First Edition: Aug. 6, 2020

Kaiser Health News: America’s Obesity Epidemic Threatens Effectiveness Of Any COVID Vaccine 
For a world crippled by the coronavirus, salvation hinges on a vaccine. But in the United States, where at least 4.6 million people have been infected and nearly 155,000 have died, the promise of that vaccine is hampered by a vexing epidemic that long preceded COVID-19: obesity. Scientists know that vaccines engineered to protect the public from influenza, hepatitis B, tetanus and rabies can be less effective in obese adults than in the general population, leaving them more vulnerable to infection and illness. There is little reason to believe, obesity researchers say, that COVID-19 vaccines will be any different. (Varney, 8/6)

Kaiser Health News: Health Care Workers Of Color Nearly Twice As Likely As Whites To Get COVID-19 
Health care workers of color were more likely to care for patients with suspected or confirmed COVID-19, more likely to report using inadequate or reused protective gear, and nearly twice as likely as white colleagues to test positive for the coronavirus, a new study from Harvard Medical School researchers found. The study also showed that health care workers are at least three times more likely than the general public to report a positive COVID test, with risks rising for workers treating COVID patients. (Jewett, 8/6)

Kaiser Health News: With Caveats, Hopeful News For Preschools Planning Young Kids’ Return
Sabrina Lira Garcia is proud to work as a clinical assistant in the COVID-19 ward of a Los Angeles hospital, but sometimes she wishes she could just stay home with her infant son until the pandemic is over. Pulling her child from day care has never been an option for Lira Garcia, however. She can’t let her career lapse. Her husband was born in Mexico and is undocumented. The family pays monthly legal fees to help him get residency papers. If he were ever deported, she’d have to support Jeremiah, born in October, by herself. (Almendrala, 8/6)

Kaiser Health News and KCUR: Missouri Voters Approve Medicaid Expansion Despite GOP Resistance
Despite strong opposition from Republicans and rural voters, Missouri on Tuesday joined 37 states and the District of Columbia in expanding its Medicaid program. Voters in Missouri approved creating a state constitutional amendment that will open Medicaid eligibility to include healthy adults starting July 1, 2021. Voters approved expansion by a margin of 6.5 percentage points. (Smith, 8/5)

The Washington Post: Facebook Removes A Coronavirus Misinformation Post From Trump For The First Time Ever 
Facebook and Twitter on Wednesday took extraordinary action against President Trump for spreading coronavirus misinformation after his official and campaign accounts broke their rules, respectively. Facebook removed from Trump’s official account the post of a video clip from a Fox News interview in which he said children are “almost immune” from covid-19. Twitter required his Team Trump campaign account to delete a tweet with the same video, blocking it from tweeting in the interim. (Kelly, 8/5)

The Wall Street Journal: Facebook, Twitter Take Down Video Of Trump Saying Children ‘Almost Immune’ From Covid-19
The video clip—a portion of an interview aired on Fox News—attracted roughly 450,000 views on Facebook before it was taken down, according to CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned analytics company. It also drew thousands of comments and was reshared nearly 2,000 times. The action marked the first time that Facebook removed Mr. Trump’s posts for violating its coronavirus misinformation rules, a Facebook spokesman said. “This video includes false claims that a group of people is immune from COVID-19 which is a violation of our policies around harmful COVID misinformation,” the spokesman said. (Seetharaman, 8/5)

The New York Times: Facebook Removes Trump Campaign’s Misleading Coronavirus Video 
The action on Wednesday did not signal a change to Facebook’s fierce defense of free expression. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, has said the social network is not an arbiter of truth and that it is in the public’s interest to see what political leaders post — even if they include falsehoods by politicians like Mr. Trump. Mr. Zuckerberg has stood by the position, even as other social media companies like Twitter have ramped up their rule enforcement with regard to the president’s speech. (Kang and Frenkel, 8 /5)

