First Edition: April 30, 2020

Kaiser Health News: As Coronavirus Strikes, Crucial Data In Electronic Health Records Hard To Harvest
When President Donald Trump started touting hydroxychloroquine as “one of the biggest game changers” for treating COVID-19, researchers hoped electronic health records could quickly tell them if he was on the right track. Yet pooling data from the digital records systems in thousands of hospitals has proved a technical nightmare thus far. That’s largely because software built by rival technology firms often cannot retrieve and share information to help doctors judge which coronavirus treatments are helping patients recover. (Schulte, 4/30)

Kaiser Health News: Free Clinics Try To Fill Gaps As COVID Sweeps Away Job-Based Insurance
Joe Delbert hadn’t needed the Tree of Life Free Clinic in three years. The 55-year-old man, who moved to Tupelo from Georgia to take care of his dying father nearly four years ago, found manufacturing work that came with health insurance. But last month, he joined 26 million other Americans who have lost their jobs because of COVID-19 in the past five weeks. (Morris, 4/30)

Kaiser Health News: ‘An Arm And A Leg’: If Insurer Bills You For COVID Testing, Talk — And Maybe Tweet — It Out
Anna Davis Abel’s insurance company pledged to cover COVID-19 testing without cost sharing, but then left her to pay a big bill. Davis Abel got help thanks to a viral tweet — and from a reporter who reached out to and prodded her insurance company. But her story exposes gaps in the protections Congress put in place to make coronavirus testing more affordable for consumers with health coverage. (Weissmann, 4/30)

Kaiser Health News: Trump Says N95 Masks Can Be Sterilized For Reuse. Only In A Pinch, Experts Warn.
As COVID-19 cases continue to climb, front-line health care workers are decrying unsafe working conditions — in particular, describing inadequate access to personal protective equipment, or PPE. Many hospitals and state lawmakers blame Washington, saying the Trump administration has not done enough to make this critical protective gear available. But at a recent press conference, President Donald Trump suggested those claims are overblown, asserting instead that hospitals have the tools they need to sanitize and reuse protective facewear. (Luthra, 4/29)

The Associated Press: Grim Count: US Virus Toll Passes Trump's 60,000 Marker
President Donald Trump likes to talk about the most, the best, the thing that nobody has ever seen. Now he is trying to make a virtue of a lower number, arguing that the efforts of his administration have warded off a far greater death toll than otherwise would have been seen. But the reported U.S. death toll on Wednesday crept past 60,000, a figure that Trump in recent weeks had suggested might be the total death count. (Superville, 4/30)

Reuters: U.S. Coronavirus Outbreak Soon To Be Deadlier Than Any Flu Since 1967 As Deaths Top 60,000
America's worst flu season in recent years was in 2017-2018 when more than 61,000 people died, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Preventihere. The only deadlier flu seasons were in 1967 when about 100,000 Americans died, 1957 when 116,000 died and the Spanish flu of 1918 when 675,000 died, according to the CDC. (Shumaker, 4/29)

The Wall Street Journal: U.S. Coronavirus Deaths Top 60,000 As New Data Show Economic Toll
The death toll, which has now surpassed some previous projections, shows the continuing challenge in estimating the severity of the outbreak. In late March, the Trump administration estimated between 100,000 and 240,000 people could die. About two weeks later, Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in an interview with NBC that the toll was likely to be closer to 60,000. Models released in early April by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation showed a similar result. Those models projected the rate of deaths would peak mid-April, and they estimated 61,545 fatalities by Aug. 4. New models from the institute now project 72,860 deaths by Aug. 4. (Ansari and Boston, 4/29)

The Washington Post: U.S. Reports 66,000 More Deaths So Far This Year
The United States has suffered at least 66,000 more deaths than expected this year, a toll that includes the devastation directly caused by the coronavirus pandemic and a sharp rise in fatalities not attributed to the virus, the government reported late Wednesday. The new report from the National Center for Health Statistics shows 33,756 covid-19 deaths and 32,325 from all other causes since Jan. 1. Other causes include heart attacks, accidents, overdoses, cancer and a wide variety of other fatal diseases. (Bernstein, 4/29)

