The New York Times: Coronavirus Testing Falls Woefully Short As Trump Seeks To Reopen U.S. 
As President Trump pushes to reopen the economy, most of the country is not conducting nearly enough testing to track the path and penetration of the coronavirus in a way that would allow Americans to safely return to work, public health officials and political leaders say. Although capacity has improved in recent weeks, supply shortages remain crippling, and many regions are still restricting tests to people who meet specific criteria. Antibody tests, which reveal whether someone has ever been infected with the coronavirus, are just starting to be rolled out, and most have not been vetted by the Food and Drug Administration. (Goodnough, Thomas and Kaplan, 4/15)

CNN: Trump Told Testing Is Key To Reopening During Business Panel Call 
In the first phone call convened between President Donald Trump and some members of his newly formed business council, industry leaders reiterated to the President what public health experts and governors have been telling him for weeks: that there would need to be guarantees of ramped-up coronavirus testing before people return to work, according to one person briefed on the discussions. The call, one of a series with various sectors on Wednesday, was the first task force teleconference aimed at devising a strategy for reopening the country. The call lasted for about an hour and had dozens of participants from the banking, food, hospitality and retail sectors, many of whom lauded the President and his administration for their efforts to combat coronavirus and jump-start the economy, this person said. (Salama, Liptak, Alesci and Collins, 4/15)

The New York Times: Trump’s ‘Opening Our Country Council’ Runs Into Its Own Opening Problems
Some business leaders had no idea they were included until they heard that their names had been read in the Rose Garden on Tuesday night by President Trump. Some of those who had agreed to help said they received little information on what, exactly, they were signing up for. And others who were willing to connect with the White House could not participate in hastily organized conference calls on Wednesday because of scheduling conflicts and technical difficulties. (Karni, Kelly and Gelles, 4/15)

The Washington Post: Trump Attempt To Enlist Businesses In Reopening Push Gets Off To Rocky Start
Across the business world, there was private unhappiness with how the White House handled the announcement of the advisory council — which it has dubbed its “Great American Economic Revival Industry Groups” — and others warned that Trump’s goal of a May 1 reopening date for much of the country was unrealistic. Many of the chief executives urged the White House to focus more on mass testing, according to several participants on the calls. (Costa, Parker, Dawsey and Sonmez, 4/15)

The Wall Street Journal: Business Leaders Urge Trump To Dramatically Increase Coronavirus Testing
In some cases, CEOs had been approached about getting on a call with the president and agreed, but had not been warned he would be announcing that they were on the task force. Some of those CEOs have already “delegated it downward”—meaning any participation will be from government affairs people, not the executives themselves, according to the representative. The purpose of the task force is twofold, according to White House officials: to solicit recommendations for how to open up parts of the U.S. economy and to respond to the economic damage already being inflicted by the outbreak. (Bender and Restuccia, 4/15)

The Hill: Senate Democrats Unveil Plan To Ramp Up Coronavirus Testing That Includes $30 Billion In Emergency Funding
Senate Democratic leadership rolled out a proposal on Wednesday to ramp up nationwide coronavirus testing, which public health officials have said will be key to lifting social distancing measures. The plan — unveiled by Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and other members of leadership — would provide $30 billion in emergency funding to increase testing and build out a structure for administering tests across the country. (Carney, 4/15)

The Hill: GOP Chairman Warns: Without More Coronavirus Testing, Hard To Go Back To Work, School
Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) warned on Wednesday that without an increase in coronavirus testing it would be difficult to start reopening the country, something President Trump has signaled he hopes happens soon. “Without more tests with quick results, it will be difficult to contain this disease and give Americans confidence to go back to work and back to school," Alexander, who chairs the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said in a statement. (Carney, 4/15)

More stories of ongoing testing troubles are reported —

The Hill: Lack Of Testing Supplies An Obstacle To Reopening Economy, Officials Say 
A lack of supplies like swabs and chemicals is a major obstacle to expanding COVID-19 testing in the U.S. and eventually reopening parts of the economy, health officials and governors said Wednesday. The pandemic has stressed the supply chains for items needed to collect and process patient samples, delaying results and making it impossible to determine how many Americans have the virus. (Hellmann, 4/15)

CNN: Decision To Ease Coronavirus Shutdowns Will Come Down To One Key Thing, State Officials Say
State officials struggling with how to ease coronavirus shutdowns without setting off another deadly wave of infections say the decision will come down to testing capabilities. More than 630,000 people have tested positive in the US with at least 30,844 deaths linked to the virus, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. About 15% of those deaths -- 4,811 -- were reported Wednesday alone. (Karimi and Almasy, 4/16)

The Associated Press: Trump Looks To Ease Distancing In Places; CEOs Urge Caution
President Donald Trump said Wednesday he’s prepared to announce new guidelines allowing some states to quickly ease up on social distancing even as business leaders told him they need more coronavirus testing and personal protective equipment before people can safely go back to work. The industry executives cautioned Trump that the return to normalcy will be anything but swift. (Miller, Madhani and Freking, 4/16)

The Hill: Trump Says White House To Release Guidelines On Relaxing Social Distancing On Thursday 
The decision on what individual states do, however, will fall to governors across the country. “The battle continues but the data suggests that nationwide we have passed the peak on new cases,” Trump said at a news conference in the White House Rose Garden. (Chalfant, 4/15)

NBC News: White House Draft Plan To Reopen Economy Would Advise Some Areas To Lift Restrictions After May 1
Regions that can be the first to renew economic activity should have "limited transmission, ample public health and health system capacity," and they should be prepared to monitor the situation closely for a resurgence of infections, according to the 10-page document circulated to a new task force and shared with NBC News. The plan stopped short of giving specific metrics for how communities would know whether or when they fall into that category. Areas identified as recovering hot spots, where the virus is circulating but contained, would likely have to wait until June to start bringing industries back online in phases, with child care facilities and schools among the first facilities to reopen so parents can return to work, the plan said.(Pettypiece, 4/15)

The Associated Press: Powerful GOP Allies Propel Trump Effort To Reopen Economy
Leading Republicans say the coronavirus shutdown cannot go on. Car-honking activists swarmed a statehouse Wednesday to protest stay-home restrictions. Capitol Hill staff are quietly drafting bills to undo the just-passed rescue aid and push Americans back to work. Behind President Donald Trump’s effort to accelerate re-opening the U.S. economy during the pandemic is a contingent of GOP allies eager to have his back. (Mascaro, 4/16)

The Washington Post: Worldwide Coronavirus Infections Surge Past 2 Million, U.S. Deaths Top 28,000
Even on a day that recorded more than 2,400 American deaths, the highest one-day total so far, leaders in Washington and around the country continued to grapple with how and when the country might begin to emerge from a lockdown that has crippled the economy and harmed millions of workers. “The data suggests that nationwide, we have passed the peak on new cases,” President Trump said late Wednesday at the White House, making his latest pitch for why portions of the country should soon begin the trek toward normalcy. (Dennis, 4/15)

NPR: To Safely Ease Social Distancing, U.S. Needs To Tackle These 5 Obstacles
First things first: it's not yet time to end social distancing and go back to work and church and concerts and handshakes. Public health experts say social distancing appears to be working, and letting up these measures too soon could be disastrous. Until there is a sustained reduction in new cases — and the coronavirus' spread is clearly slowing — we need to stay the course. (Simmons-Duffin and Aubrey, 4/16)

PBS NewsHour: As U.S. Death Toll Climbs, Trump Says Working Groups Are Planning Economic Resurgence 
The U.S. death toll from novel coronavirus is approaching 30,000. Though President Trump is eager to lift the restrictions prompted by the pandemic and “reopen” the economy, other leaders continue to express concern that doing so would undermine efforts to contain the virus. Trump is also battling with the World Health Organization over their initial response to the outbreak. (Yang, 4/15)

The New York Times: Trump Threatens To Adjourn Congress To Install Nominees. McConnell Demurs.
President Trump, furious over government vacancies he said were hindering his administration’s coronavirus response, threatened on Wednesday to invoke a never-before-used presidential power to adjourn Congress so he could fill the positions temporarily himself. The top Senate Republican, Senator Mitch McConnell, quickly let it be known that would not happen. Days after insisting he had “total” authority to supersede governors’ decisions about whether to reopen their states, Mr. Trump floated the unprecedented step during a White House news conference as he lashed out at Democrats for opposing his nominees. (Fandos, 4/15)

The Wall Street Journal: Trump Threatens To Adjourn Congress Over Nominees
The president acknowledged that the effort would likely result in a legal challenge. “We’ll see who wins,” he said. While Mr. Trump complained about stalled nominees, he hasn’t announced nominees for 150 of the 749 key positions requiring Senate confirmation that are tracked in a database maintained by The Washington Post and the Partnership for Public Service. In all, the Senate has confirmed 510 nominees tracked by the groups. The president has argued that some positions aren’t necessary and that he isn’t announcing nominees for every job because he thinks they’ll just get held up in the Senate. (Restuccia and Leary, 4/15)

The Associated Press: Trump Threatens To Bypass Senate Rules On Nominees
In recent years, Congress has refused to fully adjourn during most breaks precisely to prevent the president from making recess appointments. Little or no business is conducted in such “pro-forma sessions,” but they give members of both chambers of Congress the chance to go back home without going into recess. It’s a process lawmakers also employed to thwart President Barack Obama’s nominees. (Freking and Mascaro, 4/16)

Reuters: Trump Threatens To Adjourn U.S. Congress Over 'Scam' Preventing Appointments 
“The current practice of leaving town, while conducting phony pro forma sessions, is a dereliction of duty that the American people cannot afford during this crisis,” an angry Trump told reporters at his daily White House briefing on the coronavirus crisis. “It is a scam that they do. It’s a scam and everyone knows it, and it’s been that way for a long time,” Trump said. (Holland and Zengerle, 4/15)

The Washington Post: Trump Threatens To Adjourn Congress To Get His Nominees But Likely Would Be Impeded By Senate Rules
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) spoke to Trump on Wednesday, but signaled that he wasn’t on board with the president’s plan. Any attempt to formally adjourn the Senate would require all 100 senators traveling back to Washington for such a vote — which McConnell and Senate leaders have deemed an unsafe move at this point. “The leader pledged to find ways to confirm nominees considered mission-critical to the covid-19 pandemic, but under Senate rules that will take consent from Leader Schumer,” said a McConnell spokesman, referring to Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.). (Itkowitz and DeBonis, 4/15)

The New York Times: W.H.O., Now Trump’s Scapegoat, Warned About Coronavirus Early And Often
On Jan. 22, two days after Chinese officials first acknowledged the serious threat posed by the new virus ravaging the city of Wuhan, the chief of the World Health Organization held the first of what would be months of almost daily media briefings, sounding the alarm, telling the world to take the outbreak seriously. But with its officials divided, the W.H.O., still seeing no evidence of sustained spread of the virus outside of China, declined the next day to declare a global public health emergency. A week later, the organization reversed course and made the declaration. (Perez-Pena and McNeil, 4/16)

