The New York Times: This Is The Future Of The Pandemic
By now we know — contrary to false predictions — that the novel coronavirus will be with us for a rather long time. “Exactly how long remains to be seen,” said Marc Lipsitch, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “It’s going to be a matter of managing it over months to a couple of years. It’s not a matter of getting past the peak, as some people seem to believe.” (Roberts, 5/8)

Stat: Coronavirus In The U.S.: A High Plateau Of Cases Portends More Spread
For all the talk of a second wave of coronavirus cases hitting the United States this fall, one consideration is often lost: The country is still in the throes of the first wave of this pandemic. Even as roughly half of states start to peek out from under their lockdowns, the United States confirmed more than 25,000 new Covid-19 infections nearly every day in April, a clip that does not seem to be dropping in May, according to STAT’s Covid-19 Tracker. More than 1,000 people have died each day since April 2. On some days, including both Tuesday and Wednesday this week, the toll topped 2,000. (Joseph, 5/7)

Reuters: U.S. Coronavirus Deaths Exceed 75,000: Reuters Tally
U.S. deaths from the novel coronavirus topped 75,000 deaths on Thursday, according to a Reuters tally, after the White House shelved a step-by-step guide prepared by health officials to help states safely reopen. Deaths in the United States, the epicenter of the global pandemic, have averaged 2,000 a day since mid-April despite efforts to slow the outbreak. The death toll is higher than any fatalities from the seasonal flu going back to 1967 and represents more U.S. deaths than during the first 10 years of the AIDS epidemic, from 1981 to 1991. (Shumaker, 5/7)

The Wall Street Journal: Global Coronavirus Deaths Near 270,000 As Some Restrictions Loosen
Coronavirus-related restrictions are set to loosen further in parts of the U.S., while some countries are ramping up reopening plans, as the global death toll from the pandemic nears 270,000. The total number of cases world-wide rose to nearly 3.85 million Friday, with about a third of those in the U.S., according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The U.S. death toll, the highest in the world, stood at more than 75,000, according to Johns Hopkins. (Craymer, 5/8)

The Associated Press: Experts Worry CDC Is Sidelined In Coronavirus Response
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has repeatedly found its suggestions for fighting the coronavirus outbreak taking a backseat to other concerns within the Trump administration. That leaves public health experts outside government fearing the agency’s decades of experience in beating back disease threats are going to waste. “You have the greatest fighting force against infectious diseases in world history. Why would you not use them?” said Dr. Howard Markel, a public health historian at the University of Michigan. (Stobbe, Dearen and Miller, 5/8)

The Washington Post: Trump Tightens Grip On Coronavirus Information As He Pushes To Restart The Economy
President Trump in recent weeks has sought to block or downplay information about the severity of the coronavirus pandemic as he urges a return to normalcy and the rekindling of an economy that has been devastated by public health restrictions aimed at mitigating the outbreak. His administration has sidelined or replaced officials not seen as loyal, rebuffed congressional requests for testimony, dismissed jarring statistics and models, praised states for reopening without meeting White House guidelines and, briefly, pushed to disband a task force created to combat the virus and communicate about the public health crisis. (Olorunnipa, 5/7)

The New York Times: Trump Blocks C.D.C.'s Coronavirus Reopening Guidelines
As President Trump rushes to reopen the economy, a battle has erupted between the White House and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over the agency’s detailed guidelines to help schools, restaurants, churches and other establishments safely reopen. A copy of the C.D.C. guidance obtained by The New York Times includes sections for child care programs, schools and day camps, churches and other “communities of faith,” employers with vulnerable workers, restaurants and bars, and mass transit administrators. (Goodnough and Haberman, 5/7)

Politico: White House Says It Ordered CDC To Revise Reopening Guidelines
The White House has ordered the CDC to revise a guide to reopening public places amid the coronavirus pandemic because it didn't align with President Donald Trump’s strategy of giving states the final say, according to a spokesperson. The agency's draft guidance was “too prescriptive,” the White House spokesperson said, adding it amounted to “counter messaging” as the administration pushes governors to come up with their own plans for restarting businesses, schools, churches and other institutions. (Ehley, 5/7)

NPR: Trump Task Force Said CDC Rules For Reopening Were Too Rigid
President Trump has said he wants to see the country begin to reopen. The pandemic crashed the economy by keeping people at home, leading to millions of job losses. The White House task force issued guidelines on how to gradually and safely reopen but left decisions up to governors based on conditions in their states. (Ordonez and Wise, 5/7)

ABC News: Trump White House Won't Issue Detailed CDC Guidelines For States, Businesses On Reopening
A task force official defended the decision, saying that "overly specific instructions" beyond the already-issued guidelines on a phased reopening would be counterproductive and noted that the onus is on the states to make case-by-case decisions they see as best for their community. "On April 16, President Trump released guidelines for opening America up again. Those guidelines made clear that each State should open up in a safe and responsible way based on the data and response efforts in those individual states. Issuing overly specific instructions for how various types of businesses open up would be overly prescriptive and broad for the various circumstances States are experiencing throughout the country," a task force official said. (Phelps and Faulders, 5/7)

NPR: CDC Guidance Lays Out Plans For Reopening Schools, Day Care And Summer Camps
The CDC does not have authority to enforce its guidance, which is intended for public information only; the actual policy decisions are up to state and local governments. Schools are closed through the end of the school year throughout much of the country, with the exception of Montana, which welcomed a handful of students back this week. Child care protocols are different in different states. (Kamenetz, 5/7)

The Hill: Guidelines Drafted By CDC Were Rejected By Trump Administration Citing Religious Freedom, Economic Concerns: Report 
The public health agency also recommends against the "sharing of frequently touched objects" such as worship aids, hymnals, prayer books, bulletins and other books, among other suggestions. (Moreno, 5/7)

The Hill: Trump Meets Harsh Reality With Coronavirus Threat
President Trump’s flirtation with disbanding the White House coronavirus task force is just the latest reflection of his eagerness to put the coronavirus pandemic behind him and turn his focus to the economy. Yet Trump’s eagerness to move on keeps running into reality. The idea of disbanding the coronavirus task force was quickly abandoned; Trump said he got calls from “very respected people” who said it would be better to keep it open. (Chalfant and Samuels, 5/7)

The New York Times: White House Rattled By A Military Aide’s Positive Coronavirus Test
President Trump said on Thursday that the White House staff would be tested every day for the coronavirus after a military aide who has had contact with him was found to have the virus. Asked by reporters about the aide, whom a senior administration official described as a personal valet to the president, Mr. Trump downplayed the matter. “I’ve had very little contact, personal contact, with this gentleman,” he said. But he added that he and other officials and staff members at the White House would be tested more frequently. (Crowley and Shear, 5/7)

Reuters: Trump, Pence Test Negative After White House Valet Contracts Coronavirus 
During a meeting with the governor of Texas in the Oval Office on Thursday, Trump told reporters he had little contact with the man and would be tested daily going forward. Neither Trump nor Pence wore masks during the meeting. (Holland and Mason, 5/7)

The Associated Press: Trump Valet Has Coronavirus; President Again Tests Negative
Trump, 73, said the incident was a bit concerning. “It’s a little bit strange but it’s one of those things,” he told reporters as he hosted Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in the Oval Office. “As I said, you know, I said yesterday, governor, all people are warriors in this country. Right now we’re all warriors.” White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said in a statement, “We were recently notified by the White House Medical Unit that a member of the United States Military, who works on the White House campus, has tested positive for Coronavirus.” (Miller, 5/7)

The Washington Post: Trump Valet Tests Positive For Coronavirus, Sparking Fear Of West Wing Spread
The infected staffer is one of Trump’s personal valets, the military staff members who sometimes serve meals and look after personal needs of the president. That would mean the president, Secret Service personnel and senior members of the White House staff could have had close or prolonged contact with the aide before the illness was diagnosed. (Gearan, Dawsey and Leonnig, 5/7)