The Washington Post: Trump Threatens Executive Actions As Coronavirus Relief Deal Remains Elusive On Capitol Hill 
President Trump on Wednesday threatened to take executive action to extend an eviction moratorium, suspend collection of the payroll tax and boost unemployment benefits unless a coronavirus relief deal can be reached quickly with Democrats on Capitol Hill. And in a sign the White House could be preparing to act, the Trump administration has asked federal agencies to identify all of the money they have not yet spent from the $2 trillion Cares Act, which passed in March, according to two people briefed on the effort. White House officials are trying to determine whether this money could be redirected and used for other purposes, such as temporary unemployment benefits or the eviction moratorium. (Werner, Demirjian and Stein, 8/5)

The Hill: Skepticism Grows Over Friday Deadline For Coronavirus Deal 
The White House and congressional Democrats are racing the clock as they try to agree to a framework for a coronavirus relief package by Friday. The self-imposed deadline sets up a 48-hour scramble for the key negotiators, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.).Senate Republicans, who are now on the sidelines watching, didn’t offer a lot of optimism on Wednesday. (Carney, 8/5)

Politico: ‘I Want To Get An Outcome’: McConnell Defends Strategy As He Faces GOP Grumbling 
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell knows where he needs to take his fellow Republicans on coronavirus relief — but he’s not sure how many will follow him there. Facing a deeply divided Senate GOP conference just three months before an election that could cost Republicans their majority, McConnell is struggling to hold his members together as the White House and Democratic congressional leaders negotiate a new coronavirus relief package. There are complaints about the plan pushed by McConnell, as well as questions over whether any deal can get done this close to Nov. 3. For the first time in a while, Republicans are questioning McConnell’s choices. (Bresnahan, Levine and Desiderio, 8/5)

AP: AP Interview: Clyburn Warns US Lacks Plan To Stop Virus
Rep. James Clyburn said Wednesday the COVID-19 crisis is “much, much worse” than the 2008 Great Recession because the U.S. is without a national strategy to contain the coronavirus. “Our entire economy is at stake,” Clyburn told The Associated Press in a Newsmakers interview. The third-ranking House Democrat said he’s hopeful that negotiators on Capitol Hill can reach an agreement soon on a new virus aid package. But he said it’s a direr situation than the financial crisis more than a decade ago. (Mascaro and Rama, 8/6)

The Hill: Duckworth: Republican Coronavirus Package Would 'Gut' Americans With Disabilities Act
Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), the first disabled woman elected to the Senate, slammed Senate Republicans’ coronavirus relief proposal in a floor speech Wednesday evening, saying it would “gut” the Americans with Disabilities Act. Duckworth invoked the “Capitol Crawl” by wheelchair users lobbying for the 1990 legislation, including eight-year-old Jennifer Keelan, who was heard to say “I’ll take all night if I have to.” “Thirty years ago this legislative body said people like me mattered, but last week the Republicans in this chamber proposed a bill that said that we don’t,” Duckworth said. (Budryk, 8/5)

Politico: 'It's Whiplash': Dead People May Yet Get Their Stimulus Checks 
Dead people could end up eligible for economic stimulus checks after all. A little-noticed provision in Senate Republicans’ latest coronavirus relief package would partially overturn the Treasury Department’s much-publicized ban on sending stimulus money to the departed. So long as someone died this year, they would be eligible for the $1,200 payments included in the plan. Not just that, Senate Republicans would also make them retroactively eligible for the previous round of stimulus checks. (Faler, 8/5)

The New York Times: Postal Service Funding Dispute Complicates Impasse Over U.S. Virus Stimulus 
Top lawmakers remained nowhere close to an agreement on Wednesday for a new economic rescue package amid the recession, and appeared to be growing increasingly pessimistic that they could meet a self-imposed Friday deadline. A dispute over funding for the United States Postal Service has joined expanded unemployment benefits and aid to state and local governments on the list of issues dividing Democratic leaders and the Trump administration. (8/5)

