�������ýҕ�l

The novel coronavirus is surging in several Midwestern states that had not previously seen high infection rates while average daily deaths remained elevated Monday in Southern and Western states hit with a resurgence of the disease after lifting some restrictions earlier this summer. Missouri, Montana and Oklahoma are among those witnessing the largest percentage surge of infections over the past week, while, adjusted for population, the number of new cases in Florida, Mississippi and Alabama still outpaced all other states, according to a Washington Post analysis of health data. (Gearan, Wagner and Dupree, 8/4)

The U.S. reported more than 47,000 new coronavirus cases, the smallest daily increase in almost four weeks, despite signs of an uptick in new infections in some Northeast and Midwest states. Total coronavirus cases world-wide surpassed 18 million Monday, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, with the U.S. accounting for more than one-quarter of the tally. The U.S. death toll was approaching 155,000. (Prang and de Avila, 8/3)

Mississippi is heading for a title that no state would want: It is on track to overtake Florida to become the No. 1 state for new coronavirus infections per capita, according to researchers at Harvard. The state already faces high levels of diabetes, hypertension, heart disease and obesity. As a result, the challenges specific to the coronavirus pandemic are "layered on top of our existing challenges," says Dr. LouAnn Woodward, who is the top executive at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. (Shapiro and Pao, 8/3)

Over the last two weeks, California saw an average of 121 deaths per day, Newsom said. On Friday, the state reported 214 fatalities, 21% more than the previous record, set two days prior. Still, there are some early signs of hope, Newsom said. The number of people hospitalized statewide has fallen about 10% over two weeks, and admissions to intensive care units have fallen by 5%, he said. (Nelson and Miller, 8/3)

President Donald Trump continued to push a rosy outlook on the future of the coronavirus crisis on Monday, claiming "the virus is receding," just one day after a prominent task force doctor warned it's "extraordinarily widespread" as the U.S. enters "a new phase" of the pandemic. "We are beginning to see evidence of significant progress," Trump said Monday evening in a press conference, even as coronavirus cases increase in roughly 15 states and deaths have increase in 35. "The virus is receding." (Siegel and Cathey, 8/3)

President Trump said in an interview with “Axios on HBO” that he thinks the coronavirus is as well-controlled in the U.S. as it can be, despite dramatic surges in new infections over the course of the summer and more than 150,000 American deaths. ... In the interview, which took place last Tuesday, Trump returned to familiar themes and areas where the U.S. really has made significant progress. He cited the dramatic increase in ventilator production, the ramp-up in testing and treatment that has reduced the overall fatality rate from the virus. (Baker, 8/4)

President Trump further disparaged his senior health advisers on Monday even as the pandemic deepened its hold on the nation, as the White House’s top coronavirus coordinator, Deborah Birx, joined Anthony S. Fauci and other scientists on the receiving end of the president’s ire. Birx — who built a career leading public health efforts against HIV/AIDS — quickly garnered Trump’s favor earlier this year for publicly championing the administration’s coronavirus response, becoming a prominent figure both inside and outside the White House. (Parker, Dawsey and Abutaleb, 8/3)

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease specialist, agreed on Monday with his colleague Dr. Deborah Birx that the United States has entered a “new phase” of the coronavirus pandemic, in which the virus is now spreading uncontrolled in some states by asymptomatic people — comments that drew fire from President Trump. Dr. Fauci said Dr. Birx had been referring to the “inherent community spread” that is occurring in some states, adding: “When you have community spread, it’s much more difficult to get your arms around that and contain it.” (8/3)

Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert, warned on Monday that the U.S. could be in a “really bad situation” if the number of new coronavirus cases confirmed daily does not drop to 10,000 by next month. Fauci, the director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said during a livestreamed interview with the Journal of the American Medical Association that he is basing that number on the expected emergence of the flu in the fall as well as the return of colder weather, which will likely drive more people indoors, where health experts say COVID-19 spreads more easily. (Coleman, 8/3)

President Donald Trump has extended the federal deployment of nearly 25,000 National Guard members detailed to coronavirus relief efforts until the end of 2020, but ordered states to start picking up 25 percent of the tab — millions per month at a time states are struggling financially. Though many states are reporting record cases and hospitalizations amid a resurgence of the virus, the memorandum released Monday night says the decrease in financial support comes "as the United States transitions to a period of increased economic activity and recovery in those areas of the Nation where the threat posed by COVID-19 has been sufficiently mitigated." (Miranda Ollstein, 8/3)

The White House issued a memo to the secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security that the federal funding will extend through the end of 2020. The move comes as governors in both parties were pleading with the administration to extend the National Guard assistance, warning that a lapse in funding could jeopardize the pandemic response. The memo indicates that the federal government will no longer cover 100 percent for states' use of National Guard forces for the COVID-19 response once the existing authorization expires on Aug. 21. (Samuels, 8/3)

As President Donald Trump continues to downplay the need for increased Covid-19 testing across the country, White House officials were told on Monday they will now be subjected to random testing for the virus. According to an email sent to executive branch employees, which POLITICO obtained, the new policy will require “random mandatory Covid-19 testing” for officials working inside the White House complex. Limited exceptions are available to aides who have spent the last 30 days working remotely or are on previously approved leave. (Orr, 8/3)

A major organization representing deaf Americans and a group of deaf individuals are suing the White House over the lack of a sign language interpreter at the administration's COVID-19 briefings. CNN first reported the lawsuit, which was filed in district court in Washington, D.C., and accuses the Trump administration of a First Amendment violation. Plaintiffs argue that the captions carried on video of the events lack details that would be conveyed by a sign language interpreter. (Bowden, 8/3)

As Congress continues to flounder on a path forward for the next phase of coronavirus relief, President Donald Trump said Monday that he was considering executive action if Congress fails to act. "They're not interested in the people, they're not interested in unemployment. They're not interested in evictions -- which is a big deal. The evictions -- they want to evict a lot of people," Trump said. (Faulders and Pecorin, 8/3)

“A lot of people are going to be evicted, but I’m going to stop it because I’ll do it myself if I have to,” Trump told reporters at an event at the White House. “I have a lot of powers with respect to executive orders, and we’re looking at that very seriously right now.” ... Similarly, he told reporters he could use an executive order to lower payroll taxes, after the idea generated little enthusiasm on Capitol Hill. (Werner, Stein and Demirjian, 8/3)

Negotiations on a COVID-19 relief bill inched forward Monday during a two-hour meeting between congressional Democrats and key Trump administration officials, though the sides remain far apart on several key issues. Speaker Nancy Pelosi told rank-and-file Democrats on a conference call that she sees talks bleeding into next week, when both chambers are scheduled to be out of session, according to two sources on the call who spoke on condition of anonymity. (Shutt and McPherson, 8/3)

A key sticking point remains what to do about the $600-per-week enhanced unemployment benefit, a key lifeline for the tens of millions of Americans thrown out of work during the pandemic, which expired on Friday. “We’re making some progress on certain issues, moving closer together,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters after Monday’s talks. “There are a lot of issues that are still outstanding. But I think there is a desire to get something done as soon as we can.” (Lawder and Cowan, 8/3)