The Hill: Military Official Who Serves As Trump Valet Tests Positive For Coronavirus
The valet is the second known individual who works at the White House to test positive for the virus, which health officials have warned is highly transmissible. A staffer in Vice President Pence's office tested positive for the virus in March. (Samuels, 5/7)

Reuters: Whistleblower Offers Window Into HHS’s Flawed COVID-19 Response
A new whistleblower complaint has drawn attention for its allegations that the Trump administration retaliated against a scientist who sent early coronavirus warnings. The case also provides an insider account of the dysfunction critics say paralyzed the Department of Health and Human Services at the dawn of the COVID-19 response. (Roston and Taylor, 5/7)

Kaiser Health News: KHN’s ‘What The Health?’: Blowing The Whistle On Trump Team’s COVID Policies
Those working inside the Trump administration are getting so frustrated with the response to the COVID-19 pandemic that they are going public. Named and unnamed whistleblowers — including one of the government’s top vaccine experts who was ousted from his job ―are out with stories of political favoritism, workers with no government experience overruling those who have done their jobs for decades, and an underlying disdain for science. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is hearing cases by telephone, including one this week that would give employers the broad ability to decline to offer no-cost birth control to women, a benefit guaranteed under the Affordable Care Act. (5/7)

Politico: Melinda Gates Gives Trump Administration 'D-Minus' For Coronavirus Response
Melinda Gates on Thursday gave the Trump administration low marks for its handling of the coronavirus pandemic, adding that more money is needed for testing and vaccine development in the United States and across the world. Gates — co-chairman of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has donated billions of dollars to health research — gave the administration a “D-minus” grade for its handling of the outbreak, citing a lack of a coordinated, national response. (Ward, 5/7)

The Washington Post: China, U.S. Stand By Trump Trade Deal As Coronavirus Pushes Relations To Worst In Decades
U.S. and Chinese economic officials struck a conciliatory tone during a call on Friday as they discussed the prospects of China fulfilling a Phase 1 trade deal that President Trump has threatened to scrap in the coming days as bilateral relations fray. Although the Chinese representative, Vice Premier Liu He, stopped short of guaranteeing that China will fulfill its promise to buy an additional $200 billion in U.S. products, both he and U.S. officials agreed to “strengthen cooperation on the macroeconomy and public health and create favorable conditions for implementing the Phase 1 deal,” according to a Chinese statement. (Shih, 5/8)

The Hill: Nurses Protest For PPE Outside White House: 'You Throw Us To The Wolves'
Nurses protested outside the White House on Thursday over a lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) for health care workers on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic. Nurses with the union National Nurses United stood outside the White House alongside pairs of empty shoes lined up to represent the nurses who died due to “insufficient PPE” during the COVID-19 pandemic. (Klar, 5/7)

The New York Times: F.D.A. Paves Way For Home Testing Of Coronavirus
In a move that could significantly expand the nation’s testing capacity, the Food and Drug Administration has posted new guidelines that could pave the way for millions of people to test themselves for the coronavirus at home. The guidelines allow companies to develop and market testing kits with the tools to swab their noses and mail the specimens to any lab in the country. (Jacobs, 5/7)

The Washington Post: FDA Gives Emergency Authorization For CRISPR-Based Diagnostic Tool For Coronavirus
The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved a new diagnostic tool that employs the revolutionary CRISPR gene-editing technology to determine in just one hour if someone is infected with the novel coronavirus. The FDA’s emergency use authorization allows only “high-complexity” laboratories to use the test kit, developed by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, the Ragon Institute and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and marketed by Sherlock Biosciences of Cambridge, Mass. (Achenbach and McGinley, 5/7)

Boston Globe: Cambridge Biotech’s Virus Test Using CRISPR Gene Editing OK’d For Crisis
A Cambridge biotech startup received emergency clearance Thursday for a faster and radically different laboratory test to diagnose COVID-19, a kit the company says can give results within an hour. The Food and Drug Administration provided an “emergency use authorization” for the test made by Sherlock Biosciences. It relies on the revolutionary genome-editing tool CRISPR, which edits DNA and has the potential to treat a vast array of diseases but had yet to win FDA approval for any product. The tool was repurposed to create a diagnostic test. (Saltzman, 5/7)

Stat: Could The Porn Industry Offer A Model For Reopening Amid Covid-19? 
As states and employers furiously develop plans to safely reopen workplaces in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, they’re grappling with what seems like an endless list of questions: where to test, who to test, and how often to test for the virus? Further complicating matters are issues of workers’ privacy, geography, politics, science, and cost. It’s a difficult mandate. But there is one place to look for guidance — the adult film industry. (McFarling, 5/8)

CNN: Coronavirus: Rollout Of Antibody Tests Met With Confusion, Little Oversight
Public health experts, including members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, have argued accurate Covid-19 antibody tests can support efforts to get Americans back to work by determining who may have overcome the virus. But the rollout of millions of antibody tests in the US has created frustration and division among state health departments due to a mix of questionable tests, shifting federal rules and a hodgepodge of different methods for tracking results. (Devine, Bronstein and Griffin, 5/7)

Kaiser Health News: Trying Out LA’s New Coronavirus Testing Regime
Last week, after Mayor Eric Garcetti announced that Los Angeles was offering COVID-19 tests to all city and county residents, I decided to get one myself — and test Garcetti’s bold new promise in the bargain. I was surprised how easily I was able to log on to L.A.’s testing website. I answered a few questions about myself, including whether I had any symptoms of the disease — the answer was no — and within three minutes, I had a same-day appointment at one of eight city-run testing sites. (Wolfson, 5/8)

San Francisco Chronicle: California Clinics, Counties Get $97 Million From Feds To Expand Testing 
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has awarded $97.3 million to 179 California health centers to expand coronavirus testing in low-income communities, the federal agency said Thursday. The grants are part of $583 million the federal government is distributing to 1,385 health centers that receive funding from the Health Resources and Services Administration, a unit of HHS that seeks to improve health care access for uninsured and vulnerable Americans. The money comes from the federal Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act, which provides funding for small businesses hurt by the pandemic and economic support for health care providers and testing efforts. (Ho, 5/7)

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Governor Urges All Georgians To Get Testing For Coronavirus
Gov. Brian Kemp urged all Georgians to schedule an appointment for coronavirus screening regardless of whether they have symptoms, as the state continues to expand testing for the disease even as the rapid growth has exposed new strains. With the state no longer facing crippling shortages of key supplies, Kemp said Thursday that the capacity for testing now outstrips the public’s demand in the weeks after he began to reopen parts of the economy. That has stressed area labs, however, struggling to keep up with record numbers of tests. (Bluestein and Hallerman, 5/7)

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Ga. Heath Centers To Receive More Than $12.2 Million For COVID Testing
Nearly three dozen health centers in Georgia will share more than $12.2 million in federal dollars to expand testing for COVID-19. This infusion of funding is part of nearly $583 million awarded across the U.S. and its territories by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to boost testing capacity. The money is going to centers funded by its Health Resources and Services Administration, which provide health care services to populations that have limited access to health care services. (Mariano, 5/7)

Boston Globe: Maine To Triple Testing Capacity For Coronavirus
Maine Governor Janet Mills announced a partnership with IDEXX Laboratories, a local manufacturer, which will allow the state to more than triple its testing capacity in the coming weeks and remove testing criteria for those who believe they may have the virus. The public-private partnership will introduce a new diagnostic testing system to the state’s health department and bolster the state’s testing 2,000 tests per week to 7,000 tests per week “for the foreseeable future,” Mills said at a press conference Thursday afternoon. IDEXX is also lending 3,500 test kits to the state’s health department. (Berg, 5/7)