The Washington Post: Trump’s Move Against The World Health Organization Is Latest Twist In A Shifting Policy On China 
Having already heaped blame on China for its role in the covid-19 outbreak, President Trump and his allies opened a new front in the campaign this week by targeting the World Health Organization, calling the institution complicit in Beijing’s coverup of the breadth and severity of the pandemic. Critics contend that the White House is employing a cynical strategy, in the middle of a global health and economic crisis, to deflect culpability over Trump’s own mishandling of the U.S. response to the novel coronavirus and create another foil to rally his conservative base ahead of the 2020 presidential election. (Nakamura, Gearan and Dawsey, 4/15)

The New York Times: Urged On By Conservatives And His Own Advisers, Trump Targeted The W.H.O.
Fox News pundits and Republican lawmakers have raged for weeks at the World Health Organization for praising China’s handling of the coronavirus crisis. On his podcast, President Trump’s former chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, urged his former boss to stop funding the W.H.O., citing its ties to the “Chinese Communist Party.” And inside the West Wing, the president found little resistance among the China skeptics in his administration for lashing out at the W.H.O. and essentially trying to shift the blame for his own failure to aggressively confront the spread of the virus by accusing the world’s premier global health group of covering up for the country where it started. (Shear, 4/15)

ProPublica: Trump Administration Officials Warned Against Halting Funding To WHO, Leaked Memo Shows
An internal memorandum written by U.S. officials and addressed to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warns that cutting funding to the World Health Organization, as President Donald Trump said he would do Tuesday, would erode America’s global standing, threaten U.S. lives and hobble global efforts to combat the coronavirus pandemic. The memo, which was prepared before Trump’s Rose Garden announcement, was written by officials within the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs and includes a detailed list of how U.S. funding to the WHO helps countries in the Middle East control the pandemic. (Torbati, 4/15)

ABC News: Birx, Like Trump, Suggests China Or WHO Warned Late About Human-To-Human Transmission, Says Actions Need To Be Examined 'Once This Is Over' 
A day after President Donald Trump said he was putting a hold on U.S. funding for the World Health Organization amid the ongoing pandemic, White House coronavirus response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx echoed the president, saying that "someone had to have known" that human transmission was happening, whether China or the WHO, and signaled many lives could have been saved it been known earlier. "I think once this is over, we'll be able to look back and see, 'did China and the WHO say and do everything to alert the rest of the world to the nuances of this virus' -- because when it first explodes someone had to have known that there was human to human transmission," Birx told co-hosts of ABC's "The View" Wednesday. (Cathey, 4/15)

The New York Times: What Does The World Health Organization Do?
President Trump’s decision to halt funding for the World Health Organization, depriving it of its biggest funding source, could have far-reaching effects in efforts to fight diseases and make health care more widely available across the globe. Mr. Trump’s order centered on the organization’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, and he is far from alone in criticizing its actions and statements. Some countries have disregarded the W.H.O.’s efforts as the epidemic has spread, failing to report outbreaks or flouting international regulations. (Victor and Hauser, 4/15)

Stat: Tedros Says WHO Regrets U.S. Funding Cut But Is Focused On 'Saving Lives'
The head of the World Health Organization on Wednesday expressed “regret” that President Trump intends to cut off U.S. funding to the agency over its handling of the coronavirus, but pointedly avoided criticizing the U.S. move. Instead, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stressed the importance of global unity in the face of the pandemic. (Branswell, 4/15)

The Hill: Pelosi Says Trump Decision On WHO Will Be 'Swiftly Challenged' 
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is vowing to challenge President Trump's decision to halt U.S. funding to the World Health Organization (WHO), a controversial move that comes as the coronavirus outbreak continues to ravage the globe. Pelosi did not provide details Wednesday of how she will respond, but she did make it clear she vehemently disagrees with the president's decision. “This decision is dangerous, illegal and will be swiftly challenged," Pelosi said in a statement. (Beavers, 4/15)

ABC News: Widespread Condemnation Of Trump’s Halt For WHO Funding
President Donald Trump announced he is halting funding to the World Health Organization on Tuesday, accusing the United Nations agency of "severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the novel coronavirus" by "parrot(ing)" Chinese government data and not "call(ing) out China's lack of transparency. "His decision has been roundly criticized by lawmakers who challenge its legality, public health experts who say it undermines the global fight against COVID-19, critics who argue Trump is searching for a scapegoat after he was slow to act and similarly praised China's initial response and even the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a conservative business lobby, which said the timing is wrong. (Finnegan, 4/15)

Politico: 15 Times Trump Praised China As Coronavirus Was Spreading Across The Globe
Trump, however, echoed many of those same assurances regarding China and its response to the virus throughout January and February, as the unique coronavirus began to infiltrate countries around the world. Just days before the U.S. recorded its first death from Covid-19, Trump touted China’s government for its transparency and hard work to defeat the coronavirus that causes the illness. (Ward, 4/15)

NPR: Timeline: How Trump And WHO Reacted At Key Moments During The Coronavirus Crisis
We looked at the public record to see what Trump and the WHO had to say over the past 15 weeks about the coronavirus pandemic. Here's a timeline highlighting key quotes. (Keith and Gharib, 4/15)

The Associated Press: Medical Intelligence Sleuths Tracked, Warned Of New Virus
In late February when President Donald Trump was urging Americans not to panic over the novel coronavirus, alarms were sounding at a little-known intelligence unit situated on a U.S. Army base an hour’s drive north of Washington. Intelligence, science and medical professionals at the National Center for Medical Intelligence were quietly doing what they have done for decades — monitoring and tracking global health threats that could endanger U.S. troops abroad and Americans at home. (Riechmann, 4/16)

Politico: The Virus-Fighting Agency Trump Gutted (It’s Not The WHO)
Donald Trump may be threatening to defund the World Health Organization, the United Nations agency he accuses of “severely mismanaging” the coronavirus epidemic. But diplomats and public health experts at the WHO and elsewhere say the U.S. president has already gutted the agency that has traditionally taken the lead in battling global pandemics: the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Wheaton, Furlong and Kenen, 4/15)

Politico: Trump’s Crisis Troubleshooter Preps For His Toughest Test Yet
On an afternoon in late February, hours after stepping off an overnight flight from India, President Donald Trump huddled with senior aides in the Oval Office to discuss a coronavirus outbreak that was spreading within the U.S. and wrecking a stock-market boom. Trump wanted someone else to steer the administration’s public health response if the virus hit the U.S. hard, but he was unimpressed with the names his aides were tossing out. As they ticked through potential candidates, Trump settled on an easier solution: Mike Pence. (Orr, 4/16)

Politico: White House Snubs Azar, Installs Trump Loyalist Michael Caputo As HHS Spokesperson
The White House is installing Trump campaign veteran Michael Caputo in the health department’s top communications position, Caputo confirmed to POLITICO. The move is designed to assert more White House control over Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, whom officials believe has been behind recent critical reports about President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, according to two officials with knowledge of the move. (Diamond and Lippman, 4/15)

The Hill: Health Experts Pushed To Side At Trump Briefings 
Top public health officials have been pushed to the background at President Trump’s daily coronavirus briefings this week. As the number of cases and deaths from the virus in the U.S. mounts, Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx have been less visible during what have increasingly become Trump-centric briefings in prime time. (Samuels and Chalfant, 4/15)

Politico: Stephen Miller’s Hardline Policies On Refugee Families Make A Comeback At HHS
After the Trump administration abruptly installed a new hardline leader last month, the health department’s refugee office is pushing to implement immigration policies favored by White House senior adviser Stephen Miller, according to four health department officials and internal documents reviewed by POLITICO. The office — which takes custody of thousands of migrant children — is now seeking to delay placing migrant children in shelters operated by the health department, which would instead leave those children in the custody of the border patrol for an extended length of time, according to an internal email sent last week and reviewed by POLITICO. (Diamond, 4/16)

The Associated Press: Justice Dept. Watchdog To Inspect Prisons Amid Virus Spread
The Justice Department’s inspector general will conduct remote inspections of Bureau of Prisons facilities to ensure they are following best practices to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus after hundreds of federal inmates tested positive for the virus. The review, announced Wednesday, comes as the federal prison system struggles with a growing number of coronavirus cases and complaints from inmates, advocacy groups and correction officers about how officials are handling the pandemic among their 122 facilities. (Balsamo, 4/15)

The Wall Street Journal: Justice Department Investigators Inspect Federal Prisons For Coronavirus Containment Procedures
The move announced Wednesday comes amid growing criticism of the federal Bureau of Prisons’ response to the pandemic and as the number of infected inmates and employees continued to rise. At least 451 inmates and 280 staff had tested positive for the virus, and 17 inmates have died, the bureau reported. The department’s inspector general said its investigators would be trying to determine whether federal prisons facilities are “complying with the available guidance and best practices regarding preventing, managing and containing potential Covid-19 outbreaks.” (Gurman, 4/15)

The Hill: DOJ Watchdog To Inspect Federal Prisons After Hundreds Diagnosed With Coronavirus 
Barr asked Inspector General Michael Horowitz to conduct an assessment of the federal prisons that were becoming hot spots and analyze how the department can improve best practices, a person familiar with the matter told the AP, and Barr has continued to consult with Horowitz on the matter in the meantime. The remote inspections will include Bureau of Prisons facilities, halfway houses and prisons with contracts to house federal inmates, all of which will be reviewed for compliance with government guidelines. (Budryk, 4/15)

In other news —

The Washington Post: D.C. Jail Inmates With Coronavirus Barred From Access To Lawyers, Family, Showers And Changes Of Clothing, Inspectors Say
Staff shortages prevent the D.C. jail from keeping inmates six feet apart to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus, with one guard monitoring up to 45 prisoners, court-appointed inspectors told a U.S. judge Wednesday. Painting a squalid if not shocking portrait of sickness behind bars, the inspectors — two veteran D.C. criminal justice experts — said inmates with the virus are isolated and prohibited from showering or cleaning their cells. (Hsu, 4/15)

ABC News: Judge Denies Release Of Rikers Island Inmates Over COVID-19 Concerns
Rikers Island inmates Jagger Freeman and Christopher Ransom, who are charged in connection to the friendly fire death of an NYPD detective, and 19 others were denied requests for their release as the novel coronavirus spreads in one of the largest correctional facilities in the world. Queens Supreme Court Justice Kenneth Holder denied their release on Wednesday, citing the lack of proof that their detention was unconstitutional. Separately, Queens Supreme Court Justice Marcia Hirsch denied Freeman's release on Tuesday. (Carrega, 4/15)

Kaiser Health News: Jails And Prisons Spring Thousands To Prevent Coronavirus Outbreaks
Terry Smith, a 65-year-old Vietnam veteran with PTSD, multiple health issues and a history of homelessness, spent nearly three years in San Francisco County Jail awaiting trial on a burglary charge. The final several weeks were served in the full flush of a burgeoning viral pandemic. He considers himself lucky. (Kreidler, 4/16)

The New York Times: Navy May Reinstate Fired Captain To Command Of Roosevelt 
The Navy is looking into whether it can reinstate Capt. Brett E. Crozier, who was removed from command of the carrier Theodore Roosevelt after he pleaded for more help fighting a novel coronavirus outbreak aboard his ship, Defense Department officials said on Wednesday. Adm. Michael M. Gilday, the chief of naval operations, has indicated that he may reinstate Captain Crozier, who is viewed as a hero by his crew for putting their lives above his career, officials said. “No final decisions have been made,” Cmdr. Nate Christensen, a spokesman for the admiral, said in a statement on Wednesday to The New York Times. (Cooper, Schmitt and Gibbons-Neff, 4/15)

