First Edition: May 28, 2020

Kaiser Health News: Lost On The Frontline
Over 100,000 Americans are now confirmed dead. Many of the COVID-19 victims are health care professionals who risked their lives to fight the outbreak. As the nation passes this grim milestone, The Guardian and KHN profiles the lost workers. (5/27)

Kaiser Health News: Antibody Tests Were Hailed As Way To End Lockdowns. Instead, They Cause Confusion.
Aspen was an early COVID-19 hot spot in Colorado, with a cluster of cases in March linked to tourists visiting for its world-famous skiing. Tests were in short supply, making it difficult to know how the virus was spreading. So in April, when the Pitkin County Public Health Department announced it had obtained 1,000 COVID-19 antibody tests that it would offer residents at no charge, it seemed like an exciting opportunity to evaluate the efforts underway to stop the spread of the virus. (Aschwanden, 5/28)

Kaiser Health News: Searching For Safety: Where Children Hide When Gunfire Is All Too Common
In communities across the United States this spring, families are dealing with more than just the threat of the coronavirus outside their homes. In the midst of violence that does not stop even during a pandemic, children like Amor continually search for safety, peace and a quiet place. “Safer at Home” slogans don’t guarantee safety for them. More than two dozen parents and caregivers who spoke with Kaiser Health News attested that the kids hide underneath beds, in basements and dry bathtubs, waiting for gunfire to stop while their parents pray that a bullet never finds them. (Anthony, 5/28)

Kaiser Health News: For Seniors, COVID-19 Sets Off A Pandemic Of Despair
As states relax coronavirus restrictions, older adults are advised, in most cases, to keep sheltering in place. But for some, the burden of isolation and uncertainty is becoming hard to bear. This “stay at home awhile longer” advice recognizes that older adults are more likely to become critically ill and die if infected with the virus. At highest risk are seniors with underlying medical conditions such as heart, lung or autoimmune diseases. (Graham, 5/28)

Kaiser Health News: Some Ivory Towers Are Ideal For A Pandemic. Most Aren’t.
Saint Mary’s College in Moraga, California, is open for business this fall — but to get there, you really have to want it. Tucked amid verdant hills 23 miles east of San Francisco, accessible by a single road and a single entrance, the small, private Roman Catholic school receives almost no visitors by accident. This, in the age of a pandemic, is good news indeed for its administrators.“We can control who comes in or out in a way that larger, urban campuses perhaps can’t do,” said William Mullen, the school’s vice provost for enrollment. “Those campuses are in many cases more permeable.” (Kreidler, 5/28)

The Associated Press: Virus Deaths Surpass 100,000 In US While Cases Rise In India
As the death toll from the coronavirus rose above 100,000 in the United States, there were also record numbers getting sick in India and worrying signs of a resurgence in South Korea. The once-unthinkable milestone in the U.S. means that more Americans have died from the virus than were killed in the Vietnam and Korean wars combined. (Perry, 5/28)

The Washington Post: U.S. Coronavirus Death Toll Surpasses 100,000, Exposing Nation’s Vulnerabilities
One hundred thousand Americans dead in less than four months. It’s as if every person in Edison, N.J., or Kenosha, Wis., died. It’s half the population of Salt Lake City or Grand Rapids, Mich. It’s about 20 times the number of people killed in homicides in that length of time, about twice the number who die of strokes. The death toll from the coronavirus passed that hard-to-fathom marker on Wednesday, which slipped by like so many other days in this dark spring, one more spin of the Earth, one more headline in a numbing cascade of grim news. (Fisher, 5/27)

Reuters: U.S. Coronavirus Deaths Top 100,000 As Country Reopens
In about three months, more Americans have died from COVID-19 than during the Korean War, Vietnam War and the U.S. conflict in Iraq from 2003-2011 combined. The new respiratory disease has also killed more people than the AIDS epidemic did from 1981 through 1989, and it is far deadlier than the seasonal flu has been in decades. The last time the flu killed as many people in the United States was in the 1957-1958 season, when 116,000 died. (Shumaker, 5/27)

