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With new cases surging in many parts of the country, at least a dozen states and cities are pulling back on reopening plans, with measures that effectively declare: Not so fast. (6/29)

At least 16 states have halted their reopening plans in response to a surge in new infections, but some health officials say the spread of coronavirus will be difficult to control. "What we hope is we can take it seriously and slow the transmission in these places," said Dr. Anne Schuchat, the principal deputy director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "But what I think is very discouraging is we're clearly not at a point where there's so little virus being spread that it's going to be easy to snuff out." (Maxouris, 6/30)

More than 41,000 new coronavirus cases were recorded nationwide Monday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. That was an increase from Sunday, but lower than Friday’s record of 45,255. World-wide, confirmed Covid-19 infections exceeded 10.3 million, with more than 505,000 deaths. The U.S. accounts for about a quarter of each figure. (Hall, 6/30)

California and Texas both marked record spikes in new COVID-19 infections on Monday, a Reuters tally showed, as Los Angeles reported an “alarming” one-day surge in America’s second-largest city that put it over 100,000 cases. Los Angeles has become a new epicenter in the pandemic as coronavirus cases and hospitalizations surge there despite California Governor Gavin Newsom’s strict orders requiring bars to close and residents to wear masks in nearly all public spaces. (Whitcomb and Caspani, 6/29)

As coronavirus cases continue to surge across the Sun Belt, the optimism surrounding ambitious reopening plans is swiftly dissipating. Arizona delayed plans to reopen public schools and ordered bars, gyms, movie theaters and water parks to close on Monday, as the state marked yet another day with a record number of hospitalizations. In Los Angeles County, which is at risk of running out of hospital beds in the next two to three weeks, residents are being urged to “hunker down” in their homes and avoid all unnecessary trips. (Noori Farzan and Noack, 6/30)

Among those implementing the face-covering orders is the city of Jacksonville, Florida, where mask-averse President Donald Trump plans to accept the Republican nomination in August. Trump has refused to wear a mask during visits to states and businesses that require them. (Lush and Schmall, 6/29)

The governors of New York and New Jersey said on Monday that they were so alarmed by a surge in coronavirus cases in the South and West that they were reconsidering plans to allow indoor dining in the two states in the coming days. Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey said that plans to allow indoor dining to resume on Thursday would be postponed “indefinitely.” (Zaveri, 6/29)

Arizona’s governor ordered bars, nightclubs and water parks to close again for at least a month starting Monday night — a dramatic about-face as coronavirus cases surge in the Sunbelt. Republican Gov. Doug Ducey also ordered public schools to delay the start of the classes at least until Aug. 17. Many districts planned to start the school year in late July or early August. His orders can be extended. (Billeaud, 6/30)

In one of the most drastic rollbacks of reopenings yet, Arizona is closing bars, gyms, movie theaters and other businesses for 30 days amid a "brutal" increase in Covid-19 cases, Gov. Doug Ducey said Monday. Water parks and tubing must also close, Ducey said at a news conference, and events with more than 50 people are prohibited. (Berryman and Waldrop, 6/30)

Only a few weeks ago, thousands of Southern Californians were flocking to beaches, Disneyland was announcing it would soon reopen and Whoopi Goldberg was lauding Gov. Gavin Newsom on “The View” for the state’s progress in combating the coronavirus. The worst, many in California thought, was behind them. In fact, an alarming surge in cases up and down the state was only just beginning. (Hubler and Fuller, 6/29)

The seeds of the latest surge in coronavirus cases in California appear to have been planted around Memorial Day. People had been pent up in their homes; businesses shuttered for months amid the stay-at-home order began to open. And as the reopening accelerated, a lot of people were ready to get out. (Lin II, Lee, Greene and Karlamangla, 6/29)

On June 11, a month and a half into reopening efforts in Texas, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner issued a dire warning. "The virus is not under control, the community spread is not under control," he said, as the city reported 210 new coronavirus cases. "We no longer have the ability to hit the brakes. That's controlled now totally by the state." (Siegel, Kim and Faulders, 6/30)

The summer tourism season is here, and Rhode Island’s welcome mat still has some strings attached. Visitors coming from states with a 5 percent positivity rate will have to either quarantine for 14 days or receive a negative test result within three days of their arrival, Governor Gina Raimondo announced Monday. Likewise, Rhode Islanders who visit those states will have to quarantine when they return or be tested for COVID-19. (Milkovits , 6/29)

Health officials in Allegheny County, Penn., say a surge in novel coronavirus cases recently reported around Pittsburgh has been tied to bars, not protests, local media report. Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald (D) told CBS Pittsburgh the area has seen “some alarming spikes” in cases in recent weeks, adding, “We have seen more cases in the last two days than in the previous two weeks.” (Folley, 6/29)

Los Angeles is shutting its beaches for the holiday weekend around Independence Day as the number of new coronavirus cases spikes, county officials said Monday. Beaches will be closed to all recreational activities from July 3 through July 6 at 5 a.m. to prevent crowding that could spread the coronavirus. (Klar, 6/29)

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti on Monday announced he was taking a “hard pause” on when movie theaters in the city can reopen, citing an increase in coronavirus cases. Los Angeles County is the biggest movie theater market in the United States. (6/29)

So, are you feeling lucky? That’s what gamblers around the D.C. region are asking themselves as they decide whether they are comfortable returning to Maryland’s casinos, the two largest of which reopened Monday after a 3½-month shutdown due to the coronavirus pandemic. For Mariam Hashimi, of Woodbridge, Va., the answer was a qualified yes. Hashimi said she called MGM National Harbor on Monday morning to check on safety precautions before deciding to visit. She arrived after her shift as an attendant on Amtrak’s Auto Train, wearing the same protective equipment she wears for work, including gloves, two face masks and a face shield. (Heim, 6/29)

New York City may delay allowing indoor dining amid signs it poses a risk of spreading the coronavirus, Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday. The city is set to enter the third phase of its reopening next Monday, which was scheduled to include indoor dining. But both leaders say they are seriously considering nixing the reopening of indoor restaurants and bars, which have been tied to new virus clusters in other states. (Durkin, 6/29)

The easiest job for a food critic? Assembling table mates. Even when I tell people I’m not responsible for how the night might turn out, the siren call of a meal paid by someone else is hard to say no to. Only twice in two decades have I had a problem getting people to help me eat my way through a menu. Before Anthony S. Fauci became a household name, it was when I first reviewed the exclusive Sushi Nakazawa, a branch of a four-star draw in New York that is linked to the Trump International hotel. (Sietsema, 6/29)

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, admonished Americans who have abandoned practicing personal mitigation measures to slow the spread of the coronavirus — asserting that such an “all or none” approach has contributed to a surge of new Covid-19 cases across the country. “What has happened, I guess understandably, but nonetheless regrettably, [is] that people took the attitude in some places of either all or none. Either you’re locked down, or you just let it fly and you just ignore many of the guidelines of” social distancing, mask-wearing, abstaining from shaking hands and avoiding large crowds, Fauci told CNN in an interview that aired Monday. (Forgey, 6/29)

The Trump administration said Monday that it has the coronavirus epidemic under control in the United States, but a resurgent outbreak in Sun Belt states continued to worsen — and Jacksonville, Fla., where President Trump plans to pack a convention hall to accept the Republican nomination for reelection, made mask-wearing mandatory. The World Health Organization warned that the outbreak is far from over and a grim milestone passed Sunday, with the confirmed worldwide death count from the novel coronavirus surpassing 500,000, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Over the weekend, the number of coronavirus cases reported worldwide soared past 10 million. (Gearan, Shammas and Beachum, 6/29)

