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President Trump retreated Sunday from his desire to relax coronavirus guidelines by Easter, announcing instead that all Americans must continue to avoid nonessential travel, going to work, eating at bars and restaurants, or gathering in groups of more than 10 for at least another month and perhaps until June. The grim recommendation, which the president made in the White House Rose Garden, came just a day before the end of a two-week period in which the world’s largest economy has largely shut down with staggering consequences: businesses shuttered, schools and colleges emptied, and social life all but suspended. (Shear, 3/29)

It was a stark shift in tone by the president, who only days ago mused about the country reopening in a few weeks. From the Rose Garden, he said his Easter revival hopes had only been “aspirational.” The initial 15-day period of social distancing urged by the federal government expires Monday and Trump had expressed interest in relaxing the national guidelines at least in parts of the country less afflicted by the pandemic. He instead decided to extend them through April 30, a tacit acknowledgment he’d been too optimistic. Many states and local governments have stiffer controls in place on mobility and gatherings. (Miller and Colvin, 3/30)

The reversal by Trump, which he said would be disclosed in greater detail on Tuesday, came as the U.S. death toll topped 2,460 from the respiratory disease, according to a Reuters tally, with more than 141,000 cases, the most of any country in the world. (Chiacu and Whitcomb, 3/29)

The president’s comments came after a top medical adviser to the White House and state governors said in television interviews Sunday that they could not envision an easing soon of measures designed to slow the virus’s spread, warning that the outbreak will continue taxing hospitals and could kill thousands more people. Anthony S. Fauci, the White House adviser, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that models suggest the virus could cause between 100,000 and 200,000 deaths and that millions of people could be infected. But he stressed that the 200,000 figure was a worst-case estimate that is unlikely to come to pass. (Duncan and Sonmez, 3/29)

Public-health experts have said extended social distancing is needed until the U.S. develops a vigorous testing regime to identify and isolate cases. Widespread testing is still a long way off and labs now are struggling with supply issues that are further hampering the ability to identify cases. The coronavirus can be spread when people are asymptomatic. Mr. Trump said he didn’t anticipate relaxing the guidelines before April 30 even for regions less affected by the virus. (Ballhaus, Restuccia and Calfas, 3/29)

An eerie quiet crept over the White House.Desks were empty. Office lights were turned off. Many staffers had been told to work from home. The bustling Navy Mess was closed, and the usual stream of visitors rushing in and out of the West Wing had slowed to a trickle. Left behind were President Donald Trump, his top aides, and a small group of staffers, hunkered down and making battle plans as the novel coronavirus marched across the country. All were acutely aware their decisions in the coming days could define their legacies — not to mention whether they kept their jobs after 2020. (McGraw and Oprysko, 3/29)

For weeks, President Donald Trump carved out a trail of groundless assurances about the coronavirus pandemic as health officials, governors and local officials sounded alarm about what was coming — and already here. That sunlit trail now has hit a wall. On Sunday, Trump appeared to be bracing the country for a grim death toll as he accepted the advice of public-health experts and gave up on letting federal social-distance guidelines lapse Monday as initially intended. In doing so, he acknowledged what his officials had told him — that 100,000 people or many more could die from COVID-19 in the U.S. before it’s over. And he recognized it won’t be over for some time. (Woodward and Yen, 3/30)

Even President Donald Trump, a serial spinner of his own political realities, accepted science's dire truth in ditching an Easter target to open up the US economy with the coronavirus pandemic set to take a savage turn. Trump's extension of social distancing guidelines until April 30 is a highly significant move that means American life will remain shut down for at least a month, and probably longer. (Collinson, 3/30)

On two occasions during Sunday's coronavirus briefing, President Donald Trump falsely denied he had said words he had said publicly last week. When PBS's Yamiche Alcindor noted that the President had said he did not believe that governors actually need all the equipment they claimed they did, Trump said, "I didn't say that" — even though he said precisely that on Fox News on Thursday. Later, when CNN White House Correspondent Jeremy Diamond noted that Trump had said he wanted governors to be "appreciative" of him, and that "if they don't treat you right, I don't call," Trump said, "But I didn't say that" — even though he said precisely that at the Friday briefing. (Dale and Subramaniam, 3/29)

If there’s one thing people agree on, even as they debate the government’s coronavirus response, it is this: We can’t do this forever. The nationwide shutdowns, the home quarantines, hospital shortages, layoffs, deaths and infections. All seemingly without end. So what exactly is our next step? Concerned about the nation’s halting, uncoordinated response — which has featured a patchwork of state-by-state, competing and at times contradictory decisions — health experts are rushing to offer their own long-term strategies to combat the virus and edge America closer back to normal. (McGinley and Wan, 3/29)

A new report co-authored by President Donald Trump's former FDA commissioner suggests the country wouldn't broadly reopen anytime soon, as the Trump administration weighs whether to ease nationwide measures aimed at slowing the coronavirus. The country doesn’t yet appear to meet the proposed criteria for reopening schools and businesses laid out in the paper co-written by Scott Gottlieb, who has continued to advise the Trump administration. (Roubein, 3/29)

With Covid-19 racing through the country, the United States is virtually locked down. At the same time, the yearning among Americans to reopen their communities grows, as does their desire to return to some semblance of normality. In an effort to chart a path toward that goal, public health experts laid out two new roadmaps over the weekend. (Branswell, 3/29)

As coronavirus infections rise across the United States, public health experts widely agree it's time for a drastic step: Every state in the nation should now issue the kind of stay-at-home orders first adopted by the hardest-hit places. And while most states will probably not need to keep the rules in place for months upon months, many health specialists say the lockdowns will need to be kept up for several weeks. Yet among these same experts, there is debate when it comes to the natural next question: What strategy can be deployed after the lockdowns are lifted? (Aizenman, 3/27)

The Seattle area, home of the first known coronavirus case in the United States and the place where the virus claimed 37 of its first 50 victims, is now seeing evidence that strict containment strategies, imposed in the earliest days of the outbreak, are beginning to pay off — at least for now. Deaths are not rising as fast as they are in other states. Dramatic declines in street traffic show that people are staying home. Hospitals have so far not been overwhelmed. (Baker, 3/29)

When the first case of the coronavirus in Silicon Valley was discovered in late January, health officials were faced with a barrage of questions: What city did the patient live in? Whom had he come in contact with? Which health clinic had he visited before he knew he was infected? Dr. Sara Cody, the chief health officer for Santa Clara County, which has a population of two million across 15 cities, declined to give details. “I can’t give the city,” she said, adding “we are not going to be giving out information about where he sought health care.” (Fuller, 3/28)

Is the phrase “social distancing” sending the wrong message to millions of Americans who are struggling to get by during the COVID-19 pandemic? That’s the case being made by Daniel Aldrich, director of the security and resilience program at Northeastern University in Boston. “The moment I heard public health authorities use the term, I thought they were making a mistake,” he said. (Netburn, 3/28)

Dan Blazer and his wife were sheltering at home in North Carolina when their neighbors, a couple in their 50s, reached out by email last week to reassure the 76-year-old and his wife that they weren’t alone. Another couple phoned to check in. “We’re older and we’re perfectly healthy and perfectly independent,” Blazer said. Still, he’s been a bit lonely of late, and appreciated the effort. “Knowing these people are out there makes a huge difference,” he said. (Silberner, 3/28)

Social-distancing measures ended her in-person therapy sessions. For Gonzalez, and others disinclined to discuss problems or whose mental health issues already involve isolating, that is no small thing. (Bracelin, 3/29)

The federal prison system has recorded its first death attributed to the novel coronavirus pandemic as criminal justice reform advocates and public health experts urge officials to consider releasing inmates to slow the contagion. Patrick Jones, 49, was transferred to a hospital from a minimum security prison in Oakdale, La., on March 19, tested positive for Covid-19 — the disease caused by the virus — and was placed on a ventilator the next day, according to a statement from the Bureau of Prisons. (Gerstein, 3/29)

With more than 2 million prisoners held in thousands of detention centers across the U.S., advocates for the incarcerated have been sounding the alarm about the dangers posed to this vulnerable population during the current pandemic. (Feliciano, 3/29)

Thirteen years ago, a group of U.S. public health officials came up with a plan to address what they regarded as one of the medical system’s crucial vulnerabilities: a shortage of ventilators. The breathing-assistance machines tended to be bulky, expensive and limited in number. The plan was to build a large fleet of inexpensive portable devices to deploy in a flu pandemic or another crisis. Money was budgeted. A federal contract was signed. Work got underway. (Kulish, Kliff and Silver-Greenberg, 3/29)

Producers and distributors of medical supplies across the country are raising red flags about what they say is a lack of guidance from the federal government about where to send their products, as hospitals compete for desperately needed masks and ventilators to combat the spread of the novel coronavirus. The issue is taking on greater urgency as supplies run short in hard-hit regions. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, for example, said the city could run out of supplies after a week, saying in a CNN interview the city would “need a re-enforcement” after that to address a crisis that is certain to last much longer. (Ballhaus and Restuccia, 3/29)

A commercial aircraft carrying 80 tons of gloves, masks, gowns and other medical supplies from Shanghai touched down in New York on Sunday, the first of 22 scheduled flights that White House officials say will funnel much-needed goods to the United States by early April as it battles the world’s largest coronavirus outbreak. The plane delivered 130,000 N95 masks, 1.8 million face masks and gowns, 10 million gloves and thousands of thermometers for distribution to New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, said Lizzie Litzow, a spokeswoman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Ms. Litzow said that flights would be arriving in Chicago on Monday and in Ohio on Tuesday, and that supplies would be sent from there to other states using private-sector distribution networks. (Swanson, 3/29)

When President Trump came to office, he promised a new day with America’s manufacturers, casting himself as the first president who understood their needs. He toured factory floors, often handing out his signature “Make America Great Again” hats. Yet in the first national crisis that required harnessing American manufacturing ingenuity and ramping up production of ventilators, perhaps the most crucial piece of equipment for patients in crisis, the White House’s ability to gather the power of American industry crumpled. (Sanger and Haberman, 3/29)

President Donald Trump on Friday ordered General Motors to produce ventilators under the Defense Production Act."Our negotiations with GM regarding its ability to supply ventilators have been productive, but our fight against the virus is too urgent to allow the give-and-take of the contracting process to continue to run its normal course. GM was wasting time," the White House said in a statement. (Brady, 3/27)

Formula 1 engine manufacturer Mercedes has teamed up with clinicians and university engineers in London to design a breathing aid for coronavirus patients that can be quickly mass produced, a development that could help reduce the need for ventilators. The Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) device, which was re-engineered from an existing device in fewer than 100 hours, has been recommended for use by the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, according to a statement from University College London (UCL), which worked on the project. (Riley, 3/30)