The Associated Press: Jobless Rate Spikes To 14.7%, Highest Since Great Depression
The U.S. unemployment rate hit 14.7% in April, the highest rate since the Great Depression, as 20.5 million jobs vanished in the worst monthly loss on record. The figures are stark evidence of the damage the coronavirus has done to a now-shattered economy. The losses reflect what has become a severe recession caused by sudden business shutdowns in nearly every industry. Almost all the job growth achieved during the 11-year recovery from the Great Recession has now been lost in one month. (Rugaber, 5/8)

CNBC: A record 20.5 million jobs were lost in April as unemployment rate jumps to 14.7%
A more encompassing measure that includes those not looking for work as well as those holding part-time jobs for economic reasons also hit an all-time high of 22.8%. That reading may be a more accurate picture of the current jobs situation as millions of workers are being paid to stay home and thus not willing or able to look for new jobs. The jump in the “real” unemployment rate reflected a plunge in the labor participation rate to 60.7%, its lowest level since 1973. (Cox, 5/8)

Reuters: Coronavirus Deals U.S. Job Losses Of 20.5 Million, Historic Unemployment Rate In April
The bleak numbers strengthen analysts’ expectations of a slow recovery from the recession caused by the pandemic, adding to a pile of dismal data on consumer spending, business investment, trade, productivity and the housing market. The report underscores the devastation unleashed by lockdowns imposed by states and local governments in mid-March to slow the spread of COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the virus. (Mutikani, 5/8)

The Wall Street Journal: April Unemployment Rate Rose To A Record 14.7%
The job losses and high unemployment mark a sharp pivot from just a few months ago, when the economy was pumping out hundreds of thousands of new jobs, and joblessness was hovering near 50-year lows. The jobs bust has been widespread. Friday’s jobs report will show the extent to which the economic pain has hit services and other lower-wage jobs, and white-collar jobs in business services, including lawyers, architects and consultants. (Chaney and Morath, 5/8)

CNN: Record 20.5 million American jobs lost in April. Unemployment rate soars to 14.7%
Those losses follow steep cutbacks in March as well, when employers slashed 870,000 jobs. Those two months amount to layoffs so severe, they moire than double the 8.7 million jobs lost during the financial crisis. For many Americans who lost their jobs and their homes in the 2008 financial crisis, this moment reopens old wounds. It took years to rebound from those setbacks. When the economy eventually did crawl back, US employers added 22.8 million jobs over 10 years — a victory for all those who had weathered the Great Recession. (Tappe, 5/8)

Bloomberg: U.S. Jobless Rate Triples to 14.7% in Sharpest Labor Downturn
April’s losses erase roughly all of the jobs that the economy had added in this past decade’s expansion and lay bare just how precarious employment is for vast swaths of Americans. With a steep recession now in progress, the destruction of jobs heaps election-year pressure on President Donald Trump to restart the economy and show results by November. (Dmitrieva, 5/8)

MarketWatch: Coronavirus Costs The U.S. 20.5 Million Jobs In April As Unemployment Soars To 14.7%
In seven weeks since the virus shut down much of the U.S. economy, more than 33 million people have applied for unemployment benefits. The numbers are still growing by several million a week. A smattering of people have been returning to work in dribs and drabs over the past few weeks as states slowly reopen their economies, but not enough to put an appreciable dent in record unemployment. (Bartash, 5/8)

The Washington Post: U.S. Unemployment Rate Hits ‘Scary’ 14.7 Percent, The Worst Since The Depression Era
The sudden economic contraction has forced millions of Americans to turn to food banks and seek government aid for the first time or stop paying rent and other bills. As they go without paychecks for weeks, some have also lost health insurance and even put their homes up for sale. “This is pretty scary,” said Lindsey Piegza, chief economist at Stifel. “I’m fearful many of these jobs are not going to come back and we are going to have an unemployment rate well into 2021 of near 10 percent.” (Long, 5/8)

The New York Times: The Jobs Report Friday Will Be A Portrait Of Devastation
Just how bad are the April employment figures going to be? We know they will be awful. After all, the number of people filing new claims for unemployment insurance was in the millions for the seventh straight week last week, the Labor Department announced Thursday. But it is the monthly jobs report — showing job creation or losses, and the unemployment rate — that investors and the news media generally scrutinize for evidence of how the economy is evolving. (Irwin, 5/7)

Reuters: Explainer: Why Friday's U.S. Jobless Figures Won't Capture The True State Of The Coronavirus Economy
The U.S. economy has never lost more than 2 million jobs in a single month. And although the unemployment rate reached 25% in 1933, it got there much more slowly. But even these grim estimates, from economists polled by Reuters in recent weeks, don’t capture the staggering impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the workforce in the world’s largest economy. The unemployment rate is part of a monthly report from the federal government’s Labor Department, showing how many people don’t have jobs as a percentage of the overall American workforce. (Saphir, 5/8)

Politico: When Will All The Jobs Return?
The U.S. economy is sitting in its deepest hole since the Great Depression, with more than 33 million Americans losing their jobs in just seven weeks and an unemployment rate likely to top 20 percent this year under the weight of the coronavirus pandemic. And it’s likely to take years — perhaps much of the next decade — to dig out. (White, 5/8)

The New York Times: An 8-Week Odyssey Through The State Bureaucracy To Collect Unemployment
Seven weeks after she filed for unemployment benefits, Nadine Josephs was running out of money. The birthdays of her two teenage children loomed, and she was spending her days pleading for forbearance on overdue bills. Holed up in her apartment in the East New York, Brooklyn, Ms. Josephs, 46, had grown increasingly frustrated since she filed her claim on March 16. And she was tired of hearing assurances from Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to the thousands of desperate New Yorkers like her that the checks would be in the mail. (McGeehan, 5/8)

PBS NewsHour: Economic Damage From The Pandemic Spreads To All Corners Of The Country 
More than 33 million Americans have lost their jobs since the COVID-19 pandemic began -- including 3.2 million in just the past week. Oceanside shops and restaurants that usually draw tourists at this time of year are deserted, forcing layoffs. But major national retailers are also affected by the economic collapse, with Neiman Marcus and J.Crew filing for bankruptcy. (Brangham, 5/7)

WBUR: Economist Gene Sperling Says US Needs To Improve 'Economic Dignity' For All Workers 
The 33 million unemployment claims paint a picture of a U.S. economy devastated by the coronavirus pandemic. But those numbers don’t give us the most important measure, says economist Gene Sperling, former economic adviser to presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. (Hobson, 5/7)

The Wall Street Journal: House Democrats Close In On New Stimulus Proposal
House Democrats are putting the finishing touches on their next legislative response to the coronavirus pandemic, a package that will propose another massive round of aid just as President Trump and Senate Republicans are urging caution on quickly passing new spending. The bill being drafted by Democratic leadership is expected to include more than $750 billion in aid to state and local governments, as well as another round of direct support to Americans, according to interviews with lawmakers and aides. Leaders also say they are interested in extending enhanced unemployment benefits, but haven’t provided specifics. (Andrews, 5/7)

Politico: Pelosi To Lay Down Multitrillion-Dollar Marker With New Coronavirus Package
Pelosi had hoped to release the draft bill — which some Democrats worry could cost upward of $2 trillion — on Friday. But that timeline is slipping as members from all corners of the caucus pressure leadership to stuff the ballooning bill with their priorities, many of which were left out of the previous four aid packages negotiated with Republicans. Senior Democratic aides said Pelosi and the committees will be working through the weekend on the package. (Caygle, Ferris and Bresnahan, 5/7)