The Associated Press: A 1st: US Study Finds Gilead Drug Works Against Coronavirus
For the first time, a major study suggests that an experimental drug works against the new coronavirus, and U.S. government officials said Wednesday that they would work to make it available to appropriate patients as quickly as possible. In a study of 1,063 patients sick enough to be hospitalized, Gilead Sciences’s remdesivir shortened the time to recovery by 31% — 11 days on average versus 15 days for those just given usual care, officials said. (Marchione, 4/29)

The New York Times: Remdesivir Shows Modest Benefits In Coronavirus Trial
The improvement in recovery times “doesn’t seem like a knockout 100 percent,” Dr. Fauci conceded, but “it is a very important proof of concept, because what it has proven is that a drug can block this virus.” Sitting at Dr. Fauci’s side, President Trump said, “Certainly it’s positive, it’s a very positive event.” In past weeks, he has repeatedly hailed remdesivir as a potential “game changer,” despite spotty evidence. Business leaders, scientists and politicians alike are scrambling to find ways to fight an insidious epidemic and to reopen a devastated economy. The virus has claimed at least 60,000 lives in the United States, and more than 200,000 worldwide. There have been precious few reasons for optimism, and the markets seized on the news. (Kolata, Baker and Weiland, 4/29)

The Washington Post: Hopes Rise For Remdesivir, A Covid-19 Drug Therapy, As U.S. Passes 60,000 Dead
The study showed only a marginal benefit in the rate of death. Fauci said that a death rate of 8 percent for those taking the drug versus 11 percent for those taking the placebo is not statistically significant but that the results will undergo further analysis. The drug must be given intravenously over five to 10 days, and the NIAID trial results apply only to hospitalized patients. Remdesivir is not intended for use in the majority of patients, estimated to be 80 percent or more, who are infected with the novel coronavirus but do not require hospitalization. (Gearan, Rowland and McGinley, 4/29)

Reuters: Explainer: What Does New Data Say About Gilead's Experimental Coronavirus Drug?
The data also suggest a possible survival benefit with remdesivir, although the difference was not statistically significant, meaning it might have been due to chance and not Gilead’s drug. Comparing the drug to a placebo should give researchers definitive answers about remdesivir’s effect on the illness. While the study did meet its primary goal, the promising NIAID data are from an interim analysis. The trial’s final results will likely not be known until sometime next month. (Lapid, 4/29)

Politico: 'A Drug Can Block This Virus': Fauci Hails Covid-19 Treatment Breakthrough
Gilead said the data also suggests that people who received remdesivir early in their infection seemed to fare better than those that received it later. The study is not a traditional trial with a placebo arm to compare against remdesivir for effectiveness, earning Gilead some criticism from policy experts over sharing the news alongside the NIAID results. (Owermohle, 4/29)

The Wall Street Journal: U.S. Explores Emergency-Use Approval For Gilead Drug After Study Found It Helped Recovery From Covid-19
Federal health regulators are exploring whether to greenlight the emergency use of a Gilead Sciences Inc. drug in serious Covid-19 patients, after U.S. government researchers reported the therapy helped the patients recover faster. President Trump said he was pushing the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to grant the emergency-use authorization to the Gilead drug remdesivir. (Walker, 4/29)

Stat: Gilead CEO: We’re Going To Make Sure Remdesivir Is Accessible
On Wednesday Gilead Sciences, best known as a maker of HIV medicines, sent out a 177-word press release that led to a sigh of relief around the world: A study had shown that its experimental drug, remdesivir, had reduced the time it took for patients with Covid-19 to get better. The data were only preliminary, and many questions still remain, including the nature of the treatment effect in patients. But for Gilead’s chief executive, Daniel O’Day, it was a big moment. (Herper, 4/29)

