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With Covid-19 cases soaring in the US South and Southwest, the nation's public health experts fear the end is not yet in sight and wonder what normal will look like as the pandemic stretches on through the rest of the year. While New York and New Jersey were the early virus hotspots, California, Florida, Arizona and Texas now have become the states to watch, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease doctor, said Tuesday. Fauci, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, called Covid-19 a "pandemic of historic proportions." (Holcombe, 7/15)

It’s not just Florida, Arizona and Texas anymore. States including Oklahoma and Nevada are reporting record numbers of new coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths, according to data tracked by The Washington Post. More than 62,000 new infections were reported nationwide on Tuesday, pushing the total count since the pandemic began past 3.41 million. Outside of the United States, that kind of explosive growth can be found only in the developing world, in countries that lack the United States’ wealth and resources. The number of new cases reported in Florida alone over the past week outstrips the total count in most European nations. (Noori Farzan and Armus, 7/15)

Alabama and Florida reported their respective states’ highest single-day death tolls on Tuesday since the coronavirus pandemic began. In its 10 a.m. update, the Alabama Department of Public Health confirmed 40 single-day deaths. It also has 56,441 confirmed COVID-19 cases, with an increase of 1,673 since Monday. (Darnell, 7/14)

After Florida reported a record 132 deaths on Tuesday, a group of mayors from Miami-Dade County, the center of the state’s crisis, warned Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, that local officials are running out of time to avoid another painful economic closure. “There is a significant amount of pressure for us to shut down,” Mayor Francis Suarez of Miami told Mr. DeSantis at an event in the city. “We have between one week and four weeks to get this thing under control, or we will have to take some aggressive measures.” (7/14)

Florida posted its highest number of deaths yet from the coronavirus Tuesday. The state's Department of Health reported 132 deaths and 9,194 new positive cases. It followed two days when Florida registered its highest number of new COVID-19 cases. On Sunday, Florida saw 15,300 cases, the most so far by any state. (Allen, 7/14)

The governors of Virginia and Maryland moved Tuesday to enforce mask and social distancing requirements inside bars and other businesses after an increase in coronavirus cases stirred worries that the region is facing a resurgence of the virus seen in other parts of the country. The seven-day average of new infections in the District, Maryland and Virginia increased for an eighth consecutive day Tuesday, jumping to 1,421 — about where the region stood last month before shutdown restrictions for nonessential businesses were further loosened. The region’s largest daily caseloads of the past month have occurred in the past five days. (Olivo, Hedgpeth, Cox and Wiggins, 7/14)

Health care systems in many places struggle in winter. Conditions such as asthma, heart attacks and stroke tend to worsen in colder temperatures, and some infectious diseases like influenza spread more easily, which means facilities face a greater patient load. This year, the coronavirus pandemic could create the perfect winter storm, and scientists say countries need to prepare for a potential uptick in cases that could be more serious than the initial outbreak. (Hunt, 7/14)

The first COVID-19 vaccine tested in the U.S. revved up people’s immune systems just the way scientists had hoped, researchers reported Tuesday — as the shots are poised to begin key final testing. “No matter how you slice this, this is good news,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. government’s top infectious disease expert, told The Associated Press. (Neergaard, 7/15)

An experimental vaccine to treat COVID-19 manufactured by Moderna was able to induce an immune response in all of the volunteers in an early-stage trial, according to data published online in a medical journal. The initial results, published in The New England Journal of Medicine on Tuesday, showed the vaccine was generally safe and well tolerated in 45 volunteers, with no serious adverse events. (Weixel, 7/14)

Within 12 hours of getting the second dose of an experimental COVID-19 vaccine being developed by Moderna Inc., Ian Haydon began to feel chills. Then came nausea, headaches, muscle pain and delirium. He took his temperature: 103.2 degrees. With fluids and rest, the symptoms faded. ... A day and half after getting the shot, he felt fine. Similar side effects of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine were described in a report published Tuesday by the New England Journal of Medicine. Its findings confirm the company’s preliminary announcement in May that the candidate vaccine prompted the production of coronavirus antibodies in human testers. (Curwen, 7/14)

Dr. Paul Offit, an infectious disease expert at the University of Pennsylvania and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said that the neutralizing antibodies and other immune responses were a good sign, but that it was not known yet whether they would actually protect people against the virus, or how long they would last. The side effects were a “small price to pay” for protection against a potentially severe disease, he said, though fever may be a cause for concern once the vaccine is given to large numbers of people. (Grady, 7/14)

The data roughly mirror the results from a similar vaccine being produced by Pfizer and BioNTech, which were released July 1. Moderna posted a listing on clinicaltrials.gov, a government registry, that says it will start a Phase 3 study in 30,000 patients on July 27. Pfizer and BioNTech said they plan to start their own large study by the end of the month. There are 23 vaccines in human clinical trials against the virus, SARS-CoV-2, according to the World Health Organization, with more set to begin testing soon. (Herper and Garde, 7/14)

The U.S. government is supporting Moderna’s vaccine with nearly half a billion dollars and has chosen it as one of the first to enter large-scale human trials. A successful vaccine could be a turning point for Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Moderna, which has never had a licensed product. (Steenhuysen, 7/14)

The discovery of HIV was a long-awaited moment, and Health and Human Services Secretary Margaret Heckler vowed that the scourge of AIDS would soon end. A vaccine would be ready for testing within two years, she proclaimed. ... Thirty-six years later, there still is no HIV vaccine. But instead of being a cautionary tale of scientific hubris, that unsuccessful effort is leading to even greater confidence in the search for a coronavirus vaccine, from some of the same researchers who have spent their careers seeking a cure for AIDS. (Johnson and Bernstein, 7/14)

The Trump administration has ordered hospitals to bypass the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and send all Covid-19 patient information to a central database in Washington beginning on Wednesday. The move has alarmed health experts who fear the data will be politicized or withheld from the public. (Gay Stolberg, 7/14)

Hospitals will begin sending coronavirus-related information directly to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), not the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), under new instructions from the Trump administration. The move will take effect on Wednesday, according to a new guidance and FAQ document for hospitals and clinical labs quietly posted on the HHS website. (Weixel, 7/14)

In a letter to the nation’s governors that says the National Guard could help improve hospitals’ data flow, HHS Secretary Alex Azar and Deborah Birx, the White House’s Coronavirus Task Force response coordinator, say they ordered the changes because some hospitals have failed to report the information daily or completely. That portrayal, and the involvement of the National Guard, have infuriated hospital industry leaders, who say any data collection problems lie primarily with HHS and repeatedly shifting federal instructions. (Sun and Goldstein, 7/14)

Hospital data on coronavirus patients will now be rerouted to the Trump administration instead of first being sent to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed to CNN on Tuesday. Michael Caputo, the assistant secretary for public affairs at the department, confirmed the change first reported by The New York Times earlier in the day, saying in a statement that the "new faster and complete data system is what our nation needs to defeat the coronavirus and the CDC, an operating division of HHS, will certainly participate in this streamlined all-of-government response. They will simply no longer control it." (Acosta and Cole, 7/15)