Kelyn Yanez used to clean homes during the day and wait tables at night in the Houston area before the coronavirus. But the mother of three lost both jobs in March because of the pandemic and now is facing eviction. The Honduran immigrant got help from a local church to pay part of July’s rent but was still hundreds of dollars short and is now awaiting a three-day notice to vacate the apartment where she lives with her children. She has no idea how she will meet her August rent. (Garcia Cano and Casey, 8/4)

Healthcare workers who were furloughed or laid off stand to lose as generous federal unemployment beneifts lapse, but continuing the increased payouts could hurt providers' finances as it keeps employer-sponsored insurance rolls low. Congressional leaders and the Trump administration failed to reach a deal to extend additional federal unemployment benefits before their expiration on Friday. That could mean benefit cuts for healthcare workers who are furloughed or laid off. The additional federal benefits were previously set at $600 per week in the CARES Act, which passed in March. (Cohrs, 8/3)

For two decades, Jeff Esaw of Stratford, Connecticut, has been serving up Southern barbecue to the gastronomes of elite hideaways dotting the state's coastline. But economic trends haven't been as kind to Esaw, 61, as they have been to his patrons. He had to give up Jeff's Cuisine, his brick-and-mortar restaurant in nearby Norwalk — one of the few Black-owned businesses in the area — after the 2008 financial market crisis, and he estimates he lost 80 percent or more of his overall revenue from his catering business when the coronavirus shut down commerce in the state this year. (Allen, 8/3)

Religious organizations, having received as much as $10 billion in the first round of COVID-19 aid, hope to receive more funding under any new relief package. Churches of all denominations and other religious nonprofits were quick to take advantage of the Paycheck Protection Program, which provided forgivable loans under the CARES Act in March. The U.S. Catholic Church alone received at least $1.4 billion in funding and possibly as much as $3.5 billion under the program, according to an analysis by the Associated Press, using data provided by the Small Business Administration (SBA). (Gjelten, 8/3)

It was a bold claim when President Trump said that he was about to produce an overhaul of the nation’s health-care system, at last doing away with the Affordable Care Act, which he has long promised to abolish. “We’re signing a health-care plan within two weeks, a full and complete health-care plan,” Trump pledged in a July 19 interview with “Fox News Sunday” anchor Chris Wallace.Now, with the two weeks expiring Sunday, there is no evidence that the administration has designed a replacement for the 2010 health-care law. Instead, there is a sense of familiarity. (Gearan, Goldstein and Min Kim, 8/2)

Kaiser Health News: Listen: ACA Heading To Supreme Court — Again

Julie Rovner, KHN’s chief Washington correspondent, joins “SCOTUStalk” podcast host Amy Howe to talk about the upcoming Supreme Court hearing on the Affordable Care Act. The two look at the law’s history before the court — it will be the seventh hearing in eight years on the ACA or one of its provisions — and what issues might be important to the justices, including whether Republican state officials bringing the case have standing or whether their argument that the elimination of the tax for people who don’t get insurance dooms the entire law. (8/3)

The Trump administration is taking steps to give telehealth a broader role under Medicare, with an executive order that serves as a call for Congress to make doctor visits via personal technology a permanent fixture of the program. The order President Donald Trump signed on Monday applies to one segment of Medicare recipients — people living in rural communities. But administration officials said it’s intended as a signal to Congress that Trump is ready to back significant legislation that would permanently open up telehealth as an option for all people with Medicare. (Alonso-Zaldivar, 8/3)

President Trump on Monday signed an executive order seeking to expand the use of virtual doctors visits, as his administration looks to highlight achievements in health care. The administration waived certain regulatory barriers to video and phone calls with doctors, known as telehealth, when the coronavirus pandemic struck and many people were stuck at home. Now, the administration is looking to make some of those changes permanent, arguing the moves will provide another option for patients to talk to their doctors. (Sullivan, 8/3)

Missouri voters on Tuesday will decide whether to expand Medicaid health care coverage to thousands more low-income adults after years of resistance from Republican lawmakers. The vote on health care, as well as primaries for statewide offices and congressional seats, comes as coronavirus cases are increasing in the state, which could impact voter turnout. Missouri’s Republican-led Legislature repeatedly rejected Medicaid expansion proposals over the past decade, which prompted supporters to turn to the initiative process. (Ballentine, 8/4)

President Donald Trump on Monday claimed to have the authority to issue an executive order addressing the expected influx of mail-in voting in the November election and said he hadn’t ruled out doing so, in spite of the Constitution’s expressly giving states the right to run their elections. “I have the right to do it,” Trump insisted, adding: “We haven’t got there yet, but we’ll see what happens.” (Oprysko, 8/3)

President Donald Trump vowed on Monday he would sue Nevada after the state’s Democratic lawmakers passed a bill to send mail-in ballots to every voter ahead of November’s presidential election in light of the coronavirus pandemic. Trump, who has repeatedly claimed without evidence that voting by mail will lead to rampant fraud, wrote on Twitter the legislation approved on Sunday was an “illegal late night coup” and told reporters his administration was already preparing a lawsuit. “We will be suing in Nevada. And that’s already been taken care of, we’ll probably file something tomorrow,” he said during a White House briefing. (Ax and Whitesides, 8/3)

Donald Trump’s all-out war on mail voting is backfiring in battleground states. New private polling shared first with POLITICO showed that Republicans have become overwhelmingly concerned about mail balloting, which Trump has claimed without evidence, will lead to widespread voter fraud. A potentially decisive slice of Trump’s battleground-state base — 15 percent of Trump voters in Florida, 12 percent in Pennsylvania and 10 percent in Michigan — said that getting a ballot in the mail would make them less likely to vote in November. (Cadelago and Montellaro, 8/3)

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden said on Monday that President Donald Trump was telling “bald-faced lies” about voting by mail to distract from his own failures, after Trump last week suggested it could be cause to delay the election. Biden’s remarks were his strongest on the issue since Trump, who trails the presumptive Democratic nominee in opinion polls, tweeted on Thursday that he would not trust the results of an election that included widespread mail voting - a measure many observers see as critical during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. (Martina, 8/3)

A judge on Monday extended changes in Minnesota’s absentee ballot rules to the November general election. Ramsey County Judge Sara Grewing approved the agreement allowing Minnesota voters to submit their mail-in or absentee ballots in the Nov. 3 general election without witness signatures, the Star Tribune reported. (8/4)

Michigan's primary is on Tuesday, and the state's Republicans are debating among themselves how much they should embrace mail-in voting as President Trump tries to cast doubt on it. (Censki, 8/3)

At the peak of the pandemic in the United States and the United Kingdom, frontline healthcare workers (HCWs) who had adequate personal protective equipment (PPE) were still at more than three times the risk of COVID-19 infection than the general public—even after accounting for differences in testing frequency, according to a study published late last week in The Lancet Public Health. Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital and King's College London used data entered into the COVID Symptom Study smartphone app by 99,795 frontline HCWs and 2,035,395 community members. From Mar 24 to Apr 23, positive coronavirus tests were identified in 5,545 app users. (Van Beusekom, 8/3)