Politico: U.S. Coronavirus Death Toll Tops 100,000 As Trump Pushes To Reopen
A day before the U.S. reached the 100,000-death mark, Trump once again blamed China for not stopping the virus before it spread across the globe, and touted his decision in January to restrict travel from China to the U.S. “For all of the political hacks out there, if I hadn’t done my job well, & early, we would have lost 1 1/2 to 2 Million People, as opposed to the 100,000 plus that looks like will be the number,” he tweeted on Tuesday. (Lim, 5/27)

ProPublica: 100,000 Lives Lost To COVID-19. What Did They Teach Us?
COVID-19 has also laid bare many long-standing inequities and failings in America’s health care system. It is devastating, but not surprising, to learn that many of those who have been most harmed by the virus are also Americans who have long suffered from historical social injustices that left them particularly susceptible to the disease. This massive loss of life wasn’t inevitable. It wasn’t simply unfortunate and regrettable. (Chen, 5/27)

NPR: Among US Health Workers, COVID Deaths Near 300, With 60,000 Sick
The coronavirus continues to batter the U.S. health care workforce. More than 60,000 health care workers have been infected and close to 300 have died from COVID-19, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The numbers mark a staggering increase from six weeks ago when the CDC first released data on coronavirus infections and deaths among nurses, doctors, pharmacists, EMTs, technicians and other medical employees. (Stone and Feibel, 5/28)

The Wall Street Journal: U.S. Coronavirus Deaths Top 100,000 As South American Cases Surge 
Experts say official totals likely understate the extent of the pandemic, in part because of limited and differing testing capabilities in the U.S. and around the world. Estimates for the U.S. death toll have varied, and some modelers say it is difficult to make projections beyond a few weeks out. As of May 26, the Reich Lab at the University of Massachusetts Amherst estimated the U.S. would likely reach 117,000 to 130,000 deaths by June 20, a forecast based on projections from multiple modeling groups. (Ansari and Schwartz, 5/27)

The New York Times: Remembering The 100,000 Lives Lost To Coronavirus In America
As the U.S. reached a grim milestone in the outbreak, The New York Times gathered names of the dead and memories of their lives from obituaries across the country. (5/27)

The Washington Post: Coronavirus Victims: Remembering The Americans Who Have Died
No infectious disease in a century has exacted as swift and merciless a toll on the United States as covid-19. With no vaccine and no cure, the pandemic has killed people in every state. The necessary isolation it imposes has robbed the bereaved of proper goodbyes and the comfort of mourning rituals. Those remembered in this continually updating series represent but some of the tens of thousands who have died. Some were well-known, and many were unsung. All added their stories, from all walks of life, to the diversity of the American experience. (5/27)

The Washington Post: For A Numbers-Obsessed Trump, There’s One He Has Tried To Ignore: 100,000 Dead
President Trump has spent his life in thrall to numbers — his wealth, his ratings, his polls. Even during the deadly coronavirus pandemic, he has remained fixated on certain metrics — peppering aides about infection statistics, favoring rosy projections and obsessing over the gyrating stock market. But as the nation reached a bleak milestone this week — 100,000 Americans dead from the novel coronavirus — Trump has been uncharacteristically silent. His public schedule this week contains no special commemoration, no moment of silence, no collective sharing of grief. (Parker, 5/27)

The Wall Street Journal: Most Countries Fail To Capture Extent Of Covid-19 Deaths
A growing pool of global death statistics indicates that few countries are accurately capturing fatalities from the new coronavirus—and in some the shortfall is significant. In the U.S., Russia, the U.K., the Netherlands and many other countries, the number of deaths recorded from all causes has jumped since March and far exceeded the number of deaths those countries report as linked to Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. (Michaels, 5/28)

NPR: How Some Countries Brought New Coronavirus Cases Down To Nearly Zero
Over the past month, Hong Kong has averaged one new confirmed coronavirus case a day. Taiwan has reported only one case in the past three weeks. The situation is similar in Vietnam. Although the number of coronavirus cases continues to grow globally, there are places that have managed to successfully control COVID-19. (Beaubien, 5/27)

The Washington Post: Trump’s Mockery Of Wearing Masks Divides Republicans
A growing chorus of Republicans are pushing back against President Trump’s suggestion that wearing cloth masks to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus is a sign of personal weakness or political correctness. They include governors seeking to prevent a rebound in coronavirus cases and federal lawmakers who face tough reelection fights this fall, as national polling shows lopsided support for wearing masks in public. (Scherer, 5/27)

