The Associated Press: Alarming Rise In Virus Cases As States Roll Back Lockdowns
States are rolling back lockdowns, but the coronavirus isn’t done with the U.S. Cases are rising in nearly half the states, according to an Associated Press analysis, a worrying trend that could intensify as people return to work and venture out during the summer. In Arizona, hospitals have been told to prepare for the worst. Texas has more hospitalized COVID-19 patients than at any time before. (Stobbe, 6/11)

The Hill: US Showing Signs Of Retreat In Battle Against COVID-19 
When throngs of tourists and revelers left their homes over Memorial Day weekend, public health experts braced for a surge in coronavirus infections that could force a second round of painful shutdowns. Two weeks later, that surge has hit places like Houston, Phoenix, South Carolina and Missouri. Week-over-week case counts are on the rise in half of all states. Only 16 states and the District of Columbia have seen their total case counts decline for two consecutive weeks. (Wilson, 6/11)

The Wall Street Journal: Covid-19 Hospitalizations Surge In Some States
The post-Memorial Day outbreaks in states come roughly a month after stay-at-home orders were lifted. Experts urged people to continue to take the virus seriously and not take increased freedom as permission to stop wearing masks or resume gathering in large groups. Dr. Marc Boom, chief executive officer of the Houston Methodist hospital network, said he is concerned by the “array of indicators, all of which are starting to flash at us,” including increased cases, a rise in hospitalizations and a boost in the percentage of positive test results. (Collin and Findell, 6/11)

ABC News: Ominous Sign? Of The 14 States With Rising New Coronavirus Cases, Arizona Has Experts Especially Worried 
Some states with increasing cases (a growing number over the past 14 days), like Montana, Hawaii and Alaska, have so few overall infections that to label their respective rises a spike would be misleading. Other sharp upticks, like Arizona's, in which new cases rose from roughly 200 infections a day in late May to more than 1,400 infections a day this week, are more ominous. (Schumaker, 6/11)

Reuters: Fears Of Second U.S. Coronavirus Wave Rise On Worrisome Spike In Cases, Hospitalizations 
Texas has seen record hospitalizations for three days in a row, and in North Carolina only 13% of the state’s ICU beds are available due to severe COVID-19 cases. Houston’s mayor said the city was ready to turn its NFL stadium into a make-shift hospital if necessary. Arizona has seen a record number of hospitalizations at 1,291. The state health director told hospitals this week to activate emergency plans and increase ICU capacity. About three-quarters of the state's ICU beds are filled, according to the state website. (Shumaker, O'Donnell and Erman, 6/11)

CIDRAP: Models Show Rising US COVID-19 Cases, Deaths In Months Ahead
With more than 2 million cases of COVID-19 detected in the United States, public health experts are revising models meant to guide and inform the public on what the next few months of battling the global pandemic will look like. Today, Johns Hopkins University's COVID-19 tracker shows 2,015,214 cases and 113,561 deaths. The model produced by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, influential among members of the White House coronavirus task force, updated its projection of fatalities due to the novel coronavirus, showing the US death toll could reach 169,890 by Oct 1. (Soucheray, 6/11)

The Hill: Harvard Doctor Warns Coronavirus Deaths Could Reach 200,000 By September As States Uptick In Cases 
A top Harvard doctor said Thursday that the U.S. could see its death toll from the coronavirus pandemic hit 200,000 by September, as several states have seen spikes in the number of COVID-19 cases. "The numbers are concerning particularly in states like Arizona, North and South Carolina, Florida and Texas — places where we're seeing pretty consistent increases," Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute told NBC's "Today." (Johnson, 6/11)

Reuters: 'This Is About Livelihoods': U.S. Virus Hotspots Reopen Despite Second Wave Specter
Facing budget shortfalls and double-digit unemployment, governors of U.S. states that are COVID-19 hotspots on Thursday pressed ahead with economic reopenings that have raised fears of a second wave of infections. The moves by governors of states such as Florida and Arizona came as Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the United States could not afford to let the novel coronavirus shut its economy again and global stocks tanked on worries of a pandemic resurgence. (Hay, 6/11)

NPR: N.C. Health Secretary Warns Of Surge In Cases, Possible Return Of Stay-At-Home Orders
North Carolina is experiencing a surge of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations during its second phase of reopening, forcing the state's health director to contend with the idea of a second shutdown. "If we need to go back to stay-at-home [orders], we will," Mandy Cohen, the secretary of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, told NPR's Morning Edition on Thursday. "I hope we don't have to. I think there are things we can do before we have to get there, but yes, we are concerned." (Silva, 6/11)

The Associated Press: Florida Migrant Towns Become Coronavirus Hot Spots In US
When much of the world was staying at home to slow the spread of the new coronavirus, Elbin Sales Perez continued to rise at 4:30 a.m. to report to his landscaping job in a rural Florida town. Now, a couple of months later, as state-imposed restrictions are lifted and Floridians begin to venture out, the Guatemalan immigrant is ill and isolated at home with his wife and children in Immokalee, a poverty-stricken town in the throes of one of the sharpest COVID-19 upticks in the state. (Licon, 6/12)

NPR: Florida And S.C. Report New Spikes In Coronavirus Cases
A record high in South Carolina. A two-month high in Florida. Record hospitalizations in Texas. Several states that were among the first to reopen their economies are now reporting spikes in new coronavirus cases, driving an alarming trend that has propelled the U.S. to 2 million cases. Florida reported nearly 1,700 new cases Thursday morning — "the biggest jump since March," as NPR member station WLRN reported. Hours after the state published that data, Gov. Ron DeSantis unveiled his plan to reopen schools in August, urging local governments to aim for "full capacity" when they resume classes. (Chappell, 6/11)

Politico: Florida Covid-19 Cases Soar In Agricultural Communities
The Florida Department of Health reported a record daily number of Covid-19 diagnoses, which Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday said was the result of outbreaks among farming communities and increased statewide testing. The state Department of Health reported that 1,677 people were diagnosed with Covid-19 on Wednesday, the highest number of positive tests since the state reported its first case March 1. The previous record was the 1,527 cases reported on April 3, according to Johns Hopkins University & Medicine. (Sarkissian, 6/11)

The Associated Press: Oregon Reopening Paused As Daily Coronavirus Cases Hit High
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown said Thursday evening that a noticeable increase in coronavirus infections was cause for concern and that she was putting all county applications for further reopening on hold for seven days. The Oregon Health Authority reported 178 new confirmed COVID-19 cases Thursday, marking the highest daily count in the state since the start of the pandemic. (6/12)

Los Angeles Times: L.A. County Coronavirus Cases Rise, Hospitals Face New Danger
Coronavirus transmission continues to worsen in Los Angeles County, officials said this week, and that brings risks as the region further reopens. With higher transmissions, there is a chance that the nation’s most populous county could run out of intensive care unit beds in two to four weeks, officials said Wednesday. The numbers have not reached danger levels yet, but health officials said they are monitoring conditions carefully for any signs of new pressures on hospitals. (Lin and Shalby, 6/11)

Los Angeles Times: Far-Flung Coronavirus Outbreaks 'Took Over The Planet'
The chroniclers of history’s great plagues — physicians and novelists, diarists and archivists — tend to recount uncannily similar moments, always poignant in retrospect, when people allow themselves to believe that the devastation has reached its height. And then it gets worse. The novel coronavirus is no longer a novelty. Some six months after the outbreak began in Wuhan, China, and three months after COVID-19’s formal designation as a pandemic, nearly every corner of the world has been touched. (Bengali, McDonnell, Pierson and King, 6/11)

Dallas Morning News: Dallas County Reports Record 312 New Coronavirus Cases As Hospitalizations Rise
Dallas County reported 312 new cases of the coronavirus Thursday — breaking a single-day high it set the day before — while hospitalizations and emergency room visits also rose. Three new deaths were reported, all of them Dallas residents. The victims were a woman in her 50s, a man in his 60s who lived at a long-term care facility and a man in his 70s. (Jones, 6/11)

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Against The Unknown, Georgia Hospitals Gird For The Next Virus Wave
With few national policy solutions or vaccine in sight, how quickly hospitals can adapt and respond to another surge in coronavirus infections will be a matter of life or death for the sickest patients. While Georgia’s coronavirus cases are trending flat, a fifth of U.S. states is experiencing a surge, including four of the five states bordering the Peach State. (Mariano, 6/12)

The New York Times: On The Future, Americans Can Agree: ‘It’s All Screwed’
Brendan Hermanson, 51, a construction worker for three decades, has come through the pandemic healthy and employed. At home in Milwaukee, where he lives with his grown son, he tries to tune out the hostile politics in the country and wonders if he should bother to vote again for President Trump in November or “sit back and watch it crumble.” In the Philadelphia suburbs, Basil Miles, 27, isn’t as comfortable. He worries about his ability to provide for his pregnant partner and their 3-year-old daughter after he was laid off from his food service job because of the coronavirus. He recently skipped a doctor’s appointment in the city because he feared armed white vigilantes who were threatening black protesters in the area. (Lerer and Umhoefer, 6/12)

The Associated Press: Downplaying Virus Risk, Trump Gets Back To Business As Usual
Three months after President Donald Trump bowed to the realities of a pandemic that put big chunks of life on pause and killed more Americans than several major wars, Trump is back to business as usual — even as coronavirus cases are on the upswing in many parts of the country. While the nation has now had months to prepare stockpiles of protective gear and ventilators, a vaccine still is many months away at best and a model cited by the White House projects tens of thousands of more deaths by the end of September. (Colvin and Miller, 6/12)

Politico: Trump Rally Attendees Must Agree Not To Sue Campaign Over Potential Coronavirus Exposure
Supporters of President Donald Trump will soon be able to attend one of his signature, raucous campaign rallies again after a monthslong hiatus because of the coronavirus pandemic — but first, they must agree not to sue the campaign if they contract the virus after the event. The Trump campaign on Thursday sent out registration information for the president’s first rally since March, with the campaign’s chief operating officer, Michael Glassner, proclaiming that there is “no better place” to restart rallies than Tulsa, Okla. (Oprysko, 6/11)

The Washington Post: Trump’s Tulsa Campaign Rally Sign-Up Page Includes Coronavirus Liability Disclaimer
At the bottom of the registration page for tickets to the upcoming Trump campaign rally is a disclaimer notifying attendees that “by clicking register below, you are acknowledging that an inherent risk of exposure to COVID-19 exists in any public place where people are present.” “By attending the Rally, you and any guests voluntarily assume all risks related to exposure to COVID-19 and agree not to hold Donald J. Trump for President, Inc.; BOK Center; ASM Global; or any of their affiliates, directors, officers, employees, agents, contractors, or volunteers liable for any illness or injury,” the notice states. (Sonmez, 6/11)

NPR: Trump Campaign Faces Backlash Over Next Campaign Rally
Asked what precautions would be taken at Trump's rallies as they restart, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Wednesday "we will ensure that everyone who goes is safe," but she did not elaborate. The decision by the Trump campaign to hold a rally in Tulsa, where white mobs massacred black citizens in 1921 has been widely condemned by Democrats, including Rep. Val Demings of Florida and Sen. Kamala Harris of California. (Sprunt, 6/11)

NBC News: Rally At Your Own Risk: Trump Campaign's Coronavirus Disclaimer To Supporters
The rally is being held in the Bank of Oklahoma Center and comes as the city is in phase three of reopening from the coronavirus pandemic. “Under Phase 3, businesses may resume unrestricted staffing at their worksites by observing proper CDC-recommended social distancing protocols and are recommended to continue increased cleaning and disinfecting practices," Gov. Kevin Stitt's office said in a May 29th statement. (Gregorian, 6/11)