The Wall Street Journal: USS Theodore Roosevelt Outbreak Is Linked To Flight Crews, Not Vietnam Visit
U.S. military officials are increasingly certain that the coronavirus outbreak last month aboard the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt was sparked by the vessel’s flight operations, rather than a result of the ship’s port visit to Vietnam. That view comes as officials work to find the cause of an outbreak that forced the aircraft carrier to interrupt a deployment in Asia and divert to port in Guam, where hundreds of crew members, including its former commander, are in quarantine. (Lubold and Youssef, 4/15)

ABC News: Organizations Supporting Veterans, Troops Making Changes In Response To Coronavirus 
As Americans at home change their lifestyles in the wake of the novel coronavirus, organizations that support veterans and deployed troops are making changes too. "There's a lot of the things that are challenging for our military service members and their families," said Alan Reyes, chief operating officer of the USO. "They're having to deal with this same stressor that we are, on top of already pretty stressful lives where they're far from home or from family, friends and so their disconnection is even more." (Stoddart and Siu, 4/16)

The Washington Post: U.S. Now Has 22 Million Unemployed As Economy Sinks Toward Depression-Like Scenario
More than 22 million Americans have filed for unemployment aid since President Trump declared a national emergency four weeks ago, a staggering loss of jobs that has caused families to flood food banks as they await government help. Last week, 5.2 million people filed unemployment insurance claims in the week ending April 11, the Labor Department reported Thursday, making it among one of the bigger spikes, although smaller than the 6.6 million people who applied the week before and the record 6.9 million people who applied the week that ended on March 28. (Long, 4/16)

The Wall Street Journal: U.S. Jobless Claims Top 20 Million Since Start Of Shutdowns
Thursday’s report also showed 12 million Americans received unemployment payments in the week ended April 4, a new record high. That is up from 7.4 million the prior week, which exceeded the highest level set in the 2007-2009 recession. “It might take until mid-May or longer before we see claims declining” to much lower levels, University of Michigan labor economist Daniil Manaenkov said ahead of the latest data. “It could take until we see the economy partially reopen.” (Morath and Chaney, 4/16)

The New York Times: Live Stock Market Tracker: More Than 5.2 Million File For Unemployment
The latest figure from the Labor Department, reflecting last week’s initial unemployment claims, brings the four-week total to about 22 million, roughly the net number of jobs created in a nine-and-a-half-year stretch that began after the last recession and ended with the pandemic’s arrival. It underscores how the downdraft has spread to every corner of the economy: hotels and restaurants, mass retailers, manufacturers and white-collar strongholds like law firms. “There’s nowhere to hide,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Grant Thornton in Chicago. “This is the deepest, fastest, most broad-based recession we’ve ever seen.” (4/16)

The Associated Press: 5.2 Million More Seek Unemployment Aid Amid Coronavirus
All businesses deemed nonessential have been closed in nearly every state as the economy has virtually shut down. Deep job losses have been inflicted across nearly every industry. Some economists say the unemployment rate could reach as high as 20% in April, which would be the highest rate since the Great Depression of the 1930s. By comparison, unemployment never topped 10% during the Great Recession. Layoffs are spreading beyond service industries like hotels, bars and restaurants, which absorbed the brunt of the initial job cuts, into white-collar professional occupations, including software programmers, construction workers and sales people. (4/16)

Politico: Jobless Claims Reach 22 Million Over Four Weeks
This latest grim picture of the labor market comes as President Donald Trump ramps up pressure on states to reopen the economy. But with the number of confirmed coronavirus cases past 600,000, states are hesitating to move too quickly. (Rainey, 4/16)

CNN: Unemployment Benefits: 22 Million Americans Have Filed For Unemployment Benefits In The Last Four Weeks
Overall, the last four weeks have marked the largest and most dramatic rise in claims on record since the Labor Department started tracking the data in 1967. Other jobs crises have played out far more slowly. In the Great Recession, for example, it took two years for 8.6 million Americans to lose their jobs. (Tappe, 4/16)

NPR: 10 Years Of Spectacular U.S. Job Growth Nearly Wiped Out In 4 Weeks
The dramatic reversal followed a decade of spectacular growth in jobs that brought the unemployment rate to near 50-year lows along with record low jobless rates for blacks and Hispanics. Now the job market is on its knees. (Zarroli and Schneider, 4/16)

The Wall Street Journal: New York City Could See Nearly 500,000 Job Losses From Coronavirus
New York City faces its worst fiscal crisis since the 1970s because of the coronavirus pandemic, with massive job losses and an estimated $9.7 billion decrease in the city’s tax revenue over the next two fiscal years, according to a report released Wednesday. The city’s Independent Budget Office estimated in the report that 475,000 jobs could vanish by March of next year, including 100,000 retail jobs, 86,000 jobs in hotels and restaurants, as well as a combined 26,000 jobs in the arts, entertainment and recreation industries. (Vielkind, 4/15)

NPR: Unemployment Money Not Reaching Millions Of People Who Applied
About 17 million people have applied for unemployment benefits in the U.S. in recent weeks. It's an astonishing number that's nearly 10 times what the system has ever handled so quickly. But, by one estimate, that money is still not flowing to about half of those people who desperately need it. And others are only getting a trickle of what they should be receiving. Many people have been out of a job for a month now. That's a long time to be without your income in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. (Arnold, 4/15)

Cincinnati Enquirer: Ohio Leaders: Unemployment Compensation Fund Will Be Insolvent In June
Ohio’s unemployment compensation fund wasn’t in great shape before the novel coronavirus. Now, state leaders estimate it will be insolvent sometime in June. That means Ohio will have a choice: borrow money from the federal government, add fees to employers or limit employees’ benefits going forward. “There are a variety of ways you can go about addressing it,” Lt. Gov. Jon Husted said Wednesday. (Borchardt and Balmert, 4/15)

Stateline: Your Unemployment Call Could Be Answered By The National Guard 
As stay-at-home orders spread to once-resistant states in the South, unemployment numbers are surging and state systems to handle the jobless claims are overwhelmed, keeping desperately needed checks out of the hands of sidelined workers. In Florida, state Sen. Annette Taddeo said, “$275 a week may not be a lot, but for the people who need it, it means food on the table, medicine, paying the rent.” Hundreds of her jobless constituents in the Miami suburbs lined up for six hours last week at a Kendall megachurch for emergency food packages. (Henderson, 4/16)

The New York Times: It’s The End Of The World Economy As We Know It 
When big convulsive economic events happen, the implications tend to take years to play out, and spiral in unpredictable directions. Who would have thought that a crisis that began with mortgage defaults in American suburbs in 2007 would lead to a fiscal crisis in Greece in 2010? Or that a stock market crash in New York in 1929 would contribute to the rise of fascists in Europe in the 1930s? (Irwin, 4/16)

The Wall Street Journal: Coronavirus Closures Froze Swaths Of U.S. Economy In March
Large chunks of the U.S. economy froze in March as the coronavirus pandemic closed malls, restaurants, factories and mines, causing Americans to cut retail spending by a record amount and the country’s industrial output to plunge at the steepest rate in more than 70 years. Retail sales, a measure of purchases at stores, gasoline stations, restaurants, bars and online, fell by a seasonally adjusted 8.7% in March from a month earlier, the biggest month-over-month decline since the records began in 1992, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. Sales at clothing stores plunged by more than 50%, while spending on motor vehicles, furniture, electronics and sporting goods fell by double digits. (Torry and Nassauer, 4/15)

ProPublica: Despite Federal Ban, Landlords Are Still Moving to Evict People During the Pandemic
Landlords in at least four states have violated the eviction ban passed by Congress last month, a review of records shows, moving to throw more than a hundred people out of their homes. In an effort to help renters amid the coronavirus pandemic and skyrocketing unemployment, the March 27 CARES Act banned eviction filings for all federally backed rental units nationwide, more than a quarter of the total. (Ernsthausen, Simani and Elliott, 4/16)

The New York Times: Coronavirus Small-Business Loans Run Dry As Program Fails To Reach Hardest Hit
A new federal program to help small businesses weather the coronavirus pandemic is running out of money and falling short in the industries and states most battered by the crisis, risking waves of bankruptcies and millions of additional unemployed workers. Funding for the Paycheck Protection Program, an initiative created by the $2.2 trillion stimulus law enacted last month, could be exhausted as early as Wednesday night, meaning that the Small Business Administration would have to stop approving applications. As of Wednesday evening, more than 1.4 million loans had been approved at a value of more than $315 billion, according to the Small Business Administration. (Tankersley, Cochrane Flitter, 4/15)

The Wall Street Journal: Small-Business Aid Program Set To Run Out Of Money
The Paycheck Protection Program was on track to exhaust most of its initial allocation of $350 billion in the early morning hours Thursday, with the Small Business Administration saying it had approved more than 1.5 million loans valued at more than $324 billion as of late Wednesday and loans were continuing to be processed. The fund needs about $10 billion to cover processing and fees, Senate Small Business Committee Chairman Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) said on Twitter. (Peterson, 4/15)

Politico: Small Business Loan Funds Nearly Depleted With Congress Deadlocked
As of 9 p.m., the SBA reported that 1.5 million applications had been approved for more than $324 billion. In a message obtained by POLITICO, the agency began to warn banks Wednesday that lenders would no longer be able to load loan requests into the SBA's systems and that the agency would not accept applications for new lenders to participate in the program. The program neared its limit after Republicans and Democrats failed to reach a deal on a $250 billion funding increase requested by the Trump administration. (Warmbrodt, 4/16)

The Wall Street Journal: Small-Business Aid Package Excludes Many Franchises In Coronavirus Crisis
Franchise companies that collectively provide jobs for hundreds of thousands of workers across the country are locked out of stimulus funding linked to the coronavirus pandemic because of how the Small Business Administration is interpreting the congressional relief package’s rules. The affected businesses include commercial cleaners, home-repair companies, salons and other franchise operations that the SBA says aren’t eligible for Payroll Protection Program loans in Congress’s Cares Act because of the way the franchises are structured or operate. (Bykowicz, 4/16)

CNN: Scramble Among Businesses For Coronavirus Stimulus Loans Spills Into Court 
Some businesses unable to access stimulus loans may have to keep waiting. A federal judge allowed Bank of America this week to continue its process of doling out coronavirus relief loans to its existing customers before other applicants, in one of the first notable court cases to interpret the $2 trillion stimulus bill passed by Congress last month. (Polantz, 4/15)

The Hill: Democratic Rep Pushes For Eligibility For Coronavirus Lending Programs To Be Extended To Chambers Of Commerce 
Rep. Chris Pappas (D-N.H.) is calling for federal assistance to be made available to local chambers of commerce, arguing that helping chambers remain financially solvent amid the coronavirus pandemic will play a critical role in helping businesses get back on their feet. While the third coronavirus relief package passed by Congress last month allocated $350 billion toward the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) — which provides loans and grants to small businesses struggling with the financial fallout caused by the virus — chambers of commerce are ineligible for the program. (Brufke, 4/15)

NPR: Counties Hit By Falling Tax Revenues Seek More Federal Help
County leaders across the country are asking the federal government for more emergency aid money as they watch tax revenues sink because of the coronavirus shutdown. The federal CARES Act passed last month includes $150 billion in direct aid to states and cities, with some caveats. Local governments with populations above 500,000 people get the money directly. (Allen, 4/15)