Politico: ‘There’s No Stigma Attached To Wearing A Mask’: McConnell Makes Plea In Favor Of Face Masks
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Wednesday made an extensive pitch for Americans to don face masks as a means to begin returning the country to normalcy while the coronavirus remains a threat. “There’s no stigma attached to wearing a mask. There’s no stigma attached to staying six feet apart,” the Kentucky Republican said at an event back in his home state, referencing social distancing guidelines recommended to stem the transmission of the coronavirus. (Oprysko, 5/27)

The Washington Post Fact Checker: Trump Campaign Is Creating An Alternate Reality Online About Coronavirus
The Trump administration’s mishandling of key moments in the novel coronavirus outbreak has been well documented. Early travel restrictions from China and Europe were meant to buy time, but inaction or poor planning squandered much of the benefit. Delays in testing allowed the virus to spread across the country largely undetected. A shortage of personal protective equipment while cases surged overwhelmed hospitals and health-care workers. (Kelly and Samuels, 5/28)

The Wall Street Journal: Fauci Warns About Hydroxychloroquine And In-Person Party Conventions 
Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious-disease expert, said hydroxychloroquine isn’t an effective treatment for Covid-19 and urged caution as Republicans and Democrats plan their conventions for later this summer. Dr. Fauci’s comments Wednesday about hydroxychloroquine echo the findings of recent studies and countered President Trump’s frequent efforts to tout the antimalarial drug as a promising treatment for Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. (Restuccia, 5/27)

Politico: Fauci: Hydroxychloroquine Not Effective Against Coronavirus
He stopped short of calling for an outright ban of the drug, which President Trump said he was taking last week as a preventative measure after a top White House aide was diagnosed with the coronavirus. Fauci's comments come days after the Lancet published a 96,000-patient observational study that concluded that hydroxychloroquine had no effect on Covid-19 and may have even caused some harm. (Brennan, 5/27)

The Associated Press: Trump Continues To Claim Broad Powers He Doesn't Have
As he battles the coronavirus pandemic, President Donald Trump has been claiming extraordinarily sweeping powers that legal scholars say the president simply doesn’t have. And he has repeatedly refusing to spell out the legal basis for those powers.“ It’s not that the president does’t have a remarkable amount of power to respond to a public health crisis. It’s that these are not the powers he has,” said Stephen Vladeck, a University of Texas School of Law professor who specializes in constitutional and national security law. (Colvin, 5/28)

The Associated Press: Trump Threatens Twitter Over Fact Checks: What's Next?
Twitter has taken the unprecedented step of adding fact-check warnings to two of President Donald Trump’s tweets that falsely called mail-in ballots “substantially fraudulent” and predicted a “Rigged Election.” On Wednesday, the president threatened to impose new regulation on social media companies or even to “close them down.” But Twitter’s move and Trump’s reaction raise a host of questions, including why Twitter acted now, how it decides when to use such warnings and what its newly assumed role means for the 2020 U.S. presidential election. (Ortutay, 5/28)

The New York Times: Executive Order Is Expected To Curtail Protections For Social Media Companies
Such an order, which officials said was still being drafted and was subject to change, would make it easier for federal regulators to argue that companies like Facebook, Google, YouTube and Twitter are suppressing free speech when they move to suspend users or delete posts, among other examples. (Haberman and Conger, 5/28)

The New York Times: Where Coronavirus Help On Facebook Is ‘Inherently Political’
The three young idealists met before this all started, when the most pressing issues they faced were climate change, environmental justice and ensuring clean water for Detroit residents. They were all organizers of a sort: eager to do the unglamorous work of convincing people that they could dream bigger, and demand more from their government. They came from very different parts of a segregated region. Justin Onwenu, 23, lives in Detroit, where 79 percent of the population is black. Bridget Quinn, 35, and Lauren Schandevel, 23, are from the overwhelmingly white suburbs of Macomb County, just north of the city. (Medina, 5/28)

Politico: Bad State Data Hides Coronavirus Threat As Trump Pushes Reopening
Federal and state officials across the country have altered or hidden public health data crucial to tracking the coronavirus' spread, hindering the ability to detect a surge of infections as President Donald Trump pushes the nation to reopen rapidly. In at least a dozen states, health departments have inflated testing numbers or deflated death tallies by changing criteria for who counts as a coronavirus victim and what counts as a coronavirus test, according to reporting from POLITICO, other news outlets and the states' own admissions. (Tahir and Cancryn, 5/27)