The Washington Post: Democrats Demand Postal Service Reverse New Rules That Have Slowed The Delivery Of Absentee Ballots 
Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill told negotiators for President Trump on Wednesday that preserving funding for the U.S. Postal Service and removing new rules that have slowed delivery times are essential ingredients of a new coronavirus relief bill in a year when millions of Americans plan to vote by mail. “Elections are sacred,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), told reporters after a meeting with Postmaster General Louis DeJoy. “To do cutbacks when ballots, all ballots, have to be counted — we can’t say, ‘Oh, we’ll get 94 percent of them.’ It’s insufficient.” (Gardner and Bogage, 8/5)

AP: Trump Considering Giving Convention Speech From White House
President Donald Trump said Wednesday he’ll probably deliver his Republican convention acceptance speech from the White House now that plans to hold the event in two battleground states have been foiled by coronavirus concerns and restrictions. Such a move would mark an unprecedented use of public property for partisan political purposes, and congressional leaders in both parties publicly doubted Trump could go ahead with the plan. Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said flatly that he “can’t do that.” (Superville, 8/5)

The Wall Street Journal: Joe Biden Won’t Travel To Milwaukee For Democratic National Convention
Former Vice President Joe Biden will no longer travel to Milwaukee to accept the Democratic presidential nomination later this month because of concerns about the coronavirus pandemic and will instead address the nation from his home state of Delaware. The convention will now be entirely virtual, according to a person familiar with the plans, something unprecedented in American political history. (Thomas and McCormick, 8/5)

The New York Times: Biden’s Milwaukee Trip Is Canceled, And So Is A Normal Presidential Campaign 
The decision to cancel major in-person appearances at the Democratic National Convention 90 days before the election, at the recommendation of health officials, was the final blow to the prospect that the fall campaign would resemble anything remotely like a traditional presidential contest, as the country confronts more than 150,000 deaths from the virus and cases continue to rise in parts of the country. “The conventions as we traditionally have known them are no more,” said Terry McAuliffe, the former Democratic National Committee chairman who oversaw the party’s 2000 and 2004 conventions. “They will be more interactive and more digital, with more on social media.” (Epstein and Glueck, 8/5)

CIDRAP: Experts: Not All States Ready To Hold Safe Elections In Pandemic 
Many US states don't offer the policies and flexibility that voters will need to avoid COVID-19 infection during the upcoming general election on Nov 3—and don't have much time to correct the deficiencies, according to two Rand Corp studies published today to inform state lawmakers and election officials on mitigating health risks and ensuring election integrity. (Van Beusekom, 8/5)

The New York Times: Split 5 To 4, Supreme Court Rules For California Jail Over Virus Measures 
By a 5-to-4 vote, the Supreme Court on Wednesday sided with officials at a California jail in a dispute over the adequacy of its response to the coronavirus pandemic. The court’s brief order was unsigned and gave no reasons, which is typical when it acts on emergency applications. The four more liberal justices noted their dissents, and Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, filed an eight-page dissent that accused the majority of failing to safeguard the health of thousands of detainees. (Liptak, 8/5)

AP: Feds Propose Consent Decree To Ensure Care At Virginia Jail
The Justice Department proposed Wednesday that a Virginia jail comply with a consent decree requiring officials to improve medical treatment for inmates, marking one of the first times the department has proposed such a resolution in the Trump administration. The rare action follows a multiyear investigation into the practices at the Hampton Roads Regional Jail in Portsmouth, Virginia, which prosecutors said uncovered unlawful conditions for the inmates housed there. Federal officials allege, in part, that the jail “fails to provide constitutionally adequate mental health care to prisoners,” according to court documents. (Balsamo, 8/5)

USA Today: Some Hospital Infections Up As Feds Waived Safety Oversight, Reporting
When the Trump administration waived most federal hospital inspections and suspended hospital infection reporting in March during the coronavirus pandemic, patient safety advocates warned it could lead to big increases in hospital-acquired infections. Jumps in infections at two hospitals in New York and St. Louis – up to five times higher – suggest they may have been right. (O'Donnell, 8/5)