U.S. President Donald Trump accused hospitals on Sunday of hoarding ventilators that are in scarce supply across the United States as the coronavirus spreads, adding any hospitals not using the devices must release them. Trump, whose critics have accused him of trying to deflect blame over his handling of the crisis, did not cite any evidence to back his accusation that hospitals were hoarding the devices. It was also unclear which medical facilities he was referring to. “We have some healthcare workers, some hospitals ... hoarding equipment including ventilators,” Trump said at the White House following a meeting with corporate executives, including from U.S. Medical Group. (Bose and Stewart, 3/29)

Trump’s boldest claim was about masks. He noted that current demand wasn’t commensurate with what hospitals typically use and suggested that masks were “going out the back door.” “It’s a New York hospital, very — it’s packed all the time,” he said. “How do you go from 10 to 20 [thousand masks per week] to 300,000? Ten [thousand] to 20,000 masks, to 300,000 — even though this is different? Something is going on, and you ought to look into it as reporters. Are they going out the back door?” (Blake, 3/29)

U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday bragged about the millions of people tuning in to view his daily press briefings on the coronavirus pandemic, saying on Twitter that his average ratings matched a season finale of “The Bachelor.” (Wolfe, 3/29)

President Donald Trump recently authorized the Pentagon to call-up units of the National Guard, reserves and individuals from the Individual Ready Reserve, to assist with the response to the novel coronavirus pandemic. On Friday, Trump said he signed an executive order that would give the Defense Department "the authority to activate the ready reserve components of the armed forces." "This will allow us to mobilize medical disaster and emergency response personnel to help wage our battle against the virus by activating thousands of experienced service members, including retirees," Trump added. (Martinez, 3/28)

Union leaders called on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to stop lobbying President Trump against using the Defense Production Act (DPA), a law that gives the president broad authority to increase the manufacturing output of critical items in a national emergency. Business groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce had been pressing the administration to not use the act but Trump bucked the business community on Friday by using DPA to force General Motors to ramp up production of ventilators. (Gangitano, 3/29)

State governors, besieged by a flood of coronavirus patients amid scarce hospital resources, took to the airwaves on Sunday to plead for more equipment to fight the pandemic. Both Democratic and Republican governors highlighted acute shortages of equipment that medical professionals on the front lines need to do their jobs, including masks, gowns and face shields. One particular point of concern is the scarcity of the ventilators used to help restore breathing capability among severely stricken patients. (Burton, 3/29)

Wary of President Trump’s criticism that they were ungrateful for his management of the coronavirus crisis, governors of several of the hardest-hit states sought gingerly Sunday to avoid provoking him anew and risk losing desperately needed federal aid. Despite the drastic shutdown of much of the country, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious-disease specialist, warned Sunday that 100,000 to 200,000 Americans might die before the pandemic eases. More than 2,400 had died as of Sunday. (King, 3/29)

The White House coronavirus task force coordinator said Sunday that the administration is “asking every single governor and every single mayor to prepare like New York is preparing now. ”Dr. Deborah Birx told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that state and city leaders need to know where each hospital in their jurisdiction is located, where the surgical centers are, where “every piece of equipment is in the state” and how to move equipment around the state “based on need.” (Coleman, 3/29)

When Goldman Sachs directed more than 12,000 employees in the New York City metro area to work from home two weeks ago, bank President John Waldron didn’t need to check with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin — he got on the phone with New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy. It’s one of many calls corporate executives have had to do with state and local officials over the last month as states from California to New Jersey shuttered their economies to prevent the spread of the virus. (Sutton, 3/30)

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) said Saturday that 170 ventilators shipped by the federal government to help his state respond to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus were "not working" when they arrived. Newsom made the remarks during a press conference in which he noted that the number of coronavirus patients in intensive care units had doubled since Friday, according to the Los Angeles Times. Newsom said that the stockpile of ventilators had been sent to Los Angeles County by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). He noted that a company called Bloom Energy was fixing the equipment. (Wise, 3/29)

California and other states have been stocking up on ventilators in anticipation of a shortage at hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic. Newsom said he learned about the problem with the federal government’s ventilators when he visited Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti on Friday. “Rather than lamenting about it, rather than complaining about it, rather than pointing fingers, rather than generating headlines in order to generate more stress and anxiety, we got a car and a truck,” Newsom said. (Luna and Lin, 3/29)

In the span of several days, Marylou Sudders and a team of state officials confirmed two separate orders last week: one for hundreds of N95 respirator masks and another promising shipments of 35 ventilators to Massachusetts, every week, for the “foreseeable future," the state’s health and human services secretary said. They represented victories, if relatively small ones compared to the millions of pieces of equipment the state is chasing. That is, until, it ran into a force seemingly as immovable as the novel coronavirus. (Stout and McGrane, 3/27)

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine expects federal officials will expand new technology to clean face masks used by health care workers treating novel coronavirus patients. The Food and Drug Administration, in a letter sent Saturday, partially approved a new decontamination system by Columbus-based research nonprofit Battelle Memorial Institute. (Borchardt, 3/29)

The Trump administration is leaving untapped reinforcements and supplies from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, even as many hospitals are struggling with a crush of coronavirus patients. The VA serves 9 million veterans through 170 hospitals and more than 1,000 clinics, but it’s also legally designated as the country’s backup health system in an emergency. As part of the National Disaster Medical System, the VA has deployed doctors and equipment to disasters and emergencies in recent instances such as Hurricane Maria and the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida. The VA system has 13,000 acute care beds, including 1,800 intensive care unit beds. (Arnsdorf, 3/27)

With coronavirus cases continuing to climb and hospitals facing the prospect of having to decide how to allocate limited staff and resources, the Department of Health and Human Services is reminding states and health care providers that civil rights laws still apply in a pandemic. States are preparing for a situation when there's not enough care to go around by issuing "crisis of care" standards. (Shapiro, 3/28)

At least a dozen skilled nursing facilities across the state could soon be emptied of their residents and converted to treatment centers for COVID-19 patients to take pressure off nearby hospitals. The first such transition is underway in Worcester, where officials on Saturday began relocating 147 residents from Beaumont Rehabilitation and Skilled Nursing Center and into a number of other eldercare facilities in Central Massachusetts. (Weisman and Logan, 3/28)

Hospitals are still grappling with the Trump administration’s pleas to scrub elective procedures with coronavirus cases mounting, as they try to balance competing demands to protect against the infection and stave off financial catastrophe. Some hospitals were still performing routine surgeries and outpatient procedures this week over the objections of staff who worry that they were putting patients and providers at risk of exposure to the virus. Staff who spoke with POLITICO also said they worried about depleting valuable inventory of personal protective equipment that’s in diminishing supply in many parts of the country. (Rayasam, Goldberg and Roubein, 3/29)

As officials scramble to supply hospitals with much needed protective equipment for doctors and nurses fighting the novel coronavirus on the front lines, hospital leaders around the country warn that they are running low on another critical supply: money. Hospitals have taken a significant loss of revenue as they cut back lucrative elective procedures to free up resources to treat COVID-19 patients. At the same time, they are pouring money into efforts to fight the virus like buying personal protective equipment (PPE) supplies, providing child care for staff and overtime pay, transforming units to COVID-19 wings for treatment and setting up drive-thru testing sites, hospital officials told ABC News. (Rubin and Kim, 3/30)

Kaiser Health News: The Nation’s 5,000 Outpatient Surgery Centers Could Help With The COVID-19 Overflow

As the number of COVID-19 cases continues to rise, a group of anesthesiologists wants to convert America’s surgery centers into critical care units for infected patients. Many of the country’s more than 5,000 outpatient surgery centers have closed or sharply cut back on the number of elective procedures they perform, to comply with requests from government agencies and professional societies. But those surgery centers have space and staff, as well as anesthesia machines that could be repurposed into ventilators — all of which could be especially crucial in hard-hit areas like New York. (Anthony and Szabo, 3/27)

Across the United States, hospitals have been dealing with a disease disaster made worse by the federal government’s failure to act in the early weeks, when better containment might have been possible. Now, with U.S. case numbers exploding, testing is still a bottleneck, and there is a dire shortage of everything from low-tech face masks to high-tech ventilators. In New York City, a doctor at a hospital with 13 deaths in one day told the New York Times just days ago that the situation was “apocalyptic.” (McCullough and Gartner, 3/27)

Massachusetts is asking some nursing homes to evacuate their elderly residents so the facilities can treat coronavirus patients, the newest effort to find places to treat the infected as their surging numbers begin overwhelming hospitals. One nursing home in Worcester, the state’s second-largest city, has begun moving residents to other nursing facilities in the area. The state also said it is asking other homes to become dedicated sites for coronavirus treatment by similarly transferring residents. (Kamp and Wilde Mathews, 3/29)

Nurses at one hospital in southeastern Washington state have alleged that, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, they were ordered by supervisors to use one protective mask per shift, potentially exposing themselves to the novel coronavirus. At another hospital, just east of Seattle, nurses had to use face shields indefinitely. At a third hospital, on Washington’s border with Oregon, nurses reported that respirators were expired. The hospital responded, the nurses said, by ordering staff to remove stickers showing that the respirators might be as much as three years out of date. (Armstrong and Davila, 3/28)

Hospital employees across the country have been blocked from wearing surgical masks in certain situations to protect against infection by the new coronavirus — including those they bring to work themselves. Workers at the Raymond G. Murphy VA Medical Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico, have been told not to wear face masks unless they have lingering respiratory symptoms after an illness, are under surveillance following COVID-19 exposure or are treating patients showing signs of COVID-19. (Furlow and Miller, 3/27)

While the safety of physicians and nurses has received much attention during the coronavirus pandemic, hospital housekeepers and nursing home and home health aides also need greater protection and support, labor and industry groups say. The most pressing need is for adequate supplies of personal protection equipment like N95 masks and gloves for these workers, whose safety often has gotten a lower priority. Housekeepers sometimes enter rooms wearing only gloves and find nurses garbed in head-to-toe protective equipment, said Anne Igoe, vice president for health systems at Service Employees International Union Healthcare in Chicago. (Meyer, 3/27)

Emergency room doctors at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center have been told some of their accrued pay is being held back. More than 1,100 Atrius Health physicians and staffers are facing reduced paychecks or unpaid furloughs, while pay raises for medical staff at South Shore Health, set for April, are being delayed. (Ostriker, 3/27)

