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More than 22,000 people with the coronavirus have now died in the United States, according to a New York Times database. The country’s death toll increased by more than 2,000 in a single day for the first time on Friday and has now surpassed the number of reported deaths in Italy. (4/13)

The development comes as more hot spots begin to emerge in the U.S. in addition to New York, Louisiana and Detroit. Earlier this month, Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, said Colorado, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C., were among areas of concern. (Hernandez, 4/12)

The U.S. leads the world in number of confirmed cases, more than 550,000, and fatalities, more than 21,700, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, surpassing Italy’s death toll. The U.S. has more than five times the population of Italy and fewer deaths per capita than the European country of over 60 million people. Globally, the number of confirmed coronavirus cases topped 1.8 million on Sunday. (Ansari, Gurman, McBride and Calfas, 4/13)

While many countries around the world and cities in the U.S. are pointing toward positive signs that social distancing might be finally flattening the curve, the novel coronavirus death toll continues to be staggering. In the U.S., more than 529,000 people have been diagnosed with COVID-19, the disease caused by the new respiratory virus, according to data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. At least 20,602 people in the U.S. have died, the highest out of any country. (Torres and Mansell, 4/12)

New Yorkers headed into a new week with notes of cautious optimism from their elected leaders after enduring the toughest days to date in the coronavirus pandemic. The state reported Sunday that the net number of hospitalized patients, factoring in admittances and discharges, increased by 53 on Saturday, the lowest daily sum since New York started tracking such figures related to the new coronavirus almost a month ago. The peak daily increase, recorded on April 2, was 1,427. (Passy, 4/12)

New York documented 758 coronavirus deaths Saturday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) announced Sunday. The state most affected by the virus so far experienced its sixth straight day of more than 700 deaths from COVID-19, the governor reported during his daily press conference. “You see also a flattening in the number of lives lost at a terribly high rate, but if you look back over the past several days, you see there’s a certain continuity to that number,” he said during his press conference. (Coleman, 4/12)

In total, the coronavirus has killed 9,385 people in New York. The state's growing death toll dwarfs the nearly 3,000 deaths at the World Trade Center on 9/11, "which was supposed to be the tragedy of my lifetime," Cuomo said. Daily hospitalizations were down again, Cuomo said, with 53 new COVID-19 admissions in the past day — "the lowest number since we started doing these charts," Cuomo noted. The governor said officials were following the number of new hospitializations closely because the "great fear" was always "overwhelming the raw capacity of the hospital system." About 18,700 people are hospitalized with the coronavirus in New York. (Schwartz, 4/12)

The White House announced on March 31 that officials expect up to 100,000 to 240,000 total American deaths from COVID-19, even with social distancing policies. At around the same time, a prediction model from the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics Evaluation (IHME) was estimating far fewer total American deaths, totaling approximately 84,000. Now - only one week later -- the IHME figure has dropped even further, estimating 60,000 deaths by August. (Kagan, 4/11)

Los Angeles County officials reported 31 new coronavirus deaths on Sunday, the largest single-day total so far. Twenty-five of those fatalities were people over the age of 65 and six people were between the ages of 41 and 65, health officials said. In all, 296 L.A. County residents have died of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. The number of confirmed infections in the county rose to 9,192 — an increase of 323 since Saturday, the lowest number of daily new cases since March 27. (Wigglesworth, Jennings, Cosgrove, Pineda and Newberry, 4/12)

Seven more Rhode Islanders have died, and 334 have tested positive for coronavirus, Governor Gina M. Raimondo announced on Saturday. That means a total of 56 people have died of COVID-19 associated illnesses since the virus was first detected in Rhode Island on March 1. A total of 2,349 Rhode Islanders have tested positive, and 183 are hospitalized as of Saturday. (Milkovitz, 4/11)

Dead or alive, patients have the same privacy protections under federal healthcare privacy rules, legal experts warn. So while there's a growing public interest in data that providers are amassing on COVID-19 deaths, HIPAA tightly regulates how that information can—or more importantly, can't—be shared. (Cohen, 4/10)

It began one day in late February, with two people in King County, Wash. Elsewhere, life in the United States was still relatively normal: economy humming, kids in school, games on, stores open, streets busy. Even then, a killer was moving silently through the country. Those two in Washington state, a man in his 50s and a woman in her 80s, were the first of more than 1,000 people to die here of the novel coronavirus in that 30-day span, the earliest casualties in a raging pandemic that will scar generations of Americans and people across the world. (Hauslohner, Thebault and Dupree, 4/12)

President Trump has been open about his eagerness to see the economy and some semblance of business as usual spring back to life as soon as possible. His surgeon general, Jerome Adams, in a television interview on Friday noted the potential for reopening the country — “place by place, bit by bit,” beginning as early as next month. But on Sunday, officials still in the thick of the grim reality caused by the coronavirus pandemic urged caution, fearing that relaxing protective measures too early could cause the virus to surge once again. (Rojas, 4/12)

President Donald Trump on Friday offered perhaps his most optimistic take yet on U.S. efforts to combat the spread of the coronavirus and suggested the country could begin to reopen by May 1. “People want to get back to work. ... We are setting up a council of some of the most distinguished leaders in virtually every field, including politics, business and medical. And we'll be making that decision fairly soon,” Trump said in a Saturday interview on Fox News. (Beavers, 4/12)

New cases of the coronavirus are certain to arise when restrictions imposed to limit the spread of the virus are eased, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease expert for the U.S. But Fauci said Sunday that the economy in parts of the country could have a “rolling reentry” as early as next month, provided health authorities can quickly identify and isolate people who will inevitably be infected. Fauci also said he “can’t guarantee” that it will be safe for Americans to vote in person on Election Day, Nov. 3. (Sherman and Superville, 4/13)

“We are hoping by the end of the month we can look around and say, ‘OK, is there any element here that we can safely and cautiously start pulling back on?’” Fauci, the best-known public health expert on the White House coronavirus task force, said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “If so, do it,” he said. “If not, then just continue to hunker down.” Fauci and other health experts worry that if the country ends social-distancing policies too early, the virus could once again start rapidly spreading, causing a renewed increase in illness and death. (King, 4/12)

He added that officials will have to look at the nature of the outbreak that a region has already experienced as well as the threat of an outbreak it may not have experienced yet. The situation in New York, the state that's been hit hardest by the pandemic, will be different from the situation in Arkansas, he said.  (Klar, 4/12)

The president has pushed for reopening the country, an effort that Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, voiced caution about, warning that lifting all restrictions next month would probably mean that “by July or August, we could be back in the same situation we are now.” “Maybe some states can open up mid-May,” Murray, the creator of one of the most widely cited coronavirus models, said on CBS News’s “Face the Nation.” “But we have to be very careful and make sure that we don’t sort of lose all the effort that the American people have put into closures by premature opening.” (Sonmez, Telford and Viebeck, 4/13)

“I fear, if we open up too early and we have not sufficiently made that health recovery and cracked the back of this virus, that we could be pouring gasoline on the fire, even inadvertently,” Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” He stressed that there had to be a health care recovery before there could be an economic recovery. “It has to come in that sequencing,” Murphy said. New Jersey and New York state have borne the heaviest toll from the spread of the coronavirus, accounting for more than half of the nearly 21,000 deaths in the U.S. as of Sunday morning. (Beavers, 4/12)

President Donald Trump said he’s planning a Tuesday announcement to name the members of a new White House task force focused on reopening parts of the country that have been shuttered because of the coronavirus pandemic. “We’re also setting up a council, a very, very great — doctors and businesspeople, we’re going to be announcing it on Tuesday, of some great people,” Trump told reporters at a coronavirus task force briefing at the White House on Friday. (Oprysko, 4/10)

There is also no sign of a government plan for how vital functions like air and surface transport can safely resume without triggering a new wave of mass infections. Trump, however, appears increasingly keen to get everyone back to work, or at least is laying the groundwork to blame others if it can't happen, once again suggesting amid criticism of his leadership that states, and not Washington, should be in the lead. (Collinson, 4/13)

A national plan to fight the coronavirus pandemic in the United States and return Americans to jobs and classrooms is emerging — but not from the White House. Instead, a collection of governors, former government officials, disease specialists and nonprofits are pursuing a strategy that relies on the three pillars of disease control: Ramp up testing to identify people who are infected. Find everyone they interact with by deploying contact tracing on a scale America has never attempted before. And focus restrictions more narrowly on the infected and their contacts so the rest of society doesn’t have to stay in permanent lockdown. (Sun, Wan and Abutaleb, 4/10)

South Korean officials warned Monday that hard-earned progress fighting the coronavirus pandemic could be upset by new infections at bars and leisure spots, highlighting global tensions between governments desperate to maintain social distancing and citizens eager to resume their lives as economic pressure mounts and infections slow in some places. Some European nations have started tentative moves to ease their shutdowns. Hard-hit Spain, which on Sunday reported its lowest daily growth in infections in three weeks, will allow workers in some nonessential industries to return to factories and construction sites Monday. (Klug, 4/13)

Employers and employees around the world are anxious to get back to work as soon as possible. A picture of how that will unfold is starting to emerge — and it’s far from straightforward. Businesses have long relied on a five-tier inverted pyramid called the “hierarchy of controls” to reduce workplace risks to employees, ranging from chemical exposure to physical injury. This framework will also be the basis for companies’ plans to get back to work, occupational safety experts say. (Dou, 4/13)

Kaiser Health News: How Do We Exit The Shutdown? Hire An Army Of Public Health Workers

Last month, facing the prospect of overwhelmed hospitals and unchecked spread of the novel coronavirus, seven Bay Area county and city health departments joined forces to become the first region in the nation to pass sweeping regulations ordering millions of people indoors and shuttering the local economy. It shocked people, but health experts around the country applauded the bold step, which since has been broadly replicated. (Barry-Jester, 4/13)

Blood tests for the coronavirus could play a key role in deciding whether millions of Americans can safely return to work and school. But public health officials warn that the current “Wild West” of unregulated tests is creating confusion that could ultimately slow the path to recovery. More than 70 companies have signed up to sell so-called antibody tests in recent weeks, according to U.S. regulators. (Perrone, 4/12)

The United States needs to ramp up testing for the coronavirus as the White House considers when and how to lift stay-at-home restrictions and lockdowns triggered by the pandemic, U.S. health experts said on Sunday. More than 2 million tests have been done in the country so far, but the tests are not available to many who need them, said Dr. Stephen Hahn, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. “We need to do more, no question about that,” Hahn said on ABC’s “This Week.” (Chiacu, 4/12)

Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Stephen Hahn said Sunday that the U.S. needs to do more coronavirus testing, adding there’s “no question about that.” ABC’s “This Week” co-host Martha Raddatz asked Hahn why the U.S. is “still so far behind” other countries like the U.K., Germany and South Korea, who have tested millions of residents. Hahn responded calling the situation “complicated” and “rapidly moving,” noting the pressure on supply chains. (Coleman, 4/12)

Tests turning up negative even when all signs point to COVID-19 has been a common experience in American hospitals over the past month, public health experts have told ProPublica. It’s unclear what proportion of these negative results are inaccurate — known as “false negatives” — and whether that’s due to some external factor, like bad sample collection, or because of an issue inherent in the tests’ design. Neither the major test manufacturers, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration or the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would say how common false negatives are. While the FDA requires test-makers to report any known instances of false negatives as a condition of granting them provisional approval, known as emergency use authorizations, no such reports are visible in a database the agency maintains for that purpose. (DePillis and Chen, 4/10)

South Korea plans to send 600,000 coronavirus testing kits to the United States on Tuesday in the first such shipment following a request from U.S. President Donald Trump, a Seoul official told Reuters on Monday. (Shin and Cha, 4/13)

When thousands of rapid COVID-19 tests were delivered to the South Texas city of Laredo late last month, it looked as if a visiting dignitary had arrived. With lights flashing and sirens blaring, Webb County sheriff’s deputies escorted a red tractor-trailer carrying the tests to a local emergency room, whose owner had purchased them from a Chinese manufacturer. Longtime Laredo Congressman Henry Cuellar, who helped facilitate the arrival of the tests, smiled broadly as he carried boxes of them inside the clinic. Believing the tests would detect an active infection, Laredo leaders hustled to set up a drive-through testing site to welcome anxious residents the following morning. (Schwartz, 4/10)

With testing for coronavirus infections ramping up across the Louisiana, political leaders and hospital officials are starting to look ahead to a new type of test that will let patients know if they've developed immunity to the deadly virus. Unlike the tests now on the market used to confirm if someone with symptoms does in fact have COVID-19, the blood test, officially a serology test, is used to establish whether someone has developed antibodies to the disease after infection. (Williams and Karlin, 4/12)

Many Americans — at first, perhaps just health care workers and first responders — may be able to walk into a pharmacy or hospital and get an antibody test, a pinprick blood test that will tell them if they’ve had the coronavirus and may have some immunity. If the test shows high enough levels of antibodies — proteins produced by the immune system to fight infection — they may get a certificate that allows them to go back to work. (Ho and Moench, 4/12)

One month ago today, President Trump declared a national emergency. In a Rose Garden address, flanked by leaders from giant retailers and medical testing companies, he promised a mobilization of public and private resources to attack the coronavirus. "We've been working very hard on this. We've made tremendous progress," Trump said. "When you compare what we've done to other areas of the world, it's pretty incredible." But few of those promises have come to pass. (Mak, Pfeiffer, Jingnan, Benincasa, Smith, Shapiro and Anderson, 4/13)

With the coronavirus, though, things appear to be actually getting personal for Trump. After initially downplaying the burgeoning outbreak, the president’s tenor changed as he started reflecting publicly about a friend who was in a coma after becoming infected and recounting the chaos at a hospital near his childhood home in Queens. He’s repeatedly waxed about the meaning of the pandemic leaving society isolated on Easter, which the president has personalized as “a very special day for me. ”The coronavirus has also encircled the president, making it even more personal, with guests near Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort testing positive, and political allies like British Prime Minister Boris Johnson falling ill. (McGraw, 4/12)

By the time President Donald Trump first spoke publicly about the coronavirus, it may already have been too late. Interviewed at Davos, a gathering of global elites in the Swiss Alps, the president on Jan. 22 played down the threat posed by the respiratory virus from China, which had just reached American shores in the form of a solitary patient in Washington state. “We have it totally under control,” Trump said on CNBC. “It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.” (Lemire, Miller, Colvin and Alonso-Zaldivar, 4/12)

Man bites watchdog. In firing one inspector general, sidelining another and assailing a third, President Donald Trump in recent days has put his aversion to agents of federal accountability on stark display in a country consumed by the coronavirus. Clearly displeased when inspectors general come to independent conclusions that don’t fit the stories he tells, Trump employs a tactic to mar their credibility. If public servants worked for the government in the Obama era, they are subject to being painted as Obama loyalists out to get him. (Yen and Woodward, 4/13)

Aides to President Donald Trump are debating some potentially far-reaching moves to punish the World Health Organization in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, including cutting off U.S. funding and trying to create an alternative institution. Officials have begun drafting a letter that -- if the decision is made -- will announce a suspension of U.S. funding to the WHO and a related body, the Pan American Health Organization, according to a person familiar with the issue. The draft document also tells officials at the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development and other institutions to try to route the money to existing alternative organizations. (Toosi, 4/10)

A trio of public health and medical professionals making the rounds on the Sunday morning news shows called for President Donald Trump not to defund the World Health Organization as the administration weighs punitive measures on the public health organization. White House aides and Trump are debating several far-reaching moves to target the WHO in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, POLITICO reported Friday, including cutting off U.S. funding and trying to create an alternative institution. (Beavers, 4/12)

The federal government’s haphazard approach to distributing its limited supplies has left states trying everything — filling out lengthy FEMA applications, calling Trump, contacting Pence, sending messages to Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, and trade adviser Peter Navarro, who are both leading different efforts to find supplies, according to local and states officials in more than half dozen states. They’re even asking mutual friends to call Trump or sending him signals on TV and Twitter. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. “This is not something that we should ever be faced with,” Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, said in an interview. “It really is the federal government's responsibility to build those stockpiles, and distribute those during the time of crisis.” (Kumar and Bade, 4/13)

The governor of Maryland pushed back against President Donald Trump's claim at his latest briefing that states are in "good shape" with ventilators and protective equipment. Republican Gov. Larry Hogan acknowledged that states are better off than they were a few weeks ago, but "I think to say that everybody's completely happy and that we have everything we need -- it's not quite accurate," he said on ABC's "This Week" Sunday. (Robinson, 4/12)

Last month, as a deadly new virus swept over the globe, one Canadian defense contractor predicted on an earnings call that it would lead to a big business opportunity in the U.S. Thanks to the White House, that bet paid off just a few weeks later in a $96 million no-bid deal. In an unusual move, even in times of disaster, the White House stepped into the federal purchasing process, ordering the Federal Emergency Management Agency to award a contract to AirBoss of America. The Trump administration has rushed through hundreds of deals to address the pandemic without the usual oversight, more than $760 million reported as of this week, but the AirBoss transaction is the single largest no-bid purchase, a ProPublica analysis of federal purchasing data found. (McSwane and Torbati, 4/10)

California, Oregon and Washington have more ventilators than they can use. As the nation struggles to scrounge up the lifesaving machines for hospitals overrun with Covid-19 patients, these three Western states recently shipped 1,000 spares to New York and other besieged neighbors to the East. “All NYC needs is love …. From CA,” a worker scrawled in Magic Marker on a ventilator shipping box, shown in a video posted on Twitter by the governor of California, Gavin Newsom. The ongoing effort of three West Coast states to come to the aid of more hard-hit parts of the nation has emerged as the most powerful indication to date that the early intervention of West Coast governors and mayors might have mitigated, at least for now, the medical catastrophe that has befallen New York and parts of the Midwest and South. (Nagourney and Martin, 4/13)

Assembly-line workers at America’s largest auto makers, ordered to turn their skills from vehicles to ventilators, must first master tweezers and tiny screwdrivers. That is one of the many steps ahead in the race to convert car plants to medical-supply factories before the coronavirus pandemic reaches its peak in the U.S. General Motors Co. and Ford Motor Co. hope to head off a shortage of the lifesaving machines but have only weeks to deliver them. At a Ford engineering facility in Dearborn, Mich., engineers plastered a conference-room wall with yellow sticky notes last week, mocking up a factory layout to produce the machines. Some only weeks ago had been immersed in the launch of the new Ford Bronco SUV. (Colias, 4/12)

As health officials around the world push to get more ventilators to treat coronavirus patients, some doctors are moving away from using the breathing machines when they can. The reason: Some hospitals have reported unusually high death rates for coronavirus patients on ventilators, and some doctors worry that the machines could be harming certain patients.The evolving treatments highlight the fact that doctors are still learning the best way to manage a virus that emerged only months ago. They are relying on anecdotal, real-time data amid a crush of patients and shortages of basic supplies. (Stobbe, 4/13)

State guidelines to help hospitals decide who would get a ventilator if the medical system becomes overwhelmed by COVID-19 patients could disproportionately leave people from already disadvantaged groups to die, according to a letter from hundreds of front-line health care workers. (Rosen, 4/12)

President Trump publicly signaled his frustration on Sunday with Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the federal government’s top infectious disease expert, after the doctor said more lives could have been saved from the coronavirus if the country had been shut down earlier. Mr. Trump reposted a Twitter message that said “Time to #FireFauci” as he rejected criticism of his slow initial response to the pandemic that has now killed more than 22,000 people in the United States. The president privately has been irritated at times with Dr. Fauci, but the Twitter post was the most explicit he has been in letting that show publicly. (Baker, 4/12)

Appearing on CNN on Sunday morning, Dr. Fauci said that the government “could have saved more lives” if it had moved sooner to impose social-distancing restrictions. On Sunday evening, Mr. Trump retweeted a message from a former Republican congressional candidate attacking that comment. “Fauci is now saying that had Trump listened to the medical experts earlier he could’ve saved more lives,” wrote DeAnna Lorraine, who challenged House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) in her San Francisco-area district. Her message went on: “Fauci was telling people on February 29th that there was nothing to worry about and it posed no threat to the US public at large. Time to #FireFauci…” (Leary, 4/13)

Asked whether the statistics were the direct result of the late start on mitigation measures, Fauci said that "it isn't as simple as that." While earlier mitigation efforts would have had an impact, Fauci noted that "where we are right now is the result of a number of factors," including the size of the country and the heterogeneity of the country. "I think it's a little bit unfair to compare us to South Korea, where they had an outbreak in Daegu, and they had the capability of immediately, essentially, shutting it off completely in a way that we may not have been able to do in this country," he said. "So, obviously, it would have been nice if we had a better head start, but I don't think you could say that we are where we are right now because of one factor." (Wise, 4/12)