CNN: Trump Rally: The Campaign Says It Can't Be Held Liable If Tulsa Attendees Contract Coronavirus 
Catherine Sharkey, a law professor at New York University School of Law, said waivers like the Trump campaign's are likely to become a regular part of American life as the country reopens and the coronavirus remains a threat. However, the waivers offer only a base-level protection against liability. "They only give limited protections, so they never would protect against, for example, gross negligence or recklessness," said Sharkey. "One could argue that holding a large public gathering that will draw people together in a context in which they're not able to do social distancing or follow the directive of the CDC, et cetera. One could argue that is grossly negligent." (Nobles, 6/11)

The Hill: Trump Rally Sign-Up Includes Disclaimer About Potential COVID-19 Exposure
Public health experts have warned that mass gatherings can be dangerous in spreading the virus. North Carolina, Arizona and Florida — states where Trump has said he will hold future rallies — have seen their case totals increase in recent weeks. (Samuels, 6/11)

Politico: ‘They Had A Huge Opportunity’: People Of Color On Trump’s Team Reckon With A Backlash
It’s another Charlottesville moment for some aides inside the Trump administration. President Donald Trump’s handling of the nationwide anti-racism protests and the response to George Floyd’s killing is prompting a private reckoning, spurring sadness or soul-searching among some people of color who continue to serve in the administration after three and a half years, say several current and former aides. (Cook and Lippman, 6/12)

The New York Times: Trump Defends Police, But Says He’ll Sign Order Encouraging Better Practices
President Trump offered only a vague policy response on Thursday to the killing of George Floyd, saying he would sign an executive order encouraging better practices by police departments while rejecting more far-reaching proposals to tackle racial injustice and police brutality in the United States. Dismissing police misconduct as the work of only a few “bad apples,” Mr. Trump strongly defended law enforcement agencies and made clear he had little interest in broader legislation being debated in Congress. (Baker and Kaplan, 6/11)

Politico: Trump Says He’s Finalizing Executive Order On Police Reform
Decrying calls from progressive activists to defund the police and funnel that money to other community programs, Trump said he wanted to increase investment in law enforcement. “We’re not defunding police. If anything we’re going the other route,” Trump said. “We’re going to make sure our police are well trained, perfectly trained, they have the best equipment.” The president also announced plans to build “safety and opportunity and dignity” by increasing access to capital for minority-owned small businesses and confronting health care disparities in communities of color. (Cohen, 6/11)

In other news, presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden addresses racial disparities and the pandemic fallout —

The Wall Street Journal: Biden Warns Of Coronavirus ‘Bounce-Back’, Says U.S. Ill-Prepared
Joe Biden warned Thursday of a second wave of coronavirus cases, saying the nation would require a surge in testing and protective equipment to allow businesses to reopen safely during the pandemic. The former vice president and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee said during a town hall meeting in Philadelphia that he was seeing “nothing that is being done to prepare for what the experts and scientists are telling us is likely to be a bounceback.” (Thomas, 6/11)

NPR: Biden Outlines Plan To Restart Economy, Including Testing Every Worker
"Trump may have forgotten about the coronavirus, but it hasn't forgotten about us," Biden said at the front of a horseshoe-shaped table at a community center in West Philadelphia. "The failure to respond to the pandemic, I think the federal government has abdicated any effective leadership role." The former vice president, meeting with black community leaders and business owners, said that he would also task the Occupational Safety and Health Administration with enforcing standard workplace safety requirements and that he wants to build out a public health job corps with state, tribal and local officials to conduct robust contact tracing. (Gringlas, 6/11)

ABC News: Coronavirus Task Force Fades From View As Trump White House Moves On 
The White House coronavirus task force had already faded from public view as the administration pivots from public health to the economy, but as President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence openly shifted into campaign mode this month they have also openly flouted the advice of top administration health officials. Even as the nation's top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci warned on ABC's "Good Morning America" Wednesday that "you still should be wearing a mask and "avoid congregating in large numbers," Trump the same day announced he would resume his signature mega rallies next week after more than a three-month hiatus due to the virus. (Phelps and Gittleson, 6/11)

The Hill: Schumer Requests Briefing With White House Coronavirus Task Force As Cases Rise 
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) asked the White House coronavirus task force to brief Senate Democrats next week on the status of the pandemic as several states begin to see surges in new cases. Schumer said that the briefing was needed "to wrest the focus back" on the coronavirus. (Hellmann, 6/11)

And in other news —

CNN: Fauci Voices Support For World Health Organization After Trump Terminates US Relationship
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, expressed support for the World Health Organization on Thursday in a significant break from President Donald Trump, who announced last month that the US would terminate its relationship with the world's leading public health body. (LeBlanc, 6/11)

The Wall Street Journal: Steven Mnuchin Says White House Considering Second Round Of Stimulus Payments
The Trump administration is weighing getting behind a second round of stimulus payments for Americans as part of an economic-relief package Congress is likely to consider next month, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Thursday. Mr. Mnuchin said he had discussed with President Trump the idea of additional stimulus payments, though no decision had been made yet on whether to advocate for them in the next bill. “It’s something that we’re very seriously considering,” he told reporters during an online question-and-answer session Thursday. (Davidson and Rubin, 6/11)

The Wall Street Journal: Congress Confronts Summer Deadlines For Stimulus Spending Decisions
With the Federal Reserve pledging to do whatever it can to pull the U.S. out of a recession, it is now up to Congress to decide how much more of a spending boost the economy needs, and what form it should take. Important deadlines are looming. Millions of jobless Americans will see their extra unemployment benefits disappear at the end of July unless Congress extends them. Deferred tax payments are due July 15. And many state and local governments must complete annual budgets by June 30. They are counting on more federal aid to close gaping deficits that have forced them to cut spending and lay off workers. (Davidson and Timiraos, 6/11)

Politico: Black Community Braces For Next Threat: Mass Evictions
A new tremor is threatening to shake minority communities as protests over racial injustice sweep the country: A wave of evictions as a federal moratorium on kicking people out of their rental units expires. The ban on evictions — which applies to rentals that are backed by the government — expires in a matter of weeks. On top of that, the federal boost to unemployment benefits that many laid-off workers have used to pay their rent is set to end July 31. (O'Donnell, 6/12)

ABC News: American Cancer Society Eliminates 1,000 Jobs Amid COVID-19 Pandemic 
The largest nongovernmental supporter of cancer research in the United States is facing major financial hardship during the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic. As a result, the American Cancer Society announced the layoffs of 1,000 employees Thursday in an effort to shrink its overall budget, according to a statement. (Fuerte, 6/11)

NBC News: Dow Plunges Nearly 7 Percent On Concerns Of Coronavirus Resurgence
U.S. stocks dropped sharply on Thursday as investors weighed sobering economic forecasts and new data, along with indications that the COVID-19 pandemic is far from subsiding. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 1,861 points, or 6.9 percent, and the S&P 500 was down 5.9 percent, the biggest fall since March 16. Just a day before, the Nasdaq Composite hit an intraday high. (Gura, 6/11)

ABC News: Dow Plunges Nearly 7% On COVID-19 Fears, Economic Forecasts 
The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted more than 1,860 points, or 6.9%, on Thursday as investors seemed concerned about new spikes in COVID-19 cases and on the heels of two gloomy economic forecasts. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 closed down 5.9% and the Nasdaq tumbled 5.3%.Thursday marked the worst day for U.S. financial markets since March 16, when the impact of the coronavirus pandemic first began to hit Wall Street. (Thorbecke, 6/11)

The Hill: DeVos Issues Rule Barring Colleges From Granting Coronavirus Relief Funds To DACA Recipients 
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos issued a rule Thursday that would ban colleges from granting coronavirus relief funds to noncitizens, including those protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) program. The rule finalizes the Education Department’s (DOE) interpretation of a provision in the $2.2 trillion CARES Act that Congress passed in March which allocated $12.6 billion to colleges to fund emergency grants for students affected by campus closures. (Moreno, 6/11)

Politico: American Indian Tribes Thwarted In Efforts To Get Coronavirus Data
Federal and state health agencies are refusing to give Native American tribes and organizations representing them access to data showing how the coronavirus is spreading around their lands, potentially widening health disparities and frustrating tribal leaders already ill-equipped to contain the pandemic. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has turned down tribal epidemiologists’ requests for data that it’s making freely available to states. Authorities in Michigan and Massachusetts since early spring have also resisted handing over information on testing and confirmed cases, citing privacy concerns, and refused to strike agreements with tribes on contact tracing or other surveillance, eight tribal leaders and health experts told POLITICO. (Tahir and Cancryn, 6/11)

NBC News: Analysis: Data From 15 Million Phones Shows Some Americans Are Gathering At Pre-Pandemic Levels
Americans have been keeping their distance from one another since late March. But new data suggests that those habits are coming to an end for more than 10 million people. According to an NBC News analysis of cellphone location data provided by the analytics and marketing company Cuebiq, people in more than 450 counties across the country have started to come near one another more frequently. And as people begin to gather in greater numbers, health officials are watching for a new round of coronavirus spikes. (Chiwaya, 6/11)

The Wall Street Journal: Urgent-Care Clinics Turn To Technology To Meet Coronavirus Challenge
Experity Inc., a company that sells software for urgent-care walk-in clinics, has had to quickly build new tools to meet customer demands during the coronavirus pandemic. The Machesney Park, Ill., company accelerated the development and launch of a telemedicine application and also built a feature to allow Covid-19 patients to check in to their urgent-care appointments. Both tools debuted in March. “We had to respond very quickly for our clients,” said David Stern, Experity’s chief executive. (Castellanos, 6/11)

The New York Times: Twitter Removes Chinese Misinformation Campaign
China has stepped up its effort to spread misinformation on Twitter, creating tens of thousands of fake accounts that discussed protests in Hong Kong and the Communist Party’s response to the coronavirus, Twitter said on Thursday. The company said it had discovered and removed 23,750 accounts that were “highly engaged” in a coordinated effort to spread misinformation. Twitter said it also took down about 150,000 accounts that were dedicated to boosting China’s messages by retweeting and liking the content. (Conger, 6/11)

NPR: EPA Orders Amazon And EBay To Stop Selling Bogus Coronavirus-Fighting Products
On Thursday, the Environmental Protection Agency ordered Amazon and eBay to stop selling certain pesticide-containing products, many of which claimed to fight off and disinfect from the coronavirus. The orders also bar the e-commerce giants from selling products that contain toxic chemicals like chlorine dioxide and methylene chloride, which is federally regulated as a toxic substance. (Hagemann, 6/11)

The Wall Street Journal: How New York’s Coronavirus Response Made The Pandemic Worse
New York leaders faced an unanticipated crisis as the new coronavirus overwhelmed the nation’s largest city. Their response was marred by missed warning signs and policies that many health-care workers say put residents at greater risk and led to unnecessary deaths. In the first few days of March, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio assured New Yorkers things were under control. On March 2, Mr. de Blasio tweeted that people should go see a movie. Only after the disease had gripped the city’s low-income neighborhoods in early March did Gov. Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio mobilize public and private hospitals to create more beds and intensive-care units. (Ramachandran, Kusisto and Honan, 6/11)