More than half of all rural low-income communities in the U.S. have zero ICU beds, forcing local hospitals to rely on transfers to wealthier communities for their sickest coronavirus patients, according to a new study. The findings, published in Health Affairs, underscore the economic disparities shaping the nation’s coronavirus response, especially as the virus shifts from wealthier coastal metros to rural communities in the Southeast and West that have historically struggled with access to care. (Doherty, 8/3)

Dolores’ loss after 12 years of marriage offers a reminder that the thousands of health care workers in North Texas and across the nation on the front lines of the global pandemic do their jobs as their own families navigate life — and death. “This whole time he was worried about me catching COVID — about me passing away,” Dolores said. “I had to convince him that I was safe, that this was my job. We got blindsided.”As a nurse, Dolores is trained to cope — if not detach — from the grief that accompanies death. (Garcia, 8/3)

The Oklahoma State Department of Health named its third lead epidemiologist since the beginning of the global pandemic on Monday. The State Department of Health confirmed that Oklahoma State University faculty member Jared Taylor will serve as an epidemiology consultant for the department. Interim state epidemiologist Aaron Wendelboe's contract expired this past Friday. (Kemp, 8/3)

A Florida doctor allegedly bilked Medicare and commercial insurers out of $121 million by billing $681 million of fraudulent tests and treatments for substance abuse patients. Dr. Michael Ligotti was arrested and charged last week with conspiring to commit healthcare fraud and wire fraud for his alleged participation in a massive years-long scheme across Palm Beach County, which reports estimate is home to a more than $1 billion substance abuse treatment industry. (Kacik, 8/3)

Kindred Healthcare and Dignity Health will build a second inpatient rehabilitation hospital in the Phoenix area to serve a growing need, according to a news release. Louisville, Kentucky-based Kindred and San Francisco-based Dignity, through Dignity Community Care, first opened the Dignity Health East Valley Rehabilitation Hospital in Chandler, Arizona, in 2016. (Christ, 8/3)

Government cancellations of elective surgeries and shelter-at-home orders have vexed Tenet since mid-March, when COVID-19 reached pandemic levels in the U.S. At its hospitals, surgeries fell by 55% in April. By June, that percentage had recovered to 90% of pre-COVID-19 levels. (O'Donnell, 8/3)

Like its peers, Tenet Healthcare Corp. managed to significantly cut expenses during the second quarter to counteract the most severe effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, ultimately driving up its profit more than 200%, the company announced Monday. Dallas-based Tenet's expenses fell in the second quarter of 2020 to $4.2 billion, down 11.4% year-over-year. Revenue dropped 20% year-over-year to $3.6 billion, below the $3.8 billion projected by Zacks Investment Research analysts. (Bannow, 8/3)

Nursing homes and hospitals in New York can once again be held liable in lawsuits and criminal prosecutions for care provided to patients not being treated for COVID-19 under a law signed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo Monday. Nursing homes, hospitals and other health care facilities were granted a broad legal shield to fend off lawsuits and criminal prosecutions over care provided to all patients during the pandemic in an April state budget provision that Cuomo and lawmakers approved and well-heeled hospital lobbyists said they drafted. (Villeneuve, 8/4)

The Trump administration’s plan to provide every nursing home with a fast COVID-19 testing machine comes with an asterisk: The government won’t supply enough test kits to check staff and residents beyond an initial couple of rounds. A program that sounded like a game changer when it was announced last month at the White House is now prompting concerns that it could turn into another unfulfilled promise for nursing homes, whose residents and staff represent a tiny share of the U.S. population but account for as many as 4 in 10 coronavirus deaths, according to some estimates. (Alonso-Zaldivar, 8/4)

The Baker administration moved Monday to cut nursing homes in Lowell, Worcester and Wareham from the MassHealth program after determining they failed to respond adequately to the COVID-19 pandemic, a step that could lead to their closures. Health and Human Services officials sent initial termination notices to three facilities — Town and Country in Lowell, Hermitage Healthcare in Worcester, and Wareham Healthcare in Wareham — that demonstrated significant problems amid the public health crisis. (Lisinski, 8/3)

For the medical director at one of the nation’s largest nursing home operators, the opportunity to open the facilities to pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Company to conduct research on a promising new coronavirus treatment was irresistible. After spending the past six months trying desperately to keep the deadly virus from invading their facilities, Dr. Mark Gloth said he believes he is finally getting a chance to strike back. (Mosk and Salzman, 8/3)

More than 60 people have tested positive for the coronavirus in an ongoing outbreak at a West Virginia nursing home, officials said Monday. Republican Gov. Jim Justice said 31 staffers and 33 residents at the Princeton Health Care Center have tested positive. Nineteen people linked to the Mercer County facility have been hospitalized. Three have died. “Absolutely the Princeton situation is not good." (8/3)

This will not be music to the ears of the pharmaceutical industry. A pair of advocacy groups is asking the Food and Drug Administration to ban the use of music during the portion of television and online ads that recite potential side effects, warning consumers may be too easily distracted. In arguing their case, the advocacy groups contend that ads with music too often fail to comply with the so-called fair balance goals sought by the FDA when the agency loosened its rules in 1999 and made it easier for drug makers to advertise medicines on television. (Silverman, 8/3)

Hundreds of drug companies, medical device manufacturers, and universities owe the public a decade’s worth of missing data from clinical trials, federal officials warned last week. New rules issued last week in the wake of a federal court ruling in February instructed clinical trial sponsors to submit missing data for trials conducted between 2007 and 2017 “as soon as possible.” (Facher, 8/4)

In an unusual move, a pair of academics is escalating an effort to convince Gilead Sciences (GILD) to test a compound that is not only known for saving cats from a fatal virus, but is highly similar to remdesivir and, therefore, may be useful in combating Covid-19. At issue is a Gilead compound known as GS-441524, which works in the same way as remdesivir to inhibit viruses, according to research conducted partly by the company. The compound has not been tested in humans, but has been sold on black markets to repel feline infectious peritonitis, which is caused by a different coronavirus than the virus that causes Covid-19. (Silverman, 8/4)

Amid growing complaints that many Americans cannot afford their prescription medicines, most people in the U.S. who have insurance are paying lower out-of-pocket costs, but cash-paying customers are shelling out significantly more than five years ago, according to a new analysis. Overall, the average amount paid out-of-pocket for a prescription by all patients — those with and without insurance — held steady at $10.67 in 2019, which was unchanged from the year before up just 33 cents since 2015. But commercially insured prescription costs declined from $10.83 to $8.90 between 2015 and 2019, according to the analysis by the IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science. (Silverman, 8/4)

The US Food and Drug Administration has expanded its warning about hand sanitizers to avoid, with the list now topping 100. The agency first warned consumers in June about hand sanitizers containing methanol, which can be toxic when absorbed through the skin and potentially deadly if ingested. Since then, several such products have been recalled by manufacturers and pulled from store shelves. Now, the FDA is also warning about hand sanitizers containing insufficient levels of alcohol. (Kaur, 8/3)