The official leading the Trump administration's coronavirus testing efforts on Tuesday rebuffed the notion that health experts are lying after President Trump retweeted a Twitter post saying that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and others were spreading falsehoods about the virus. "We may occasionally make mistakes based on the information we have, but none of us lie," Adm. Brett Giroir, the assistant secretary of Health and Human Services, said on NBC's "Today." (Wise, 7/14)

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Robert Redfield said Tuesday the president and vice president need to wear masks to set an example for the public. President Trump wore a mask in public for the first time over the weekend, nearly three months after the CDC issued guidance recommending the use of face coverings when social distancing isn’t possible. Trump has previously argued he doesn’t need to wear a mask because he is routinely tested for COVID-19. (Hellmann, 7/14)

Getting children back to in-person learning is important for their social well-being -- but the key to reopening classrooms during the coronavirus pandemic is masks, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday. Dr. Robert Redfield, speaking during a Buck Institute webinar, said everyone should work together to find common ground for reopening in a way that is safe and comfortable with people. He said the CDC is presenting options for school systems, and will release some additional resources this week on how to reopen schools. (Almasy and Maxouris, 7/14)

“Like herd immunity with vaccines, the more individuals wear cloth face coverings in public places where they may be close together, the more the entire community is protected,” Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and two colleagues wrote in an editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association, also published on Tuesday. Because cloth face coverings can also allow states to more safely ease stay-at-home orders and business closings, Redfield told a JAMA Live webcast Tuesday, “If we could get everybody to wear a mask right now, I really think in the next four, six, eight weeks, we could bring this epidemic under control.” (Begley, 7/14)

Forty-four percent of voters in a new poll said people are less likely to wear masks when President Trump does not wear a mask in public to lower the spread of the coronavirus. The July 7-10 Hill-HarrisX poll survey was taken before Trump donned a face mask during a visit to Walter Reed Hospital, the first time he did so in front of cameras since the CDC recommended face masks to slow the spread of the COVID-19 disease. Thirty-two percent of registered voters said the president's refusal to don a mask makes people more likely to wear a mask, while 24 percent said it has no effect. (7/14)

When President Trump wore a face mask in public for the first time this weekend, his supporters were exultant.“Goodnight, Joe Biden,” tweeted Boris Epshteyn, a campaign advisor. “Game on,” declared Sebastian Gorka, an official who recently rejoined the administration. Campaign manager Brad Parscale simply tweeted a photo of the masked president touring Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., with the familiar Trump slogan #AmericaFirst. With all the crowing, you’d think Trump and his orbit had long seen wearing a mask as a no-brainer and political win. But Trump’s journey to don a mask is far more circuitous than what his allies portray. (Mason, 7/14)

Anthony Fauci said the public can trust him when he provides guidance on the coronavirus based on his track record as he comes under increasingly public attacks from some administration officials. “I believe, for the most part, you can trust respected medical authorities,” Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, said Tuesday during a Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public Service event. “I believe I’m one of them, so I think you can trust me.” (Axelrod, 7/14)

Young people have an important role to play in stopping the spread of COVID-19 and protecting those at risk for serious illness, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Tuesday. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, told Georgetown University students that a high number of infections are being confirmed in young adults, who are unlikely to become seriously ill from COVID-19 but can pass it to more vulnerable people if they don't wear masks or practice social distancing. (Hellmann, 7/14)

Peter Navarro, President Donald Trump‘s top trade adviser, blasted Dr. Anthony Fauci on Tuesday, claiming that the nation’s top infectious disease expert and the public face of the White House‘s coronavirus response has been consistently wrong while advising on how to contain the disease. In a brief op-ed published in USA Today, Navarro said: “Dr. Anthony Fauci has a good bedside manner with the public, but he has been wrong about everything I have interacted with him on.“ (Choi, 7/14)

The economic adviser pointed to Fauci's past comments on using the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19, comments about the falling mortality rate in the country and other remarks. "So when you ask me whether I listen to Dr. Fauci’s advice, my answer is: only with skepticism and caution," he wrote. (Moreno, 7/14)

White House officials this week have denied trying to undermine Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, for his stark analysis of the coronavirus pandemic. But Dan Scavino, the White House deputy chief of staff for communications, undercut that message by posting a cartoon mocking Dr. Fauci by an artist whose work has been criticized for its anti-Semitic imagery. (Rogers, 7/14)

Former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Joseph Dunford has withdrawn his name from consideration to chair a coronavirus oversight panel created by the March relief package. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) were looking at Dunford to head the five-member congressional commission to oversee pandemic relief. But Dunford has withdrawn his name, two sources familiar confirmed to The Hill. (Carney, 7/14)

The commission has been leaderless since its creation in April, as Republicans and Democrats have failed to agree on a chairman. In recent weeks, General Dunford, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had emerged as the clear favorite of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, and Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, to lead the panel, and was going through the final stages of vetting for the job. (Broadwater, 7/14)

HHS on Monday signed off on a final rule to improve care coordination for substance use disorder, despite concerns that it might make people less willing to seek treatment. The final rule will retain a basic framework to protect the records of patients with substance use disorder, but will remove barriers to coordinated care and enable providers to share more patient information, according to HHS' Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (Brady, 7/13)

Dr. Ronny Jackson, President Donald Trump's former chief physician and one-time nominee for Veterans Affairs secretary, won a GOP primary runoff for a Texas congressional seat on Tuesday, CNN projects, defeating cattle industry lobbyist Josh Winegarner. Trump had backed Jackson, who is a Texas native, while Winegarner had the support of outgoing 13th District Rep. Mac Thornberry, who announced last year that he would not run for reelection. (Foran, 7/14)

In a stunning reversal of policy, the Trump administration on Tuesday abandoned a plan that would have forced out tens of thousands of foreign students following widespread condemnation of the move and pressure from colleges and major businesses. U.S. officials announced last week that international students at schools that had moved to online-only classes due to the coronavirus pandemic would have to leave the country if they were unable to transfer to a college with at least some in-person instruction. (Rosenberg and Hesson, 7/14)

The loss of international students could have cost universities millions of dollars in tuition and jeopardized the ability of U.S. companies to hire the highly skilled workers who often start their careers with an American education. Two days after the policy was announced on July 6, Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology filed the first of a litany of lawsuits seeking to block it. (Jordan and Hartocollis, 7/14)

Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology had sued to block the new policy. In a hearing in that case on Tuesday, held before U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs, the judge announced that the schools and the federal government had reached an agreement that made the lawsuit moot. “The government has agreed to rescind the July 6, 2020, policy directive and the frequently asked questions, the FAQ’s, that were released the next day on July 7,” Burroughs said, according to a transcript of the hearing. “They have also agreed to rescind any implementation of the directive.” (Anderson and Svrluga, 7/14)

As millions of people lose jobs in the coronavirus outbreak, jeopardizing their health benefits, the Trump administration and many states are doing little if anything to connect Americans with other insurance coverage. The U.S. Health and Human Services Department hasn’t launched any special effort to publicize the availability of Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program or health plans being sold on marketplaces created by the Affordable Care Act. (Levey, 7/14)

The Trump administration on Tuesday asked the Supreme Court to reinstate Medicaid work requirements in Arkansas. The Department of Justice in a filing said a federal appeals court was wrong to block the Department of Health and Human Services from approving work requirements in Arkansas, and the decision "reflects a fundamental misreading of the statutory text and context." (Weixel, 7/14)