Reuters: WHO Declines Comment On Remdesivir In COVID-19, Hopes For Best
A top World Health Organization official declined comment on Wednesday on reports that Gilead Science’s remdesivir could help treat COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus, but said that further data was needed. “I wouldn’t like to make any specific comment on that, because I haven’t read those publications in detail,” Dr Mike Ryan, head of the WHO’s emergencies programme, told an online briefing in response to a question, adding it can sometimes take a number of publications to determine a drug’s efficacy. (4/29)

The Associated Press: Trump Says He's Not Extending Social Distancing Guidelines
President Donald Trump said the federal government will not be extending its coronavirus social distancing guidelines once they expire Thursday, and his son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, predicted that by July the country will be “really rocking again.” To underscore his confidence, Trump said Wednesday he plans to resume out-of-state travel after spending more than a month mostly cooped up in the White House, starting with a trip to Arizona next week. (Freking and Colvin, 4/30)

Politico: End Of Trump’s Social Distancing Policy Spurs Fears Of Virus Rebound
The Trump administration’s “Stay at Home” guidelines will quietly expire Thursday with little fanfare — letting states decide what’s next. But as President Donald Trump repeatedly declares that “we’re opening our country again,” the inconsistent patchwork of state, local and business decision-making is exactly what could drive a second wave of the coronavirus — or potentially prolong the current outbreak. (Kenen, 4/29)

NPR: 'Slow The Spread' Guidelines Will Phase Out, Trump Says
During a White House meeting with Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards on Wednesday, Trump commended governors for taking steps to reopen their economies. The original two-week guidelines that were extended 30 more days called for Americans to work from home, limit travel and avoid large gatherings. Vice President Pence said the existing guidelines were being applied to the new guidance issued by the White House on how states can reopen safely. (Ordonez, 4/29)

Politico: As Death Toll Passes 60,000, Trump’s Team Searches For An Exit Strategy
As the White House shifts its focus away from the public health response and toward rebuilding an economy ravaged by the pandemic, there remains little clear sense — even within his own administration — of how close the U.S. is to victory, and what “winning” the war even looks like. Successive benchmarks set by Trump that rested on containing the virus’ early cases, slowing the disease’s spread and establishing a national pandemic defense have fallen by the wayside. And this week, Trump’s predictions that the U.S. may see just 60,000 coronavirus deaths were belied by the brutal reality of the data. (Cancryn, 4/29)

The Wall Street Journal: Trump Says He’s Ready To Hit The Road To Arizona, Coronavirus Or Not
President Trump, like much of the nation, has cabin fever. That’s about to end. Mr. Trump told reporters at an event with business executives on Wednesday that he plans to travel to Arizona next week and Ohio soon after that. “We’re going to start to move around,” he said, adding that he hopes to start holding campaign rallies again. The Arizona event will focus on industry, he said, without offering further details. (Ballhaus, 4/29)

Politico: Trump To Relax Shelter-In–White-House Routine
Trump often mentions that he hasn’t left the White House in months — except for once — as his administration has worked to respond to the pandemic. Last month he sent off a hospital ship, the USNS Comfort, from a Virginia naval base. He has otherwise stayed within the executive complex for six weeks, a long stretch for a president who used to spend most weekends golfing and visiting his own hotels and golf clubs. In recent days, Trump had asked aides to start adding to his schedule official events outside Washington. (Kumar, 4/29)

The New York Times: Trump And Kushner On The Coronavirus: Wishful Thinking And Revisionist History
The total number of coronavirus cases in the United States exceeded one million. The American death toll surpassed that of the Vietnam War. And the economy was reported to have shrunk by nearly 5 percent. But the White House on Wednesday declared its response to the crisis “a great success story.” As states begin to lift quarantines, President Trump is trying to recast the story of the pandemic from that of an administration slow to see and address the threat to one that responded with decisive action that saved lives. Recognizing that the crisis jeopardizes his chances of re-election, he and his allies want to convince his supporters that the cascade of criticism is unwarranted. (Baker, 4/29)