Just a little over a week ago, Mericien Venzon was a typical fourth-year medical student at New York University. Dan Lurie was a cognitive neuroscience graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley. Louise Siu and Sonia Hsia were both stay-at-home moms. None expected they'd be running citywide drives and fundraisers for health care workers in need of medical supplies during the novel coronavirus pandemic. (Roberts, 3/28)

In an effort to boost the number of health-care professionals on the front lines of the coronavirus outbreak, Pennsylvania is chipping away at the bureaucratic barriers imposed on many of the state’s licensed workers. But two state senators say that broader, more sweeping changes — such as limiting which criminal convictions are considered disqualifying — are needed to tackle dual crises: the virus and the impending economic downturn. (Simon, 3/29)

Many of the calls and messages from my primary care patients start, unnecessarily, with an apology. Teresa is in her 40s. She wants to let me know about thermometer readings that are higher than usual, but not quite a fever. A cough when she thinks about it. And shortness of breath — a symptom, she notes wryly, both of covid-19 and of covid-induced anxiety. Ava, a 26-year-old graduate student with asthma, tells me she feels run down and had a sore throat earlier this week. She wonders what she can do to keep herself and her roommate safe. (Ganguli, 3/28)

As infections grow on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic, so does stress for health care workers.There were at least 184 hospital staff infected in Massachusetts as of Thursday night, and that’s only counting five hospitals that consistently report their numbers: Massachusetts General, Brigham and Women's, Boston Medical Center, Tufts Medical Center and UMass Memorial Medical. (Bebinger, 3/27)

Independent physicians are hoping for expedited federal aid as elective procedures and non-urgent, in-person doctors' visits are postponed to accommodate more COVID-19 cases, threatening their practices' viability. Many private-practice physician groups, which are owned by doctors rather than by a health system or other entity, have seen in-person visits drop 40% to 60% over the past several weeks, similar to hospitals and other providers. That decline is only partially offset by virtual visits, and practices that do not have telehealth capabilities are particularly vulnerable, physician group executives said. (Kacik, 3/27)

Abbott Laboratories is unveiling a coronavirus test that can tell if someone is infected in as little as five minutes, and is so small and portable it can be used in almost any health-care setting. The medical-device maker plans to supply 50,000 tests a day starting April 1, said John Frels, vice president of research and development at Abbott Diagnostics. The molecular test looks for fragments of the coronavirus genome, which can quickly be detected when present at high levels. A thorough search to definitively rule out an infection can take up to 13 minutes, he said. Abbott has received emergency use authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration “for use by authorized laboratories and patient care settings,” the company said on Friday. (Cortez, 3/27)

When Austin-based Everlywell unveiled a new test for the coronavirus that people could buy online, use at home and mail back with results in 48 hours, the company was confident the product would be a hit. The botched rollout of the federal government’s testing effort had left consumers hungry for alternatives. The company, which sells a variety of other home tests, was “inundated” with requests for a coronavirus one, said chief executive Julia Cheek on March 19, four days before it planned to put 30,000 tests up for sale at $135 each. (McGinley, Mufson and Dwoskin, 3/27)

President Trump gave the United States a pat on the back on this week, saying the nation had done more coronavirus testing than South Korea, a country widely seen as a model in its management of the pandemic. But his comparison was misleading. “Just reported that the United States has done far more ‘testing’ than any other nation, by far!” Trump said in a tweet Wednesday morning. “In fact, over an eight day span, the United States now does more testing than what South Korea (which has been a very successful tester) does over an eight week span. Great job!” (Mooney, Mufson and Ba Tran, 3/27)

Kaiser Health News: What Takes So Long? A Behind-The-Scenes Look At The Steps Involved In COVID-19 Testing

After a slow start, testing for COVID-19 has ramped up in recent weeks, with giant commercial labs jumping into the effort, drive-up testing sites established in some places and new types of tests approved under emergency rules set by the Food and Drug Administration. But even for people who are able to get tested (and there’s still a big lag in testing ability in hot spots across the U.S.), there can be a frustratingly long wait for results — not just hours, but often days. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) didn’t get his positive test results for six days and is now being criticized for not self-quarantining during that time. (Appleby, 3/30)

The alarming rise in the number of deaths and positive cases of COVID-19 has prompted a veritable race to get tested. Some celebrities, politicians, and top athletes, many with mild infections or no symptoms at all, have seemingly received tests and results in hours, while others have coughed and stressed for over a week. Discussion of this divide has bounced around virtual meeting rooms and burned across social media: Just how does a person qualify for a test and how long should they have to wait for results? The answer: It depends. (Lazar and Ryan, 3/28)

Three new mobile COVID-19 testing sites will open in San Francisco next week, as health officials race to expand testing capabilities ahead of a predicted surge of patients in the coming weeks. San Francisco will have seven drive-through or drop-in testing sites operating once the three new locations become operational by the end of next week, though some of those locations are reserved only for health care employees and first responders. (Fracassa, 3/27)

On Feb. 13, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent out an email with what the author described as an “URGENT” call for help. The agency was struggling with one of its most important duties: keeping track of Americans suspected of having the novel coronavirus. It had “an ongoing issue” with organizing — and sometimes flat-out losing — forms sent by local agencies about people thought to be infected. The email listed job postings for people who could track or retrieve this paperwork. (Chen, Allen and Churchill, 3/26)

Kaiser Health News: ‘Red Dawn Breaking Bad’: Officials Warned About Safety Gear Shortfall Early On, Emails Show

A high-ranking federal official in late February warned that the United States needed to plan for not having enough personal protective equipment for medical workers as they began to battle the novel coronavirus, according to internal emails obtained by Kaiser Health News. The messages provide a sharp contrast to President Donald Trump’s statements at the time that the threat the coronavirus posed to the American public remained “very low.” In fact, concerns were already mounting, the emails show, that medical workers and first responders would not have enough masks, gloves, face shields and other supplies, known as PPE, to protect themselves against infection when treating COVID-19 patients. (Pradhan and Jewett, 3/28)

Everyone in the White House owns — or wants to own — a piece of the administration’s coronavirus response. Vice President Mike Pence is officially running the coronavirus task force. Senior adviser Jared Kushner has propped up his own operation focused on increasing the testing capacity in the U.S., forging partnerships with private industries and business executives, and tracking down desperately needed medical supplies. (Cook and Orr, 3/29)

The White House coronavirus task force unanimously shunned President Donald Trump’s suggestion of a quarantine in the New York City area, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Sunday. The president “did very seriously consider” the idea of locking down the tri-state area of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, Mnuchin said on “Fox News Sunday.” But Trump was dissuaded after a meeting with the task force led by Vice President Mike Pence. (Rahman, 3/29)

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has taken on an outsized role in the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus, serving as a key conduit between President Trump and Congress. Mnuchin has helped shepherd through two massive legislative packages aimed at helping address the public health crisis and the ensuing economic fallout, engaging constantly with Democratic leaders despite the considerable partisan divide that has plagued Washington. (Chalfant and Elis, 3/29)

One of the new staples of the coronavirus outbreak here in the U.S. has been the nightly briefings from the White House coronavirus task force. A regular at the lectern, and often the only woman on stage, is Dr. Deborah Birx. In her role as coronavirus response coordinator, she has become one of the most prominent voices of the administration around this crisis. Her appearances are a cross between a war briefing and FDR's fireside chats. She mixes the minutia of disease transmission with deeply personal stories, then pivots to complex discussions of antibody testing for the virus. She scolds and reassures within minutes of each other. (Beaubien, 3/27)

For decades, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci has been known as the hardest worker in Building 31 — the first scientist to arrive at the sprawling National Institutes of Health campus in Bethesda, Md., in the morning and the last to leave in the evening. “He’s even found notes on his windshield left by co-workers that say things like, “Go home. You’re making me feel guilty,” President George W. Bush said in 2008 when he awarded Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. (Jarvie, 3/29)

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has been advising Americans on issues of everyday health since the administration of late President Ronald Reagan. In the White House spotlight this month, he has admonished people to take the spread of coronavirus seriously. But lately he's also reached out to audiences that might not watch daily news conferences on cable: the social media generation. (Romero, 3/29)

Dr. Anthony Fauci said Sunday that President Donald Trump decided not to impose a strict quarantine on parts of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut after officials had "very intensive discussions" at the White House with the President last night. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on CNN's "State of the Union" that it was important not to enforce something that would create "a bigger difficulty," and instead issue a travel advisory for the New York metro area. (Robertson and Cole, 3/29)

President Donald Trump acknowledged Sunday for the first time that deaths in the United States from coronavirus could reach 100,000 or more, adding that if the death toll stays at or below 100,000, "we all together have done a very good job." Trump's assertion came after he was asked about comments the nation's top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, made earlier Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union" that based on models, 100,000 Americans or more could die from the virus. (Bohn, 3/30)

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who is also helping lead the White House's coronavirus task force, called President Trump’s decision to keep the government’s current social distancing guidelines in place through the end of April a “wise” one. “We feel that the mitigation that we’re doing right now is having an effect. It’s very difficult to quantitate it because you have two dynamic things going on at the same time,” Fauci said a press conference outside the White House on Sunday. (Folley, 3/29)

As lawmakers last week completed a record-shattering economic-rescue package estimated at $2 trillion, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) predicted: “This is certainly not the end of our work here in Congress—rather the end of the beginning.” Legislators from both parties, administration officials, economists, think tanks and lobbyists are already roughing out the contours of yet another emergency-spending package—perhaps larger than the last—to try to keep the coronavirus crisis from turning into a 21st-century Great Depression. Many expect the debate to begin in earnest by late April. (Schlesinger and Jamerson, 3/29)

The top Republican in the House said Sunday that a fourth stimulus bill may not be necessary to help an economy wracked by the coronavirus pandemic. House Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures” that the $2 trillion stimulus package passed last week is “critical” to make it through the “next two months and get this economy coming back.” (Coleman, 3/29)

Democrats are keen on including additional direct payments to Americans in the next coronavirus response bill, arguing more needs to be done to provide financial stability as the pandemic ravages the economy. A number of Democratic lawmakers have offered proposals for more generous payments than the ones included in the $2 trillion measure President Trump signed into law Friday. That legislation included one-time cash payments for most Americans of up to $1,200 per adult and $500 per child. (Jagoda, 3/29)

The Federal Reserve has offered more than $3 trillion in loans and asset purchases in recent weeks to stop the U.S. financial system from seizing up, but it has not yet directly helped large swaths of the real economy: companies, municipalities and other borrowers with less than perfect credit. (Delevinge and Schneider, 3/30)

It was just hours before the start of President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial when Sen. Tom Cotton began to panic. The Arkansas Republican had spent Martin Luther King Day weekend poring over news reports from Asia describing a new, highly infectious disease traced to a provincial city of 11 million inside China, hardening his already deeply held disdain for the Chinese Communist Party. (Bertrand and Severns, 3/30)