Instances of child abuse or neglect were not reported to child protective services in 13% of cases, according to an analysis of Medicaid data released Tuesday by HHS' Office of Inspector General. The agency watchdog said Medicaid data could be used to spot child abuse or neglect among Medicaid beneficiaries, even if those events weren't reported to child protective service agencies or law enforcement. OIG's report recommended that CMS issue guidance to states about using Medicaid data to "help identify incidents of potential child abuse or neglect" and ensure compliance with state reporting requirements. (Brady, 7/14)

The Supreme Court’s oldest justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 87, was admitted to the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore early Tuesday morning after being evaluated Monday night at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington due to symptoms that included “fever and chills.” “She underwent an endoscopic procedure at Johns Hopkins this afternoon to clean out a bile duct stent that was placed last August. The Justice is resting comfortably and will stay in the hospital for a few days to receive intravenous antibiotic treatment,” said court spokesperson Kathleen Arberg. (Gerstein, 7/14)

Justice Ginsburg’s latest hospitalization comes two months after she was admitted to the same hospital for treatment of a benign gallbladder condition and a gallstone that caused an infection. (Kendall, 7/14)

Ginsburg, the leader of the court’s liberal wing, has faced a number of health issues since being appointed to the Supreme Court by former President Clinton in 1993, including surviving four bouts with cancer. (Kruzel, 7/14)

A former staffer at a veterans hospital in West Virginia pleaded guilty Tuesday to intentionally killing seven patients with fatal doses of insulin, capping a sweeping federal investigation into a series of mysterious deaths at the medical center. Reta Mays, a former nursing assistant at the Louis A. Johnson VA Medical Center in Clarksburg was charged with seven counts of second-degree murder and one count of assault with the intent to commit murder of an eighth person. She faces life sentences for each murder. (Izaguirre, 7/14)

In her three years as a nursing assistant on the overnight shift at the local Veterans Affairs hospital here, Reta Mays tended to elderly veterans with the ailments of old age. She took their vital signs and glucose levels on the graveyard shift, sitting vigil at their bedside while medical staffing was thin. Few saw her go in and out of patients' rooms. No one watched while she injected them with lethal doses of insulin during an 11-month killing rampage in 2017 and 2018, which she admitted to Tuesday in federal court, pleading guilty to second-degree murder in the deaths of seven veterans and an intent to murder an eighth who died two weeks later. (Rein and Born, 7/14)

It was meant to be a last line of defense to protect the most vulnerable as the coronavirus spread across the United States: Montana officials offered free testing in May for staff and residents at assisted living and long-term care facilities. But not all of them followed through, according to state data, including a facility in Billings, Montana’s largest city, that cares for people with dementia and other memory problems. The virus has infected almost every resident there and killed eight since July 6, accounting for almost a quarter of Montana’s 34 confirmed deaths. Thirty-six employees also have tested positive. (Brown and Hanson, 7/14)

Public health experts generally agree that, in spite of improvements, the U.S. still falls short on the testing needed to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. The official who oversees the country's testing efforts, however, maintains the U.S. is doing well on testing now and will soon be able to expand testing greatly using newer, point-of-care tests that deliver quick results. (Slotkin, 7/14)

A dramatic slowdown in testing turnaround times is undermining the U.S. response to the coronavirus, rendering tools like contact tracing almost useless in some instances. Quest Diagnostics, one of the main companies doing coronavirus testing, said Monday that “soaring demand” due to the surge in cases across the South and Southwest had pushed back their average turnaround time for getting results of a coronavirus test to at least seven days for all but the highest priority patients. (Sullivan, 7/14)

State officials adopted new guidelines Tuesday outlining who should be prioritized for COVID-19 testing in California as cases surged and counties reported delayed lab results. The new rules mark a move away from the Newsom administration‘s plans for anyone, including those without symptoms, to be tested for the virus in California. The guidelines instead adopt tiers that prioritize the testing of hospitalized patients with coronavirus symptoms, other symptomatic people, and then higher-risk asymptomatic individuals, according to state health officials. (Luna, 7/14)

With coronavirus cases surging and the need for testing at an all-time high, California officials are putting pressure on major health insurance companies to help finance the fight against the pandemic. The state Department of Managed Health Care will soon issue new regulations requiring health insurers to pay for coronavirus testing for most patients, state officials said Tuesday. They hope the move will lead to large hospitals, clinics and other health care providers conducting more testing at a time the public needs it the most. (Ho, 7/14)

The state is now opening 18 new drive-up coronavirus testing sites in places as far abreast as South Portland and Presque Isle as part of a previously announced expansion to the state’s overall ability to detect the disease. Seven organizations have partnered with the state to run those federally funded sites, some of which have already opened. The rest are expected to open in the next two weeks, complementing approximately 40 other testing sites that have already been operating around the state, the Mills administration announced Tuesday. (Eichacker, 7/14)

For businesses that have reopened to customers, there are few federal mandates specific to COVID-19. State restrictions have been relaxed since earlier in the pandemic, and enforcement has been light. Crucially, there are few hard-and-fast legal requirements for how businesses must respond if employees test positive. Many can remain open and don’t have to inform all employees or customers. (Yamanouchi and Hallerman, 7/13)

Kaiser Health News: Conspiracy Theories Aside, Here’s What Contact Tracers Really Do

In the midst of the COVID-19 epidemic, contact tracing is downright buzzy, and not always in a good way.Contact tracing is the public health practice of informing people when they’ve been exposed to a contagious disease. As it has become more widely employed across the country, it has also become mired in modern political polarization and conspiracy theories. (Appleby, 7/15)

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett on Tuesday signed into law a mask ordinance for indoor and outdoor public spaces, a day after the city's Common Council passed the measure unanimously. "The reason this is happening is because we cannot say as a community that we have conquered COVID-19 in Milwaukee, in Milwaukee County, in the state of Wisconsin or in the United States of America," said Barrett, who was sporting a mask bearing the People's Flag of Milwaukee. (Dirr, 7/14)

Best Buy, the nation’s largest consumer electronics chain, will require customers to wear face coverings at all of its stores nationwide, even in states or localities that don’t require them to do so. The retailer, based in Richfield, Minnesota, joins a growing but still short list of major retailers that have instituted mask mandates throughout their chains. (D'Innocenzio, 7/14)

When historians try to capture life in the pandemic, perhaps one of the hardest facets for future generations to grasp will be the mask wars, in many cases playing out in places where we go for a respite, or try to — ice cream shops, little farm stores, restaurant patios. ... Most people are following the rules, but as restaurants open back up, a tiny minority of resistors has injected such stress into dining and even takeout, that Mass Restaurants United, an advocacy group trying to help members survive the pandemic, recently posted the following missive on Instagram. (Teitel, 7/14)

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Tuesday extended Michigan's state of emergency through Aug. 11. The state of emergency does not in itself place any restrictions on Michigan residents. But it allows Whitmer to issue executive orders that place such restrictions, such as current orders closing gyms and theaters in south and central Michigan, restricting occupancy at dine-in restaurants, and requiring face masks at indoor public places and crowded outdoor spaces. (Egan, 7/14)