AP: Seeking Refuge In US, Children Fleeing Danger Are Expelled
When officers led them out of a detention facility near the U.S.-Mexico border and onto a bus last month, the 12-year-old from Honduras and his 9-year-old sister believed they were going to a shelter so they could be reunited with their mother in the Midwest. They had been told to sign a paper they thought would tell the shelter they didn’t have the coronavirus, the boy said. The form was in English, a language he and his sister don’t speak. The only thing he recognized was the letters “COVID.” (Merchant, 8/6)

The Hill: CNN's Burnett Presses Navarro On Hydroxychloroquine In Combative Interview: 'You're An Economist, Not A Scientist' 
CNN’s Erin Burnett pressed White House trade adviser Peter Navarro over his support for hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for the coronavirus despite public health experts, including several within the White House, stating that the anti-malaria drug is not effective at treating COVID-19. In the combative Wednesday interview, Navarro continued to push the drug as a coronavirus treatment, dismissing contradictory comments made by the nation’s top public health expert and White House coronavirus task force member Anthony Fauci. (Klar, 8/5)

Reuters: Exclusive: Fauci Says Regulators Promise Politics Will Not Guide Vaccine Timing
U.S. regulators have assured scientists that political pressure will not determine when a coronavirus vaccine is approved even as the White House hopes to have one ready ahead of the November presidential election, the country’s leading infectious diseases expert Anthony Fauci said on Wednesday. “We have assurances, and I’ve discussed this with the regulatory authorities, that they promise that they are not going to let political considerations interfere with a regulatory decision,” Dr. Fauci told Reuters in an interview. (Mason and Erman, 8/5)

The Hill: Fauci Says Family Has Faced Threats, Harassment Amid Pandemic 
Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said he and his family are getting death threats because people don’t like what he says about COVID-19. “Getting death threats for me and my family and harassing my daughters to the point where I have to get security is just, I mean, it’s amazing,” Fauci said during an interview with CNN’s Sanjay Gupta on Wednesday. (Hellmann, 8/5)

The Hill: Moderna To Charge $32 To $37 A Dose For Its COVID Vaccine 
Moderna will charge between $32 and $37 a dose for its experimental coronavirus vaccine for some "low volume" customers, the company's CEO said Wednesday. The company will be using a tiered pricing system, and will charge less for higher volume orders. The company considers a small order to be "in the millions" of doses, CEO Stéphane Bancel said on a conference call to discuss the company's quarterly earnings. (Weixel, 8/5)

The Hill: US Reaches $1B Deal For Doses Of Potential Johnson & Johnson Vaccine 
The Trump administration on Wednesday announced a deal worth approximately $1 billion for the manufacturing of 100 million doses of a potential coronavirus vaccine from Johnson & Johnson that the federal government would then own. The move is the latest in a series of agreements the Trump administration has made with several companies making potential coronavirus vaccines. The goal, through the Operation Warp Speed program, is to make bets on a wide array of vaccine candidates with the hope that at least one and maybe more will end up proving safe and effective through clinical trials. (Sullivan, 8/5)

CNN: These 3 Covid-19 Vaccines Have Been In The News. Here's What You Need To Know About Them 
The US government is pouring billions into Covid-19 vaccines, and candidates from three companies are moving along quickly: Moderna, Pfizer and Novavax. Here's what you need to know about them. (Waldrop, 8/6)

The Hill: CDC Warns Against Ingesting Hand Sanitizer After Reports Of Poisonings, Deaths 
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Wednesday issued a health warning against the ingestion of alcohol-based hand sanitizer products following reports of poisonings in the U.S. The agency said that poison centers in Arizona and New Mexico reported 15 cases of methanol poisoning associated with the swallowing of hand sanitizer in May and June. Four of the patients who were hospitalized from the poisoning died, and three were discharged with visual impairment. (Wise, 8/5)