The New York Times: Coronavirus Has Trump Health Secretary In Trouble
Two of President Trump’s top health officials were stewing last month in a drab room at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta as Mr. Trump and his health secretary, Alex M. Azar II, were concluding a laboratory tour, one that they had been left off of. One of the officials, Dr. Jerome M. Adams, the surgeon general, was then invited to join the president and the secretary to shake hands. The other, Seema Verma, who leads the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, was not. Instead, a staff member told the powerful Medicare chief to head to the receiving line with the rank and file. Furious, she left for the airport to catch a commercial flight home to Washington. (Weiland, Haberman and Shear, 4/29)

The New York Times: New Coronavirus Test Offers Advantages: Just Spit And Wait
A new test for the coronavirus is so simple and straightforward, almost anyone could do it: Spit a glob of saliva into a cup, close the lid and hand it over. While not as fast to process as the speediest swab tests, saliva tests could transform the diagnosis of Covid-19. If manufactured in enough numbers and processed by enough labs across the country, they could alleviate the diagnostic shortages that have hampered containment of the pandemic and offer a less onerous way for companies to see if workers are infected. (Mandavilli, 4/29)

The Washington Post: Richmond Coronavirus Testing Targets Poor African Americans
Tiffany Smith tilted her head way back, sending her long ponytail almost to her waist and allowing a nurse to stick a cotton swab up one nostril, then another. “Oh, damn!” she said, wiping her nose after undergoing a free coronavirus test in an east Richmond parking lot. “Whoo!” Though she hated how it felt, Smith, 47, had been seeking the nasal swab since she and her husband, Charles, started having fevers, coughs, sweats and headaches about a week ago. (Vozzella and Schneider, 4/29)

The Washington Post: Why Maryland Has Not Distributed Hogan's Coronavirus Tests From South Korea 
When Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) announced the purchase of 500,000 coronavirus tests from South Korea last week, he called it “an exponential, game-changing step forward” in the state’s effort to get more people tested. The dramatic story drew notice from Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and a dismissive swipe from fellow Republican President Trump. (Cox and Thompson, 4/29)

The New York Times: As Georgia Reopens, Virus Study Shows Black Residents May Bear Brunt
As Georgia reopens many businesses over objections from President Trump and others, a new study illustrates the high rates of coronavirus infection among black people in the state. The report, released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said that more than four-fifths of hospitalized coronavirus patients in the study were black. They were not more likely than other groups to die from the disease or to require a ventilator. Still, of the 297 patients in the study whose race and ethnicity were known, 83.2 percent were black. (Waldstein, 4/30)

The Washington Post: Southern Governors Who Initially Downplayed Coronavirus Threat Ease Into Reopening Of Their States
Last month, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was criticized for not quickly closing his state down — and allowing spring breakers to party on beaches — as the novel coronavirus spread. Neighboring Alabama insisted that it did not face the same threat from the virus as other places did, as did Mississippi, whose governor insisted his state was "never going to be China." All three governors eventually issued stay-at-home orders as the number of coronavirus cases skyrocketed. And they are moving to reopen — much more slowly and methodically than other nearby states but in ways that take cues directly from President Trump. (Wootson and Craig, 4/29)

Reuters: Florida Moves To Ease Coronavirus Lockdown As Promising Treatment Emerges
The governor of Florida, among the last to lock down his state against the U.S. coronavirus outbreak, announced on Wednesday he would permit a limited economic reopening next week while leaving restraints intact for the dense greater-Miami area. (Fagenson and Resnick-Ault, 4/29)

The Associated Press: Surf's Down In California: Governor Will Close Beaches
Gov. Gavin Newsom will order all beaches and state parks closed starting Friday after people thronged the seashore during a sweltering weekend despite his social distancing order that aims to slow the spread of the coronavirus, according to a memo sent to police chiefs around the state. Eric Nuñez, president of the California Police Chiefs Association, said it was sent to the group’s members Wednesday evening so they have time to plan ahead of Newsom’s expected announcement Thursday. (Beam and Dazio, 4/30)

