The New York Times: Trump Rally Is The ‘Perfect Storm Setup,’ For Viral Spread, Disease Expert Says
The coronavirus won’t be loosening its grip on the United States any time soon, leading infectious disease experts said on Sunday. They are also uncertain how the viral spread will be affected by the patchwork of states reopening businesses and by large events like protests and President Trump’s upcoming campaign rallies. “This virus is not going to rest” until it infects about 60 percent to 70 percent of the population, Dr. Michael T. Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said on “Fox News Sunday.” (Belluck, 6/14)

The Associated Press: Trump Rally Called ‘Dangerous Move’ In Age Of Coronavirus
“I’m concerned about our ability to protect anyone who attends a large, indoor event, and I’m also concerned about our ability to ensure the president stays safe as well,” Dr. Bruce Dart told the newspaper. Other health experts also cite the danger of infection spreading among the crowd and sparking outbreaks when people return to their homes. The Trump campaign itself acknowledges the risk in a waiver attendees must agree to absolving them of any responsibility should people get sick. (Johnson and Colvin, 6/14)

Reuters: Trump Economic Adviser Urges Wearing Of Masks At Tulsa Rally
People attending U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign rally in Oklahoma this week should wear masks, a White House adviser said on Sunday, as health experts cautioned against large gatherings such as political rallies during the coronavirus pandemic. (Chiacu, 6/14)

Politico: CDC Warns Against Large Gatherings As Trump Plans Campaign Rallies
"The best way you can avoid either acquiring or transmitting infection is to avoid crowded places, to wear a mask whenever you’re outside and if you can do both, avoid the congregation of people and do the mask, that’s great," Fauci said. Butler and CDC Director Robert Redfield on Friday also acknowledged rising case numbers in several states across the country but would not say whether social distancing guidelines had been relaxed too soon as economies reopened. (Ehley, 6/12)

NBC News: Trump Campaign Declines To Say If It Will Enforce CDC Coronavirus Guidelines At Tulsa Rally
Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale suggested that he was considering adding a second event to accommodate the more than 200,000 to 300,000 attendee sign-up requests they claim to have received for the rally. There are typically significantly fewer attendees at Trump rallies than the numbers floated by Parscale, but still enough to be considered a high risk. (Alba and Egan, 6/13)

ABC News: Fauci Tells ABC's 'Powerhouse Politics' That Attending Rallies, Protests Is 'Risky' 
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday issued specific guidelines for individuals attending larger events, strongly encouraging people to wear masks. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has been the leading scientific voice on COVID-19. His frank commentary -- this week he told biotech executives the highly contagious respiratory infection was his "worst nightmare" -- has often clashed with Trump and GOP supporters, who are pressing the country to reopen in a bid to restart the economy. (Flaherty, 6/12)

The Hill: Fauci: Ban On UK Travelers Likely To Last Months 
Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease expert in the U.S., said Sunday that the ban on British travelers entering the U.S. is likely to last months. Fauci, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, told The Telegraph that the U.K. travel ban is expected to be lifted in “more likely months than weeks.” The infectious disease expert said the travel restrictions could last until a vaccine is ready, adding that it’s possible they are lifted sooner. (Coleman, 6/14)

Meanwhile, Trump's appearance at West Point's graduation have led to questions about the president's health —

The New York Times: Trump's Walk Down Ramp At West Point Raises Health Questions
President Trump faced new questions about his health on Sunday, after videos emerged of him gingerly walking down a ramp at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and having trouble bringing a glass of water to his mouth during a speech there. Mr. Trump — who turned 74 on Sunday, the oldest a U.S. president has been in his first term — was recorded hesitantly descending the ramp one step at a time after he delivered an address to graduating cadets at the New York-based academy on Saturday. The academy’s superintendent, Lt. Gen. Darryl A. Williams, walked alongside him. Mr. Trump sped up slightly for the final three steps, as he got to the bottom. (Haberman, 6/14)

The Washington Post: Trump Tries To Explain His Slow And Unsteady Walk Down A Ramp At West Point
The walk in question came at the conclusion of Saturday’s commencement exercises at West Point, where Trump was the guest speaker. As he exited the raised platform by descending a ramp alongside Lt. Gen. Darryl A. Williams, the academy’s superintendent, Trump was visibly tentative and took short, careful steps. Video of the moment was widely shared on social media, with critics of the president — including Republican operatives working on the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group whose ads have provoked the president’s ire — using the hashtag #TrumpIsNotWell in their tweets. (Rucker, 6/14)

The New York Times: Covid-19 Changed How We Vote. It Could Also Change Who Votes.
In a normal election year, volunteers from the Columbus, Ohio, chapter of the League of Women Voters would have spent last weekend at the Columbus Arts Fair, pens and clipboards in hand, looking to sign up new voters among the festival’s 400,000 or so attendees. This is not a normal election year. “There are absolutely no festivals this summer,” said Jen Miller, the executive director of the league’s state chapter. “We don’t have volunteers at tables. We don’t have volunteers roving with clipboards. Obviously, we’re just not doing that.” (Wines, 6/14)

The Wall Street Journal: It’s Not Too Late To Save The 2020 Election
On Tuesday, citizens in Georgia stood in lines for hours to vote—and some just gave up. The state struggled to handle its primary election, hobbled amid the coronavirus pandemic by a shortage of poll workers and polling places. The Atlanta Journal Constitution called it “an ordeal for voters.” And with Georgia potentially in play between President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden, more than twice as many voters are expected in November, the paper noted. (Persily, 6/12)

The Associated Press: Blind Voters Fear Loss Of Privacy With Shift To Mail Voting
Not that long ago, Ann Byington had to squeeze into a voting booth with a Republican poll watcher on one side and a Democrat on the other reading her voting choices out loud so her ballot could be marked for her and the selections verified. Blind since birth, Byington welcomed the rise in recent years of electronic voting machines equipped with technology that empowered her and others with disabilities to cast their ballots privately and independently. (Cassidy, 6/14)

The New York Times: C.D.C. Calls For Face Masks At Large Gatherings, Warning Of Crowd Risks
Three months after the country’s top public health agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, abruptly stopped holding regular briefings on the coronavirus pandemic, its director, Dr. Robert Redfield, restarted them on Friday amid growing calls for the agency to claim a more prominent role in the virus response. The C.D.C. also released a new guidance document, “Considerations for Events and Gatherings,” that defines as “highest risk” large gatherings where it is difficult for people to stay at least six feet apart, and where attendees travel from outside the local area. (Goodnough, 6/12)

The Washington Post: Spate Of New Research Supports Wearing Masks To Control Coronavirus Spread
As partisan interests sew symbolism and controversy into masks, scientists are trying to provide answers about how effectively those masks prevent transmission of the coronavirus, and what role they should play in efforts to limit the pathogen’s spread.(Guarino, Janes and Cha, 6/13)

The Wall Street Journal: CDC Encourages Wearing Masks, Other Coronavirus Precautions At Gatherings
The CDC also listed questions that people should ask themselves when deciding to go somewhere, such as whether they are high-risk or live with someone at high risk, and if the virus is spreading within their community. The new recommendations are meant to supplement, rather than replace, guidance from state and local health officials, the CDC says. “I know people are eager to return to normal activities and ways of life,” CDC Director Robert Redfield told reporters on a conference call. “However, it’s important that we remember that the situation is unprecedented and that the pandemic has not ended.” (Abbott and McKay, 6/12)

Reuters: Masks Significantly Reduce Infection Risk, Likely Preventing Thousands Of COVID-19 Cases -Study
Requiring the wearing of masks to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus in areas at the epicenter of the global pandemic may have prevented tens of thousands of infections, a new study suggests. Mask-wearing is even more important for preventing the virus’ spread and the sometimes deadly COVID-19 illness it causes than social distancing and stay-at-home orders, researchers said, in the study published in PNAS: The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA. (Lapid, 6/12)

The Hill: Masks Now Seen As Vital Tool In Coronavirus Fight 
Evidence is mounting that widespread mask-wearing can significantly slow the spread of coronavirus and help reduce the need for future lockdowns. Public health authorities did not initially put an emphasis on masks, but that's changed and there is now increasing consensus that they play an important role in hindering transmission of the virus at a time when wearing one has become politicized as some states and businesses have made them a requirement for certain activities. (Sullivan, 6/13)

The Associated Press: Grim Blame Game Over COVID Deaths In Besieged Nursing Homes
A grim blame game with partisan overtones is breaking out over COVID-19 deaths among nursing home residents, a tiny slice of the population that represents a shockingly high proportion of Americans who have perished in the pandemic. The Trump administration has been pointing to a segment of the industry — facilities with low federal ratings for infection control — and to some Democratic governors who required nursing homes to take recovering coronavirus patients. (Alonso-Zaldivar, 6/15)

Modern Healthcare: Nursing Home Front Line Asks For Congressional Help During Pandemic
Chris Brown, a nursing home worker for the past decade, said there was such a shortage of personal protective equipment at his Illinois facility that he had to don a garbage bag for protection while treating patients. "If I become sick, how can I take care of someone else?" Brown, a certified nursing assistant, asked during a federal briefing by the U.S. House of Representatives' Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis. (Christ, 6/11)

NPR: Texas Calls In A Strike Force To Try To Slow Coronavirus Spread In Nursing Homes
Some of the worst coronavirus outbreaks have occurred at long-term care facilities that now account for more than one-third of all COVID-19 deaths in America. Some states have taken aggressive actions to slow the spread of the virus among elderly populations and workers in nursing homes. Texas formed a strike force to assess problems at its 1,222 nursing homes. (Burnett, 6/15)

The Oklahoman: Oklahoma Nursing Homes Can Begin Phased Reopening Monday
Starting Monday, Oklahoma nursing homes can begin a phased approach to allow visitations to resume, Gov. Kevin Stitt's office announced Friday — the same day the state reported its largest single-day increase of new COVID-19 cases. In order to resume family visitations, nursing homes will have to have an absence of COVID-19 for at least two weeks and will need to follow standards on staffing levels, availability of personal protective equipment and local hospital capacity. (The Oklahoman. 6/13)

Modern Healthcare: HHS Throws Out Obama-Era Rule Against Gender Discrimination
The Trump administration Friday overturned an Obama-era rule that banned discrimination against patients based on gender identity. The regulation from the HHS' Office for Civil Rights drops protections based on gender identity from the ACA's chief anti-discrimination provision. OCR similarly ended nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people by modifying other CMS rules, including standards for qualified health plans and the ACA marketplaces, even though they're not related to and predate the OCR rule. When the agency proposed the changes, it expected half of all covered entities to ditch their gender and sexual-orientation nondiscrimination policies as a result. (Brady, 6/12)

The Associated Press: Trump Administration Revokes Transgender Health Protection
The Department of Health and Human Services said it will enforce sex discrimination protections “according to the plain meaning of the word ‘sex’ as male or female and as determined by biology.” This rewrites an Obama-era regulation that sought a broader understanding shaped by a person’s internal sense of being male, female, neither or a combination. LGBTQ groups say explicit protections are needed for people seeking sex-reassignment treatment, and even for transgender people who need care for common illnesses such as diabetes or heart problems. (Alonso-Zaldivar, 6/12)

The Wall Street Journal: Trump Administration Issues Rule To Roll Back Transgender Protections In The Affordable Care Act
The rule would affect protections for the 1.4 million transgender adults and 150,000 transgender teenagers ages 13 to 17 in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute, a research group at the University of California School of Law in Los Angeles that studies sexual-orientation and gender-identity policy. Trump administration officials have said that the policy is being changed to more closely hew to the ACA text, which doesn’t explicitly mention gender identity as a protected category in health care. The provision has spurred a host of lawsuits from states and religious plaintiffs that claimed the expanded protections are unlawful. (Armour, 6/12)