The Wall Street Journal: Coronavirus Takes Financial Toll On New York City’s ‘Safety-Net’ Hospitals
The hospitals serving New York City’s neediest and most vulnerable patients face a financial reckoning as a result of the new coronavirus outbreak and uncertain stimulus funding from Washington, officials at the institutions say. New York City’s Health + Hospitals system is running with about 18 days of cash on hand, officials say. The 11-hospital system will go lean on cash in June and July if more federal funding doesn’t begin to flow, including from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. (Grayce West and Palazzolo, 6/11)

Modern Healthcare: Recession Could Add Hundreds Of Thousands To New York's Medicaid Program
Enrollment in New York's Medicaid program could grow by hundreds of thousands of beneficiaries as workers lose their job—and their insurance coverage—because of the economic shock waves generated by COVID-19. A new analysis from the United Hospital Fund found the state is better equipped to handle a spike in workers seeking Medicaid benefits than during the Great Recession of 2007–2009. (Lamantia, 6/10)

The Wall Street Journal: The Early Coronavirus Warning That Woke Up Wall Street
The warning was stark. It was late January, and there were just six known cases of Covid-19 in the U.S. A leading infectious disease specialist who previously had battled Ebola and SARS had an alarming message for a group of money managers: It was about to get a lot worse. “In the 20 or 30 years I’ve been involved in emerging infections,” Jeremy Farrar told the managers on the January 31 call, “I’ve never seen anything that has been as fast or as rapidly moving and dynamic as this has been.” (Chung, 6/12)

Columbus Dispatch: Dr. Amy Acton Resigns As State Health Director; Democrats Cite Criticism From GOP Lawmakers
Turning down pleas from Gov. Mike DeWine to stay on the job, Dr. Amy Acton surprisingly resigned Thursday as director of the Ohio Department of Health amid the coronavirus pandemic. DeWine said Acton’s resignation is effective Thursday, although she now will become his chief health adviser. “It is difficult for me to put in words how grateful I am for Dr. Acton’s service to the state,” he said. (Ludlow, 6/11)

ABC News: Amy Acton, Ohio's Embattled Health Director, Resigns Amid COVID-19 Crisis 
Protesters demonstrated in front of her home on several occasions in May, and Republican lawmakers have been working on legislation to limit the health director's authority. In ruling that the state's order closing gyms during the pandemic violated the Ohio Constitution, an Ohio judge wrote that Acton acted in an "impermissibly arbitrary, unreasonable, and oppressive manner." Lance Himes, the Ohio Department of Health's general counsel, will become interim director, DeWine said.(Deliso, 6/11)

Kaiser Health News/The Associated Press: Public Health Officials Face Wave Of Threats, Pressure Amid Coronavirus Response
In the battle against COVID-19, public health workers spread across states, cities and small towns make up an invisible army on the front lines.  But that army, which has suffered neglect for decades, is under assault when it’s needed most. Officials who usually work behind the scenes managing everything from immunizations to water quality inspections have found themselves center stage. Elected officials and members of the public who are frustrated with the lockdowns and safety restrictions have at times turned public health workers into politicized punching bags, battering them with countless angry calls and even physical threats. (Weber, Barry-Jester and Smith, 6/12)

New Orleans Times-Picayune: An Inside Look At New Orleans' Coronavirus Field Hospital: ‘150 Bodies To Watch 12 People’
At its apex, the convention center held just one-tenth of the patients that it was built and staffed for, reaching 108 patients on April 16 and shrinking from there. While health care providers who worked there applauded the decision to prepare for the worst-case scenario, several said in interviews with The Times-Picayune | The Advocate and WWL-TV that they do not understand why the operation didn’t wind down sooner, given the absurd staffing ratios for just a handful of patients on a steep downward trend over the past eight weeks. (Gallo and Perlstein, 6/11)

The Associated Press: LA-Area Homelessness Spike Could Get Worse Post-Coronavirus
The number of homeless people counted across Los Angeles County jumped 12.7% over the past year to more than 66,400 and authorities fear that figure will spike again once the full impact of the coronavirus pandemic is felt. The majority of those experiencing homelessness were found within the city of Los Angeles, which saw a 13.6% increase to 41,209, according to data released Friday by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. (Weber, 6/12)

Los Angeles Times: Homelessness Jumped 13% In L.A. Before The Coronavirus Hit
Despite hundreds of millions of dollars spent to curb homelessness, the number of people without a home in Los Angeles grew last year for the fifth time in the last six years, officials announced Friday. And that was before the pandemic. The double-digit increases reported in both the city and county reflected the status in January, when the annual count is taken, and before the novel coronavirus thrashed the region’s economy, raising the likelihood of a new wave of people losing their homes. (Oreskes and Smith, 6/12)

The Washington Post: Is The Appalachian Trail Open?
In mid-March, the Appalachian National Scenic Trail started shutting down sections and services to hikers of all ambitions. The Appalachian Trail Conservancy (ATC), which oversees the 2,193-mile route, implored day hikers and “thru-hikers” to temporarily hang up their hiking boots. Last month, the organization revised its message and released guidelines that coincide with the steady reopening of the trail. (Sachs, 6/11)

Houston Chronicle: Hidalgo Unveils COVID-19 'Threat Level' System, Says Harris County At Second-Highest Risk
A large, ongoing outbreak of COVID-19 places the Houston area on the second-highest of four public threat levels unveiled by Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo on Thursday. If troubling trends continue, including an increase in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations, the county health department again would recommend residents stay at home except for essential errands, such as buying groceries and medicine, she said. (Despart, 6/11)

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin Coronavirus: 333 New Cases, But Testing Slows In Milwaukee
Milwaukee officials are concerned about a drop-off in tests administered for the coronavirus, an issue that one leading health official attributed in large part to the unfounded sense that the pandemic is over. The county continues to see a downtrend in testing at health care and National Guard testing sites, said Ben Weston, medical services director for Milwaukee County’s Office of Emergency Management. (Heim, Dirr, Casey and Jones, 6/11)

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Vos Says Immigrant Culture Was To Blame For COVID-19 In Racine County
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos blamed the culture of immigrant populations for a coronavirus outbreak in Racine County, according to a secret recording of his meeting last month with Gov. Tony Evers. “I know the reason at least in my region is because of a large immigrant population where it’s just a difference in culture where people are living much closer and working much closer,” the Rochester Republican said of an outbreak in Racine County. (Marley, Torres and Beck, 6/11)

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Evers Designates $40 Million From CARES Act To Wisconsin Hospitals
Wisconsin hospitals will get a $40 million boost to help with financial losses caused by the coronavirus pandemic.Gov. Tony Evers announced Thursday that hospitals statewide will receive direct payments, funded by the CARES Act, to assist with lost revenue and expenses incurred from March through May. (Garfield, 6/11)

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee County Directs $10 Million In Federal Aid Toward Housing Security
Milwaukee County will direct $10 million in federal money to county residents to prevent eviction, assist with mortgage payments and provide temporary housing. The federal money comes through the CARES Act, a package of measures approved by Congress and President Donald Trump, to address economic effects of the pandemic. (Redsten, 6/11)

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee County Moves Into Next Phase Of Coronavirus Reopening Plan
Milwaukee County’s suburban municipalities are moving forward with the next phase of reopening plans on Friday. Generally, the next phase shifts guidelines to include slightly larger mass gatherings of at least 50 persons, as well as an increasing to 75% the capacity guideline for restaurants and bars. (Casey, 6/11)

Stat: How A Piecemeal Covid-19 Response In One Prison Fueled A Fatal Outbreak
Roderick Keith Dirden has been trying for months to get out of an overcrowded dormitory at the California Institution for Men, where he has been in intermittent lockdown since Covid-19 started sweeping through the prison. “I’m not looking for somebody to jump out of a parachute to save me,” he said in a phone interview with STAT. He’s simply looking, he said, for the system to keep inmates safe. (Guo, 6/12)

PA Post and Philadelphia Inquirer: Why Gov. Tom Wolf’s Big Effort To Grant Coronavirus Reprieves To Pa. Inmates Came Up Small
In April, amid growing fear that prisons could be tinderboxes for the coronavirus, Gov. Tom Wolf announced he would grant temporary reprieves to certain nonviolent state inmates who have medical conditions that make them particularly vulnerable.It was a power move by Wolf, who initially opted to wait for a plan from the GOP-led legislature, but reversed course after it became clear a bill would be limited to 450 people. At the time of the announcement, Wolf said, “There is a premium on speed here. We need to move quickly." (Jaafari and McKinney, 6/11)

The Washington Post: Political And Health Leaders’ Embrace Of Floyd Protests Fuels Debate Over Coronavirus Restrictions
The governor of Michigan attended a street protest even though it appeared to violate her own order demanding social distancing. So did Pennsylvania’s governor. Washington’s mayor for weeks had a Twitter handle that told people to “stay home” — while sharing video of protesters massing near the White House on a street emblazoned with a mural she commissioned. Months after the coronavirus forced Americans into their homes, protests over the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody drove hundreds of thousands of people back to the streets. (Weiner, 6/11)

ABC News: White Coats And Black Lives: Health Care Workers Say 'Racism Is A Pandemic Too' 
In San Francisco, Dr. Maura Jones, a doctor at one of the city's largest hospitals located just 15 minutes from the Golden Gate bridge--the site of a massive protest, sees the effects of the pandemic. When her hospital, the University of California-San Francisco, gave doctors of color a day off earlier this month to reflect, grieve and use their time in the best way that they felt, Jones went out with many of her colleagues to join protests against systemic racism and police brutality in the wake of George Floyd's death while in police custody. (Smith, 6/12)

Stat: One Of Biotech’s Biggest Conferences Grapples With How To Talk About Race
If you’re trying to explain systemic racism to a group of scientists and biotech professionals, do it in terms they understand. Racially unjust systems are like “a mutation … in the social DNA,” said Cerevel CEO Tony Coles, speaking on a panel about race and inequality at a now-virtual conference held by the Biotech Innovation Organization, an industry trade group. (Sheridan, 6/11)

Stateline: Why Rural America Is Joining The Movement For Black Lives 
The list is long: Bethel, Alaska; Garden City, Kansas; Hailey, Idaho; Meridian, Mississippi; Kanab, Utah; Dubois, Wyoming. In the weeks since a Minneapolis police officer pushed his knee into George Floyd’s neck and squeezed the life out of his body, residents of dozens of small towns across the country have held demonstrations to oppose police brutality and declare that black lives matter. (Simpson, 6/12)

Kaiser Health News: COVID-19 Batters A Beloved Bay Area Community Health Care Center
A small band of volunteers started the Marin City Health and Wellness Center nearly two decades ago with a doctor and a retired social worker making house calls in public housing high-rises. It grew into a beloved community resource and a grassroots experiment in African American health care. “It was truly a one-stop shop,” said Ebony McKinley, a lifelong resident of this tightknit, historically black enclave several miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge. “And it was ours.” (Scheier, 6/12)

The Associated Press: Experts: Police 'Woefully Undertrained' In Use Of Force
Seattle officers hold down a protester, and one repeatedly punches him in the face. In another run-in, officers handcuff a looting suspect on the ground, one pressing a knee into his neck — the same tactic used on George Floyd. The officers were captured on videos appearing to violate policies on how to use force just days after Floyd died at the hands of Minneapolis police, setting off nationwide protests. (Bellisle, 6/12)