The wife of a man who died from COVID-19 blamed President Trump, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and a lack of mask-wearing for her husband’s death in his obituary published last week. David Nagy’s obituary gained traction online Monday after his wife, Stacey Nagy, named Trump and Abbott in his obituary published in the Jefferson Jimplecute on July 30. "Dave did everything he was supposed to do, but you did not," Stacey Nagy wrote in the obituary. "Shame on all of you, and may Karma find you all!" (Coleman, 8/3)

President Trump’s campaign emailed supporters on Monday encouraging them to wear masks when social distancing is not possible as the president has shifted his tone on the practice over the past few weeks. The reelection campaign’s email, which is signed by the president, requested Trump’s supporters don face coverings but acknowledged “there has been some confusion surrounding the usage of face masks.” (Coleman, 8/3)

A Pennsylvania man is facing charges of attempted criminal homicide after he allegedly shot at an employee of a cigar shop who asked him to wear a mask. Adam Michael Zaborowski, 35, entered Cigars international in Bethlehem Township Friday morning without a face covering, according to a probable cause affidavit, despite a statewide mandate by Gov. Tom Wolf requiring masks be worn in businesses. Staff at the shop told Zaborowski that he needed to wear a mask inside the store or could have his order taken curbside, according to the affidavit. (Riess and Silverman, 8/4)

Cases are ticking upwards in parts of Europe, the process of unlocking is paused in the UK, and the Americas are still battling to contain vast Covid-19 outbreaks. But as the tremors of a potential second wave of infections are starting to be felt, some governments are reaching for a new tool that many public health experts have been touting for months: stricter mask mandates. (Picheta, 8/4)

After fighting off cases of Covid-19, Danielle Vito and her husband needed a break. When they tested positive for antibodies, they decided to take a trip to Mexico in July. “That played a big factor when I was traveling,” says Ms. Vito, a 28-year-old social media marketer. “It gives a little sense of hope that you will be safer.” People who have recovered from Covid-19 are starting to venture back into the world, often with a greater confidence to pursue normal activities than people who haven’t had it. They’re taking trips, eating indoors at restaurants and visiting friends. In many cases, people who recovered believe they have a degree of immunity and are less likely to get or spread the illness. (Dizik, 8/3)

Medical emergencies are nothing new for the Carltons. Since the start of the pandemic, they had taken every precaution to keep their family — and especially Scotty — healthy. But when the virus invaded their home, infecting their boys, they were unprepared. (Scudder, 8/3)

Kaiser Health News: California GOP Consultant Rues ‘Big Mistake’ That Led To Family’s COVID Infections 

The tweet Richard Costigan posted July 23 was bluntly honest: “We tried our best to limit exposure to #COVID19 but we slipped up somewhere.” Costigan tweeted while waiting anxiously in the parking lot of a hospital outside Sacramento. The veteran Republican political consultant had just dropped his wife, Gloria, off at the emergency room. He wasn’t allowed to go in with her. (Young, 8/3)

The pandemic has had an unexpected effect on some of the lowest-paid workers in the country: It has made society realize they’re essential. Grocery store workers, delivery drivers, caregivers, and janitors have continued showing up for work, putting their lives on the line to keep the country functioning. Some have been hailed as heroes and awarded hazard pay. (Johnston, 8/3)

The United States is mounting the largest vaccination effort in its history — without a plan on how to reach racial and ethnic groups that have not only been devastated by the virus but are often skeptical about government outreach in their communities. For decades, communities of color have been underrepresented in clinical trials, faced greater barriers to getting vaccinated and harbored deeper distrust of a health care system that’s often overlooked or even harmed them. But now, the large-scale effort to defeat the virus depends not just on developing a safe and effective vaccine, but ensuring it reaches all corners of America. (Roubein and Owermohle, 8/3)

Monica Sager didn’t see her boyfriend for four months after she moved back into her childhood home in Pottstown, Pa., in March. She also didn’t go to any friends’ houses or social events. Now, her parameters have started to shift. Her boyfriend visited from New York over the Fourth of July weekend, and in August she will move into an apartment with roommates in Worcester, Mass., when she returns for her senior year at Clark University. (Keates, 8/3)

Kaiser Health News: When Green Means Stop: How Safety Messages Got So Muddled 

When Marquita Burnett heard Philadelphia was moving to the “green” phase of reopening, she was confused. She was pretty sure the city had already earned a green designation from Pennsylvania’s governor (it had). The next thing she knew, the city was scaling back some of the businesses it had planned to reopen (namely, indoor dining and gyms). But it was still calling this phase “restricted green.” “I feel like it’s been back and forth — the mayor says one thing, the governor says another. So who do you really listen to?” asked Burnett, a 32-year-old teacher’s assistant. (Feldman, 8/4)

With Covid-19 cases again climbing, health tech companies and researchers are renewing their pitch for wearables and apps as a cutting-edge way to catch new cases and detect when patients are growing sicker. The flood of tech tools — and the marketing machinery playing up their potential — promises to give users more timely information and fill key gaps in testing and tracing cases. But it is not altogether certain that these devices will benefit patients. (Ross, 8/4)

Arizona’s top public health official was grilled in court Monday over why health clubs must remain closed in a bid to guard against the spread of the coronavirus, yet supermarkets, restaurants and other businesses can remain open. Dr. Cara Christ, director of the Arizona Department of Health Services, testified in a lawsuit filed by two health club chains challenging Gov. Doug Ducey’s gym closure order. The clubs lost an earlier challenge but renewed their reopening request after the governor extended the closure. (Billeaud, 8/4)

Officials in Billings shut down city hall and the public library for cleaning after three public employees in Montana’s largest city tested positive for the coronavirus. City hall was scheduled to re-open to the public Thursday following cleaning work and then operate two days a week under limited hours until August 17. (8/3)

New York City’s pandemic-era outdoor dining program will continue next year, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Monday. With indoor dining banned indefinitely because of the coronavirus risk, thousands of restaurants have been allowed to take over the parking spaces outside their eateries to seat customers — and de Blasio said the al fresco dining push would usher in a longer-term change to the city’s streetscape. (Durkin, 8/3)

New York City officials shut down a party boat with more than 170 people aboard, as the city strives to keep the coronavirus at bay. Ronny Vargas and Alex Suazo, the owners of the Liberty Belle, were arrested Saturday night for violating the state's ban on large crowds and for running a bar without a license, the New York City's Sheriff's Office said. The office also said that the captain of the boat, who was not identified, was issued a summons for not displaying its identification number. (Pereira, 8/3)

Fewer than a third of Americans say they trust what President Donald Trump has said about the coronavirus pandemic, new polling shows, while a majority of the public trusts the messaging from the country's leading health experts. According to the NBC News|SurveyMonkey Weekly Tracking Poll, 58 percent of Americans say they don't trust what Trump has said about the pandemic, while 31 percent say they do trust his comments. (Kamisar and Holzberg, 8/4)