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has been crisscrossing Kentucky and delivering a sober analysis of the country's struggle with the coronavirus pandemic, imploring Americans to wear masks and warning in blunt terms that it's unclear how long the virus will continue to wreak havoc on the country. "Well regretfully, my friends, it's not over," McConnell said Monday at a hospital in Mt. Vernon, Kentucky. "We're seeing a surge in Florida and Texas and Arizona and yes, here in Kentucky." (Raju and Zaslav, 7/14)

Nearly four months after invoking a 1950s-era law in order to compel businesses to manufacture equipment for the fight against the coronavirus, the Trump administration has made only sparing use of its authorities, leaving front-line workers in dire need of supplies like masks, gowns and gloves amid the recent surge in cases. The Department of Health and Human Services listed 19 companies that have received contracts under the Defense Production Act to produce emergency supplies, including 600 million N95 respirators and face masks. But experts say it's not enough and that the effort started far too late. (Alvarez, Devine, Griffin and Holmes, 7/13)

LiveOnNY, the nonprofit organ-procurement organization that oversees donation and transplantation in the greater New York area, was coming off a record year before Covid-19 struck the region. In January the organization reported that nearly 1,000 lives were saved in 2019. Now it's hoping to rebound after a devastating March and April, and adapt to new challenges for once-routine procedures. It's also trying to contend with a new reality brought on by the pandemic: less organ supply and greater demand. (Hendersen, 7/14)

When COVID-19 barreled into the U.S. this year the predominant public health advice for avoiding infection focused on physical isolation: No parties, concerts, or sports events. No congregating inside in bars or restaurants. No on-site family reunions. No play dates for kids. Just keep away from other people. Meanwhile, although social scientists supported that medical advice, they feared the required physical distancing would spark another epidemic — one of loneliness, which was already at a high level in the U.S. (Silberner, 7/15)

What is this enemy? Seven months after the first patients were hospitalized in China battling an infection doctors had never seen before, the world’s scientists and citizens have reached an unsettling crossroads. Countless hours of treatment and research, trial and error now make it possible to take much closer measure of the new coronavirus and the lethal disease it has unleashed. But to take advantage of that intelligence, we must confront our persistent vulnerability: The virus leaves no choice. (Geller and Ritter, 7/15)

Whether or not it is safe to return to the gym has become a puzzling question for people as the number of COVID-19 cases continue to rise in many states. In Florida, one of the epicenters of the pandemic, where the positivity rate now stands at 18.3%, the state's phase 2 reopening order that went into effect in June allows gyms to operate at full capacity. (Kindelan, 7/14)

Since the pandemic, the Greater Boston Food Bank has distributed more food each month than any other in its 40-year history. And now, officials at the state's food banks say they're expecting yet another surge in demand. That's because the $600-a-week emergency unemployment benefits will expire at the end of July, possibly affecting thousands of Massachusetts families. (Rios, 7/15)

After Michael Mouton tested positive for COVID-19, he said his symptoms escalated from fatigue to fever, coughing, vomiting, aches and chills. But unlike most Americans with the coronavirus who can isolate at home, social distancing is a challenge in prisons, like the Federal Correctional Institution in Seagoville, where Mouton is serving a sentence on a federal drug charge. (Smith, 7/14)

According to the best data available, as summarized in a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the United States could prevent two-thirds of maternal deaths during or within a year of pregnancy. Policies and practices to do so are well understood; we just haven’t employed them. (Frakt, 7/13 )

About 10 Major League Baseball umpires have opted out this season, choosing not to work games in the shortened schedule because of concerns over the coronavirus. Two people familiar with the situation told The Associated Press about the decisions on Tuesday. The people spoke on condition of anonymity because there was no official announcement. (Walker, 7/14)

Los Angeles County law stipulates that people who come into close contact with someone with COVID-19 must quarantine for 14 days even if they don’t test positive or exhibit symptoms. MLB and the Dodgers have engaged in discussions with the L.A. County Department of Public Health about the team receiving an exemption, but the team hasn’t received one, according to people with knowledge of the situation. The Washington Nationals, who are holding training camp at Nationals Park in the District of Columbia, are the only one of the other 29 clubs dealing with a similar rule enforced by a local government entity. (Castillo, 7/14)

The Ventura County medical examiner on Tuesday determined the cause of death of “Glee” star Naya Rivera, whose body was found Monday in Lake Piru, was an accidental drowning. Rivera disappeared Wednesday during a boat outing with her young son. Authorities have long believed her death was an accident. (Wigglesworth and Fry, 7/14)

Grant Imahara, the longtime host of Discovery Channel’s “Mythbusters,” died from a brain aneurysm, the network said Tuesday. Imahara died Monday at the age of 49.“ We are heartbroken to hear this sad news about Grant,” the network said in a statement. “He was an important part of our Discovery family and a really wonderful man. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family.” (7/14)

President Trump called the decision by Los Angeles schools to not reopen campuses next month a “mistake” during a CBS News interview on Tuesday. Los Angeles Unified School District Supt. Austin Beutner announced Monday that the nation’s second-largest school system will continue with online learning until further notice because of the worsening coronavirus outbreak in Los Angeles. (Blume, 7/14)

“I would tell parents and teachers that you should find yourself a new person – whoever’s in charge of that decision because it’s a terrible decision,” he (Trump) said. “Because children and parents are dying from that trauma, too. They're dying because they can't do what they're doing. Mothers can’t go to work because all of a sudden they have to stay home and watch their child — and fathers.” ...The Los Angeles and San Diego school districts, which collectively enroll more than 700,000 students, both announced on Monday that they will start the coming school year online, vowing to return to physical classrooms when public health conditions permit. (Stratford, 7/14)

Kaiser Health News: California School Districts Grope For Sensible Reopening Plans 

School leaders in Elk Grove, California, wanted to leave as little to chance as possible. So they brought nearly 150 voices into their decision-making process, and canvassed the parents of the estimated 63,000 students in the district to ask how they wanted their children taught. The result was a four-item menu of instruction choices for the coming academic year, none featuring a full campus. About 45 minutes down Interstate 5 in California’s Central Valley, seven trustees in Manteca took a 5-2 vote: School would resume on campus, at full classroom capacity, five days a week. Parents would have the option to enroll children in a 100% online academy — although it didn’t yet exist. After a protest from teachers and the health department, the district later relented and agreed to put students on campus for five days every two weeks. (Kreidler, 7/15)

In a surprise move, Arlington Public Schools is scrapping a plan to offer in-person and virtual learning this fall and will instead require its 28,000 students to start the school year 100 percent online. The district’s superintendent, Francisco Durán, announced the switch in an email to families Tuesday afternoon, citing a recent increase in coronavirus cases nationwide. He also wrote that he is proposing that the school system push back the start of the school year by about a week to give teachers and administrators more time to prepare. (Natanson, 7/14)

Schools in North Dakota may reopen this fall for face-to-face learning amid the continuing coronavirus pandemic if districts approve and consult with local health officials, Gov. Doug Burgum announced Tuesday. School districts also must prepare online learning plans in addition to classroom instruction and a “hybrid” of the two, Burgum said. (MacPherson, 7/14)

Portland Public Schools has set a tentative Sept. 14 start date for the 2020-21 academic year, but the state’s largest district will only have students attend in-person classes two days per week, if at all. Students and families should be ready to go online beginning Sept. 2, as teachers will offer individual consultations and technology checks, The Oregonian/OregonLive reported. (7/14)