The Associated Press: Dems Eye Money For Smaller Cities, Towns In Next Virus Bill
Eyeing a major expansion of federal assistance, top Democrats are promising that small- to medium-sized cities and counties and small towns that were left out of four prior coronavirus bills will receive hundreds of billions of dollars in the next one. Those cities and counties, where the coronavirus has crippled Main Street and caused local tax revenues to plummet, are pushing hard for relief in the next rescue measure to avert cuts in services and layoffs of workers. (Taylor, 5/8)

Los Angeles Times: House Democrats Move To Pass Coronavirus Bill Without GOP
Democrats are putting together a bill focused on new spending for localities, individuals and testing — knowing that they will eventually have to negotiate with Republicans to get legislation through the Senate. “We have to start someplace. Rather than starting in a way that does not meet the needs of the American people, you want to set a standard,” Pelosi told reporters in the Capitol on Thursday. “We need a presidential signature, so at some point we’ll have to get an agreement.” (Haberkorn, 5/7)

The Hill: Schumer, Pelosi Set To Unveil 'Rooseveltian' Relief Package 
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Thursday that he and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) will soon unveil a coronavirus relief package that he described as “Rooseveltian” in its scope and size. “We need big, bold action," Schumer said in an MSNBC interview with Stephanie Ruhle, adding that he and Pelosi "are working very closely together on putting together a very strong plan, which you will hear shortly.” “We need Franklin Rooseveltian-type action and we hope to take that in the House and Senate in a very big and bold way,” he added. (Bolton, 5/7)

Politico: Democratic Senators Propose $2,000 Monthly Payments To Most Americans
A trio of Democratic senators are pitching a big idea: pay most American families thousands of dollars each month until the coronavirus’s economic crisis subsides. On Friday, Sens. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.) will release their Monthly Economic Crisis Support Act. It would dramatically expand upon the $1,200 sent to Americans as part of March’s gargantuan coronavirus response bill. (Everett, 5/8)

CNN: Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris And Ed Markey Team Up To Propose Monthly Payments During Pandemic 
The bill has a tall hill to climb in the Republican-controlled senate as few GOP lawmakers have voiced support for continued monthly payments. The one-time payment of $1,200, which was what passed in the Cares Act in late March, was a sticking point at the time. In addition to being more expensive and on a recurring basis, these payments would be available to US residents no matter if they have a social security number, which includes undocumented immigrants who pay taxes but don't have a SSN. (Wright and Grayer, 5/8)

The New York Times: G.O.P. Coronavirus Message: Economic Crisis Is A Green New Deal Preview
The coronavirus and the struggle to contain it has tanked the economy, shuttered thousands of businesses and thrown more than 30 million people out of work. As President Trump struggles for a political response, Republicans and their allies have seized on an answer: attacking climate change policies. “If You Like the Pandemic Lockdown, You’re Going to Love the Green New Deal,” the conservative Washington Examiner said in the headline of a recent editorial. Elizabeth Harrington, spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, wrote in an opinion article in The Hill that Democrats “think a pandemic is the perfect opportunity to kill millions more jobs” with carbon-cutting plans. (Friedman, 5/7)

Elsewhere on Capitol Hill —

The Hill: Pelosi Calls For Federal Standard To Reopen Country 
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Thursday called for the Trump administration to adopt a set of national, science-based standards for reopening the country following weeks of economic lockdown triggered by the deadly coronavirus. "I do think there should be federal standards, and I think that they should set an example," Pelosi told a small group of masked reporters in the Capitol. (Lillis, 5/7)

The Hill: GOP Lawmakers Press Trump To Suspend Visas Over Coronavirus Job Losses 
Four GOP senators are urging President Trump to suspend immigration for guest workers as the U.S. economy struggles to recover from the coronavirus outbreak. Politico first reported a letter from Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) calling on Trump to suspend guest worker visas for 60 days and prevent some workers from returning to the U.S. for up to a year. (Bowden, 5/7)

The Hill: House Subcommittee Says Trump Administration Did Not Adequately Screen Travelers From Italy, South Korea For COVID-19 
A House committee probe found that the Trump administration failed to adequately screen travelers from Italy and South Korea in early March after both countries showed earlier outbreaks of the coronavirus. “This investigation reveals another opportunity the administration missed to limit the impact of coronavirus,” said Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), chairman of the House Oversight Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy. (Moreno, 5/7)

Reuters: Exclusive: U.S. Companies Got Emergency Government Loans Despite Having Months Of Cash
When American companies recently applied for U.S. government loans meant to help small businesses survive the coronavirus crisis, they had to certify they needed the cash to cover basic needs like salaries and rent. The money, up to $10 million, was meant to tide them over for eight weeks. (Franklin and Delevigne, 5/7)

Politico: 'It’s Going To Be A Big, Gigantic, Gargantuan Fight'
Lobbyists who hustled to get their clients’ priorities into the $2.1 trillion coronavirus relief package in March are angling for a piece of the action on the next —and possibly last — multitrillion-dollar bill. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and other powerful trade groups are working to persuade lawmakers to make it harder for workers and customers sickened by the virus to sue businesses in an effort that’s already divided lawmakers. (Meyer, 5/8)

ABC News: For Some Americans, Stimulus Checks Are A Chance To Give Back
For Tony Lupa, a retired machinist from Trumansburg, New York, a $1,200 stimulus check represented an opportunity -- not for himself, but to give back. "I'm on a fixed income, I wasn't affected financially by what's going on, and I thought, well, I just want to show my appreciation to the nurses and also try to help out," Lupa said. He came up with an idea. He'd buy gift certificates from three local businesses to help keep them afloat during the shutdown and give those gift certificates to a group of health care workers from Cayuga Medical Center who traveled to New York-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City to provide extra help as coronavirus cases escalated. "And that way, I would help out two ways, instead of one," Tony said. (Kolinovsky, 5/8)

Reuters: Trump Considering More Coronavirus Economic Relief Measures
President Donald Trump said on Thursday his administration was considering further economic measures, possibly via executive orders, to provide help against the economic fallout from the novel coronavirus pandemic. In remarks to reporters at the White House, Trump appeared to confirm the possibility of further postponement of the deadline for filing 2019 federal income tax returns, already extended by three months to July 15. (5/7)

Reuters: The Great Potato Giveaway: U.S. Farmers Hand Out Spuds To Avoid Food Waste 
When Tina Yates pulled her truck up to a mall in western Washington state on Thursday, workers waved her past hundreds of cars waiting to pick up free russet potatoes. (Ryder and Walljasper, 5/7)

The Wall Street Journal: Businesses Struggle To Lure Workers Away From Unemployment
Businesses looking for a quick return to normal are running into a big hitch: Workers on unemployment benefits are reluctant to give them up. That’s complicating plans to reopen states and get the U.S. economy back on track. For some workers, unemployment benefits are now paying more than their old jobs did. For others, safety concerns or a lack of child care, as most schools and day-care centers remain closed, are making them hesitant to go back. (Maher, 5/8)

Reuters: 'The Government Is Failing Us': Laid-Off Americans Struggle In Coronavirus Crisis
While U.S. government guidelines say jobless workers who qualify for assistance should get payments within three weeks of applying, many — like Alejandra — are waiting twice that long. Increasingly desperate, some are lining up at food banks or bargaining with landlords to postpone bills. Most fill their days seeking answers from overwhelmed state bureaucracies. Alejandra has not heard anything from the state — though she has gotten a fundraising email from Republican Senator Rick Scott, who set up the current unemployment system during his tenure as governor. (Sullivan and Brooks, 5/7)

ABC News: The COVID-19 Effects Hospitals Didn't Foresee: Financial Distress 
Dr. Bill O'Callahan, an emergency physician, rested his elbows on his desk, his head in his hands. Despite his whirlwind thoughts -- a recent COVID-19 patient with failing lungs, a 30% pay cut, the dangers he faced on a daily basis -- he still counted himself among the fortunate. He was healthy, and he still had a job -- for now. (Anoruo, 5/7)