An invisible enemy is killing thousands and forcing people worldwide to cower behind closed doors. Unfounded conspiracy theories and miracle “cures” abound on social media. Politicians and pundits send mixed messages about how to protect yourself. Who you gonna call? As the coronavirus rampages, the public increasingly is turning to experts in academia and government -- the educated, experienced “elites” that many Americans had tuned out. (Flesher and Borenstein, 4/12)

The captain had reached a breaking point. The aircraft carrier he commanded, the Theodore Roosevelt, was docked in Guam as the coronavirus raced unchecked through its narrow corridors. The warship’s doctors estimated that more than 50 crew members would die, but Capt. Brett E. Crozier’s superiors were balking at what they considered his drastic request to evacuate nearly the entire ship. Captain Crozier was haunted by the Diamond Princess, a cruise ship of 2,600 passengers in individual cabins where the virus had killed eight people and infected more than 700. (Gibbons-Neff, Schmitt, Cooper and Ismay, 4/12)

People in Guam are used to a constant U.S. military presence on the strategic Pacific island, but some are nervous as hundreds of sailors from a coronavirus-stricken Navy aircraft carrier flood into hotels for quarantine. Officials insist they have enforced strict safety measures. An outbreak aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt began in late March and has thrust the Navy into a leadership crisis after the ship’s commander distributed a letter urging faster action to protect his sailors. (Kelleher, 4/12)

New York City’s academic hospital systems are losing some $350 million to $450 million a month each as they respond to a surge of patients with the novel coronavirus, while its independent and smaller hospital systems are being pushed to the financial brink and may soon be unable to make payroll, according to a top official. The mounting cost to the city’s regional hospitals is because of surging labor costs, capital and equipment expenses, and dramatic losses in revenue from elective procedures that have been postponed, according to Kenneth E. Raske, president of the Greater New York Hospital Association, a trade group representing some 160 area hospitals and health systems. (West, 4/12)

As COVID-19 tests health systems' financial limits and depletes their investment portfolios, many are searching for short-term liquidity solutions. The strategy looks different depending on the system. For Livonia, Mich.-based Trinity Health, it has meant drawing $885 million from four of its credit facilities. Advocate Aurora Health is issuing $700 million in taxable bonds, although the system said that was part of a pre-pandemic plan. UPMC took out a $300 million taxable bank loan. (Bannow, 4/10)

Kaiser Health News: Furor Erupts: Billions Going To Hospitals Based On Medicare Billings, Not COVID-19

Probably few hospital systems need the emergency federal grants announced this week to handle the coronavirus crisis as badly as Florida’s Jackson Health does. Miami, its base of operations, is the worst COVID-19 hot spot in one of the most severely hit states. Even in normal years, the system sometimes barely makes money. At least two of its staff members have died of the virus. (Hancock, Galewitz and Lucas, 4/10)

As New York City strains under COVID-19 cases and health care workers scramble for every bit of equipment they can get, hospitals are starting to look less like part of a wealthy country’s medical system and more like the makeshift clinics in disaster zones or the developing world. In those places, experts say, doctors need to think about care differently: managing resources to best serve all the patients who will need help over the duration of a crisis, even if it means not being able to save every person to walk through the door. Dr. Sean Runnels is an associate professor at University of Utah Health and a working anesthesiologist who manages the supply room for his department. (DePillis, 4/11)

Faced with the threat of overburdened hospitals, states across the country are converting convention centers, sports facilities and performance spaces into backup treatment sites for coronavirus patients. Tennessee is no exception. What some Memphis residents don’t get is why in their city, a shopping center in the middle of a predominantly black, low-income residential neighborhood has been targeted. (Sainz, 4/13)

The state will convert a part of the Georgia World Congress Center into a 200-bed hospital to handle an influx of coronavirus patients, Gov. Brian Kemp said Sunday. The governor said the Georgia National Guard and state health and emergency officials will work with PAE, a private contractor, to transform the downtown Atlanta facility into an emergency hospital. (Bluestein and Trubey, 4/13)

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is scaling back the size of a field hospital being constructed inside the Suburban Collection Showplace convention center in Novi, Mich., intended to relieve suburban Detroit hospitals overwhelmed by the coronavirus outbreak. An Army Corps official said Saturday that they are constructing 250-bed medical care facility inside the convention hall instead of the original 1,100-bed plan announced earlier in the week. (Livengood, 4/11)

The front doors of the TCF Regional Health Care Center were barricaded Friday on the first day that coronavirus patients were admitted to the Detroit field hospital.The signs were clear — "No Visitation No Entry" — as a lone Michigan State Police trooper in his vehicle stood guard at the front of the convention center, which was transformed in the last 11 days into a 1,000-bed field hospital, built to help ease the surge of coronavirus patients filling southeast Michigan hospitals. (Gray, 4/10)

The most powerful medicine being used to bolster the morale of New York area healthcare workers at the epicenter of the U.S. novel coronavirus crisis may well be music. Daily infusions of upbeat songs from The Beatles’ classic “Here Comes the Sun” to the theme from the hang-tough movie “Rocky” are being pumped through hospital public address systems to boost the spirits of nurses, doctors and support staff. (Goldberg, 4/12)

For many health systems, 3D printing capabilities have served them well—helping to create face masks, test kit swabs and ways to adapt and repair breathing machines. The technology that was just a few years ago called an industry game-changer because it offered options to create cheaper medical devices and supplies is helping providers navigate the dangers of caring for the nation’s pandemic victims. (Castellucci, 4/11)

As of Saturday, 686 Massachusetts residents had died from COVID-19, and over 2,100 had been hospitalized. Yet state leaders talk about a "surge" of patients that's still to come — any day now, in fact.Gov. Charlie Baker has said the state is tracking coronavirus testing and hospital admissions, and it looks like "the surge is going to land about when we thought it was going to land, which is somewhere between the 10th and the 20th." On Friday, he said COVID-19 cases were still "on an upward slope" and the latest data suggest the peak will come closer to the 20th. (Goldberg, 4/10)

Boston’s major hospitals are largely staying ahead of the surging demand for intensive care beds in the coronavirus pandemic and, so far, leaders are cautiously optimistic they will avoid the overwhelming crush of patients that has hit other cities. Though some doctors predict infections and deaths will continue to climb for about two weeks, two hospital leaders said they believe advanced planning and social distancing efforts are paying off, potentially allowing the health care system to sidestep worst-case projections. (Kowalczyk, 4/10)

To prepare for an expected surge in coronavirus cases this month, Boston leaders are setting up a new medical center for COVID-19 patients at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center in the Seaport. The facility will be called Boston Hope Medical Center. The city of Boston shared a video Saturday of crews setting up the space, which is one of several new medical centers being set up across the state. (Gans, 4/12)

There have been several cases of coronavirus at Milwaukee County’s public behavioral health hospital, and the children’s unit has been shut down, officials confirmed Saturday. A union leader representing staff at the hospital said employees were not protected quickly enough, though they now have access to masks and other protective equipment. (Linnane, 4/11)

A Georgia man was charged with fraud after attempting to sell millions of nonexistent respirator masks to the government as it struggles to shore up supplies of vital medical equipment during the coronavirus pandemic, the authorities said. The man, Christopher Parris, 39, of Atlanta, was arrested on Friday and charged with wire fraud in federal court in Washington, the Justice Department said in a statement. (Diaz and Ortiz, 4/11)

A powerful California union that claimed to have discovered 39 million masks for healthcare workers fighting the novel coronavirus was duped in an elaborate scam uncovered by FBI investigators, the U.S. attorney’s office said Friday. U.S. Atty. Scott Brady of the Western District of Pennsylvania said FBI agents and prosecutors stumbled onto the arrangement while looking into whether they could intercept the masks for the Federal Emergency Management Agency under the Defense Production Act. (Gutierrez and Elmahrek, 4/11)

Massachusetts hospitals will be able to decontaminate their N95 respirator masks for free, helping to address a crisis for healthcare workers on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic. Battelle, an Ohio nonprofit, has set up one of its giant decontamination machines in Somerville, where it has been hailed as a “game-changer.” The system, which uses concentrated hydrogen peroxide vapor to decontaminate up to 80,000 respirator masks each day, is currently undergoing testing. (Ostriker, 4/11)

As well-intended and carefully executed as the covert mission to China had been, at least some and possibly many of the roughly one-million protective masks on the team plane were not the time-tested, industry-standard N95 masks that medical workers wear when treating coronavirus patients. Rather, they were a Chinese version known as a KN95 mask that some hospitals in Boston and beyond have so far declined to use and remain reluctant about today. (Arnett, 4/12)

Gov. Andrew Cuomo said on Sunday that he will order employers who are still open and interacting with the public to provide workers with some sort of face covering. A forthcoming executive order will direct “employers to provide essential workers with a cloth or surgical facemask to their employees when they are interacting with the public. And they should provide those masks cost-free,” he said. (Mahoney, 4/12)

Doug Preszler wasn’t thinking about risk when he took a cashier job at a regional supermarket in eastern Iowa. But five months in, he has found himself at the forefront of a global crisis with little training or protection — save for the pocket-size bottle of hand sanitizer and Ziploc full of disposable gloves he brings from home each day. The 51-year-old has told himself not to live in fear yet concedes he increasingly is. Even the most routine tasks are fraught: Accepting bills and giving change scare him the most, Preszler says. And he has run through so much hand sanitizer that his skin is cracking. (Bhattarai, 4/12)

Smithfield Foods, the world’s biggest pork processor, said on Sunday it will shut a U.S. plant indefinitely due to a rash of coronavirus cases among employees and warned the country was moving “perilously close to the edge” in supplies for grocers. Slaughterhouse shutdowns are disrupting the U.S. food supply chain, crimping availability of meat at retail stores and leaving farmers without outlets for their livestock. (Polansek, 4/12)

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem on Saturday called on Smithfield to keep the plant closed after linking it to 238 cases of the new coronavirus, representing more than half of all cases in the county. Smithfield’s plant and other meatpacking facilities around the country have emerged as hot spots for Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, with unions and advocacy groups warning that close quarters for workers on processing lines raise the risk of infection. Ms. Noem, a Republican, acknowledged Smithfield’s efforts to mitigate the spread of the virus among its plant employees but wrote in a letter to Smithfield that it could do more. (Bunge, 4/12)