Politico: California Teachers Resist Newsom’s ‘Unrealistic’ Call For July Start
California teachers unions are fighting Gov. Gavin Newsom’s suggestion that schools open this summer and making clear that they will have a say at the bargaining table. The unions say teachers were stunned by Newsom’s suggestion Tuesday that schools could reopen in July in an attempt to help reduce learning gaps caused by the coronavirus and allow parents to return to work in a greater capacity. (Mays, 4/29)

The Washington Post: Va. Gov. Ralph Northam To Allow Non-Emergency Doctor, Dentist Visits
Virginians will be able to resume non-emergency visits to the doctor, dentist or veterinarian later this week after Gov. Ralph Northam announced the state’s first rollback of restrictions since the coronavirus crisis began escalating in March. The news came Wednesday as the region’s leaders expanded efforts to fight the pandemic’s damage, with D.C. officials saying that restrictions and closures might need to be extended another three months under the “most stringent” scenario and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan announcing that all nursing home residents and employees will be tested for the novel coronavirus. (Schneider, Portnoy, Vozzella and Nirappil, 4/29)

Politico: Conservative Americans See Coronavirus Hope In Progressive Sweden
Conservatives have developed a fascination with Sweden’s hands-off approach to the coronavirus — an unexpected twist for a country that once served as a Republican punchline for Bernie Sanders jokes. On the surface, Sweden’s approach to containing the coronavirus pandemic is a libertarian dream: Restaurants remain open, as long as they adhere to social-distancing rules. Schools are in session. Salons are in business. And by some metrics, Sweden has fared roughly as well as many of its European neighbors, all of which have instituted much stricter lockdown measures. (Nguyen, 4/30)

Politico: Swedish Leader Defends Coronavirus Approach, Shrugs Off Far-Right Embrace
Sweden’s foreign minister says there’s been a “misunderstanding” in the United States about her country’s Covid-19 policies — which have been distinctly more liberal than the strict lockdowns instituted across much of the rest of Europe and North America. Ann Linde told POLITICO that Sweden is not a libertarian nirvana: the government has moved to limit online gambling in recent days, is closing restaurants that break social distancing rules, and has forbidden family visits to nursing homes. (Heath, 4/29)

The Associated Press: Police Called After NYC Funeral Home Puts Bodies In Trucks
Police were called to a Brooklyn neighborhood Wednesday after a funeral home overwhelmed by the coronavirus resorted to storing dozens of bodies on ice in rented trucks, and a passerby complained about the smell, officials said. Investigators who responded to a 911 call found that the home had rented four trucks to hold about 50 corpses, according to a law enforcement official. No criminal charges were brought and the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the investigation, spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. (sisak and Hajela, 4/30)

Reuters: Bodies Found In Unrefrigerated Trucks In New York During COVID-19 Pandemic
New York City has been at the epicenter of the global coronavirus pandemic and the city’s funeral homes have been overwhelmed. As of Wednesday afternoon, more than 18,000 people have died of COVID-19 in America’s biggest city, according to a Reuters tally. Funeral homes say they are facing weeks-long backlogs to bury or cremate the dead. (Jackson, 4/29)

The New York Times: Dozens Of Decomposing Bodies Found In Trucks At Brooklyn Funeral Home
Still, the notion that dead New Yorkers could be left to decay in broad daylight in rental trucks on a crowded street in Brooklyn underscored the challenges facing the city as it tries to absorb a disaster that has already killed nearly five times as many as died in the Sept. 11 terror attacks. One official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about the matter, said that the funeral home had been storing bodies in the trucks after its freezer stopped operating properly. Funeral directors are required to store bodies awaiting burial or cremation in appropriate conditions that prevent infection. (Feuer, Southall and Gold, 4/29)