NPR: Congress' Last Effort To Rescue Economy Has Parallels To Coronavirus Crisis
When Congress voted last month to approve the largest legislative package in modern history most lawmakers were already saying that the $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief bill wouldn't be enough to save the economy. Now, less than three weeks later, talks are stalled over a White House request to refill the nearly empty coffers of the small business loan program. Democrats and Republicans are sparring over when and how to pass the money they all agree must be spent. (Snell, 4/16)

Meanwhile —

Modern Healthcare: CARES Act Direct Deposits Surprise, Confuse Specialty Physicians
Provider relief funds in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act were originally touted as intended for hospitals and providers directly treating COVID-19 patients. But HHS interpreted the law broadly in its first, $30 billion tranche of grants to allow providers hard hit by elective procedure cancellations to qualify for relief. Specialty providers are now scrambling to make sure they are ready to meet requirements to keep the money. (Cohrs, 4/15)

The New York Times: UnitedHealth Reports Profit, Citing Falling Demand For Elective Care
UnitedHealth Group, one of the nation’s major insurers, reported on Wednesday that its earnings actually increased this past quarter, adding that the costs of the coronavirus pandemic were offset by the cancellations of routine medical appointments and elective surgeries for hip replacements and other conditions. The company’s report provided an early glimpse of how the crisis is affecting the U.S. health care industry, which in many regions has been overwhelmed by emergency and intensive care of patients infected by the virus. (Abelson, 4/15)

Modern Healthcare: UnitedHealth Sees Minimal COVID-19 Impact In First Quarter
This is largely because even though UnitedHealth pledged to eliminate patient costs for coronavirus-related testing and treatment and has donated funds to support communities most affected by the pandemic, it is benefiting from the postponement of high cost, elective procedures across the nation. "The elective deferrals to date are offsetting COVID-19 costs," UnitedHealth CEO David Wichmann said during the first-quarter earnings call on Wednesday. These are the same elective procedures that many healthcare providers rely on but were forced to defer to conserve resources for a potential influx of COVID-19 patients. Routine doctor's visits are also being canceled because of fear and state shelter-in-place orders. (Livingston, 4/15)

The New York Times: Opponents Of Stay-At-Home Orders Organize Protests At State Capitols
In Michigan, thousands of demonstrators in cars jammed the streets around the State Capitol in Lansing in protest of restrictions to prevent spread of the coronavirus. In Frankfort, Ky., dozens of people shouted through a Capitol building window, nearly drowning out Gov. Andy Beshear as he provided a virus update at a news conference. And in Raleigh, N.C., at least one person was arrested during a protest that drew more than 100 people in opposition to a stay-at-home rule, The News & Observer reported. In several states, protesters have taken to the streets to urge governors to reopen businesses and relax strict rules that health officials have said are necessary to save lives. (Bogel-Burroughs, 4/16)

The Associated Press: Thousands Protest Michigan Governor's Social Distance Order
“This arbitrary blanket spread of shutting down businesses, about putting all of these workers out of business, is just a disaster. It’s an economic disaster for Michigan,” coalition member Meshawn Maddock said. “And people are sick and tired of it.” Whitmer, a Democrat, extended a stay-home order through April 30 and has shut down schools and businesses deemed non-essential. The governor acknowledged the pain but said the restrictions were necessary to stop the spread of the coronavirus, which causes a respiratory illness that has killed more than 1,900 Michigan residents and overwhelmed hospitals in the Detroit area. (Householder and White, 4/16)

Reuters: Trump Backers Protest Michigan Stay-At-Home Orders At State Capitol
The latest version of her executive order bars residents from travel between homes or using motorboats, and it prohibits retail sales of home furnishings, garden supplies or paint while leaving marijuana dispensaries open. Michigan is one of 42 states where governors have ordered residents to remain indoors except for necessary outings like grocery shopping or doctor’s visits, while closing schools, universities and non-essential businesses. (Herald, 4/15)

NPR: Michigan Stay-At-Home Order Prompts Honking, Traffic-Jam Protest
Opponents like Shelly Vanderwerff argue there should be regional and industry-based exemptions. She caravanned to Lansing from west Michigan, where she was recently laid-off from her work at a local greenhouse. "Well, I don't think she's listening to petitions and people who are trying to communicate in a less extreme way that...there are small businesses that are suffering," said Vanderwerff. She's worried that many small businesses in the state will go under. (Censky, 4/15)

The Hill: Protesters Disrupt Kentucky Governor's Coronavirus Briefing, Chanting 'We Want To Work'
Protestors disrupted Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear’s (D) coronavirus briefing Wednesday, chanting for the governor to “open up Kentucky.” About 100 people had gathered on the lawn of the State Capitol by the time Beshear spoke, and could be heard throughout the governor’s televised briefing, the Courier Journal reports. The protesters were also chanting “we want to work” and “facts over fear.” (Klar, 4/15)

Raleigh News & Observer: Coronavirus In NC: Protesters Call For Reopening The State
More than 100 protesters rallied in downtown Raleigh to reopen North Carolina on Tuesday, describing Gov. Roy Cooper’s stay-home order as an unconstitutional overreach that will kill the state’s small businesses. At least one protester, Monica Faith Ussery, 51, of Holly Springs, was charged with violating the executive order. (Shaffer and Hajela, 4/14)

The Washington Post: Governors Confront Political Furor As They Plot A Cautious Course For Reopening
The multistate reopening task forces being created by governors on both coasts will probably take weeks to develop as officials tackle issues ranging from how to identify and isolate those sick with the novel coronavirus to how best to keep people from crossing state lines in search of open bars and restaurants, according to officials involved in the planning. The two groups were created this week, one by governors of seven Northeast states and the other by West Coast leaders, to bring cohesion and unity to a process that could pose one of the biggest challenges any state government has faced in modern times. (Craig, Wilson and Jacobs, 4/15)

San Francisco Chronicle: In California And Across The Country, Coronavirus Is Making For Explosive Politics 
Campaigns across the country, from the presidential race on down, are using the coronavirus to batter their opponents for what they have or haven’t done to fight the pandemic. With most Americans virtually confined to their homes and the virus death toll rising daily, politicians are betting that worried voters will reward those who are taking their concerns seriously and, equally important, punish those who they don’t believe are doing enough. (Wildermuth, 4/16)

The New York Times: New York Governor Orders Residents To Wear Face Masks In Public
Imposing a stricter measure to control the spread of the coronavirus, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Wednesday that he would start requiring people in New York to wear masks or face coverings in public whenever social distancing was not possible. The order will take effect on Friday and will apply to people who are unable to keep six feet away from others in public settings, such as on a bus or subway, on a crowded sidewalk or inside a grocery store. (Ferre-Sadurni and Cramer, 4/15)

The Associated Press: New York To Require Face Coverings In Busy Public Places
New York residents will be required to wear face coverings anytime they come into close contact with other people outside their homes, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Wednesday. The mandate will require a mask or face covering, like a bandanna, on busy streets, public transit, or any situation where people cannot maintain 6 feet of social distancing, even if it is passing a person briefly on a wooded trail. The order takes effect Friday. (Peltz, Villeneuve and Hill, 4/16)

Reuters: Face Masks May Be 'New Normal' In Post-Virus Life As U.S. Prepares Gradual Reopening
The death toll from the coronavirus pandemic in the United States approached 31,000 on Wednesday as governors began cautiously preparing Americans for a post-virus life that would likely include public face coverings as the “new normal.” (Caspani and Resnick-Ault, 4/15)

The Wall Street Journal: Why New York’s Coronavirus Death Count Jumped: The Stories Of Patients Who Died At Home
Jarrod Sockwell spent the final days of his life in his Brooklyn home with a fever, cough and no appetite, fearing he had the novel coronavirus. A New York City middle-school paraprofessional and high-school football coach, Mr. Sockwell had earlier gone to an emergency room to seek treatment after not feeling well. Doctors tested him for the virus, diagnosed him with pneumonia and sent him home because his oxygen levels were too high for admission. (Hawkins, Berger and Honan, 4/16)

The Wall Street Journal: As Coronavirus Deaths Surge, New York City Allows Cremations 24 Hours A Day
New York City crematories are so overwhelmed with the death toll from coronavirus cases that regulators are letting them operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Some operators of crematories said they are already working 16-hour days. They are processing double, sometimes triple, the number of bodies they would on a typical day. Several operators said they are booked up a week or more in advance. (Berger, 4/16)

Reuters: 'Don't Go To The ER': How A New York Pediatrician Is Dealing With The Coronavirus Outbreak
When a 3-year-old patient of New York pediatrician Dr. Greg Gulbransen dislocated her arm, he told her parents not to take her to the emergency care center, fearing that could put the family at risk of contracting COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. (4/15)

The New York Times: After Anonymous Tip, 17 Bodies Are Found At Nursing Home Hit By Virus
The call for body bags came late Saturday. By Monday, the police in a small New Jersey town had gotten an anonymous tip about a body being stored in a shed outside one of the state’s largest nursing homes. When the police arrived, the corpse had been removed from the shed, but they discovered 17 bodies piled inside the nursing home in a small morgue intended to hold no more than four people. (Tully, 4/15)

CNN: New Jersey Nursing Home: Tip Leads Police To 17 Bodies In Facility's Morgue 
A tip of a body in a shed led Andover Police to one of New Jersey's largest nursing homes Monday evening where they found 17 bodies in the facility's morgue, one of the responding officers told CNN... "The staff was clearly overwhelmed and probably short-staffed," Andover Police Chief Eric Danielson, one of the responding officers, told CNN. "The residents were expiring. Why? We're not sure if it's from Covid-19 or from other diseases, but we tried our best to ease the burden." (Holcombe and Alsharif, 4/16)

NBC News: Coronavirus Deaths In U.S. Nursing Homes Soar To More Than 5,500
The number of reported coronavirus deaths in long-term care facilities has more than doubled to 5,670 since last week, according to state health data gathered by NBC News, driven by huge increases in hard-hit states like New York, where more than 2 percent of nursing home residents have died of the virus. The death count is based on data from 29 state health departments and includes nursing homes, assisted living and other long-term care facilities. (Strickler and Khimm, 4/15)

The New York Times: Virginia Nursing Home Had Plenty Of Coronavirus Patients But Few Tests
After the first positive coronavirus test at a Virginia nursing home in mid-March, its administrator said, the staff restricted visitors, conducted temperature checks at the end of every worker’s shift and isolated residents who had tested positive into separate areas. Even so, there suddenly was another case. Within two weeks, dozens of others inside were falling ill. (Romero, Ivory and Bogel-Burroughs, 4/15)

Los Angeles Times: Prosecutors Open Coronavirus Inquiry At Bay Area Nursing Home
Prosecutors in the Bay Area have opened an investigation into a nursing home in Hayward where 13 people have died after contracting the novel coronavirus. A spokeswoman for Alameda County Dist. Atty. Nancy O’Malley said Wednesday that her office had begun an investigation into Gateway Care & Rehabilitation Center. Officials said 41 residents and 26 staff members there have tested positive for COVID-19. (Hamilton, 4/15)