Amazon will begin to put new grocery delivery customers on a wait list and curtail shopping hours at some Whole Foods stores to prioritize orders from existing customers buying food online during the coronavirus outbreak, the company said on Sunday. (Hu, 4/13)

Almost every day an employee at Procter & Gamble Co. PG -0.38% ’s plant in Albany, Ga., a town with one of the nation’s highest rates of coronavirus, learns that someone close has become seriously ill or died of Covid-19. There is little time for consolation between co-workers. They are all racing to churn out one of the most in-demand products in America: toilet paper. (Terlep, 4/12)

Hospitals in regions experiencing a surge of coronavirus patients are struggling to maintain supplies of antibiotics, antivirals and sedatives required for patients on ventilators, and other drugs produced in countries where the pandemic has halted or curbed manufacturing. Although overlooked by a public focused on shortages of ventilators and personal protective equipment, hospitals are increasingly concerned about future shortages of lifesaving drugs as authorities in India and other countries producing the drugs try to guarantee supplies for their own people. (Rowland and Slater, 4/12)

A small study in Brazil was halted early for safety reasons after coronavirus patients taking a higher dose of chloroquine developed irregular heart rates that increased their risk of a potentially fatal heart arrhythmia. Chloroquine is closely related to the more widely used drug hydroxychloroquine. President Trump has enthusiastically promoted them as a potential treatment for the novel coronavirus despite little evidence that they work, and despite concerns from some of his top health officials. (Thomas and Sheikh, 4/12)

The world is looking for answers in the search for a treatment for covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, which has claimed more than 100,000 lives across the globe. President Trump has repeatedly touted the anti-malarial medications hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine as that much-needed solution. (Samuels and Kelly, 4/13)

University Medical Center on Tuesday began prescribing hydroxychloroquine to high-risk emergency room patients who test positive for COVID-19 but do not require immediate hospitalization. In doing so, UMC became the first Las Vegas-area hospital to dispense it on an outpatient basis, taking a cutting-edge position nationally in the use of the controversial experimental drug. (Hynes, 4/12)

NPR has identified 440 studies that have been suspended since March 1 because of the outbreak. About a quarter of the studies put on hold were for cancer treatment. The studies involved as many as 200,000 people, though it's hard to know precisely how many were active in the studies at the time they were halted. (Lupkin, 4/11)

Federal health regulators are expected to push the nursing-home industry to inform residents, their families and staff quickly when facilities confirm Covid-19 cases, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services could announce the move as early as this week, the people said. It isn’t clear whether CMS will order facilities to disclose cases to family, residents and staff, or strongly recommend it. Nor is it clear whether the federal government will take action to gather all the data and release total figures on the spread of the virus in nursing homes. (Wilde Mathews and Kamp, 4/12)

More than 3,600 deaths nationwide have been linked to coronavirus outbreaks in nursing homes and long-term care facilities, an alarming rise in just the past two weeks, according to the latest count by The Associated Press. Because the federal government has not been releasing a count of its own, the AP has kept its own running tally based on media reports and state health departments. The latest count of at least 3,621 deaths is up from about 450 deaths just 10 days ago. (Condon and Herschaft, 4/13)

The masks are long gone, replaced by face covers fashioned from pillowcases. Cleaning supplies are dwindling. And when Maria Cecilia Lim, a licensed vocational nurse at an Orange County nursing home, needs a sterile gown, she reaches for a raincoat bought off the rack by desperate co-workers. “This is just one raincoat that we have to keep reusing,” Lim said last week between shifts at the Healthcare Center of Orange County, a 100-bed nursing facility in Buena Park. “A lot of people are using it.” (Hamilton, Gerber and Chabria, 4/12)

There have been hundreds of confirmed coronavirus cases among residents and staff and dozens of deaths linked to nursing homes in Michigan, the Free Press has found, even as facilities take steps to stem the spread and health officials work to monitor outbreaks. In Wayne County — not including Detroit, which has its own health department — 35% of all of the county's confirmed COVID-19 deaths had been nursing home residents, based on a review of the state's disease surveillance system, a spokesman said Friday. And in Detroit, officials have said all of the city's nursing homes had reported confirmed or suspected COVID-19 cases. (Kaufman, Hall, Anderson and Tanner, 4/12)

The new coronavirus has caused the deaths of at least 247 residents of Massachusetts long-term care facilities, a grim toll that accounted for more than 41 percent of all deaths in the state linked to the disease, according to new data released Friday. The disclosure was made amid a series of dire warnings Friday from Governor Charlie Baker, who said officials expect that a new surge in COVID-19 cases could sicken 2,500 residents each day for the next 10 days, and possibly beyond. (Crimaldi and Krantz, 4/10)

This isn’t the way Betsy Steen and her husband wanted to spend their golden years: Hunkered down at home, living with fear and isolation. Steen, 76, and her husband David, 75, both take immuno-suppressant medications, placing them at high risk if they contract the coronavirus. They try to keep positive, but it’s hard to escape the flood of bad news. “It’s just surreal,” the retired teacher said from her Bowdoinham home. “It’s kind of like a dream. Every once in a while, you wake up and say that’s real.” (Sharp, 4/13)

Democrats looked on in horror last week as thousands of voters in Wisconsin trekked to polling places and waited in lines for hours to cast ballots in the midst of a pandemic. Now national Democratic party leaders are scrambling to head off a similar spectacle in November, in what promises to be the most consequential partisan struggle between now and Election Day. They are seeking billions of federal dollars to prepare for an election in which voters can’t safely go to the polls in person. The party is combing through voting rules, state by state, with an eye toward expanding early voting and vote-by-mail. The Democratic National Committee has deployed “voter protection directors” in 17 states to defend against what they view as moves to block access to the polls. (Korecki and Cadelago, 4/13)

The same week President Trump told the public that voting by mail is “corrupt” and “RIPE for FRAUD,” his own party was sending a very different message to Republican voters in Pennsylvania. “Voting by mail is an easy, convenient and secure way to cast your ballot,” read a mail piece the Republican National Committee distributed across the Keystone State. “Return the attached official Republican Party mail-in ballot application to avoid lines and protect yourself from large crowds on Election Day.” (Gardner and Viebeck, 4/12)

Responding to the unprecedented coronavirus pandemic poses serious challenges for governors across the country, including the nine set to face voters in November’s 11 gubernatorial elections. How state leaders handle their COVID-19 responses could have a particular impact in competitive races, such as those in North Carolina or Montana, where Gov. Steve Bullock (D) is running for the Senate and both parties are fighting hard to replace him. (Klar, 4/12)

Kaiser Health News: Biden’s Incremental Medicare Play For Bernie’s Backers

In one of his first proposals since becoming the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden is wading back into the roiling waters of health policy. In a nod to the effects of COVID-19 on the economy, and what is clearly an overture to supporters of the “Medicare for All” plan pushed by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who suspended his presidential campaign Wednesday, Biden wants to lower the age of eligibility for Medicare from 65 to 60. (Rovner, 4/13)

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn’s re-election campaign should be his race to lose.The coronavirus outbreak, by most measures, has given Cornyn an even bigger advantage as he runs for a fourth term. The Texas Republican is sitting on $12 million with ads already on TV as his challengers campaign online against each other in a runoff election that was delayed six weeks by the pandemic. (Wermund, 4/12)

The news out of Washington this week made it sound like Democrats are playing hardball on economic relief, blocking a Republican bill that didn’t include their top priorities. But the Democrats aren’t really playing hardball. They have the power to demand just about anything they want, and they’re demanding things that President Donald Trump wants, too. Just two weeks after the largest economic relief bill in U.S. history failed to arrest the economic collapse, Trump needs another rescue package far more than Democrats do. (Grunwald, 4/11)

A partisan impasse over fresh coronavirus relief spending stretched through the holiday weekend, as funds for a small-business loan program dwindled and state leaders called for additional federal aid. Republican lawmakers want to add $250 billion to the $350 billion small-business support plan approved in late March. While Democrats say they, too, support more money for the fund, they also want to expand access to the loans. In addition, they want to include $100 billion for hospitals and $150 billion for state and local governments along with the small-business aid. (Duehren and Peterson, 4/12)

U.S. lawmakers are drawing up proposals for the federal government to guarantee private companies’ paychecks during the coronavirus pandemic to arrest soaring job losses, aiming to fill holes in last month’s aid package. The plans from Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D., Wash.) and Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) differ in the level of government aid that they would provide and the degree to which they have been fully developed. But both would put the U.S. on a track similar to those that have been taken in countries such as France and Denmark—and could spark a rethinking of some cornerstone elements of the $2.2 trillion economic rescue enacted two weeks ago. (Hughes and Morath, 4/12)

The $2.2 trillion package that Congress approved to offer financial help during the coronavirus pandemic has one major exclusion: millions of immigrants who do not have legal status in the U.S. but work here and pay taxes. That includes Carmen Contreras Lopez, a 48-year-old housekeeper who, though she earns low wages, files a tax return each year. Since the virus took hold, she has lost most of her clients and is getting by with help from her oldest son. But she won’t see a penny of the money promised to most Americans in response to the pandemic. (Galvan, Marcelo and Torrens, 4/12)

He arrived home as usual, with dusty jeans and a handful of junk mail. “Hola bambinos,” Marco said as he opened the door to the cluttered one-bedroom apartment in Langley Park, Md., he shares with his wife and two kids. “Papi!” shouted his 9-year-old, Nataly, looking up from her Barbie kitchen play set. But instead of embracing the small girl with big eyes and a dark braid, Marco backed away. (Miller, 4/12)

As President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial closed two months ago, 2020 was shaping up to be perhaps the lamest year in Congress in decades. Some judges would be confirmed, lawmakers would punt on the toughest issues and all eyes would turn to the presidential election. Instead, the coronavirus pandemic will define the 116th Congress even more than earth-shaking events that just months ago seemed to embody the wild days of government under President Donald Trump. The third presidential impeachment trial, a battle over Trump’s unprecedented use of executive power to build his border wall and the longest government shutdown in U.S. history now all seem quaint. (Everett, 4/12)

The pressure on Congress to act swiftly on another round of coronavirus relief is creating tension among Republicans. While some GOP lawmakers are seeking to hold back, at least for now, on charging forward with another massive economic package, others such as Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) are calling for a rapid infusion of federal aid costing trillions of dollars. (Bolton, 4/12)