The head of the World Health Organization is warning that the COVID-19 pandemic is speeding up, and he criticized governments that have failed to establish reliable contact tracing to stop the spread of the coronavirus. Speaking at a briefing in Geneva, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said: "We all want this to be over. We all want to get on with our lives. But the hard reality is this is not even close to being over." "Although many countries have made some progress, globally the pandemic is actually speeding up," he said. (Neuman, 6/29)

HHS spokesperson Michael Caputo on Monday tweeted that HHS intends to extend the COVID-19 public health emergency that is set to expire on July 25. The extension would prolong the emergency designation by 90 days. Several payment policies and regulatory adjustments are attached to the public health emergency, so the extension is welcome news for healthcare providers. (Cohrs, 6/29)

Americans say they trust information on the coronavirus pandemic from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) the most — and President Trump the least — according to a Pew Research Center survey released Monday. The majority of respondents to the survey, 64 percent, said the CDC and other public health organizations get the facts right almost or most of the time regarding COVID-19. Only 30 percent said the same about Trump and his administration. (Klar, 6/29)

Dr. Elias Zerhouni knows the dangers of infectious disease outbreaks. He was director of the National Institutes of Health in 2005 when bird flu appeared poised to become more infectious to humans. Fortunately, that pandemic never materialized, but he says it served as a warning of what was to come. Zerhouni has been a member of the faculty of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and head of global research and development for the pharmaceutical company Sanofi. (Palca, 6/29)

In related news —

Federal stimulus spending during the COVID-19 pandemic has helped stabilize the economy, but that the spending will come at a significant cost in the long run, according to projections from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. The nonpartisan CRFB projects the national deficit will rise to 131% of U.S. gross domestic product by the end of the decade. (Bannow, 6/29)

The top Senate Republican said Monday that there should be “no stigma” to wearing face masks to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus as President Trump continues to refuse to wear one in public. The remarks by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) came one day after Vice President Pence appeared at an event in Texas, one of the new coronavirus epicenters, where he urged Americans to don masks and wore one himself while not speaking. (Sonmez, 6/29)

McConnell added that it’s the responsibility of individuals, small businesses, employers and “all levels of government” to take the necessary public health precautions to prevent the spread of the virus. He noted health care professionals in Kentucky recognize that the extra precautions Americans are taking have helped prevent hospitals from being overrun. (Levine, 6/29)

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Monday that wearing a mask cannot be stigmatized, calling wearing one in public part of the country's new routine amid the coronavirus pandemic. McConnell, speaking from the Senate floor, said until there was a vaccine Americans needed to find a "middle ground" between widespread lockdowns and life pre-coronavirus. (Carney, 6/29)

Two governors urged Vice President Pence last week to adopt stronger messaging to encourage Americans to wear masks to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Utah Gov. Gary Herbert (R) and at least one other governor asked Pence on Friday to promote mask-wearing as several states see new outbreaks of the virus, according to multiple sources on a call between the vice president and governors. Two sources said New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) also brought up messaging on masks. (Samuels, 6/29)

After telling Arizonans that many public places were again being closed amid a surge of coronavirus cases, Gov. Doug Ducey ended a somewhat contentious news conference by imploring people to wear face masks. “Arm yourself with a mask,” he said Monday after issuing an executive order to shut down bars, night clubs and water parks while pushing back the start of school in the fall. “It’s your best defense against this virus.” (Billeaud and Prengaman, 6/30)

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly (D) said Monday she is ordering residents to wear masks in public in an effort to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus. The move will not reimpose restrictions on which state businesses are open, but rather will mandate that all Kansans wear masks when in public both indoors and outdoors when a six-foot distance cannot be maintained. (Klar, 6/29)

Gov. Brian Kemp on Monday extended the state’s public health emergency, certain business restrictions and his shelter-in-place order for the medically fragile amid a record spike in new cases of the coronavirus. The governor also announced Monday that he’s set to go on a statewide fly-around tour ahead of the July Fourth weekend to encourage Georgians to wear masks, but he said he doesn’t plan to require residents to do so. (Bluestein and Trubey, 6/29)

Also —

After the city of Jacksonville, Florida, announced that masks will be mandatory for public and indoor locations starting Monday, White House press secretary Kaleigh McEnany would not directly say if President Donald Trump planned to wear one at his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. The event, scheduled for August, is expected to bring more than 40,000 people from all over the country to Jacksonville, and while the rules may apply to them, it's likely Trump will exempt himself. (Cathey, 6/29)

Unions representing 65,000 Las Vegas-area casino workers accused some resort operators on Monday of putting employees at risk of illness and death during the coronavirus pandemic by skimping on safety measures like a requirement for mask-wearing. “They want to work, but they want to work safe,” Culinary Union executive Geoconda Argüello-Kline said of hotel housekeepers, cooks, bartenders, vehicle valets and others. “We’re going to do whatever we need to do to protect these workers, these families and this community.” (Ritter, 6/29)

In the Mississippi city where Elvis Presley was born, the mayor announced last week that masks would be required in public buildings and businesses starting Monday because of the COVID-19 pandemic — and he used the opportunity to debunk an array of rumors. “ANTIFA is not coming to Tupelo, Elvis statues are not being removed, you are not the target of some type of global conspiracy, it is impossible to erase history and no one has attempted to do so, covid is not a hoax," Tupelo Mayor Jason Shelton wrote on Facebook. (6/29)

Kaiser Health News: Workers Filed More Than 4,100 Complaints About Protective Gear. Some Still Died. 
COVID-19 cases were climbing at Michigan’s McLaren Flint hospital. So Roger Liddell, 64, who procured supplies for the hospital, asked for an N95 respirator for his own protection, since his work brought him into the same room as COVID-positive patients. But the hospital denied his request, said Kelly Indish, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 875. (Jewett, Luthra and Bailey, 6/30)

A divided Supreme Court on Monday struck down a Louisiana law regulating abortion clinics, reasserting a commitment to abortion rights over fierce opposition from dissenting conservative justices in the first big abortion case of the Trump era. Chief Justice John Roberts and his four more liberal colleagues ruled that a law that requires doctors who perform abortions must have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals violates abortion rights the court first announced in the landmark Roe v. Wade decision in 1973. (Sherman, 6/29)

Justice Stephen Breyer, in an opinion joined by rest of the court's liberal wing, wrote that the Louisiana law would make it "impossible for many women to obtain a safe, legal abortion in the State and [impose] substantial obstacles on those who could." Roberts, in a separate concurring opinion, disagreed with the liberal justices' reasoning but said he was bound by the precedent the court set just four years ago when it rejected a similar law in Texas. (Miranda Ollstein, 6/29)

But in the end, Chief Justice Roberts’s commitment to precedent sank the Louisiana law. “I joined the dissent in Whole Woman’s Health,” he wrote on Monday, “and continue to believe that the case was wrongly decided. The question today, however, is not whether Whole Woman’s Health was right or wrong, but whether to adhere to it in deciding the present case.” (Liptak, 6/29)

Kaiser Health News: Supreme Court, Rejecting Restrictive La. Law, Refuses To Roll Back Abortion Rights 
The decision in June Medical Services v. Russo effectively upholds a case from just four years ago. In 2016, in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, a 5-3 majority struck down portions of a controversial Texas law, including not only the admitting privileges requirement but also a requirement for abortion clinics to meet the same standards as surgical centers that perform more advanced procedures. (Rovner, 6/29)