The Associated Press: Navajo Nation Extends Weekend Lockdowns As Virus Cases Rise
The Navajo Nation has extended its weekend lockdowns preventing people from leaving their homes, except in emergencies, on the vast expanse of land that has been harder hit by the coronavirus than any other Native American reservation in the U.S. Jessie Valdez, who lives in Nageezi on the New Mexico portion of the reservation, and her grandchildren are ready. They’re stocked up on food and other supplies, and plan on baking, cooking, watching movies and, “of course, a lot of cleaning.” (Fonseca, 4/16)

Politico: Hot Spots Erupt In Farm Belt States Where Governors Insist Lockdowns Aren’t Needed
The only hospital in Grand Island, Neb., is full. The mayor has asked for a statewide stay-at-home order that the GOP governor insists isn’t needed. More than one-third of those tested for coronavirus in the surrounding county are positive — and there aren’t enough tests to go around. Grand Island is the fourth-biggest city in a state President Donald Trump and his top health officials repeatedly name check for keeping the virus at bay without the strict lockdowns 42 other states have imposed. (Ollstein, Goldberg and McCaskill, 4/15)

Stat: Coronavirus Pandemic Could Take A Crushing Toll On Rural Areas, Data Show
As the impact of the coronavirus crisis careens toward smaller towns and rural areas, a new data project highlights a stark, looming reality: This pandemic could take a crushing toll on rural areas that are less prepared than many of their urban counterparts. The examination of every U.S. county’s preparedness level, produced in a STAT collaboration with the Center on Rural Innovation and Applied XL, also reveals that some rural areas are better prepared than others. (Joseph, 4/16)

The Associated Press: Amid Coronavirus Outbreak, Florida County Pulls Welcome Mat
As Jessica Cherry watched traffic from her porch, she wondered with each passing vehicle if the coronavirus had made its way into her rural Florida Panhandle community. For weeks, residents of Liberty County watched as infections spread, reaching into all of Florida’s 67 counties but their own — the state’s least populous — and worried about the devastating effect the coronavirus could have on their 8,300 people. (Calvan, 4/16)

CNN: Los Angeles Mayor Says Large Gatherings Like Concerts And Sporting Events May Not Come Back Until 2021 
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said Wednesday large gatherings like sporting events or concerts may not resume in the city before 2021 as the US grapples with mitigating the novel coronavirus pandemic. "It's difficult to imagine us getting together in the thousands anytime soon, so I think we should be prepared for that this year," Garcetti told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on "The Situation Room." (LeBlanc, 4/15)

The Washington Post: St. Elizabeths Patients Under Coronavirus Quarantine After Four Deaths
A member of the nursing staff at St. Elizabeths Hospital began coughing on March 20. He thought it was his chronic bronchitis flaring up, so he took his medication and took off work to recover. Over the next two days, his health deteriorated. On March 25, he checked into MedStar Washington Hospital Center with a fever of 103 degrees, then was placed in intensive care and put on a ventilator. The next day, he tested positive for the novel coronavirus. (Moyer, Nirappil and Fowers, 4/15)

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin Coronavirus Relief Bill: Tony Evers Signs Despite Amendments
Gov. Tony Evers signed a sweeping coronavirus relief package Wednesday after lawmakers approved it with just two days to spare before the state would have lost out on hundreds of millions of dollars in federal help. The Democratic governor signed the bill, which also suspends a one-week waiting period to receive unemployment benefits, two hours after state senators unanimously approved it. (Marley and Beck, 4/15)

Houston Chronicle: At One Houston Highrise, Coronavirus Has Set Off A Court Battle Over Lives Vs. Livelihoods 
Lives vs. livelihoods: That’s the tricky balance that all the world is trying to strike right now, in the age of coronavirus. And nowhere in Houston is that balance more hotly contested than at Park Square, a condo highrise near the Galleria. “Most residents here are 65-plus,” Bill Turney said, from his 17th-floor unit. “Heavy on the plus.” (Gray, 4/15)

WBUR: Boston Homeless Advocates Say Asymptomatic Virus Spread Shows 'Urgent' Need For Universal Testing 
A recent round of coronavirus testing in Boston's homeless population is raising concern about asymptomatic spread of the coronavirus. And it's leading both advocates and public officials to call for comprehensive testing in the homeless community. The testing happened a week and a half ago at Pine Street Inn. (Joliocoeur, 4/15)

Boston Globe: City Councilors Want Health Authorities To Consider Systemic Racism When It Comes To Medical Resources 
Boston city councilors are calling for local hospitals and health authorities to consider how systemic racism causes public health disparities, a reality that has taken on added urgency as officials draft and enact policies about how to distribute life-saving medical resources amid a COVID-19 surge. (McDonald, 4/15)

Boston Globe: After More Than 3,500 Cases And 87 Deaths, Raimondo Will Reveal COVID-19 Model For Rhode Island 
Governor Gina M. Raimondo said Wednesday that the state’s COVID-19 infections are likely to increase, and she plans to provide more details on the state’s projections during her daily news conference on Thursday.“We’re not in a downward slope, that I can assure you,” Raimondo said. “We have been successful in reducing how high the slope is, but we’re definitely not on a downswing.” (Milkovits, 4/15)

Los Angeles Times: Newsom Announces Coronavirus Help For Unemployed, Immigrants
California is expanding hours at its call center that handles unemployment insurance and preparing to expedite benefits to independent contractors in response to a record number of people who are out of work and seeking government help as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Gov. Gavin Newsom discussed the efforts Wednesday and noted that 2.7 million Californians had filed for unemployment benefits in the last month, after businesses across the state shuttered under his stay-at-home order and the economy tanked. Newsom also announced a $125-million relief effort to help roughly 150,000 Californians without legal immigration status. (Luna, McGreevy and Myers, 4/15)

The Associated Press: California To Give Cash Payments To Immigrants Hurt By Virus
Many Americans began receiving $1,200 checks from the federal government this week, and others who are unemployed are getting an additional $600 a week from the government that has ordered them to stay home and disrupted what had been a roaring economy. But people living in the country illegally are not eligible for any of that money, and advocates have been pushing for states to fill in the gap. Wednesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced he would spend $75 million of taxpayer money to create a Disaster Relief Fund for immigrants living in the country illegally. (Beam, 4/16)

The New York Times: FEMA’s ‘Air Bridge’ To Coronavirus Hot Spots Leaves Other Regions On Their Own
The federal government’s program to expedite the shipping of valuable protective equipment to coronavirus hot spots has left hospitals that are out of the spotlight struggling to secure their own protective gear as they watch the outbreak creep closer. The Trump administration has repeatedly endorsed the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s system of flying masks, respirators, gloves, goggles and surgical gowns from overseas suppliers to the United States. The new “air bridge” is rushing supplies to the most hard-hit areas within days instead of weeks. (Kanno-Youngs, 4/16)

NPR: A 'War' For Medical Supplies: States Say FEMA Wins By Poaching Orders
As the number of coronavirus cases surged in Massachusetts, nurses at a hospital in Milford were desperate. They held up cardboard signs outside the hospital asking for donations of protective gear to wear while treating infected patients. William Touhey Jr. thought he could help. Touhey is the fire chief and emergency management director in this small town outside of Boston. He did some legwork, and placed an order for 30,000 protective gowns from overseas. "We were hearing good things that it was coming," Touhey said. (Rose, 4/15)

Politico: U.S. Races To Stock Up On Dialysis Supplies As Kidney Failure Ravages Virus Patients
Hospitals in New York City are running out of dialysis fluids as thousands of coronavirus patients develop kidney failure, an unexpected development that could presage the next critical supply shortage nationwide. Approximately 20 percent of coronavirus patients in intensive care around the city need the kidney treatment, often for weeks, a development that many providers did not see coming. FEMA held a call Monday with FDA and CMS to discuss the possibility of issuing emergency use authorizations to import more dialysis fluids, according to a document obtained by POLITICO. (Owermohle and Eisenberg, 4/15)

The Washington Post: Coronavirus Scramble For N95 Masks Leads Trump Administration To Pay Premium To Third-Party Vendors
The Trump administration has awarded bulk contracts to third-party vendors in recent weeks in a scramble to obtain N95 respirator masks, and the government has paid the companies more than $5 per unit, nearly eight times what it would have spent in January and February when U.S. intelligence agencies warned of a looming global pandemic, procurement records show. (Stanley-Becker, Butler and Miroff, 4/15)

Politico: New York Nurses Union To Sue State Health Department, Hospitals Over Equipment Shortages
The New York State Nurses Association plans to file three lawsuits on Monday over a lack of personal protective equipment and what it considers dangerous guidance issued by the state department of health during the coronavirus pandemic — the first legal action of its kind since the outbreak began. The Montefiore Health System and Westchester Medical Center allegedly did not protect their nurses and provide them with adequate protective equipment — following guidance from the state health department to help health systems ration medical supplies, NYSNA members told POLITICO. (Eisenberg, 4/15)

The Associated Press: Nurses Suspended For Refusing COVID-19 Care Without N95 Mask
Nurse Mike Gulick was meticulous about not bringing the novel coronavirus home to his wife and their 2-year-old daughter. He’d stop at a hotel after work just to take a shower. He’d wash his clothes in Lysol disinfectant. They did a tremendous amount of handwashing. But at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California, Gulick and his colleagues worried that caring for infected patients without first being able to don an N95 respirator mask was risky. (Mendoza and Kruesi, 4/16)

Politico: Frontline Volunteers Caught Up In Red Tape, Wooed To Private Hospitals Instead
Government bureaucracy and a bidding war between wealthy and poorer hospitals is complicating the response to the coronavirus pandemic, and some warn it's putting low-income patients in further jeopardy. Wealthy hospitals are tapping into their coffers to lure nurses from across the country but they're also pulling from the city’s public and so-called safety-net hospitals, which provide care to patients regardless of their ability to pay. (Eisenberg and Young, 4/15)

San Francisco Chronicle: CDC Report Reveals How Coronavirus Spread From Patient To Health Care Workers In Solano County 
A woman with COVID-19 at a Solano County hospital — the nation’s first case from an unknown source — exposed 121 health workers to the coronavirus, yet only three got the disease, a new study of the February case reveals. All three had been in close contact for about two hours with the patient, and two had no protective gear, according to the report published Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those workers also examined the patient and performed treatments that involved close contact, such as placing her on a breathing machine. (Moench, 4/16)

WBUR: In Detroit, Over 2,600 Health Care Workers Have Gotten Sick From The Coronavirus 
More than 2,600 health care workers around Detroit have tested positive for the coronavirus. They're adapting while grappling with "survivor guilt" and the loss of their coworkers. (Wells, 4/15)

The Associated Press: `Am I Going Now To My Execution?' One Doctor's Very Long Day
It was March 7, in the afternoon. Dr. Giovanni Passeri had just returned home from Maggiore Hospital, where he is an internist, when he was urgently called back to work. His ward at the hospital was about to admit its first COVID-19 case. Driving back to the hospital, down the tree-lined streets of Parma, Passeri, 56, recalled thinking: “Am I going now to my execution?” Italy’s more than 21,000 coronavirus dead have included scores of doctors, including a colleague of Passeri’s at Maggiore, a hospital in one of Italy’s hardest-hit northern provinces. (Stinellis and D'Emilio, 4/16)