The Washington Post: A New York City Funeral Home Stored Coronavirus Victims’ Bodies In U-Haul Trucks, Police Say
City officials proposed temporarily freezing the bodies of coronavirus victims and deployed “mobile morgues,” refrigerated trailers that can hold bodies, to support overwhelmed funeral homes, morgues and crematories. The move was intended to give families more time to claim the bodies of family members, after the number of unclaimed bodies buried at Hart Island increased by fivefold in early April. Hart Island is a public cemetery and mass grave in the Bronx where the city buries people whose bodies go unclaimed and those whose families cannot afford another option. (Sheperd, 4/30)

ProPublica: Grieving Families Need Help Paying For COVID-19 Burials, But Trump Hasn’t Released The Money
As the U.S. death toll from the coronavirus mounts, President Donald Trump has yet to free up a pool of disaster relief funding specifically intended to help families cover burial costs. Approximately 30 states and territories have requested the funding as the pandemic spreads across the country and struggling families ask for help burying their dead. The funding is part of the wide array of “individual assistance” programs handled by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help disaster victims. (Song and Torbati, 4/29)

The Wall Street Journal: Miscalculation At Every Level Left U.S. Unequipped To Fight Coronavirus
A new virus had rapidly spread across the globe and Tuomey Healthcare System in South Carolina couldn’t get more protective masks for its hospital workers. A global run on them had created a shortage. That was the 2009 “swine flu.” Tuomey later stockpiled protective gear, but over the years didn’t replenish some expired items. This year, it found that elastic bands on some of its masks were brittle. One snapped when an official tried it on. The swine flu, an outbreak of H1N1 flu, turned out to be a dry run for a major pandemic. But neither hospitals nor manufacturers nor the government made sweeping changes to be ready for one. (Berzon, Evans, Armour and Hufford, 4/29)

The New York Times: Trump Seeks Push To Speed Coronavirus Vaccine, Despite Safety Concerns
President Trump is pressing his health officials to pursue a crash development program for a coronavirus vaccine that could be widely distributed by the beginning of next year, despite widespread skepticism that such an effort could succeed and considerable concern about the implications for safety. The White House has made no public announcement of the new effort, called Operation Warp Speed, and some officials are apparently trying to talk the president down, telling him that it would be more harmful to set an unreasonably short deadline that might result in a faulty vaccine than to wait for one that is proved safe and effective. (Sanger, 4/29)

The Hill: Pfizer Says Coronavirus Vaccine Could Be Ready For Emergency Use By Fall 
Pfizer and German pharmaceutical company BioNTech have developed a coronavirus vaccine that could be ready for emergency use as early as September, Pfizer’s CEO told The Wall Street Journal Tuesday. The two pharmaceutical firms said Wednesday they began human trials of the potential vaccine, BNT162, on April 23 in Germany. Twelve participants were given the vaccine and data on the trial is expected as early as June, according to Business Insider. (Guzman, 4/29)

Politico: Democrats Call For Masks To Be Required Aboard Planes
Democrats in Congress are increasingly pushing the Trump administration to require everyone on board an airplane to wear face masks, brushing aside the Federal Aviation Administration's assertion that it doesn't regulate public health. Flight attendant unions have been asking for such a requirement for weeks; airlines have been inching toward mask requirements in recent days, though mostly for flight crews. JetBlue became the first airline to say it would voluntarily require its passengers to cover their faces earlier this week. (Mintz, 4/29)

The Washington Post: Science Behind Sanitizing Airplane Cabin Air Has Advanced But Was Too Late For Coronavirus
On March 14, 1977, a woman with the flu climbed aboard a 737 and headed for Kodiak, Alaska, with 53 other passengers and crew. After an engine failed, most of them sat on the runway with the cabin doors shut, and the ventilation system off, for two hours. Within three days, 38 more people were sick. More than four decades after state and federal epidemiologists showed how easily viruses spread from person to person on airplanes, the novel coronavirus has decimated global aviation. Daily passenger screenings are down 95 percent, according to the Transportation Security Administration. (Laris, 4/29)