The New York Times: C.D.C. Warns Of The Dangers Of Drinking Hand Sanitizer After Fatal Poisonings 
From May 1 to June 30, 15 people in Arizona and New Mexico were treated for poisoning after they swallowed alcohol-based hand sanitizer, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. Three of the patients sustained visual impairments, according to the C.D.C., which said that drinking hand sanitizer can cause methanol poisoning. Methanol is a type of alcohol commonly found in fuel products, antifreeze, industrial solvents and in some preparations of hand sanitizer that federal health officials said is harmful and should not be used. (Vigdor, 8/5)

The Wall Street Journal: Pandemic Lays Bare U.S. Reliance On China For Drugs 
The shortage of a simple, over-the-counter painkiller shows how dependent the U.S. has become on China for vital pharmaceutical supplies. ... Acetaminophen is one of a slew of life-or-death ingredients for medicines now produced in significant amounts by China. Many of these are commodity chemicals that U.S. makers found unprofitable to produce. China makes about 70% of the acetaminophen used in the U.S., the Commerce Department and analysts estimate. (Yap, 8/5)

Politico: The Summer Of Spread Is Here
New Jersey went from being one of the country’s worst Covid-19 hot spots to a model of how to flatten the curve. Now, two months into the first summer of the pandemic, it’s backsliding. New cases are way up and the state's rate of spread nearly doubled in the past four weeks as keggers, house parties and packed-to-the-gills vacation rentals became infection hubs. (Sutton and Ehley, 8/5)

The Atlantic: The Pandemic Could Be Worse In The Winter Of 2020-21 
Throughout the pandemic, one lodestar of public-health advice has come down to three words: Do things outside. For nearly five months now, the outdoors has served as a vital social release valve—a space where people can still eat, drink, relax, exercise, and worship together in relative safety. Later this year, that precious space will become far less welcoming in much of the U.S. “What do you do when nobody wants to go to the beach on some cold November day?” Andrew Noymer, a public-health professor at UC Irvine, said to me. “People are going to want to go to bowling alleys and whatnot, and that’s a recipe for disaster, honestly—particularly if they don't want to wear masks.” (Pinsker, 8/5)

The Atlantic: The Pandemic's Biggest Mystery Is Our Own Immune System 
There’s a joke about immunology, which Jessica Metcalf of Princeton recently told me. An immunologist and a cardiologist are kidnapped. The kidnappers threaten to shoot one of them, but promise to spare whoever has made the greater contribution to humanity. The cardiologist says, “Well, I’ve identified drugs that have saved the lives of millions of people.” Impressed, the kidnappers turn to the immunologist. “What have you done?” they ask. The immunologist says, “The thing is, the immune system is very complicated …” And the cardiologist says, “Just shoot me now.” (Yong, 8/5)

The New York Times: The Many Symptoms Of Covid-19 
For a Texas nurse, the first sign that something was wrong happened while brushing her teeth — she couldn’t taste her toothpaste. For a Georgia attorney, it was hitting a wall of fatigue on a normally easy run. When a Wisconsin professor fell ill in June, he thought a bad meal had upset his stomach. But eventually, all of these people discovered that their manifold symptoms were all signs of Covid-19. Some of the common symptoms — a dry cough, a headache — can start so mildly they are at first mistaken for allergies or a cold. In other cases, the symptoms are so unusual — strange leg pain, a rash or dizziness — that patients and even their doctors don’t think Covid-19 could be the culprit. (Parker-Pope, 8/5)

Stat: How A Zoom Forum Is Changing ICU Treatment Of Covid-19 Patients 
It was late April, near the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in the big cities in the northeastern U.S., and anesthesiologist Joseph Savino was puzzled. In two months, an unexpectedly high number of coronavirus patients had died in his intensive care unit at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania after a stroke caused by bleeding in the brain... So Savino described the dilemma on a virtual forum on Zoom, where dozens of critical-care experts from around the world meet each week to share their experiences with Covid-19 patients. (Winslow, 8/6)