The Trump White House on Monday called the Supreme Court decision overturning a Louisiana law that abortion providers said made it harder for women to acquire abortion services “unfortunate," saying it showed justices were “imposing their own policy preference in favor of abortion to override legitimate abortion safety regulations.” A statement from White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said that “the Supreme Court devalued both the health of mothers and the lives of unborn children” in making the ruling, which overturned a Louisiana law requiring abortion providers have admitting privileges with a nearby hospital. (Pecorin, 6/29)

Four other conservatives dissented, including Justice Kennedy’s successor, Justice Brett Kavanaugh. “In my view, additional fact-finding is necessary to properly evaluate Louisiana’s law,” he wrote in a terse dissent that took up only two of the 133 pages six different justices filed in various plurality, concurring and dissenting opinions. (Bravin, 6/29)

Each of the court’s four most consistent conservatives wrote separately to describe their disagreement. (Barnes, 6/29)

Kaiser Health News: KHN’s ‘What The Health?’: High Court’s Surprising Abortion Decision 
The Supreme Court surprised both sides in the polarized abortion battle Monday by ruling, 5-4, that a Louisiana law requiring doctors who perform the procedure to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital is an unconstitutional infringement of a woman’s right to an abortion. As expected, the court’s four liberals in the case, June Medical Services v. Russo, said that the law did not provide any protections for women and merely made it harder for them to obtain an abortion and that it was nearly identical to a Texas law struck down in 2016. (6/29)

It did not take Sara Gideon long to leverage Monday’s Supreme Court ruling on abortion in her race against Senator Susan Collins. When Ms. Collins, a Maine Republican, cast a decisive vote to confirm Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court in 2018, she did so on the premise that he would uphold precedent to preserve abortion rights. But on Monday, Justice Kavanaugh dissented from a decision that did that, arguing that the court should have ruled differently than it did in a nearly identical case four years ago. (Astor and Stevens, 6/29)

For anti-abortion activists, Monday’s Supreme Court ruling against a Louisiana law delivered a stinging and surprising setback. But perhaps not for long. The anti-abortion movement has a long pipeline of new cases that, if taken up by the Supreme Court, could present a more direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that established federal protection for abortion. As of June, there were at least 16 abortion cases before United States appeals courts, the last step before the Supreme Court, according to lawyers at Planned Parenthood Federation of America. (Tavernise and Dias, 6/29)

Every Supreme Court decision seems to confirm Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s pivotal role at the center of the court, and Monday’s ruling on abortion showed that restrictions on a woman’s right to the procedure for now will go only as far as the chief justice allows. In a remarkable stretch of decisions over the past two weeks, Roberts has dismayed conservatives and the Trump administration by finding that federal anti-discrimination law protects gay, bisexual and transgender workers and stopping the president from ending the federal program that protects undocumented immigrants brought here as children. (Barnes, 6/29)

In other news on abortion —

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds on Monday signed into law a bill that requires women to wait 24 hours before getting an abortion, trying again to institute a restriction similar to one struck down two years ago by the Iowa Supreme Court. Reynolds signed the measure into law just after lawyers representing Planned Parenthood of the Heartland and the state wrapped up arguments before a state court judge. The court must now decide whether to halt immediately enforcement of the new law, which is set to take effect Wednesday. (Pitt, 6/30)

Voters in deep-red Oklahoma this week could order Medicaid expansion for at least 200,000 poor adults, defying state and Trump administration officials fighting to limit the Obamacare program. If voters approve a ballot measure on Tuesday, Oklahoma would become the first state to broadly expand government-backed health insurance to many of its poorest residents since the beginning of a pandemic that has stripped many people of coverage. At the same time, that could scuttle the Trump administration’s efforts to make Oklahoma a test case for its plan to transform the entitlement program into a block grant. (Roubein and Goldberg, 6/29)

Oklahoma is one of 14 states, along with neighboring Texas and Kansas, that have not expanded Medicaid under the 2010 federal Affordable Care Act. Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt and his predecessor, Mary Fallin, both have opposed expansion, citing uncertainty about future costs for the state. The Oklahoma Health Care Authority has projected that about 215,000 residents would qualify for a Medicaid expansion, for a total annual cost of about $1.3 billion. The estimated state share would be about $164 million. But those numbers could be considerably higher given the number of Oklahomans who have lost their jobs and work-related health insurance because of the economic shutdown amid the coronavirus pandemic.(6/30)

The House Monday passed the first significant expansion of the Affordable Care Act since its birth a decade ago, providing Democrats a high-wattage platform to castigate President Trump for his efforts to overturn the landmark law during a pandemic and an election year. The 234-179 vote, almost entirely along party lines, was a hollow exercise in terms of any chance the bill would become law and reshape federal health policy. Moments after the debate began, the White House announced the president would veto the legislation if it reached his desk, though a wall of Senate Republican opposition to the measure makes that a moot point. (Goldstein, 6/29)

Democrats timed the vote to contrast with the Trump administration’s legal brief filed with the Supreme Court last week calling for the ACA to be struck down, a move Democrats said would be even more harmful during the coronavirus pandemic. (Sullivan, 6/29)

White House officials said the bill was spending billions to prop up the ACA and denounced a drug-price negotiation provision designed to bring prices for expensive, single-source drugs closer to prices paid in other countries. Republicans argue the drug-pricing measure will stifle innovation by reducing drugmakers' research and development budgets during a pandemic. (Cohrs, 6/29)

A new Food and Drug Administration platform gives cancer patients and physicians a way to comb through data on the experiences of clinical trial participants — but experts say it’s missing critical details to make that information actually useful to patients. The website, called Project Patient Voice, is a publicly searchable database of patient-reported outcomes, or information on symptoms and side effects collected by surveying participants during a clinical trial. (Gaffney, 6/30)

After being called off because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the FDA’s public meeting to discuss data strategy, an issue that is vital to the future of health care in the United States, is being held — virtually, of course — on Tuesday, June 30. Like many regulatory bodies, the FDA innovates at a far slower pace than the private sector. This lag time has made it difficult for the FDA to develop a technology strategy that remains relevant from inception of a new drug to deployment. (Rymsza, 6/29)

The drugmaker behind the experimental COVID-19 treatment remdesivir has announced how much it will charge for the drug, after months of speculation as the company tried to figure out how to balance profit and public health needs in the middle of a pandemic. In the United States, Gilead Sciences will charge $520 per vial for patients with private insurance, with some government programs getting a lower price. With a double-dose the first day, that comes out to $3,120 for the five-day treatment course. For governments in developed countries outside the U.S., it will cost $390 per vial, or $2,340 for the five-day course. (Lupkin, 6/29)

Remdesivir, the first drug shown to be effective against the coronavirus, will be distributed under an unusual agreement with the federal government that establishes nonnegotiable prices and prioritizes American patients, health officials announced on Monday. Remdesivir will be sold for $520 per vial, or $3,120 per treatment course, to hospitals for treatment of patients with private insurance, according to the Department of Health and Human Services and Gilead Sciences, the drug’s manufacturer. (Kolata, 6/29)

Under the company’s plans, Gilead will charge a higher price for most patients in the U.S., and a lower price for the rest of the developed world where governments directly negotiate drug prices. The lower price will be extended to some U.S. government agencies, such as the Department of Veterans Affairs, but not programs such as Medicare and Medicaid that don’t directly purchase medicines, a Gilead spokesman said. (Walker, 6/29)

The California-based drugmaker Gilead Sciences announced its pricing plans for remdesivir, an antiviral COVID-19 drug candidate, saying the treatment will cost $520 per dose for U.S. private insurance companies and $390 per dose for the U.S. government. For a majority of people who receive a five-day treatment of the drug using six vials (based on current patterns), the total charged to hospitals for patients with private insurance in the U.S. will be $3,120. For those under U.S. government health programs, the total will be $2,340 per patient. (Thorbecke, 6/29)