As education leaders decide whether to reopen classrooms in the fall amid a raging pandemic, many are looking to a standard generally agreed upon among epidemiologists: To control community spread of the coronavirus, the average daily infection rate among those who are tested should not exceed 5 percent. But of the nation’s 10 largest school districts, only New York City and Chicago appear to have achieved that public health goal, according to a New York Times analysis of city and county-level data. (Goldstein and Shapiro, 7/14)

For generations, school has been an opportunity for American children to learn and make friends. For many parents today, though, it’s something that’s elemental in a very different way: a safe place that cares for their children while they are at work — or a necessity for them to be able to work at all. (Loller, 7/15)

As school districts consider how to approach learning this fall with no sign of the coronavirus slowing, the virus has already had devastating consequences in one rural Arizona school district. Jena Martinez-Inzunza was one of three elementary school teachers at the Hayden Winkelman Unified School District who all tested positive for COVID-19 after teaching virtual summer school lessons together from the same classroom. (Doubek, 7/14)

It’s a fresh taste of bitter medicine for New Orleans: A sharp increase in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations is forcing bars in the good-time-loving, tourist-dependent city to shut down again just a month after they were allowed to partially reopen. Louisiana had been an international hot spot for the new coronavirus in March, and New Orleans was its focal point. But hospitalizations began dropping after an April peak and it appeared that the closure of a wide array of businesses, including dine-in restaurants, gyms, tattoo parlors and bars, had flattened the curve. (McGill and McConnaughey, 7/15)

In Indian Country, the Indian Health Service reports that as of July 9 just over 23,600 Indigenous people have tested positive. The IHS branch in Billings, which operates facilities for every tribe and nation in Eastern Montana, said 464 people as testing positive. (Hamby, 7/14)

The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services on June 30 eased restrictions on visits to long-term facilities that had been in place since mid-March. In-person visits are now allowed with residents who are in serious or critical condition or hospice care. Additionally, family members and friends may visit facilities to assist residents with activities of daily living. Staff at Martha T. Berry planned the facility's first family visits this week thanks to a section of the MDHHS order that permits visits for people whose doctors determine their well-being is at significant risk and recommend visits as a possible intervention. (Jackson and Hall, 7/14)

People traveling from Iowa and Oklahoma to Chicago will have to quarantine for two weeks upon arrival or face possible fines starting Friday. Chicago first issued a quarantine order early this month for 15 other states based on increasing numbers of confirmed cases of the coronavirus. The city updated the order Tuesday, bringing the total number of affected states to 17. (7/14)

A recent spike in confirmed coronavirus cases in Minnesota has landed the state on the quarantine list for New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Tuesday that Minnesota and three other states — New Mexico, Ohio and Wisconsin — were added to the list as officials in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut try to contain the spread of the coronavirus from regions of the country where infection rates are growing. (7/14)

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy on Tuesday shot down the prospect of fining travelers from COVID-19 hot spots if they don’t provide contact information to health officials. The first-term Democrat spoke about the new proposal made Monday by fellow Democrat New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo that would impose such a fine. “New York and New Jersey do things a little bit differently,” Murphy said during a radio interview on 104.3-FM. “I don’t know that we will be fining people.” (7/14)

Utah tallied 10 more confirmed deaths from the coronavirus Tuesday, the latest sign showing the severity of a surge of case that began after businesses reopened in May. Six of the deaths came in rural San Juan County in the southeast corner of the state, including three at an assisted living facility, according to the Utah Health Department. (7/14)

Cook County residents continue to die at a staggering rate from opioid-related overdoses, and Black residents from Chicago’s West Side account for a disproportionate number of those deaths. County political and public health officials on Tuesday sounded the alarm about what they said was a preventable crisis that has been overshadowed by the COVID-19 pandemic. “Whatever crisis faces our communities, people of color bear the brunt of it,” Toni Preckwinkle, the Cook County Board president, said at a news conference. (Eldeib and Sanchez, 7/14)

Immigrant leaders in Maine’s largest cities say the state has failed them as the nation’s whitest state sees some of the biggest racial disparities in coronavirus cases. Most states have seen some racial disparities, according to data compiled by the Covid Tracking Project. But nowhere is it greater than in Maine for Black and African American people. They are 24 times more likely to have tested positive for the virus than whites are here. (Piper, 7/22)

The release of the footage by Allentown police came days after activists tweeted a shorter, 26-second video, which has been viewed hundreds of thousand of times. Police say the man was taken into the hospital and, after treatment, was released. His name and medical details were not disclosed. Police also didn't release the names of the officers. (Booker, 7/14)

A 16-year-old boy in Kalamazoo, Michigan, died this spring after workers pinned him to the floor at the residential facility where he lived — after he’d thrown a sandwich at lunch. While held on the ground, he told them: “I can’t breathe.” At least 70 people have died in law enforcement custody in the last decade after saying the words “I can’t breathe,” a recent New York Times investigation found. But just as adults have died after being restrained, so have children. (Smith Richards and Cohen, 7/10)

All too often, health care workers are the target of biased or bigoted behavior from the patients they’re caring for — but many medical centers don’t have formal policies in place to help clinicians handle those incidents or the impact on staff. A new set of recommendations, published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine, offers health systems a blueprint for better responding to incidents of patient bias. They say a “one size fits all” approach won’t work, and instead urge health systems to take a sweeping set of actions to make sure they’re prepared to handle such problems, which have long been documented. (Spinelli, 7/13)

With the clock ticking on a European Commission probe into Google’s $2.1 billion bid for Fitbit, the tech giant offered regulators a concession late Monday, agreeing not to use Fitbit’s trove of health data to help target ads. Google had been staring down the possibility of a sweeping antitrust investigation by European regulators that was the latest in a series of probes into its deal with Fitbit announced last November. But the tech giant had a potential way to avoid the full thrust of the investigation: A promise, in the form of a binding pledge, not to use Fitbit’s fitness data for ad-targeting. (Brodwin, 7/14)

Since February of last year, tens of thousands of patients hospitalized at one of Minnesota’s largest health systems have had their discharge planning decisions informed with help from an artificial intelligence model. But few if any of those patients has any idea about the AI involved in their care. (Robbins and Brodwin, 7/15)

Public health officials in Houston are struggling to keep up with one of the nation’s largest coronavirus outbreaks. They are desperate to trace cases and quarantine patients before they spread the virus to others. But first, they must negotiate with the office fax machine. (Kliff and Sanger-Katz, 7/13)

UNC School of Medicine and UNC Health on Tuesday launched a mobile app that's designed to provide healthcare workers with mental health resources amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The Heroes Health app, a part of UNC School of Medicine's Heroes Health Initiative and developed with volunteers from Google, is meant to help healthcare workers better understand their own mental health, said Dr. Samuel McLean, an emergency medicine physician at the medical school who founded the initiative. (Cohen, 6/14)

Insurance companies cannot discriminate against disabled people by broadly denying coverage for the types of treatment they need, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday. In a lawsuit against Kaiser Foundation Health Plan by two hard-of-hearing patients insured under the federal health care law, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said they may not be entitled to coverage, because not everyone with a hearing loss is disabled. But the court said Kaiser and other insurers that provide coverage under the 2010 law known as the Affordable Care Act may not design their plans in ways that exclude the disabled. (Egelko, 7/14)