Politico: U.S. Surgeon General: George Floyd 'Could Have Been Me'
U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams told POLITICO that he sees parallels between himself and George Floyd in his most extensive comments about the death of the unarmed black man that launched a wave of national protests. Floyd was "the same age that I am,” Adams told POLITICO’s “Pulse Check” podcast, reflecting on the 46-year-old’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police last month, which was captured on video and immediately shared around the globe. “And I look at him, and I really do think that could have been me.” (Diamond, 6/11)

POLITICO's Pulse Check: U.S. Surgeon General: George Floyd 'Could Have Been Me'
U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams joins host Dan Diamond to discuss America's dual pandemics: the coronavirus crisis and systemic racism in the health care system, and how the killing of George Floyd is affecting him personally. (6/11)

Reuters: Exclusive: Most Americans, Including Republicans, Support Sweeping Democratic Police Reform Proposals - Reuters/Ipsos Poll
Most Americans, including a majority of President Donald Trump’s Republican Party, support sweeping law enforcement reforms such as a ban on chokeholds and racial profiling after the latest death of an African American while in police custody, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Thursday. (Kahn, 6/11)

The Washington Post: D.C. Police Reform Measures Make It Easier To Fire Officers For Misconduct, Expand Civilian Review Over Force
Sweeping legislation swiftly passed by the D.C. Council this week to bring greater accountability and transparency to the District’s police force will expand civilian review, make it far easier to fire officers and tweak rules governing the use of deadly force. The department must now publicly release the names of officers involved in deadly confrontations as well as the body-camera footage of those incidents, information that before was rarely revealed. (Hermann, 6/11)

Politico: Tim Scott Wades Into The Reckoning Over Race And Police: 'I'm One Person'
Tim Scott doesn’t regularly seek out the spotlight. Yet the spotlight has a way of finding him anyway. And there might be no bigger moment so far for the South Carolina senator than this one. Scott has been tasked by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to do the near-impossible: Assemble a set of reforms that responds to the national outrage over police killings of African Americans and also satisfies President Donald Trump, conservative Republicans and enough Democrats to become law. (Everett, 6/11)

NBC News: Ohio Politician Fired As ER Doctor After Asking Whether 'Colored Population' More Likely To Get COVID-19 Because They Don't 'Wash Their Hands As Well'
An Ohio lawmaker was fired from his job as an emergency room doctor Thursday after he sparked a backlash by asking whether the "colored population" is more susceptible to the coronavirus because they "do not wash their hands as well as other groups." State Sen. Steve Huffman, a Republican from the town of Tipp City, asked the question Tuesday during a hearing on whether to declare racism a public health crisis in Ohio — and as hundreds of people were outside the Statehouse in Columbus protesting the death of George Floyd in the custody of Minneapolis police. (Siemaszko, 6/11)

The New York Times: Ohio Lawmaker Asks Racist Question About Black People And Hand-Washing
A witness before the State Senate committee, Angela C. Dawson, the executive director of the Ohio Commission on Minority Health, instantly pushed back on Mr. Huffman’s remarks. “That is not the opinion of leading medical experts in this country,” she told him, citing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, among others. On Thursday, a spokesman for TeamHealth, which employed Mr. Huffman as an emergency room doctor, said he had been dismissed for his remarks. (Bagriel, 6/11)

The Hill: LA Doctor Receives 'Hundreds' Of Requests After Offering Free Medical Aid To Injured George Floyd Protesters 
A Los Angeles doctor says he has received hundreds of requests after offering on social media to treat injuries suffered by protesters from law enforcement during the protests over the death of George Floyd for free. Amir Moarefi, a Long Beach-area ophthalmologist, posted on Instagram that he would provide "free health care and eye care, especially to those without any insurance" for any Californians injured by police during recent protests across the state. (Bowden, 6/11)

Los Angeles Times: Was LAPD Force Appropriate In George Floyd Protests? 
Since the May 25 death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer, Angelenos have turned out to protest many facets of modern policing, including the use of excessive force against the public. Witnesses have flooded social media with videos showing police responding aggressively in turn to the large and sometimes volatile protests. A Times review of social media videos from the first days of the protests found Los Angeles Police Department officers using extreme and at times violent measures against protesters, seemingly without following department protocols around the implementation and escalation of force — which themselves offer little by way of guidance. (6/11)

NPR: LA Police Union Official Fends Off Criticism And Slams Garcetti's Budget Cuts
In the two-and-a-half weeks since police killed George Floyd in Minneapolis, the question of how to change policing has eclipsed almost every other topic of debate. Some of the loudest voices opposing dramatic change are from police unions.In Los Angeles, Mayor Eric Garcetti wants to cut the police budget by as much as $150 million. In a recent speech, he referred to police as "killers." In response, union directors questioned the mayor's mental health. (Shapiro and Dorning, 6/11)

San Francisco Chronicle: Nurses Lie Outside San Francisco City Hall, Call For Health Care Reform 
The Nurses for Racial Justice rally started at 7:45 p.m. — timed for nurses getting off a 12-hour shift — at CPMC Van Ness Campus. People in passing cars honked, raised fists and recorded video as the group marched along Van Ness Avenue to City Hall. The crowd cheered as a neighbor clanged together a metal spoon and pot while watching from an apartment high above the street. (Bauman, 6/11)

KQED: Black Restaurant Community Talks Next Steps For Anti-Racism 
Since the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police on May 25, protests have erupted in cities across the country and throughout the Bay Area. As our communities face this latest wave of racist violence in the shadow of a pandemic, the most vulnerable of our populations are put at even greater risk. Possibly at the center of all of this is food and the role it plays in dictating who can rise up and who cannot. From restaurants supplying food to protesters to its history of exploitive labor and exclusive rights to own farmland, food could be considered a medium of conversation for race and injustice. (Wise, 6/11)

Boston Globe: These Cities Have Tried To Reform Their Police Departments. The Results Have Been Mixed 
It’s a message scrawled across homemade signs and reverberating through protests across the country: Defund the police. The idea — to cut or eliminate funding to police departments — strikes some observers as extreme. But activists say the rallying cry is the only sensible course of action after decades of piecemeal reform efforts that did little to change police culture. (Krueger. 6/11)

The New York Times: Schools Move To Eliminate Campus Police Officers
The national reckoning over police violence has spread to schools, with several districts choosing in recent days to sever their relationships with local police departments out of concern that the officers patrolling their hallways represent more of a threat than a form of protection. School districts in Minneapolis, Seattle and Portland, Ore., have all promised to remove officers, with the Seattle superintendent saying the presence of armed police “prohibits many students and staff from feeling fully safe.” (Goldstein, 6/12)

KQED: For People’s Breakfast, Black Liberation, Food Access And Bail Funds Intersect 
The successive waves of a pandemic and a national uprising against police brutality have overwhelmed the capacity of community-based organizations. But for Oakland’s People’s Breakfast, these moments have galvanized their work. The organization first started as a food distribution program in 2017 that has since evolved to providing masks and hand sanitizer throughout the pandemic. Most recently, the Oakland founders Delency Parham and Blake Simons took action for their community by bailing out Black protesters who've been arrested in the uprisings against police brutality. (Gebreyesus, 6/11)

The Washington Post: Can Old Vaccines From Science’s Medicine Cabinet Ward Off Coronavirus? 
Two tried-and-true vaccines — a century-old inoculation against tuberculosis and a decades-old polio vaccine once given as a sugar cube — are being evaluated to see if they can offer limited protection against the coronavirus. Tests are already underway to see if the TB vaccine can slow the novel coronavirus, while other researchers writing in a scientific journal Thursday propose using the polio vaccine, which once was melted on children’s tongues. (Johnson and Mufson, 6/11)

The Hill: Tuberculosis, Polio Vaccines Examined By Scientists For Possible Protection Against COVID-19 
The scientists said they are not suggesting the vaccines will prevent people from contracting COVID-19, but it may help them experience less severe symptoms if they do contract it. (Moreno, 6/11)

NBC News: Polio Vaccine Could Give Temporary Protection Against COVID-19, Scientists Hope
The polio vaccine in question is a live vaccine — meaning it uses a weakened form of the live virus. Live vaccines trigger a general immune response that helps the body fight off invaders until the immune system has time to develop specific antibodies. In theory, scientists believe that this temporary immune boost could provide protection for viruses the vaccine was not designed to prevent, such as the coronavirus, said a co-author of the Science piece, Dr. Konstantin Chumakov, a member of the Global Virus Network, an international coalition of virologists aimed at preventing and eradicating virus disease. (Sullivan, 6/11)

Reuters: Exclusive: Bottlenecks? Glass Vial Makers Prepare For COVID-19 Vaccine
Drugmakers are warning of a potential shortage of vials to bottle future COVID-19 vaccines, but their rush to secure supplies risks making matters worse, some major medical equipment manufacturers warn. Schott AG, the world’s largest maker of speciality glass for vaccine vials, says it has turned down requests to reserve output from major pharmaceutical firms because it does not want to commit resources before it is clear which vaccines will work. (Burger and Blamont, 6/12)

The Associated Press: Final Tests Of Some COVID-19 Vaccines To Start Next Month
The first experimental COVID-19 vaccine in the U.S. is on track to begin a huge study next month to prove if it really can fend off the coronavirus, while hard-hit Brazil is testing a different shot from China. Where to do crucial, late-stage testing and how many volunteers are needed to roll up their sleeves are big worries for health officials as the virus spread starts tapering off in parts of the world. (Neergaard, 6/11)

Reuters: How A Vaccine Made Of Mosquito Spit Could Help Stop The Next Epidemic
Five years ago, in an office complex with a giant sculpture of a mosquito just northwest of Phnom Penh, Jessica Manning struck on a novel idea. Rather than spend more years in what felt like a futile search for a malaria vaccine, she would take on all mosquito-borne pathogens at once. (Baldwin, 6/11)

The New York Times: EU Wants To Buy COVID-19 Vaccines Up Front-Unless They're Made In America
The European Commission is seeking a mandate from EU countries to buy promising COVID-19 vaccine candidates in advance from pharmaceutical firms, as long as they are not produced solely in the United States, officials said. The EU executive wants to pay for up to six potential vaccines in deals where the makers would commit to providing doses when and if they become available. (6/11)

ABC News: As Pressure For Vaccine Builds, Regulators May Face Difficult Decision 
With multiple pharmaceutical firms wading deeper into human testing of a vaccine, federal regulators may soon face their toughest decisions yet in the global battle to subdue the novel coronavirus. In a matter of months, the Food and Drug Administration will likely have to determine when to approve mass production and distribution of a vaccine that will likely be injected into the arms of tens of millions of Americans. (Rubin and Bruggeman, 6/12)

The Washington Post: Financial Speculation Surrounding Coronavirus Drug Developed With Taxpayer Money
Ridgeback Biotherapeutics had no laboratories, no manufacturing facility of its own and a minimal track record when it struck a deal in March with Emory University to license an experimental coronavirus pill invented by university researchers with $16 million in grants from U.S. taxpayers. But what the tiny Miami company did have was a willingness from its wealthy owners — hedge fund manager Wayne Holman and his wife, Wendy — to place a bet on the treatment in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. That wager paid off with extraordinary speed in May when, just two months after acquiring the antiviral therapy called EIDD-2801 from Emory, Ridgeback sold exclusive worldwide rights to drug giant Merck. (Rowland, 6/11)