The New York Times: Health Care Advocates Push Back Against Trump’s Erasure Of Transgender Rights
Health advocates representing American hospitals, medical groups, insurers and civil rights associations condemned the Trump administration on Saturday for rolling back protections for transgender patients, and for doing so amid a global pandemic. The new rule, long sought by conservatives and the religious right, narrows the legal definition of sex discrimination in the Affordable Care Act so that it omits protection for transgender people. It also opens the door for health care providers to refuse to treat patients who have had abortions. (Kaplan, 6/13)

Reuters: U.S. Health Agency Reverses Obamacare Transgender Protections
LGBTQ rights groups, Democratic lawmakers and Democratic-controlled states have decried efforts under the administration of Republican President Donald Trump to erode protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer citizens. One group said it planned to sue the administration over the new rule. U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the decision a “shocking attack on the health and well-being of countless vulnerable communities, including women, LGBTQ individuals, and people of color.” (6/12)

The Washington Post: Trump Administration Erases Non-Discrimination Protections For Transgender People In Health Care
Under President Barack Obama, the concept of gender in many areas of the law had been broadened beyond biological sex to encompass the myriad identities that different Americans embrace. Roger Severino, director of the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services, has argued that when members of Congress who passed the 2010 Affordable Care Act prohibited providers receiving federal funding from discrimination on the basis of sex, they meant “the plain meaning of the term.” (Cha, 6/12)

Politico: Trump Finalizes Rollback Of LGBTQ Patient Protections
Roger Severino, head of the HHS civil rights office, said the timing of the rule's release is "purely coincidental." He also disputed that the new rules would endanger patients during the pandemic. “Especially during the Covid-19 pandemic, we’ve gone into overdrive in terms of our civil rights enforcement, and that will not be affected,” he said, citing recent efforts to enforce disability rights protections and other civil rights. “Everyone deserves to be treated with respect and accordance with the law.” (Diamond, 6/12)

The Hill: Biden: 'Unconscionable' For Trump To Roll Back LGBTQ Protections 
Former Vice President Joe Biden on Friday slammed the Trump administration’s decision to roll back LGBTQ protections in the Affordable Care Act, calling the move “unconscionable.” “This action is unconscionable — and to do so during Pride Month, on the fourth anniversary of the deadly terrorist attack at the Pulse Nightclub that claimed 49 lives, many of them members of the LGBTQ+ community, is despicable,” the presumptive Democratic nominee said in a statement. (Gstalter, 6/13)

Politico: Missing Data Veils Coronavirus Damage To Minority Communities
The coronavirus’ brutal impact on African Americans and other minorities may never be fully known because of consistent gaps in gathering data on race and ethnicity that persist more than four months into the pandemic. Despite rising pressure on the Trump administration to fix the data deficits, 52 percent of reported coronavirus cases in the U.S. are still missing information on race or ethnicity. Recent federal guidance on gathering more of that data through testing won’t start until August. (Barron-Lopez, Cancryn, King and Tahir, 6/14)

USA Today: Festering Racial Bias In Health Care A Factor In COVID-19 Disparities
Actress Alicia Cole developed flesh-eating disease, sepsis and three life-threatening antibiotic-resistant infections after what was supposed to be a minor surgery in 2006. But for all she went through, Cole recalls details of the racial bias she encountered at the hospital as clearly as the physical ones she suffered.  The experiences of Cole and her family over more than a decade of hospital stays turned her into a vocal patient safety advocate – and one of the very few people of color in the growing movement. (O'Donnell and Alltucker, 6/14)

The Wall Street Journal: Coronavirus, Economic Toll Threaten To Worsen Black Mortality Rates
The new coronavirus pandemic and its economic fallout threaten to exacerbate mortality rates for African-Americans, which have risen in recent years for blacks in middle age. Blacks are dying at disproportionately high rates from the coronavirus, and their unemployment rate has tripled as a result of the pandemic. The financial stress, along with long-simmering racial tensions highlighted by the May 25 killing of George Floyd while in the custody of Minneapolis police, may compound factors that have been shown to worsen the health of African-Americans, according to health experts and researchers. (Adamy, 6/13)

PBS NewsHour: Why Chronic Stress And COVID-19 Are A ‘Perfect Storm’ For The Health Of Black Americans 
For months, the world has sat on edge while the COVID-19 pandemic disrupts life and takes lives, with no end in sight. In recent months, numerous killings of black Americans — Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd — at the hands of white, current or former law enforcement officers have prompted passionate, sometimes volatile protests. Those pains are fresh, but the deadly perils of systemic racism, as well as the chronic stress that comes with it, are not. (Santhanam, 6/12)

Stateline: Racism Is A Public Health Crisis, Say Cities And Counties
More recently, research has shown that racial health disparities don’t just affect poor African Americans, but they also cross class lines, Benjamin said. “As a black man, my status, my suit and tie don’t protect me.”The data is stark: Black women are up to four times more likely to die of pregnancy related complications than white women. Black men are more than twice as likely to be killed by police as white men. And the average life expectancy of African Americans is four years lower than the rest of the U.S. population. (Vestal, 6/15)

Modern Healthcare: Front-Line Healthcare Workers Join Calls To End Systemic Racism
Following Floyd’s death on May 25, hospitals began organizing ceremonies to take a knee, an action that just a few years ago created a national firestorm when quarterback Colin Kaepernick began kneeling during the national anthem before NFL games. They’ve also participated in moments of silence. Just a day before the vandalism at the University of Iowa campus, Dr. Nicole del Castillo helped lead a #WhiteCoatsforBlackLives protest at the hospital for Carver College of Medicine residents and staff. They knelt for nearly 10 minutes. According to del Castillo, the demonstration was both a show of solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and a call to action for change within the hospital. (Caruso, 6/13)

Modern Healthcare: COVID-19 Highlights Need To Tackle Lingering Social Needs
Finding upstream solutions to address the social needs of patients will become even more crucial as the impact of COVID-19 will linger in many communities long after the pandemic has subsided. Such was the common theme discussed during Modern Healthcare’s most recent Social Determinants of Health Symposium June 2. Stakeholders said now was the time to address the gaps in both healthcare services and socio-economic supports that have contributed to some communities experiencing the worst outcomes from the outbreak. In places like Louisiana, African Americans make up 31% of the state’s total population yet accounted for more than 54% of COVID-19 deaths as of May 26, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. (Johnson, 6/13)

The Associated Press: Floyd's Death Spurs Question: What Is A Black Life Worth?
For 12-year-old Tamir Rice, it was simply carrying a toy handgun. For Eric Garner, it was allegedly selling untaxed cigarettes. For Michael Brown, Sandra Bland and Ahmaud Arbery, it was the minor offenses of jaywalking, failing to signal a lane change and trespassing on a residential construction site. And for George Floyd, it was an accusation he used a fake $20 bill at a grocery store. While in police custody on May 25, Floyd repeatedly pleaded “I can’t breathe,” as a white officer in Minneapolis pressed his knee into the black man’s neck for what prosecutors say was nearly nine minutes. (Morrison, 6/12)

CBS News: 40% Of Black-Owned Businesses Not Expected To Survive Coronavirus
Jameian Selmon kicked off 2020 with a dozen employees and a full slate of weddings and birthday parties booked for her thriving event-planning company in Minneapolis. Less than four months later, her company is gone — one of hundreds of thousands of black-owned businesses around the U.S. that have closed permanently amid the economic rubble caused by the coronavirus pandemic. (Brooks, 6/12)

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin Protests Reflect Diversity Of Voices Calling For Change
On the north side, more than 100 people, mostly senior citizens, lined the corner of North King Drive  and West North Avenue with folding chairs for a sit-in that supported marchers that went by. In Madison, about a thousand medical professionals marched on the State Capitol in a demonstration dubbed “White Coats for Black Lives. ”There were other peaceful demonstrations on Saturday as well, but after three weeks of marching and chanting, one thing is clear: a range of Wisconsinites, and Americans in general, are eager to show their solidarity with the Black community and other people of color. (Torres, Andrea, Prihar and Hughes, 6/13)

WBUR: Walsh Declares Racism 'A Public Health Crisis,' Proposes To Divert Less Than 3% Of Police Budget To Other Services 
Mayor Marty Walsh on Friday declared racism a public health crisis in Boston. To tackle the emergency, after discussion with the Boston Police Department, Walsh said he will reallocate $3 million of the department's overtime budget to public health. Walsh said the decision comes after he listened to Black people — both in the Black Lives Matter movement and in his life — who shared with him "how racism shapes lives and hurts communities." (Walters, 6/12)

The New York Times: Police Killings Prompt Reassessment Of Laws Allowing Deadly Force
The swift decision on Sunday to fire the white Atlanta police officer who shot and killed a black motorist intensified the growing re-examination of the use of deadly force by the police, challenging longstanding principles that have given law enforcement officers wide latitude in cases in which an encounter ends with a death. Although laws vary by state, police officers in America are generally allowed to use deadly force when they reasonably believe their lives or the lives of others are in danger, a legal standard designed to give the authorities enormous leeway to make split-second life-or-death decisions without hesitation or fear of prosecution. (Rojas and Fausset, 6/14)

The New York Times: Police Reform Is Necessary. But How Do We Do It?
On Memorial Day, the police in Minneapolis killed George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man. Three officers stood by or assisted as a fourth, Derek Chauvin, pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes. Floyd said he could not breathe and then became unresponsive. His death has touched off the largest and most sustained round of protests the country has seen since the 1960s, as well as demonstrations around the world. The killing has also prompted renewed calls to address brutality, racial disparities and impunity in American policing — and beyond that, to change the conditions that burden black and Latino communities. (Bazelon and Sidibe, 6/13)

The Associated Press: Senate GOP To Restrict Police Choke Holds In Emerging Bill
Driven by a rare urgency, Senate Republicans are poised to unveil an extensive package of policing changes that includes new restrictions on police choke holds and other practices as President Donald Trump signals his support following the mass demonstrations over the deaths of George Floyd and other black Americans. (Mascaro, 6/15)

Los Angeles Times: Congress Tackles Police Reform, But GOP And Democrats At Odds
Nearly three weeks after George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, which galvanized the most widespread and sustained racial-justice protests the United States has seen in a generation, House Democrats are calling for a ban on police chokeholds, an end to no-knock warrants and the creation of a national police misconduct registry, among other steps. A midweek hearing is set in the House on the Democratic plan. On the Senate side, the chamber’s only Black Republican, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, plans to unveil a measure this week. (King, 6/14)

The Washington Post: Republican Senators Outline GOP’s Police Reform Bill
Sens. James Lankford (R-Okla.) and Tim Scott (R-S.C.), who have been working on the GOP’s answer to a bill released by House Democrats last week, both endorsed a ban on chokeholds Sunday. But while Scott stressed on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that both chambers of Congress and the White House “want to tackle the issue,” it is not clear whether such a ban will appear in the GOP bill. (Demirjian, 6/14)

The Associated Press: Perils Of Police At High Speeds Spur Calls For More Reform
A tragic chain of events that led to the death of a retired elementary teacher in Chicago started when a police officer confronted a man in a West Side alley. After issuing a call for help, the officer could be heard over the police radio screaming, “Drop the gun!” Three minutes later and just two blocks away, two police vehicles speeding to the officer’s aid collided at an intersection, one catapulting the other onto a sedan taking 84-year-old Verona Gunn home after a family cookout. She died hours later on an operating table. (Tarm, 6/15)

Los Angeles Times: LAPD Violence Against George Floyd Protests Erodes Reforms
May Day, 2007, began peacefully in Los Angeles. It ended as another dark, violent chapter for the city’s Police Department. As annual immigrant rights demonstrations wound down, marchers gathered at MacArthur Park. When a small group of agitators threw bottles and other objects, disorganized police responded with shocking force on the entire crowd. Officers in riot gear swept through the park, firing hard projectiles and beating people. The ruthlessness — televised live — left nearly 250 protesters injured. The city was outraged. (Rubin, 6/14)