The Hill: Health Officials Nervously Eye Emerging Hotspots
Public health officials are nervously eyeing cities that may become the next epicenters of the coronavirus pandemic as new models point to increased rates of transmission. The fact that restless Americans are now emerging from lockdowns to resume something approximating normal life is only exacerbating those concerns. While the number of new coronavirus cases is declining in New York, Seattle and other focal points of the first wave of cases, models are predicting that cases could skyrocket in the next two weeks in cities like Houston, Dallas, Nashville, Tenn., and Memphis, Tenn., creating new epicenters. (Wilson, 5/27)

The Associated Press: Tennessee To Halt Sharing COVID-19 Patient Data
Tennessee will soon stop providing the names and addresses of COVID-19 patients to first responders, after initially arguing that doing so would protect those on the front line. Gov. Bill Lee’s administration decided on the change this week, conceding that the data may have created a false sense of security to those responding to emergency calls. The data sharing will stop at the end of the month. (Kruesi, 5/27)

Reuters: Factbox: Where States Stand As U.S. Reaches 100,000 Coronavirus Deaths
Below are summaries of how the states and the District of Columbia are coming back from the economic slowdown they orchestrated to combat the pandemic, based on Reuters reporting, a Reuters tally of infections and deaths as of Wednesday, and data compiled by the National Governors Association. (Szekely, 5/27)

The Wall Street Journal: Gov. Cuomo Has ‘Good Conversation’ With Trump Over Federal Aid
“It was about: How do we supercharge the reopening?” Mr. Cuomo told reporters after the White House meeting. “It was a good conversation. The president is from New York so he has a context for all the things we’re talking about.” Every region of the Empire State except New York City has begun a limited restart of its economy, including nonessential manufacturing and construction projects and retail with curbside pickup. The Democratic governor lobbied Mr. Trump to expedite federal approvals for an expansion of the Second Avenue subway, in Manhattan, and for a train to LaGuardia Airport in Queens. (Vielkind, 5/27)

The Wall Street Journal: New York State Lawmakers Pass Coronavirus Relief Bills
Members of the state Assembly and Senate passed more than a dozen bills on Wednesday, including a measure giving victims of childhood sexual abuse more time to sue the responsible parties. Most of the legislation dealt with the new coronavirus crisis, and several bills codified parts of executive orders that Gov. Andrew Cuomo issued in response to the pandemic. Legislators haven’t convened for a session since April 3, when they approved the last pieces of the $178 billion state budget. (Vielkind, 5/27)

The New York Times: 10 Weeks Into New York Area’s Lockdown, Who Is Still Getting Sick?
New York City has been locked down and shut off for more than two months. On sidewalks and in stores, masked New Yorkers stand on pieces of tape six feet apart as they wait to enter, shop, and check out. The person who delivers your mail, your food and your industrial sized box of bleach wipes is wearing gloves. Compulsive hand washing is second nature. (Newman, 5/28)

The New York Times: As A Federal Coronavirus Expert Frets, The Capital Moves To Reopen
The leaders around the nation’s capital are pushing forward with plans to reopen the region, hoping they are close enough to their public health goals to move toward normalcy despite coronavirus infection rates that have alarmed federal officials. “I want to make sure we all understand that moving into Phase 1 means that more people can get infected,” Muriel E. Bowser, Washington’s mayor, said on Wednesday as she announced that parts of the city would begin to reopen on Friday. “It cannot be said enough: Every single one of us has a role to play.” (Steinhauer, 5/27)

The New York Times: Asserting Sovereignty, Indian Casinos Defy California’s Governor And Reopen
It was a high-stakes gamble: a chance to win big at the slot machines but risk getting infected with the coronavirus. Braving a cold drizzle last week, hundreds placed their bet, lining up for hours in front of the Viejas Casino and Resort, a glass-and-stone Indian casino east of San Diego that was reopening despite pleas from California’s governor, Gavin Newsom. Fleming Clark, 56, a former manager at a fast-food restaurant, displayed the dedication of many gamblers in line, driving hours to the casino despite health conditions that put him at higher risk of Covid-19 complications. (Fuller, 5/28)