In other pharmaceutical news —

Reuters: Japan's PeptiDream To Work With Merck In Developing COVID-19 Therapies
Japanese drug-discovery company PeptiDream Inc said on Friday it would collaborate with Merck & Co in developing COVID-19 therapies. The companies will work to develop peptide therapeutics that may be effective against multiple coronavirus strains, they said in a release. The agreement builds on a research and licensing partnership announced in 2015. PeptiDream specialises in constrained peptides, types of amino acids that can carry various cargoes to specific types of cells. (6/11)

CIDRAP: Regeneron To Begin Trials For COVID-19 Antibody Cocktail
Biotechnology company Regeneron Pharmaceuticals said today that it is launching a series of clinical trials to test the safety and efficacy of an investigational antibody cocktail for the treatment and prevention of COVID-19. According to a company press release, Regeneron, of Tarrytown, New York, will conduct placebo-controlled trials of REGN-COV2 at multiple sites in four different populations: hospitalized COVID-19 patients, non-hospitalized patients with COVID-19 symptoms, uninfected people in high-risk groups such as healthcare workers, and uninfected people in close contact with infected patients. (Dall, 6/11)

Modern Healthcare: House Expected To Vote On Affordable Care Act Tweaks Before July 4
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Thursday that the House is expected to vote before July 4 on tweaks to the Affordable Care Act. Hoyer didn't volunteer details about the legislation beyond saying on a BakerHostetler webinar that the bill would lower premiums and co-pays. A House Democratic leadership aide said the legislation is being developed with the committees of jurisdiction. The bill is will strengthen and expand the ACA, a source familiar with the effort said. (Cohrs, 6/11)

The Hill: Hoyer: House Will Vote Soon On Bill To Improve ObamaCare 
"We're going to meet on the Affordable Care Act, trying to bring the costs of premiums and co-pays and deductibles in the Affordable Care Act down to a place where people can in fact afford them," Hoyer said during a webinar hosted by the law firm Baker Hostetler. (Sullivan, 6/11)

ProPublica: How Rich Investors, Not Doctors, Profit From Marking Up ER Bills
In 2017, TeamHealth, the nation’s largest staffing firm for ER doctors, sued a small insurance company in Texas over a few million dollars of disputed bills. Over 2 1/2 years of litigation, the case has provided a rare look inside TeamHealth’s own operations at a time when the company, owned by private-equity giant Blackstone, is under scrutiny for soaking patients with surprise medical bills and cutting doctors’ pay amid the coronavirus pandemic. (Arnsdorf, 6/12)

Kaiser Health News: If You’ve Lost Your Health Plan In The COVID Crisis, You’ve Got Options
The coronavirus pandemic — and the economic fallout that has come with it — boosted health insurance enrollment counselor Mark Van Arnam’s workload. But he wants to be even busier. The loss of employment for 21 million Americans is a double blow for many because it also means the loss of insurance, said Van Arnam, director of the North Carolina Navigator Consortium, a group of organizations that offer free help to state residents enrolling in insurance. (Appleby, 6/12)

Reuters: U.S. Insurers Use Lofty Estimates To Beat Back Coronavirus Claims
U.S. property and casualty insurers have cast the coronavirus pandemic as an unprecedented event whose massive cost to small businesses they are neither able nor required to cover. The industry has warned it could cost them $255 billion to $431 billion a month if they are required, as some states are proposing, to compensate firms for income lost and expenses owed due to virus-led shutdowns, an amount it says would make insurers insolvent. (Scott and Barlyn, 6/12)

Modern Healthcare: Hospital Stocks Slide As COVID-19 Cases Climb In South
For-profit hospital operators have watched their share prices fall steadily this week as COVID-19 cases tick up some of their most important states. Big hospital chains had benefited in recent weeks from a broader wave of optimism in recent weeks, but that seemed to end on Monday. Shares in Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare lost 12% of their value on Thursday alone, but the loss was nearly 25% since Monday. The shares were priced at about $19 as of Thursday's close. (Bannow, 6/11)

The New York Times: Covid-19 Patient Gets Double Lung Transplant, Offering Hope For Others
A young woman whose lungs were destroyed by the coronavirus received a double lung transplant last week at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, the hospital reported on Thursday, the first known lung transplant in the United States for Covid-19. The 10-hour surgery was more difficult and took several hours longer than most lung transplants because inflammation from the disease had left the woman’s lungs “completely plastered to tissue around them, the heart, the chest wall and diaphragm,” said Dr. Ankit Bharat, the chief of thoracic surgery and surgical director of the lung transplant program at Northwestern Medicine, which includes Northwestern Memorial Hospital, in an interview. (Grady, 6/11)

The Washington Post: Surgeons Perform First Known U.S. Lung Transplant For Covid-19 Patient
Ankit Bharat, chief of thoracic surgery and surgical director of Northwestern’s lung transplant program, said organ transplantation may become more frequent for victims of the most severe forms of covid-19. The disease caused by the novel coronavirus most commonly attacks the respiratory system but also can inflict damage on kidneys, hearts, blood vessels and the neurological system. (Bernstein and Powers, 6/11)

The Associated Press: Coronavirus Survivor In US Receives Double Lung Transplant
The Chicago patient is in her 20s and was on a ventilator and heart-lung machine for almost two months before her operation at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. The 10-hour procedure was challenging because the virus had left her lungs full of holes and almost fused to the chest wall, said Dr. Ankit Bharat, who performed the operation. (Tanner, 6/11)

NPR: Young Patient In Chicago Gets Double Lung Transplant For COVID
The woman has a long road to recovery ahead. Bharat says her body started to show antibodies against the transplanted organ, so she has been given medication aimed at preventing her body from rejecting the lungs. Since she spent weeks sedated in bed prior to the transplant, her body is weak. She is not able to stand or take deep breaths on her own, but Bharat says they expect to be able to take her off the ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) device, which has been pumping and oxygenating her blood outside of her body. (Herman, 6/12)

Modern Healthcare: Northwestern Memorial Performs Lung Transplant On COVID Survivor
The patient had spent six weeks in Northwestern's COVID intensive care unit on a ventilator and a machine that supports the heart and lungs, Northwestern Medicine said in a statement. She needed to test negative for the virus before doctors could put her on the waiting list for a transplant. (Goldberg, 6/11)

The Washington Post: Chronic Coronavirus: These Patients Have Been Sick For Weeks, But Doctors Don't Know Why
It started for Melanie Montano with a tightness in her chest, almost like someone was sitting on top of her. It was March 15, and she was sweating but freezing cold. And she had a strange “pins-and-needles” sensation on the back of her legs. “It was as if I woke up in a totally different body,” she recalled. Over the following weeks, Montano, 32, developed a fever, cough, stomach problems, and lost her sense of taste and smell like other sufferers of the novel coronavirus. Unlike most of them, though, her symptoms never went away. (Cha and Bernstein, 6/11)

The Associated Press: Researchers Ask If Survivor Plasma Could Prevent Coronavirus
Survivors of COVID-19 are donating their blood plasma in droves in hopes it helps other patients recover from the coronavirus. And while the jury’s still out, now scientists are testing if the donations might also prevent infection in the first place. Thousands of coronavirus patients in hospitals around the world have been treated with so-called convalescent plasma — including more than 20,000 in the U.S. — with little solid evidence so far that it makes a difference. One recent study from China was unclear while another from New York offered a hint of benefit. (Neergaard, 6/12)

San Francisco Chronicle: SARS Antibodies Block Coronavirus Infections, Study Shows
Antibodies from people who recovered from SARS — a deadly respiratory disease caused by a coronavirus that emerged nearly 20 years ago — may be critical to fighting COVID-19, according to a study in the journal Nature. The peer-reviewed paper reveals how an antibody discovered in a person infected by the severe acute respiratory syndrome virus in 2003 acted as a potent blocker against SARS-CoV-2, the closely related coronavirus that causes COVID-19. (Dizikes, 6/11)

Modern Healthcare: Microsoft, Biotech Firm Release Data On COVID-19 Immune Response
Microsoft Corp. and Seattle biotech company Adaptive Biotechnologies Corp. on Thursday launched a database designed to provide public health agencies and researchers with population-level information about patients' immune response to COVID-19. The database, dubbed ImmuneCODE, provides researchers with information about T cells—a key part of immune response—and how they respond to the virus, from "initial exposure through clearance," Harlan Robins, Adaptive Biotechnologies' co-founder and chief scientific officer, said in a statement. (Cohen, 6/11)

The New York Times: Trump Will Give Republican Convention Speech In Jacksonville
It’s official: President Trump will deliver his Aug. 27 convention speech in Jacksonville, Fla., inside an arena that holds 15,000 people, after his demands for an event without social distancing rules led to a rift with Democratic leaders in North Carolina, where the Republican convention was originally planned. Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, confirmed on Thursday that the speech would take place at the VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena in Jacksonville, a diverse city where the mayor and the governor are both Republican allies of Mr. Trump’s. (Karni, 6/11)

Reuters: Trump To Accept Republican Nomination In Jacksonville, Florida
Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said in a statement on Thursday the official business of the party’s convention would still be held in Charlotte but the celebration of Trump’s nomination would be moved to Jacksonville. The announcement, which was expected, caps an ugly dispute that had been brewing between Trump, his Republican Party and Democratic Governor Roy Cooper of North Carolina, who refused to alter public health protocols to suit Trump in a state where the number of COVID-19 cases is still growing. (Oliphant, 6/11)

The Washington Post: Republicans Announce Trump Convention Events Will Move To Jacksonville
The change means that the GOP will have roughly 70 days to plan a series of events that typically take two years to work through. Political conventions, once a secretive process for elites to select their party’s nominee, are now largely for show. But they do serve purposes: kicking off the final leg of the presidential races, offering a high-profile opportunity for the candidates to sell a vision for the country and delivering a platform for the next generation of political stars in each party. (Linskey, 6/11)

The Wall Street Journal: GOP Moves Main Convention Events To Jacksonville, Fla., From Charlotte, N.C.
“Not only does Florida hold a special place in President Trump’s heart as his home state, but it is crucial in the path for victory in 2020,” Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said. “We look forward to bringing this great celebration and economic boon to the Sunshine State in just a few short months.” Jacksonville was one of several cities that showed interest. But the city, which is run by a Republican mayor in a state governed by a Republican ally of Mr. Trump, emerged as the front-runner as convention organizers have limited time to contend with logistical, health and security concerns. (Leary, 6/11)

The Associated Press: 'It's Broken': Fears Grow About Patchwork US Election System
The increasingly urgent concerns are both complex and simple: long lines disproportionately affecting voters of color in places like Atlanta with a history of voter suppression; a severe shortage of poll workers scared away by coronavirus concerns; and an emerging consensus that it could take several days after polls close on Election Day to determine a winner as battleground states struggle with an explosion of mail voting. (Peoples and Cassidy, 6/12)

The New York Times: Georgia Havoc Raises New Doubts On Pricey Voting Machines
As Georgia elections officials prepared to roll out an over $100 million high-tech voting system last year, good-government groups, a federal judge and election-security experts warned of its perils. The new system, they argued, was too convoluted, too expensive, too big — and was still insecure. They said the state would regret purchasing the machines. On Tuesday, that admonition appeared prescient. (Corasaniti and Saul, 6/11)

NPR: Why Democrats And Republicans Disagree About Voting Rights
Republicans and Democrats seldom agree on much in 21st century politics — but one issue that divides them more than ever may be voting and elections. The parties didn't only battle about whether or how to enact new legislation following the Russian interference in the 2016 election. They differ in the basic ways they perceive and frame myriad aspects of practicing democracy. (Ewing, 6/12)