Before the coronavirus pandemic became Congress’ sole focus, late May was widely viewed as a final 2020 deadline for lawmakers to take action on key health policy issues, including legislation to lower the price of prescription drugs. But with the Covid-19 crisis dominating every aspect of American politics, such legislation will have to wait. A recent $2 trillion relief package that lawmakers passed on Friday could mean drug pricing advocates might be waiting a long while — likely until November, weeks after Election Day. (Facher, 3/30)

Congress has passed a $2 trillion rescue plan but before those funds start to flow, American companies from the owner of a single liquor store in Boston to corporate giants like Macy’s Inc., must decide what to do about April’s bills: Which obligations do they pay and which can they put off? How many employees can they afford to keep on the payroll? Can they get a break on rent? The decisions they make this week could shape how deeply the economy is damaged by the coronavirus pandemic. “Rent is due. Utilities are due. Credit card bills are due April 1,” said Hadley Douglas, who has laid off two workers from her liquor business, The Urban Grape. (Simon, Fung, Kapner and Haddon, 3/29)

Major U.S. airlines asked the U.S. Treasury to move quickly to release up to $58 billion in government grants and loans and recommended a formula to divide up the money. In a letter dated Saturday and seen by Reuters, carriers wrote that “given the urgent and immediate need, it is essential that these funds be disbursed as soon as possible.” (Shepardson, 3/29)

Airports are a way out — out of town, but for many people, out of poverty.Those routes to a better life, however, are shutting down along with the flights. Thousands of workers at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport and hundreds of their counterparts at Hobby Airport have had hours cut dramatically or lost jobs altogether. (Douglas, 3/27)

The Justice Department is reportedly probing decisions made by at least one lawmaker to sell stock in the days before the market turned downward as a result of the coronavirus outbreak. CNN reported Sunday that the inquiry, which was launched in cooperation with the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC), is still in its early stages, according to two people familiar with the matter. However, at least one lawmaker, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), has been contacted by investigators, according to CNN. (Bowden, 3/29)

Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio on Sunday painted a grim picture of the coming week as the state’s death toll from Covid-19 approached 1,000, but at the same time they dismissed calls to impose tighter restrictions on people’s movements in a region that has become the nation’s largest concentration of coronavirus infections. “The virus continues its march across the state of New York,” Cuomo said at a news conference on Sunday. “I don’t see how you look at those numbers and conclude anything less than thousands of people will pass away.” (Durkin, Giambusso, Mahoney and Toure, 3/29)

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York said on Sunday that 237 people had died since the day before, the largest one-day increase in the state since the coronavirus outbreak began. (3/29)

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said his city is on track to run out of supplies next weekend. "We have enough supplies to get to a week from today, with the exception of ventilators," de Blasio said Sunday. "We're going to need at least several hundred more ventilators very quickly," the mayor said. "We are going to need a reinforcement by Sunday, April 5, in all categories, especially ventilators but in other areas as well. And personnel is becoming more and more the issue." (Yan, 3/29)

New York City, already the epicenter of the coronavirus crisis inside the United States, is still days, if not weeks, from the peak of the outbreak there. The head of the city's hospital system says it has enough ventilators and protective equipment to survive through the end of the month. After that, New York will need massive help, and fast. (Breslow, 3/27)

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Sunday said nonessential businesses must remain closed and that gatherings will be banned until April 15 as the death toll from the new coronavirus surged over the weekend. Over 500 people around the state died from the disease between Friday and Sunday, Mr. Cuomo said, bringing the overall toll above 1,000—the highest for any state in the nation. The total includes a New York Police Department detective as well as several health care workers. (Vielkind, 3/29)

The official statistics reported by health authorities would seem to show that the United States has more coronavirus infections than any other country and that the New York caseloads exceed any other state. But the true statistics are far from clear. Reporting and testing vary so much from country to country and state to state that it’s hard to know the exact size of the outbreaks, and that is especially the case in New York. (Stobbe, 3/30)

Women preparing to give birth at some hospitals in New York City will no longer have to labor alone, state officials said Saturday. Melissa DeRosa, the secretary to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, announced that an executive order would be issued that required all hospitals in New York, both public and private, to allow women to have a partner in the labor and delivery room — in compliance with the latest guidance from the New York State Department of Health. (Van Syckle and Caron, 3/28)

Serta Simmons Bedding seeks to ease part of the overwhelming burden the hospital and health care facilities are enduring as New York City’s hospitalizations climb due to the coronavirus. The company, which is based in Doraville, Georgia, has announced it will donate 10,000 mattresses to those facilities in the wake of the pandemic that has claimed the lives of more than 1,000 Americans and sickened tens of thousands. (Toone, 3/27)

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a travel advisory late Saturday night for the New York tri-state area after President Trump said he had requested the measure in an effort to stem the spread of the coronavirus. The news comes hours after the president said he was considering a short-term quarantine of "hot spots" in parts of the tri-state area of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. These states have fluid populations that travel in and out of New York City, where cases of COVID-19 and deaths due to the disease continue to rise at an alarming rate. (Moreno, 3/28)

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) said Sunday that New Yorkers who violate orders from police to disperse public gatherings will be fined up to $500 amid the coronavirus outbreak. Politico reported that the mayor made the announcement at a press conference, while stressing that fines would be only issued as a last resort to those truly intent on violating his order. (Bowden, 3/29)

One odd side effect of covid-19 has been what it does to taste. Even those who have avoided the illness enjoy things they once disliked: Government spending. Facetiming with family. Andrew M. Cuomo. The governor of New York’s morning news conferences have become part of the country’s new daily rhythm. He is broadcast live from the wood-paneled Red Room of the state capitol building or New York City’s convention center — a leader in a polo shirt or neatly knotted tie, projecting competence to go along with the PowerPoint projection of hard truths. And to the surprise of anyone who has watched his State of the State, it’s must-see television. (Ellison and Terris, 3/29)

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s approval ratings soared this month as he responded to the surging outbreak of the novel coronavirus, a new poll shows. A poll released Monday by the Siena College Research Institute found 87% of those surveyed approved of how the Democratic governor has handled the epidemic. The poll also found 76% liked the response of their local health department, 74% approval for Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and 41% for both President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence. (Vielkind, 3/30)

The federal health agency that serves more than 2.5 million Native Americans has only limited ability to monitor and investigate coronavirus cases across American Indian communities and reservations, slowing its ability to respond to outbreaks and raising fears that a lack of reliable data could compromise national efforts to eradicate the virus. The Indian Health Service is instead relying largely on Native organizations and health facilities to track the virus and self-report their findings to the Trump administration – an inconsistent practice further complicated by minimal testing capabilities, outdated health technology and provider shortages that Native groups warn could vastly understate the crisis across tribal lands. (Cancryn, 3/28)

Lisa Robbins runs the generator attached to her family’s mobile home for just a few hours most mornings. With no electricity, it provides heat in this rural high-desert stretch of the Navajo Nation where overnight temperatures often linger in the low 30s this time of year. Robbins first started hearing the whispers earlier this month — the fever, that sickness, something called coronavirus — but most people in this town of about 900 didn’t seem too worried. It was far off, neighbors told her, a world away in the big cities. (Lee, 3/29)

Gov. Kevin Stitt isn't the only head of a government in Oklahoma scrambling to bolster a health care system, rework a disintegrating budget and provide leadership to citizens as they struggle to cope with a virus that is threatening their physical and economic health.The leaders of Oklahoma's 38 federally recognized Indian tribes are facing those same challenges. (Ellis, 3/29)

Hours after her father died, an angry and distraught Lori Hannaford typed out a 3 a.m. Facebook post aimed at anyone still walking around this laid-back city as if the world wasn't reeling from a pandemic caused by a deadly virus with no vaccine and no cure. “I hope you never have to lose a spouse and be unable to touch them, be in their room, or say goodbye to them,” she wrote, a short time after changing her Facebook cover photo to a picture of her stepfather kissing her on her wedding day. “I hope you never have to lose your father and be unable to hug your mom and be consoled because you have to stay 6 feet away.” (Wootson, 3/29)

Public-health officials say statewide lockdowns implemented early and aggressively are necessary to curb the coronavirus pandemic. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis disagrees. Among the states in the U.S. with the most coronavirus cases, Florida alone has refrained from imposing a statewide stay-at-home order. The Republican governor has instead focused restrictions on the hardest-hit counties while seeking to spare other areas from the deep economic pain that comes with a lockdown. (Campo-Flores, 3/30)

Gone are the weekly bingo games at Temple Beth Am. Gone too are the daily shuttles around the golf course and the Friday bus trips to the mall. A vast game room, typically full of bridge players, is locked up. “Nothing,” said Carol Friedman, a 70-year-old resident of Wynmoor, a South Florida retirement community of 9,000 residents, just a few miles from the ocean shore. “Can’t do nothing now. Everyone just sits here bored.” (Kaleem, 3/29)

Local governments across the country are imposing travel restrictions on people from hot-spots of the new coronavirus in the U.S., forcing them to self-isolate, stopping vehicles with out-of-state plates and urging them to stay away. Governors in Rhode Island, Florida and Texas, among others, have tightened restrictions on out-of-state travelers. In particular, they have targeted those coming from New York, the pandemic’s U.S. epicenter, and surrounding states. State leaders say the measures are needed to combat the spread of the virus. (Calfas and Ansari, 3/29)

A group of residents from an island town in Maine cut down a tree and dragged it into the middle of a road in an attempt to forcibly quarantine three roommates they believed could have the new coronavirus after arriving from out of state, law enforcement officials said on Saturday. The tree was discovered after one of the roommates left their residence on Cripple Creek Road in Vinalhaven, an island off the coast of Maine, at about 3:30 p.m. on Friday to see why the cable service wasn’t working, the Knox County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement. (Ortiz, 3/29)

Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo is no longer singling out motorists from New York for restricted access to her state. Instead, she has broadened the restrictions to include all other states. Raimondo announced on Friday that her state’s police would pull over drivers with New York license plates and force them to self-quarantine for 14 days. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo quickly denounced the policy and threatened to sue. (Mahoney and Gerstein, 3/29)

With one of the nation's hottest coronavirus zones just 200 miles south on Interstate 95 in New York City, Gov. Charlie Baker on Friday urged people who are thinking about traveling to Massachusetts to reconsider, and said that anyone arriving to the state through an airport or train station will be advised to self-quarantine for 14 days. (Murphy, 3/27)