The New York Times: As Meatpacking Plants Look To Reopen, Some Families Are Wary
On April 28, J. finished his shift at the Smithfield meat-processing plant in Crete, Neb., and drove to the local mobile testing site. (Worried about upsetting his employer, J. asked that we not use his name.) Two weeks earlier, he says, one of his co-workers tested positive for the coronavirus; not long after that, the person who worked directly next to him on the line had, too, so his daughter made an appointment for him to be tested. After having his nasal canal swabbed, J. went home to quarantine until further notice, using his two-week paid sick leave to do so. He wore a mask around the house and used his own set of dishes to protect his family from potential infection. As long as he didn’t develop any symptoms over those two weeks, he would be expected back at work. (Hughes, 5/27)

The New York Times: Coronavirus Epidemics Began Later Than Believed, Study Concludes
The first confirmed coronavirus infections in Europe and the United States, discovered in January, did not ignite the epidemics that followed, according to a close analysis of hundreds of viral genomes. Instead, the outbreaks plaguing much of the West began weeks later, the study concluded. The revised timeline may clarify nagging ambiguities about the arrival of the pandemic. For example, while President Trump has frequently claimed that a ban on travelers from China prevented the epidemic from becoming much worse, the new data suggest that the virus that started Washington State’s epidemic arrived roughly two weeks after the ban was imposed on Feb. 2. (Zimmer, 5/27)

The Washington Post: Will Coronavirus End? Covid-19 May Become Endemic And Last Years
There’s a good chance the coronavirus will never go away. Even after a vaccine is discovered and deployed, the coronavirus will likely remain for decades to come, circulating among the world’s population. Experts call such diseases endemic — stubbornly resisting efforts to stamp them out. Think measles, HIV, chickenpox. (Wan and Johnson, 5/27)

The New York Times: The World Is Still Far From Herd Immunity For Coronavirus
The coronavirus still has a long way to go. That’s the message from a crop of new studies across the world that are trying to quantify how many people have been infected. Official case counts often substantially underestimate the number of coronavirus infections. But even in results from a new set of studies that test the population more broadly to estimate everyone who has been infected, the percentage of people who have been infected so far is still in the single digits. (Popovich and Sanger-Katz, 5/28)

CNN: Confused By The Science Behind Covid-19? You're Not Alone 
Try out this riddle: If you could double over a piece of normal notebook paper 42 times, how thick would it be? The answer, though fanciful, illustrates just how hard it can be to understand exponential growth and doubling, two pieces of math that explain the spread of viruses like Covid-19. Because by the time you made the 42nd fold, your stack of paper would reach the moon. It's not just a handy fact for trivia night: It shows how exponential growth can result in numbers that are nearly incomprehensible. (Smith, 5/28)

The New York Times: What’s The Risk Of Catching Coronavirus From A Surface?
Fears about catching the coronavirus from contaminated surfaces have prompted many of us to spend the past few months wiping down groceries, leaving packages unopened and stressing about touching elevator buttons. But what’s the real risk of catching Covid-19 from a germy surface or object? The question has been on people’s minds lately, and there was some confusion after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made some edits to its website last week. (Parker-Pope, 5/28)

The Associated Press: History In The Making As House Casts Proxy Votes In Pandemic
It was a day for the history books on Capitol Hill: For the first time, House lawmakers voted by proxy, an unprecedented move to avoid the risks of travel to Washington during the pandemic. To mark Wednesday’s history-making moment, House Republicans sued to stop the Democratic majority’s new system, in which absent lawmakers can instruct those present to vote on their behalf. (Mascaro, 5/28)

Reuters: Republicans Cast Doubt On Future Of House Bills Passed By Proxy
Republicans warned on Wednesday that legislation passed by the Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives during the coronavirus pandemic may not become law if lawmakers are allowed to cast votes remotely under a new voting system. (5/27)

Politico: White House Bids For 'Surprise' Billing Fix Ahead Of Next Rescue Package
The White House is renewing a push to end “surprise” medical bills — possibly as part of the next coronavirus rescue package — in a bid to deliver on protecting insured patients from sometimes staggering costs of emergency or out-of-network care. Trump administration officials are floating a plan that would outlaw health care providers from putting patients on the hook for thousands of dollars in expenses — but without mandating how doctors and hospitals would recover their costs from insurers, according to administration officials, Capitol Hill aides and industry lobbyists familiar with discussions. (Luthi and Roubein, 5/27)