NPR: Hospitals Lose Money During Pandemic; Healthcare Workers Face Layoffs, Cut Hours
Michelle Sweeney could barely sleep. The nurse in Plymouth, Mass., had just learned she would be furloughed. She only had four hours the next day to call all of her patients. "I was in a panic state. I was sick over it," Sweeney said. "Our patients are the frailest, sickest group."Sweeney works for Atrius Health as a case manager for patients with chronic health conditions and those who have been discharged from the hospital or emergency room. (Fadel, Stone, Anderson and Benincasa, 5/8)

Modern Healthcare: Hospitals Ask Federal Court To Toss Rule On Negotiated Rates
Hospitals on Thursday pushed a federal judge to throw out a rule that would force them to disclose the prices they negotiate with commercial health insurers, saying that Congress didn't give HHS the power to do it. Lawmakers only allowed the federal government to make hospitals post a list of so-called "standard charges" and the rates they charge for diagnostic-related groups, argued Cate Stetson, an attorney for Hogan Lovells representing hospitals, during a telephonic hearing before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. (Brady, 5/7)

Modern Healthcare: Which Hospitals Received The Biggest CARES Grants?
HHS has released preliminary data about how the department distributed grant funds Congress set aside to help providers offset lost revenue and COVID-19-related costs. The disclosure only includes providers who have already accepted terms and conditions for the first $50 billion general grant distribution from the $175 billion provider relief fund created in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act. (Cohrs, 5/7)

ABC News: COVID-19 Is Exposing Cracks In The US Health System, Experts Say 
Dr. Mary Bassett addressed an audience in Boston last October. "This epidemic is complicated, and like all epidemics, it tracks along fissures in our society,” Bassett, a professor at Harvard's public health school, told the crowd. Bassett was talking about the opioid crisis, but her turn of phrase was prescient. She just as easily could have been referring to the COVID-19 epidemic, for which the United States has emerged as the epicenter, making up a third of the world's infections and a quarter of its deaths by May. (Schumaker, 5/8)

NPR: U.S. Field Hospitals Stand Down, Most Without Treating Any COVID-19 Patients
As hospitals were overrun by coronavirus patients in other parts of the world, the Army Corps of Engineers mobilized in the U.S., hiring private contractors to build emergency field hospitals around the country. The endeavor cost more than $660 million, according to an NPR analysis of federal spending records. (Rose, 5/7)

The Wall Street Journal: Health-Care Leaders Question How Remdesivir Is Being Distributed
Health-care leaders are expressing concern over how the Trump administration plans to distribute the promising coronavirus drug remdesivir, saying they are in the dark about the allocation criteria being used and are worried it isn’t based on need. Some hospital officials say they have been informed they can’t get the drug since the federal government took over its allocation following the Food and Drug Administration’s emergency use authorization on May 1. (Armour and Walker, 5/8)

The Washington Post: Remdesivir’s Rollout By The Trump Administration Is Angering Doctors On The Front Lines
Doctors in several hospitals, including some that have seen surges in people with covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, say they cannot get access to remdesivir for their patients — and that they don’t understand the process for obtaining the drug. In Boston, Massachusetts General Hospital said it is in line to receive the drug, but two other large teaching hospitals have been denied supplies without explanation, doctors said. (Rowland and McGinley, 5/7)

Politico: Frustrated Doctors Push Administration To Reveal Which Hospitals Are Getting Remdesivir — And Why
So far the rollout has been chaotic. About 25 hospitals have been approved to receive the drug, but doctors say it’s not clear how the government — through its contractor, AmerisourceBergen — is making those decisions. A spokesperson for the company said the administration is choosing which facilities receive the drug and how much they get. Adding to the confusion, a senior HHS official told POLITICO that the government has not finalized its plan for distributing remdesivir. That has frustrated doctors on the front lines of the pandemic. Brennan, 5/7)

The Hill: Trump Officials' Communication Breakdown Slows COVID-19 Drug Distribution: Report 
The mishap reportedly stirred tensions within the coronavirus task force, with Vice President Pence calling on Health and Human Services Secretary (HHS) Alex Azar to take ownership of the distribution process. (Moreno, 5/7)

Boston Globe: Who’s Getting Federal Distributions Of Coronavirus Drug Remdesivir? After Much Confusion, Massachusetts Government, Hospitals Team Up To Share 
Massachusetts government and hospital officials are taking matters into their own hands and working out a plan to share donations of the coronavirus treatment remdesivir, after questions were raised about the federal government’s puzzling distribution process for the drug. Remdesivir, an experimental drug manufactured by Gilead Sciences, received an emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration on May 1, after the antiviral treatment showed promise in a government-run trial for treating COVID-19. (Ostriker, 5/7)

In other news —

ABC News: Oregon's 1st Coronavirus Patient Released From Hospital After Months 
After more than two months in the hospital, the first Oregon resident to test positive for coronavirus was released to cheers and a mariachi parade. Calderon, a janitor at Forest Hills Elementary School in Lake Oswego, Oregon, was treated at Kaiser Permanente West Side Medical Center in Hillsboro, Oregon, after he tested positive at the end of February. He was one of the first patients in the nation to be treated with remdesivir, according to Kaiser Permanente. (Parrish, 5/7)

Stat: CytoDyn: HIV Drug Was Not Filed For FDA Approval, As Previously Claimed
CytoDyn CEO Nader Pourhassan is already under fire for the timing of lucrative sales of company stock. On Thursday night, Pourhassan found himself with a new problem: An admission that CytoDyn misled investors about a completed drug marketing application to the Food and Drug Administration.The biotech’s lead drug, leronlimab, an investigational treatment for patients with HIV, has not been submitted for approval to the FDA, as the company previously claimed. (Feuerstein, 5/7)

The Associated Press: Malaria Drug Shows No Benefit In Another Coronavirus Study
A new study finds no evidence of benefit from a malaria drug widely promoted as a treatment for coronavirus infection. Hydroxychloroquine did not lower the risk of dying or needing a breathing tube in a comparison that involved nearly 1,400 patients treated at Columbia University in New York, researchers reported Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine. (Marchione, 5/7)

Reuters: Malaria Drug Touted By Trump For Coronavirus Fails Another Test
Among patients given hydroxychloroquine, 32.3% ended up needing a ventilator or dying, compared with 14.9% of patients who were not given the drug. But doctors were more likely to give hydroxychloroquine to sicker patients, so researchers at New York-Presbyterian Hospital and Columbia University Irving Medical Center adjusted the rates to account for that. They concluded that the drug may not have hurt patients, but it clearly did not help. (Emery, 5/7)

The Wall Street Journal: Antimalaria Drug Doesn’t Help Treat Covid-19, Large But Inconclusive Study Finds
The results aren’t definitive, however. Unlike the most rigorous drug trials, patients in the study weren’t divided at random into one group getting the drug and another that didn’t, and researchers reviewed how patients fared after the fact. Also, patients got a mix of treatments, including other drugs. (Hopkins, 5/7)

Roll Call: States Weigh What To Do With Millions Of Malaria Pills
The Strategic National Stockpile has shipped 28 million tablets of a malaria drug that President Donald Trump touted as a potential treatment for COVID-19 to states since April 1. States received millions more from donations or taxpayer-funded purchases. But after doubts arose about whether the drug, hydroxychloroquine sulfate, is safe and effective for the coronavirus-based disease, states are donating supplies to patients who need them for other reasons, seeking refunds or weighing what to do with them. (Kopp, 5/7)

The New York Times: Back In Session, State Legislatures Challenge Governors’ Authority
State lawmakers in Mississippi voted overwhelmingly last week to strip away the governor’s authority to spend more than $1.2 billion in federal funds. In Wisconsin, lawyers for the Legislature’s Republican leaders argued before the State Supreme Court their case for reining in the governor’s executive “safer-at-home” order. And in Louisiana, plexiglass barriers separated masked lawmakers as they returned to work this week for the first time since the state became a coronavirus hot spot. (Rojas, 5/8)