At a time when Georgia hospitals are experiencing huge revenue losses, a west Georgia community hospital system did the unthinkable: It gave back tens of millions in relief money. Tanner Health System returned $62.6 million after it discovered an error in the way the federal government had calculated its distribution under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act. Under the legislation, more than $2 billion has been distributed by the government to thousands of Georgia health care providers to help soften the impact of the pandemic. (Berard, 7/14)

Georgia health officials inked a contract with Piedmont Healthcare to expand the state’s hospital bed capacity as the number of coronavirus cases in the state soars. Gov. Brian Kemp’s office said the contract will add at least 62 beds at the hospital’s main building at the Buckhead campus and, potentially, another 40 or so beds in the new Marcus Tower, which was opened four months ahead of schedule. (Bluestein, 7/14)

The median in-network commercial charge for COVID-19 hospitalizations ranged from $34,662 for the 23 to 30 age group to $45,683 for the 51 to 60 age group, new data show. The 51 to 60 age group was the most expensive to treat as well as the most common to be hospitalized for COVID-19, accounting for nearly 30% of related hospitalizations, according to an analysis of commercial claims from January through May by not-for-profit research firm Fair Health. Although, the age distribution may be in flux, researchers said, pointing to recent reports indicating that the average age of new COVID-19 cases dropped by about 15 years. (Kacik, 7/14)

In the first four months of COVID-19 when Georgia saw more than 84,000 confirmed cases and nearly 3,000 deaths, journalists, advocates and lawyers submitted more than 40 records requests for emails about the Department of Public Health’s response to the pandemic. The requesters sought emails regarding the state’s allocation of resources, Gov. Brian Kemp’s April remarks about asymptomatic transmission of COVID-19, correspondence with corporate leaders and information that guided the state’s reopening. (Blau, 7/14)

The co-director of President Trump’s Operation Warp Speed can maintain extensive investments in the drug industry and avoid ethics disclosures while he continues to make decisions about government contracts for promising coronavirus vaccines under a decision this week by the Health and Human Services inspector general. Monday’s ruling by the Office of Inspector General came in response to a complaint filed by the advocacy groups Public Citizen and Lower Drug Prices Now. The groups said the Trump administration has carved out an improper exception to federal conflict of interest rules for Moncef Slaoui, a venture capital executive and former high-ranking official at drug giant GlaxoSmithKline. (Rowland, 7/14)

In a matter of weeks, McKinsey had extracted a total of $40.6 million in no-bid contracts out of its initial agreement with one federal agency. The firm has continued to scoop up COVID-19-related contracts for various governments since then. Altogether, in the four months since the pandemic started, the firm has been awarded work for state, city and federal agencies worth well over $100 million — and counting. (MacDougall, 7/15)

Some of the pharmaceutical companies developing Covid-19 vaccine candidates have pledged to not take a profit. But neither the companies nor the U.S. government bankrolling a great deal of the vaccine research has defined precisely what forgoing a profit means or how long that will last. And that’s feeding skepticism and uncertainty among industry watchers and doubts in Congress about who will end up paying what could be a very large tab. “A drug company’s claim that it’s providing a vaccine at cost should be viewed with the same skepticism as that by a used car salesperson,” Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), a leading critic of the industry in Congress, told POLITICO in an email. (Brennan, 7/13)

When the United States began shutting down this spring, a virus that emerged months earlier as a mysterious outbreak in a Chinese provincial capital had infected a total of fewer than 200,000 people worldwide. So far this week, the planet has added an average of more than 200,000 cases every day. The novel coronavirus — once concentrated in specific cities or countries — has now crept into virtually every corner of the globe and is wreaking havoc in multiple major regions at once. (Witte, Sheridan, Slater and Sly, 7/14)

In early May, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said at a committee hearing that the U.S. “ought to look at the Swedish approach.” The Swedish approach was to largely allow businesses to remain open. And at first, it seemed to work, with a death count nowhere near what it was in countries such as Italy, Spain, and the U.K. But even as Sweden was being hailed as a model, its cases were steadily rising, and its death rate now exceeds that of the U.S. Sweden also did not seem to stave off the economic damage it was aiming to avoid. (Begley and Joseph, 7/15)

Janet Cavanagh, whose electric bike tour company offers a guided glimpse of western Ireland’s windswept landscape, saw her business come to a swift halt — along with nearly everything else — as the coronavirus pandemic forced the country into lockdown. She recently reopened her doors, eager to restart business and make up for lost time as restrictions eased. (Specia, 7/14)

South Africa on Tuesday surpassed the U.K. in its number of confirmed coronavirus cases as the country’s president warns of “the gravest crisis in the history of our democracy.” South Africa now has the world’s eighth-highest number of cases at 298,292, which represents nearly half of all the confirmed cases on the African continent. That’s according to a Health Ministry statement and data compiled by Johns Hopkins University researchers, which showed the U.K. with 292,931 confirmed cases. (Anna, 7/15)

On Sunday, a top cabinet minister in charge of pandemic response said wearing masks was "good manners" but completely optional. On Monday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said face coverings were just a bit of "extra insurance." On Tuesday, the British government announced that masks would be mandatory in all shops — and shirkers could be fined $125. That sort of no-maybe-yes messaging has been typical of the Johnson government’s pandemic response. Johnson and his ministers say they follow their science advisers and take each step as necessary. But critics say the waffling may have been especially unhelpful in the case of face coverings — which have been supported by numerous studies on controlling spread of the novel coronavirus. (Adam and Booth, 7/14)

Health experts put Tokyo on the highest alert for coronavirus infections on Wednesday, alarmed by a recent spike in cases to record levels, while the governor of the Japanese capital said the situation was “rather severe." The resurgence of the virus in Tokyo could add to the growing pressure on policymakers to shore up the world’s No.3 economy, which analysts say is set to shrink at its fastest pace in decades this fiscal year due to the pandemic. (Park and Kim, 7/14)

However, a recent spike in cases in Tokyo is due to a failure to stick to guidelines to prevent contagion, he said. A physician who served as a science adviser to the Japanese cabinet from 2006-2008, Kurokawa also headed an independent probe into the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. Currently, he is advising the government on the coronavirus pandemic. “I think the virus is mutating all the time ... it may be a much stronger virus that triggers a second wave,” Kurokawa told Reuters. “The Olympics may be postponed again, but I can’t predict.” (Sieg and Swift, 7/15)

The Democratic Republic of Congo has given copper and cobalt mining companies a month to stop confining workers on site away from their families as part of COVID-19 restrictions and return to normal operations, the labour minister said in an open letter. Workers have been told by managers to either stay and work or lose their jobs, civil society organisations said last month, citing miners and union representatives and demanding an end to the approach. (7/14)

Indonesia reported 87 new coronavirus deaths on Wednesday, its biggest daily jump, bringing the total number of fatalities to 3,797, its health ministry said. Indonesia also reported 1,522 new coronavirus infections, taking the overall tally to 80,094 cases, ministry official Achmad Yurianto told a televised news briefing. (7/15)