Politico: 'I Need The Food': Ag Department Food Box Program Beset By Delays
An event-planning company that received one of the largest federal contracts to provide produce, meat and dairy to hungry families has yet to deliver the much-needed boxes to food banks across the Southwest. The delay has stoked concerns about the Agriculture Department’s new $3 billion “Farmers to Families Food Box Program” — especially surrounding multimillion-dollar contracts awarded to several small firms with little experience in food distribution. (Bottemiller Evich and McCrimmon, 5/27)

The New York Times: Biden’s Testing Strategy Sets Up A Clear Contrast With Trump On The Coronavirus
Joseph R. Biden Jr. has proposed harnessing the broad powers of the federal government to step up coronavirus testing, with a public-private board overseeing test manufacturing and distribution, federal safety regulators enforcing testing at work and at least 100,000 contact tracers tracking down people exposed to the virus. The presumptive Democratic nominee’s plan, laid out in a little-noticed Medium post, stands in stark contrast to President Trump’s leave-it-to-the-states strategy, detailed in an 81-page document released over the weekend. And it presents voters in November with a classic philosophical choice over the role they want Washington to play during the worst public health crisis in a century. (Stolberg, 5/28)

The Washington Post: With Citizenship Ceremonies Postponed Due To Coronavirus, Hundreds Of Thousands Could Miss Chance To Vote In November
Hundreds of thousands of potential voters will be ineligible to cast ballots in November unless the Trump administration resumes citizenship ceremonies and clears a pandemic-related backlog of immigrants waiting to take the naturalization oath, according to rights groups and lawmakers from both parties. President Trump, who claims falsely that millions of immigrants vote illegally in U.S. elections, now has the ability to effectively deny a large number of foreign-born Americans from becoming legally eligible to register ahead of the next presidential election. (Miroff, 5/27)

The Associated Press: Will Mail-In Voting Turn Election Day Into Election Week?
A shift to mail voting is increasing the chances that Americans will not know the winner of November’s presidential race on election night, a scenario that is fueling worries about whether President Donald Trump will use the delay to sow doubts about the results. State election officials in some key battleground states have recently warned that it may take days to count what they expect will be a surge of ballots sent by mail out of concern for safety amid the pandemic. In an election as close as 2016′s, a delayed tally in key states could keep news organizations from calling a winner. (Riccardi, 5/27)

Reuters: New Wave Of U.S. Layoffs Feared As Coronavirus Pain Deepens
Job cuts by U.S. state and local governments whose budgets have been crushed fighting the COVID-19 pandemic and more second-wave layoffs in the private sector likely contributed last week to a 10th straight week of more than 2 million Americans seeking unemployment benefits. (Mutikani, 5/28)

The Associated Press: Huge Washington Unemployment Fraud Warning To Other States
The first word Seattle political consultant Dayna Lurie had that someone filed for unemployment benefits in her name was when her boss called. “Did you quit without telling me?” he asked. “We got an unemployment form from the state of Washington saying you don’t work here anymore.” It turned out that, like thousands of Washington state residents, Lurie’s identity was used by criminals seeking to capitalize on a flood of legitimate unemployment claims by sneaking in fraudulent ones. (Johnson, 5/27)

NPR: New Survey Finds Roughly Half Of Americans Plan To Get Coronavirus Vaccine
As the federal government, public health experts and scientists push toward a coronavirus vaccine, a new survey suggests only about half of Americans say they will get one when it becomes available. The poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds 49% of Americans overall say they plan to get a vaccination, while 31% of respondents say they are unsure if they will get vaccinated. The survey found 20% of respondents flat out said they will not. (Booker, 5/27)

Reuters: GSK Aims For 1 Billion Doses With COVID Vaccine Booster Plan
Britain’s GlaxoSmithKline (GSK.L) laid out plans on Thursday to produce 1 billion doses of vaccine efficacy boosters, or adjuvants, next year as the race to develop and produce a successful solution to the coronavirus crisis heats up. The world’s largest vaccine maker said it was in talks with governments to back a manufacturing expansion that would help to scale up production of future vaccines for COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. (5/28)