The Hill: US Could Avoid 4.5M Early Deaths By Fighting Climate Change, Study Finds 
The U.S. stands to avoid 4.5 million premature deaths if it works to keep global temperatures from rising by more than 2 degree Celsius, according to new research from Duke University. The same study found working to limit climate change could prevent about 3.5 million hospitalizations and emergency room visits and approximately 300 million lost workdays in America. (Beitsch, 8/5)

Reuters: Two U.S. Senators Seek Ban On Collecting Customer Biometric Data Without Consent 
Two U.S. senators are proposing legislation to prohibit private companies from collecting biometric data without consumers and employees’ consent. Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon said this week he is introducing the reform measure along with independent Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. The effort comes after growing concerns about biometric data collection among private companies, including the use of facial-recognition technology. (8/6)

AP: Lack Of Study And Oversight Raises Concerns About Tear Gas
On June 2, Justin LaFrancois attended a protest against police violence and racism in downtown Charlotte, North Carolina, where he planned to livestream the event for his alternative newspaper’s website. Shortly into the march, police, who reported that water bottles and rocks were being thrown at them, unleashed a volley of tear gas on the entire crowd, including those who were marching peacefully. The protesters tried to run. But hemmed in by tall buildings and desperate for an escape route, they tugged at the closed gate of a parking garage, pulling it up just high enough so they could slip inside to escape the pepper balls and exploding flashbangs. (Selsky, 8/6)

CIDRAP: NIH Awards $19 Million For New Gonorrhea Diagnostic Test
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) today awarded $19 million for a new diagnostic test that can detect gonorrhea in under 30 minutes—and determine if the infection is susceptible to a single-dose antibiotic. The test is made by Visby Medical, Inc. The award is part of the NIH's Antimicrobial Resistance Diagnostic Challenge, which aims to improve diagnostics for the more than 2.8 million antibiotic-resistant infections in the United States each year. Those infections kill more than 35,000 people annually, the NIH said in a news release. (8/5)

The New York Times: Can A Physically Taxing Job Be Bad For Our Brains? 
Regular exercise helps to bulk up our brains and improve thinking skills, numerous studies show. But physically demanding jobs, even if they are being carried out in an office, might have a different and opposite effect, according to a provocative new study of almost 100 older people and their brains and work histories. It finds that men and women who considered their work to be physically draining tended to have smaller memory centers in their brains and lower scores on memory tests than other people whose jobs felt less physically taxing. The study does not prove that physical demands at work shrunk people’s brains. But it does raise interesting questions about whether being physically active on the job might somehow have different effects on our brains than being active at the gym or out on the trails. (Reynolds, 8/5)

The Washington Post: Struggling U.S. Manufacturers Pivot To One Product Where Sales Are Actually Booming: Masks
For nearly a century, Steele Canvas has been churning out industrial goods from its workshops near Boston, lately housed in a brick factory in Chelsea, Mass. The family-owned manufacturer built a booming business making canvas-and-steel storage carts that customers use to stash tools, construction materials and other wares. As the economy started locking down in March, those orders dried up, pushing the company toward crisis and forcing it to consider furloughing its 70 employees. But then it found a way out — making masks. (Whalen, 8/5)

Stat: Blackstone Agrees To Buy Ancestry In $4.7 Billion Deal
Investment firm Blackstone announced on Wednesday that it was buying a majority stake in the direct-to-consumer genetics company Ancestry from its former equity holders for $4.7 billion. The firm will take the reins from global firms including Silver Lake, GIC, and Spectrum Equity, but GIC will retain a significant minority stake in the company, according to a press release. Ancestry was last valued at roughly $3 billion in 2017, according to PitchBook, and had eyed an IPO in 2017 and 2019, when the personal genetics business was booming. (Brodwin, 8/5)