Facing a worsening economic crisis and with little chance of Western or oil-rich Arab countries providing assistance without substantial reforms, Lebanon’s cash-strapped government is looking east, hoping to secure investments from China that could bring relief. But help from Beijing risks alienating the United States, which has suggested such a move could come at the cost of Lebanese-U.S. ties. (Mroue, 7/15)

A 15-year-old boy has died in western Mongolia of bubonic plague, the country’s national news agency reported. The Health Ministry said laboratory tests confirmed the teenager died of plague that he contracted from an infected marmot, according to the Montsame News Agency. The case prompted the government to impose a quarantine on a portion of the province of Gobi-Altai. Montsame said 15 people who had contact with the boy were isolated. (7/15)

AstraZeneca Plc and Merck & Co Inc said on Wednesday their blockbuster cancer treatment Lynparza won approval in the European Union for treating patients with a form of pancreatic cancer. The approval was based on results from a late-stage trial in which Lynparza nearly doubled the lifespan of patients without disease progression or death when compared with placebo. (7/8)

Aspen has offered to cut prices by an average of 73% for six off-patent cancer drugs, EU antitrust regulators said on Tuesday, a move that could help the South African pharmaceutical company avoid a potentially hefty fine. The European Commission opened an investigation into Aspen in 2017 following concerns it may have charged excessive prices for drugs critical in treating patients suffering from certain types of life-threatening cancer, such as leukaemia and multiple myeloma. (Chee, 7/14)

In another sign of its renewed emphasis on cancer, Sanofi (SNY) said Tuesday it will partner with the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center to speed oncology research and testing of its experimental cancer drugs. The five-year alliance, whose contractual details were not disclosed by the French pharmaceutical company or the Houston academic medical center, will bring together MD Anderson’s clinical trial system with Sanofi’s pipeline of potential cancer treatments. (Cooney, 7/14)

Roche has struck a $1.7 billion cancer drug pact with Blueprint Medicines, it said Tuesday, as advances in genetic testing for rare mutations drive lucrative deals for expensive treatments. The Swiss drugmaker will pay $675 million in cash and make a $100 million equity investment in Blueprint for rights to pralsetinib, which could gain U.S. approval against so-called RET-altered non-small cell lung cancer in November. (Miller, 7/14)

The Ohio Attorney General has filed a lawsuit alleging Express Scripts overcharged a state pension plan for generic drugs and “silently” pocketed millions of dollars, the second time in two years the state has accused a big pharmacy benefit manager of overcharging for medicines. Specifically, Express Scripts failed to satisfy pricing guarantees in a contract with the Ohio State Highway Patrol Retirement System and “repeatedly misclassified” generic drugs as brand-name medicines. (Silverman, 7/14)

A former Sun Pharmaceutical sales rep filed a lawsuit arguing she was fired from her job after complaining that a district manager improperly distributed samples to physicians, the latest instance in which the drug maker has allegedly run afoul of laws governing product sampling. In her lawsuit, Jeannine Umpleby claimed that, after moving last year from one territory to another in the Cleveland area, she received a call from a physician’s office saying a district manager unexpectedly shipped samples of a medicine. Since federal law stipulates that samples may only be sent in response to a written notice from a physician, Umpleby reported the incident to her supervisor. (Silverman, 7/14)

It is rare to have a conversation in Nigeria about the problem of falsified medicine without a mention of the My Pikin syrup tragedy. In 2009, 84 children were killed by a batch of teething syrup that contained diethylene glycol, an industrial solvent and ingredient found in antifreeze and brake fluid. Two employees from the company which made the syrup were found guilty by a court. (Hooper, 7/14)

A Democratic TV ad attacks Sen. Susan Collins for voting twice “to allow drug companies to keep cheaper generic drugs off the market,” but omits the fact that Collins has supported bills intended to increase generic-drug competition and lower prescription costs. Collins, for example, is a co-sponsor of the Preserve Access to Affordable Generics and Biosimilars Act of 2019. She also supports and contributed to the Lower Health Care Costs Act of 2019, which seeks, in part, to prevent the blocking of more generic drugs from the marketplace. (Gore, 7/9)

For months, hospitals have suffered the consequences of the country’s pandemic blunders. Intensive-care units have overflowed. Medical staff have struggled to get personal protective equipment, and have worked beyond exhaustion. It seems unfair to ask them to make up for another government misstep. But U.S. hospitals need to band together to run a clinical trial of the Covid-19 treatment remdesivir, even though the Trump administration has already decided the drug is what all hospitals should be using, going so far as to corner the worldwide market for it. (Peter Bach, 7/13)

We’re all in this together, or so we are often told when it comes to the coronavirus crisis. If it applies to wearing masks in public and keeping socially distant, it has to apply to a lifesaving medical treatment for COVID-19 as well. That means that remdesivir, the promising anti-viral drug with the recently released eye-popping price tag of about $3,000 a course, has to be accessible for everyone. (7/3)

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has refused to hold a vote on multiple bills to lower prescription drug costs even as prices continue to increase. Since July 1, 42 medications have increased in cost by an average of 3.5%, according to GoodRx, including drugs to treat asthma, diabetes, and high blood pressure. (Dan Desai Martin, 7/13)

Seniors’ access to affordable prescription drugs remains hotly debated in Congress and an issue of high interest in Mesa, home to many aging adults and the district I represent at the Arizona state House. Back in 2003, President Bush and the U.S. Congress found an innovative way to add a Prescription Drug Benefit to Medicare. It is known as Medicare Part D. (Michelle Udall, 7/6)

If it wasn’t already clear that the U.S. does a poor job of investing in things that keep people healthy, the coronavirus crisis and its disproportionate effects on people of color has made this abundantly clear — even though we spend more per capita on health care than any other nation. If we could tie more of that investment to low-cost preventive services that deliver positive health outcomes, we could keep more people healthy in “normal” times as well as during a pandemic. (Eric Letsinger and Alison Rein, 7/15)

The End of Life Option Act was terribly controversial as it worked its way through the California Legislature. But since it became law in 2016, it has not led to the horror scenarios opponents had conjured, and newly released statistics suggest that it has enabled more than 1,200 terminally ill people to end their lives on their own terms with dignity and a minimum of pain and suffering.In fact, the law — under which terminally ill people with six months or less to live may request drugs from a doctor to end their lives — has been so successful that it’s time to do the unthinkable by loosening and expanding it. That includes streamlining some unnecessary regulatory roadblocks and passing similar laws in the 41 states that currently don’t have them. And I’d go even beyond that. I believe that we should make more people eligible to participate in what’s come to be known as “aid in dying,” if they choose to. Alzheimer’s patients and others facing dementia seem like an obvious place to start, although policymakers also could consider people with certain degenerative diseases or those living in chronic pain, even if they aren’t within six months of death. (Nicholas Goldberg, 7/15)

Vigilance is a necessity in the investigation of every hanging. Recently, protesters called for an investigation of the death of Titi Gurley, also known as Tete, a 31-year-old Black transgender woman who was found hanging in Portland, Ore., on May 27, 2019. Her death was ruled a suicide. There is evidence that suggests otherwise. We need answers, particularly when the American Medical Association declared violence against transgender people — which disproportionately affects Black trans women — as an epidemic. (Jeneé Osterheldt, 7/13))