The New York Times: How Coronavirus Mutates And Spreads
The coronavirus is an oily membrane packed with genetic instructions to make millions of copies of itself. The instructions are encoded in 30,000 “letters” of RNA — a, c, g and u — which the infected cell reads and translates into many kinds of virus proteins. (Corum and Zimmer, 4/30)

The Washington Post: Studies Leave Question Of ‘Airborne’ Coronavirus Transmission Unanswered
A growing number of studies, including one published this week in the journal Nature, have found evidence that the coronavirus can remain suspended in the air in aerosol particles. That raises anew the question of whether and to what extent the virus can be transmitted as an aerosol — although the evidence is far from conclusive and no such infections have been documented. (Achenbach and Johnson, 4/29)

The Washington Post: Dogs Are Being Trained To Sniff Out Coronavirus Cases
As some states move to reopen after weeks of shutdowns, infectious disease experts say the prevention of future coronavirus outbreaks will require scaling up testing and identifying asymptomatic carriers. Eight Labrador retrievers — and their powerful noses — have been enlisted to help. The dogs are the first trainees in a University of Pennsylvania research project to determine whether canines can detect an odor associated with the virus that causes the disease covid-19. (Brulliard, 4/29)

The Wall Street Journal: Doctors Investigate Link Between Rare Childhood Disease And Covid-19
Doctors in Italy and the U.K. have raised the alarm over a small but growing number of children displaying symptoms of a rare blood-vessel disease that may be linked to Covid-19. In both countries, doctors have alerted their colleagues to look out for symptoms associated with Kawasaki disease, an inflammatory condition that typically affects young children. Symptoms include stomach pain, skin rashes and a high fever. The disease is rarely life-threatening, but can cause lasting heart problems if untreated. (Stancati and Douglas, 4/29)

Politico: Mitch McConnell's Public Health Gamble
Coronavirus cases are still rising in the District of Columbia, where more than 200 people have died of the disease. The House decided it was too dangerous to return to the Capitol. But Mitch McConnell’s Senate is coming back anyway. The Senate majority leader is gambling that 100 senators can safely meet on the Senate floor and throughout the Capitol complex. Many of them will travel across the country for the Senate’s reopening, risking exposure on airplanes and in airports. And 49 senators are aged 65 or older and at greater risk of the deadly disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Plus, the senators’ return will bring back hundreds of staffers and Capitol employees. (Everett and Levine, 4/30)

Politico: Pelosi Taps 7 Lawmakers To Select Coronavirus Committee
Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday appointed seven Democratic members to a newly created House panel meant to police the Trump administration’s coronavirus response efforts. The appointments are expected to ignite a wave of congressional action to spotlight President Donald Trump’s handling of the multitrillion-dollar pandemic relief packages meant to confront the illness’ devastating toll on American life. (Cheney and Ferris, 4/29)

Politico: Lawmakers Made Hundreds Of Stock Transactions During Pandemic, Watchdog Finds
Republican and Democratic lawmakers have bought and sold stocks hundreds of times throughout the coronavirus pandemic — some of them lucrative moves to invest in industries buoyed by the crisis and divest from sectors like restaurants and hotels that have tanked, according to a new analysis by the Campaign Legal Center. From Feb. 2 to April 8 of this year, the nonpartisan watchdog group found, 12 senators made a combined 127 purchases or sales, while 37 House representatives made at least 1,358 transactions. (Ollstein, 4/29)

The Wall Street Journal: States Struggle With Coronavirus Unemployment Claims Surge
Connecticut was more than halfway through a multiyear modernization of its unemployment insurance system in mid-March when the coronavirus pandemic triggered a surge in claims and the state website that accepts applications froze. Labor department personnel worked all night trying to figure out what had gone wrong and realized the website could only handle up to 8,300 applications in a single day, a fraction of what residents were now trying to submit. After fixing that problem, they tried to figure out what might break next, said Danté Bartolomeo, deputy commissioner of Connecticut’s labor department. (Chaney and King, 4/30)