Providers on Friday began receiving $30 billion from the first round of grant funding from Congress' third stimulus package. The funds, from the $100 billion provider relief fund in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, were distributed based on providers' share of 2019 Medicare fee-for-service reimbursements. The grants do not have to be repaid, but administration officials said Thursday that grant recipients have to agree not to balance bill patients for out-of-network COVID-19 treatment. (Cohrs, 4/10)

A sixth-month pause on certain mortgage payments mandated by the coronavirus economic rescue bill is causing confusion and risking financial peril across the housing industry. The $2.2-trillion coronavirus response and stimulus bill signed by President Trump in March gave any homeowner with a mortgage backstopped by the federal government the ability to receive forbearance or delay payments for up to 180 days. (Lane, 4/12)

More than 16 million Americans have applied for unemployment benefits in the last three weeks as the COVID-19 pandemic grinds the economy to a near halt. Even as many wait for the first direct payments from the U.S. government as part of the recovery bill, people in dire financial straits have been turning to social media to ask for help. (Weber, 4/11)

Economic firefighters around the world have a problem they’ve never seen before: a lightning-fast economic collapse strapped to a virulent global pandemic and wild, whipsawing financial markets threatening to amplify the damage. From Washington to Brussels to Frankfurt to Berlin and beyond, officials in advanced economies are rolling out the biggest fiscal and monetary policy bazookas they’ve ever imagined. Some of the players, notably Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, have forged a close fire-fighting partnership echoing their predecessors’ during the 2008 financial crisis. (White, Guida and Karnitschnig, 4/13)

World leaders from President Trump to President Emmanuel Macron of France and Queen Elizabeth II of Britain have invoked the wartime spirit as they rally citizens to defeat the new coronavirus. Like the great wars of the 20th century, some analysts and historians think the current crisis could fuel a new era of big government in which public officials control more of the levers of the economy, for better or for worse. (Fairless and Douglas, 4/12)

Last August, the chief executives of 181 of America’s largest corporations signed a document pledging their commitment to run their companies for the benefit of workers and communities, and not just for shareholders. Some pundits celebrated the statement from the Business Roundtable as a historical milestone, the moment when corporate executives demonstrated sensitivity to public anger over economic inequality. But others dismissed the document as a canny public relations move: So long as executive pay remained tied to stock prices, shareholder interest would remain supreme. (Goodman, 4/13)

Standing in line used to be an American pastime, whether it was lining up for Broadway shows, camping outside movie theaters before a Star Wars premiere or shivering outside big-box stores to be the first inside on Black Friday. The coronavirus has changed all that. Now, millions of people across the country are risking their health to wait in tense, sometimes desperate, new lines for basic needs as the economic toll of the virus grips the country. In cars and on foot, they are snapping on masks and waiting for hours to stock up on groceries, file for unemployment assistance, cast their ballots and pick up boxes of donated food. The lines stretch around blocks and clog two-lane highways. (Healy, 4/12)

The coronavirus pandemic that has already cost more than 22,000 American lives is also causing many to go hungry. Thousands have been forced to wait for hours in long lines at food banks across the country. Feeding America, the nation's largest network of food banks, reported a 98 percent increase in demand. (4/13)

The San Antonio Food Bank is in dire need of monetary donations and volunteers as demand on its food stock has doubled during the COVID-19 outbreak. The food bank plans another mega drive thru food giveaway at the Alamodome on Friday, April 17th beginning at 10 a.m. A large-scale food giveaway at Traders Village on the Southwest Side Friday attracted 10,000 people in a single day. Aerial images shot by television news helicopters showed long lines of vehicles stacking up and made national headlines. (Kirkpatrick, 4/12)

Thousands of vehicles lined up before dawn Thursday to seek aid from the San Antonio Food Bank. The agency fed about 10,000 households at a South Side flea market amid the economic fallout caused by the coronavirus pandemic. (Dunphy, 4/10)

The harrowing images of thousands of cars lined up for Thursday’s San Antonio Food Bank giveaway captured the attention of the nation and prompted thousands of people to reach for their wallets, including bestselling author Shea Serrano. The San Antonio native took to Twitter on Saturday morning, urging his nearly 372,000 followers to donate to the Food Bank if they have the means. Less than eight hours later, $100,000 in donations had poured in. (Cline, 4/11)

The first Thursday of every month typically brings about 250 to 300 families to the Watch City Market, a Waltham food pantry that distributes fresh fruit and veggies and other healthy staples to those in need. On April 2, the first time the pantry opened after the COVID-19 crisis struck, a line of cars began queuing up an hour and a half before distribution began. More than 900 people showed up at the church parking lot where the group had moved its operations to accommodate social distancing, but the pantry only had food for the first 330 in line. (Nanos and McGrane, 4/12)

The Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank held another drive-up distribution of food on Friday at the PPG Paints Arena. The food bank teamed up with the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Allegheny Fayette Central Labor Council to distribute two boxes of food to 1,300 vehicles that waited in long lines to gain access to the parking lots around the arena. (4/10)

Betsey Stevenson tells Ali Velshi that the 6-7 million who filed for unemployment per week might not represent how many are actually trying to file, but what the system can handle. Jared Bernstein says the growing food bank lines is a stark reminder that many families with little to no savings waiting on help from the government could be “a couple of weeks away from real concerns about meeting basic needs, putting food on the table, avoiding eviction.” (4/10)

Visa and airline ticket in hand, a Filipina nurse named Maria checked in recently for her flight from London to the United States, where a job awaited her as an intensive care nurse at a North Carolina hospital on the front lines of the coronavirus crisis. But under the travel restrictions imposed by President Trump to help prevent new exposure to the virus, she was not allowed to board. “I was told that my visa is valid, and I would be allowed to travel once the restrictions are lifted,” she reported to the company that has been trying to bring her into the United States. (Jordan and Correal, 4/13)

The elderly coronavirus patient arrived at the Manhattan hospital extremely sick and rapidly deteriorating. Dr. Marissa Nadeau, an emergency medicine physician on the night shift, had little time to ascertain his wishes. The patient, gasping for breath but alert, made it clear he did not want to be intubated and put on a ventilator, which might have been his only hope for survival. Dr. Nadeau placed her hand on his shoulder, then used her phone to FaceTime with his family, telling them of his choice and holding up her phone so they could say what might be a final goodbye. (Goldstein and Weiser, 4/13)

On emergency call after emergency call, Teaneck Volunteer Ambulance Corps member C.J. Levin transported Covid-19 patients, knowing each interaction increased his risk. The 25-year-old emergency medical technician worried about infecting his parents, whom he lived with in Teaneck, the center of New Jersey’s coronavirus crisis. But just as he was packing a bag and planning to move out of their home on March 18, he came down with body aches and a fever. He got tested that day, and the results came back positive. (De Avila, 4/12)

The nurse was pregnant — and worried. But in mid-March, early in the covid-19 crisis, a manager at Moses Taylor Hospital in Scranton, Pa., assured her she would not be sent to the floor for patients infected with the deadly virus. The risks for expectant mothers were too uncertain. Two days later, she says, the administration changed course, saying the hospital needed “all hands on deck.” The pregnant nurse said she was sent back and forth between the “covid floor” and the neonatal intensive care unit, known as the NICU, where she normally treated vulnerable newborns and recovering mothers. (Butler, 4/11)

The COVID-19 pandemic has catapulted shortages to the forefront of concerns regarding nurse staffing and quality of care. Until recently, worries surrounding the nursing shortage were mainly focused on a projection of the estimated workforce five to 10 years from now. (Caruso, 4/11)

An African American doctor, who has been battling the coronavirus pandemic in his hospital and on the streets of Miami, was detained and handcuffed in front of his own home by a police sergeant as he loaded up his van with supplies he says he planned to take to the homeless. Dr. Armen Henderson, an internal medicine physician at the University of Miami Health System, said his biggest concern about the up-close encounter was that the Miami-Dade police sergeant was not wearing a protective mask when Henderson says the sergeant got "all up in my face," Henderson told ABC News on Sunday. (Hutchinson, 4/12)

During the COVID-19 pandemic, New Orleans first responders and health care workers have put themselves — and by extension, their families or roommates — at great risk for the illness. “When [COVID-19] hit," says Jessie Senini, vice president of the New Orleans EMS Foundation, "it hit so quickly and unexpectedly that we didn’t realize that one of the needs was going to be quarantine measures for medics, first responders, cops, firefighters — all these people on the front lines being exposed.” The New Orleans EMS Foundation is a nonprofit that advocates and provides resources and support for the city's emergency first responders.  (Ravits, 4/10)

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s initiative to fortify the state’s health care work force was ambitious — a March 30 executive order establishing the California Health Corps — but nursing students are encountering imposing obstacles as they try to join the effort. Those concerns were outlined Friday in a letter from two nursing education groups to the Department of Consumer Affairs, which oversees the California Board of Registered Nursing. The letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Chronicle, seeks revisions in the licensing requirements for nursing students to graduate. (Kroichick, 4/12)

Like health care professionals everywhere, Dr. David Finn’s colleagues at Massachusetts General Hospital have always had to deal with a certain level of on-the-job stress: worrying about patients and their loved ones, questioning decisions, being in the presence of death. But lately, with the novel coronavirus infecting more people who make their way to the hospital, those anxieties are amplified. (Lotan, 4/12)

Health experts say it’s too early to tell how extensively the pandemic is impacting mental health but there are already indications of rising symptoms of anxiety and depression, and more calls to support lines. At Children’s Hospital, a greater portion of youth coming to the emergency room are being treated for self-inflicted injuries, compared to this time last year, according to Amy Herbst, vice president of mental and behavioral health. (Linnnane, 4/13)

In one of the most far-ranging attempts to halt the spread of the coronavirus, Apple and Google said they were building software into smartphones that would tell people if they were recently in contact with someone who was infected with it. The technology giants said they were teaming up to release the tool within several months, building it into the operating systems of the billions of iPhones and Android devices around the world. That would enable the smartphones to constantly log other devices they come near, enabling what is known as “contact tracing” of the disease. People would opt in to use the tool and voluntarily report if they became infected. (Nicas and Wakabayashi, 4/10)

Two of the tech industry's biggest competitors are teaming up on a project they say will help alert people who may have had contact with someone diagnosed with the novel coronavirus. Apple and Google in May will release the first step of a two-part project focused on contact tracing, a process used in public health to identify people who were in close contact or proximity to someone infected with a virus, such as COVID-19. (Cohen, 4/10)