Texas expanded its quarantine requirement for out-of-state travelers on Sunday, adding to a growing patchwork of domestic travel rules aimed at stemming the spread of the coronavirus. Gov. Greg Abbott targeted some of the pandemic's hot spots, ordering that air travelers from California, Washington state and several other places must self-quarantine for two weeks after arriving in Texas. (Bermel, 3/29)

Back home in Oakland, Calif., Lisa Pezzino and Kit Center built a life that revolved around music and the people who make it — the musicians who recorded on Pezzino’s small label and performed in places where Center rigged the lights and sound equipment. Where they are now, deep in the redwood forest near Big Sur, 140 miles south along the California coast, there is mostly the towering silence of isolation. A tiny cabin, an outdoor kitchen, just one neighbor. This is life in the flight from the virus. (Fisher, Schwartzman and Weissenbach, 3/28)

As a mysterious respiratory illness tore through China and other countries in mid-January, Kyle Coleman, an emergency management coordinator in Texas, took inventory of his team’s personal protective gear at a warehouse in Bexar County. The hazmat suits and gloves were in good condition. Some of the respirator masks had expired. Three pallets of hand sanitizer seemed like enough because they seldom used more than one pallet a year. Over several weeks in January, Coleman followed the outbreak of the novel coronavirus: the first death reported in China on Jan. 11, the spread to Thailand and Japan, and then the first U.S. case in Washington state confirmed on Jan. 21.The next day, President Trump, in an interview on CNBC, assured the public: “We have it totally under control.” (Dungca, Abelson and Sullivan, 3/29)

Emergency room doctor Thomas Krajewski stopped at the hospital room door at 2 a.m. to glance at the chart. He knew instantly the long odds faced by the patient inside: A man in his 70s, with a fever, short of breath. “Do you mind calling my son?” the patient asked him. “My two grandsons tomorrow morning are going to crawl in my bed because they wake me up on the weekends, and if I’m not there, they will wonder.” Twelve hours later, the man needed a ventilator. After a day, his kidneys started to fail. In three days, he was dead - one of 151 people who had succumbed to COVID-19 in Louisiana by late Sunday. (Brooks, 3/30)

If the rate of growth in coronavirus cases in the New York metro area continues, it will suffer a more severe outbreak than those experienced in Wuhan, China, or the Lombardy region of Italy. There is no guarantee, of course, that current trends will continue. What has happened to this point can’t be used to predict what will happen next. It is possible that social distancing will soon slow or arrest the growth of cases. (Cohn, Katz, Sanger-Katz and Quealy, 3/27)

With cases of coronavirus surging around the world, regular people and policymakers alike want to know: Where are the new hotspots? And which countries are doing the best job in controlling outbreaks? Many coronavirus trackers focus on the total number of cases. But viruses spread exponentially, which can quickly balloon the number of infections from a few dozen to hundreds or thousands within days, making it harder to compare countries in different stages of outbreak. Is there a better way? (Jin, 3/27)

Hundreds of worshippers attended services at a Louisiana church on Sunday, flouting a ban on large gatherings, angering neighbors and seemingly turning a deaf ear to their governor, who once again warned that hospitals could soon be overwhelmed with new cases of the coronavirus. An estimated 500 people of all ages filed inside the mustard-yellow and beige Life Tabernacle church in Central, a city of nearly 29,000 outside Baton Rouge. (Plaisance, 3/29)

Some in Jonesboro, Ark., saw a miracle on Saturday after a tornado roared through town. It tore through businesses already closed by the coronavirus and neighborhoods where people had already been told to social distance by hunkering down at home. Not a soul died. Now comes the really hard part: rebuilding and moving on together while officials still urge residents to stay apart. The tornado gashed a scar of devastation that stretched on for more than four miles, scraping through the heart of the city’s commercial district, destroying hangars at the municipal airport and pulverizing homes in several subdivisions. (Rojas and Swales, 3/29)

Ohio had yet to report a single case of Covid-19 in early March when Gov. Mike DeWine faced a wrenching decision. The Arnold Sports Festival, an annual weightlifting extravaganza and expo in Columbus, Ohio, was set to open. But with some 60,000 spectators a day for four days rubbing elbows with 20,000 athletes from 80 countries, local health officials were raising alarms. On March 5, after resistance from festival organizers, the state got a court order to shut down the expo expected to start that day. It lost out on much of the $53 million in economic activity expected from the event. (Barrett, 3/29)

Tenants rights groups and some lawmakers are blasting a new executive order from Gov. Gavin Newsom that purports to suspend evictions statewide, calling it useless and misleading. Newsom announced the moratorium on Friday, saying it would provide relief to tenants who have been laid off, furloughed or seen their hours slashed while the state grapples with the coronavirus pandemic. (Baldassari and Solomon, 3/27)

The number of coronavirus patients in California’s intensive care unit beds doubled overnight, rising from 200 on Friday to 410 on Saturday, Gov. Gavin Newsom said. The number of hospitalized patients testing positive for the coronavirus that causes the respiratory disease known as COVID-19 rose by 38.6% — from 746 on Friday to 1,034 on Saturday, Newsom said. (Luna, Lin and Greene, 3/28)

Los Angeles County recorded five more coronavirus deaths on Sunday, bringing the total to 37 as the virus continued to spread. The county now has 2,100 total confirmed cases, including more than 300 reported on Sunday. More cases and deaths were reported across California, with officials warning the numbers will spike in the coming weeks. (3/29)

At the same time hospitals in California are racing to secure more beds, ventilators, and masks to care for a surge of coronavirus patients, they are also scrambling to prepare — and preserve — their workforce so they don’t run out of doctors, nurses, and respiratory therapists, too. With health care workers among those most likely to become sick and need weeks off from work to recover or be quarantined, hospital and government officials are calling older doctors out of retirement, asking part-time staff to go full time, and moving surgeons and anesthesiologists out of the operating room and into the intensive care unit and the emergency room. (Dembosky, 3/28)

Some Massachusetts sheriffs say they are already considering whether some prisoners can be released to stem the spread of COVID-19 in correctional facilities, ahead of a hearing next week asking the state to quickly start reducing incarceration. A spokesman for Barnstable County Sheriff James Cummings says 100 fewer men are incarcerated there now compared to a year ago. There are two housing units in the jail dedicated to COVID-19. As of Friday there were no reports of positive coronavirus tests in Barnstable. (Becker, 3/27)

As Liberty University’s spring break was drawing to a close this month, Jerry Falwell Jr., its president, spoke with the physician who runs Liberty’s student health service about the rampaging coronavirus. “We’ve lost the ability to corral this thing,” Dr. Thomas W. Eppes Jr. said he told Mr. Falwell. But he did not urge him to close the school. “I just am not going to be so presumptuous as to say, ‘This is what you should do and this is what you shouldn’t do,’” Dr. Eppes said in an interview. (Williamson, 3/29)

The combination of economic collapse and social isolation can result in stress and strained emotional health. Crisis hotlines are staffing up amid spikes in calls. (Noguchi, 3/29)

To say amen, just honk your horn and flash your lights.That’s what hundreds of worshipers did in Cumberland County on Sunday morning. The Big Spring Inter-church Council brought together congregations from the Harrisburg-Carlisle area for church at Cumberland Drive-In Theatre. (Bryant and Owens, 3/29)

Pennsylvania adjusted its restrictions on dental work after dentists said that too-strict rules prevented them from performing even emergency procedures. Now, patients experiencing an emergency, such as an abscess or infection, can call their dentist for a phone evaluation, and will be asked to come in for treatment if necessary. (Gantz, 3/27)

The Washington region reported its single-deadliest day in the coronavirus outbreak, with 16 fatalities announced Sunday, bringing the total number of deaths to 51. Outbreaks at nursing homes and eldercare facilities in Virginia and Maryland contributed to the spike, with Maryland also reporting its largest single-day increase in known infections with 246 new cases, by The Washington Post’s count. (Swenson, Tan and Vozzella, 3/29)

A 66-year-old Virginia resident who fell ill with the new coronavirus, or COVID-19, on a trip to New Orleans died Wednesday morning at a hospital in Concord, North Carolina. The death of Landon Spradlin, an accomplished musician and a pastor, has drawn viral attention online, in part because earlier this month Spradlin questioned whether media coverage of the disease was overblown. Spradlin lived in Gretna, a small town in Pittsylvania County, about halfway between Lynchburg and Danville. (Hand, 3/26)

From the White House to the county courthouse, the coronavirus pandemic has drastically upended the 2020 elections. Many Democratic leaders now doubt their national party convention will take place as planned in July, while President Trump’s determination to hold the Republican convention could collide with life-and-death realities. Both Mr. Trump and former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. are wary of holding public events too soon and may not engage in full-fledged campaigning until the summer. (Martin, Epstein and Haberman, 3/29)

In Los Angeles, Mayor Eric Garcetti has instituted a shutdown on a city of nearly 4 million people and threatened uncooperative business owners with power shutoffs and arrest. In Mississippi, home to nearly 3 million people, Gov. Tate Reeves has allowed most businesses to stay open — even restaurants, so long as they serve no more than 10 people at a time. The divergent approaches are evidence that not even a global pandemic can bridge the gaping political divisions of the Trump era. (Peoples, 3/30)

As an uneasy March unspooled, as coronavirus dread descended upon the United States, it became commonplace — and, for public figures, quite practical — to point out how, unlike most major events in the 21st century, this was an unusually communal moment. There is power and authority in invoking shared experience, whether it comes from the president (“We are all in this together”), the governor of New York (“Nobody’s alone. We are all in the same situation”) or a random Pittsburgh disc jockey (“Everybody’s in the same boat”). (Anothny, 3/29)

Joe Biden urged President Donald Trump on Sunday to “stop thinking out loud and start thinking deeply” about his administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. “Look, the coronavirus is not the president fault, but the slow response, the failure to get going right away, the inability to do the things that needed to be done quickly — they are things that can’t continue,” the former vice president and likely Democratic presidential nominee said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” (Rahman, 3/29)

Former Vice President Joe Biden said Sunday that the worst thing the government could do is “raise false expectations” about the quarantine time periods. NBC’s Chuck Todd asked the Democratic presidential frontrunner on “Meet the Press” how he would convey to American residents that they may have to continue social distancing in their homes for at least another 60 days. Biden responded that the American public is “really strong and tough” and deserves to hear the “unvarnished truth.” (Coleman, 3/29)

With so much still uncertain about how widespread hospitalizations for coronavirus patients will be around the United States, a new analysis says premiums could increase as much as 40 percent next year if the pandemic results in millions of Americans needing hospital stays. “Health plans went into 2020 with no hint of coronavirus on the horizon,” said Peter V. Lee, the executive director of Covered California, the state insurance marketplace created under the Affordable Care Act, which conducted the analysis. To protect businesses and individuals from sharply higher rates, he supports a temporary federal program that would cover some of these costs. (Abelson, 3/28)