Stat: A Biotech Company Tries To Retrofit A Lung Drug For Covid-19 After Effects
As the world scrambles to find antiviral treatments and vaccines for the novel coronavirus, some scientists are looking ahead to a problem on the horizon: Many Covid-19 survivors will have long-term lung injuries, and medicine has little to offer them. There’s only scant data on how many patients who recover from Covid-19 are left with long-term fibrosis, or scarring of the lung. But studies on SARS and MERS, relatives of the novel coronavirus, suggest about 30% of patients had signs of fibrotic lung disease months after recovery. And, considering the novel coronavirus has already infected more than 5 million people worldwide, debilitating lung problems could become a global scourge. (Garde, 5/28)

Stat: Startup Spotlight: Going After Immune Regulators When They Cause Disease
Q32 Bio has two targets in its sights: the two arms of the immune system. The Cambridge, Mass., startup on Wednesday announced $46 million in Series A financing led by Atlas Venture, and disclosed it aims to address problems with both innate immunity, the body’s initial response to an invader, and adaptive immunity, which develops antibodies to the foreign interloper. (Cooney, 5/27)

Stat: San Francisco Testing Blitz Shows Covid-19 Hit Mostly Low-Wage Workers
Early in the coronavirus outbreak, as the first infected patients trickled into Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, Diane Havlir noticed a troubling trend. Most were Latinx, most were men, and most were young. The infectious disease specialist wanted to understand why — and what it meant about how this new virus was traveling through her city. (McFarling, 5/28)

Stat: Experts Decry FDA's Decision To Halt Seattle Covid-19 Study Over Approvals
Regulators at the Food and Drug Administration told STAT the agency’s decision this month to halt a high-profile, Bill Gates-backed effort to study the spread of coronavirus in the Seattle area came after the researchers involved failed to secure needed approval. The program, called the Seattle Coronavirus Assessment Network, or SCAN, was initially focused on studying the flu but quickly pivoted to track the coronavirus at the outset of the pandemic, making inroads in tracking the spread of the virus and attracting high-profile support from companies like shipping giant Amazon, whose health care arm picked up and delivered Covid-19 tests to healthy and infected people. But the FDA stopped the effort suddenly last week, the New York Times reported. (Brodwin, 5/27)

Stat: Wastewater Testing Gains Support As Early Warning For Covid-19 
What only a month ago had been merely an intriguing laboratory finding about analyzing wastewater to detect the virus that causes Covid-19 has quickly leapt to the threshold of real-world use. With swab tests still plagued by capacity issues, inaccuracy, and slow turnaround, testing wastewater for the novel coronavirus’ genetic signature could give communities a faster way to spot a rebound in cases — as soon as this fall. (Begley, 5/28)

Roll Call: Drug Overdoses Climb During COVID-19 Pandemic
Drug overdoses have risen in some areas during the COVID-19 pandemic, less than a year after the Trump administration touted decreases in the nation’s overdose epidemic. From Memphis to Milwaukee, a range of cities and counties across the country are reporting spikes in fatal and nonfatal overdoses. Last year, Trump administration officials highlighted progress toward curbing the U.S. overdose crisis of the last decade. (Raman, 5/27)

NPR: Federal Government Approves Methadone Deliveries During Pandemic
New York City launched a methadone delivery program last month so that patients won't have to leave home during the pandemic to get their next dose. Methadone, a highly regulated medication for opioid addiction, has to be taken every day, otherwise patients risk a painful withdrawal. Normally, methadone has to be picked up from a treatment center. But now, the federal government says patients in quarantine can get their methadone delivered to them, if they follow security protocols. (Reingold, 5/27)

The New York Times: Experts Fear Increase In Postpartum Mood And Anxiety Disorders 
After going through a harrowing bout of postpartum depression with her first child, my patient, Emily, had done everything possible to prepare for the postpartum period with her second. She stayed in treatment with me, her perinatal psychiatrist, and together we made the decision for her to continue Zoloft during her pregnancy. With the combination of medication, psychotherapy and a significant amount of planning, she was feeling confident about her delivery in April. And then, the coronavirus hit. (Lakshmin, 5/27)