The Washington Post: Richmond Protests: Police Pepper Spray Protesters In Standoff Outside Police Headquarters
Police in Richmond used what appeared to be pepper spray on demonstrators twice late Sunday after hundreds protested an incident Saturday evening in which a city police vehicle hit several people while driving through a group. At least one person was thought to have been taken into custody. (Schneider, 6/15)

The Wall Street Journal: Atlanta Police Shooting Sparks New Outrage
The killing in a Wendy’s parking lot added a rallying cry to protests demanding an end to police brutality and systemic racism that have fanned out nationwide and internationally from Minneapolis since the May 25 police killing of George Floyd in that city. Over the weekend, protests coincided with Pride Month for the LGBTQ community as demonstrators rallied in support of black transgender rights in Brooklyn, while several streets in Los Angeles closed down for a demonstration that combined racial-injustice protests with the city’s annual pride march for gay and transgender rights. (Calfas and Honan, 6/14)

KQED: Oakland Groups Sue City, Police Chief Over Forceful Response To Black Lives Matter Protests 
The city of Oakland, its interim police chief and several Oakland Police Department officers are facing a class-action lawsuit over their handling of protests that erupted in late May in the wake of the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd. A coalition of social justice groups filed the suit Thursday night, alleging some OPD officers unlawfully attacked Black Lives Matter protesters. (Siler-Gonzales, 6/12)

Dallas Morning News: With Dallas Roundtable, Texas Sen. Cornyn And City Leaders Hope To Begin Long March Toward Police Reform
Conceding the scope of the task ahead, Sen. John Cornyn and Dallas city leaders held a roundtable discussion Friday to begin the process of rebuilding trust in law enforcement locally and nationally in the wake of George Floyd’s killing last month. ...However, the senator said, while it was his hope that “something good can come out of this terrible tragedy,” he cautioned against acting too swiftly to institute needed reforms despite the sense of urgency spurred by recent national unrest. (Ramirez, 6/12)

ProPublica/New Mexico In Depth: A Hospital’s Secret Coronavirus Policy Separated Native American Mothers From Their Newborns 
A prominent women’s hospital here has separated some Native American women from their newly born babies, the result of a practice designed to stop the spread of COVID-19 that clinicians and health care ethicists described as racial profiling. Lovelace Women’s Hospital in Albuquerque implemented a secretive policy in recent months to conduct special coronavirus screenings for pregnant women, based on whether they appeared to be Native American, even if they had no symptoms or were otherwise at low risk for the disease, according to clinicians. (Furlow, 6/13)

ProPublica/New Mexico In Depth: State Investigating Hospital With Coronavirus Policy That Profiled Pregnant Native American Mothers And Separated Them From Newborns
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced on Twitter Saturday that state officials would investigate allegations of racial profiling of pregnant Native American women at a top hospital in Albuquerque. Lujan Grisham was reacting to a story published Saturday by New Mexico In Depth and ProPublica revealing that Lovelace Women’s Hospital had a secret policy for screening Native American women for coronavirus based on their appearance and home ZIP code, according to several clinicians who work there. (Furlow, 6/14)

In other news on hospitals —

New Orleans Times-Picayune: 'My Deepest Fear': What Happens If Hospitals, State Face Dual Threat Of Hurricanes And Coronavirus?
A busy storm season is a worry for Louisiana hospitals and other health care providers every year. But the ongoing pandemic has made preparations even more critical. Providers and the state health department are sizing up the risks and rethinking emergency response tactics. Some hospitals are stocking up on personal protective equipment and other supplies. Others are changing how they’ll manage non-essential staff and patients’ families. (Woodruff, 6/12)

NPR: Coronavirus 2nd Wave? Nope, The U.S. Is Still Stuck In The 1st One
Just weeks after parts of the U.S. began reopening, coronavirus infections are on the upswing in several states, including Arizona, Utah, Texas and Florida. Dramatic increases in daily case counts have given rise to some unsettling questions: Is the U.S. at the start of a second wave? Have states reopened too soon? And have the recent widespread demonstrations against racial injustice inadvertently added fuel to the fire? The short, unpleasant answer to the first question is that the U.S. has not even gotten through the current first wave of infections. (Aizenman, 6/12)

Reuters: Record Spikes In New Coronavirus Cases, Hospitalizations Sweep Parts Of U.S.
New coronavirus cases and hospitalizations in record numbers swept through more U.S. states, including Florida and Texas, as most push ahead with reopening and President Donald Trump plans an indoor rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Alabama reported a record number of new cases for the fourth day in a row on Sunday. Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Florida, North Carolina, Oklahoma and South Carolina all had record numbers of new cases in the past three days, according to a Reuters tally. (Shumaker, 6/14)

Reuters: U.S. CDC Warns That Restrictions May Be Needed Again If COVID-19 Cases Spike
U.S. health officials on Friday urged Americans to continue adhering to social distancing and other COVID-19 safety measures, and warned that states may need to reimpose strict restrictions if COVID-19 cases spike. In recent weeks, experts have raised concerns that the reopening of the U.S. economy could lead to a fresh wave of infections. About half a dozen states, including Texas and Arizona, are grappling with a rising number of coronavirus patients filling hospital beds. (Joseph and O'Donnell, 6/12)

CNN: Why A Second Covid-19 Shutdown Might Be Worse Than The First -- And How To Prevent It
It's an outcome no one wants, but could become a "harsh reality": a second wave of shutdowns. Weeks after lifting stay-at-home orders, some states are seeing record numbers of hospitalizations from Covid-19 as thousands more Americans get infected every day. "We're going to have to face the harsh reality in some states that we may need to shut down again," said Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a professor at George Washington University School of Medicine. (Yan, 6/15)

The New York Times: Coronavirus Cases Spike Across Sun Belt As Economy Lurches Into Motion
The warning has echoed ominously for weeks from epidemiologists, small-town mayors and county health officials: Once states begin to reopen, a surge in coronavirus cases will follow. That scenario is now playing out in states across the country, particularly in the Sun Belt and the West, as thousands of Americans have been sickened by the virus in new and alarming outbreaks. Hospitals in Arizona have been urged to activate emergency plans to cope with a flood of coronavirus patients. On Saturday, Florida saw its largest single-day count of cases since the pandemic began. (Bosman and Smith, 6/14)

NPR: Health Experts Link Rise In Arizona Coronavirus Cases To End Of Stay-At-Home Order
With new daily coronavirus cases rising in at least two dozen states, an explosion of new infections in Arizona is stretching some hospitals and alarming public health experts who link the surge in cases to the state's lifting of a stay-at-home order close to a month ago. Arizona has emerged as one of the country's newest coronavirus hot spots, with the weekly average of daily cases nearly tripling from two weeks ago. The total number of people hospitalized is climbing, too. (Stone, 6/14)

Politico: Summer Setback: Cities Put Brakes On Reopening As Virus Spikes Again
Sharp spikes in coronavirus cases are prompting governors and mayors in Oregon, Utah and Tennessee to pause reopening plans, while officials in Houston and elsewhere are warning of the potential need for new restrictions. The moves could be a harbinger of more slowdowns to come, with coronavirus infections and hospitalizations rising in more than a dozen states since Memorial Day weekend. But most state and local leaders have so far been reluctant to halt reopenings or reimpose restrictions, worried about further damaging economies or aggravating shutdown-fatigued residents. President Donald Trump and administration officials have meanwhile urged states to keep moving forward. (Goldberg, Ollstein and Roubein, 6/12)

Reuters: U.S. CDC Reports 2,063,812 Coronavirus Cases
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Sunday reported 2,063,812 cases of the new coronavirus, an increase of 25,468 cases from its previous count, and said that the number of deaths had risen by 646 to 115,271. The CDC reported its tally of cases of the respiratory illness known as COVID-19, caused by the novel coronavirus, as of 4 p.m. ET on June 13 versus its previous report on Saturday. (6/14)

CIDRAP: CDC Director Thanks Americans, But Warns COVID-19 Pandemic Is Far From Over
Robert Redfield, MD, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) thanked Americans today for being "selfless" 6 months into the nation's continued fight against COVID-19. The comments were made during the agency's first media briefing on the coronavirus in several weeks. At the start of the pandemic, the CDC held weekly briefs on the growing outbreak, but since March has remained mostly silent as the agency continues to work to track the virus' course across the country. (Soucheray, 6/12)

The Associated Press: As NYC Awakens, Navigating A Strange New Normal
The New-York City that was lingers everywhere in the New York City that is, like flashes of movement out of the corner of your eye. The subways run, but not all hours, and definitely not with anywhere near as many riders. Your favorite corner deli has your bagel and coffee — as long as you take it to go and wear a mask to get it. Go enjoy the sunshine in a park, but too many other people better not have the same idea. It begs the question: Who do we become when we can’t be who we were? (Hajela, 6/14)

The Washington Post: Lured By Sunny Weather, D.C. Residents Spill Outside, Masks And Social Distancing At Times Forgotten 
Almost every day since the weather began to warm, Tony Ponte had driven his taxi past the volleyball courts near the Lincoln Memorial, hoping to see the players he befriended across years of watching games. No dice, for several long and boring weeks, until Sunday morning — when Ponte, 67, spotted five men in their late 40s and mid 50s shouting, panting and scrambling in the sand. None of the players paid any attention to the sign, tied to one of the metal net posts, that declared “Volleyball Courts Closed” to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus. None of them wore masks. (Natanson, 6/14)

The Associated Press: Some Tribes Reopen Their Casinos Despite State Opposition
Drivers heading down state roads leading to Foxwoods Resort Casino and Mohegan Sun in Connecticut are greeted by flashing warnings: “Avoid Large Crowds” and “Don’t Gamble With COVID.” Despite having authority to shutter thousands of businesses during the coronavirus pandemic, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont has been constrained when dealing with the sovereign tribal nations that own two of the world’s largest casinos. (Haigh, 6/15)

The Washington Post: As Coronavirus Cases Climb, Some Local Officials Put Reopening On Hold
A rise in coronavirus cases is spurring leaders in some cities and states to delay reopening additional businesses and warn that a return to stricter shutdown orders is possible should cases continue to climb. White House guidelines for reopening called for states to reevaluate after each phase and move backward if the virus spreads. Nationwide, few officials have publicly done so, and states with rapidly increasing caseloads and hospitalizations are moving forward with reopening amid political and economic pressure to return to normal. Increased testing in some states has contributed to the uptick. (Weiner, 6/12)

CNN: US Coronavirus: New York Could Roll Back Reopening If Restrictions Violated, Gov. Cuomo Says 
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo warned people on Sunday that high violations of Covid-19 restrictions could cause the state to roll back its reopening. Once the US epicenter of the pandemic, New York state has made a major turnaround as much of it edges towards fully reopening, with just 23 deaths announced Sunday. At a news conference, Cuomo praised the "achievement by New Yorkers" but said the numbers could change in a week. "It is our behavior, nothing more nothing less," that determines the future of reopening, he said. (Karimi, Sgueglia and Cullinane, 6/14)

CBS News: Cuomo Says Bars And Restaurants Will Lose Their Liquor License If There Are Crowds 
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said Sunday that he would revoke the liquor licenses of bars and restaurants that have large crowds that are in violation of coronavirus restrictions. There were multiple videos that went viral showing crowded bars and restaurants over the weekend, and Cuomo even tweeted "don't make me come down there" on Saturday in reaction to one video of bar patrons seen in Manhattan's East Village. (Linton, 6/14)

ABC News: Florida Sees 2 Consecutive Days Of 2,000-Plus New COVID-19 Cases As More Beaches Reopen 
Florida reported record levels of new COVID-19 cases this weekend as more beaches reopened in the Sunshine State. On Sunday, the Florida Department of Health reported its second consecutive day of more than 2,000 new daily cases, with 2,016. On Saturday, it reported a daily record of 2,581. The records come as the state continued its phased reopening during the coronavirus pandemic. Most of the state is now in Phase 2 of Gov. Ron DeSantis' reopening plan, which allowed bars, movie theaters and tattoo parlors to reopen on June 5 with restrictions. (Deliso, 6/14)

