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A mother and her child were stopped from boarding a flight to Puerto Rico before Thanksgiving after Maryland officials learned the child tested positive for COVID-19. The Wicomico County Health Department notified Maryland State Police on Nov. 24 that a 9-year-old boy tested positive for the novel coronavirus and informed them that he and his mother were scheduled to depart from Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport to Puerto Rico, Maryland State Police Sgt. Travis Nelson told USA TODAY. (Ali, 12/5)

Lunch breaks have become a drag for Jason Alfonso. Due to the pandemic, the steel mill where he works in Pittsburg, Calif., has reduced the capacity of break rooms from six to two people, mandated wearing masks at all times and encouraged employees to spray down tables with a bleach mixture after they eat. Not the most relaxed place to take a break after spending hours in an indoor warehouse. “Usually there’s only one person in there at a time. If there is someone else, we don’t sit together, definitely 6 feet apart. To me it’s the same as eating by myself,” he says. (Varagur, 12/6)

Sports teams have faced intense blowback since the spring over the perception that they have received special treatment in a pandemic. Now some public health experts are weighing a counterintuitive idea for how they could help end it. They are suggesting that athletes get earlier access to the coronavirus vaccines. The process of injecting 330 million Americans with a vaccine for a disease that wasn’t identified one year ago began as a marvel of science and medicine. Soon it will be a daunting logistical challenge. And then it will be a vexing behavioral problem. There are too many people who want the vaccine right now and too many people who don’t want the vaccine at all.  (Radnofsky and Cohen, 12/6)

Health-conscious consumers are eating avocados like never before during the pandemic. After a brief drop in demand at the start of the Covid crisis, European and U.S. consumption are hitting record highs, according to Xavier Equihua, chief executive officer of the World Avocado Organization, a trade group. “Consumption is off the charts,” Equihua said in an interview from California. “People want to eat healthy. The new luxury post-pandemic is going to be eating healthy, and wellness. Even the fashion industry is saying that.” (Perez, 12/4)

There is no crowding into a small kitchen this year, waiting for your turn with the stand mixer or the oven, and grabbing handfuls of warm treats off a buffet platter. Like so many other 2020 events, holiday cookie swaps will look a little different in the time of social distancing. (Barber, 12/5)

KHN: ‘An Arm And A Leg’: Obamacare Alum Andy Slavitt Takes Stock Of The COVID Pandemic — So Far 

Andy Slavitt has spent much of 2020 talking with almost everybody who knows anything about the COVID-19 pandemic — and sharing what he learns in real time, first on Twitter, then on his pandemic podcast, “In the Bubble.” To do our own podcast episode about what we’ve learned so far and what we might expect next, Slavitt was the person to speak with. (Weissmann, 12/7)

Residents in a Chicago suburb set up a condolence box at the police station to honor their mail carrier who recently died of COVID-19.Victor Fajardo was a letter carrier for more than 20 years and last worked in Deerfield. “It’s a really sobering reminder that nobody is immune to this, even if you’re healthy and you walk a five-hour route every day and people love you,” Cara McGowan told WBBM-TV. (12/6)

David Lander, the actor who played Squiggy on ABC’s “Laverne & Shirley” in the 1970s and 1980s, died Dec. 4 at a Los Angeles hospital. He was 73. His wife, Kathy Fields Lander, confirmed the death to the Los Angeles Times. He had battled multiple sclerosis for more than 36 years. (Vankin, 12/6)