NBC News: NYC Medical Residents Treating Coronavirus Describe 'Living A Nightmare'
On the front lines of the coronavirus crisis that has swept through New York City, a medical resident in Brooklyn decided to write about dealing with a historic pandemic at what is an early and critical time in the career of a doctor. "Throughout these last couple of weeks I've hit a whole range of emotions," the resident, who works at several hospitals in Brooklyn, wrote in text shared with NBC News. "There have been multiple days where I'd come home and just feel … defeated." (Silva, 4/16)

ABC News: Service Has Bought Nearly 4,000 Meals From Local Restaurants For New York City Medical Workers
Anna Azvolinsky and Joel Weingarten were looking for ways to help local hospitals amid the novel coronavirus pandemic. Azvolinsky, a molecular biologst, already had donated a cache of N95 masks she found in her closet. When she was speaking with a doctor at Mount Sinai West, she asked what else they could do. "We really don't have time to eat," Weingarten said the doctor told his wife. (Torres, 4/15)

ABC News: Last Responders: The Grim Job Of Medical Examiners In The COVID-19 Pandemic 
Just as first responders have been working hard to treat and prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus, another group of medical staff have been working hard as last responders: medical examiners. Medical examiners, also called forensic pathologists, are doctors who undergo intensive training to examine dead bodies to determine the likely cause of death. (Baldwin, 4/16)

WBUR: How Immigrant Medical Professionals Are Helping To Fight The Coronavirus 
The battle against the coronavirus has been strained by shortages of ventilators, gloves and N95 masks, but hospitals are also scrambling to keep enough medical staff in place to deal with the surges of patients. Experts say immigrants are helping to fill this need and could play a bigger role if some of the obstacles they face are removed — from long and costly licensing processes to acceptance and even respect. (Peñaloza, 4/16)

KQED: Doctors Offices Are Small Businesses Too. And They're Struggling To Stay Afloat During The Pandemic
About half the medical care in California is delivered by solo and small practice physicians, according to the California Medical Association. In a recent survey of its members, 50% of doctors said they’ve had to lay off fellow physicians, nurses and office staff because of the downturn, and 11% closed down temporarily. (Dembosky, 4/15)

Kaiser Health News: Coronavirus Nurses Ask An Ebola Veteran: Is It OK To Be Afraid?
Martha Phillips knows exactly how it feels to suddenly find oneself up close to — and unprotected from — a deadly virus. In 2014, Phillips, an emergency room nurse, was at the bedside of a suspected Ebola patient in Sierra Leone when the disposable plastic guard protecting her face came loose. (Stone, 4/16)

'Lost On The Frontline': Know of a health-care worker who died of COVID-19? KHN and The Guardian are documenting the lives of U.S. workers who succumbed during the crisis. These are the front-line health workers who risk their lives to care for the sick and keep our facilities running. Please share their stories here.

The Washington Post: Coronavirus Treatment: Chaotic Search For Drugs Lacks Centralized Strategy
In a desperate bid to find treatments for people sickened by the coronavirus, doctors and drug companies have launched more than 100 human experiments in the United States, investigating experimental drugs, a decades-old malaria medicine and cutting-edge therapies that have worked for other conditions such as HIV and rheumatoid arthritis. Development of effective treatments for covid-19, the disease the virus causes, would be one of the most significant milestones in returning the United States to normalcy. (Johnson, 4/15)

The Wall Street Journal: Japan, China Vie To Be Global Supplier Of Unproven Coronavirus Drug
A drug called favipiravir has set off a diplomatic tug of war between geopolitical rivals Japan and China, both of which are offering it to other nations as a gesture to fight the coronavirus pandemic. What makes the rival diplomacy unusual is the lack of solid evidence that either country’s pills can help virus victims. No peer-reviewed research suggests the drug’s efficacy in fighting Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, and previous studies show favipiravir could cause birth defects if taken by pregnant women. (Landers and Inada, 4/16)

Stat: Blood Clots Leave Clinicians With Clues About Covid-19 — But No Proven Treatments
Doctors treating the sickest Covid-19 patients have zeroed in on a new phenomenon: Some people have developed widespread blood clots, their lungs peppered with tiny blockages that prevent oxygen from pumping into the bloodstream and body. A number of doctors are now trying to blast those clots with tPA, or tissue plasminogen activator, an antithrombotic drug typically reserved for treating strokes and heart attacks. Other doctors are eyeing the blood thinner heparin as a potential way to prevent clotting before it starts. (Cooney, 4/16)

ABC News: Scientist Behind Saliva Test Breakthrough Sees Bridge To Nationwide Coronavirus Screening 
The Rutgers University scientist who oversaw the development of a saliva test to detect coronavirus said he believes this new way to collect patient samples could serve as a bridge to widespread national testing -- modeled off the kits used by familiar commercial genealogical brands like Ancestry.com and 23 and Me. "It opens up a lot of doors," Andrew Brooks, the chief operating officer and director of technology development at the Rutgers lab, told ABC News. (Mosk and Bruggeman, 4/16)

Stat: Scientists Tap CRISPR To Create A Rapid Covid-19 Test
It cuts genomes, edits DNA, and holds the potential to treat a vast range of diseases. Now, CRISPR is being put to a new test as a search-and-detect engine for Covid-19. On Thursday, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, and scientists at Mammoth Biosciences — whose advisory board includes CRISPR pioneer Jennifer Doudna — published research in Nature Biotechnology laying out a method for using CRISPR to quickly spot the coronavirus in samples from nose or throat swabs. (Brodwin, 4/16)

Stat: CT Scans Might Offer A More Accurate Way To Diagnose Covid-19 
To safely relax the chokehold that policies to control Covid-19 have on the economy, most experts agree that the U.S. will need a four-pronged strategy: aggressive diagnostic testing for Covid-19, isolation of known cases, tracing of their contacts, and quarantining of anyone who might have been exposed until they are clearly uninfected. Many public health officials have focused on the challenge of contact tracing, saying it will require “an army” of new workers. (Begley, 4/16)

CIDRAP: Antibody Tests May Hold Clues To COVID-19 Exposure, Immunity—But It's Complicated
As the nation looks for ways to emerge from the shelter-in-place orders instituted across the country, there's growing hope that our blood might hold clues for how we move forward. Late last week, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced that it has begun recruiting volunteers for a study to determine how many Americans without a confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis have been exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, based on the presence of antibodies in their blood. (Dall, 4/15)

Modern Healthcare: Abbott Launching Another COVID Test
Abbott Laboratories, which has been on the forefront of COVID-19 testing, is launching a blood test that shows whether someone has had the virus. While the North Chicago, Ill., medical-device maker's two molecular tests are used to detect infection in real time, its new antibody test detects previous infections, the company said in a statement today. (Goldberg, 4/15)

Modern Healthcare: Medicare To Double Payments For High-Throughput COVID-19 Tests
Medicare will pay almost twice as much for high-throughput COVID-19 tests compared with conventional testing methods, the CMS said Wednesday. The agency hopes that higher reimbursements for new testing methods will accelerate their adoption. The move will "allow for increased testing capacity, faster results, and more effective means of combating the spread of the virus," CMS said. (Brady, 4/15)

Kaiser Health News: N.Y. Leads The Nation In COVID-19 Tests, But The Effort Still Lags Behind Demand
This jampacked city, with its high-rises, brownstones and cheek-by-jowl single-family homes, is a ripe environment for the novel coronavirus that has killed more than 11,000 residents. That density also complicates a key strategy for alleviating the epidemic: testing. In their initial response to the pandemic, city and state officials called for federal health officials to move more quickly on increasing testing capacity, seeking to identify those who had contracted the virus and isolate them to help stem the outbreak. (Andrews, 4/16)

Meanwhile, experts explore reopening the country through contact tracing —

The New York Times: An Army Of Virus Tracers Takes Shape In Massachusetts
Alexandra Cross, a newly minted state public health worker, dialed a stranger’s telephone number on Monday, her heart racing. It was Ms. Cross’s first day as part of Massachusetts’s fleet of contact tracers, charged with tracking down people who have been exposed to the coronavirus, as soon as possible, and warning them. On her screen was the name of a woman from Lowell. “One person who has recently been diagnosed has been in contact with you,” the script told her to say. “Do you have a few minutes to discuss what that exposure might mean for you?” (Barry, 4/16)

Politico: San Francisco's New Contact Tracing Program Could Help California Emerge From Isolation
San Francisco is enlisting a cadre of outreach workers and a software company to track and trace Bay Area residents who have been exposed to the coronavirus as California enters the next phase of managing the pandemic. The pilot program announced Wednesday could serve as a model for California and possibly the country as state leaders grapple with how to ease the stay-at-home orders that have hamstrung the economy. Gov. Gavin Newsom this week specifically said tracing the spread of Covid-19 will be crucial in allowing people to increase their movements. (Colliver, 4/15)

San Francisco Chronicle: SF To Use Contact Tracing To Alert Bay Area Residents Exposed To The Coronavirus 
San Francisco unveiled a public health outreach plan Wednesday meant to help the city quickly test and identify people newly infected with the coronavirus, and to track down anyone they may have had contact with who could also become ill. The program is meant to augment the city’s contact tracing efforts, which are a long-standing tool of public health to battle infectious disease outbreaks. (Said and Allday, 4/15)

Stat: Simply Speaking Could Transmit Coronavirus, New Study Suggests 
Speaking calmly and at a normal volume produces liquid droplets so small they can remain suspended in the air long enough to enter the airways of other people, potentially exposing them to viruses including the one that causes Covid-19, according to a new study led by scientists at the National Institutes of Health. “Aerosols from infected persons may therefore pose an inhalation threat even at considerable distances and in enclosed spaces, particularly if there is poor ventilation,” Harvard University biologist Matthew Meselson wrote in a commentary accompanying the paper, which used a laser to visualize airborne droplets created when volunteers uttered the words “stay healthy.” (Begley, 4/15)

The Washington Post: How Coronavirus Attacks Organs: Doctors Find Damage In Lungs, Kidneys, Hearts
The new coronavirus kills by inflaming and clogging the tiny air sacs in the lungs, choking off the body’s oxygen supply until it shuts down the organs essential for life. But clinicians around the world are seeing evidence that suggests the virus also may be causing heart inflammation, acute kidney disease, neurological malfunction, blood clots, intestinal damage and liver problems. (Bernstein, Johnson, Kaplan and McGinley, 4/15)

Los Angeles Times: Obesity May Make A Coronavirus Infection Worse
America’s obesity epidemic appears to be making the coronavirus outbreak more dangerous — and potentially more deadly — in the United States, new research suggests. For younger and middle-aged adults in particular, carrying excess weight may significantly boost the likelihood of becoming severely ill with COVID-19. The evidence for this comes from thousands of COVID-19 patients who sought treatment in emergency departments in New York, and it’s prompting alarm among doctors and other health experts. In the U.S., 42.4% of adults have obesity, which means their body-mass index, or BMI, is 30 or more. (Healy, 4/15)

ABC News: Organizations Coming Together To Represent Type 1 Diabetics During Coronavirus 
Patients with novel coronavirus each have their own unique set of circumstances for treatment, especially if they already have underlying medical conditions, like diabetes. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say people with diabetes have an increased risk of severe illness from COVID-19 infection, but the agency does not differentiate between Type 1 or Type 2 diabetics. (Dastmalchi, 4/16)