Stat: Teladoc Health Reaches Agreement To Buy Livongo In A $18.5 Billion Deal
Telemedicine provider Teladoc Health has reached an agreement to buy the diabetes coaching company Livongo in an $18.5 billion deal that will create the first true health tech giant — in an era in which demand for virtual care is surging. The merger agreement, announced on Wednesday morning, is expected to create a combined company on track to bring in $1.3 billion in revenue this year, up 85% over last year. (Robbins, 8/5)

Stat: 10 Burning Questions About Teladoc's $18.5 Billion Deal To Buy Livongo
It’s hard to recall a deal that scrambled the dynamics of the health tech industry more than Teladoc Health’s proposed $18.5 billion buyout of Livongo. The agreement, announced on Wednesday, is expected to create a digital health behemoth that combines Teladoc’s telemedicine platform with Livongo’s chronic disease coaching programs — and brings in a huge number of patient users and insurer and employer customers in the process. (Robbins, Ross and Brodwin, 8/5)

Reuters: Virginia Touts Nation's First Contact Tracing App With Apple-Google Tech 
Virginia on Wednesday launched the first contact tracing app for the novel coronavirus in the United States that uses new technology from Apple Inc (AAPL.O) and Alphabet Inc’s Google (GOOGL.O). The state is betting that the app, COVIDWISE, can help it catch new cases faster, though long delays in getting test results must be overcome in order for it to be effective. (Dave, 8/5)

Stat: This Company Has A Better Version Of A Simpler, Faster Covid-19 Test
In some parts of the U.S. right now, it can take weeks to get results for a simple Covid-19 test, a delay that renders the results largely useless. So a handful of city governments and schools are turning to an entirely different type of Covid-19 test that they say is simpler, easier, and most importantly faster — and therefore more meaningful. (Sheridan, 8/6)

Los Angeles Times: COVID-19 Test Issues Skew California Results, Slow Response 
A breakdown in the electronic collection of coronavirus test data is hampering California’s pandemic response, with some public health officials resorting to counting results by hand and a growing number of counties warning the public that statistics provided by the state on infection rates are unreliable. The ongoing technical problems with the electronic system for gathering and analyzing COVID-19 infection rates affect the state’s ability to track the spread of the virus and could be resulting in significant undercounts of infections across the state. (Shalby, 8/5)

AP: US Cruises Are Off Through October After Infections Overseas
With new coronavirus clusters sprouting aboard ships overseas, the U.S. cruise industry is extending its suspension of operations through October. The Cruise Lines International Association, which represents more than 50 companies and 95% of ocean-going cruise capacity, said Wednesday that if conditions in the U.S. change, it would consider allowing short, modified sailings. A no-sail order for U.S. waters initially issued by the Centers for Disease Control in March has been extended through Sept. 30. The CLIA has extended its travel suspension twice. (Durbin, 8/5)

AP: The Latest: Virus Cases On Norwegian Cruise Ship Reach 53
The number of people on a Norwegian cruise ship who have tested positive for the coronavirus has reached 53.Following the outbreak on the MS Roald Amundsen, the ship’s owner halted all cruises on Monday and Norway closed its ports to cruise ships for two weeks. The Norwegian Institute of Public Health said that during its two journeys last month, a total of 37 crew members and 16 passengers have tested positive. The passengers all registered as living in Norway. (8/6)

AP: UConn Becomes 1st FBS Program To Cancel Football Over Virus
UConn canceled its 2020-2021 football season Wednesday, becoming the first FBS program to do so because of the coronavirus pandemic, after other schools had taken the Huskies off their schedules and the governor was reluctant to allow players to travel to states with high infection rates. “After receiving guidance from state and public health officials and consulting with football student-athletes, we’ve decided that we will not compete on the gridiron this season,” athletic director David Benedict said. ”The safety challenges created by COVID-19 place our football student-athletes at an unacceptable level of risk.” (Eaton-Robb, 8/5)