The Washington Post: Power Struggles Erupt As Governors And State Legislatures Fight Over Coronavirus Response
Reeves’s frustration is an example of the challenges that governors nationwide face as state legislators become more assertive in challenging executive authority as the coronavirus pandemic drags on. From Kansas to New Hampshire, state lawmakers are rushing to sponsor legislation, file court challenges and make public statements on what they see as gubernatorial overreach on matters ranging from the spending of federal dollars to whether their neighborhood hair salon or tavern should remain closed. (Craig and Gowen, 5/7)

Detroit Free Press: Why Gov. Whitmer Is Likely To Win GOP Lawsuit Over Emergency Powers
The lawsuit Republican lawmakers filed Wednesday over Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's use of emergency powers during the coronavirus pandemic appears to be a loser, according to three Michigan law professors. A fourth law professor said he finds the Legislature's legal arguments "plausible, if not persuasive," but said he thinks it would be extremely difficult for a judge or a panel of judges to second-guess the governor during a deadly pandemic. (Egan, 5/7)

The Washington Post: Coronavirus Solutions: Meet The People Working To Mitigate The Pandemic’s Effects
They are immigrants and the children of immigrants, public servants, people on their second careers. They are planners and problem-solvers. What they lack in swagger they make up for in empathy, skill and statistical rigor. Their greatest power is their ability to learn from the mistakes of the past. They are the right people in the right place at the right moment, like physician-researcher Andre Kalil, a veteran of past epidemics trying to find a cure for this pandemic, and Anar Yukhayev, a New York obstetrician-gynecologist who was severely ill with covid-19 when he enrolled in a clinical trial for an untested treatment. (Kaplan, Reiley, Rowland, Tan and Weintraub, 5/7)

CNN: Novel Coronavirus Fears And Frustrations As US States Reopen 
With nearly all states partially reopened this week, backlash and frustrations are growing as Americans struggle with ways to combat the deadly coronavirus. More than 40 states are opening some businesses and restarting economies crushed by a pandemic that has killed nearly 76,000 people and infected over 1.2 million. (Karimi, 5/8)

ABC News: Reopening The Country Seen As Greater Risk Among Most Americans: POLL 
Americans, by a large 30-point margin, are resistant to re-opening the country now, believing the risk to human life of opening the country outweighs the economic toll of remaining under restrictive lockdowns -- a concern that starkly divides along partisan lines, according to a new ABC News/Ipsos released Friday. In the new poll, conducted by Ipsos in partnership with ABC News using Ipsos’ Knowledge Panel, nearly two-thirds of Americans said they more closely align with the view that opening the county now is not advantageous since it will result in a higher death toll, while slightly more than one-third agree with the belief that an immediate reopening is beneficial to minimize the negative impact on the economy. (Karson, 5/8)

Reuters: Michigan, California Move To Reopen Factories As U.S. Jobless Ranks Grow
Michigan and California, two U.S. manufacturing powerhouses, acted on Thursday to allow factories to reopen from coronavirus lockdowns over the next few days, as millions more Americans joined the ranks of workers left jobless by the pandemic. (Klayman and Bernstein, 5/7)

Los Angeles Times: Coronavirus Second Wave Fears Shadow California Reopening
Los Angeles County health officials on Thursday announced 51 news coronavirus-linked fatalities, pushing California’s death toll past 2,500. The majority of those — 1,418 — have been in L.A. County, California’s largest and the hotbed of COVID-19 infections in the state. These numbers “represent people who live in our community, and they have families and friends who are suffering as they mourn their loved ones,” the director of the county Department of Public Health, Barbara Ferrer, said. “I ask you to join with us and keep them in our thoughts and prayers.” (Money and Chabria, 5/7)

Los Angeles Times: First Californian To Get Coronavirus In Community Spread Was Infected At A Nail Salon, Newsom Says
The first person in California to contract the coronavirus through community spread caught the virus in a nail salon, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Thursday. Newsom cited the case when asked why personal services, such as nail salons, must remain closed even as the state starts to slowly open businesses. (Willon, 5/7)

The Washington Post: How Gov. Ralph Northam Decided When Virginia Might Emerge From Shutdown
Gov. Ralph Northam looked like anyone else working from home on Sunday night, wearing an old flannel shirt and sweatpants. But he was dialing into a conference call that would determine when 8.5 million Virginians could go back out and earn a living or get a haircut or eat in a restaurant amid the coronavirus pandemic. There was increasing pressure to reopen as the state’s economy tanked. (Schneider and Vozzella, 5/7)

The Washington Post: After Outcry, Arizona Restores Partnership With Team Projecting Increased Coronavirus Cases
Arizona reversed course on Thursday and resumed a partnership with epidemiologists whose projections suggest the state may be moving too rapidly to reopen businesses as cases of the novel coronavirus mount. The turnaround, after a public outcry, marked the latest chapter in a skirmish over data and public policy that reflects the anguished national debate over how to incorporate scientific expertise to protect both lives and livelihoods during a pandemic that has killed more than 75,000 Americans and thrown 33 million out of work. (Stanley-Becker, 5/7)

ABC News: Why This ICU Nurse Stood Up To People Protesting Stay-At-Home Orders 
On her day off from caring for patients in the Banner Health COVID-19 unit, intensive care unit nurse Lauren Leander went to the Arizona State Capitol to meet those protesting the state's stay-at-home order. She stood in a silent protest as, she said, people approached her enraged. (Yang, 5/7)

The New York Times: De Blasio Strips Control Of Virus Tracing From Health Department
New York City will soon assemble an army of more than 1,000 disease detectives to trace the contacts of every person who tests positive for the coronavirus, an approach seen as crucial to quelling the outbreak and paving the way to reopen the hobbled city. But that effort will not be led by the city’s renowned Health Department, which for decades has conducted contact tracing for diseases such as tuberculosis, H.I.V. and Ebola, city officials said on Thursday. (Goodman, Rashbaum and Mays, 5/7)

The New York Times: Travel From New York City Seeded Wave Of U.S. Outbreaks
New York City’s coronavirus outbreak grew so large by early March that the city became the primary source of new infections in the United States, new research reveals, as thousands of infected people traveled from the city and seeded outbreaks around the country. The research indicates that a wave of infections swept from New York City through much of the country before the city began setting social distancing limits to stop the growth. That helped to fuel outbreaks in Louisiana, Texas, Arizona and as far away as the West Coast. (Carey and Glanz, 5/7)

In other news on contact tracing —

NPR: Some States Plan To Big Increase In Contact Tracing Staff To Fight Coronavirus
In late April, NPR surveyed all 50 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia to ask them about their contact tracing workforce. That survey showed that states had, or planned to have, around 36,000 workers in total focused on contact tracing, a key strategy to contain the spread of the coronavirus and prevent outbreaks. In ten days since NPR first published the results of this survey, we've received responses from several more states; in addition some states with big populations announced new plans to increase contact tracing. (Simmons-Duffin, 5/7)

San Francisco Chronicle: California Coronavirus Budget Is Grim: Deficit Tops $54 Billion
California is facing a deficit of more than $54 billion in its upcoming state budget as tax revenue plummets and the demand for social services soars amid the coronavirus pandemic. The updated projection, released Thursday by the state Department of Finance, is the latest sign of how badly California’s economy has been battered since the pandemic took hold less than three months ago. Gov. Gavin Newsom said a multibillion-dollar budget reserve would be of some help, but he also pleaded for Washington to come to the state’s rescue with bailout money. (Koseff, 5/7)