With the national death toll from COVID-19 passing the grim 150,000 mark, an NPR/Ipsos poll finds broad support for a single, national strategy to address the pandemic and more aggressive measures to contain it. Two-thirds of respondents said they believe the U.S. is handling the pandemic worse than other countries, and most want the federal government to take extensive action to slow the spread of the coronavirus, favoring a top-down approach to reopening schools and businesses. (Mann, 8/4)

Weak environmental protections, safety rules and labor and civil rights protections may be cutting lives short in conservative states and deepening the divide between red and blue states, according to a new study on links between life expectancy and state policy. The report, published Tuesday in the health policy journal Milbank Quarterly, finds that states where residents live longest, including California, tend to have much more stringent environmental laws, tougher tobacco and firearms regulations and more protections for workers, minorities and LGBTQ residents. (Levey, 8/3)

Childhood vaccination rates are still down in at least 20 states, public health officials in those areas told ABC News, a worrying trend that has continued in the days and weeks before children are set to head back to school in parts of the country. The continued decline in pediatric visits comes as parents are fearful about possible infection amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. (8/4)

In January, two weeks after Rick Solomon joined the YMCA near his home, he fell ill. The 65-year-old Bay Area resident hoped to spend the month working out, instead he lay in bed wheezing, with crippling muscle aches. He missed several days of work at a small publishing house. "I was sick for most of the month of February with a horrible cough like I've never had before," said Solomon as he ran his fingers through his thick salt and pepper hair. "It went into my chest. I used inhalers for the first time in my life." (McClurg, 8/3)

Kaiser Health News: Readers And Tweeters Defend Human — And Animal — Rights 

Many aspects of your story on homeless camps being “swept,” moved or cleared during this pandemic (“Sweeps of Homeless Camps Run Counter to COVID Guidance and Pile On Health Risks,” June 26) seemed tone-deaf or smacked of a skewed viewpoint by those who blame the homeless for poverty or other circumstances that lead them to camp on the street. (8/4)

The Ohio Department of Agriculture (ODA) late last week announced that the Asian longhorned tick, a rapidly spreading invasive species, has been found on a stray dog from Gallia County. In a statement, the ODA said the tick was identified on May 28 by The Ohio State University, with findings confirmed by the US Department of Agriculture National Veterinary Services Laboratory in Ames, Iowa. (8/3)

Los Angeles County prosecutors dramatically expanded their case against a former UCLA gynecologist on Monday, charging him with 17 additional felonies related to his alleged sexual abuse of five former patients. Dr. James M. Heaps, 67, who was already facing three similar charges of alleged abuse against two other former patients, was handcuffed and taken into custody. His bond was set at $650,000. (Cosgrove, 8/3)

U.S. and Mexican officials stood united Monday as they condemned white supremacy, hatred and xenophobia while vowing to provide justice as the borderlands marked a somber first remembrance of the largest massacre by a gunman targeting Mexicans in U.S. history. The day was marked with a series of memorials, plaque dedications and a groundbreaking for a healing garden to honor the 23 victims of last year’s August 3 massacre. (Corchado, 8/3)

As legislators across the United States propose policing changes, one issue has been a sticking point: bans on police using tear gas against protesters. Dozens of law enforcement agencies have used forms of tear gas on protesters marching against police brutality since the killing of George Floyd, a Black man, under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer. Over that time, many police chiefs and law enforcement leaders have supported legislation to improve their work. But bans on tear gas to quell crowds of protesters? From a police perspective, that’s not going to fly. (Van Ness, 8/4)

Keona Hankson was about six months pregnant when she arrived at the hospital, and doctors told her they would have to perform a cesarean section to prematurely deliver her daughter, Melody, her family said. Gadlin, who works as an operating assistant at another local hospital, said she called her sister every two hours and since she understood the language of hospitals, their mother, Karina McDaniels, asked her to be the family member to check in regularly with hospital staff. (Anderson, 8/3)

Kaiser Health News: Listen: NPR Interview About Less Lethal Weapons That Can Maim Or Kill 

The streets in many U.S. cities have erupted with protests recently and police and federal officers have fired rubber bullets and other projectiles into crowds, injuring or even blinding some of the participants. This has been going on for decades, yet efforts to crack down on less-lethal ammo have failed locally and nationally. KHN senior correspondent Jay Hancock spoke with NPR’s Ailsa Chang on “All Things Considered” about why efforts to curb their use have failed. (8/3)

The Mall of America said Monday the Nickelodeon Universe amusement park inside the mall will reopen Aug. 10 after being closed nearly five months due to COVID-19. Officials of the Bloomington, Minnesota, mall said the seven-acre (2.8-hectare) theme park will reopen with significant changes aimed at maintaining a safe, healthy and comfortable environment. To meet state guidelines, Nickelodeon Universe will operate with a reduced capacity of 250 visitors at any time. (8/3)

When American sports leagues began to chart their paths for the pandemic, they faced countless questions. How often should they test? Would the NBA’s bubble burst? How many rule changes does it take to drive MLB purists cuckoo? But the thorniest question they had to reckon with is one that applies to multibillion-dollar sports enterprises and small businesses alike. When is it safe for someone who has tested positive for Covid-19 to return to work?The answer is as surprising as it is murky. (Beaton and Radnofsky, 8/3)

A soccer player who deliberately coughs close to another player or match official can be issued a red card. The International Football Association Board, the game’s lawmaker, updated its guidelines while the pandemic perseveres. A referee can only red card a player when they are certain the cough is intentional. A yellow card is also optional. (8/4)

California elementary schools that want to open their doors for in-person learning must consult with parents, labor unions and others on campus and demonstrate their plans for contact-tracing and other public health measures that have been widely implemented in summer camps and child care settings, according to new guidelines released Monday night. The highly anticipated guidance — along with new rules that impose strict restrictions on youth sports — comes as teachers and families are starting to head back to school across California. It follows Gov. Gavin Newsom's mid-July announcement that the state would generally require fully online learning for public and private schools located in counties that have landed on the Covid-19 watch list within the past 14 days — which would apply to 38 counties with more than 90 percent of California residents combined. (Murphy and White, 8/3)

Some California elementary schools may be able to reopen for in-person classes this fall under a strict waiver system announced Monday by state officials. But because of the detailed rules, smaller schools — especially private and parochial campuses with more flexibility — will probably be among the most successful at meeting the special guidelines, prompting concern from some that select reopenings could add to gaps in educational equity. (Chabria and Agrawal, 8/3)

After a troubled and uneven spring of distance learning, Los Angeles schools will reopen in two weeks with a major reboot for learning at home that includes a structured schedule, mandatory attendance-taking and more required online time with teachers and counselors, under a tentative agreement between the teachers union and the district. The official schedule will be shorter than a normal on-campus school day, beginning at 9 a.m. and ending at 2:15 p.m., with teachers expected to work an average of six hours while exercising broad discretion over how much time they spend teaching live online classes versus providing recorded sessions and supervising students working independently. (Blume, 8/3)