CBS News: Texas Records Its Highest Number Of COVID-19 Hospitalizations So Far In Outbreak 
The number of people in Texas hospitalized from the coronavirus hit a record high of 2,287 on Sunday, an increase from the previous record of 2,242 cases on Saturday. The state has continued to move forward with its reopening plan, with restaurants being allowed to increase capacity to 75% and almost all businesses allowed to operate with 50% capacity on Friday. (Linton, 6/14)

Los Angeles Times: L.A. County Reports 1,003 More Coronavirus Cases, 17 Deaths
Los Angeles County public health officials Sunday reported 1,003 new cases of the coronavirus and 17 related deaths. The county now has recorded more than 73,000 cases of the virus, and more than 2,900 people have died. The number of new cases reported by the county each day has continued to rise, topping 1,000 each day last week except for Monday, when case counts are usually lower due to decreased weekend testing. (Wigglesworth, 6/14)

Los Angeles Times: Vernon Has More Coronavirus Cases Than Residents
Inside the home of the famed Dodger Dog, Pedro Albarran watched with alarm as his colleagues stood at the meatpacking line shoulder-to-shoulder, unmasked, amid the coronavirus pandemic. People started coughing. Then, one by one, they disappeared from their places in the line. Sure enough, the virus was circulating at the Farmer John plant in the city of Vernon, sickening at least 165 workers as of June 2, according to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. (Reyes-Velarde and Rector, 6/14)

San Francisco Chronicle: Bay Area Hospital Reports A Major Coronavirus Outbreak 
More than three dozen workers connected with a single unit at St. Rose Hospital in Hayward tested positive for the coronavirus in late May, a spokesman disclosed Friday. Of the hospital’s 780 employees, 37 tested positive and a majority (26) were workers on the same medical/surgical/telemetry unit. Two additional workers who had the virus interacted regularly with that part of the hospital and nine had occasional contact. (Moench, 6/13)

Dallas Morning News: Dallas County Reports Record Number Of New Coronavirus Cases For Third Day In A Row
Dallas County reported 328 new coronavirus cases Friday, setting a daily record for the third consecutive day. The county also reported three more deaths from the virus: three men, all in their 60s, from Garland, Irving and Richardson. There have been 13,585 cases of COVID-19 and 280 deaths in Dallas County, which does not report a number of recoveries. (Jones, 6/12)

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Coastal Georgia Experiencing Rise In Coronavirus Cases
Chatham County, home to Savannah, Tybee Island and many other popular coastal Georgia attractions, has seen a jump in the number of coronavirus cases reported. A 700-case jump came between April 29 and the present, a time during which coastal beaches were flooded with Memorial Day revelers and protests over the death of George Floyd while in Minneapolis police custody. (Darnell, 6/12)

NBC News: When Coronavirus Closed Schools, Some Detroit Students Went Missing From Class. These Educators Had To Find Them.
Principal Jacqueline Dungey was searching for one of her kindergartners. She’d called every number she had for his family. She’d sent urgent notes to his parents. She’d reached out to a social worker who’d worked with his family in the past. But more than a month after the coronavirus threat forced the New Paradigm Loving Academy in Detroit to move its classes online, the little boy, Legend, hadn’t been in touch with his teachers. His family had not shown up for the meals the school distributes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. No one seemed to know where he was. (Einhorn, 6/14)

The Washington Post: William & Mary To Bring Students Back For Fall Term Amid Pandemic
The College of William & Mary, second-oldest in the country, plans to bring students back to its Williamsburg, Va., campus in August despite the disruptions of the coronavirus pandemic — an announcement that signals an acceleration of the movement to reopen campuses. Katherine A. Rowe, the public university’s president, said Friday the fall term will start for the law school on Aug. 17 and for undergraduates and other students on Aug. 19. There will be no fall break, and some classes will be held on Saturday, in an effort to squeeze as much in-person instruction as possible into the semester by the time it ends before Thanksgiving. (Anderson, 6/12)

CBS News: Colleges And Universities Prepare For Fall Classes In The Middle Of The Coronavirus Pandemic 
This fall, college will start with a test. Can America's universities reopen during the greatest pandemic in a hundred years? Some universities are remaining online, others are still unsure, but a growing number are preparing for perhaps the largest coordinated return institutions have made since the virus hit. (Dickerson, 6/14)

The Wall Street Journal: What It Will Take To Make The Indoors Feel Safe Again
Cupcake fans walking into New York City locations of the iconic Magnolia Bakery will soon encounter something a little less Sarah Jessica Parker in “Sex and the City,” a little more Dustin Hoffman in “Outbreak.” Anyone wishing to enter will be encouraged to pass through a cleansing chamber, analogous to the disinfecting airlocks outside biohazard labs. Patrons’ entire bodies will be bathed in ultraviolet light for 20 seconds. Based on years of research, scientists say they are confident this particular type of UV light is lethal for viruses and bacteria, but safe for humans. (Mims, 6/12)

The Wall Street Journal: Hotels Are Reopening. Will Guests Have Any Reservations?
On a sun-soaked afternoon with the temperature approaching 100 degrees, guests of the Gaylord Texan got their first look at what it means to visit a resort in the age of Covid-19. Cleaning attendants were outfitted in gloves and masks and more than 200 signs stationed throughout the 125-acre complex advised guests to remain 6 feet apart. In the fitness center, plaques on every other treadmill apologized for being off limits “to support social distancing.” Employees prepared the Gaylord’s 1,815 hotel rooms according to a 28-page playbook based on safety guidelines developed by Marriott International Inc. Every room required the attention of three employees, blasts from hospital-grade disinfectant sprayers and roughly 45 minutes of work. (Karmin and Russolillo, 6/13)

The Washington Post: For Gym Goers, Pumping Iron Will Come With A Pump Of Sanitizer
For Justin Case, owner of Underground Athlete in Fairfax City, Friday was a test run. He headed up workout classes of no more than six and planned to do a deep clean over the weekend before reopening again Monday. Like many gym operators grappling with how to operate safely during the coronavirus pandemic, Case bought an air filtration system to ease his members’ fears of virus droplets floating in the air. He also is requiring trainers to wear masks, and he installed social distancing reminders on the floor. (Rosenzweig-Ziff, 6/12)

The Washington Post: Contact Tracing Is ‘Best’ Tool We Have Until There’s A Vaccine, Health Experts Say
It has quelled outbreaks of Ebola, allowed smallpox to be corralled before being vanquished by a vaccine, and helped turn HIV into a survivable illness. And whenever a new infectious disease emerges, contact tracing is public health’s most powerful weapon for tracking transmission and figuring out how best to protect the population. But now, as coronavirus cases are surging in hot spots across the country, the proven strategy’s effectiveness is in doubt: Contact tracing failed to stanch the first wave of coronavirus infections, and today’s far more extensive undertaking will require 100,000 or more trained tracers to delve into strangers’ personal lives and persuade even some without symptoms to stay home. (Sellers and Guarino, 6/14)

CBS News: Ohio State Requiring Returning Players To Sign COVID-19 Waivers 
Ohio State football has started voluntary workouts, but before any Buckeyes started those team-sanctioned activities, they had to sign an acknowledgement of risk waiver due to COVID-19.  The Columbus Dispatch obtained the waiver and reported Sunday that players were asked to sign a "Buckeye Pledge." That pledge commits players to following the school's health guidelines -- including participation in contact tracing efforts and reporting of exposure -- and acknowledges the risk of contracting COVID-19 even while following those protocols. (Patterson, 6/15)

WBUR: As California Trains 20,000 Contact Tracers, Librarians And Tax Assessors Step Up 
After more than two months at home, Lisa Fagundes really misses her work managing the science fiction book collection of the San Francisco Public Library. She feels like she's in withdrawal, longing to see new books, touch them, smell them. "It's like a disease," she says, laughing. But recently, she's been learning how to combat a different disease: COVID-19. While libraries are closed, Fagundes is one of dozens of librarians in San Francisco training to become contact tracers, workers who call people who have been exposed to the coronavirus and ask them to self-quarantine so they don't spread it further. (Dembosky, 6/14)

The Wall Street Journal: Coronavirus Privacy Bills Hit Roadblocks In Congress
As authorities and companies explore surveillance tools to fight the coronavirus and reopen the U.S. economy, many federal lawmakers agree that privacy protections are key. But proposals for safeguards unveiled in recent weeks have crashed into two familiar roadblocks in the U.S. Senate. Many Republicans want federal law to override state-level rules for privacy, while Democrats have argued stronger state statutes should hold sway and want individuals to be able to sue companies for privacy violations. (Uberti, 6/15)

And in news on testing —

The Associated Press: Accuracy Still Unknown For Many Coronavirus Tests Rushed Out
How accurate are the coronavirus tests used in the U.S.? Months into the outbreak, no one really knows how well many of the screening tests work, and experts at top medical centers say it is time to do the studies to find out. When the new virus began spreading, the Food and Drug Administration used its emergency powers to OK scores of quickly devised tests, based mainly on a small number of lab studies showing they could successfully detect the virus. (Perrone, 6/14)

NPR: PCR Tests For The Coronavirus Can Be Compromised By Lab Errors
During the coronavirus pandemic, many scientists who usually have nothing to do with viruses or infectious disease are turning their attention to COVID-19. For example, one wildlife biologist is raising questions about the accuracy of tests that detect the coronavirus. In normal times, Andrew Cohen focuses his attention on issues of ecology and conservation, as director of the Center for Research on Aquatic Bioinvasions. (Harris, 6/15)

San Francisco Chronicle: Don’t Want A Long Swab Up Your Nose? Bay Area Coronavirus Test Sites Are Trying Alternatives 
Cooper, who tested negative, is one of millions of people who have gotten tested for the coronavirus with a long, uncomfortable nasopharyngeal swab, which has been the standard way to test for respiratory illnesses. It collects specimens from the nasopharynx, which is where the nasal cavity and throat meet. Many people have also been tested with a long throat swab, known as an oropharyngeal swab. But in recent weeks, many coronavirus testing sites have started using shorter, less invasive swabs that don’t go nearly as far into the nose. One type of swab, known as a mid-turbinate swab, penetrates about an inch to an inch-and-a half into the nostril until it hits resistance at the nasal wall. Another type goes into the front inside part of the nostril, called the anterior nares, about as far as someone would stick their pinky finger in to pick their nose. (Ho, 6/15)

The Washington Post: Florida Fired Its Coronavirus Data Scientist. Now She’s Publishing The Statistics On Her Own.
Tension built for days between Florida Department of Health supervisors and the department’s geographic information systems manager before officials showed her the door, she says, permanently pulling her off the coronavirus dashboard that she operated for weeks. Managers had wanted Rebekah Jones to make certain changes to the public-facing portal, she says. Jones had objected to — and sometimes refused to comply with — what she saw as unethical requests. She says the department offered to let her resign. Jones declined. (Iati, 6/13)

NPR: Fired Florida Data Scientist Launches A Coronavirus Dashboard Of Her Own
Jones says she was originally tasked with building essentially the same type of dashboard for the health department's website in her role as a geographic information system manager — until it became clear what the results would show. "When I went to show them what the report card would say for each county, among other things, they asked me to delete the report card because it showed that no counties, pretty much, were ready for reopening," she says. "And they didn't want to draw attention to that." (Wamsley, 6/14)

CNN: Former Florida Data Official Rebekah Jones Launches A Covid-19 Dashboard After Removal 
Jones parallels her data alongside DOH's coronavirus numbers, which are much lower, according to the website. "DOH publishes total cases, not positive people," the website says. "Additionally, cases are not currently created for those who receive positive antibody test results, and so DOH excludes them from that total. We show the total number of people who have definitive lab results showing they have or have had COVID-19 regardless of the type of test." (Alonso, 6/15)