As the Covid-19 pandemic reshapes how medicine is practiced in the U.S., one iconic tool could be relegated to the dustbin of medical history: the stethoscope... We are entering the era of point-of-care ultrasound, which relies on higher-frequency sound waves than its stethoscope predecessor. It is a hand-held device equipped with the ability to both emit sound waves and interpret them as they reflect off structures of interest, similar to how a bat uses sonar to navigate its surroundings. (Larry Istrail, 7/15)

As Americans tried to sleep Monday night — through a global pandemic, an imploding economy, and the challenge presented by structural racism and police violence in the Black community — their federal government was hard at work. The Department of Justice kept federal judges in courts, slashing through the remaining obstacles to resuming federal executions after a nearly 20-year hiatus. (David Cole, 7/15)

Health care policy can be simplified to answering the basic question of who gets covered and at what cost. Universal coverage was once championed only by the most progressive. Then came COVID-19. (Dr. Li Tso, 7/14)

So long as California law tethers nurse practitioners to physicians, fewer can serve rural populations.A proven solution and a step toward addressing these problems is expanding nurse practitioners’ scope of practice to the level of their training, as Assembly Bill 890, now pending in the state Senate, would do. (Kathryn Hallstein, 7/10)

California Gov. Gavin Newsom pressed the panic button on Monday and locked down his state again. The causes of California’s Covid-19 “surge” are complex as they are elsewhere, but most areas have ample hospital capacity. Mr. Newsom and other politicians will do more long-term harm to their citizens if they sedate the economy whenever and wherever there’s a flare-up. Mr. Newsom was the first Governor to impose a statewide shelter in place order, though to his credit he allowed counties to begin to reopen in early May. Santa Clara and San Francisco counties have kept restaurants, bars and salons closed, but they have nonetheless experienced a surge in cases and hospitalizations like other areas of the state. (7/14)

The renewed shutdowns and restrictions ordered by Gov. Gavin Newsom this week may not be as far reaching as the March stay-at-home measures, but they will be no less devastating to a state still reeling from the first round of pandemic closures. Nevertheless, Newsom took the correct approach for the moment. Who’s to blame for our retreat back into lockdown? Everyone and no one, perhaps. With the benefit of hindsight, we can now say that allowing hot spots like Los Angeles to reopen in May wasn’t a good idea, especially because it suggested to a public desperate for release that the coronavirus was in retreat and we could start getting back to normal. It wasn’t, and our collective complacency paved the way for a resurgence of COVID-19. (7/15)

When you mix science and politics, you get politics. With the coronavirus, the United States has proved politics hasn’t worked. If we are to fully reopen both the economy and schools safely — which can be done — we have to return to science. To understand just how bad things are in the United States and, more important, what can be done about it requires comparison. At this writing, Italy, once the poster child of coronavirus devastation and with a population twice that of Texas, has recently averaged about 200 new cases a day when Texas has had over 9,000. Germany, with a population four times that of Florida, has had fewer than 400 new cases a day. On Sunday, Florida reported over 15,300, the highest single-day total of any state. The White House says the country has to learn to live with the virus. (John M. Barry, 7/14)

Dallas County’s decision this week to seize control of COVID-19 testing from the federal government simply had to happen. As Commissioner John Wiley Price correctly pointed out, it was untenable to have separate and unequal test result returns between a county-contracted testing site in Irving and a federally- controlled site at Ellis Davis Field in southern Dallas. We know that coronavirus is disparately impacting communities of color. As reporter Dianne Solis noted in a recent story, ZIP code 75211 in south Oak Cliff is the hardest hit area of Dallas for active COVID cases. Sixty percent of infections in the county are among Latinos. Black and Asian residents also have elevated infection rates compared with white residents. (7/15)

Thank you, universe, for Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease specialist. Where would we be in poorly led, COVID-ravaged Florida without Fauci’s consistent advice to take the highly infectious virus seriously? We all would be swimming in the petri dish of ignorance and denial that our mediocre local, state and federal leaders have cultivated by downplaying the dire facts. (Fabiola Santiago, 7/15)

Public health and politics have always been intertwined. Think abortion and reproductive rights. One prominent public health official appears to have managed to untwine the two: Anthony Fauci. (Haider J. Warraich, 7/14)

Rarely has a president shown himself to be so unequal to a tragic national emergency. Hundreds of Americans are dying daily and tens of thousands are getting infected from a once-in-a-century virus. States and cities are closing down again, threatening to trigger a ruinous new economic slump. Doctors and nurses lack sufficient protective gear as they battle the deadly pathogen. And with testing swamped by waves of disease, one top official is warning of the "the most difficult time" ever for US public health this winter. (Stephen Collinson, 7/15)

What do you you tell parents, who look at this, who look at Arizona where a schoolteacher recently died teaching summer school; parents who are worried about the safety of their children in public schools?” That was the question posed Monday to President Trump about teacher Kimberley Chavez Lopez Byrd, who died after contracting covid-19. And — to no great surprise — it went unanswered. No expressions of sympathy for the family. No discussion of steps being taken. No assurances about safeguards being put in place. Mr. Trump instead just doubled down on his insistence schools reopen in the fall. ...We happen to agree with the president about the importance of getting children back into the classroom. ...Unlike the president, though, we don’t think it is sufficient, let alone effective, to make believe the virus isn’t a problem while bullying and threatening states and local school districts to open their doors in August. (7/14)

Reopening public schools has moved—appropriately—to the center of national debate. U.S. public education from pre-K through 12th grade is a $680 billion yearly enterprise, involving about 51 million students and more than six million teachers and support staff, not to mention tens of millions of parents. If schools don’t reopen this fall, students will suffer, parents will face difficult choices, and the economic recovery will be hobbled. But if schools are reopened hastily, without adequate preparation, the public-health consequences will be dire. (William A. Galston, 7/14)

As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is exploring race as a factor for consideration in the prioritization of COVID-19 vaccination receipt, the agency must use lessons from its own past to help guide communication efforts. In 2001 when letters containing anthrax were mailed to Sens. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), two vastly different populations were affected in Washington, DC — Brentwood Post office employees, who were predominately Black, and Hart Senate Office staff, who were mostly white. (Dr. Janice Blanchard, 7/14)

No one could level an accusation of complacency at Kanakuk Kamps, a network of Christian camps in Missouri that posted a 31-point program of pandemic precautions as summer approached. Despite those preparations, one of its camps, for teenagers, was hit by a major outbreak last month. That failure, and others like it nationwide, are a warning sign for schools and colleges that hope to reopen this fall. As we’ve said, there are excellent reasons for schools to do everything possible to reopen. The risk-benefit calculation for education is very different than, say, for filling football stadiums. But as Kanakuk’s cautionary tale makes clear, the risks can’t be minimized. (7/14)

In America, you should always get a little suspicious when politicians suddenly start calling you a hero. It’s a well-worn trick; they’re buttering you up before sacrificing you to the gods of unconstrained capitalism and governmental neglect. A few months ago, it was nurses, doctors and other essential workers who were hailed as heroes — a perfectly accurate and heartwarming sentiment, but also one meant to obscure the sorry reality that the world’s richest country was asking health care workers to treat coronavirus patients without providing adequate protective gear. “Please don’t call me a hero,” a nurse in Brooklyn wrote on a protest sign at the time. “I am being martyred against my will.” (Farhad Manjoo, 7/15)