Boston Globe: Late Night Deals, International Holdups, And Curious Characters: Inside The State’s Quest For PPE 
In mid-March, as they scrambled to prepare for a coming surge in COVID-19 cases, state officials found themselves in dire need of masks, gowns, gloves, and other personal protective equipment. Hospitals were clamoring for the gear to shield front-line workers from the new and gravely infectious coronavirus. National shortages had rendered many traditional supply chains useless, and President Trump made it clear that the federal government had little interest in jumping in to help. “We’re not a shipping clerk,” Trump said. (Rocheleau and Arnett, 6/11)

WBUR: Racing To Find Masks Amid The Pandemic, Mass. Turned To Brokers Who Didn't Deliver 
WBUR found problems with at least three deals in which masks were never delivered or their quality was subpar. In each of these cases, Massachusetts pre-paid millions of dollars to brokers and waited weeks and weeks to get masks. As some deals soured, the state continued its mad dash for protective equipment. (Willmsen and Healy, 6/12)

ProPublica: Federal Agencies Have Spent Millions On KN95 Masks, Often Without Knowing Who Made Them
In scrambling to buy protective equipment for the coronavirus pandemic, federal agencies purchased up to $11 million worth of Chinese-made masks, often with little attention to manufacturing details or rapidly evolving regulatory guidance about safety or quality, a ProPublica review shows. Some agencies cannot say who made their masks at a time when thousands of foreign-made respirators appeared on the market, some falsely claiming approval or certification by the Food and Drug Administration. (Torbati and Willis, 6/11)

The New York Times: Silver Lining To The Mask? Not Having To Smile
For most of my life, I have had a minor but chronic condition: My face, when it is at ease, looks not just serious but mean. There are women who will recognize this problem, particularly those who — around this time of the year, as the sun comes out and more of us are outside — have grown accustomed to being asked “Why don’t you smile?” by anonymous people, usually men, on the street (that, or breathlessly practicing how we can put more people “at ease” by softening our facial expressions in the mirror). (Bennett, 6/10)

The Associated Press: Face Masks With Windows Mean More Than Smiles To Deaf People
Michael Conley felt especially isolated these past few months: A deaf man, he was prevented from reading lips by the masks people wore to prevent the spread of COVID-19. But then he met Ingrid Helton, a costume designer who sewed him a solution – masks with plastic windows for hearing people to wear, allowing lip readers to see mouths move. She has started a business to provide the windowed masks, and she’s not alone. A half-dozen startups are doing the same. (Watson, 6/12)

Los Angeles Times: Orange County Rescinds Coronavirus Mask Mandate
Orange County residents no longer have to wear masks in public, officials announced Thursday — an abrupt shift in health orders following weeks of debate over the use of face coverings to stem the spread of the coronavirus. Masks will go from being required to being strongly recommended in public settings under a revised order from new Orange County Health Care Agency Director Dr. Clayton Chau. (Money, Fry and Lai, 6/11)

NBC News: Few N95 Masks, Reused Gowns: Dire PPE Shortages Reveal COVID-19's Racial Divide
Amy Arlund, an intensive care unit nurse in California, starts every overnight shift hoping her supervisors will give her a fresh N95 respirator. “You are asked to reuse them for weeks on end,” Arlund, 45, told NBC News. “You have to justify to your manager repeatedly why you need a new one.” Nearly 100 days after the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic, health care workers across the country are still facing major shortages of personal protective equipment, or PPE, including crucial equipment such as masks, gowns, gloves and N95 respirators. (Dunn and Fitzpatrick, 6/12)

Kaiser Health News: Health Workers Resort To Etsy, Learning Chinese, Shady Deals To Find Safety Gear
A nursing home worker in New Jersey rendezvoused with “the parking lot guy” to cut a deal for gowns. A director of safety-net clinics in Florida learned basic Chinese and waited outside past midnight for a truck to arrive with tens of thousands of masks. A cardiologist in South Carolina tried his luck with “shady characters” to buy ingredients to blend his own hand sanitizer. The global pandemic has ordinary health care workers going to extremes in a desperate hunt for medical supplies. (Cahan and Varney, 6/12)

The New York Times: How A Virus Triage Tent Became A Serene Oasis For Health Care Workers
On a rare quiet evening in late May, Dr. Dahlia Rizk asked her staff to join her by a campfire. They sat together for more than an hour, sharing the overwhelming horrors and occasional triumphs they’d experienced while treating the coronavirus, as the sounds of burning logs crackled in the background and a bright orange glow filled the room. “It was a moment to realize that this all happened, this is real,” said Dr. Kamana Pillay, one of those employees in the room. “And to try to get back to some level of normal as a person.” (Elliot, 6/12)

NPR: FDNY Sued By Paramedics Who Spoke To Media About COVID-19
A group of New York City emergency medical service workers who gave interviews to the news media, including NPR, are suing the city for allegedly retaliating against them after speaking about their experiences responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. In a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday with the federal court in Manhattan, four EMS workers allege the city is violating their right to speak on issues of public concern under the First Amendment, as well as their due process rights. (Wang, 6/11)

ABC News: Medical School Graduates Ready To Fight COVID-19 On The Front Lines 
As the country continues to see new cases of the novel coronavirus, recent medical school graduates are stepping up to fight the pandemic in the front lines. Graduates from the University of California at Irvine's School of Medicine shared scenes from their drive-through commencement and told ABC News what that moment meant to them. (McCarthy and Noll, 6/11)

The New York Times: She Witnessed The Pandemic’s Toll From Inside A Funeral Home
When news reports emerged about a novel coronavirus in China, 23-year-old Stephanie Garcia, a funeral director at International Funeral Service of New York in Brooklyn, didn’t know what to make of them. She felt scared and confused, unsure as to how such a distant and invisible threat might affect New York. But then the virus arrived in the U.S. and New York City quickly became its epicenter. (Petri, 6/11)

The Washington Post: The Veteran Nurse Could Have Taken Easier Jobs. She Chose To Work In A Correctional Facility That’s Now A Covid-19 Hot Spot.
Daisy Doronilla was the youngest of five sisters born in Manila. She came from humble beginnings, said her daughter, Denise Rendor. Nursing was a way to rise above her circumstances. She ended up loving it. Doronilla worked as a nurse in Abu Dhabi for a few years before coming to the United States, where she had always dreamed of living. Her first jobs were in California, at a medical center serving mostly the poor in South Los Angeles and at a juvenile detention facility. (Cha and Shammas, 6/11)

Kaiser Health News/The Guardian: Lost On The Frontline
A traveling nurse who pitched in after retirement. A phlebotomist who loved her job and was loved by her patients. A driver transporting senior care residents to medical appointments. These are the people just added to “Lost on the Frontline,” a special series from The Guardian and KHN that profiles health care workers who died of COVID-19. (6/12)

NBC News: Missing Nurse Ashley Zachman Who Disappeared After Her Shift In Santa Barbara, California On May 29 Found Safe
A nurse who went missing nearly two weeks ago after leaving her shift at Cottage Hospital in Santa, Barbara, California, has been found safe, according to the Santa Barbara Police Department. SBPD spokesperson Anthony Wagner told Dateline in an email that Ashley Zachman was located “safe and unharmed” on Wednesday, June 10. Details of Ashley’s whereabouts were not released. (Cavallier, 6/11)

Boston Globe: ‘As Healthcare Workers, This Is Our Fight, Too’: Healthcare Workers Unite To Support Black Lives Matter 
Healthcare workers across the state joined together Thursday afternoon to show support for the Black Lives Matter movement and stand up against police brutality, honoring the victims who have died at the hands of police. At noon, the healthcare workers, from over 25 facilities, united in a moment of silence lasting eight minutes and 46 seconds — the amount of time a white police officer pressed his knee to George Floyd’s neck before he died in Minneapolis over two weeks ago. (Berg, 6/11)

Detroit Free Press: Sinai-Grace Nurses: Dozens Died Because Hospital Was Short-Staffed
He couldn't breathe, so he went to the busy emergency room at Detroit's Sinai-Grace Hospital in late March. But instead of getting lifesaving treatment, the man became a victim of an overwhelmed hospital without the resources or staff to properly care for him, said Catherine Gaughan, a clinical coordinator who oversaw the emergency department the night of March 25. (Shamus, 6/11)

WBUR: Close, Sell, Consolidate? Tough Prognosis For Some Massachusetts Health Care Providers 
In fact, 23% of primary care providers surveyed in late May and early June are considering closing their practices, according to preliminary results released by the state’s Health Policy Commission (HPC). The Massachusetts Chapter of the American College of Physicians, working with researchers at the state's medical schools, gathered information from more than 400 practices representing primary care, behavioral health, specialists and other practices. Among specialists, 42% say closing is an option under review and 23% are looking at consolidation. (Bebinger, 6/11)

WBUR: As Less People Seek Care, Physician Practices Consider Closing Amid Pandemic Losses
A new survey of physician practices in Massachusetts finds a startling number of them in financial trouble due to the coronavirus crisis, in which potential patients are staying home. Findings show 42% of specialists and 23% of primary care physicians are considering closing their practices as losses pile up. (Oakes, 6/11)

Kaiser Health News/The Guardian: A Family With Five Doctors — And Two COVID Deaths
On the morning of April 1, Dr. Priya Khanna inched her way from the bedroom to the front door, using walls, doors and railings to hold herself up long enough to get to the stretcher waiting outside. She had been battling COVID-19 for five days and was struggling to breathe. Her mother, also COVID-positive, watched helplessly as EMTs in full personal protective equipment guided Priya into the ambulance. Priya waved to Justin Vandergaag, a childhood friend walking alongside her. “I’ll see you later,” he said. (Megas, 6/11)

Kaiser Health News: Using Stories To Mentally Survive As A COVID-19 Clinician
Dr. Christopher Travis, an intern in obstetrics-gynecology, has cared for patients with COVID-19 and performed surgery on women suspected of having the coronavirus. But the patient who arrived for a routine prenatal visit in two masks and gloves had a problem that wasn’t physiological. “She told me, ‘I’m terrified I’m going to get this virus that’s spreading all over the world,'” and worried it would hurt her baby, he said of the March encounter. (Stephens, 6/11)

The Wall Street Journal: U.S. Blood Reserves Are Critically Low
The U.S. blood supply is at critically low levels after Covid-19 shutdowns have emptied community centers, universities, places of worship and other venues where blood drives typically occur. The American Red Cross, which supplies about 40% of the nation’s blood, said more than 30,000 planned blood drives have been canceled since mid-March. Even as some businesses, schools and community groups make plans to reopen in coming months, they have told the Red Cross they don’t anticipate sponsoring blood drives in the near future. (Dockser Marcus, 6/12)

The New York Times: How 133 Epidemiologists Are Deciding When To Send Their Children To School
For many parents, the most pressing question as the nation emerges from pandemic lockdown is when they can send their children to school, camp or child care. We asked more than 500 epidemiologists and infectious disease specialists when they expect to restart 20 activities of daily life, assuming that the coronavirus pandemic and the public health response to it unfold as they expect. On sending children to school, camp or child care, 70 percent said they would do so either right now, later this summer or in the fall — much sooner than most said they would resume other activities that involved big groups of people gathering indoors. (Cain Miller and Sanger-Katz, 6/12)