San Francisco Chronicle: The Doctor Is In, But Coronavirus Changes The Look And Feel Of The Office Visit
Doctors’ offices are slowly reopening as California loosens restrictions put in place to halt the spread of the coronavirus, but the patient experience may never be the same even after the virus is under control. Although health care was deemed essential and most medical practices remained open, California doctors had to cancel or delay all elective surgeries and non-urgent health care starting in mid-March when Gov. Gavin Newsom put the stay-at-home order in place. (Fimrite, 6/14)

The Washington Post: Homelessness Crisis Is Expected In D.C. When Coronavirus Emergency Ends And Evictions Begin
Just about the time the District is coming out of the coronavirus crisis, it will face a new one over homelessness, housing experts warn. Thousands of tenants who recently lost their jobs because of the pandemic shutdown can no longer afford to pay their rent or will soon lack the money to do so. They’re able to stay in their homes for now because of an emergency moratorium on evictions. But the ban ends 60 days after Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) lifts the public health emergency, and evictions are likely to surge, according to officials and advocates for tenants. (McCartney, 6/15)

Houston Chronicle: Dramatic Shift In Economy Underway As Houstonians Adapt To New Normal 
The coronavirus pandemic forced a swift collapse of the economy, but the tentative recovery beginning to take shape is likely to stretch for months, if not years, as businesses, workers and consumers try to adapt to dramatic changes in economic and social life. In a matter of months, more than 30 million Americans lost jobs, including more than 2 million in Texas and 500,000 in Houston. (Douglas, 6/12)

Dallas Morning News: Delays In Test Results Frustrate Local Efforts To Stem Spread Of COVID-19 In Texas
Fast testing is critical to stem the spread of COVID-19, public health experts say. The virus is so contagious that even a few days’ delay in isolating sick people can increase disease spread. For that reason, Gov. Greg Abbott ordered widespread testing at all nursing homes last month and sent mobile test teams to places with few of their own medical resources. (Morris, 6/14)

Billings Gazette: Billings Hospitals Report Drop In Vaccination Rates Amid Pandemic 
Health care providers are seeing a drop in routine vaccinations across Montana amid the coronavirus pandemic and are encouraging parents to keep up on their children’s immunizations. Both adults and children are advised to stay on top of routine checkups and immunizations, but because of COVID-19 vaccination rates have been decreasing at clinics across the county, according to the Unified Health Command made up of Billings Clinic, St. Vincent Healthcare, RiverStone Health and Yellowstone County Disaster and Emergency Services. (Hall, 6/14)

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Georgia Legislators Set To Return To A Much-Different Session
The Georgia General Assembly returns to the Capitol on Monday to finish possibly the oddest legislative session on record. Lawmakers started the year with hopes of passing hundreds of bills, giving pay raises to 200,000 teachers and state employees, and cutting the income tax. Just the kind of political goodies welcome to any incumbent seeking re-election in November. (Salzer, 6/12)

Houston Chronicle: Humana To Open 10 Medical Centers For Seniors In Southeast Texas 
Humana, one of the largest insurers in Houston, will open 10 community centers to provide seniors with clinical care and supportive services over the next year in Southeast Texas. The Partners in Primary Care centers are part of a $600 million funding venture from WCAS, a private equity firm focusing on health care and technology.  WCAS, in conjunction with Humana, has already opened five centers in the Greater Houston region, in Baytown, East End, Gulfgate, Jacinto City and Pasadena. (Wu, 6/12)

The New York Times: She Survived The Coronavirus. Then She Got A $400,000 Medical Bill.
Janet Mendez started receiving bills soon after returning in April to her mother’s home from Mount Sinai Morningside hospital, where she nearly died of Covid-19. First, there was one for $31,165. Unable to work and finding it difficult to walk, Ms. Mendez decided to put the bill out of her mind and focus on her recovery. The next one was impossible to ignore: an invoice for $401,885.57, although it noted that the hospital would reduce the bill by $326,851.63 as a “financial assistance benefit.” But that still left a tab of more than $75,000. “Oh my God, how am I going to pay all this money?” Ms. Mendez, 33, recalled thinking. The answer came to her in about a second: “I’m not going to be able to pay all this.” (Goldstein, 6/14)

ProPublica: How America’s Hospitals Survived The First Wave Of The Coronavirus
The prediction from New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo was grim. In late March, as the number of COVID-19 cases was growing exponentially in the state, Cuomo said New York hospitals might need twice as many beds as they normally have. Otherwise there could be no space to treat patients seriously ill with the new coronavirus. “We have 53,000 hospital beds available,” Cuomo, a Democrat, said at a briefing on March 22. “Right now, the curve suggests we could need 110,000 hospital beds, and that is an obvious problem and that’s what we’re dealing with.” (Ornstein, 6/15)

Modern Healthcare: Insurers Create Temporary Population-Based Payment Models
Some health insurers have offered physicians and hospitals in their networks a temporary source of population-based payments to ensure they keep their doors open during the COVID-19 crisis. But some groups are calling for more permanent measures. Inland Empire Health Plan, based in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., said it would fill gaps in hospitals’ revenue and bolster specialists’ payments for three months. Similarly, Buffalo, N.Y.-based Independent Health stepped up value-based payments by giving primary-care practices an emergency global payment to help them maintain a monthly cash flow resembling pre-pandemic levels. (Livingston, 6/13)

Modern Healthcare: COVID-19 May End Up Boosting Value-Based Payment
Almost overnight, Dr. Fuad Sheriff’s small primary-care practice in Amherst, N.Y., was thrust into unknown territory. Like hospitals and other medical practices across the country, his practice saw patient visits screech to a halt as the COVID-19 crisis forced restrictions on nonurgent services. So too, did a big chunk of the income that sustains Sheriff’s practice, Amherst Medical Associates. (Livingston, 6/13)

Politico: White House Pressure For A Vaccine Raises Risk The U.S. Will Approve One That Doesn’t Work
President Donald Trump has promised that there will be a coronavirus vaccine before the year is out. But public health experts are growing increasingly worried that the White House will pressure regulators to approve the first vaccine candidate to show promise — without proof that it provides effective, reliable protection against the virus. Drugmakers and health agencies have already begun rewriting the rules of vaccine research, launching candidates into clinical trials at record speed in search of a pandemic-ending shot. Data on the vaccines’ safety is already trickling in. But no candidate is yet ready for the final step of the development process: a months-long trial in tens of thousands of volunteers to prove once and for all whether the shot works. (Owermohle, 6/15)

The New York Times: Guaranteed Ingredient In Any Coronavirus Vaccine? Thousands Of Volunteers 
Not long after researchers completed their work with mice, guinea pigs, ferrets and monkeys, Human Subject 8, an art director for a software company in Missouri, received an injection. Four days later, her sister, a schoolteacher, became Subject 14. Together, the sisters make up about 5 percent of the first ever clinical trial of a DNA vaccine for the novel coronavirus. How they respond to it will help determine the future of the vaccine. If it proves safe in this trial and effective in future trials, it could become not only one of the first coronavirus vaccines, but also the first DNA vaccine ever approved for commercial use against a human disease. (Murphy, 6/13)

Reuters: Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine Appears To Clear Safety Hurdle In Mouse Study
A series of studies in mice of Moderna Inc’s COVID-19 lent some assurance that it may not increase the risk of more severe disease, and that one dose may provide protection against the novel coronavirus, according to preliminary data released on Friday. Prior studies on a vaccine for SARS - a close cousin to the new virus that causes COVID-19 - suggests vaccines against this type of virus might have the unintended effect of causing more severe disease when the vaccinated person is later exposed to the pathogen, especially in individuals who do not produce an adequately strong immune response. (Steenhuysen, 6/12)

Reuters: AstraZeneca Agrees To Supply Europe With 400 Million Doses Of COVID-19 Vaccine
AstraZeneca Plc has signed a contract with European governments to supply the region with its potential vaccine against the coronavirus, the British drugmaker’s latest deal to pledge its drug to help combat the pandemic. The contract is for up to 400 million doses of the vaccine, developed by the University of Oxford, the company said on Saturday, adding that it was looking to expand manufacturing of the vaccine, which it said it would provide for no profit during the pandemic. The vaccine is still in clinical trials. If the trial results convince regulators the vaccine is safe and effective, deliveries would be expected to start by the end of 2020. (6/13)

Stat: What’s At Stake For Pharma In Its Space Race For A Covid-19 Vaccine
The Trump administration’s move to pick five companies as finalists in the quest to develop a vaccine for the novel coronavirus has set off a pharmaceutical Space Race in the industry. And for each of the five firms involved, there’s a lot at stake: reputation, a boon to national pride, maybe even a rebuke to voluble skeptics. (Garde, 6/15)

Stat: Sinovac Says Its Covid-19 Vaccine Generated Immune Responses 
Sinovac Biotech announced preliminary study results on Saturday showing its experimental Covid-19 vaccine generated immune responses in patients and was safe — early data that suggest it might protect people against infections with the novel coronavirus. The Beijing-based drug maker’s vaccine, called CoronaVac, induced neutralizing antibodies in “above 90%” of people who were tested 14 days after receiving two injections, two weeks apart. There were no severe side effects reported, the company said in a statement. (Feuerstein, 6/14)

The Wall Street Journal: Over 1,300 Chinese Medical Suppliers To U.S.—Including Mask Providers—Use Bogus Registration Data
More than 1,300 Chinese medical-device companies that registered to sell protective gear and other equipment in the U.S. during the coronavirus pandemic listed as their American representative a purported Delaware entity that uses a false address and nonworking phone number, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. All foreign manufacturers of medical devices are required to have a representative with a real address in the U.S. and somebody available during business hours. Such U.S. agents serve as a point of contact between the Food and Drug Administration and these overseas companies, to coordinate inspections, recalls or other urgent needs. (Hufford, Maremont and Lin, 6/12)

In other news on medical devices —

The Wall Street Journal: Medical-Supply Firm Sues Bank Over Broken Coronavirus Deal
A politically connected medical supply company alleged that the improper actions of its bank caused it to lose a $600 million order for coronavirus supplies, ruined its business, triggered death threats to its founders and ruined their reputation. In a suit filed Friday in a Virginia federal court, Blue Flame Medical LLC contends that as it was waiting for a down payment from the state of California, an official at Chain Bridge Bank told California’s treasurer that the company might be “fraudulent.” (Mullins, 6/12)

Kaiser Health News: White House Left States On Their Own To Buy Ventilators. Inside Their Mad Scramble.
Fearful that New Orleans would run out of ventilators by early April as the number of COVID-19 patients rose by the hundreds, even thousands, per day, Louisiana officials set out to get every device they could find. At the time, that meant securing an additional 14,000. Within days of President Donald Trump’s urging states to get their own supplies because it would “be faster if they can get them directly,” Louisiana sought only a fraction of them from the federal government and turned to private companies for the rest, having little confidence one supplier would give the state all it needed. (Pradhan, 6/15)

The New York Times: The Pandemic Claims New Victims: Prestigious Medical Journals
One study promised that popular blood-pressure drugs were safe for people infected with the coronavirus. Another paper warned that anti-malaria drugs endorsed by President Trump actually were dangerous to these patients. The studies, published in the New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet, were retracted shortly after publication, following an outcry from researchers who saw obvious flaws. (Caryn Rabin, 6/14)

The Wall Street Journal: Before Catching Coronavirus, Some People’s Immune Systems Are Already Primed To Fight It
Researchers piecing together how the body’s immune system responds to the virus that causes Covid-19 are exploring a tantalizing effect: Some people who have never encountered the pathogen before appear to be able to mobilize parts of their immune system to ward it off. That response suggests that infection with other coronaviruses, such as those responsible for severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, and even the common cold, may aid the body’s fight against the new invader. Harnessing the biological processes at play could aid the search for a new vaccine, researchers say. (Douglas, 6/12)