Two major U.S. health insurers, Cigna and Humana, are waiving all out-of-pocket costs for coronavirus treatments nationwide. "Two of the country's largest health insurers, Humana and Cigna, are announcing that they will waive co-pays, which is a big deal. For anybody who understands insurance, they don't waive co-pays easily, but we've asked them to do it, and they've done it," Trump announced at a Sunday press briefing in the Rose Garden. (Bowden, 3/29)

Leaders of both companies called it the right thing to do to help alleviate financial stress for their members and to remove barriers that could keep people from getting needed medical care. “We’re stepping in as aggressively as we can to support care access and peace of mind,” Cigna Chief Executive Officer David Cordani said in a joint interview with Humana CEO Bruce Broussard. The immediacy of the coronavirus crisis has overshadowed America’s longstanding conflicts over the price of medical care and how costs should be distributed. But those problems are simmering in the background as the pandemic meets a population where access to health care was already precarious for tens of millions of people. (Tozzi, 3/29)

The Food and Drug Administration on Sunday issued an emergency use authorization for hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, decades-old malaria drugs championed by President Donald Trump for coronavirus treatment despite scant evidence. The agency allowed for the drugs to be "donated to the Strategic National Stockpile to be distributed and prescribed by doctors to hospitalized teen and adult patients with COVID-19, as appropriate, when a clinical trial is not available or feasible," HHS said in a statement, announcing that Sandoz donated 30 million doses of hydroxychloroquine to the stockpile and Bayer donated 1 million doses of chloroquine. (Diamond, 3/29)

President Donald Trump’s all-out push to advance unproven coronavirus treatments is deepening a divide between the White House and career health officials, who are being pulled away from other potential projects to address the president’s hunch that decades-old malaria medicines can be coronavirus cures. The White House directed health officials to set up a project to track if the antimalarial drugs chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine show promise — a dayslong effort that distracted from urgent tasks like trials of other medicines thought to have more potential against the virus. (Owermohle and Diamond, 3/27)

President Donald Trump’s excitement about decades-old anti-malarial drugs to treat the coronavirus has touched off widespread interest in the medications, hoarding by some doctors, new clinical trials on the fly and desperation among patients who take them for other conditions. Many experts say there isn’t enough evidence that the drugs work for the coronavirus, but at least a few say there’s little to lose in giving hydroxychloroquine to patients who are severely ill with coronavirus. (Ornstein, 3/29)

The prospect that a pair of malaria drugs will become go-to medications for treating COVID-19 before they’ve been rigorously tested is prompting new safety warnings from heart specialists and other doctors. President Trump has touted the drugs chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine as a potential “game changer” for patients sickened by the novel coronavirus. Political activists are urging doctors to prescribe them, and federal officials have asked pharmaceutical manufacturers to make their stocks of these drugs available for immediate use. (Healy, 3/28)

Researchers at the University of Minnesota say the COVID-19 pandemic stands a good chance of leading to shortages of critically needed medications in the United States, given the nation's heavy dependence on drugs made in other countries, especially India and China. That concern is among the preliminary findings of a study of the US medication supply chain, revealed this week by the university's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP), publisher of CIDRAP News. (Roos, 3/27)

The COVID-19 pandemic threatens access to drug treatment for lupus patients, in part because the prevailing drug of choice for lupus was touted by the president as a “game changer” in the fight against coronavirus.Chloraquine and hydroxychloroquine are drugs commonly used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, which are disorders of the immune system. Oakland-based Kaiser Permanente patients say they've received inconsistent advice about the availability of this treatment from one day to the next, and they’re concerned the supply won’t hold out. (Peterson, 3/29)

While it might be impossible to figure out who is going to become sick with novel coronavirus, some public health experts believe the more critical question may be who has already been exposed. In Telluride, Colorado, last week, one biotech company put that idea to work. Abdelmalek, David and Margolin, 3/28)

The last time Peter John Dario saw his father alive was on March 14, at the entrance to a hospital in Edison, N.J. An employee took him away in a wheelchair, telling Mr. Dario and his mother gently but unequivocally that they could not go in the building. In a fog of worry and confusion, as he watched his father’s diminished silhouette disappear through the door, Mr. Dario forgot to say goodbye. Five days later, his father, Peter Dario, died of respiratory failure from an infection caused by the coronavirus. He was 59. None of the members of his large family — several of them now also sick with Covid-19 — were at his side. (Hafner, 3/29)

The coronavirus outbreak could kill 100,000 to 200,000 Americans, the U.S. government’s top infectious-disease expert warned on Sunday as family members described wrenching farewells through hospital windows with dying loved ones. Faced with that grim projection and the possibility even more could die in the U.S. without measures to keep people away from one another, President Donald Trump extended federal guidelines recommending people stay home for another 30 days until the end of April to prevent the spread of the virus. (Sedensky, Sisak and Dazio, 3/29)

A few weeks ago, Debbie Cameron saw her grandsons most days, playing the piano, making after-school snacks or singing nursery rhymes with the baby in her Chandler, Arizona, home. Then the cornavirus crisis hit and the boys were suddenly gone. Cameron is 68 and has asthma, making her one of the people most at risk of getting seriously ill or dying. Now she sees her grandchildren from behind the glass of a window or a phone screen. “Looking at them through the window and not being able hug them, it’s just a dang killer,” she said. (Whitehurst, 3/30)

In the scramble to contain the novel coronavirus, seniors are having difficulty returning to their nursing homes and rehabilitation centers after leaving for hospital visits, routine medical appointments or funerals. Nursing home staff say the residents need to provide a negative test before returning out of fear they could import the disease. Anticipating a surge in patients, hospitals are discharging those who do not need extensive care. At the same time, nursing homes are closing their doors to try to prevent the kind of outbreaks that have invaded at least 146 facilities in 27 states, including Life Care Center in the Seattle suburbs, where more than 30 people have died of covid-19. (Mettler and Oldham, 3/28)

Kaiser Health News: Coronavirus Patients Caught In Conflict Between Hospital And Nursing Homes

A wrenching conflict is emerging as the COVID-19 virus storms through U.S. communities: Some patients are falling into a no man’s land between hospitals and nursing homes. Hospitals need to clear out patients who no longer need acute care. But nursing homes don’t want to take patients discharged from hospitals for fear they’ll bring the coronavirus with them. (Graham, 3/30)

Workers for Instacart, a tech company that delivers groceries and other household items ordered through an app, plan a nationwide strike on Monday, maintaining that the company has not provided them with supplies to protect them from being infected during the coronavirus pandemic. It is unclear how many might strike. The company has approximately 200,000 shoppers, with plans to add 300,000 over the next three months. The shoppers are independent contractors who can work as little or as much as they want. (Taylor, 3/28)

A group called the Gig Workers Collective is calling for a nationwide walk-out Monday. They’ve been asking Instacart to provide workers with hazard pay and protective gear, among other demands. Instacart said Sunday it would soon provide workers with a new hand sanitizer upon request and outlined changes to its tip system. The group said the measures were too little too late. While some workers say they intend to join the strike for at least a day — or have stopped filling orders already for fear of getting the virus — other, newer workers are content to have a paying job at a time of mass layoffs in other industries. (Olson and Anderson, 3/29)

The online grocery business is doing well during the coronavirus outbreak. Workers from Amazon and Instacart are asking their companies to do more to keep them safe during the pandemic. (3/30)

Here’s what has happened in the meatpacking industry in the last week alone: A federal food safety inspector in New York City, who oversaw meat processing plants, died from the illness caused by the novel coronavirus. A poultry worker in Mississippi, employed by America’s third largest chicken company, tested positive for the virus, causing a half-dozen workers to self-quarantine. Another worker in South Dakota, employed by the world’s largest pork producer, also tested positive. (Grabell, 3/28)

Thousands of farmworkers are now carrying a new document with them on the road, in case they get stopped. Barbara Resendiz got hers last Friday, together with her paycheck. The small card explains that the Department of Homeland Security considers her job to be part of the nation's critical infrastructure and that she needs to get to work, despite California's order to shelter in place. (Charles, 3/27)

As coronavirus spreads across the U.S., the trash industry is girding for a potential rise in infectious waste while grappling with concerns about workers’ exposure to the pathogen. The U.S. is looking to China, where daily medical-waste volumes jumped sixfold in Wuhan as more people contracted the virus, prompting the government to deploy dozens of portable waste-treatment facilities. Chinese officials recently said medical-waste facilities in 29 cities were at or near full capacity. (Chaudhuri, 3/30)

Three months into this pandemic, scientists are coming to understand the novel coronavirus. They know, for example, that as horrible as this virus is, it is not the worst, most apocalyptic virus imaginable. Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, is not as contagious as measles, and although it is very dangerous, it is not as likely to kill an infected person as, say, Ebola. (Achenbach, 3/28)

In the one month since the first U.S. coronavirus death, America has become a country of uncertainty. New cases of infection and casualties continue multiplying. New York and Louisiana hospitals are grappling with a flood of patients that threatens to overwhelm their health-care systems. Meanwhile, the president and political conservatives are increasingly agitating to end drastic restrictions meant to buy time and save lives. (Wan and Blake, 3/27)

Soon after President Trump first uttered the phrase “Chinese virus,” Representative Grace Meng got a call from her parents, who had read about it in the newspaper. Had Mr. Trump, they wondered, really given the coronavirus that corrosive moniker? Yes, she told them, indeed he had. And no, despite being a member of Congress and her parents’ continued pleas, there was nothing she could do to make him stop. (Stevens, 3/29)

Newborns and babies have so far seemed to be largely unaffected by the coronavirus, but three new studies suggest that the virus may reach the fetus in utero. Even in these studies, the newborns seemed only mildly affected, if at all — which is reassuring, experts said. And the studies are small and inconclusive on whether the virus does truly breach the placenta. “I don’t look at this and think coronaviruses must cross across the placenta,” said Dr. Carolyn Coyne of the University of Pittsburgh, who studies the placenta as a barrier to viruses. (Madavilli, 3/27)

In the race to control the coronavirus, some public health experts have great expectations for a humble tool: a “smart” thermometer that is feeding data about surging fevers into a new online “Health Weather” map of the United States. Especially while diagnostic tests remain scarce, the device may provide early warnings for officials chasing down local outbreaks before the disease can spread. Kinsa, a San Francisco-based start-up, began selling and donating its smart thermometers eight years before the onset of covid-19. (Ellison, 3/27)