Reuters: California Startup Aims To Monitor Social Distancing And Face Masks Using Drones
Airspace Systems, a California startup company that makes drones that can hunt down and capture other drones, on Thursday released new software for monitoring social distancing and face-mask wearing from the air. The software analyzes video streams captured by drones and can identify when people are standing close together or points where people gather in clusters. The software can detect when people are wearing masks. The system can also process video captured by ground-based cameras, and Airspace aims to sell the system to cities and police departments. (Nellis, 6/11)

CNN: Away From School Pressures, Children Who Defy Gender Norms Blossom At Home 
Ben has liked Disney princesses, nail polish, jewelry and long hair since he was 3. His mother Carrie assumed his preferences would not only be tolerated but celebrated in their liberal enclave of South Orange, New Jersey. Instead, Carrie said, "Everyone made fun of him." (Davis, 6/11)

ABC News: In Hotels And Beyond, UV Light Robots And Lamps Could Help Protect Against Coronavirus 
For guests checking into a high-profile California hotel, they might be staying in rooms that have been sanitized in part by an unusual new staff member: a three-foot-tall robot named Kennedy. Kennedy is among the Beverly Hilton Hotel's newest lines of defense against coronavirus. It's a machine designed to kill the virus by flashing intense, germ-killing ultraviolet light through the room, after the room has undergone the usual cleaning by Kennedy's human coworkers. (Folmer and Bhatt, 6/12)

Houston Chronicle: The Epidemic Within The Pandemic: COVID-19’s Coming Mental Health Toll 
COVID-19 has already claimed the lives of more than 115,000 Americans, but one of the disease’s most serious and lasting effects is just starting to hit: the mental health toll. The coming crisis, created by massive unemployment, social isolation and uncertainty about the future, has already caused a doubling of anxiety and depression from 2014, according to a U.S. Census Bureau survey released late last month. Now, a Texas group is predicting the ultimate mental health cost: a big spike in deaths because of suicide and drug overdose. (Ackerman, 6/12)

PBS NewsHour: How Americans’ Drinking Habits Have Changed During The Pandemic 
Stay-at-home orders posed a special challenge to Americans who struggle with addiction and rely on the support of in-person recovery meetings. Many others found their alcohol consumption patterns changed significantly during the pandemic. William Brangham reports on the impact COVID-19 has had on Americans’ substance use -- including consequences that could long outlast the virus. (Brangham and Nagy, 6/11)

Stat: New Embryo-Like Model Could Help Scientists Study Early Development
Researchers have developed the first-ever embryo-like model from human embryonic stem cells, a workaround that will let them examine birth defects and diseases they couldn’t otherwise, given ethical and technical issues with studying a human embryo in the lab. The model resembles a human embryo around 18 to 21 days old — complete with the layers of the cells that will eventually form the nervous system, muscles, the gut, and other cells and structures in the human body. It offers far more insights into the organization and decision-making processes of early-stage embryos than other models, but experts caution it still differs from human embryos in key ways. (Ortolano, 6/11)

Stat: Agios Drug Shows Strong Response In Patients With Inherited Blood Disorder
Agios Pharmaceuticals on Friday reported positive results from the first clinical trial of its lead pipeline drug in patients with two different types of thalassemia, an inherited blood disorder. Overall, 12 of the 13 patients treated with the Agios drug called mitapivat achieved meaningful hemoglobin responses in the Phase 2 study. The results are still preliminary but set up a pivotal Phase 3 studies starting next year, the company said. (Feuerstein, 6/12)

Stat: New Data In Sickle Cell Show Biotechs Tackling Disease In Novel Ways
Sickle cell disease features prominently at this year’s virtual meeting of the European Hematology Association, which kicks off Friday. The 32 research abstracts being presented are highlighted by early-stage studies of experimental drugs that target the inherited blood disorder in new ways. (Feuerstein, 6/12)

Stat: MIT Ends Negotiations With Elsevier Over Research Access Dispute
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has ended negotiations over a new contract with the major journal publisher Elsevier, making it the latest high-profile academic institution to walk away from Elsevier amid an escalating fight that could shape the way that academic research gets read and paid for. The decision, announced on Thursday, is the result of an ongoing dispute over open-access research, which is made freely available to the public online. (Robbins, 6/11)

WBUR: All Women Should Be Screened For Anxiety Disorders, Health Group Says 
All adult and adolescent women and girls should be screened for anxiety, according to a new recommendation from a coalition of women's health groups. The guidelines, issued by the Women's Preventive Services Initiative, advise primary care doctors and other health providers to screen all female patients for anxiety disorders beginning at age 13. (McCammon, 6/11)

The New York Times: Trump Administration Moves To Solidify Restrictive Immigration Policies
As a pandemic and widespread protests have convulsed the United States, the Trump administration has continued to advance sweeping policies to restrict legal immigration, including halting foreign workers and revamping the asylum process for those seeking sanctuary. Last month, the administration, citing the coronavirus pandemic, extended restrictions that effectively blocked tens of thousands of migrants from seeking asylum at the southwestern border. In April, President Trump issued an executive order temporarily suspending the issuance of green cards to many outside the United States and is expected to limit certain visas issued to immigrants seeking temporary work in the country. (Kanno-Youngs, 6/12)

NPR: Trump Administration Proposes Rules To Sharply Restrict Asylum Claims
The sweeping restrictions would make it easier for immigration judges to reject asylum requests out of hand. They would, for instance, harden the categories of people who face persecution for their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a social group. A Justice Department press release says the 161-page rule would allow "streamlined proceedings" for individuals found to have credible fear, clarify when an application is "frivolous," define terms involved in the adjudication of asylum claims, and raise certain burdens of proof. (Wamsley and Burnett, 6/11)

The Washington Post: Border Officials Spent Emergency Humanitarian Funds On Dirt Bikes, Dogs And Enforcement Programs, According To Government Report
U.S. Customs and Border Protection used emergency funding meant for migrant families and children to pay for dirt bikes, canine supplies, computer equipment and other enforcement related-expenditures, according to a report published Thursday by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Congress last June approved a $4.6 billion emergency funding bill to cope with an unprecedented influx of Central American families and children at the U.S.-Mexico border that left U.S. agents overwhelmed and detention cells dangerously crowded. (Miroff, 6/11)

The Associated Press: Aid Groups 'Alarmed' By Little US Coronavirus Assistance
More than two dozen international aid organizations have told the U.S. government they are “increasingly alarmed” that “little to no U.S. humanitarian assistance has reached those on the front lines” of the coronavirus pandemic, as the number of new cases picks up speed in some of the world’s most fragile regions. The letter obtained by The Associated Press and signed by groups including Save the Children, Mercy Corps, World Vision and others says that “in spite of months of promising conversations with USAID field staff, few organizations have received an executed award for COVID-19 humanitarian assistance.” (Anna, 6/12)

The Associated Press: WHO Warns Of Accelerating Covid-19 Infections In Africa
The World Health Organization has warned that the coronavirus pandemic is accelerating in Africa, after the continent hit 200,000 cases earlier this week. Speaking at a video briefing hosted by the UN press association in Geneva on Thursday, Doctor Matshidiso Moeti, the WHO’s regional director for Africa, said, “It took 98 days to reach the first 100,000 cases, and only 18 days to move to 200,000 cases.” Africa has so far recorded 5,635 deaths. (Sullivan, 6/11)

The Associated Press: Indian Capital's Crematoriums Overwhelmed With Virus Dead
Like elsewhere in the world, the novel coronavirus has made honoring the dead in New Delhi a hurried affair, largely devoid of the rituals that give it meaning for mourners. Cemeteries and crematoriums are overwhelmed, so there isn’t much time for ceremony, and even if there were, the government limits the number of people allowed at funerals and those in attendance must maintain distance and wear masks. (Saaliq, 6/12)

The New York Times: Lebanon’s Currency Plunges, And Protesters Surge Into Streets
A new wave of anti-government protests erupted across Lebanon on Thursday with people blocking roads, burning tires and chanting against the political elite amid a deepening economic crisis. The protests, in a number of cities and in multiple parts of the capital, Beirut, did not appear to be coordinated, but broke out after the Lebanese pound sank to a new low against the U.S. dollar, obliterating the purchasing power of many Lebanese. (Hubbard and Saad, 6/11)

The Associated Press: Maldives Allows People Out During Daytime
The Maldives will further relax coronavirus restrictions from Monday, allowing people to leave their homes during daytime. The Indian Ocean archipelago known for high-end resorts has reported 1,976 cases and eight deaths. So far, the government had issued three passes per family, each for two hours of outgoing every week. The relaxed rules allow people to go out without permits from 5 a.m to 10 p.m. (6/12)

The Associated Press: Mexico Doc Visits, Supports COVID-19 Survivors In Free Time
When Dr. Juan Antonio Salas finishes his shifts in coronavirus wards at two Mexico City public hospitals, his work is not done. The health effects of COVID-19 often persist long after a patient is discharged. So instead of taking a well-deserved rest, Salas follows up with survivors of the disease who are still dealing with the physical and psychological trauma at home. (Verza, 6/11)

Reuters: EU Experts See Some Risk Of Return To Lockdown In COVID-19 Second Wave
The risk of a second wave of COVID-19 infections big enough to require European lockdowns to be reimposed is moderate to high, EU health experts said on Friday, and depends on the gradual easing of restrictions and how people stick to them. A pandemic risk assessment by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control also predicted a moderate pick-up in infection rates in the coming weeks, although it said transmission has passed its peak in most European countries. (Kelland, 6/12)

The New York Times: How Data Became One Of The Most Powerful Tools To Fight An Epidemic
The River Lea originates in the suburbs north of London, winding its way southward until it reaches the city’s East End, where it empties into the Thames near Greenwich and the Isle of Dogs. In the early 1700s, the river was connected to a network of canals that supported the growing dockyards and industrial plants in the area. By the next century, the Lea had become one of the most polluted waterways in all of Britain, deployed to flush out what used to be called the city’s “stink industries.” In June 1866, a laborer named Hedges was living with his wife on the edge of the Lea, in a neighborhood called Bromley-by-Bow. Almost nothing is known today about Hedges and his wife other than the sad facts of their demise: On June 27 of that year, both of them died of cholera. (Johnson, 6/10)

WIRED: The Dangers Of Excluding Women From HIV Prevention Drug Tests
When Dazon Dixon Diallo began working to prevent the spread of HIV among women in 1985, she first had to convince them that they could get the infection. Even some HIV activists didn’t fully appreciate that women needed to be included in prevention efforts. Diallo founded an Atlanta-based organization called SisterLove to promote reproductive justice and to support women with or at risk of getting HIV/AIDS, expanding it to a program in South Africa, where today two-thirds of the people living with HIV are women. In the US, almost one in five new HIV diagnoses are among women. Yet after 35 years, Diallo is still waiting for gender equity in the research for drugs that could prevent HIV infection. (Marill, 6/10)

Undark: As Uganda Takes Control Of The HIV Epidemic, U.S. Shifts Funding
On July 11, 2003, then-U.S. President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush visited a clinic of The AIDS Support Organization (TASO) in Entebbe, Uganda, about 25 miles southwest of the capital Kampala. Six weeks earlier, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (Pepfar) had been signed into law. Congress committed $15 billion to support HIV/AIDS prevention, care, and treatment over the next five years to combat the disease in the 15 most afflicted countries, including 12 in Africa, with Uganda foremost among them. “We knew [the Bushes’ visit] was the most significant event at the time. There was true hope,” says Bernard Michael Etukoit, a physician who was then manager of the TASO clinic. “Our patients were all dying and there was nothing we could do about it. Pepfar gave us hope. It gave us an additional narrative to give to the patients. They had a chance to live longer.” (Nakkazi, 6/10)