K.J. Seung is surprised to be hiring and training new workers in Boston. His public health nonprofit, Partners in Health, specializes in helping the poorest people in developing nations — tracking down contacts of Ebola patients in Liberia and Sierra Leone; running child health and HIV clinics in Haiti; and operating tuberculosis control programs in Peru. But now it is advertising for 500 people to help do what’s known as contact tracing to try to control Covid-19 in Massachusetts. (Fox, 4/13)

Preliminary findings released this week from a new effort to track the spread of the coronavirus through sewage data suggests that one metro region in Massachusetts that's reported fewer than 500 positive tests actually may actually have exponentially more. Last month, Massachusetts lab Biobot Analytics launched a partnership with Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Brigham and Women's Hospital to use its technology pro bono to map and analyze the spread of the virus through wastewater... Based on wastewater data, Biobot gave an estimate of anywhere from 2,300 to over 115,000 infected persons within the area sampled, though only 446 cases in the area had been reported. (Francescani and Anoruo, 4/11)

All 50 states are under a major disaster declaration for the first time in U.S. history, after President Trump approved Wyoming’s declaration Saturday. Within 22 days, Trump declared a major emergency in all 50 states and most territories through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The final disaster declaration occurred on the same day U.S. surpassed Italy to become the country with the most deaths from the virus. (Coleman, 4/12)

The Navajo Nation enacted a 57-hour curfew over the holiday weekend in an effort to combat the spread of coronavirus among its more than 250,000 members. As of Saturday, there were 698 confirmed cases of coronavirus, including 24 deaths, among members of the Navajo Nation living in New Mexico, Arizona and Utah, Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez and Vice President Myron Lizer said in a news release. (Silverman, 4/12)

It looks increasingly likely the South will endure more death and economic loss from COVID-19 than any other region in the country — and not just because Southern governors were slow to shut down businesses and order people to stay at home. Southern poverty rates are high, social welfare programs spotty and health care infrastructure threadbare. Last year, 120 rural U.S. hospitals closed their doors; 75 of them were in the South. (Vestal, 4/13)

A man found dead in his house in early March. A woman who fell sick in mid-February and later died. These early COVID-19 deaths in the San Francisco Bay Area suggest that the novel coronavirus had established itself in the community long before health officials started looking for it. The lag time has had dire consequences, allowing the virus to spread unchecked before social distancing rules went into effect. (St. John, 4/11)

The cost of going out on a Saturday night just keeps going up and up. For seven visitors to Santa Cruz, California, the bill came to $7,000 in fines for violating local shelter-in-place, or SIP, guidelines. They "came from Fremont to get some 'essential' drinks," Police Chief Andrew Mills tweeted. "If you are not from Santa Cruz and you put our community at risk, you will get a ticket. #shelterinyourowntown." (Moshtaghian and Croft, 4/12)

Kaiser Health News: Battling A Pandemic Across 4,750 Square Miles And 10 Million People

Barbara Ferrer, Los Angeles County’s top health official, is in the hot seat as the COVID-19 pandemic exacts its rising toll. With over 10 million residents, the county is by far California’s largest, and it has the most confirmed coronavirus cases. Ferrer, who has been director of the Department of Public Health for three years, leads a daily press briefing in which she tries to keep up morale while dutifully reciting the latest sobering statistics. (Wolfson, 4/13)

Some Californians who are missing work because of the novel coronavirus can access benefits, including unemployment.Benefits are not only for people who have been laid off, they also apply to caregivers, those who are quarantined and workers whose hours have been reduced. Additionally, President Donald Trump signed a $2 trillion coronavirus relief package that extends unemployment insurance to independent contractors, self-employed and gig economy workers. (Sarah, 4/11)

The Texas Supreme Court has stayed a ruling that blocked an executive order prohibiting judges from releasing inmates during the pandemic on personal bonds if they’ve been accused or convicted of a violent crime. The high court’s decision on Saturday effectively gives Gov. Greg Abbott the ability to enforce the order in contention, although that is not permanent. Responses from both the governor and the plaintiff, which includes 16 Harris County misdemeanor judges and several criminal defense organizations, are due Monday morning, according to notifications from the court. (Ketterer, 4/11)

A New York Police Department traffic enforcement agent died as a result of Covid-19, NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea said Sunday, bringing the number of virus-related deaths on the force to 20. Agent William Hayes, an Army veteran, had been with the department for nearly 31 years, Shea said in a tweet."Our prayers are with his loved ones & colleagues today and every day," Shea tweeted. (Waldrop, 4/12)

Mayors from two of the nation's biggest cities on Sunday called out racial health disparities that have been starkly highlighted by the ongoing coronavirus crisis as early data suggest the virus disproportionately affects black and brown Americans. Muriel Bowser of Washington, D.C., on Sunday said the coronavirus pandemic is casting a “spotlight” on health disparities among African Americans that draw their roots in “slavery, racism [and] Jim Crow roles and laws.” (Beavers, 4/12)

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) on Sunday called the disproportionate coronavirus deaths among African Americans in his state “very disturbing.” The governor told ABC’s “This Week” that he requested a study to track the number of cases and deaths by race because it wasn’t being monitored by anyone, including the federal government. (Coleman, 4/12)

It started off as a strange-sounding disease that only other folks were getting. But then it hit black people with a sudden ferocity. Many of the victims died alone, separated from family. Hospital workers were bewildered. The virus was unstoppable. (Blake, 4/12)

Advocates and Democratic lawmakers are raising concerns over new research that suggests air pollution, water access and other environmental conditions are exacerbating the effects of the coronavirus on low-income and minority communities. A recent Harvard study found that people who live in areas with more exposure to air pollution are more likely to die from the pandemic, while other research shows that black and Latino communities people are disproportionately affected by the disease. (Frazin, 4/12)

Perhaps the last thing we needed in this hyperpartisan election year was another reminder of what divides us as a nation. Then the COVID-19 crisis arrived and gave us one. The virus is affecting everyone, in one way or another, but in terms of actual sickness and death, it is disproportionately afflicting people of color. So far, at least, it is afflicting primarily those people of color who live in the most densely populated cores of our metropolitan centers. (Elving, 4/12)

There are corners of America where social distancing is practiced with care, but the house in Robesonia, Pa., that Mark Stokes shares with 10 other people is not among them. Housemates come and go to jobs in fast food and a chocolate factory, sharing a single shower. Dirty dishes crowd the kitchen that no one cleans. Lacking a bed, Mr. Stokes, a freshman at Kutztown University, sleeps on the floor in the room of a friend who took him in when the dorms closed. (DeParle, 4/12)

As a doctor at San Francisco’s safety net hospital, Katie Brooks takes pride in caring for the city’s most vulnerable patients. But as the Covid-19 pandemic puts further stress on city resources already stretched to the limit, Brooks says it’s harder than ever to help those who are homeless. “I am having a really tough time discharging people from the hospital to anywhere but to the street,” said Brooks, a hospitalist at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. (Bond, 4/11)

While empty shelves are now a common sight at markets of all sizes, small store owners say they are bearing the brunt of a food supply chain strained by consumers overbuying groceries while under shelter-in-place orders. The increased demand has pushed up prices for some staples nationwide, say experts, raising costs for retailers and consumers. (Romero, 4/10)

Mat Risher leaves the safety of his home near Seattle three days a week for dialysis at a clinic, a treatment he cannot live without but one that now most likely increases his risk of exposure to the coronavirus. About 20 patients sit in a small space with him, tethered for several hours to machines that filter toxins from their blood. All now have their temperatures taken before they enter. They can wear a surgical mask and are told that the rooms are cleaned and machinery disinfected regularly. One of the first people to die from the virus in the United States had received dialysis at the very same clinic, information that triggered a panic attack in Mr. Risher. (Abelson, 4/11)

For Singh and other addiction specialists, efforts to address one epidemic can put patients at increased risk for the other. As cities and states throughout the country ban many public gatherings, concerns over the pandemic have compelled addiction medicine providers to limit access to their facilities and temporarily halt in-person group therapy sessions and replace them with counseling over the phone or through videoconferencing. (Johnson, 4/11)

Should you wash your hands? Are you going out to get the mail? Should you touch the mailbox? Should you touch the mail? Should you clean the mail? Should you take a walk? Should you wear a mask? What about gloves? What about neighbors — stay six feet away? Ten? Will they approach? What will you do? Will you be standoffish, or laugh it off? (Anthony, 4/13)

The line outside the Panam International supermarket in Northwest Washington looped along 14th Street, nearly three dozen shoppers, half wearing masks to protect themselves from the coronavirus. Yet most of the patrons stood only a foot or two apart, ignoring sidewalk markings and public health warnings to stay six feet away. The employee monitoring the crowd at the entrance on Saturday in Columbia Heights offered no reminders as the line grew over the course of a few minutes. (Schwartzman, Williams and Hermann, 4/12)

The worried doctors stood together after their rounds, weighing the risks. A 31-year-old pregnant woman was in peril, her lungs ravaged by the coronavirus. If they delivered her baby now, it might reduce the strain on her body and help her recover. But it was more than two months before the due date, and the infant would probably have difficulty breathing, feeding and maintaining temperature and be at risk for long-term health problems. The surgery itself, a cesarean section, would be a stressor for the mother. (Fink, 4/12)

The Pregnancy Coronavirus Outcomes Registry began enrolling pregnant women across the country with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 on March 24. It will track participants for a year to learn how the virus impacts maternal health, fetal development, preterm delivery, newborn health and outcomes for underserved women at higher risk of mortality during pregnancy. The study also will address transmission: whether a mother can pass the infection on to her child during pregnancy and birth or through breast milk. (Feldberg, 4/10)

Tens of thousands of women across the country trying to have a baby through fertility treatments are in limbo because of COVID-19: They've had to postpone their appointments indefinitely due to coronavirus recommendations recently issued by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. But now some fertility specialists and their patients are pushing back. Among them is Amy Schmidt Zook, whose bathroom cabinet in her Fort Worth, Texas, home is a miniature pharmacy of medicine and medical equipment — syringes, needles, alcohol swabs, cotton pads, medications for stimulating her ovaries and follicles and for preventing premature ovulation. (Pfeiffer, 4/12)