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy is continuing to assert that schools will reopen for in-person instruction in the fall, announcing Monday that all students will be required to wear masks in school buildings. Murphy said the state Department of Education has updated its reopening guidance document to require face coverings “for all students at all times while inside a school building regardless of social distancing,” unless doing so would inhibit the individual’s health. The updated guidance also includes exceptions for students with disabilities. (Sitrin, 8/3)

This week, 44 Mississippi school districts are resuming in-person instruction for the first time since March, many with safety precautions like mandatory mask-wearing, temperature checks and daily sanitizing. Another six districts are starting this week with only remote instruction. (Willingham, 8/3)

The percentage of parents who say they want full-time, in-person school for their children in the fall has fallen 20 points in recent months, although more still favor it than fully remote classes, according to Gallup. Thirty-six percent of K-12 parents say they favor resuming in-person, full-time classes in the fall, down from 56 percent in May and early June. Twenty-eight percent are currently in favor of full-time remote classes, up 21 percentage points from earlier in the year. Another 36 percent now favor a combination of the two options. (Budryk, 8/3)

Early childhood classrooms are going to look different this year, even if school buildings are open – no desk clusters with kids sharing materials, no cozy circles on the rug, no holding hands on the way to the bathroom. CDC guidelines recommend social distancing, keeping students in one classroom throughout the day, and masks for adults. (In many schools, young children will be encouraged but not required to wear masks.) (Bouffard, 8/4)

As the United States and other countries anxiously consider how to reopen schools, Israel, one of the first countries to do so, illustrates the dangers of moving too precipitously. Confident it had beaten the coronavirus and desperate to reboot a devastated economy, the Israeli government invited the entire student body back in late May. Within days, infections were reported at a Jerusalem high school, which quickly mushroomed into the largest outbreak in a single school in Israel, possibly the world. (8/4)

One overcast morning in a farming village in hilly western India, a group of schoolchildren sat on the mud floor of a wooden shed for their first class in months. There was no teacher, just a voice from a loudspeaker. The recorded lessons form part of an initiative by an Indian non-profit spread over six villages that aims to reach 1,000 students denied formal classes since the coronavirus pandemic forced schools to close four months ago. The children sang rhymes and answered questions, with some of them speaking of the loudspeaker as ‘Speaker Brother’ or ‘Speaker Sister.' (Waydande, 8/3)

Singapore researchers have developed “electronic skin” capable of recreating a sense of touch, an innovation they hope will allow people with prosthetic limbs to detect objects, as well as feel texture, or even temperature and pain. The device, dubbed ACES, or Asynchronous Coded Electronic Skin, is made up of 100 small sensors and is about 1 sq cm (0.16 square inch) in size. (8/3)

Despite the lack of effective treatments or preventive strategies, the dementia epidemic is on the wane in the United States and Europe, scientists reported on Monday. The risk for a person to develop dementia over a lifetime is now 13 percent lower than it was in 2010. Incidence rates at every age have steadily declined over the past quarter-century. If the trend continues, the paper’s authors note, there will be 15 million fewer people in Europe and the United States with dementia than there are now. (Kolata, 8/3)

Like humans, dinosaurs got sick. T. rex may have suffered from gout, duck-billed dinosaurs had bone tumors and many species would have scratched at lice. Now, scientists say they have, for the first time, found that dinosaurs suffered from osteosarcoma -- an aggressive malignant cancer that afflicts humans today. (Hunt, 8/3)

You are what you eat, so the saying goes. But few people would suspect that dietary choices are reflected, inch by inch, in the hair growing on your head. Your mop can potentially shed light on whether you prefer veggie burgers or cheeseburgers, a new study has suggested. Researchers from the University of Utah collected discarded hair from barbers and hair salons from 65 cities across the United States. From the chemical traces in the cuttings the scientists found that American diets are dominated by animal-derived protein like meat and dairy. (Hunt, 8/3)

Dr. Hyochol “Brian” Ahn, professor at UTHealth’s Cizik School of Nursing, suggested that pain could be zapped away using electric currents. The concept behind his research is transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), a noninvasive way to stimulate certain parts of the brain using a low intensity current. At first, Harrison was skeptical - especially when she saw the “hat” she would need to wear as part of the experiment. The headgear would carry a weak electric current, powered by batteries. (Peyton, 8/4)

Under a microscope, human sperm seem to swim like wiggling eels, tails gyrating to and fro as they seek an egg to fertilize. But now, new 3D microscopy and high-speed video reveal that sperm don't swim in this simple, symmetrical motion at all. Instead, they move with a rollicking spin that compensates for the fact that their tails actually beat only to one side. (Pappas, 7/31)

Ever heard of bacterial vaginosis? It's caused when the normal bacterial flora in the vagina go haywire, allowing "bad" bacteria to proliferate. If the answer is no, you're not alone. Even though bacterial vaginosis, otherwise known as BV, is the most common vaginal infection in women between the ages 15 and 44, many have never heard of it. Yet bacterial vaginosis is a serious condition, difficult to treat and eliminate. If a woman is infected during a pregnancy, vaginosis can cause the baby to be born prematurely or with a low birth weight. (LaMotte, 8/4)

Michigan officials were frustrated waiting on the federal government to adopt health-protecting standards for the nonstick, so-called "forever chemicals" that have become a leading emerging contaminant in the state and across the country. So they made their own. Michigan's new standards for seven per- and polyfluoroalkyl substance (PFAS) compounds in drinking water — some of the toughest, most comprehensive standards on the chemicals anywhere in the country — took effect Monday. (Matheny, 8/3)

California’s prison population of 99,000 is its lowest since 1990 and 74,000 below its peak in 2006. Court rulings, new state laws and policies on imprisonment, and changes in voters’ attitudes have all contributed to the reduction, which has not led to any statewide increase in crime. But the events look somewhat different through a broader historical lens. In 1976, the state’s prison population was 20,000, and the crime rate was only slightly higher than it is today. (Egelko, 8/3)

Concerned about trends in the public health metrics, some experts say the state is nearing the threshold for rolling back its phased reopening plan. The move from Phase 2 to Phase 3 happened less than a month ago, becoming effective July 6 statewide and July 13 in Boston. (Somerville has put Phase 3 of reopening on hold.) (Finucane and Reiss, 8/3)

Two teenagers in Florida have died from Covid-19 complications, according to data posted by the Florida Department of Health. The teens were between the ages of 14 and 17, the department said. This brings the total number of minors who have died in relation to the virus in Florida to seven. The others were a 9-year-old girl from Putnam County, an 11-year-old boy in Miami-Dade County, an 11-year-old girl in Broward County, a 16-year-old girl in Lee County, and a 17-year-old boy in Pasco County. (Colbert, 8/3)

Hawaii continued to experience a sharp spike in the number of COVID-19 cases on Monday, prompting Gov. David Ige to warn that the state may have to once again delay the start of a pre-travel testing program for travelers if the trend doesn’t change. “If there are too many cases here and we haven’t stopped the increase, then we would be looking at delaying the September 1st date,” Ige said, referring to the current timeline for allowing out-of state visitors to bypass a 14-day traveler quarantine if they test negative. (McAvoy, 8/3)

