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The Portsmouth Naval Shipyard has been hit by 18 cases of COVID-19, and Maine public health officials suspect the outbreak may be connected to a commuter van that transports workers from the Sanford area in York County, the site of additional disease outbreaks. Dr. Nirav Shah, director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said it is the “early, initial hypothesis” that the commuting van started the outbreak. (Lawlor, 9/17)

A wedding in rural Maine became a coronavirus "superspreader" event that left seven people dead and 177 infected. Now, for the community and wider region, which had relaxed social-distancing rules introduced earlier in the crisis, the news was a brutal wake-up call. (9/18)

Hospitals and clinics around Massachusetts are gearing up to help people access treatment for opioid use disorder, as part of a statewide event aimed at increasing awareness of the disease. The September 22 event, called Massachusetts Opioid Screening and Awareness Day, will feature a free virtual panel discussion with experts in opioid use disorder and people with lived experience. The event is open to the general public. (Joliocoeur, 9/19)

With lingering questions about how the novel coronavirus killed thousands of New Yorkers who lived in nursing homes, a group of state lawmakers is pushing to create an independent commission to get answers from the state Department of Health. State Sen. Jim Tedisco, a Republican from the Schenectady suburbs, last week announced an online petition drive to build public support for such a commission. He said a pair of August hearings, convened by Democrats who control the state Assembly and Senate, didn’t produce the information needed to evaluate and adjust state policies before a predicted second wave of the virus. (Vielkind, 9/20)

Virginia health officials on Friday reported the state’s first coronavirus-related death of a child since the start of the pandemic. As state health officials reminded residents that no age group is immune from the effects of the coronavirus, Maryland announced it will expand indoor-dining capacity — changes that won’t be coming to the state’s harder-hit Washington suburbs. (Cox, Lumpkin and Moyer, 9/18)

People who want to comment on Gov. Brian Kemp’s plan to block Georgians' access to the Affordable Care Act health insurance shopping website healthcare.gov now have six more days to weigh in. The new deadline for public comment on the proposal is Sept. 23, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services told the AJC on Thursday night. It extended the deadline after the AJC discovered that the email address posted for submitting public comment was incorrect and reported it. (Hart, 9/18)

At least eight residents of the Maison Orleans nursing home in Uptown New Orleans have died from the coronavirus — according to records provided by the Orleans Parish coroner’s office, anyhow. But the state Department of Health only lists three Maison Orleans residents among Louisiana’s 5,172 COVID-19 deaths. (Russell, 9/20)

Six more state corrections employees have tested positive for the coronavirus as the number of cases in the state prison system continues to grow. Three employees at the Nebraska State Penitentiary in Lincoln and three employees at the state Diagnostic and Evaluation Center tested positive for COVID-19, the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services said in a news release Saturday. (9/20)

South Dakota health officials said Sunday that active cases of the coronavirus dropped by 102 in the last day, decreasing the total number to 2,843. The report comes one day after the state reached 200 deaths due to complications from COVID-19. Officials confirmed two more deaths Sunday, both elderly men from Minnehaha County. (9/20)

The three-member team, called RIGHT Care, is a pilot program run by the Dallas police and fire departments and Parkland Health & Hospital Systems. Started in 2018 to change how Dallas police respond to the 13,000 mental health crisis calls that emergency dispatch receives each year, the team is on patrol from 7 a.m. until 11 p.m. daily in the city’s south central neighborhoods. And now, City Hall and its partners plan to expand RIGHT Care across Dallas as part of its response to a summer of protests against police brutality and systemic racism. (Garcia and Cooper, 9/18)

Kaiser Health News: California’s Deadliest Spring In 20 Years Suggests COVID Undercount 

The first five months of the COVID-19 pandemic in California rank among the deadliest in state history, deadlier than any other consecutive five-month period in at least 20 years. And the grim milestone encompasses thousands of “excess” deaths not accounted for in the state’s official COVID death tally: a loss of life concentrated among Blacks, Asians and Latinos, afflicting people who experts say likely didn’t get preventive medical care amid the far-reaching shutdowns or who were wrongly excluded from the coronavirus death count. (Reese, 9/21)

Bay Area hospitals have reported their first cases of influenza, signaling the start of what could be a turbulent flu season with COVID-19 in the mix. The flu season doesn’t typically begin in earnest until December or January in California, but doctors already are bracing for a worst-case scenario of widespread influenza on top of the coronavirus and other respiratory viruses that may be circulating. (Allday, 9/20)