The novel coronavirus is killing about 1 in 10 hospitalized middle-aged patients and 4 in 10 who are older than 85 in the United States, and it is particularly lethal to men even when taking into account common chronic diseases that exacerbate risk, according to previously unpublished data from a company that aggregates real-time patient data from 1,000 hospitals and 180,000 health-care providers. (Achenbach, 4/11)

A new letter from researchers at New York University shows that obesity is a risk factor for COVID-19 hospitalization in patients under the age of 60. The letter was published yesterday in Clinical Infectious Diseases. In other research news, scientists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) highlight geographic COVID-19 differences, and Johns Hopkins experts lay out the upcoming need for personal protective equipment (PPE) for healthcare workers. (Soucheray, 4/10)

With the outbreak causing indefinite school closures across the country, children are having to figure out new ways of learning and playing together while living in isolation. (Murthy, 4/12)

From mandates to work from home to massive school closures, the coronavirus has transformed the lives of millions of Americans. (Booker, 4/11)

Hernan Cortés fled the Aztec capital Tenochtitlán in 1520 under blistering military assault, losing the bulk of his troops on his escape to the coast. But the Spanish conquistador unknowingly left behind a weapon far more devastating than guns and swords: smallpox. When he returned to retake the city, it was reeling amid an epidemic that would level the Aztec population, destroy its power structures and lead to an empire’s brutal defeat — initiating a centuries-long annihilation of native societies from Tierra del Fuego to the Bering Strait. (Mozingo, 4/12)

In 2004 historian John M. Barry wrote the definitive book on the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. Between 1918 and 1920, 675,000 Americans, many of them previously healthy young adults, died from a novel H1N1 strain of flu as it swept across the country in waves. Comparing the current COVID-19 pandemic to the 1918 pandemic has been common in recent weeks. In an interview with CIDRAP News, Barry shares what's the same, what's different, and why he's glad historians don't have to predict the future. (Soucheray, 4/10)

Sister Donna Maria Moses, a Catholic nun and hospital chaplain who has seen the coronavirus pandemic firsthand, has adapted her ministry to provide solace to the dying over the phone, instead of the usual in-person visits. She manages three staff chaplains and dozens of volunteers from many faiths at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, one of the first hospitals to treat coronavirus patients returning from China and ill-fated cruise trips. The chaplains can’t visit patients, or even the units where COVID-19 patients are being treated. Moses is no longer able to hug or hold hands with someone who’s sick or grieving family members, but she’s determined to provide other kinds of spiritual and emotional comfort. (Dillon, 4/11)

During the two weeks after Minnesota issued its stay-at-home order in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, Jane Egerdal cried every day. Ms. Egerdal, 62, has a history of depression. Almost overnight, the things she had been doing to successfully cope with her condition—going to the gym, meeting friends at coffee shops, her job as a school nurse—disappeared. “I lost that network of people and sense of job and purpose,” says Ms. Egerdal, who lives alone in Faribault, Minn. “The loneliness is unbearable.” (Petersen, 4/12)

With the coronavirus pandemic causing unprecedented levels of stress and grief, companies offering virtual mental health care say they’re seeing a massive surge in interest — and are scrambling to meet that demand by introducing new services, accelerating launch timelines, and bringing more staff on board. Covid-19 could prove to be a breakout moment for these businesses, which had been trying to address the shortage of in-person mental health care by providing virtual coaching, monitoring, and educational content long before the coronavirus outbreak. (Robbins, 4/13)

The outbreak of the novel coronavirus across the globe and resulting impact on the lives of billions of people has highlighted the necessity for accurate information relating to the devastating pandemic. But how can individuals even start to process the vast amount of information being disseminated? (Bell, 4/13)

This Holy Week, celebrated by Christians worldwide, coincides with the Jewish holiday Passover, when people often join family for religious gatherings. But these aren’t normal times. (Saltzman and Fong, 4/11)

As the coronavirus tears through the country, scientists are asking: Are some people more infectious than others? Are there superspreaders, people who seem to just spew out virus, making them especially likely to infect others? It seems that the answer is yes. There do seem to be superspreaders, a loosely defined term for people who infect a disproportionate number of others, whether as a consequence of genetics, social habits or simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. (Kolata, 4/12)

On the first Monday in March, Michel Vounatsos, chief executive of the drug company Biogen, appeared in good spirits. The company’s new Alzheimer’s drug was showing promise after years of setbacks. Revenues had never been higher. Onstage at an elite health care conference in Boston, Mr. Vounatsos touted the drug’s “remarkable journey.” Asked if the coronavirus that was ravaging China would disrupt supply chains and upend the company’s big plans, Mr. Vounatsos said no. “So far, so good,” he said. (Stockman and Barker, 4/12)

With the first quarter in the books, big companies are preparing to disclose to investors early indications of the economic toll of the coronavirus pandemic. The respiratory illness has effectively shut down the U.S. economy, spurring a wave of layoffs and furloughs that resulted in a record 17 million unemployment claims in a span of three weeks. It also set off a scramble by companies to conserve cash. The Wall Street Journal, with help from data tracker MyLogIQ, analyzed public filings for companies in the S&P Composite 1500 Index—which covers about 90% of U.S. market capitalization—to assess the impact thus far. (Pacheco and Stamm, 4/13)

A federal judge on Sunday ruled that Alabama cannot ban abortions as part of the state’s response to coronavirus. U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson issued a preliminary injunction sought by clinics to prevent the state from forbidding abortions as part of a ban on elective medical procedures during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thompson said abortion providers can decide whether a procedure can wait. (Chandler, 4/13)

For the second time in recent days, the Supreme Court has been asked to referee a dispute stemming from the coronavirus pandemic on a hot-button topic that normally divides them along familiar ideological lines. The justices are currently considering a petition concerning abortion access in Texas, and last week they split bitterly, 5-4, on a Covid-19 related voting rights challenge out of Wisconsin. If the Wisconsin case highlighted the deep divisions on the Supreme Court, the abortion case could ratchet up the tension -- especially because President Donald Trump's two nominees are expected to move the court to the right on the issue. (De Vogue, 4/13)

Democratic Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam signed bills on Friday rolling back multiple abortion restrictions in the state, including some that had been in place for decades. The new laws make Virginia the first state to codify new abortion protections in 2020, according to Elizabeth Nash, the senior state issues manager at the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health think tank. (Kelly, 4/10)

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson left hospital on Sunday and thanked staff for saving his life from COVID-19, but his government was forced to defend its response to the coronavirus outbreak as the national death toll passed 10,000. The sombre milestone came after Britain reported two days in a row of hospital deaths increasing by more than 900. Friday’s death toll of 980 surpassed the highest daily total recorded in Italy, the hardest-hit country in Europe so far. (Shirbon and Holton, 4/12)

He urged people to continue practicing social distancing and stay home whenever possible to ease the burden on the country’s health-care system. “Because although we mourn every day those who are taken from us in such numbers and though the struggle is by no means over, we are now making progress in this incredible national battle against coronavirus—a fight we never picked against an enemy we still don’t entirely understand,” Mr. Johnson said. “We are making progress in this national battle because the British people formed a human shield around this country’s greatest national asset, our National Health Service.” (Hookway, 4/13)

When Israel’s health minister was found to be infected with the coronavirus early this month, all high-level officials in close contact with him were quarantined, including one who stood out: the director of the Mossad, the storied Israeli spy service. Mossad officers, primarily associated with covert operations abroad in the name of protecting Israel, are not normally in the business of public health. So Israelis were immediately intrigued. (Bergman, 4/12)

Spain’s government on Saturday set out guidelines for people returning to work under a loosening of lockdown restrictions, while the country reported its lowest one-day increase in deaths from the coronavirus since March 23. (Cadenas and Allen, 4/11)

South Korea reported on Monday that at least 116 people initially cleared of the new coronavirus had tested positive again, although officials suggested they would soon look at easing strict recommendations aimed at preventing new outbreaks. (Smith, 4/13)

China’s northeastern border with Russia has become a frontline in the fight against a resurgence of the coronavirus epidemic as new daily cases rose to the highest in nearly six weeks - with more than 90% involving people coming from abroad. (Tian and Wu, 4/12)

Li Wenliang, a doctor in the Chinese city of Wuhan, died of the coronavirus on Feb. 6 at the age of 34. More than a month before that, he went online to warn friends of the strange and deadly virus rampaging through his hospital, only to be threatened by government authorities. He became a hero in China when his warnings proved true, then a martyr when he died. After his passing, people began to gather, virtually, at his last post on Weibo, the Chinese social media platform. In the comments section, they grieve and seek solace. Some call it China’s Wailing Wall, a reference to the Western Wall in Jerusalem where people leave written prayers in the cracks. (Yuan, 4/13)

China is reporting its highest number of new coronavirus cases in more than five weeks, saying most of them originated abroad. Officials said Monday that mainland China had 169 new confirmed cases of infection, with 61 of them described as "asymptomatic" COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus. The government said 98 of the cases were "imported" by people arriving from abroad. The total figure represents the highest number of new cases since March 6. (Neuman, 4/13)

Across the United States, black and Hispanic people suffer disproportionately from poverty, poor health care and chronic diseases like diabetes, hypertension and asthma. Now the data, when it is available, shows that black and Hispanic Americans are dying of the coronavirus disease at rates far higher than white Americans.In New York City, Hispanic people are dying at the highest rate. Nearly 34 percent of the deaths in New York City are of Hispanic residents, who make up 29 percent of the population. Black New Yorkers, who represent about 22 percent of the city’s population, make up about 28 percent of the deaths. (4/11)

The novel coronavirus, as far as we know, does not discriminate along racial lines. But America does — and the data so far show that black people are dying at a disproportionate rate. The first thing to do about it? Get more of that data, and fast. The numbers trickling in from cities, counties and states in recent weeks are alarming: Chicago’s population is about 30 percent black, but so are nearly 70 percent of those in the city killed by the virus. Milwaukee County looks worse: Black people make up 26 percent of the population, and a whopping 73 percent of covid-related deaths. In Michigan, it’s 14 and 41; in Louisiana, it’s 32 and 70. Maryland has a 30 percent black population and reported Thursday that black residents account for 40 percent of the state’s deaths. We don’t know the federal statistics yet, because there aren’t any. (4/10)

A few weeks ago, Hannah Sparks of The New York Post reported on “a morbid — and chillingly astute — new slang term for the coronavirus pandemic: boomer remover,” because the virus has proved particularly deadly for the elderly. But, because it is also disproportionately deadly for men and for African-Americans, I worry about how it will affect black men in particular, and have come to use another chilling term to characterize it: a “brother killer.” (Charles Blow, 4/12)

