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The Trump administration said Thursday it is not recommending universities require students be tested for COVID-19 before they head back to campus this fall. “In general, testing people before going back to the university … is not a strategy that we recommend, nor does the CDC recommend, because you're only negative for that one moment,” Adm. Brett Giroir, assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services who is in charge of COVID-19 testing strategy, told reporters. (Hellmann, 7/23)

College students are getting ready to head back to school as the coronavirus continues and campuses are preparing as well. Rice University has contracted 60,000 coronavirus tests to conduct on campus. Rice will test undergraduate students on arrival with a free two-step testing process, the Houston Chronicle reports. Random screenings will also occur weekly for some of the community. (Rosenthal, 7/23)

Labs across the country are facing backlogs in coronavirus testing thanks in part to a shortage of tiny pieces of tapered plastic. Researchers need these little disposables, called pipette tips, to quickly and precisely move liquid between vials as they process the tests. As the number of known coronavirus cases in the United States passes 4 million, these new shortages of pipette tips and other lab supplies are once again stymieing efforts to track and curb the spread of disease. (Wu, 7/23)

National health insurer Humana said Thursday that it will mail more than 1 million in-home colon cancer and diabetic management screening kits to Medicare Advantage and Medicaid members. Humana said the screening kits will help expand access to preventative care that members may have put off during the COVID-19 pandemic. Providing in-home preventative care could also help Humana maintain its scores on certain quality and performance measures that are important to its bottom line and ability to attract seniors to its health plans. Colorectal cancer screening and diabetes care are two of those measures. (Livingston, 7/23)

A Marine assigned to the military helicopter squadron responsible for transporting the president has tested positive for Covid-19, a Marine Corps spokesperson told POLITICO. The Marine, assigned to Marine Helicopter Squadron 1, was tested on Tuesday and received the positive result on Thursday, said spokesperson Capt. Joseph Butterfield, adding that the squadron administers 80 to 100 tests per week. (Seligman, Lippman and Caputo, 7/23)

After months of detailed drafting, Major League Baseball’s return-to-play plan couldn’t make it to the season’s first pitch before facing a problem that demonstrates the enormous challenge of playing amid the coronavirus pandemic. About five hours before the Washington Nationals were set to play the first game of the shortened 2020 campaign against the New York Yankees, the team announced that star outfielder Juan Soto had tested positive for Covid-19. Upon finding out Thursday, the 21-year-old Soto took multiple rapid-response coronavirus tests that came back negative, a person familiar with the matter said. Nonetheless, Soto must sit out until he produces two lab-confirmed negative tests, spaced 24 hours apart. The entire episode provided insight into the fragility of baseball’s carefully crafted protocols—and how difficult it will be to avoid an outbreak of infection over the next three months. (Diamond and Radnofsky, 7/23)