A series of studies, starting as a steady drip and quickening to a deluge, has reported the same core finding amid the global spread of Covid-19: Artificial intelligence could analyze chest images to accurately detect the disease in legions of untested patients. The results promised a ready solution to the shortage of diagnostic testing in the U.S. and some other countries and triggered splashy press releases and a cascade of hopeful headlines. But in recent days, the initial burst of optimism has given way to an intensifying debate over the plausibility of building AI systems during an unprecedented public health emergency. (Ross and Robbins, 3/30)

Child abuse reports decrease in the summer and during winter breaks, when children are apart from educators, according to figures from local agencies. But the coronavirus pandemic will likely aggravate the problem, and not just because cases will be underreported with children out of school, say local advocates. The mental and economic strain on parents and guardians could manifest in abuse directed at children. (Londberg, 3/27)

While laboratory-confirmed flu cases continue to decline in the United States, the number of people visiting healthcare providers for influenza-like illness (ILI) rose sharply again last week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC's) latest FluView report today. The CDC says the increase in ILI activity, which rose from 5.6% to 6.4% for the week ending Mar 21, is likely linked to the COVID-19 pandemic, as more people seek care for respiratory illnesses. (3/27)

Elmo, Rooster and Cookie Monster are doing their part to help keep kids safe as the coronavirus pandemic grinds on.The beloved Sesame Street Muppets are featured in some of four new animated public service spots reminding young fans to take care while doing such things as washing hands and sneezing. One of Elmo’s signature songs, the toothbrush classic “Brushy Brush,” has been updated to “Washy Wash.” Rooster pops up in another of the 30-second spots to remind kids to “wash hands now” before eating, playing sports or using the bathroom. (3/30)

Isolation, Randy Albright has learned after 445 days in recovery, can be a perilous thing. It’s why, until recently, he was showing up three days a week at the Recovery Centers of America in suburban Maryland, leading group support sessions before heading to his midnight shift as a project manager for Metro. “Isolation is a luxury that you have to learn to grow into,” he often told the group, former users of pain pills, heroin, alcohol and other drugs. (Cenziper, Brulliard and Jacobs, 3/27)

Kaiser Health News: Addiction Is ‘A Disease Of Isolation’ — So Pandemic Puts Recovery At Risk

Before the coronavirus became a pandemic, Emma went to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting every week in the Boston area and to another support group at her methadone clinic. She said she felt safe, secure and never judged. “No one is thinking, ‘Oh, my God. She did that?’” said Emma, “’cause they’ve been there.” Now, with AA and other 12-step groups moving online, and the methadone clinic shifting to phone meetings and appointments, Emma said she is feeling more isolated. (Bebinger, 3/30)

With the coronavirus quickly spreading in Washington state in early March, leaders of the Skagit Valley Chorale debated whether to go ahead with weekly rehearsal. The virus was already killing people in the Seattle area, about an hour’s drive to the south. But Skagit County hadn’t reported any cases, schools and businesses remained open, and prohibitions on large gatherings had yet to be announced. (Read, 3/29)

The covid-19 pandemic is pushing human bodies — and human ingenuity — to their limits. As patients flood emergency departments and health-care workers struggle to respond, an international group of robotic experts is making a case for some electronic intervention. In an editorial in the journal Science Robotics, they argue that covid-19 could drive new developments in robotics — and that the devices could help with more effective diagnosis, screening and patient care. (Blakemore, 3/28)

State officials and anti-abortion advocates have said the move will free up hospital beds and medical supplies needed to fight the outbreak. The restriction will “save lives,” Attorney General Ken Paxton — who issued the directive following an executive order by Gov. Greg Abbott — told supporters on Wednesday. For providers, though, the week has been especially jarring, even for those who have worked in the field for decades. (Blackman, 3/27)

Abortion procedures, unless deemed a medical emergency or "necessary to prevent serious health risks to the unborn child's mother" are included in Gov. Kevin Stitt's order suspending elective surgeries. The executive order Stitt reissued Tuesday includes abortions, routine dermatological, ophthalmological, dental procedures and orthopedic surgeries as elective procedures that cannot be performed at this time, the governor's office clarified on Friday (Sharp and Forman, 3/27)

Anti-abortion activists have started a petition asking Gov. Brian Kemp to halt the procedure while the state seeks to slow down the spread of the novel coronavirus. Georgia Right To Life launched an online petition urging supporters to call Kemp and Attorney General Chris Carr and asking them to halt abortion services. (Prabhu, 3/27)

The alarm system was ready. Scarred by the SARS epidemic that erupted in 2002, China had created an infectious disease reporting system that officials said was world-class: fast, thorough and, just as important, immune from meddling. Hospitals could input patients’ details into a computer and instantly notify government health authorities in Beijing, where officers are trained to spot and smother contagious outbreaks before they spread. It didn’t work. (Myers, 3/29)

Shopkeepers in the city at the center of the virus outbreak in China were reopening Monday but customers were scarce after authorities lifted more of the anti-virus controls that kept tens of millions of people at home for two months. “I’m so excited, I want to cry,” said a woman on the Chuhe Hanjie pedestrian mall who would give only the English name Kat. She said she was a teacher in the eastern city of Nanjing visiting her family in Wuhan when the government locked down the city in late January to stem the spread of the coronavirus. (3/30)

China’s major industrial provinces fully resumed production on Monday, a top government official said, two months after a near-nationwide shutdown of factories, workplaces and retail outlets because of the coronavirus pandemic. The revving up of China’s economic engine contrasts with the situation in the U.S., which on Sunday extended social-distancing guidelines until the end of April as coronavirus infections continued to surge across the country and globally. Many businesses are likely to operate at reduced capacity or remain closed during this period. (Ping, 3/30)

Students have flooded social media to organize donations for Chinese doctors battling the coronavirus epidemic. Workers have marched in the streets to demand compensation for weeks of unemployment during citywide lockdowns. Young citizen journalists have taken to YouTube to call for free speech. The coronavirus outbreak has mobilized young people in China, sounding a call to action for a generation that had shown little resistance to the ruling Communist Party’s agenda. (Wang and Hernandez, 3/28)

Before the Olympics were postponed, Japan looked like it had coronavirus infections contained, even as they spread in neighboring countries. Now that the games have been pushed to next year, Tokyo’s cases are spiking, and the city’s governor is requesting that people stay home, even hinting at a possible lockdown. The sudden rise in the number of virus cases in Tokyo and the government’s strong actions immediately after the Olympic postponement have raised questions in parliament and among citizens about whether Japan understated the extent of the outbreak and delayed enforcement of social distancing measures while clinging to hopes that the games would start on July 24 as scheduled. (Yamaguchi, 3/30)

Of a world in coronavirus turmoil, they may know little or nothing. Submariners stealthily cruising the ocean deeps, purposefully shielded from worldly worries to encourage undivided focus on their top-secret missions of nuclear deterrence, may be among the last pockets of people anywhere who are still blissfully unaware of how the pandemic is turning life upside down. (Leicester, 3/30)

Andrea Napoli didn’t fit the usual profile of a coronavirus patient. At 33, he was in perfect health, with no history of respiratory disease. And he was in top physical shape, thanks to regular workouts, including water polo training. Still, Napoli, a lawyer in Rome, developed a cough and fever less than a week after Italy’s premier locked down the entire nation, including the capital which had continued life as usual while the virus raged in the north. Until that day, Napoli was following his routine of work, jogging and swimming. (Santalucia, 3/29)

When Nima Amraa returned to the Gaza Strip from neighboring Egypt earlier this month, she was surprised to learn she was being placed in a makeshift quarantine center set up by the ruling Hamas group. But her initial jitters turned to fear when two fellow travelers in another facility tested positive for the coronavirus — the first cases to be confirmed in Gaza. (Akram, 3/30)

The number of deaths from coronavirus in Italy fell for the second consecutive day on Sunday but the country still looked almost certain to see an extension of stringent containment measures. (Segreti, 3/29)

From the stage of an evangelical superchurch, the leader of the gospel choir kicked off an evening of prayer and preaching: “We’re going to celebrate the Lord! Are you feeling the joy tonight?” “Yes!” shouted the hundreds gathered at the Christian Open Door church on Feb. 18. Some of them had traveled thousands of miles to take part in the week-long gathering in Mulhouse, a city of 100,000 on France’s borders with Germany and Switzerland. For many members of this globe-spanning flock, the annual celebration is the high point of the church calendar. This time, someone in the congregation was carrying the coronavirus. (Salaun, 3/30)

The US State Department has repatriated more than 18,000 Americans who had been stuck abroad amid the novel coronavirus pandemic. As of Saturday afternoon, the agency reported it had retrieved 18,406 US citizens aboard more than 178 flights. The announcement, which the agency detailed on its website, comes after State Department officials said Friday that about 33,000 Americans were still seeking assistance from the US government to get home. The department said it had planned more than 60 repatriation flights for this week and that it would add more as needed. LeBlanc, Atwood and Hansler, 3/29)

Governments are frantically trying to contain and combat the coronavirus, and those efforts are important, but the world’s best hope is private innovation. Cutting-edge diagnostic tests and treatments are advancing, and government should encourage the trend. President Trump recently ordered the Food and Drug Administration to “slash red tape like nobody’s ever done before” to make medicines approved for other illnesses available for coronavirus patients. The FDA is famously cautious, and safety is important. But drug regulators need to be more nimble during a pandemic with millions of lives at risk. (3/29)

America’s response to the coronavirus pandemic has been plagued by material shortages, from the scarcity of tests that helped the pathogen spread undetected to the deficits of masks, ventilators and other medical equipment needed to treat those it sickens. And yet the Trump administration has been so reluctant to use the authority of the federal government to direct the country’s capacity to those needs that in some respects, it’s already too late. (3/28)

The shortage of hospital beds in the U.S. didn't happen by accident. It's a result of both market pressures and public policy. Why it matters: The bed shortage is one of many factors complicating America's response to the new coronavirus. But if we want to have more beds and critical equipment on hand for the next pandemic, the government will need to make it happen — and pay for it. By the numbers: The U.S. has 2.8 hospital beds per 1,000 people, far fewer than other developed countries. (Drew Altman, 3/30)

The coronavirus pandemic is first and foremost a global public health crisis. But here in the United States — as is likely true in other countries — the response to it is heavily overlaid with political calculations. It is both obvious and inevitable. The crisis is unfolding in the lead-up to the election. Viewed strictly in a political light, the consequences and rewards of responses to this virus — good responses as well as bad ones — suggest a new political dynamic that has few predecessors. (Charles M. Blow, 3/29)