Los Angeles Times: How UV Light May Protect Us From The Coronavirus
The stealthy new coronavirus has turned face masks into ubiquitous accessories, and that means millions of Americans are looking for ways to keep them clean. Can ultraviolet light do the job? Ideally, single-use face masks should be worn once and then thrown away, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s certainly true of the top-of-the-line N95 masks used by healthcare workers that are designed to filter out 95% of tiny particles when properly fitted to a wearer’s face. (Khan, 4/14)

ProPublica: Ventilators Aren’t Going to Cure COVID-19. Here’s What They Can Do.
From the first days of the coronavirus outbreak in the United States, hospitals and elected officials began scrambling to amass ventilators. So long as we had enough of the devices, the idea went, people’s lives would be saved. “It’s all about the ventilators,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York said in a March 18 press briefing, adding that the state could need 37,000 ventilators at the peak of the outbreak, compared with an existing capacity of 3,000. (Chen, 4/15)

ABC News: 'Sense Of Urgency': Caring For Adults Living With Autism During Coronavirus Leaves Some Feeling Forgotten
April is recognized as World Autism Month and is usually filled with special events to mark the occasion, including what is perhaps the world’s largest celebration that has been held at the United Nations every year since 2008. The coronavirus pandemic has not only put a stop to all of that but, critically, it has left those who are vulnerable with special needs – as well as their care providers -- exposed at a time when stability is key to their survival. (Haworth, 4/16)

CNN: Forget 'Social Distancing.' The WHO Prefers We Call It 'Physical Distancing' Because Social Connections Are More Important Than Ever 
That thing we've all been doing by staying home, avoiding large gatherings and maintaining at least six feet of distance from others? The World Health Organization and other health experts would prefer if we stopped calling the practice "social distancing." Instead, they're opting for the term "physical distancing." (Kaur, 4/15)

CNN: Coronavirus Covid-19 Patients Are Dying Alone, Tech Can Help Them Say Goodbye 
For those with the worst cases of Covid-19, this is the harsh reality. Patients are unable to see or speak with their families; their families are unable to say "I love you" one last time. (Bergeron, 4/15)

Kaiser Health News: ‘I Wasn’t Eating’: Senior Twin Sisters Battle Pandemic Anxiety Together
Ethel Sylvester dialed 911, trembling with fear. The 92-year-old felt hot. She thought turning off her thermostat could fix the problem. That didn’t help. Alone in her apartment, in the middle of the night, Sylvester didn’t know what was happening to her body. She feared it was COVID-19. Her neighbor and twin sister, Edna Mayes, had no idea her best friend was in trouble.“I couldn’t get to the door,” said Sylvester, recounting last month’s incident. “I was shaking, just shaking.” (Anthony, 4/16)

Politico: White House Points To CDC Guidelines As More Meatpacking Workers Infected
Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue urged food industry workers on Wednesday to comply with public health guidelines as the number of positive cases of coronavirus among meatpacking workers keeps rising. Two major meatpacking plants have been forced to close in recent days after employees have become infected and some died. More than 500 employees working at a Smithfield facility in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, have tested positive, leading the plant on Sunday to shut down indefinitely. (Crampton and Bottemiller Evich, 4/15)

The Wall Street Journal: Smithfield To Close More Pork Plants Over Coronavirus Pandemic
Smithfield Foods Inc. said it would close two more pork-processing plants because of the coronavirus pandemic, reducing meat supplies for grocery stores and deepening challenges for farmers. The top U.S. pork processor said it would close plants in Wisconsin and Missouri later this week, after announcing Sunday the shutdown of its Sioux Falls, S.D., plant, one of the industry’s biggest. Smithfield said that employees at all three plants have tested positive for the coronavirus and that the Missouri plant needed pork supplies from the South Dakota facility to operate. (Bunge, 4/15)

In other news —

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Hunger Task Force To Help Farmers, Food Pantries With Milk Purchases
The nonprofit Hunger Task Force says it will commit up to $1 million to a newly created Wisconsin Dairy Recovery Program aimed at helping farmers and food pantries. Under the program, farmers will be paid to supply milk to Kemps, a dairy cooperative based in Minnesota, which will process the milk at its plant in Cedarburg. (Barrett, 4/15)

The Washington Post: Supreme Court Avoids One Abortion Battle, But New Lawsuits Are Being Filed
Abortion providers in Texas withdrew their request that the Supreme Court step in to stop the state’s effort to restrict the procedure during the coronavirus pandemic, but new legal battles began Tuesday in Louisiana and Tennessee. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit on Monday night gave abortion rights groups the half-measure they had sought at the high court. It exempted from Texas’s ban on nonessential medical procedures those seeking an abortion induced by medication in the early weeks of pregnancy, and those about to reach Texas’s prohibition of abortion after 22 weeks. (Barnes, 4/14)

Los Angeles Times: Abortion During Coronavirus: State Bans, Closed Clinics, Self-Induced Miscarriages
Right after she was laid off from her medical job because of the coronavirus outbreak, a single mother of two in north Texas found out she was pregnant. The next day, when she called to make an appointment at a local abortion clinic, staff told her it had closed — and no other clinic in the state could provide her an abortion, either. “They told me the governor had put a halt on it,” said the woman, who asked to be identified by her first name, Kris, after driving 350 miles north to a clinic in Wichita, Kan., this week, crying and trembling with anxiety. (Hennessy-Fiske, 4/16)

The Associated Press: Coronavirus Crisis Provides Excuses For Curbs On Free Speech
Health concerns were on artist Danai Ussama’s mind when he returned to Thailand last month from a trip to Spain. He noticed that he and his fellow passengers did not go through medical checks after arriving at Bangkok’s airport, and thought it worth noting on his Facebook page. The airport authorities denied it, lodged a complaint with police, and he was arrested at his gallery in Phuket for violating the Computer Crime Act by allegedly posting false information — an offense punishable by up to five years imprisonment and a fine of 100,000 baht ($3,063). (Peck and Khunsong, 4/16)

The Associated Press: Coronavirus Could Erode Global Fight Against Other Diseases
Lavina D’Souza hasn’t been able to collect her government-supplied anti-HIV medication since the abrupt lockdown of India’s 1.3 billion people last month during the coronavirus outbreak. Marooned in a small city away from her home in Mumbai, the medicine she needs to manage her disease has run out. The 43-year-old is afraid that her immune system will crash: “Any disease, the coronavirus or something else, I’ll fall sick faster.” (Ghosal and Milko, 4/16)

The Associated Press: China Tries To Revive Economy But Consumer Engine Sputters
China, where the coronavirus pandemic started in December, is cautiously trying to get back to business, but it’s not easy when many millions of workers are wary of spending much or even going out. Factories and shops nationwide shut down starting in late January. Millions of families were told to stay home under unprecedented controls that have been copied by the United States, Europe and India. (McDonald, 4/16)

Reuters: Why Are Some South Koreans Who Recovered From The Coronavirus Testing Positive Again?
South Korean health officials are investigating several possible explanations for a small but growing number of recovered coronavirus patients who later test positive for the virus again. (Cha, 4/16)

The New York Times: How Bubonic Plague Has Helped Russia Fight The Coronavirus
In a remote alpine meadow in Kyrgyzstan a few years ago, a teenage boy killed and skinned a marmot. Five days later, his parents carried the sweating, delirious boy to a village hospital where he died of bubonic plague. Like a ghost from the medieval past, the plague still makes occasional, unwelcome appearances in remote regions of the former Soviet Union, where it survives today in wild rodents. Over the centuries, with improved public hygiene, the plague declined as a threat. Today, as a bacterial infection, it is treatable with antibiotics, if caught in time. (Kramer, 4/15)

Stat: Pharmacy Chains Gain A ‘Solid’ Victory In Opioid Litigation, But Aren’t Off The Hook Yet
As jockeying in the opioid litigation continues, a U.S. appeals court ruled several large pharmacy chains will not have to face allegations in so-called bellwether cases that they contributed to the opioid crisis by dispensing the addictive painkillers. The ruling is a victory for such retailers as CVS (CVS), Walgreens (WBA), and Rite-Aid (RAD), which had argued that a federal district court incorrectly allowed two Ohio counties to pass a deadline and pursue the accusations. (Silverman, 4/15)

Modern Healthcare: GAO: Hospices Are Having Trouble Getting Rid Of Opioids
Hospices are having trouble disposing of opioids and other drugs after their patients die, according to a Tuesday report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. "When hospice patients die at home, they often leave behind unused controlled substances, which can be diverted and misused by anyone with access to them," GAO said. (Brady, 4/15)

American Academy Of Pediatrics: Antibiotic Use And Outcomes In Children In The Emergency Department With Suspected Pneumonia
Antibiotic therapy is often prescribed for suspected community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) in children despite a lack of knowledge of causative pathogen. Our objective in this study was to investigate the association between antibiotic prescription and treatment failure in children with suspected CAP who are discharged from the hospital emergency department (ED). (Lipshaw et al, 4/1)

JAMA Internal Medicine: Assessment Of Lung Cancer Screening Program Websites
Information on public-facing websites of US lung cancer screening programs appears to lack balance with respect to portrayal of potential benefits and harms of screening. Important harms, such as overdiagnosis, were commonly ignored in the sites evaluated, and most of the centers did not explicitly guide individuals toward a guideline-recommended, shared decision-making discussion of harms and benefits. (Clark et al, 4/13)

CIDRAP: Study Highlights Spread Of C Auris In Skilled Nursing Facilities
Point prevalence surveys at high-acuity long-term care facilities in Chicago indicate that ventilator-capable skilled nursing facilities (vSNFs) are particularly vulnerable to Candida auris, a research team led by the Chicago Department of Public Health reported yesterday in Clinical Infectious Diseases. The surveys were conducted from August 2016 through December 2018 to identify patients colonized with C auris and assess infection control (IC) measures in the city's high-acuity long-term care facilities, where ongoing spread of the pathogen has been documented since the first two cases of the multidrug-resistant fungus were identified in Chicago in August 2016. (4/15)

American Academy Of Pediatrics: Dietary Fats And Atherosclerosis From Childhood To Adulthood
The association of dietary fat distribution with markers of subclinical atherosclerosis during early life is unknown. We examined whether success in achieving the main target of an infancy-onset dietary intervention based on the distribution of dietary fat was associated with aortic and carotid intima-media thickness (IMT) and distensibility from childhood to young adulthood. (Laitinen et al, 4/1)

The New York Times: Exposure To Plastic Chemicals Before Conception Tied To Premature Births
Pregnant women exposed to phthalates, a group of chemicals used in many products, may be at increased risk for preterm birth, studies have found. Now a new study has found that exposure even before conception may increase the risk. Phthalates are found in plastic toys, hair sprays, soaps, perfumes and other products and can contaminate foods by contact with packaging. The new study, in JAMA Network Open, included 419 women and 229 men seeking treatment at a fertility treatment center in Boston. (Bakalar, 4/9)

Los Angeles Times: For All Its Faults, We Need WHO Now More Than Ever 
President Trump is not wrong to question the World Health Organization’s early response to the emerging coronavirus outbreak and its apparent deference to what we now know were false assurances by Chinese officials about the seriousness of the outbreak. But Trump is wrong to use these otherwise legitimate concerns as an excuse to cut off U.S. contributions to the international health agency until it can satisfy his demand for answers and undertake fundamental structural reforms. (4/16)