NBC News: What ICU Doctors Have Learned About COVID-19 — And How They're Prepared For A 2nd Wave
The World Health Organization had just declared COVID-19 a pandemic when intensive care units in the United States started to see an influx of severely ill patients. It was mid-March, and though coronavirus cases had been mounting in countries including China, South Korea and Italy, in the U.S. there was still a dearth of knowledge about how the virus spread, how it affected patients, and what type of threat it posed to the doctors treating them. Within three months, critical care physicians across the country received a crash course on a disease that didn't exist in the U.S. before this year, and are more prepared in the event of a second wave of the illness. Now, in June, doctors have a better sense of which medicines and interventions to use or avoid, how the virus affects the body, and how to face their own COVID-19 fears. (Edwards, 6/13)

The New York Times: The Scientist, The Air And The Virus
When Linsey Marr’s son started attending day care 12 years ago, she noticed that he kept getting sick with the sniffles and other minor illnesses. But unlike most parents, Dr. Marr, an aerosol scientist at Virginia Tech, tried to figure out why. “When I’d pick him up, I’d find out that more than half the kids in the room were sick too,” said Dr. Marr. “I was really curious, and wondered, if it was spreading this fast, maybe it was going through the air.” (Parker-Pope, 6/12)

Stat: To Grasp Who's Dying Of Covid-19, Look To Social Factors Like Race 
While early studies of who was dying of Covid-19 identified risks such as obesity and having diabetes, there is a growing realization that those initial conclusions might have been misleading, obscuring a more significant explanation. As researchers pull back their lens from individuals to population-level risk factors, they’re finding that, in the U.S., race may be as important as age in gauging a person’s likelihood of dying from the disease. (Begley, 6/15)

Reuters: Popular Blood Pressure Medicines Do Not Put Patients At Greater COVID-19 Risk, New Study Finds
New research offers reassuring evidence to hundreds of millions of people with high blood pressure that popular anti-hypertension drugs do not put them at greater risk from COVID-19 as some experts had feared. (Nelson and Respaut, 6/12)

Reuters: WHO Recommends Breastfeeding, Says No Live Coronavirus Found In Mothers' Milk
Breastfeeding mothers do not seem to be passing on the new coronavirus to their infants, and based on current evidence the benefits outweigh any potential risks of transmission, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday. WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that it had carefully investigated the risks of women transmitting COVID-19 to their babies during breastfeeding. (6/12)

Reuters: Virus Has Multiple Pathways Into Cells, Moderna Vaccine Clears Safety Hurdle In Mouse Study
Two teams of European researchers, working independently, have identified a new entryway through which the coronavirus gets into cells and infects them, suggesting another approach to stopping it. One key route - via a protein on cell surfaces called ACE2 - is well known. The newly identified gateway is a cell-surface protein called neuropilin-1, or NRP1. A "spike" on the surface of the coronavirus binds to NRP1, allowing the virus to break into the cell, similar to how a virus spike attaches itself to ACE2. (Lapid, 6/12)

Los Angeles Times: Passengers Flew Into LAX With COVID-19 In March; Public Wasn't Warned
When American Airlines flight 341 to Los Angeles lifted off the tarmac at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport on a cloudy Thursday in mid-March, much of the country was already on coronavirus lockdown. The flight was far from full, but the 49 passengers and eight crew shared restrooms, cabin air and a narrow aisle for the six-hour trip. Though no one knew it then, a man in first class, a retired Manhattan surgeon, was infected with the virus. The day after the flight, he was rushed by ambulance to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center with a high fever and phlegmy cough. (Ryan and Feldman, 6/14)

The Wall Street Journal: Some Lawmakers Argue Unrest Heightens Need For Aid To States And Cities
Some Democratic and Republican lawmakers pushing to secure more state and local aid in the next stimulus package said the unrest sparked by the killing of George Floyd has magnified the need to fill holes in local public-safety budgets. “The case is being built for our bill by the events that we’re currently witnessing,” said Sen. Bill Cassidy (R., La.), who has sponsored legislation that would provide $500 billion in emergency funding to state and local governments to cover revenues lost by the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting partial economic shutdown. (Peterson and Andrews, 6/13)

The Wall Street Journal: Kudlow Urges Replacing Unemployment-Benefit Boost With Return-To-Work ‘Bonus’
A senior economic adviser to President Trump said Sunday the U.S. needs to stop providing a $600-a-week boost in unemployment benefits instituted in response to the coronavirus pandemic and replace it with a smaller bonus for workers who return to their jobs. Larry Kudlow, director of the White House National Economic Council, said the additional benefits might be dissuading some Americans from going back to work as businesses reopen across the country. (Tracy, 6/14)

Politico: Kudlow Says $600 Additional Unemployment Checks Will End In July
"That might have worked for the first couple of months. It'll end in late July," he added, saying the extra benefit was necessary during the height of the coronavirus lockdowns. Kudlow said that "almost all businesses" understand the $600 additional benefit is "a disincentive." He said the Trump administration is instead "looking at a reform measure" that will provide an incentive for returning to work, but it will not be as substantial. (Tamborrino, 6/14)

The Wall Street Journal: Differences Between New Coronavirus And SARS Show Why Quick Economic Recovery Is Unlikely
To see what economic recovery from Covid-19 could look like, some people are examining the closest modern equivalent: Hong Kong in 2003. That is when the territory’s economy was ravaged by severe acute respiratory syndrome—another epidemic caused by a coronavirus—and then staged a remarkable comeback in less than a year. The outbreak started early in the year; by May, Hong Kong’s economy was reopening—like today. So speedy was the recovery that eight months after patients first hit hospitals, Hong Kong was hosting a $100 million concert series featuring the Rolling Stones, Prince and Neil Young. (Dvorak, 6/12)

The New York Times: Don’t Cheer Too Soon. Keep An Eye On The Core Jobless Rate.
The recent jobs report for May seemed to bring good news: more jobs and lower unemployment. But the coronavirus pandemic has broken most economic charts and models, and all the numbers we regularly watch need a closer look. The decline in unemployment was actually driven by a drop in temporary layoffs. Strip those out, and what remains — let’s call it the core unemployment rate — rose in May. Pause the celebrations. In May, core unemployment stood at 5.0 percent, up from 4.6 percent in April and up from a modern low of 3.7 percent in December 2019. At 5 percent, core unemployment in May was at its highest level since February 2017. (Kolko, 6/15)

NBC News: Some Landlords Are Using Harassment, Threats To Force Out Tenants During COVID-19 Crisis
Sada Jones anxiously paces inside her apartment every time she catches a glimpse of her building’s maintenance workers through a damaged glass patio door half boarded up with scrap wood that she says her landlord refuses to repair. Jones, 23, a hotel cook, has been unable to make rent payments on her New Orleans-area apartment since being furloughed on March 19 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, she alleges, her landlord began using aggressive tactics to force her out, including cutting off her utilities and sending maintenance workers to demand she leave. (Ali, 6/14)

The Washington Post: Ripple Effects Of Downturn Show Pandemic’s Early Economic Toll Was Just The Beginning
John Dillivan would normally be breaking in new employees at this time of year, preparing for western Michigan’s summer tourist rush. Instead, for the first time in the 31 years he and his wife, Sue, have owned Pekadill’s, a sandwich shop in Whitehall, Mich., he has no new waitresses or counter help to train. At the neat white clapboard restaurant two blocks from White Lake, business is down about 20 percent. If the situation doesn’t improve, Dillivan worries he may be forced to abandon year-round operations and put Pekadill’s into hibernation this winter. (Lynch, 6/14)

The New York Times: Slowing The Coronavirus Is Speeding The Spread Of Other Diseases
As poor countries around the world struggle to beat back the coronavirus, they are unintentionally contributing to fresh explosions of illness and death from other diseases — ones that are readily prevented by vaccines. This spring, after the World Health Organization and UNICEF warned that the pandemic could spread swiftly when children gathered for shots, many countries suspended their inoculation programs. Even in countries that tried to keep them going, cargo flights with vaccine supplies were halted by the pandemic and health workers diverted to fight it. (Hoffman and Maclean, 6/14)

The New York Times: How To Think About Pregnancy Risks
Advice about pregnancy has become so prevalent that it has become almost an industry unto itself. Personal behavior can be important, but relative to a lot of the expectations heaped on pregnant women, it can also easily be overstated. There is no solid evidence, for example, that playing music or reading to babies before they are born makes a difference. There are foods to avoid, but there is no magic diet that will lead to positive effects. (Frakt, 6/15)

Stat: A Rural Getaway Fears It May Be Next To Fall In Covid-19 Pandemic
Tucked away on the northern shore of Lake Michigan, the residents of Benzie County spent the final days of winter and the early weeks of spring confident they were safe, but agitated about what was coming. Like other lightly populated U.S. counties, this hard-to-reach vacation destination found itself largely isolated from the Covid-19 pandemic that tore through metropolises and then smaller cities and towns earlier this year. Now, as Michigan reopens, residents here fear they could find themselves on the frontlines. (Schneider, 6/15)

Houston Chronicle: COVID-19’s Coming Mental Health Toll Is A ‘Disease Of Despair’ 
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)

NBC News: Therapists Are Under Strain In COVID-19 Era, Counseling Clients On Trauma They're Also Experiencing Themselves
Yuki Yamazaki makes sure her space is clean before a session, devoid of too many personal touches, as she begins virtual calls with her clients in her small one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn, New York. To accommodate the need for Yamazaki to create a private and confidential space for her clients in a space-limited apartment, Yamazaki's fiancé relocates to the bathroom to work, wearing noise-canceling headphones and using the toilet as a chair and a hamper as a desk. Yamazaki, a psychotherapist and student, is one of thousands of mental health professionals adjusting to a new normal while demand for their services has increased during the coronavirus pandemic. (Madani, 6/14)

Kaiser Health News: At A Time Of Great Need, Public Health Lacks ‘Lobbying Muscle’
If there were ever a time for more public health funding, health experts say, it’s now. Yet California Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state’s Democratic-controlled legislature are expected to reject a plea from local public health officials for an additional $150 million a year to battle the COVID-19 pandemic and protect against future public health threats. (Hart, 6/15)

The Associated Press: Pandemic Leads To A Bicycle Boom, And Shortage, Around World
Fitness junkies locked out of gyms, commuters fearful of public transit, and families going stir crazy inside their homes during the coronavirus pandemic have created a boom in bicycle sales unseen in decades. In the United States, bicycle aisles at mass merchandisers like Walmart and Target have been swept clean, and independent shops are doing a brisk business and are selling out of affordable “family” bikes. (Sharp and Chan, 6/14)

CNN: Kids Are More Sedentary During The Pandemic, Putting Them At Risk For Obesity 
Canceled soccer practices. Shuttered dance rehearsals. With worldwide lockdowns to prevent the spread of coronavirus, the normal rites and rituals of childhood and adolescence froze. Children around the world were stuck at home, slipping into more video game playing, more television watching and more just sitting around. It's a natural progression, especially when there's not much to do during a lockdown. (Prior, 6/12)

Kaiser Health News: A Teen’s Death From COVID
It started as a normal day. Dawn Guest, 54, got up and headed out to her job as a nurse around 5 a.m. She heard her 16-year-old son, Andre, stirring in his room, but he had always been an earlier riser, even when his school was shut for COVID-19. Later that day she would get a call from her husband, telling her there was something wrong with their son. That call would be the beginning of a 12-day journey that would end in tragedy. (Lofton, 6/15)

ABC News: Going Up: How Do You Stay Safe From COVID-19 In An Elevator? 
As offices start to reopen and people across the world return to working in busy office buildings, an important question is being asked: should I be taking that elevator? For many people working in high-rise buildings, the elevator is a necessity, but the good news is that riding the elevator does not seem to be a major way the novel coronavirus is transmitted. (Lee, 6/15)

Politico: Unions Tap Into Burst Of Worker Angst Over Coronavirus
Amazon warehouse workers in New York walked off the job to demand protection against Covid-19. A county judge in Illinois ordered a McDonald’s franchise to work out an agreement with its employees to supply more masks and hand sanitizer. And grocery store workers at Publix and Trader Joe's in Florida have haggled for hazard pay as they work public-facing jobs. Across corners of the labor market traditionally without unions, the coronavirus is spurring new interest in organizing for safer workplaces and better pay as the nation embarks on a long economic recovery. (Kapos, 6/15)