Since remdesivir became the first medicine shown to have an impact on Covid-19, doctors, politicians, and Wall Street investors have engaged in a tense guessing game: What would its maker, Gilead Sciences, charge for the drug? Now there is an answer. (Herper, 6/29)

Hospitals will be able to buy predetermined amounts of the promising coronavirus treatment remdesivir through September for up to $3,200 per five-day treatment course, HHS said Monday. Hospitals are currently getting the drug for free because of Gilead Sciences' initial donation of remdesivir, which officially runs out on Monday. HHS reached a deal to secure the lions' share of Gilead's scheduled production of remdesivir through September. (Cohrs, 6/29)

Gilead Sciences, in a self-described effort to do “the right and responsible thing,” may have just set a precedent its industry peers will come to resent. In picking a price for the Covid-19 drug remdesivir that is, in the words of CEO Daniel O’Day, “well below” its actual value, Gilead said it was prioritizing “broad and equitable access” over company profits. (Garde, 6/29)

After weeks of anticipation, Gilead Sciences (GILD) finally disclosed the pricing for its remdesivir experimental Covid-19 treatment. But while the number is less than what both investors and a cost-effectiveness watchdog had been expecting, the drug holds the potential to generate plenty of sales. But whether it can generate huge profits is open to debate. (Silverman, 6/29)

Sen. Chuck Grassley on Monday accused Democrats of walking away from negotiations on a bill meant to lower prescription drug prices — a bill that has, until now, enjoyed more support from Democrats in the Senate than from most Republicans in the chamber. The Iowa Republican’s surprisingly public airing of grievances, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, is the latest indication that Congress is unlikely to pass meaningful pharmaceutical industry reforms before November’s election. (Facher, 6/29)

Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) will re-introduce a drug pricing package (S. 2543) he assembled with the ranking member of his committee, Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), and soon call on Senate leaders to allow debate on the measure, Grassley spokesman Michael Zona said. ... Both parties, with control of the Senate up for grabs in the November elections, swapped blame for inaction on drug prices. ... [Democratic Sen. Ron] Wyden noted that the House passed a measure to direct the government to demand lower prices from drugmakers last year (H.R. 3). Senate leaders, including Grassley, have said they won’t support that bill. (Rouff, 6/29)

Pharmaceutical companies have raised prices on 245 drugs since the first U.S. coronavirus case was reported on Jan. 20, according to a report released Sunday by an advocacy group. Sixty-one of the drugs that saw price increases are being used to treat COVID-19, and 30 are in clinical trials, the group Patients for Affordable Drugs said in its report. The price hikes are on par with increases the previous two years. (Bikales, 6/29)

And in other news about drug pricing --

Intercept Pharmaceuticals said Monday that the Food and Drug Administration rejected its drug to treat the fatty liver disease known as NASH — a decision that has obvious negative consequences for Intercept but could also raise concerns for other drugmakers developing similar treatments. According to a statement from Intercept, FDA officials determined the “predicted benefit” of the company’s drug called obeticholic acid, or OCA, “does not sufficiently outweigh the potential risks” to support approval as a treatment for patients with NASH. (Feuerstein, 6/29)

A U.K. pharmaceutical industry trade group has publicly reprimanded AstraZeneca (AZN) for failing to uphold the “high standards” expected of drug makers, after convening an advisory board meeting that an anonymous employee contended was really an improper marketing scheme. The reprimand comes amid ongoing concerns over industry advisory boards, which are regularly convened to discuss information about medicines — notably, medical study results — but have sometimes been criticized as marketing vehicles to sway physicians. (Silverman, 6/29)

Iowa Health System, which does business as UnityPoint Health, has reached a settlement over two data breaches at the health system, which had collectively compromised data on more than 1 million patients and employees, according to court documents filed last week. The plaintiffs in the case filed the motion for preliminary approval of a settlement to end a proposed class action over the 2017 and 2018 cyberattacks in federal court in Wisconsin. (Cohen, 6/29)

Piedmont Healthcare will pay $16 million to settle two False Claims Act allegations involving overbilling and kickbacks. The Atlanta-based health system allegedly billed Medicare and Medicaid for unnecessary care and paid above fair market value to acquire Atlanta Cardiology Group in 2007, incentivizing referrals, according to a 2016 qui tam lawsuit filed by a former Piedmont physician that was unsealed last week. (Kacik, 6/29)

Kaiser Health News: Hospital Executive Charged In $1.4B Rural Hospital Billing Scheme
A Miami entrepreneur who led a rural hospital empire was charged in an indictment unsealed Monday in what federal prosecutors called a $1.4 billion fraudulent lab-billing scheme. In the indictment, prosecutors said Jorge A. Perez, 60, and nine others exploited federal regulations that allow some rural hospitals to charge substantially higher rates for laboratory testing than other providers. (Weber and Feder Ostrov, 6/30)

Michigan's 10 top hospital systems are expected to receive $1.7 billion in COVID-19 relief grant funds from the federal government and $2.7 billion in Medicare advanced reimbursement loans that must be paid back by the end of the year. Several health system executives told Crain's the $4.4 billion will not cover financial losses incurred by the coronavirus pandemic through June as measured by lost revenue from elective procedures and surgeries and increased expenses for supplies, additional personal protective equipment and hazard pay. (Greene, 6/29)

Trinity Health projects the lasting effects of the COVID-19 pandemic will mean $2 billion less in operating revenue in its fiscal 2021, which begins July 1, and it is rolling out another round of layoffs and furloughs to compensate. Livonia, Mich.-based Trinity said Monday it expects to draw $17.3 billion in operating revenue in fiscal 2021, compared with $19.3 billion in fiscal 2019, which ended June 30, 2019. The health system didn't share a projection for fiscal 2020, which ends June 30. The 92-hospital not-for-profit system, which operates in 22 states, is among the country's largest. (Bannow, 6/29)

The coronavirus keeps spreading around the United States. New hot spots are emerging and heating up by the day. The death toll keeps mounting. So how can the U.S. beat back the relentless onslaught of this deadly virus? Public health experts agree one powerful weapon is something that's gotten a lot of attention, but apparently still needs a lot more: Testing. (Stein, 6/30)

Back in March, after President Trump declared the coronavirus a national emergency, doctors felt ill-equipped to diagnose their patients or counsel them on treatment and prevention. Three months later, testing numbers are up. But primary care physicians — the doctors that many turn to first when their health declines — are not always equipped to check their patients for the pathogen. And community testing sites have not been evenly distributed, snubbing some populations most vulnerable to the ill effects of the virus. Many Americans hoping to get tested are not even sure where to start looking. (Wu, 6/29)

Before a camping and kayaking trip along the Texas Coast, Pam LeBlanc and Jimmy Harvey decided to get coronavirus tests. They wanted a bit more peace of mind before spending 13 days in close quarters along with three friends. The two got drive-through tests at Austin Emergency Center in Austin. (Kliff, 6/29)

In related news —

But even as data has jumped to the forefront of international discussions about the virus, the Johns Hopkins team wrestles with doubts about whether the numbers can truly capture the scope of the pandemic, and whether the public and policymakers are failing to absorb the big picture. They know what they are producing is not a high-resolution snapshot of the pandemic but a constantly shifting Etch a Sketch of the trail of covid-19, the disease caused by the virus. (Swenson, 6/29)

As Britain’s COVID-19 infections soared in the spring, the government reached for what it hoped could be a game changer – a smartphone app that could automate some of the work of human contact tracers. The origin of the NHS COVID-19 App goes back to a meeting on March 7 when three Oxford scientists met experts at NHSX, the technical arm of the UK’s health service. The scientists presented an analysis that concluded manual contact tracing alone couldn’t control the epidemic. (Stecklow, 6/29)