The Wall Street Journal: Coronavirus Brings California Mass Unemployment, Huge Budget Hole, Governor Says 
California will grapple with surging unemployment and a huge budget deficit this year, the governor’s finance office said Thursday, sketching a grim forecast for one of many states reeling from a coronavirus-induced recession. With much economic activity ground to a halt due to stay-at-home orders meant to combat the coronavirus pandemic, tax revenue is plummeting in California and other states at the same time spending is climbing to cope with the fallout. (Lazo and Harrison, 5/7)

KQED: California Faces Projected $54 Billion Deficit Through Summer 2021 
California faces the worst budget deficit in the state's history, at $54 billion.  That's according to an analysis released Thursday by the state Department of Finance.  The projected shortfall comes after a $21 billion surplus last year, and as the state continues to reel from the coronavirus pandemic, which has thrown more than 4 million Californians into unemployment. (Kim, 5/8)

Modern Healthcare: California Hospitals Ask Governor For $1 Billion In Immediate Aid
The California Hospital Association said Thursday it estimates the state's more than 400 hospitals have collectively lost more than $10 billion as a result of reduced revenue from surgeries and other procedures and higher labor and supply costs amid the pandemic. The organization expects that to rise at least another $5 billion. (Bannow, 5/7)

KQED: Does California Need A Defense Production Act For Medical Supplies? 
Governor Gavin Newsom called the scramble for supplies "The wild, wild, west"— a months-long free-for-all by state and local governments to purchase protective equipment, ventilators and testing supplies needed on the front lines of the fight against COVID-19. A lack of coordination by the federal government left states like California on their own to negotiate contracts for goods desperately needed to protect health care workers and safeguard the re-opening of businesses as the world attempts to respond to a global pandemic. (Marzorati, 5/7)

San Francisco Chronicle: UCSF Medical Workers Question Federal Distribution Of COVID-19 Medicine 
The distribution of a promising drug by the federal government to hospitals with COVID-19 patients has raised hackles among medical professionals after UCSF and many other medical centers with critical patients weren’t given a single dose. The experimental drug, remdesivir, reduced coronavirus symptoms in clinical trials and was approved last week by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration under what is called an emergency use authorization, but only two of the 25 medical centers that got the drug were in California. (Fimrite and Morris, 5/7)

ProPublica: What Happened When Health Officials Wanted To Close a Meatpacking Plant, But The Governor Said No
On Tuesday, March 31, an emergency room doctor at the main hospital in Grand Island, Nebraska, sent an urgent email to the regional health department: “Numerous patients” from the JBS beef packing plant had tested positive for COVID-19. The plant, he feared, was becoming a coronavirus “hot spot.” The town’s medical clinics were also reporting a rapid increase in cases among JBS workers. The next day, Dr. Rebecca Steinke, a family medicine doctor at one of the clinics, wrote to the department’s director: “Our message is really that JBS should shut down for 2 weeks and have a solid screening plan before re-opening.” (Grabell, 5/7)

Politico: Azar Faulted Workers' 'Home And Social' Conditions For Meatpacking Outbreaks
The country’s top health official downplayed concerns over the public health conditions inside meatpacking plants, suggesting on a call with lawmakers that workers were more likely to catch coronavirus based on their social interactions and group living situations, three participants said. HHS Secretary Alex Azar told a bipartisan group that he believed infected employees were bringing the virus into processing plants where a rash of cases have killed at least 20 workers and forced nearly two-dozen plants to close, according to three people on the April 28 call. (Cancryn and Barron-Lopez, 5/7)

The Associated Press: 138 Central California Meat Plant Employees Have Coronavirus
At least 138 employees at a meat packing plant in Central California have tested positive for the coronavirus, officials say. Kings County Supervisor Doug Verboon told the Fresno Bee that the outbreak at Central Valley Meat Co. in Hanford accounts for nearly two-thirds of the coronavirus cases in the rural county, which has a total of 211 reported cases. (5/7)

NBC News: The Government Still Doesn't Know How Many Nursing Homes Have Coronavirus Outbreaks
On April 19, Medicare Administrator Seema Verma took the podium at the White House's daily coronavirus briefing to announce that the Trump administration would begin tracking outbreaks and deaths at long-term care facilities nationwide — and publish the numbers for everyone to see. The effort would begin within days, federal officials promised. More than two weeks and 13,000 long-term care deaths later, the federal government still has not tallied the number of nursing homes that have had outbreaks nationwide or the number of residents who have died. And the data is still weeks away from being made public, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, the federal agency that oversees nursing homes. (Strickler and Khimm, 5/8)

The New York Times: Report Paints Scathing Picture Of Nursing Home Where 17 Bodies Piled Up
One patient at a troubled nursing home in northern New Jersey was found dead in bed, 12 hours after falling on a wet floor and suffering a head injury. Rigor mortis had set in. The patient had suffered from a high fever for days, but a doctor was never told. Sick residents who were awaiting the results of coronavirus tests shared rooms with healthy residents. And thermometers used to take employees’ temperatures at the start of each shift did not work. (Tully and Goldstein, 5/7)

Politico: Murphy Deploys 120 National Guard Troops To New Jersey’s Long-Term Care Facilities
Gov. Phil Murphy said Thursday that 120 members of the New Jersey National Guard will be deployed to help out at the state’s long-term health care facilities, which have been overwhelmed by the coronavirus. Of the 8,801 coronavirus-related deaths that have been reported statewide since early March, 4,505 have been at long-term care facilities. Overall, nearly 25,000 cases of Covid-19 have been reported at those sites. (Friedman, 5/7)

New Orleans Times-Picayune: Deaths Mount In Louisiana Nursing Homes As Details Of State Testing Plan Remain Unclear 
Reported deaths from the novel coronavirus in Louisiana nursing homes rose to 709 Thursday, up 21 from Monday's report as the virus continued to exact a devastating toll on the state's elderly and infirm, especially those who live in communal settings. More than 3,300 nursing homes residents have tested positive for the virus and 179 of the state's 279 nursing homes have reported infections, according to numbers released Thursday by the Louisiana Department of Health. (Roberts III, 5/7)

Bangor Daily News: She Was In Maine’s Largest COVID-19 Outbreak, But Tested Negative. Then, She Tested Positive And Died. 
Ogren’s death after initially testing negative for COVID-19 highlights how the coronavirus can keep spreading through a nursing home where older residents with underlying health conditions live in close quarters. Maine has so far seen coronavirus outbreaks in seven long-term care homes, and more than half of the state’s coronavirus deaths have been nursing home residents. (Pendharkar, 5/8)

The Associated Press: America's Business Of Prisons Thrives Even Amid A Pandemic
As factories and other businesses remain shuttered across America, people in prisons in at least 40 states continue going to work. Sometimes they earn pennies an hour, or nothing at all, making masks and hand sanitizer to help guard others from the coronavirus. Those same men and women have been cut off from family visits for weeks, but they get charged up to $25 for a 15-minute phone call — plus a surcharge every time they add credit. (McDowell and Mason, 5/8)

Los Angeles Times: First Youths Test Positive For Coronavirus In L.A. County Juvenile Halls
Two youths in L.A. County juvenile detention tested positive for the novel coronavirus this week after officials began testing newly booked detainees, authorities said Thursday. The juveniles, both of whom are asymptomatic, have not been in contact with other youths, said Adam Wolfson, communications director for the L.A. County Probation Department. One was admitted to Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall in Sylmar, the other to Central Juvenie Hall in Los Angeles, Wolfson said. (Queally, 5/7)

The New York Times: He Had Never Sold A Ventilator. N.Y. Gave Him An $86 Million Deal.
The offer to the Federal Emergency Management Agency sounded promising: A Silicon Valley engineer said that he could deliver thousands of ventilators from manufacturers across China to help hospitals treat coronavirus patients. The engineer was asked for more details. Within 12 hours, he responded with a 28-page digital catalog of medical supplies at his disposal, including protective masks and goggles. (Ferre-Sadurni and Kaplan, 5/8)