Massachusetts must revert to stricter shutdown rules to ward off a resurgence of COVID-19 in the state, according to some epidemiologists and doctors who have watched the small but unmistakable increase in cases with growing alarm in recent days. Though new cases on Monday totaled a relatively low 165, the state reported 643 new cases over the weekend, up from 483 last weekend and 395 the weekend before that. For nine of the past 14 days, new cases exceeded 200. (Moore and Lazar, 8/3)

Another Yellowstone County resident has died of COVID-19, bringing the county death total to 27. The person who died was a woman in her 80s, according to RiverStone Health. She died Sunday at a Yellowstone County hospital. Yellowstone County has had 23 people die since July 6, including 16 residents of senior care facilities. (Kordenbrock, 8/3)

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear started his Monday press conference on the coronavirus by saying July was the toughest month the state had endured so far in terms of cases, noting that last week had the largest number of positive cases. "What we find is we lose Kentuckians several weeks to about a month after they test positive," Beshear said. "So having a rough month in terms of overall cases in July will likely mean a rough month of Kentuckians that we lose in August. All of that means we should be concerned." (Brown and Mazade, 8/3)

Britain faces a second wave of COVID-19 this winter twice as widespread as the initial outbreak if it reopens schools without a more effective test-and-trace system in place, according to a study published on Tuesday. Researchers from University College London and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine modelled the impact of reopening schools either on a full- or part-time basis, thus allowing parents to return to work, on the potential spread of the virus. (8/4)

In Russia's Dagestan region, the official coronavirus figures started to seem suspicious to residents back in April. The mountainous republic in the North Caucasus region along the Caspian Sea was reporting just two to three fatalities per day from covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, at the time. That didn’t add up when a single village might hold five funerals in one afternoon. Dagestan’s officials eventually acknowledged that the real number of coronavirus cases and deaths was probably much higher. And, in the process, Dagestan became a point of reference for questions on the overall tallies in Russia, which reports the world’s fourth-largest number of confirmed cases but a mortality rate that is about a fifth that of U.S. per capita figures, according to Johns Hopkins University data. (Khurshudyan, 8/3)

Antibody testing in Italy indicates that nearly 1.5 million people, or about 2.5% of the population, have had the coronavirus. But officials said Monday that huge geographic variations in the results confirmed a nationwide lockdown was “absolutely crucial” to preventing the country’s south from getting slammed as badly as its north. The Health Ministry and the national statistics agency based their assessment on tests performed May 25-July 15 on a sample of nearly 65,000 Italians selected for their location, age and type of work. The government carried out the testing to understand how widely the virus circulated in the first country in the West to be overwhelmed by COVID-19, given that the bulk of confirmed cases and deaths occurred in northern Italy. (Winfield, 8/3)

Like most Spaniards, Emma Gaya thought the worst of the pandemic was behind her. Spain’s government had ended a three-month lockdown after an COVID-19 onslaught that claimed at least 28,400 lives in the European Union nation. To kickstart its stalled economy, Spaniards were encouraged to cautiously resume their lives under a “new normality” based on wearing face masks, washing hands and social distancing. The respite didn’t last long. (Brito and Wilson, 8/3)

Stylist Julia Wanja picks her way delicately through piles of food waste, discarded masks, rubber gloves and other rubbish at Nairobi’s Dandora dumpsite, looking for used hair extensions she can clean and resell to customers. The pandemic means fewer clients with less money and she is cutting down on costs by cleaning and reselling hair from the dumpsite. (Mukoya, 8/4)

When the mayor of Modica, a Sicilian town known for its chocolates and churches, learned that a sex worker in the area had tested positive for the coronavirus, he immediately started to worry about an outbreak. He made a frantic public appeal for clients to get tested, assuring them that their wives wouldn’t find out. But contact tracing proved difficult as the mayor, Ignazio Abbate, began receiving anonymous phone calls from men “asking for a friend” what the sex worker looked like. The secrecy and stigma around unregulated sex work put “everyone in danger,” Mr. Abbate said. (Bubola, 8/3)

In case you haven’t noticed, the coronavirus is still very much with us. Around a thousand Americans are dying from Covid-19 each day, 10 times the rate in the European Union. Thanks to our failure to control the pandemic, we’re still suffering from Great Depression levels of unemployment; a brief recovery driven by premature attempts to resume business as usual appears to have petered out as states pause or reverse their opening. Yet enhanced unemployment benefits, a crucial lifeline for tens of millions of Americans, have expired. And negotiations over how — or even whether — to restore aid appear to be stalled. (Paul Krugman, 8/3)

Through no fault of their own, 30 million jobless Americans just had their benefits slashed. Many may soon face eviction, hunger, bankruptcy. Unfortunately, the White House and Republican lawmakers are in no rush to help. Instead, GOP officials have essentially accused these desperate families of being lazy welfare queens, choosing to remain on cushy government benefits rather than savor the dignity of work. But five recent economic studies find no such thing is happening. (Catherine Rampell, 8/3)

What’s Mr. Trump’s plan to revive the economy? The same one he’s been pushing for months: Just “reopen” it. He wants the public to believe the shutdown orders that began in March caused the economy to tank in the first place, so reversing them will bring the economy back. Rubbish. It was the virus that caused the downturn, and its resurgence is taking the economy down again. The virus is surging back because governors reopened prematurely, before the virus was under control — at Mr. Trump’s repeated insistence. (Richard B. Reich, 8/4)

Right from the start, we told you the truth about this virus, that most people have nothing to fear. That the right response is to protect the vulnerable, that the mass shutdowns were a massive mistake. President Trump, he had the right instincts, too, right from the start. But the media, the medical establishment, the political establishment, they didn't have a clue. (Steve Hilton, 8/3)

The fear surrounding Covid-19, combined with the media’s judgmental portrayal of new coronavirus cases as failures of political leadership and citizen morality, are backing policy makers into a corner and seeding social turmoil. Rising case numbers are the expected result of basic, powerful human desires to participate in life. Rather than acknowledge this, politicians are allowing fear to fuel poor policy decisions. A course correction will require empowering Americans to prevent illness and absolving ourselves from the prevailing narrative. (Joseph A. Ladapo, 8/3)

Every time President Donald Trump and his political team claim great progress in the pandemic it's a dangerous sign: things are likely about to get worse. Forever spinning their failure in handling the crisis, Trump and Vice President Mike Pence on Monday made selective claims of "significant" advances and "very encouraging" signs and celebrated "plateauing" cases in Sunbelt areas that might have escaped their disasters by ignoring the President's advice. (Stephen Collinson, 8/4)