The Atlantic: Why Suicide Rates Among Millennials Are Rising
Throughout the summer of 2012, Tylor Morgan would call his sister Lacey at night and beg her to come over and sit with him. It wasn’t obvious why Tylor felt so depressed. Growing up in Pocatello, Idaho, Lacey and Tylor had a fairly happy childhood. Tylor was shy, with lily-white hair and blue eyes. He retreated to the background while their charismatic older brother, Mark, drew the limelight. Their parents had divorced and remarried, but the siblings stayed close. Recitals were attended and mountains explored. Tylor was “pretty much a normal kid,” Lacey, who is now 26, told me. (Khazan, 6/11)

The New York Times: Can A Vaccine For Covid-19 Be Developed In Record Time?
In the history of medicine, rarely has a vaccine been developed in less than five years. Among the fastest to be developed was the current mumps vaccine, which was isolated from the throat washings of a child named Jeryl Lynn in 1963. Over the next months, the virus was systematically “weakened” in the lab by her father, a biomedical scientist named Maurice Hilleman. Such a weakened or attenuated virus stimulates an immune response but does not cause the disease; the immune response protects against future infections with the actual virus. Human trials were carried out over the next two years, and the vaccine was licensed by Merck in December 1967. (6/8)

The Wall Street Journal: Get Ready For The Second Coronavirus Wave
I want to get back to the pandemic, which is not at the moment being seen for what it is. It is taking place within a very different context. It has been subsumed by the Upheaval, the culture-shaking event we are undergoing as a nation. States have begun to reopen, people are going out. Covid-19 feels like yesterday’s story—we don’t want to think about it, we’re barely out of the house. But it’s tomorrow’s story too. The first wave is still here. It never went away. We have every reason to think another, newer, possibly different wave will come in the late fall (different in that the strain could be more lethal, or less). We have to keep this in mind and have a plan. Public officials especially should be thinking about one. Outbreaks continue. Some 800 Americans a day are still dying. (Peggy Noonan, 6/11)

Fox News: We Were Lied To About Coronavirus And The Mass Lockdowns. Here's The Proof
Millions of Americans remain subjected to unprecedented restrictions on their personal lives, their daily lives, their family's lives. The coronavirus lockdowns continue in many places. You may not know that because it gets no publicity, but it's true. And if you're living under it, you definitely know. As a result of this, tens of millions of people are now unemployed. A huge number of them have no prospects of working again. Many thousands of small businesses are closed and will never reopen. More Americans have become dependent on drugs and alcohol, seeing their marriages dissolve, and become clinically depressed. ...We had no choice. We did the right thing. That's what they're telling us. Is it true? (Tucker Carlson, 6/11)

Los Angeles Times: Reopened Las Vegas Hotels Divided Over Coronavirus Rules
“Why is he wearing a mask?” As I walked up to a roulette table at the Cosmopolitan on Friday night, I couldn’t help but hear the young woman ask her friend about my facial covering. I knew she was talking about me because as I scanned the casino floor, I was the only non-employee wearing a mask. Welcome to the new Las Vegas, where the coronavirus pandemic is in the mental rear-view mirror of many visitors, and mask shaming is in vogue for some tourists trying to return to normalcy. (Arash Markazi, 6/11)

The Wall Street Journal: The Second Wave Covid Scare
Stocks sold off Thursday amid investor worries that a “second wave” of coronavirus infections could cause countries and states that are reopening to lock down again. But headlines about a coronavirus resurgence in the U.S. are overblown so far, and the bigger threat is keeping the economy in a coma. “We know as a fact that reopening other states we’re seeing significant problems,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Tuesday. “Twelve states that reopened are now seeing spikes. This is a very real possibility.” This is Mr. Cuomo’s excuse for keeping New York City in lockdown purgatory for 12 weeks as other states reopen and their economies rebound. (6/11)

Lexington Herald Leader: COVID-19 Toll In Black Community No Surprise To UK Researcher. Racism ‘Embedded’ In Healthcare.
Not long after coronavirus appeared on our shores, we learned about its capricious nature, sometimes manifesting as a head cold, sometimes as a lethal disease. As the count went up, public health experts soon reported that a disproportionate number of the worst COVID-19 deaths were in the black community. For example, blacks make up 13 percent of the U.S. population and 23 percent of reported deaths. In Kentucky, black deaths are up to 17 percent in a state where blacks are just 8 percent of the population. And Anita Fernander is not surprised. (Linda Blackford, 6/11)

New England Journal of Medicine: The Impact Of Covid-19 On Minority Communities 
The continuing spread of SARS-CoV-2 remains a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. What physicians need to know about transmission, diagnosis, and treatment of Covid-19 is the subject of ongoing updates from infectious disease experts at the Journal. In this audio interview conducted on June 10, 2020, the editors are joined by Dr. Michele Evans of the National Institutes of Health to discuss a new study examining the disproportionate effect of Covid-19 on minority communities. (Eric J. Rubin, Lindsey R. Baden, Michele K. Evans, and Stephen Morrissey, 6/11)

The Hill: Elementary Principals Urge Congress To Boost School Aid Amid COVID-19 
The coronavirus outbreak continues to send shockwaves through health and economic systems around the globe. No aspect of society has been spared, including our nation’s public education system. This spring, at least 124,000 K-12 schools closed, causing significant disruptions in learning for more than 55 million students. Principals are working to prepare their schools for reopening this fall, but significant federal support will be needed to ensure schools have sufficient resources, staffing, and testing to open safely. (L. Earl Franks, 6/11)

Stat: Fee For Service Is A Terrible Way To Pay For Health Care 
Amid the nightly roar of applause for health care workers courageously caring for Covid-19 patients, many of them are losing their jobs. The crisis behind quarantine clapping — a communal show of gratitude for the workers braving the pandemic — has overwhelmed intensive care units in hospitals located in Covid-19 hot spots like New York, Boston, Detroit, and Seattle. At the same time, it has also tanked demand for primary care, dentistry, dermatology, and other clinical services. Why? Many of those in need of those services are among those also at greatest risk of contracting the virus that causes Covid-19. (Vivian S. Lee, 6/12)

WBUR: Racism In Medicine Isn't An Abstract Notion. It's Happening All Around Us, Every Day 
Ahmaud Arbery. Breonna Taylor. George Floyd. Tony McDade. For some, their killings illuminate racism’s stronghold on our society for the first time. However, police brutality is part of the epidemic of anti-Black racism initiated when the first slave ships docked on American shores in 1619. (Ayotomiwa Ojo, 6/12)

New England Journal of Medicine: Diagnosing And Treating Systemic Racism 
For physicians, the words “I can’t breathe” are a primal cry for help. As many physicians have left their comfort zones to care for patients with Covid-19–associated respiratory failure, the role of the medical profession in addressing this life-defining need has rarely been clearer. But as George Floyd’s repeated cry of “I can’t breathe” while he was being murdered by a Minneapolis police officer has resounded through the country, the physician’s role has seemed less clear. Police brutality against black people, and the systemic racism of which it is but one lethal manifestation, is a festering public health crisis. Can the medical profession use the tools in its armamentarium to address this deep-rooted disease? (Michele K. Evans, Lisa Rosenbaum, Debra Malina, Stephen Morrissey, and Eric J. Rubin, 6/10)

JAMA: Medicaid And COVID-19: At The Center Of Both Health And Economic Crises
Nearly 3 months into the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, more than 40 million individuals in the US have filed for unemployment. Without jobs and with lower incomes, millions will lose their health insurance, which will lead to a surge of new enrollees in Medicaid. This is particularly true in the 37 states that implemented Affordable Care Act (ACA) Medicaid expansions, through which most low-income adults other than undocumented or recent immigrants can qualify for coverage. However, in nonexpansion states millions will remain ineligible. Large increases in enrollment during recessions are an essential feature in “countercyclical” programs like Medicaid, meaning tax revenues that support the program decline while expenditures for the program increase. (Benjamin D. Sommers, 6/11)

Bloomberg: 2020 Is Not 1968. It May Be Worse.
The American death toll is rising. An unpopular president fears for his re-election chances. The U.S. sends men into space. Down on Earth, the economy is in trouble. Racial tensions boil over into rallies, looting and violent confrontations with police in cities across the nation, intensifying political polarization and widening the generational divide. The president considers invoking the 1807 Insurrection Act, which empowers a president to deploy the armed forces and National Guard in any state. Yes, as writers across the political spectrum such as David Frum, James Fallows, Max Boot, Julian Zelizer and Zachary Karabell have pointed out, 2020 is looking a lot like 1968. For Vietnam, read Covid-19. (Niall Ferguson, 6/10)

The Hill: America's Mental Health Is Under Siege — Congress Can Help Now 
For years now, the American psyche has been under siege. Well before COVID-19 arrived, our suicide rate was the highest it’s been since World War II and drug overdoses were killing more people than car accidents. Now, though, we must also contend with a deadly virus, the worst unemployment since the Great Depression and isolating lockdown measures, as well as the national trauma of George Floyd’s horrific death at the hands of police. (Brian Barnett, Andrew Carlo and Bruce Schwartz, 6/11)

The Washington Post: What Social Isolation May Be Doing To Our Brains
Now that the country is slowly emerging from lockdown, we might consider what effect this vast experiment in social isolation has had on not just how we feel but also how we think. Many of my friends and patients have been telling me they feel mentally duller and unfocused — even those who are still busy working and, in some cases, exercising even more than usual. (Richard A. Friedman, 6/11)

Stat: Lack Of Disability-Related Covid-19 Data Can Confound Responses 
After a few days of feeling feverish, exhausted, achy, and having an intermittent sore throat, I feared the worst: Covid-19. I immediately self-quarantined. My husband begged me to call the doctor, but I didn’t see the point, as I knew I would be told to get tested. For me, that medical advice was complicated by my disability. (Bonnielin Swenor, 6/12)

The Wall Street Journal: Letting The Docs Dispense
Instead of forcing patients to stand in line at a drugstore to fill their prescriptions, it would be easier and cheaper if these patients could get their meds directly from the doctors prescribing them. No doubt that’s why only six states—Montana, Texas, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and New Hampshire—insist on the added cost and delay of forcing patients to make a separate trip to the pharmacy. The Institute for Justice says this is ridiculous and wants to change it. On June 15, IJ will sue in Montana on behalf of three doctors who seek the freedom to dispense “non-controlled medications directly to their patients at cost.” The suit notes that Montana’s ban already allows doctors to dispense in certain cases, such as in emergencies or rural areas where there’s no pharmacy within 10 miles. If doctors are qualified in these cases, what sense does it make to disqualify everyone else based on geography? (6/11)

The New York Times: Coronavirus Could Make America’s Gun Problem Even Deadlier
Millions of Americans have experienced the coronavirus pandemic directly, as they or their loved ones suffered through infection. But for most of us, the experience is defined by weeks and months on end stuck at home. The shut-ins are testing the safety of our home environments. Stress and isolation combined with another feature of American life — easy access to firearms — could form a deadly brew. Last week we released results of a new study — the largest ever on the connection between suicide and handgun ownership — in The New England Journal of Medicine revealing that gun owners were nearly four times as likely to die by suicide than people without guns, even when controlling for gender, age, race and neighborhood. (David Studdert, Matthew Miller and Garen Wintemute, 6/11)