Immigrants have been front-line warriors fighting the coronavirus outbreak in the United States, providing medical care, picking field crops, disinfecting buildings, and delivering food and groceries to your front door. In the same vein, these workers will be critical, once the pandemic abates, to kickstart a decimated economy — but only if the Trump administration drops its misguided attacks on undocumented workers. (3/28)

As attempts to exploit the COVID-19 pandemic go, here’s a reprehensible one: the effort by some conservative states to halt abortions by arguing that they are “nonessential” medical procedures. Sounds ridiculous, but that’s the way officials in Ohio and Texas have interpreted emergency health orders intended to conserve medical equipment and gear needed for hospitals during the crisis. It should be obvious that an abortion can’t be “postponed” until the pandemic clears up like a facelift or cataract surgery or routine dental work. If a woman doesn’t get get an abortion in a timely fashion, she can’t get it at all. (3/27)

Access to abortion is an essential service and a fundamental human right. Period. The denial of it, including in times of global crisis like the Covid-19 pandemic, constitutes cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. (Serra Sippel and Akila Radhakrishnan, 3/28)

Unemployment is soaring due to COVID-19 business closures, with unprecedented disruptions in the food supply and to school or childcare-based food assistance. Increasing financial benefits to households participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), is a proven policy approach to reduce poverty. In 2017, SNAP lifted 3.4 million people, including 1.5 million children, out of poverty. (Sara Bleich, Caroline Dunn and Sheila Fleischhacker, 3/29)

On Tuesday, Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, spoke to the media from a Manhattan convention center that’s being converted into a 1,000-bed hospital for COVID-19 patients. No one delivers bad news as well as Cuomo. He is a master of rue. Also bluntness. And that combination is what New York, and the nation, is starved for these days. Not condescension. Not soothing blandishments. Not dangerous Trumpist lies that imply the sick will rise from their beds and the dead from their graves on Easter Sunday. (Virginia Heffernan, 3/26)

It is now crystal clear that the health of the world determines our health here at home. As countries around the world hunker down to control COVID-19, it is not too early to plan for the next phase of the pandemic. America should lead the world in creating the systems and organizations required to overcome COVID-19, prepare to respond to future threats, and make the world safer and more prosperous. (Mark Dybul and Deus Bazira, 3/26)

Federal lawmakers have reached a bipartisan agreement for a $2 trillion stimulus package aimed at ameliorating the public health and economic crises wreaked by the coronavirus. But in one critical respect, the deal is a colossal failure: it includes less than one-fifth of what is needed retrofit our voting systems for a nationwide pandemic in time for the November election. Unless Congress remedies this failure quickly, the coronavirus will add our democracy to its casualties. (Weiser and Norden, 3/26)

Social distancing, self-isolation, quarantine: These are among the essential public health interventions for the Covid-19 pandemic. As we use these strategies, we must also minimize their harms to the people they’re intended to protect. One such person is my uncle. (Jason Karlawish, 3/29)

In a life-or-death crisis, judgments are made about which lives are deemed worthy. Given the longstanding racial disparities in health care and treatment in this country, that’s especially alarming for people of color and those in poverty during a pandemic. (Renée Graham, 3/27)

This is the moment to pray for the psychological welfare of our health care professionals. In the months ahead, many will witness unimaginable scenes of suffering and death, modern Pietàs without Marys, in which victims are escorted into hospitals by their loved ones and left to die alone. I fear these doctors and nurses and other first responders will burn out. I fear they will suffer from post-traumatic stress. And with the prospect of triage on the horizon, I fear they will soon be handed a devil’s kit of choices no healer should ever have to make. It’s a recipe for moral injury. (Jennifer Senior, 3/29)

The COVID-19 catastrophe is about to require Americans to make tough decisions for how to allocate scarce resources that can determine life and death. This is especially true with ventilators and beds in intensive care units. Many hospitalized patients in ICUs are dying of cancer or advanced irreversible dementia, or are on ventilators because of irreversible heart, lung or liver failure. In a large proportion of these kinds of cases, the physicians caring for the patient recognize that death is imminent, but treatment continues, often because families are unwilling to recognize the inevitable. (Neil S. Wenger and Martin F. Shapiro, 3/26)

Long before the coronavirus outbreak, health care providers and policy makers saw promise in telemedicine. Providing care by phone or video call can be a way to reach patients in underserved areas — and, potentially, to save money in the health care system. Now, by necessity, telemedicine is getting a huge unexpected test run. If this experiment works, it should accelerate the acceptance of remote health care after the pandemic subsides. (3/29)

In the fight against Covid-19 though we might look forward in doom, one day we will look backward in awe. In an article last week, I discussed a promising drug combination to treat the disease. There is now new data supporting this treatment. Since then, Kansas City area physicians, including Joe Brewer, Dan Hinthorn and me, continue to treat many patients, and some have shown improvement. Major medical centers including the University of Washington and Mass General have added hydroxychloroquine to treatment options. So here’s an update, a response to some questions that have come up, and suggestions based on the latest information. (Jeff Colyer, 3/29)

As physicians, we are familiar with the difficult decisions that our patients and their families have to make when faced with critical illness. The urgency of these decisions is even more amplified by the unprecedented and rapidly evolving COVID-19 pandemic. We fear that many of our patients may end up being hospitalized and confronted with challenging questions — like if they would like to be kept alive on a ventilator, or to have cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) done — and have not had conversations about this in advance. (Abraar Karan and Evan Shannon, 3/26)

Early in the SARS outbreak, some 17 years ago, I was in Beijing and Guangzhou with an international team of scientists assembled by the World Health Organization. In live animal markets, the civet cat was a commodity. The mammal, which resembles a mongoose more than a cat, is a culinary delicacy in China and was believed to have health benefits. (Robert F. Breiman, 3/27)

A lot of English people believed 1666 would be the year of the apocalypse. You can’t really blame them. In late spring 1665, bubonic plague began to eat away at London’s population. By fall, roughly 7,000 people were dying every week in the city. The plague lasted through most of 1666, ultimately killing about 100,000 people in London alone — and possibly as many as three-quarters of a million in England as a whole. Perhaps the greatest chronicler of the Great Plague was Samuel Pepys, a well-connected English administrator and politician who kept a detailed personal diary during London’s darkest years. He reported stumbling across corpses in the street, and anxiously reading the weekly death tolls posted in public squares. (Annalee Newitz, 3/29)

I turned 61 last week, and am now, along with millions of others across the globe, within the higher risk group for Covid-19. Before this turn of events, ours had been the generation that had, along with billions of others younger and slightly older than me, avoided a major global crisis. Unlike our parents and grandparents, we didn't face the tragedy of living through two World Wars; we avoided nuclear warfare during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 and the Cold War. Now, our luck has run out. (Marcelo Gleiser, 3/27)

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, is the nation’s federal special education law. It provides funding, technical assistance and monitoring to ensure students with disabilities receive a free and appropriate education. With the new COVID-19 stimulus package, the U.S. Congress will provide Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos with the right to provide waivers to states for the IDEA implementation. As a researcher in the area of education policy, I think this is extremely concerning. If DeVos’ past behavior has any predictive value for her future decisions related to equitable educational policies, then families of children with disabilities across the country should also be highly concerned. (David DeMatthews, 3/29)

Two weeks ago, when restaurants were still open, I watched a friend at lunch repeatedly spritz his hands with hand sanitizer. It seemed more compulsion than prudent protective measure. If he keeps this up for the duration of this pandemic, I thought, there’s a good chance the skin on his hands might not hold up. In a market, I saw a man load 50 rolls of toilet paper into two carts, elbowing others away, as if his life depended on this act of hoarding. (Deborah A. Lott, 3/27)

This week, the Justice Department took an aggressive step toward holding individuals who knowingly spread the coronavirus accountable for their actions. The new guidance could serve as a powerful deterrent to those contemplating weaponizing the virus in the weeks ahead. In an official memo, the Justice Department indicates that those who intentionally spread Covid-19 could be charged on terrorism-related charges, because the virus "appears to meet the statutory definition of a 'biological agent.'" And the charges, in some cases, could lead to life imprisonment. (Samantha Vinograd, 3/26)

At least once each day, North Carolina’s Department of Health and Human Services updates its data on coronavirus cases in our state. To get those DHHS numbers, simply go to the department’s coronavirus page, where you can find the current official NC case count, number of COVID-19 deaths, and the number of completed public and commercial tests. You also can find the number of cases and deaths in each county on a map below.It’s helpful information, and DHHS has served North Carolina well with the availability of secretary Mandy Cohen, who has directly and thoughtfully answered questions in news conferences during the crisis. But residents of other states are getting information about the coronavirus that North Carolinians aren’t. (3/27)

Daily life as we know it changed remarkably Friday, as Tampa Bay entered the first full weekend under stay-home orders aimed at limiting the spread of the coronavirus. The new restrictions on where and how we can shop, do business and play will certainly hurt some workers and limit any relief the weekend can bring to the ongoing public malaise, but all 2.4 million residents in Pinellas and Hillsborough counties have an obligation to adhere to the orders and act responsibly. This is a test of patience and common sense for residents and government alike, and the more a collective attitude prevails, the faster and better the region will emerge from the pandemic. (3/27)

Gov. Ron DeSantis denied Mary Ellen Klas, a Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times reporter in Tallahassee, access to his coronavirus press conference on Saturday. It was vindictive, petty — and illegal. He should be ashamed — not because he thinks he put one over on a reporter, the Times or the Herald. No, to them it’s not personal. Rather, he should be ashamed because, in not allowing Klas to do her job and ask the serious questions that deserve his serious answers, he is really denying access to the Floridians who look to these media outlets for vital information. There’s no denying it: DeSantis, like some — but not other, more-conscientious — Republican governors, is taking his marching orders from President Trump, who is still downplaying the intensity of COVID-19’s grip on the nation, ignoring medical experts and playing politics with Americans’ very lives. After all, the president had threatened to hold coronavirus aid hostage unless certain governors who have criticized him play nice. (3/29)

The explosion of cases in New Orleans, Louisiana, has caught the attention of Covid watchers and doomsayers across the country. Less than two weeks ago, the Crescent City recorded less than 100 cases. By March 29 the number of infections in Orleans Parish reached 1,350, with 73 deaths. The fatalities per capita rivals that of New York City. Though all eyes are on New Orleans, an equally alarming outbreak is occurring in a smaller city in the northwest of the state. (Kent Sepkowitz, 3/29)

Even though we’re in the middle of a deadly pandemic, you still have to pick up after your dog. Each. And. Every. Time. It. Poops. Many of you did not abide by this basic tenet of dog ownership before the coronavirus struck. Fewer of you seem to be abiding by it now — if my neighborhood strolls and those of Twitter users across the country are any indication. (Matthew Fleischer, 3/25)