The lifting of Covid-19 lockdowns around the world was never going to be easy. But as infections are flaring up from Spain to Australia, it’s worth noting that two of the hardest-hit countries at the pandemic’s peak — Italy and Sweden — are keeping the virus’s spread under control. Daily confirmed cases in both nations are now averaging at around 200 each, well below their respective peaks, with no rebound in sight and no strain on hospitals. By contrast, the daily case count in Spain rose past 2,000 last week and France’s surpassed 1,000. This is by no means a second wave, but it’s worth asking what Italy and Sweden might be doing differently to manage the virus. (Lionel Laurent, 8/4)

Here’s what didn’t happen on Sunday: The signing of a “full and complete” health-care plan, which Trump had promised in an interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace that had aired July 19. Wallace, as good an interviewer as there is, had tweaked Trump over the fact that he had yet to deliver on one of his signature campaign promises, which was to replace the Affordable Care Act with “something terrific.” "You’re going to have such great health care, at a tiny fraction of the cost — and it’s going to be so easy,” he boasted the month before the 2016 election. (Karen Tumulty, 8/3)

Your money or your life. For a robber, it's a threat. For supporters of junk insurance, asking Americans to waste their money or risk their life counts as a “victory [for] sick patients.” At least that was the sentiment expressed by Michael F. Cannon in his recent op-ed “In a win for consumers, a court ruling affirms the legality of short-term health insurance plans” (The Hill, July 24). Cannon cheers a court decision that upholds a Trump administration regulatory loophole that seeks to eviscerate the Affordable Care Act through the proliferation of junk insurance. (Margaret A. Murray, 8/3)

For most Americans the coronavirus is a scourge. But teachers unions seem to think it’s also an opportunity—to squeeze more money from taxpayers and put their private and public charter school competition out of business. That’s the only way to read the extraordinary effort by national and local union leaders to keep their members from returning to the classroom. (8/3)

I am writing as a current teacher in New Orleans. I am urging the School Board to make Orleans the parish where students and teachers don’t die of COVID-19.This week, I signed a petition with three demands: 1) During virtual learning and professional development, in-person attendance must be optional for all teachers and staff. 2) Schools cannot resume in-person instruction until cases in Orleans Parish decrease to 5% positive for a seven-day cycle and there are 50 or fewer cases for seven consecutive days. 3) Any plan for in-person school must include regular and prioritized testing for all school staff. (Shannon Brown, 8/3)

President Trump last week called on those who have recovered from covid-19 to donate their blood plasma as a potential treatment for help stem the pandemic. More work has yet to be done to demonstrate that such a therapy is safe and effective, but if so, it could help millions of patients with the novel coronavirus both here and abroad. The United States could desperately use such a treatment. The nation continues to struggle with high rates of hospitalizations and tragic deaths. While vaccine development continues, it’s important to advance every promising treatment option to improve the odds for those who become sick.Blood plasma — also known as convalescent plasma — has been used as a therapy for infectious diseases for a century, including against the flu in 1918 as well as SARS, Ebola, meningitis and measles. While it doesn’t work for all infections, the idea is to use one person’s successful defense system of antibodies to bolster the immune response of a newly infected person. (Former FDA Commissioners Mark McClellan, Margaret Hamburg, Robert Califf and Scott Gottlieb, 8/3)

Hydroxychloroquine is back! And this time it has brought not only hot-aired discussion but space aliens and demon sperm! Yes, it's true, the supposed miracle cure for Covid-19 that is really no cure at all, is all over the news again, thanks to President Donald Trump and a group of true believers, who are re-upping their endorsement of its all-around wonderfulness. Though distracting, the attention hydroxychloroquine is drawing raises a different but very important issue: whatever happened to the relentless US search for a Covid-19 cure? (Kent Sepkowitz, 8/3)

As Americans eagerly anticipate a COVID-19 vaccine, there's troubling new evidence that they're failing to get inoculated against other infectious diseases. To get vaccination rates back where they need to be, policymakers must remind the public of the importance of routine immunizations and remove the regulatory barriers that make it difficult for people to get their shots. (Sally Pipes, 8/3)

In a large study that was recently published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, a team of researchers examined hospital mortality rates in more than 2,200 critically ill coronavirus patients in 65 hospitals throughout the country. Their findings? Patients admitted to hospitals with fewer than 50 I.C.U. beds — smaller hospitals — were more than three times more likely to die than patients admitted to larger hospitals. Though they were not able to study factors like staffing and hospital strain, these likely contributed. In fact, a recent investigative piece in The Times examined mortality data for hospitals in New York City — and found that at the peak of the pandemic, patients at some community hospitals (with lower staffing and worse equipment) were three times more likely to die as patients in medical centers in the wealthiest areas. (Daniela J. Lamas, 8/4)

The world is learning more about the uncommon but puzzling ways Covid-19 can show up in kids, keeping worried parents on the lookout for symptoms of the disease. We should also be concerned about how toxic stress brought on by the pandemic, or made worse by it, will affect children’s developing brains and bodies and their future health. (Nadine Burke Harris, 8/4)

If there ever was a time for our nation to embrace true reform for mental health and addiction, now is that time. But like all significant efforts for change, it takes courage, leadership, and vision. (Benjamin F. Miller, 8/2)

To enjoy dining out amid a pandemic, you’d have to excise from your brain the fact that brown and Black people, who represent over 80% of the state’s farm and restaurant workforce, are dying at disproportionately higher rates from the virus. Behind those asymmetrical figures is an increased exposure to the virus unmitigated by social safety nets. As epidemiologist and physician Dr. Camara Phyllis Jones put it, race isn’t a risk factor, racism is. If you muffle the inequities the pandemic has made so sharp, then you can task a largely unprotected workforce to feed your escapist fantasies of normalcy, no matter the cost to their lives. (Ruth Gebreyesus, 8/3)

Does it matter who hired Bennett Walsh to run the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home, where at least 76 residents died of COVID-19 due to catastrophic management decisions? If full accountability for those dead veterans matters — then yes, it does matter who hired Walsh. That’s why Governor Charlie Baker has tried to put more than social distance between himself and Walsh. But unlike other designated fall guys, Walsh isn’t making it easy. He went to court, first trying to bar the facility’s board of trustees from firing him, and then arguing that a June 24 letter of termination signed by the governor and Marylou Sudders, Baker’s secretary of health and human services, is invalid, because only the Soldiers’ Home board has the power to do that. (Joan Vennochi, 8/3)

Covid-19 has made life much harder for people with opioid addiction. But the response to the virus has also revealed a way forward that could radically expand effective treatment and reduce overdose deaths. Until now, getting effective treatment depended on where you lived. Forty percent of American counties — much of Appalachia, for example — have no providers licensed to prescribe buprenorphine, the most successful treatment so far. But the pandemic has made it possible to see a licensed provider from home, and that could make buprenorphine treatment available anywhere. (Tina Rosenberg, 8/4)

Perhaps one silver lining of the pandemic is that many Americans finally realize that Donald Trump is not fit to be commander in chief. But even if the president loses in the fall, we cannot allow that to be the only way we improve our nation in response to the pandemic... COVID-19 has brought to light the many disparities in healthcare treatment for Black and brown people in the United States. (Former Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.), 8/3)