Despite being home to premiere academic medical institutions and a thriving biotech hub, Massachusetts has not achieved health equity across race and ethnicity. Never mind that we were the first state in the nation to offer true health care reform. Boston alone is saturated with Level 1 trauma centers and a plethora of physicians. Yet the experience for many poor communities of color has been anything but ideal. The devastation that COVID-19 has unleashed in our communities of color requires bold and immediate action. (Jon Santiago, Rachael Rollins, and Ayanna Pressley, 4/10)

The global economic and social devastation brought by the COVID-19 pandemic is revealing stark contrasts between the fortunate and vulnerable in American society. Predictably, it appears that our Native American communities will once again have to pick ourselves up by the bootstraps in the face of what appears to be slow, inadequate relief from the federal government. In addition to failing infrastructure, lack of access to health care and a sizable percentage of the population at risk for the most severe COVID-19 complications, tribal communities are also facing bleak economic prospects. Our most consistent revenue generator — land-based casino gaming — has disappeared virtually overnight. (Gary Davis, 4/10)

People with underlying medical conditions -- such as heart disease, diabetes and kidney disease -- are more likely to be hospitalized and die as a result of the virus. In the United States, these patients disproportionately include people of color. This horrifying reality, unfolding throughout the United States was, sadly, predictable. We need to act now to prevent staggering death rates from Covid-19 in black communities across America. (Clark-Cutaia, 4/11)

Why would a slight, 79-year-old physician-scientist stand up to a volatile, combative President Trump on national television? Here’s a related question: Why do millions of health care workers — doctors, nurses, emergency responders, aides, transport specialists, and more — risk their lives every day to care for those with Covid-19, a potentially deadly infection? Personal courage is part of the explanation. But there’s more to it than that. (David Blumenthal, 4/13)

The vast majority of Americans, across all age groups, are practicing social distancing, according to our KFF polling. Why it matters: The public doesn’t always act in its best interests when it comes to health — but this time, people are. And it’s helping to “flatten the curve” of the coronavirus pandemic. By the numbers: At the end of March, between 77% and 89% of all age groups were sheltering in place. Those are remarkable numbers, considering that essential workers are leaving their home and several states still do not have stay-at-home directives in place. (Drew Altman, 4/13)

Can we talk about toilet paper? My stash is running low, and my guess is yours is too. I’ve haunted the paper goods aisle in my neighborhood stores and scoured online sites. Everything’s gone or on back order. The supply chain has been disrupted by coronavirus pandemic panic buyers, and it’s not clear when it will get back on track. It’s easier to score a delivery appointment on Amazon Fresh than a single, scratchy generic roll. But I’m not worried. I’m so over toilet paper. (Mariel Garza, 4/13)

Health care workers are responding to the onslaught of the Covid-19 pandemic with professionalism and courage. Doctors and nurses have been, by far, the faces seen on nightly news videos or the voices quoted in news articles. Yet many other workers are involved in patient care and make it possible for hospital ecosystems to function properly — janitors, transport specialists, baristas, administrative clerks, dietitians, and more. They, however, tend to be invisible to the world outside of hospitals doors. (Gray Moonen, 4/13)

I was supposed to be home in Italy for my spring break. Instead, as my parents are self-quarantining in our house near Milan, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in Italy, I am stranded in Washington, D.C., self-isolating in college housing more than 4,000 miles away from them. I want to go home, but I’m afraid to do so. (Silvia Martelli, 4/12)

Whether you are 18 or 80, advance care plans make it easier for doctors to provide care that honors the wishes of an individual if they are unable to speak for themselves. In the ER, we have minutes to make a decision that will dictate if a person might live on a machine or pass a natural death. I always make decisions based on what I think is best for the patient, but unless people have an advance care plan, that is exceedingly difficult. If I’m told about a patient’s wishes, not only does my work become more person-centered — it can also be quicker. As we handle massive influxes of patients amid dwindling yet crucial resources, time is everything. (Elizabeth P. Clayborne, 4/10)

In the weeks since I was hospitalized for the coronavirus, the same question has flooded my email inbox, texts and direct messages: Are you better, yet? I don’t yet know how to answer. While the widespread support from friends, family and strangers has been very heartwarming, I’ve also struggled to reconcile the genuine happiness expressed at my improving condition with my own lingering symptoms, confusion about contagion, and anxieties about relapse. When I tested positive for coronavirus on March 17, I didn’t know what to expect. Much remains unknown about the virus, and many of the symptoms I experienced, such as gastrointestinal issues and loss of smell, were only just being identified. (Fiona Lowenstein, 4/13)

Yet accessing a laundromat is still challenging for many Americans. Though the exact number of Americans who rely on laundromats to wash their clothes is not measured, the Coin Laundry Association estimates the coin laundry industry to generate $5 billion in gross revenue annually. (Allister Chang, 4/10)

At his most recent coronavirus briefing, President Trump said that determining when to reopen the country would be the most difficult decision he’d ever have to make. He’s right. The calculations are complex, the stakes high, the tradeoffs unimaginable. He’s stuck between forcing millions of people out of their jobs and causing a downturn that could rival the Great Depression — or authorizing the deaths, possibly, of tens of thousands more people by reopening too soon. If only such important decisions weren’t in the hands of a president so obviously unprepared and ill-equipped to make them.  (Nicholas Goldberg, 4/12)

People across America are stepping up to the plate. Millions are performing essential services at great personal risk, and millions more are staying at home, away from friends and extended family. In return, they want the answer to a simple question: What is the plan to safely reopen America? So far, the Trump administration hasn’t supplied an answer. (Former Vice President Joe Biden, 4/12)

With the NBA, Major League Baseball and even table tennis shut down, Monday Morning Quarterbacking is the sport du jour. Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren and so many others think they could manage the coronavirus pandemic better than President Trump, and they all have a plan to get us out of this mess. Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden (or someone) penned an editorial for the New York Times entitled “Joe Biden: My Plan to Safely Reopen America.” In it he offers novel advice such as “we have to get the number of new cases of the disease down significantly.” Also: “If I were president, I would convene top experts from the private sector, industry by industry, to come up with new ideas on how to operate more safely.”I f nothing else, it is conceivable that four years of a Joe Biden presidency could put the country into a stupor. (Liz Peek, 4/13)

There is no more time to waste. Too many people are dying. Dozens of very smart citizens, even citizen representatives, have expressed enough concern that a response seems to be in order. These are the same mental health concerns we had from the beginning, and the coronavirus pandemic has only deepened these concerns. (Dr. Bandy Lee, 4/12)

The intense measures and restrictions to combat Covid-19 are a necessary hardship to prevent a wider and more devastating epidemic. But even after the epidemic subsides, the virus will remain a threat until there is an effective vaccine. America needs a plan to reduce that threat, and business leaders can play a big part. As employees return to work, perhaps as early as May, employers can offer screening at their place of business. Rapid diagnosis and containment will be a critical part of limiting spread. Bringing these activities into the workplace would make them more widespread and routine, and can be done in conjunction with efforts to expand testing throughout the health-care system. People who have signs of respiratory illness should see a doctor. But many Covid-19 patients have mild or no symptoms. Without prompt testing to differentiate mild colds from the novel coronavirus, people could spread the virus unknowingly. Portable and relatively inexpensive testing platforms can be brought to businesses in mobile vans or deployed on-site and administered by professionals. Testing companies are ramping up supply, and businesses can start placing orders now. (Scott Gottlieb and Lauren Silvis, 4/12)

The US now has the world's highest number of deaths from Covid-19, with at least 21,692 losing their lives to the virus as of Sunday afternoon. Americans will continue to die in large numbers until our country mounts a coherent response to the epidemic. President Donald Trump has failed. The US still lacks even a basic plan for controlling the epidemic and restarting the economy. (Jeffrey Sachs, 4/12)

Americans by and large have willingly obeyed the government’s shelter-in-place and social-distancing orders, but that doesn’t seem to be enough for some public officials. They’re indulging their inner bully in ways that over time will erode public support for behavior that can reduce the spread of the coronavirus. One problem is excessive enforcement. Some state and local officials tasked with implementing shelter-at-home orders appear either to misunderstand the edicts they are meant to carry out or to suffer from a lack of discernment. Police officers in Brighton, Colo., handcuffed a man for playing with his wife and six-year-old daughter on a nearly empty softball field—though the order police claimed he had violated barred only groups of five or more. (4/12)

Americans are doing a lot of soul-searching amid the COVID-19 pandemic, questioning everything from public health systems and political polarization to U.S. economic resilience. It seems like everything is on the table, except how the United States formulates, implements and communicates its relations with allies and competitors. In response to this life-altering health crisis, U.S. foreign policy must change too. (Judd Devermont, 4/12)

The politics of the coronavirus have made it seem indecent to talk about the future. As President Trump has flirted with reopening America quickly — saying in late March that he’d like to see “packed churches” on Easter and returning to the theme days ago with “we cannot let this continue” — public-health experts have felt compelled to call out the dangers. Many Americans have responded by rejecting as monstrous the whole idea of any trade-off between saving lives and saving the economy. And in the near term, it’s true that those two goals align: For the sake of both, it’s imperative to keep businesses shuttered and people in their homes as much as possible. (4/10)

President Donald Trump appears to have wavered on last month's goal to have the US "opened up and just raring to go by Easter" as well as his warning on Twitter back then that "WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF..." I agree that the economic costs of the Covid-19 pandemic are massive and growing. But the social and human costs are even higher and unequally distributed, hitting the vulnerable the most. (Jennifer Prah Ruger, 4/11)

Americans are learning a thing or two about clinical trials as they watch the tense, televised push-pull between President Trump promoting a drug combination for Covid-19 based on skimpy, preliminary clinical trial data and Dr. Anthony Fauci promoting caution about the combination. Fortunately, the federal government provides a handy resource for navigating such disputes, ClinicalTrials.gov, where drug makers and other sponsors of clinical trials must report their results. The Food and Drug Administration bases its decisions largely on the results of such clinical trials, which reveal how effective or safe a drug or device is compared to existing options or placebos. But that decision-making machinery can be thrown off when trial sponsors don’t have to share the results of all of their trials. (Christoper Morten, Peter G. Lurie and Charles Seife, 4/13)