As states grapple with how to safely start the upcoming school year, the American Academy of Pediatrics is pushing for students to be physically present in classrooms rather than continue in remote learning for the sake of their well-being. The group, which represents and guides pediatricians across the country, updated its back-to-school recommendations to say evidence shows the academic, mental and physical benefits of in-person learning outweigh the risks from the coronavirus. (Lee, 6/30)

On the other hand, the AAP argues that based on the nation's experience this spring, remote learning is likely to result in severe learning loss and increased social isolation. Social isolation, in turn, can breed serious social, emotional and health issues: "child and adolescent physical or sexual abuse, substance use, depression, and suicidal ideation." Furthermore, these impacts will be visited more severely on Black and brown children, as well as low-income children and those with learning disabilities. (Kamenetz, 6/29)

A 71-year-old man who died last week while serving time on San Quentin’s Death Row tested positive for the coronavirus, marking the first known death of a coronavirus patient inside California’s oldest state prison. Richard Stitely’s test results, announced by Marin County officials late Monday morning, come as a monstrous outbreak continues to overwhelm San Quentin State Prison, now infecting more than 1,000 incarcerated people and 89 employees at the facility. As of Monday evening, more than one out of every four people incarcerated at San Quentin were infected. (Cassidy and Fagone, 6/29)

The prison now has almost 40 percent of all confirmed coronavirus cases in the California prison system, which has a total of 2,573 confirmed cases. (Coleman, 6/29)

When the first coronavirus cases in Chicago appeared in January, they bore the same genetic signatures as a germ that emerged in China weeks before. But as Egon Ozer, an infectious-disease specialist at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, examined the genetic structure of virus samples from local patients, he noticed something different. (Kaplan and Achenbach, 6/29)

Hospitals in Arizona are seeing an intense wave of new coronavirus cases, doctors at the Banner University Medical Center in Phoenix told ABC News on Monday, and it is filling up their intensive care units and pushing their nurses to the brink. Dr. Jennifer O'Hea, a Banner ICU doctor overseeing 100 patients, said the situation "exploded" towards the end of May and has snowballed into a dire situation. (Abdelmalek, Rubin, Hartung and Zepeda, 6/30)

A handful of front-line health care workers who have been away from home helping patients fight the coronavirus have once again hugged their children after spending months apart. ... Mary Ann Dakkak, a doctor at Boston Medical Center who has been on the front lines, recently saw her children Eli and Isabelle Tauches, who are 8 and 10 years old respectively, for the first time in more than 90 days. (Schwartz, 6/29)

Kaiser Health News: Essential Worker Shoulders $1,840 Pandemic Debt Due To COVID Cost Loophole 
Carmen Quintero works an early shift as a supervisor at a 3M distribution warehouse that ships N95 masks to a nation under siege from the coronavirus. On March 23, she had developed a severe cough, and her voice, usually quick and enthusiastic, was barely a whisper. A human resources staff member told Quintero she needed to go home. (Varney, 6/30)

Kaiser Health News: Lost On The Frontline | Kaiser Health News
America’s health care workers are dying. In some states, medical personnel account for as many as 20% of known coronavirus cases. They tend to patients in hospitals, treating them, serving them food and cleaning their rooms. Others at risk work in nursing homes or are employed as home health aides.“Lost on the Frontline,” a collaboration between KHN and The Guardian, has identified 729 such workers who likely died of COVID-19 after helping patients during the pandemic. (6/30)

The hospital’s first employee to die of Covid-19 was a kitchen worker named Marie Deus. She was 65, and a longtime germophobe. Years before the pandemic, years before the new coronavirus was known to exist, she always kept a stash of masks and Purell in her bag. She was never without paper towels, to shield her hands from whatever unseen dangers lurked on doorknobs, on handholds in the bus. (Boodman, 6/30)

Across New York, workers in patient services at hospitals have had to figure out what to do with the thousands of cellphones, chargers, walkers, canes, hearing aids, dentures, glasses, clothing, shoes, wallets, Bibles, jewelry, among other items, that have been left behind by patients who have died after contracting Covid-19. (Salcedo, 6/29)

The state Department of Health granted New York City hospitals permission to resume nonurgent surgeries June 8—Long Island and Westchester facilities got the green light in late May—but the busiest facilities have thousands of procedures to schedule. Perullo is working with her doctor to find a date for surgery. (LaMantia, 6/29)

Flying can increase your risk of exposure to infection, but airlines are taking some precautions and you can too. Air travel means spending time in security lines and airport terminals, which puts you into close contact with other people. As travel slowly recovers, planes are becoming more crowded, which means you will likely sit close to other people, often for hours, which raises your risk. (6/30)

Other related stories include —

When Brittany Brockenbrough’s transgender son lost his in-school counseling and the ability to have meet-ups with other L.G.B.T.Q. youth during the pandemic, his mental health suffered. “He began to feel depressed and was withdrawn,” said Ms. Brockenbrough, a mother of two in Virginia. She was later able to get her son teletherapy and in-home support from a local mental health agency and to find ways for him to stay in touch with others in his community through such activities as weekly Zoom meetings and online game nights. (Valencia, 6/29)

Kaiser Health News: ‘More Than Physical Health’: Gym Helps 91-Year-Old Battle Isolation
Most mornings, like clockwork, you could find Art Ballard pumping iron. At least five days a week, he drove to Foothill Gym, where he beat on the punching bag, rode a stationary bike and worked his abs. After he joined the gym five years ago, he dropped 20 pounds, improved his balance and made friends. (de Marco, 6/30)

Alameda County health officer Dr. Erica Pan, a key figure in the county’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, is leaving that position for a role with the state’s health department. Pan has been appointed California State Epidemiologist and deputy director for the Center for Infectious Diseases at the California Department of Public Health, according to a release from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office Monday. (Kawahara, 6/29)

Bay Area tenants groups and a prominent San Francisco tenants law firm say they’ve seen a surge in evictions, or high pressure from landlords meant to squeeze tenants out, as people across California file for unemployment in droves. (Fitzgerald Rodriguez, 6/29)

Throwing a party -- a real, in-person party -- during a pandemic means pondering questions rarely covered in books of etiquette. Which guests should be crossed off the list as too risky or too much at risk? How to deal with huggers who fail to suppress their instincts? Will there be access to a bathroom? And is it appropriate to use a bottle of hand sanitizer as a table centerpiece? (Haddon and Hagerty, 6/29)

Two U.S. research groups have reported finding nearly 300 cases of an alarming apparent side effect of Covid-19 in children, a condition called multisystem inflammation syndrome, or MIS-C. While researchers have previously reported on the condition, the papers mark the first attempt to measure how frequently the side effect occurs and how it affects children who develop it. (Branswell, 6/29)

Today the New England Journal of Medicine published two studies spotlighting the serious manifestations of COVID-19–related multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), the first involving 186 kids in 26 states and the second involving 99 patients in New York. On May 14, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a national health advisory on COVID-19 patients with features of MIS-C similar to Kawasaki disease, a rare pediatric inflammatory illness that can cause coronary-artery aneurysms and toxic shock syndrome. (Beusekom, 6/29)

At least 285 U.S. children have developed a serious inflammatory condition linked to the coronavirus and while most recovered, the potential for long-term or permanent damage is unknown, two new studies suggest. The papers, published online Monday in the New England Journal of Medicine, provide the fullest report yet on the condition. (Tanner, 6/30)