Politico: NCAA Ditches Fall Championships For Hundreds Of Schools 
Athletes at hundreds of colleges and universities won't participate in fall sports championships this year, after the NCAA's second- and third-tier divisions canceled postseason competitions Wednesday. Division II and Division III officials nixed their fall postseasons after the NCAA's governing board announced earlier Wednesday that each division could make its own call on whether to cancel the competitions amid the coronavirus pandemic. But administrators for higher-profile NCAA Division I programs have yet to pull the plug. (Perez Jr., 8/5)

The Wall Street Journal: Dartmouth Is The Blueprint For NFL Success In 2020. Yes, Dartmouth.
Buddy Teevens came up with a crazy idea because he needed one. Dartmouth’s football team lost every one of its games in 2008. It won only two in 2009. Teevens knew just two things for certain: his team’s injury rate was really high and its success rate was really low. Teevens’s radical plan to turn around an Ivy League football program a decade ago is now the unlikely blueprint for every team in the NFL. Dartmouth eliminated full-contact practices. Injuries plummeted. Success skyrocketed. Rethinking how football teams have practiced for over a century made Dartmouth healthier—and better. (Beaton, 8/5)

AP: NBA Releases Testing Results, No Players Confirmed Positive
The NBA’s bubble is still working. The league released its latest results Wednesday for coronavirus tests performed on players participating in the restarted season at Walt Disney World, and the numbers are still perfect. Of the 343 players tested since results were last announced July 29, none has been confirmed positive. That means no player has tested positive since entering the so-called bubble last month. (Reynolds, 8/5)

CNN: Over 100 Students Quarantined In Mississippi School District After Several Individuals Tested Positive For Covid-19
Several students in the Corinth School District in Mississippi have been infected with Covid-19 a little over a week after in-person classes resumed. Taylor Coombs, spokesperson for the Corinth School District, told CNN that six students and one staff member tested positive for the coronavirus. According to Coombs, 116 students that have been considered in "close contact" of a positive case have been sent home to quarantine for 14 days.(Lynch, 8/5)

Reuters: Chicago Says Students Will Stay Home, New York Erects COVID-19 Checkpoints
Chicago will teach online only when school resumes in September, the mayor said on Wednesday, and New York City announced checkpoints at bridges and tunnels to enforce a quarantine on travelers from 35 states on a list of coronavirus hot spots. The teachers’ union and many parents in Chicago had objected to a plan to allow students the option of attending class in pods of 15 pupils twice a week. (Caspani and O'Brien, 8/5)

The Washington Post: Blount County Tennessee Schools Bringing Students Into Classrooms 
It was just before 7:30 a.m. when the line of Blount County Schools buses grumbled into the parking lot of Heritage High School and began dropping off students — some wearing masks, others barefaced — into the fraught new world of in-school education during a pandemic. At the flagpole in front of the school, two unmasked teens hugged before sitting down in a small group to chat until the bell rang. The scene of students reuniting could have been from any other first day of school in any other year. But over their shoulders, an early August thunderstorm brewed above the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains — an almost-too-perfect metaphor for what many parents and teachers here, and across the country, worry is coming. (Shilton and Heim, 8/5)

The Washington Post: America Is About To Start Online Learning, Round 2. For Millions Of Students, It Won’T Be Any Better
America is about to embark on Round 2 of its unplanned experiment in online education — and, for millions of students, virtual learning won’t be any better than it was in the spring. As the start of school inches ever closer — and is already underway in some places — many teachers have yet to be trained how to be more adept with online learning. School district leaders spent so much time over the summer trying to create reopening plans that would meet safety guidelines for classes inside school buildings that they had little time to focus on improving online academic offerings. And millions of students nationwide still lack devices and Internet access. (Natanson and Strauss, 8/5)

AP: Inslee: Most Schools Should Go Online-Only, Cancel Sports
Gov. Jay Inslee said Wednesday that he’s strongly recommending most schools offer online-only learning for students this fall due to COVID-19, and canceling or postponing sports and all other in-person extracurricular activities. “This pandemic will continue to grow unless something changes,” Inslee said, adding if every school district brought all students back “I believe we would see a dangerous increase of COVID activity.” (Ho, 8/5)