919, had seen a wave of racial violence across the U.S. and would become known as the Red Summer. Lynchings and anti-black violence forced African Americans to the streets to protest, and it was their actions that were branded dangerous and lawless, rather than the hate they were desperate to counter. (Philippa Levine, 6/17)

On June 6, one of us attended a memorial vigil for George Floyd. The opening speaker first thanked the local Police Department for keeping the vigil safe and then went on to distinguish between the majority of police officers who do their job helping and protecting people and the few who are racist and violent. His remarks echoed those made by Barack Obama on May 29, in his public statement on the killing of Mr. Floyd, when he wrote of “the majority of men and women in law enforcement who take pride in doing their tough job the right way, every day.” (Todd May and George Yancy, 6/21)

My namesake, Rodney, was pulled over by police after a high-speed chase. The cops beat Rodney King with their nightsticks more than 50 times. The brutal event on March 3, 1991, in Los Angeles was caught on amateur videotape. After four policemen were acquitted, the City of Angels went up in flames. Decades earlier, in the summer of 1967, civil disorder erupted in Newark, Detroit and more than 100 communities across the country, some of it brought on and inflamed by police actions. (Colbert I. King, 6/19)

Parents’ concerns about fights among students and other safety issues have led to a growing police presence at public schools, whether the officers are hired as school employees or are provided by the local police department. Their numbers grew further after a series of high-profile tragedies in which a disturbed student or outsider brought guns to a school and killed multiple students and teachers. Although rare, these incidents created a misguided sense that campuses needed to be well-armed in self-defense. (6/21)

Every black southern family that I’m aware of has a cold case. The murder of a family member by a white man about which records might have disappeared or been deleted. It’s family oral tradition that keeps the story alive. My grandfather, Mack Hopkins, was stabbed by a white man on July 9, 1934. He told my mother that when he arrived at Erlanger Hospital in Chattanooga, Tenn., he overheard a doctor say, “Let that nigger die.” My mother was 16 at the time. My grandfather did die, and his killer remained free. (Ishmael Reed, 6/20)

A white classmate from college recently sent an email. She recalled that decades ago, I talked to her about racism when we were both students. We walked across campus as I talked. Perhaps I was trying to explain institutional racism, or racism and Western Civilization, or racism and literature. She told me she didn’t believe me then but that the conversation stayed with her. I have no recollection of this conversation. It sounds like my younger self — the self not yet exhausted explaining racism to white people. I'm not sure how to respond. (DeNeen L. Brown, 6/17)

Forgive me if, based on my experience, and my son’s, I’m a little skeptical about the Boy Scouts of America’s announcement on June 15 of several moves to make scouting more inclusive. The BSA’s plans include the creation of a “diversity and inclusion merit badge.” It will be required for anyone who wants to become an Eagle Scout, scouting’s highest achievement. The organization also says it will review its programs and mandate diversity training for employees and adult volunteers. That’s a good start, but I wish I could be more hopeful. (David Nicholson, 6/19)

Remember early March — that week or so before we fully grasped how much our lives were about to change? I was in Washington, D.C., to attend what turned out to be one of the last in-person oral arguments at the Supreme Court for the foreseeable future — the big abortion case out of Louisiana. Though I didn’t know it at the time, on that trip I also ate my last meal inside a restaurant for a good while (huevos rancheros and a margarita), went to my last cultural institution (the Smithsonian’s African-American history museum, where I at least avoided the interactive exhibits and winced at a toddler licking the wall) and shared my last hug with someone outside my home. (Lauren Kelley, 6/21)

Covid-19 is freaking out fathers. And rightly so. Whether it’s an expectant father trying not to contract Covid-19 ahead of his newborn’s birth or an essential worker who comes home every night fearful of spreading the virus to his family, fathers are more stressed than ever about how their health affects their families. And there are reasons to be concerned. Long before the pandemic, men were fighting an uphill health battle. (Clarissa Simon and Craig Garfield, 6/21)

On his podcast, the chef David Chang recently talked about spending more time at home with his baby this spring. Mr. Chang shared stories about cooking for his son and other newfound parental responsibilities, joking that he should call the podcast “Mr. Moms.” In a later episode, Mr. Chang humbly explained that a listener had informed him of a better name for a podcast about men who spend time at home with their kids: “Dads.” Mr. Chang is hardly the only American father who has been on a steep learning curve in the past few months. During the quarantine, millions of men have spent significant time at home with their children for the first time. (Martin Gelin, 6/21)

Not all surprises are welcome, least of all surprise medical charges — when patients are billed for services they had expected their insurer would cover. Negotiations to end surprise billing have been at an impasse for nearly a year. Discussions between the White House and congressional leaders over another coronavirus bill offer an opportunity to finally end this practice that defrauds millions of patients every year. The lobbying battle lines are well defined. (Doug Badger and Brian Blase, 6/19)

In their recent public meeting, members of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory (DGA) Committee forecast changes to the prevailing advice on alcohol. Long instructed to limit consumption to no more than two drinks per day, “if they choose to consume alcohol,” American men will now be told to cut themselves off after just a single serving of beer, wine, or liquor. The new guidelines also have advice for anyone drinking to lower the risk of cardiovascular disease or achieve other health benefits: don’t. According to the Committee, “at all levels of consumption, drinking less is generally better for health than drinking more.” (Thomas Gremillion, 6/19)

The remote-learning experiment isn’t going well. This month the University of Washington’s Center on Reinventing Public Education published a report looking at how 477 school districts nationwide have responded to the Covid-19 crisis. Its findings reveal widespread neglect of students. The report found only 27% of districts required teachers to record whether students participate in remote classes, while remote attendance has been abysmal. During the first two weeks of the shutdown, some 15,000 Los Angeles students failed to show up for classes or do any schoolwork. (6/21)