In related news —

More than 8 percent of children living in Department of Children and Families group homes and similar settings have contracted the coronavirus, a figure that far outstrips the rate among young people elsewhere in the state. The first case of COVID-19 in so-called congregate care surfaced in early April, according to DCF officials, and similar to other corners of Massachusetts, the virus has proliferated since. Of the roughly 1,700 children in state custody living in group homes or residential school settings, 144 have so far contracted the virus. (Stout, 6/29)

This year’s plague, the newly emerged coronavirus, will likely spare many people from being attacked by an ancient scourge: bedbugs. Given the drastic pandemic-induced reductions in travel and nights spent in hotels, motels and other venues outside one’s home, the chances of being bitten by or bringing home these uninvited guests have been greatly curtailed. (Brody, 6/29)

Recently, and out of necessity, my husband and daughter became more familiar with the symptoms of menopause. As many families sheltering at home are learning, physical and emotional changes can amplify the challenges already inherent in spending so much time together. But, until this time, my family had only a basic understanding of menopause and its symptoms, and no idea how to help. (Gillard, 6/29)

Hot weather causes an average of 702 deaths nationwide each year, according to a new report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, based on data from 2004 through 2018. Most of the deaths (90 percent) occurred from May to September, and about 70 percent of the victims were men. More than a third of those who died (37 percent) lived in Texas, Arizona and California. (Searing, 6/29)

Using data from a commercial insurance claims database, the researchers found that the incidence of C difficile infection (CDI) among individuals living with a family member who had CDI was more than 12 times greater than the incidence in those without prior family exposure. The incidence rate was even higher in certain groups less likely to have other risk-increasing exposures. The results of the study appeared Jun 26 in JAMA Open Network. (Dall, 6/29)

The novel coronavirus pandemic has only exacerbated income inequality, experts say, stretching the racial wealth gap in the United States and making the richest wealthier while leaving many of the poorest without jobs. As the COVID-19 pandemic overtook the U.S., it brought with it an unprecedented financial crisis and unemployment rates at their highest levels since the Great Depression, especially among Black, Hispanic and Asian workers (16.8%, 17.6% and 15% in May compared to 12.4% for whites). At least 45 million people have filed for unemployment since the pandemic began. (Thorbecke and Mitropoulos, 6/28)

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said he had agreed to shift more than $1 billion in annual funding out of the New York Police Department, as he and the city council raced to agree on the city’s budget for the coming fiscal year. The mayor provided few details Monday about the proposed reductions because he and the council were still in negotiations. However, part of the funding changes would involve shrinking the NYPD’s head count and transferring school safety agents and crossing guards from the control of the police to the Department of Education, according to people familiar with the matter. (Honan and Brody, 6/29)

The national movement to defund the police seemed to score its biggest victory yet over the weekend with a tentative deal to shift $1 billion away from the NYPD. The agreement to cut a sixth of the budget of the nation’s largest police force would have been unthinkable even several weeks ago, when it became clear the economic crisis sparked by the coronavirus pandemic would force huge reductions to city spending. That the city’s Democratic establishment quickly coalesced around such a proposal is testament to how much the mass protests against police brutality have changed the political dynamic in the city and across the country. But for those pushing for the cuts, it's not enough — not even close. (Durkin, 6/29)

Congress on Monday began to investigate tactics used by federal law enforcement officers to clear protesters near Lafayette Square ahead of President Trump’s photo op in front of the pale yellow facade of St. John’s Episcopal Church. Protesters, journalists and witnesses who were caught in clouds of chemical irritants, hit with police batons, pelted by projectiles and shoved with riot shields described their experiences and injuries to lawmakers, whose confidence in police officers’ tactics seemed to splinter along party lines. (Lang, 6/29)

 Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said Monday she wants to ban police use of chokeholds and make racially motivated 911 calls hate crimes. The measures were among a new series of police reforms called for by Whitmer, who on June 3 announced other measures she wants enacted in Michigan, including requiring police officers to intervene if they see colleagues using excessive force. (Egan, 6/29)

The first day protesters gathered outside Colorado’s State Capitol last month to call for policing changes, state Rep. Leslie Herod stood with them. ...The urgency of the public protests, paired with legislative sessions interrupted by the coronavirus pandemic, put policing changes on a fast track in Colorado and elsewhere, said Amber Widgery, a policy analyst with the criminal justice program of the National Conference of State Legislatures. (Van Ness, 6/30)

As social unrest swept across Los Angeles this month, police dispatchers were hit with a curious, if brief, trend. Calls for service handled by officers — incidents ranging from loud parties and fireworks to domestic disputes and traffic stops — declined nearly by half during the two-week demonstration period. That means each day there were 2,000 fewer calls for police compared with the department’s typical workload, according to a Times analysis of dispatch data. (Stiles, 6/29)

Barbecuing at Lake Merritt in Oakland. Selling water without a permit. Both instances in which a Black person was doing something deemed criminal by a white person. Both instances in which a white person called the police. Now, as racial tensions continue to flare as the nation protests the death of George Floyd and others, a Bay Area lawmaker plans to introduce legislation that would make discriminatory 911 calls a hate crime, joining a handful of states in pushing to criminalize emergency calls. Three states — New York, Oregon and Washington — have recently enacted new laws. (Castillo, 6/29)

For years, social media platforms have fueled political polarization and hosted an explosion of hate speech. Now, with four months until the U.S. presidential election and the country’s divisions reaching a boiling point, these companies are upping their game against bigotry and threats of violence. What’s not yet clear is whether this action is too little, too late — nor whether the pressure on these companies, including a growing advertiser boycott, will be enough to produce lasting change. (Ortutay and Arbel, 6/29)

Two members of the Senate are calling for an investigation of five states that ordered nursing homes to accept COVID-19-positive patients who were discharged from hospitals. Republicans Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Greg Walden of Oregon are asking Christi Grimm, Principal Deputy Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to determine if the states violated federal health care guidelines and regulations. (Jaffe, 6/29)

Dallas County continued a four-day trend of record coronavirus daily cases Monday — reporting 572 new cases. The county also reported one additional death, an Irving man in his 40s who had underlying high-risk health conditions but had not been hospitalized. (Jones, 6/29)

San Francisco voters could be weighing as many as five tax hike measures this fall, in what will be a test of how the coronavirus-fueled recession influences attitudes on economic growth and whether the city’s big businesses are paying their fair share. Four of the five tax-increase proposals — which have been placed on the November ballot but could still be withdrawn up until the end of July — were rooted in the pre-COVID days of 2019 when the city was flush with cash, the hotels were packed with business travelers, unemployment was about 2% and the growth of tech companies seemed limitless. (Dineen, 6/29)

Another Mainer has died as 28 more cases of the new coronavirus have been detected in the state, health officials said Monday. There have now been 3,219 cases across all of Maine’s counties since the outbreak began here in March, according to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s up from 3,191 on Sunday. (Burns, 6/29)

The University of Georgia confirmed Monday that nearly 150 students and campus workers have tested positive for COVID-19. The UGA Health Center said that 143 people tested positive, according to a news release. It is unclear how many of those positive cases are students and how many are staff members. (Hansen, 6/29)

For months, Republican leaders in Texas resisted calls by Democrats to allow widespread mail-in voting, more swayed by President Trump’s concerns about mail-ballot “fraud” than by the threat the coronavirus might pose at polling places. The pandemic would have run its course by the time voting began, they believed. The election had been postponed, after all, and would not take place until long after Gov. Greg Abbott had embarked on an aggressive reopening of the state. (Goodman, 6/29)