The New York Times: States Made It Harder To Get Jobless Benefits. Now That’s Hard To Undo.
The state unemployment systems that were supposed to help millions of jobless workers were full of boxes to check and mandates to meet that couldn’t possibly apply in a pandemic. States required workers to document their job searches, weekly; to register with employment services, in person; to take a wait period before their first check, up to 10 days. Such requirements increased in the years following the Great Recession, as many states moved to tighten access to or reduce unemployment benefits. (Badger and Parlapiano, 4/30)

Politico: Unemployed Workers Face Choice Between Safety And Money As States Reopen
Americans may soon face a stark choice as more states begin to reopen their doors: Go back to work and risk catching the coronavirus, or stay home and lose unemployment aid. As governors allow more businesses and retail stores to come back online, employers will begin calling back workers who had been laid off or furloughed and were eligible for unemployment benefits. If they refuse the offer to return to work out of fear for their health amid the pandemic, federal guidelines dictate that they will lose the aid that many have only just started to receive. (Cassella and Ehley, 4/29)

The New York Times: Food Lines A Mile Long In America’s Second-Wealthiest State
Jean Wickham’s two sons are in college. Her husband has worked at the same New Jersey casino for 36 years. She recently felt secure enough to trade her full-time casino job for two part-time gigs that came with an expectation of bigger tips. Then the coronavirus shut down every casino in Atlantic City and instantly put more than 26,000 people out of work — 10 percent of the county’s population. “I’ve worked since I was 14 years old,” said Ms. Wickham, 55, a card dealer. “We’ve never had to rely on anyone else.” (Tully, 4/30)

NPR: Coronavirus Threat Poses Extra Problems For SNAP Recipients
Not long after the shelter-in-place order went into effect in California last month, Melissa Santos and her wife established new rules: they'd eat breakfast, try to get by with snacks, suppress hunger with coffee, and then have dinner. Santos is a student at the University of California, Berkeley. At 32, she's older than most of her undergraduate peers; she spent years taking care of a grandmother with Alzheimer's before considering her own education and career. (Gingold, 4/30)

NPR: Antigen Tests For The Coronavirus Might Be Easier, But How Reliable? 
States clamoring for coronavirus tests in recent weeks have been talking about two different types. First, there's a PCR test that detects the virus' genetic material, so can confirm an active infection. And then there's an antibody test, which looks at the body's reaction to that infection, so is useful in identifying people who have been infected with the virus in the past. Now, there's a third kind of test under development to help fight COVID-19 that homes in on proteins that stud the virus's outer surface; it, too, detects an active infection. (Stein, 4/30)

ProPublica/WBEZ: Inside The Jail With One Of The Country’s Largest Coronavirus Outbreaks
The Cook County Jail in Chicago is one of the largest in the country. Sprawling across 96 acres on the Southwest Side, the facility houses more than 4,000 people, most awaiting trial. Its cramped living conditions made it a perfect petri dish for COVID-19. Today, the jail is home to one of the largest known outbreaks in the country and has been a flashpoint in the national debate over how to contain the virus in correctional facilities. (Heffernan, 4/30)

The New York Times: Prisoner With Coronavirus Dies After Giving Birth While On Ventilator
The first female federal prisoner to die after contracting the coronavirus was a 30-year-old mother who had just weeks earlier given birth while on a ventilator. The woman, Andrea Circle Bear, of Eagle Butte, S.D., was sentenced in January to serve 26 months in prison for using a residence on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation to sell drugs in 2018. She admitted that she had sold $850 worth of methamphetamine to a buyer who was later revealed to be a confidential informant, according to court documents. (Bogel-Burroughs and Swales, 4/29)