ProPublica: Emails Reveal Chaos As Meatpacking Companies Fought Health Agencies Over COVID-19 Outbreaks In Their Plants
For weeks, Rachel Willard, the county health director in Wilkesboro, North Carolina, had watched with alarm as COVID-19 cases rolled in from the Tyson Foods chicken plant in the center of town. Then Tyson hired a private company to take over testing, and the information suddenly slowed to a trickle. Blinded to the burgeoning health crisis, Willard and her small staff grew increasingly agitated. The outbreak had already spread across 100 miles of the North Carolina piedmont, and two workers had died. But nearly a week after Tyson’s testing ended in May, the county health agency had received less than 20% of the results. (Grabell, Perlman and Yeung, 6/12)

The Wall Street Journal: Auto Makers’ Reopening Complicated By Worker Absences Amid Covid Cases
Auto makers are grappling with absent U.S. factory workers and Covid-19 cases at their reopened plants, complicating the companies’ efforts to recoup production lost to the pandemic. The impact on output has been minimal as many plants aren’t yet operating at full capacity, the companies said. Still, the challenges have required auto makers to adjust shifts and add temporary workers. Such moves highlight the complexities businesses face upon reopening as they look to insulate their workplaces from potential outbreaks while restoring moneymaking operations after weeks of lockdown. (Foldy and Colias, 6/13)

The New York Times: What It Looks Like Inside An Amazon Warehouse Now 
After months of being embattled over its response to the coronavirus, Amazon is working to convince the public that its workplaces — specifically, the warehouses where it stores everything from toys to hand sanitizer — are safe during the pandemic. The giant internet retailer has started running television ads that show that its warehouse and delivery employees have masks and other protective gear. It has pushed out segments to local news stations touting its safety improvements. It has asked journalists to visit its warehouses to see for themselves. (Weise, 6/9)

The Washington Post: How The Genetic Code Was Cracked, With Paper And Pencil And No Computers
When scientists discovered DNA and its double-helix form, they had finally identified the molecules that contain every human’s unique genetic code. But determining how those instructions were interpreted by cells was a beast of a challenge. Scientists had to figure out how a double helix of just four building blocks could be translated into proteins, the molecules that are the basis of living tissues — and they had to do so without the help of computer spreadsheets. (Blakemore, 6/13)

ProPublica: 'They Were The Authority And I Didn’t Argue With Authority'
The stranger finally left. Sue Royston, terrified, peeked around her door to make sure the man wasn’t waiting for her just outside with his butcher knife — the knife he’d held moments earlier against her neck. She’d put up a fight, but she had lost. If she screamed, if she chased him, would he return to take her life? Seeing no one, she ran half-dressed from her apartment to see where he had gone. There he was. He was still wearing the waist-length black wig he had used as a disguise. He was walking slowly, nonchalant, down Antoinette Avenue on the north edge of Fairbanks. As if nothing had happened. As if he hadn’t quietly broken into her home in the early hours of the morning, wordlessly cut off her underwear and raped her at knifepoint. (Chang, 6/13)

The Wall Street Journal: 10,000 Steps A Day Is A Myth. The Number To Stay Healthy Is Far Lower.
Don’t be discouraged if you aren’t clocking 10,000 steps a day. That threshold, often billed as the minimum for good health, originated in marketing, not medicine, when a Japanese company launched a pedometer in 1965 named, in English, the “10,000-step meter” with the slogan “Let’s walk 10,000 steps a day.” (McGinty, 6/12)

The Wall Street Journal: Worried About A Difficult Conversation? Here’s Advice From A Hostage Negotiator.
Bracing yourself for a tough talk? There are so many to have right now. Tensions over racial issues, politics and the coronavirus pandemic are provoking arguments within families and between friends: Spouses are arguing about money; siblings are fighting about how to keep parents safe from the virus; some people are confronting relatives about race. Many conversations have the potential to become heated, especially as chronic stress is keeping our fight-or-flight systems activated, making us more likely to react. (Bernstein, 6/14)

Stat: Gardasil, The HPV Vaccine, Approved To Prevent Head-And-Neck Cancer
For the past decade, evidence has suggested that Gardasil, the HPV vaccine, could stem an epidemic of throat cancer. But it has also never received approval from the Food and Drug Administration for that use — and it was unclear if it ever would. On Friday, the agency granted that approval, clearing the latest version of the vaccine, Gardasil 9, to prevent a cancer that affects 13,500 Americans annually. The decision was announced by Gardasil’s maker, Merck. (Herper, 6/12)

Stat: Would-Be Cancer Centers Want To Treat Patients With Right To Try Drugs
In an unusual move, a private equity firm is soliciting investors to help create a chain of cancer centers that would focus on providing experimental medicines that are available under the controversial Right to Try law that went into effect two years ago. Earlier this month, Vivaris Capital began touting United Cancer Centers, which is described as the “first institutional health care system” in the U.S. to offer “integrative cancer care.” A big selling point for patients will be helping patients obtain medicines under the Right to Try law, which largely cuts the Food and Drug Administration out of the process for determining when dying patients can access experimental drugs being studied in clinical trials. (Silverman, 6/15)

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: As Efficacy Of Constellation's Cancer Drug Wanes, Debate Over Data Grows
The response rate to an experimental myelofibrosis drug is falling, Constellation Pharmaceuticals, the drug’s maker, said Friday. But whether that’s good or bad news depends on your point of view. With 30 myelofibrosis patients now treated and evaluable in its mid-stage study, the 24-week spleen response rate to CPI-0610 — when used on top of Incyte’s market-leading drug Jakafi — stands at 63%. The new data were presented Friday at the annual meeting of the European Hematology Association. (Feuerstein, 6/12)

Politico: Why Virtual Care Will Outlast The Pandemic
An explosion of virtual care during the pandemic is raising expectations that Washington will make sure Americans can continue video chatting with their doctors after the health crisis subsides. Telehealth had been inching ahead for quite a few years, but it remained a niche industry amid a thicket of regulatory restrictions designed to combat potential fraud and high costs. That was until the pandemic hit and the Trump administration swiftly — though temporarily — knocked down many of those barriers, with states and private health insurers also expanding coverage of virtual care. (Ravindranath, 6/12)

Modern Healthcare: Bill Would Permanently Boost Medicare Telemedicine Pay For Health Centers
A bipartisan duo of lawmakers on Thursday introduced a bill to make Medicare reimbursement permanent for some telemedicine services. Telemedicine has experienced substantial growth in response to the coronavirus outbreak, helped by a host of regulatory flexibilities from Medicare. Healthcare providers have voiced concern that those flexibilities expire with the public health emergency, and have said they want to see actions like expanded Medicare reimbursement continue after the outbreak subsides. (Cohen, 6/12)

Houston Chronicle: Houston’s Health Care Systems Turn To Telemedicine To Meet Medical Needs 
In the span of two short months, getting to a doctor’s appointment has changed from ducking out of the office at midday and fighting traffic to launching a video app on a computer or smartphone for a consultation. The coronavirus pandemic, as it has with shopping, office work and socializing, is accelerating the adoption of technologies in the health care industry that allow people to conduct business and connect without leaving their homes — or wherever else they happen to be. While telemedicine has been around for years, the necessity of providing medical care over the internet to comply with social distancing measures has eroded resistance to it. (Wu, 6/13)

Modern Healthcare: Online Training Helps Redeployed Nurses Get Up-To-Speed On COVID-19
Launched April 13, Project Florence is designed to help train nurses on skills specifically needed to care for COVID-19 patients. It supplements the training and mentoring from senior nurses and specialists that a nurse would receive if they had no critical-care experience. Project Florence targeted a core challenge: the tendency to use a one-size-fits-all approach when expanding training for large groups, said Diane Adams, chief learning officer at Mount Sinai. (Cohen, 6/13)

The Associated Press: China's New Virus Outbreak Underscores Continued Threat
China’s capital was bracing Monday for a resurgence of the coronavirus after more than 100 new cases were reported in recent days in a city that hadn’t seen a case of local transmission in more than a month. The United States, meanwhile, continued to struggle with an outbreak that appeared ready to stretch on for months or even years, and the governor of hard-hit New York state threatened to reinstate business closings. (Moritsugu, 6/15)

NPR: Beijing In 'Wartime Emergency Mode' Amid Fresh Cluster Of Coronavirus Cases
Authorities say there have been seven new cases in the past three days, all of which are connected to the Xinfadi market, the city's largest wholesale food market. Health officials said Saturday that, of the 517 samples that they took from market workers the day before, 45 tested positive for the virus. Under China's standards for confirming coronavirus cases — which exclude asymptomatic individuals — this cluster of people won't be counted as confirmed unless they begin displaying symptoms and come up positive on a separate nucleic acid test. (Dwyer and Cheng, 6/13)

The Wall Street Journal: Beijing Coronavirus Outbreak Tied To Huge Market Sparks Resurgence Concerns
Chinese health authorities shut parts of Beijing and adopted tight controls after the capital confirmed a record number of new Covid-19 infections, sparking growing concerns about a coronavirus resurgence. Beijing had recorded almost 80 new cases by Sunday, all locally transmitted and linked to Xinfadi, a sprawling meat and vegetable wholesale market in the southwestern district of Fengtai that supplies most of the city’s fruit and vegetables, officials said. (Hua, 6/14)

The Associated Press: Europe's Borders Reopen But Long Road For Tourism To Recover
Borders opened up across Europe on Monday after three months of coronavirus closures that began chaotically in March. But many restrictions persist, it’s unclear how keen Europeans will be to travel this summer and the continent is still closed to Americans, Asians and other international tourists. Border checks for most Europeans were dropped overnight in Germany, France and elsewhere, nearly two weeks after Italy opened its frontiers. (Moulson, 6/15)

The New York Times: Pakistan’s Lockdown Ended A Month Ago. Now Hospital Signs Read ‘Full.’
Pakistanis stricken by the coronavirus are being turned away from hospitals that have simply closed their gates and put up signs reading “full house.” Doctors and nurses are falling ill at alarming rates, and are also coming under physical assault from desperate and angry families. When Pakistan’s government lifted its lockdown on May 9, it warned that the already impoverished country could no longer withstand the shutdown needed to mitigate the pandemic’s spread. But now left unshackled, the virus is meting out devastation in other ways, and panic is rising. (ur-Rehman, Masood and Abi-Habib, 6/15)

The Associated Press: Russia's Low Virus Death Toll Still Raises Questions In West
When Leonid Shlykov’s father, Sergei, died in a Moscow hospital last month after 11 days on a ventilator, the death certificate listed the coronavirus as an underlying condition but not the actual cause of death. “Yes, he was suffering from impaired kidney function and diabetes, but if it hadn’t been for COVID-19, he would’ve been alive,” the son wrote on Facebook. “If we had known the real number of infections and deaths … it would have helped us make the decision to hospitalize (dad) earlier.” (Litvinova and Isachenkov, 6/14)

Reuters: As Quarantine Wanes, Bogota's Medics Brace For A Spike In COVID Cases
A COVID patient lies shirtless on a gurney in a chill corridor of a hospital in Colombia’s capital Bogota, oxygen tubes coiled on his chest. It takes five staff - in scrubs, masks and face shields - to wheel him into the intensive care unit. His intubation takes time. To protect themselves from coronavirus-infected saliva during the complicated procedure, the medics place a large orb-like shield over the man’s head. (Cobb, 6/14)

The Washington Post: Coronavirus Education: Millions Of Girls At Risk Of Leaving School Because Of Pandemic Shutdowns
She was 13 when the Ebola virus struck her country, shuttering schools across Sierra Leone. The closures lasted nine months, but Mari Kalokoh could not return to the classroom for years. “I felt like nobody,” she recalled of her time on the street, begging for food. Now a radio has replaced her teacher in the era of the coronavirus. The previous epidemic in West Africa forced more girls than boys to halt their studies in the ensuing years, from 2014 to 2016, researchers say, dimming economic prospects for a generation of young women. (Paquette, 6/13)