A federal appeals court panel upheld a host of Republican-authored voting restrictions in Wisconsin on Monday, handing conservatives a significant win in a pair of lawsuits just months before residents in the battleground state cast their ballots for president. The three-judge panel —all Republican appointees— found that the state can restrict early voting hours and restored a requirement that people must live in a district for 28 days, not 10, before they can vote. The panel also said emailing and faxing absentee ballots is unconstitutional. (Richmond, 6/30)

Chinese researchers have discovered a new type of swine flu that can infect humans and has the potential to cause a future pandemic, according to a study released on Monday, though scientists have cautioned that the virus does not pose an immediate global health threat. The disease, which researchers called the G4 virus, is genetically descended from the H1N1 swine flu that caused a pandemic in 2009. G4 now shows "all the essential hallmarks of a candidate pandemic virus," said the study, published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). (Yeung, 6/30)

A new flu virus found in Chinese pigs has become more infectious to humans and needs to be watched closely in case it becomes a potential “pandemic virus”, a study said, although experts said there is no imminent threat. A team of Chinese researchers looked at influenza viruses found in pigs from 2011 to 2018 and found a “G4” strain of H1N1 that has “all the essential hallmarks of a candidate pandemic virus”, according to the paper, published by the U.S. journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). (6/29)

Bharat Biotech’s COVID-19 vaccine has been approved for human trials, making it India’s first domestic candidate to get the green light from the government’s drug regulator as cases surge in a country with more than 1.3 billion people. The Drug Controller General of India has approved the company’s application to conduct a Phase I and II clinical trial of Covaxin, which was developed along with the Indian Council of Medical Research’s National Institute of Virology, the company said in a statement on Monday. (6/29)

The 27-member bloc is expected to give outline approval to leisure or business travel from Wednesday to 14 countries beyond its borders when they vote on the list by midday Brussels time (1000 GMT), the diplomats said. The countries are Algeria, Australia, Canada, Georgia, Japan, Montenegro, Morocco, New Zealand, Rwanda, Serbia, South Korea, Thailand, Tunisia and Uruguay, they said. (Blenkinsop, 6/30)

The European Union is set to make public Tuesday a list of countries whose citizens will be allowed to enter 31 European countries, but most Americans are likely to be refused entry for at least another two weeks due to soaring coronavirus infections in the U.S. EU envoys to Brussels have launched a written procedure which would see the list endorsed Tuesday morning as long as no objections are raised by member countries. The list is expected to contain up to 15 countries that have virus infection rates comparable to those in the EU. (6/30)

The United Kingdom’s suspected COVID-19 death toll has hit 54,852, according to a Reuters tally of official data sources that underline the country’s status as one of the worst hit in the world. The Reuters tally comprises fatalities where COVID-19 was mentioned on death certificates in England, Wales and Northern Ireland up to June 19, and up to June 21 in Scotland. It also includes more recent hospital deaths. (6/30)

British researchers are reporting repeatedly that some ethnic groups are more vulnerable to Covid-19 than the country’s white majority, a finding mirrored in the U.S. that doctors say is laying bare longstanding inequalities in health between communities. The most persuasive reason for the disparity, doctors and researchers say, is that black and other ethnic minority groups in the U.K. are on average poorer than whites and more likely to live in places or work in occupations in which the risk of exposure to the new coronavirus is greater. (Douglas, 6/29)

On Friday, Feb. 21, Duncan Selbie, chief executive of Public Health England, was in a cheerful mood. It was near the end of the school half-term holiday. He wrote on an official blog that there had been no new positive cases of the new coronavirus that week in the United Kingdom. It was a “testament,” he said, “to the robust infection control measures” and the “diagnostic and testing work” at laboratories nationwide. (Grey, Macaskill, McNeill, Stecklow and Wilkes, 6/29)

After taking a job in a hospital’s COVID-19 emergency room, Philippine doctor Jan Claire Dorado planned to move out of the family home to protect relatives from the risk of infection. But Dorado’s parents insisted the 30-year-old keep living at home, so her father constructed a makeshift isolation area in a storage room there. (Lopez, 6/30)

Covid-19 cases are surging in states that took Donald Trump’s advice and reopened for business too soon. This new surge — is it OK now to call it a second wave? — is, on average, hitting people younger than the initial surge in the Northeast did. Perhaps as a result, rising infections haven’t been reflected in a comparable rise in deaths, although that may be only a matter of time. There is, however, growing evidence that even those who survive Covid-19 can suffer long-term adverse effects: scarred lungs, damaged hearts and perhaps neurological disorders. And if the Trump administration gets its way, there may be another source of long-term damage: permanent inability to get health insurance. (Paul Krugman, 6/29)

So much for all those crocodile fears about the end of abortion rights. The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 Monday that a state can’t even require abortion providers to have admitting privileges at a hospital. And the logic of the concurring opinion from Chief Justice John Roberts, who provided the fifth vote, suggests not even de minimis regulation of abortion will survive his Court’s scrutiny. A woman’s right to abortion wasn’t at issue in June Medical Services v. Russo. No woman seeking an abortion was a plaintiff. The case was brought by abortion providers, who claimed that Louisiana’s requirement that they have admitting privileges at a hospital would be an undue burden on the ability of women to obtain an abortion. Here’s the stunner: Four years ago a different Court majority overturned a similar Texas statute, with then Justice Anthony Kennedy joining the four liberals. Chief Justice Roberts dissented in that case. (6/29)

Commentators have been busy trying to discern what Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. was up to when he joined the Supreme Court’s four liberals Monday in striking down a Louisiana abortion law virtually identical to a Texas statute the court overturned in 2016. Was he cynically voting to save the Republican Party from the political fallout of an anti-abortion ruling? Or maybe a concern for the court’s legitimacy led him to act hypocritically, genuflecting at the altar of precedent despite the fact that he himself has voted to overrule prior decisions such as a 2018 case in which the court reversed a41-year-old precedent that allowed unions to collect “fair share fees” from non-members. Or was Roberts signaling that he might be open to overruling Planned Parenthood vs. Casey, the 1992 decision that reaffirmed the “essential holding” of Roe vs. Wade. (Michael McGough, 6/29)

The Supreme Court upheld abortion rights on Monday, with Chief Justice John Roberts concurring with the liberals on the court to strike down a Louisiana anti-abortion law. That sentence might surprise a lot of people, given that the chief justice is a staunch conservative, and that the court now has a solid right-wing majority. President Trump achieved that majority by appointing two justices with the express purpose of pushing a hard-right agenda, as determined by legal groups like the Federalist Society. Obliterating abortion access in America is at the top of that priority list. (6/29)

To their credit, Justices Clarence, Thomas and Samuel Alito, as well as President Trump’s appointees Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, strongly dissented – but it was not enough to overcome a narrow majority. For that, we need President Trump to fill at least one more inevitable vacancy. Pro-life momentum cannot be ignored. In response to growing extremism in states controlled by pro-abortion Democrats, pro-life lawmakers are eager to implement protections for unborn children and challenge Roe v. Wade. A prominent pro-abortion think tank notes with alarm that more than one-third of all pro-life state laws since Roe have been passed within the last 10 years – nearly 60 of them enacted in 2019 alone. Just this month, lawmakers in Tennessee and Mississippi took bold strides for life. (Marjorie Dannenfelser, 6/29)

The perennial challenge for American democracy is fixing what is wrong with the system while preserving what is right. Today the trade-offs and tensions between change and stability seem more acute than they have been for many years. As in the past, however, the rule of law offers the best — the only — way for society to negotiate upheaval peacefully. And so it is cause for optimism that the Supreme Court has voted to strike down a law in Louisiana that would have imposed strict but medically unwarranted regulations on that state’s abortion providers. This is a victory for the right to choose and for women who rely on it. Equally, if not more important, however, it is a triumph for adherence to precedent, without which the judicial process degenerates into a raw exercise of power. (6/29)