Fox News: Coronavirus Reopening — If Health Restrictions Rolled Back Too Soon This Could Happen
If all public health measures were immediately lifted, the pandemic could reignite with full fury.  At this point, there is no vaccine. There are no effective drugs. Testing is still woefully inadequate.  And the vast majority of people are still completely susceptible to infection. (Robert Siegel, 4/15)

The Wall Street Journal: A Reckoning For The WHO 
President Trump’s Tuesday decision to withhold funding from the World Health Organization (WHO) should shatter the pretensions of the agency’s leaders, who had taken American support for granted. While the U.S. investigates the degraded agency’s Covid-19 failures, the White House can outline a path for WHO to regain America’s confidence. “WHO failed in its basic duty and must be held accountable,” said Mr. Trump, who placed a hold on funding for 60 to 90 days. He added that if the agency had done its job, “this would have saved thousands of lives and avoided world-wide economic damage.” The President isn’t exaggerating. (4/15)

Seattle Times: WHO Needs Funding, Not Scapegoating
Congress must quickly reverse President Donald Trump’s defunding of the World Health Organization. This should be a bipartisan priority, to provide U.S. leadership in combating the worldwide pandemic and support WHO’s broader, ongoing global-health mission. The WHO made errors in its initial response to the coronavirus but so did Trump, who is scapegoating and undermining a critical health organization when it’s desperately needed to save lives. As Bill Gates said on Twitter, the world needs WHO now more than ever. (4/15)

Bloomberg: Meticulous Germany Knows How To Handle A Pandemic
It’s still early days in this pandemic, but not too early to venture a prediction: Germany and its chancellor, Angela Merkel, will come out of it looking quite good. What’s more, she may look even better as the outbreak enters its second phase, in which lockdowns gradually yield to uneasy resumptions of social and economic life. That’s because this pandemic won’t end with a made-for-television big bang. It’ll be managed patiently into remission, for a long time and through many setbacks, with sobriety, incrementalism and nuance. And, at the risk of stereotyping, these just happen to be traits characteristic of modern Germany generally, and Merkel in particular. (Andreas Kluth, 4/16)

The Wall Street Journal: Presidential Power Is Limited But Vast 
President Trump has come under attack this week for saying he has “absolute authority” to reopen the economy. He doesn’t—his authority is limited. But while the president can’t simply order the entire economy to reopen on his own signature, neither is the matter entirely up to states and their governors. The two sides of this debate are mostly talking past each other. The federal government’s powers are limited and enumerated and don’t include a “general police power” to regulate community health and welfare. That authority rests principally with the states and includes the power to impose coercive measures such as mandatory vaccination, as the Supreme Court held in Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905). Nor may the federal government commandeer state personnel and resources to achieve its ends or otherwise coerce the states into a particular course of conduct. There is no dispute about these respective state and federal powers. (David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey, 4/15)

The Washington Post: We’ve Never Backed A Democrat For President. But Trump Must Be Defeated. 
This November, Americans will cast their most consequential votes since Abraham Lincoln’s reelection in 1864. We confront a constellation of crises: a public health emergency not seen in a century, an economic collapse set to rival the Great Depression, and a world where American leadership is absent and dangers rise in the vacuum. Today, the United States is beset with a president who was unprepared for the burden of the presidency and who has made plain his deficits in leadership, management, intelligence and morality. When we founded the Lincoln Project, we did so with a clear mission: to defeat President Trump in November. Publicly supporting a Democratic nominee for president is a first for all of us. (George T. Conway III, Reed Galen, Steve Schmidt, John Weaver and Rick Wilson, 4/15)

The Washington Post: Captain Trump Hits The Rocks
As the captain propounds powerful gibberish, the mutiny builds. Regional blocs make their own pandemic-recovery plans. Allies condemn his assault on the WHO. Republican Sen. Susan Collins (Maine) tells Politico that Trump has been “very uneven.” Even Trump-friendly outlets such as Fox News and the Wall Street Journal editorial page offer some criticism. (Dana Millbank, 4/15)

The New York Times: I’m Overseeing The Coronavirus Relief Bill. The Strings Aren’t Attached.
Congress recently gave the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve broad authority to lend out trillions of dollars to businesses, states and municipalities struggling because of coronavirus distancing orders. The key question is whether that money ends up helping working people or flows instead to the managers, executives and investors who have already taken so much of the income gains in the past decade. (Bharat Ramamurti, 4/16)

The Washington Post: State Department Cables Warned Of Safety Issues At Wuhan Lab Studying Bat Coronaviruses
Two years before the novel coronavirus pandemic upended the world, U.S. Embassy officials visited a Chinese research facility in the city of Wuhan several times and sent two official warnings back to Washington about inadequate safety at the lab, which was conducting risky studies on coronaviruses from bats. The cables have fueled discussions inside the U.S. government about whether this or another Wuhan lab was the source of the virus — even though conclusive proof has yet to emerge. (Josh Rogin, 4/14)

The Washington Post: Global Democracy Will Be Weakened Without Fair Elections. South Korea Shows They’re Possible.
South Korean voters were at the polls Wednesday, spaced at three-foot intervals and wearing masks and state-supplied gloves. Provided they passed a temperature screening, they were able to vote in national parliamentary elections. Turnout was expected to be above 70 percent, thanks in part to early voting and balloting by mail for covid-19 patients, and it could exceed that of the previous legislative election four years ago. All that is evidence of an effective response to the coronavirus pandemic by the ruling Democratic Party of President Moon Jae-in, which is likely to be rewarded as a result. (4/15)

Cincinnati Enquirer: COVID-19 Exposed Underfunded Public Health System
While Greater Cincinnati is under a stay-at-home order, many of us are watching news that is dominated by stories of the breakdowns in the American health care system. A sudden, widespread public health crisis will intensify existing problems, but with COVID-19 they are on full display. (Michelle Dillingham, 4/14)

Boston Globe: Mass. Legislature Must Protect Low-Income And Minority Populations From Coronavirus 
Last week marked one month since the coronavirus state of emergency was declared in Massachusetts. In that time, state government has been fighting this public health battle with one hand behind its back. Governor Charlie Baker and Health and Human Services Secretary Marylou Sudders have done an admirable (though not perfect) job so far establishing a COVID-19 Response Command Center, advising people to stay at home, redeploying health care resources, fighting for and distributing scarce personal protective equipment for health care workers, and coordinating field hospitals for the surge. It’s past time for the Legislature to step up with the same kind of urgency. (Sonia Chang-Díaz, Maria Robinson, and Liz Miranda, 4/15)

Modern Healthcare: Some Positive Changes In Healthcare Amid The COVID Crisis
If COVID-19 is the war, then front-line healthcare workers are our hero soldiers. Sadly, the list of healthcare providers lost to COVID-19 worldwide grows longer and longer. How is it that the country that spends the most per person on healthcare ended up sending soldiers to the battlefield without proper protection (too few masks and caregivers resorting to garbage bags as gowns). (Dawn Bounds and Wrenetha Julion, 4/15)

Stat: Protect Health Care Workers Speaking The Truth On Social Media 
I think a lot of doctors now are feeling that the worry and the panic about coronavirus is gonna be worse than the actual coronavirus for them.” That was Dr. Mehmet Oz opining on Fox News not long ago. Within seconds, health care professionals responded fiercely and forcefully on social media. (Jessica Gold, 4/16)

CNN: It's Shameful How Many Health-Care Workers Are Dying From Covid-19 
When I was a young doctor in the 1980s, I cared for several health-care workers who had acquired HIV infection after an occupational exposure -- a needlestick, a cut, a laboratory accident. No effective treatment was available then, but I would see them every month and we would talk about the latest "cures" hitting the news. Some we tried and when zidovudine, the first approved medication, became widely available, we tried that too. But each person died, sooner rather than later. Their tragic situation has recurred in recent years as well. (Kent Sepkowitz, 4/15)

WBUR: I'm Worried About The Psychological Toll On Health Care Workers. They Need Help
Our health care workers are under immense stress.They are facing dire shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE). They’re being asked to make life-and-death decisions that are potentially inconsistent with their values. They fear not only compromising their own personal well-being, but also that of their families. They are facing incomprehensible and unpredictable situations each day, that for some may result in delayed anxiety symptoms, traumatic memories, PTSD or depression. (Nancy Rappaport, 4/16)

The New York Times: The Coronavirus Is Mutating. What Does That Mean For A Vaccine?
Around the world, hope for a return to normalcy is pinned on a vaccine, the “ultimate weapon,” as it’s been called by officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. But it’s still unclear how successful a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, can be. A lot will depend on how the virus mutates. Broadly, there are two ways mutations can play out. (Nathaniel Lash and Tala Schlossberg, 4/16)

Stat: The Covid-19 Pandemic Could Improve The U.S. Health Care System
The Covid-19 pandemic has rapidly disrupted our everyday life... It’s a bleak scenario. And it won’t get better any time soon. Yet we have high hopes for how the U.S. health care system will emerge from this crisis. Why? In the past two weeks, the nation has adopted new policies to protect the health of vulnerable populations – policies that public health professionals and advocates have been pursuing for decades. (Julia L. Marcus and Joshua Barocas, 4/14)

The New York Times: The Coronavirus Is Changing How Americans View One Another 
America will almost certainly emerge from the coronavirus pandemic as a different society. A new survey suggests the experience has already changed what we believe we owe our neighbors and how much economic inequality we find acceptable. (Alexander W. Cappelen, Ranveig Falch, Erik O. Sorensen, Bertil Tungodden and Gus Wezerek, 4/16)

Stat: Learning Lessons From Poor Countries That Have Fought Epidemics 
About two months ago, when Covid-19 was still a somewhat distant problem in the United States, I caught sight of a poster in a remote airport in the Peruvian Amazon warning about the coronavirus. At the time I was leading a global health team from Dartmouth College working with Peru’s National Telehealth Network to extend its telehealth program to remote rural communities with limited health infrastructure and health care workers. (Anne N. Sosin, 4/16)

The Hill: Supply Chain Management Is A Vital Weapon In The War Against The Coronavirus 
The great French-Algerian philosopher Albert Camus observed in his classic novel “The Plague” that “…always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise.” What does not take people by surprise is the naming and blaming and politicization (especially in an election year) that immediately come front and center when a national catastrophe takes place. In the “Age of Coronavirus,” one side claims that COVID-19 did indeed take us by surprise, while the other counters that as early as November 2019 a report presented to the White House from the military’s National Center for Medical Intelligence made it clear that the contagion was very real and rapidly growing and widening. (Ricardo Ernst and Jerry Haar, 4/15)

Stat: Lawsuits Could Loom With HIPAA's De-Identified Data Exception 
As money pours into health care startups built around artificial intelligence — more than 350 deals totaling $4 billion in 2019 — the field is generally overlooking the potential litigation risk surrounding the de-identified data exception in HIPAA. Large volumes of data underpin the development of any AI effort. So it’s no surprise we’ve been seeing partnerships between hospitals and holders of large amounts of consumer data (“big data”). (Patricia S. Calhoun and Patricia M. Carreiro, 4/16)