NBC News: Chinese Consulates Deploying 'Mask Diplomacy' In U.S. Communities
As the coronavirus was lashing Louisiana last month, hospital workers in the small town of Monroe lined up before work for a free lunch from a nearby steakhouse — paid for by the Chinese government. When the meals arrived in a big white truck, a local newspaper photographer was on hand to capture the moment as health care workers, still in scrubs, held up signs with big red hearts. The Chinese Consulate in Houston, working with a local World War II museum, had donated meals for everyone at Monroe's St. Francis Medical Center, which had been hit hard by COVID-19. (Lederman, 6/15)

Reuters: Coronavirus Hitting The Americas Hardest Says World Health Organization
The Americas are bearing the brunt of the global coronavirus pandemic at present, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday, with North and South America currently having four of the 10 worst hit countries in the world. The disease was “highly active” in Central and South America, the WHO’s top emergency expert Mike Ryan said, highlighting problems in Brazil and Mexico. (Revill and Nebehay, 6/12)

The New York Times: Coronavirus Created An Obstacle Course For Safe Abortions
When a 19-year-old woman from southern Poland decided to end her pregnancy at 18 weeks, she knew the only way to get an abortion was to rush to a neighboring European country. Abortion is illegal in most circumstances in Poland, and so for years, many women have traveled within Europe to seek the procedure. But it was April, and across the continent, borders were closing fast because of the coronavirus pandemic. (Stevis-Gridneff, Haridasani Gupta and Pronczuk, 6/14)

The New York Times: Brazil President Embraces Unproven ‘Cure’ As Pandemic Surges
The coronavirus was taking root in Latin America when President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil startled the medical community with a claim: A miracle drug was on hand. “God is Brazilian, the cure is right here!” the president exclaimed in late March to a throng of supporters. “Chloroquine is working everywhere. ”Since then, the virus has ripped through Brazil. More than 41,000 people have died — Brazil has now passed Britain and has recorded more fatalities than any country other than the United States — and the daily death toll is now the highest in the world, bucking the downward trend that is allowing other major economies to reopen. (Londono and Simoes, 6/13)

The New York Times: A Deal To Save Medicaid, The Unemployed And State Budgets
Covid-19’s economic devastation has revealed gaping holes in our safety net, as decades-old structures for Medicaid and unemployment insurance are compounding the pain caused by disease and job loss. Let’s be honest, we would not today design them as they were created. The CARES Act took steps to fix these programs, but they need permanent institutional reform and modernization. As the next stimulus package focuses on state and local aid, nothing would give greater assistance to state and local budgets than to be relieved of their share of funding for Medicaid and unemployment insurance. They should then be required to use that savings to boost their investment in infrastructure and education, invigorating states’ fiscal health and their economies. (Ezekiel J. Emanuel and Rahm Emanuel, 6/15)

The Wall Street Journal: The Covid Age Penalty
By now it’s clear that people older than 65 are the most vulnerable to the novel coronavirus, and the age penalty is especially severe for the elderly with underlying health conditions. This is a tragedy in lives cut short, but it also means that states and cities should be able to lift their lockdowns safely if they focus on protecting vulnerable Americans. About 80% of Americans who have died of Covid-19 are older than 65, and the median age is 80. A review by Stanford medical professor John Ioannidis last month found that individuals under age 65 accounted for 4.8% to 9.3% of all Covid-19 deaths in 10 European countries and 7.8% to 23.9% in 12 U.S. locations. (6/12)

Stat: Covid-19 And Remdesivir: Rethinking How We Measure Drug "Value" 
As pharmaceutical and biotech companies scramble to identify treatments for Covid-19, a new disease that initially had none, we must begin to figure out what is an appropriate pricing approach — and price — for emerging therapies. Remdesivir, Gilead Sciences’ repurposed antiviral drug, offers the first opportunity to do this. (Patricia Deverka, Louis Garrison and Samuel Nussbaum, 6/15)

CNN: A Mutation Shows Why The Coronavirus Is Such A Formidable Foe
All living organisms mutate and adapt to maximize survival in their ecologic niche. For months, scientists have been looking into whether the novel coronavirus -- known as SARS-CoV-2 -- is mutating and becoming more transmissible or more lethal. Recent evidence points to a preliminary answer to half the question: yes, a study has found that the virus has mutated and the dominant strain today is now capable of infecting more human cells. But the scientists say more research is needed to show whether this changed the course of the pandemic, and it remains unclear whether this mutation is more lethal. (William A. Haseltine, 6/12)

The New York Times: As A Black Doctor, Should I Choose My Skin Color Or My Health?
As a black emergency medicine physician, concern about the spread of Covid-19 at protests in the wake of the murder of George Floyd is not top of my mind. And yet many continue to seize on this concern. The risk of spread of Covid-19 is clearly elevated at demonstrations: People are yelling, stirring up respiratory droplets and projecting them into the air; people are marching long distances, exerting themselves and taking gulps of air in the process; people are standing and kneeling much less than six feet from one another; and mask use is, over all, abundant but admittedly inconsistent. And yet — the tension between Covid-19 and the protests did not even occur to me until a journalist asked. And why not? Because as a black physician, I understand that the protests are the necessary medicine for both ills. (Steven McDonald, 6/14)

The Hill: COVID-19 Vaccine In Warp Speed 
As COVID-19 rages to its highest level in more than a dozen states, it is still killing as many as 1,000 Americans every single day. This isn’t going to stop until we have a vaccine. A COVID-19 vaccine would save tens of thousands of American lives and help rescue the economy, but the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed plan is underfunded and inadequate. (Kaitlin Hunter and David Kendall, 6/14)

The Washington Post: Forgive Tucker Carlson For His Panicky Desperation. His World Is Collapsing.
Credit Carlson for honesty: He wants riot footage, and that’s about it. As for the footage that touched off the protests, well, the Erik Wemple Blog reviewed transcripts and could find no record that Carlson showed the video of Floyd’s death. Media Matters for America, an organization that scours Fox News coverage, told us it found nothing. We’ve asked Fox News about editorial decisions on the Floyd footage and will update with any response. (Erik Wemple , 6/13)

Los Angeles Times: Sheltering From Coronavirus And Loneliness In A Halfway House
We often pack the living room to watch a movie. We sit shoulder to shoulder for morning meditation. Most of us sleep two to a room. Some us worry about it all, but most of us don’t. We might make a nervous joke when someone coughs. But no one really wants to make it an issue. We even went to get tested for COVID-19 together. This is communal living in the time of coronavirus. (Chris Vognar, 6/15)

CNN: Trump Is Kicking The LGBTQ Community While We're Down
The Trump administration yanked the rug out from under more than a million Americans on Friday by removing protections that prohibit discrimination in health care against transgender patients. This move -- announced on the four-year anniversary of a shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in which 49 people died -- is cruel and unusual punishment from an administration that chooses to represent a small and extreme fringe pushing to further marginalize the already disadvantaged. (Allison Hope, 6/13)

The Wall Street Journal: New Rules For Covid Summer: Be Flexible And Vigilant
America is entering a complicated new phase of the Covid-19 pandemic. The remainder of 2020 warrants flexibility and tolerance, trying different ways to adapt to new evidence. In a country with such fractured politics, this will be no small challenge. That challenge is a function of a complicated public-health picture combined with contradictory public attitudes. Even as economic activity is resuming, Covid cases are rising in about a dozen states. This isn’t a second wave; it’s a series of spikes off the first surge. In the coming months, some states will see infections rise while others fall. The trick will be to manage the constant risk of Covid while restarting normal life.Policy makers are inclined to react to this challenge by looking for exactly the right set of rules to impose. But that overestimates how much of the country’s response to the virus has been a matter of policy, in the traditional sense. A lot of the hand-wringing about whether the shutdowns were justified makes the same mistake.It is clear in retrospect that there wasn’t much of a choice about whether to shut down. (Scott Gottlieb and Yuval Levin, 6/14)

Tulsa World: This Is The Wrong Time And Tulsa Is The Wrong Place For The Trump Rally
President Donald Trump is coming to town this week for a campaign rally. It will be his first since such events were suspended earlier this year because of the COVID-19 shutdown. We don’t know why he chose Tulsa, but we can’t see any way that his visit will be good for the city. Tulsa is still dealing with the challenges created by a pandemic.The city and state have authorized reopening, but that doesn’t make a mass indoor gathering of people pressed closely together and cheering a good idea. There is no treatment for COVID-19 and no vaccine. It will be our health care system that will have to deal with whatever effects follow. The public health concern would apply whether it were Donald Trump, Joe Biden or anyone else who was planning a mass rally at the BOK. (6/15)

The Washington Post: Should We Worship And Protest During The Pandemic?
Protest and worship embody the most hallowed freedoms protected by the Constitution: freedom of thought, of religion, of assembly. They are also often very public and physical endeavors, such as a political demonstration or a church service. In normal times, we barely think twice. But in the middle of a pandemic, with a spreading virus that can sicken and kill, it is vital to think clearly about how to protect these rights yet also avoid making the pandemic worse. The tension between these two forces has been growing. (6/14)

The New York Times: Expecting Students To Play It Safe If Colleges Reopen Is A Fantasy
A number of American colleges and universities have decided to bring students back to campus this fall, believing they can diminish the risk of coronavirus transmission if everyone wears masks, uses hand sanitizer and social distances. Some schools also plan to reconfigure dorms to create family-size clusters of uninfected students, who could socialize in relative safety, if only with their suite mates. These plans are so unrealistically optimistic that they border on delusional and could lead to outbreaks of Covid-19 among students, faculty and staff. (Laurence Steinberg, 6/15)

The Washington Post: Covid-19 Is Killing Catholic Schools — And Hurting The Minorities That Attend Them 
Among the many consequences of our covid-19 economy is the likely closing of dozens of Catholic schools that serve minority students in vulnerable, underserved communities. The National Catholic Educational Association (NCEA) estimates that at least 100 such schools won’t reopen in the fall — or probably ever. Their fortunes and those of their students rely heavily upon charitable donations, which have fallen off in the months since stay-at-home orders went into effect. Without those funds, the schools can’t offer scholarships to families that otherwise couldn’t afford tuition. Twenty percent of students in the nation’s 6,000 Catholic schools are minorities, including Hispanics, African Americans and Asians. (Kathleen Parker, 6/12)

The New York Times: Don’t Leave The W.H.O. Strengthen It.
The world is fighting the most serious pandemic in a century, and the United States is in the process of withdrawing from the only international organization equipped to lead that effort. President Trump has accused the World Health Organization, which is made up of 194 member countries (including the United States), of failing to sound the alarm about the coronavirus quickly enough, of helping the Chinese government cover up the severity of the virus’s threat, and of being too deferential to China in general. He froze federal funding for the organization in April. In May, he gave the W.H.O.’s leaders 30 days to make unspecified improvements, and then — before that time was up, and as the American death toll from Covid-19 topped 100,000 — he decided to withdraw from the group altogether.It remains to be seen whether Mr. Trump can withdraw from the organization without congressional approval, but a senior administration official recently told Politico that the decision was final. (6/13)

The Wall Street Journal: Lockdowns Hit Minority Businesses
If Covid-19 cases keep rising in the weeks to come, city and state leaders might reimpose a strict lockdown. They should bear in mind who’d be harmed most by the ensuing economic destruction. From February to April, the number of active black business owners fell 41%, according to an analysis last week from the National Bureau of Economic Research.“This study provides the first estimates of the early-stage effects of COVID-19 on small business owners,” writes Robert Fairlie, an economist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Overall, he finds, “the number of working business owners plummeted from 15.0 million in February 2020 to 11.7 million in April 2020.” That’s a drop of 3.3 million, or 22%. (6/14)