By a 5-4 vote, a fractured Supreme Court Monday struck down Louisiana’s effort to regulate abortion by requiring abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at local hospitals. Chief Justice John Roberts agreed with four liberal justices that the state law imposed a “substantial burden” on a woman’s right to an abortion.While the decision guarantees that abortion will continue to roil our politics, it may prove an even more important signal of Roberts’ determination to foil President Trump’s agenda to remake the federal courts. (John Yoo, 6/29)

Medi-Cal, supported mostly from federal funds, has grown rapidly over the past decade. This past week, even as the legislature approved a budget with many cuts, Medi-Cal spending kept growing, to $112 billion annually. The increase covers the two million people expected to join Medi-Cal after losing jobs or insurance during the pandemic.All told, 14.5 million Californians — more than one-third of us — will be on Medi-Cal by summer’s end, double the number in 2010. (Joe Mathews, 6/28)

This is a pivotal year in our country’s history. The overwhelmingly peaceful uprisings have pushed cities like Oakland to meaningfully address police brutality. The Oakland City Council reduced police funding by $14 million last week, but that’s not nearly enough to combat systemic racism.If you believe Black lives matter, I urge you not to lose sight of the economic devastation facing marginalized communities because of the pandemic. And know this: Racial justice won’t ever be achieved without sustained investment in communities with historical gaps in health care, education and employment. (Otis R. Taylor Jr., 6/29)

The rule, finalized on June 12 by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Civil Rights, rewrites part of the Affordable Care Act by interpreting “sex” discrimination to apply only to biological sex, thus allowing health care providers and insurance companies to refuse care or coverage to patients merely because they are transgender. Although the Supreme Court’s recent groundbreaking ruling that employers cannot fire individuals based on sexual orientation or gender identity sets an important precedent, it doesn’t keep the HHS rule from taking effect. (Aliza Norwood, 6/26)

The killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis was a brutal, senseless and avoidable tragedy, and one our country has witnessed countless times before. In many ways, his death was the match that ignited nationwide conversations about the racial injustices that have existed in our country for generations. These systemic problems have led to inequalities in everything from education, to health care, to housing, and while each of these must be addressed, the most important place to start is with police reforms. (John Cornyn, 6/29)

We stand with Hugo’s Tacos. On Sunday, the Los Angeles business took the extreme measure of temporarily closing its two locations, in Studio City and Atwater Village, to give employees “a break” from verbal and physical abuse by customers outraged that employees were enforcing the law requiring face coverings. During the closure, the staff will strategize ways to reopen in a way that complies with rules to limit spread of COVID-19 as well as insulates employees from having to endure the misplaced hostility of defiant patrons. It was the responsible, if economically difficult, choice but it’s a situation that no business should be forced into. (6/30)

Democratic governors and lawmakers on Sunday pushed for a better-coordinated federal response to the coronavirus pandemic as cases spike in several states, particularly in the southern and eastern U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said on ABC’s “This Week” that a national mask mandate was “long overdue,” and “it’s time for this administration to take this seriously.” (Zack Budryk, 6/28)

Like someone skipping along the edge of a cliff, Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry has committed the city to playing host to thousands of people in an enclosed place during a pandemic. As an earlier Times-Union editorial stated, there were more cons than pros to bringing the Republican National Convention to Jacksonville. In the past few weeks the dangers have only increased. Let’s start with the fact that Florida and Jacksonville are seeing a record surge of coronavirus cases. The proportion of positive coronavirus tests increased from less than 2 percent to over 14 percent in the last month. And the fact that some people with the coronavirus have no symptoms or mild symptoms produced a false sense of security for the anti-mask crowd. (6/29)

The coronavirus is increasing or flat in nearly every state. Only four states are seeing a decline in cases. It used to be the reverse. So when you're frustrated about the social distance and the masks and all the rest of it and you develop an unstoppable urge to go unprotected into a large group of people and live the way you did back in January, you should first watch this video a CNN team shot inside United Memorial Medical Center in Houston. (Zachary B. Wolf, 6/30)

The past three months have been a stark reminder that the United States is an aging society. Americans older than 60 outnumber those younger than 15. And this rapidly expanding older population is being devastated by the novel coronavirus. But we have also learned a great deal since March about why seniors are so susceptible to this virus — and which symptoms to look for when they present themselves at clinics and hospitals looking for help. (John W. Rowe, 6/29)

Perhaps no single action better epitomizes President Trump’s narcissism than his decision to relocate the Republican National Convention from North Carolina to Florida, a state that would allow him to flout anti-coronavirus protection measures such as social distancing and mask-wearing, and expose his own followers to a deadly pandemic in the pursuit of TV optics. Now, he might not even get that. The Post reports: “Jacksonville, the largest city in Florida and host of the Republican National Convention in August, announced Monday that masks will be mandatory in public and indoor locations, as well as in ‘other situations where individuals cannot socially distance.’ ” It seems Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry, a Republican, finally saw the necessity of following expert advice. (Jennifer Rubin, 6/29)

By sheer necessity, the Covid-19 pandemic has united health care systems around the common purpose of accelerating advances to help patients that might otherwise have taken years to develop. This has taken cutting through layers of bureaucracy stemming from misguided policies, ingrained industry practices, and outdated conventions that too often tied the hands of patients and clinicians. (Peter Pronovost, 6/30)

From coast to coast, outrage over the murder of George Floyd has brought to bear what BIPOC have always known: That “normal” has never been good enough. For months now, COVID-19 has been redoubling the gaps in white privilege that have always existed. If higher death rates among Black and Brown people laid bare the structural weakness of “normal,” then protests over Floyd’s death are the wrecking ball that will finally bring it to the ground. And it’s about time. (Joseph Kunkel, 6/29)

Covid-19 is not an evenly distributed pandemic. The United States is an outlier — and not in a good way — with more than 2.5 million cases and 125,000 deaths, or about 36 deaths per 100,000 people. One of the strongest performers is Taiwan, with 446 confirmed cases and just seven deaths for nearly 24 million citizens, or 0.03 deaths per 100,000. On a per capita basis, the U.S. has 1,200 times as many Covid-19 deaths as Taiwan. (Ezekiel J. Emanuel, Cathy Zhang and Aaron Glickman, 6/30)

To be truly effective, Gov. Abbott needs to find the political courage to buck irresponsible elements within his own party, including Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who went on Fox News Thursday to minimize and obfuscate the state’s alarming numbers. The outbreak has worsened to the point where suggestions and recommendations will not be enough to keep the situation from deteriorating. We’ll say it again: Abbott must order statewide mask use for all Texans when they are outside their homes and near others or free up local leaders to determine what restrictions make sense in their communities. He must lead or get out of the way. Successfully navigating the pandemic demands more from our leaders than politics as usual. When dealing with COVID-19, the gap between words and actions is not only hypocritical, it is deadly. (6/29)

How are you doing today? That is what schools should be asking every student regularly when classes restart in the fall, however school looks. It’s also probably the question they should be asking themselves. Due to the lasting effects of the coronavirus pandemic, they’ll have to address issues like anxiety, depression, abuse, trauma, grief, safety and food security, among not just students but staff. (Vicki Vila. 6/28)

The critically ill patients in Parkland’s COVID-19 Tactical Care Unit couldn’t wear masks even if they wanted to. They each have a plastic tube jammed down their throats, straight to their lungs. The other end of each tube coils like a translucent snake, tethering the inert form in the bed to a gleaming machine — and, with luck, to life. (Sharon Grigsby, 6/28)