The New York Times: A Quarantine Hospital So Unwelcome That New Yorkers Burned It Down
President Trump tweeted in late April that because of the coronavirus pandemic, he sought to halt immigration “in light of the attack from the Invisible Enemy.” This followed earlier assertions that concerns over the virus’s spread legitimized a crackdown at the southwestern border. While this particular coronavirus may be novel, there is nothing new about the use of a pathogen to justify hostility to foreigners, as disease and anti-immigrant sentiment have periodically been fevered bedfellows in America. (Gill, 5/8)

Politico: Warren Joins NYC Council To Push For Increased Protections For Essential Workers
Former presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren joined a slate of city officials on Thursday to push increased protections for essential workers on the frontline of the coronavirus pandemic. "If these essential workers are willing to get out there and put their own health at risk — sometimes putting their families' health at risk — then the very least the rest of us can do is make sure that they have some genuine protection,” Warren said during a virtual town hall. “That means both medical protection and it means economic protection.” (Muoio, 5/7)

State House News Service: 'Reasonably Positive' Trends For Mass. Go The Other Way 
Every metric that Gov. Charlie Baker has said must show improvement before the economy and society is allowed to restart took a step in the wrong direction in the last day. The latest COVID-19 update from the Department of Public Health showed that the state conducted fewer tests than any day in the last two weeks, the percent of those tests that came back positive shot up to 28% after hovering in the high teens for several days, and more people were hospitalized for COVID-19 on Wednesday than were on Tuesday. (Young, 5/7)

Boston Globe: Pastors Across Massachusetts Sign Letter Asking Baker To Reopen Churches 
About 260 pastors from churches across the state called on Governor Charlie Baker in a letter Thursday to allow them to reopen their doors later this month. As the state prepares to ease some restrictions imposed in March to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, the ministers say churches should be among the first wave of establishments allowed to reopen after the governor’s order expires May 18. (Fox, 5/7)

WBUR: Judge: Bristol Sheriff And ICE Likely Violated Rights Of Detainees; Orders COVID-19 Testing
Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) likely violated the constitutional rights of ICE detainees, according to a federal judge in Boston. U.S. District Court Judge William Young found both the sheriff and ICE have deliberately disregarded the health of detainees in their care amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Young ordered immediate, widespread testing — at ICE's expense — of ICE detainees, as well as staff who may have come in contact with them. (Dooling, 5/7)

Des Moines Register: Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds Says State Is 'Leading By Example' On Coronavirus
Iowans “can be proud” of how the state is responding to the coronavirus pandemic, Gov. Kim Reynolds said at a Thursday news conference. Her statement follows a Wednesday afternoon proclamation further easing restrictions on some businesses and activities and a trip to the White House where she discussed the state’s response and outbreaks at meatpacking plants here. The state avoided having its hospitals overwhelmed and now has ample available beds and equipment, Reynolds said. (Coltrain, 5/7)

The Washington Post: As Iowa Reopens, Workers Are Being Forced To Choose Between A Paycheck And Their Health
Terrie Neider loves to be around people. “I’m chatty,” she said. “Customer service is my thing. It’s what I’m good at.” So when she was looking to supplement her monthly Social Security check, the 64-year-old took a part-time job at the Casey’s General Store off the main strip in this rural southeastern Iowa town. She worked three shifts, about 24 hours a week, running the cash register and occasionally making pizza, earning just enough to make ends meet. (Bailey, 5/7)

Boston Globe: Raimondo To Lift Stay-At-Home Order Saturday; R.I. Sees 18 More Coronavirus Deaths 
Governor Gina Raimondo said Thursday she will lift Rhode Island’s stay-at-home order this weekend, but the state will still prohibit social gatherings of more than five people as it seeks to avoid a spike in coronavirus cases in the coming days. Raimondo said the state is moving forward with its plan to begin a limited reopening of the economy, but she indicated that residents should not expect significant changes during the first phase. While non-essential retailers will be allowed to open under capacity restrictions, she encouraged people to continue to work from home if they can. (McGowan, 5/7)

Modern Healthcare: NYC Insurer Partners With Amazon, Bain & Co. To Connect Members To Social Services
A new collaboration between the insurer MetroPlus, Amazon Web Services, Bain & Co. and the nonprofit AirNYC has helped the health plan rapidly connect with its most vulnerable members to check on their needs and keep them out of the hospital. In March MetroPlus set out to identify all of its members who were at high risk of being hospitalized during the Covid-19 pandemic so it could connect them to medical and social services. (Lamantia, 5/7)

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Metro Governments Taking Baby Steps Back To Work
Across Georgia, local governments are trying to decide if the time is right to go back to the office — and if so, how to do it. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration have recommended guidelines, but there is no one-size-fits-all solution, leaders say. And as the number of Georgia deaths from the virus grows, and new infections increase with more testing, a wrong move could have fatal consequences. (Stafford and Kass, 5/8)

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Metro Atlanta Public Pool Openings Delayed In Summer Of COVID-19
Those planning to beat summer of COVID-19 heat with a cool dip in the pool will need to take a chill pill; public pools will probably open later than usual this year  — if they open at all. Gov. Brian Kemp’s shelter-in-place order, set to expire May 14, prevents public pools from opening — including those in subdivisions, apartments, condominiums, fitness centers, hotels and parks. (Coyne, Habersham and Murchison, 5/7)

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Georgia Revisits Lessons Of Great Recession As New Downturn Looms
Brenda Simmons had been working for the state agency that investigates child abuse cases and helps the poor sign up for food stamps for more than 20 year when the Great Recession hit Georgia’s economy like a sledgehammer in 2008. Georgians lost their jobs, homes and businesses. State government, which provided salaries to about 300,000 teachers, university staffers, state patrol officers, prison guards, park rangers and meat inspectors, saw tax collections plummet. That brought layoffs, pay cuts, furloughs, the elimination of programs and closing of facilities. (Salzer, 5/7)

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Concerns Grow About Returning Children To Schools, Daycare
The COVID-19 epidemic arrived with an important silver lining: Fewer children seemed to catch the disease, and with many who did, you could barely tell. But as Georgia inches back to work, that is starting to pose a big problem. The scarce tests have gone to the more seriously ill, most often meaning adults, and research on how the new virus works has just started. (Hart and Oliviero, 5/7)

New Orleans Times-Picayune: New Orleans Officials Place More Than 150 Homeless Residents In Hotels Thursday Morning
An additional 150 homeless New Orleanians were relocated to temporary housing at local hotels this morning as part of officials' ongoing efforts to help this at-risk community during the COVID-19 pandemic. City and state officials, along with UNITY of Greater New Orleans, a nonprofit that works to provide housing and services to those without shelter in Jefferson and Orleans parishes, facilitated the move. (Ravits, 5/7)

Las Vegas Review-Journal: CCSD Distance Learning Attendance Numbers Improve  
The Clark County School District improved its distance learning attendance numbers for the week of April 20, with approximately 30,000 more students reached by teachers than the week prior, according to an update presented to board members Thursday night. The district reached 241,555 of its 325,081 students during the week of April 20, with another 9,376 documented instances of students not being able to access distance learning for lack of a computer or transportation to packet distribution sites. (Appleton, 5/7)

Politico: Trump’s Coronavirus Sidekick Attempts A New Balancing Act
Months after Mike Pence parachuted into the most important role of his career as head of the government’s coronavirus task force, the vice president is entering a new phase as the administration’s unofficial coronavirus czar: overseeing a precarious reboot of the U.S. economy, delicately navigating coronavirus surges in individual states and attempting to meet the president’s lofty goal of developing a Covid-19 vaccine by the end of the year. His success or failure will likely determine the outcome of Trump’s last presidential election — and shape Pence’s first presidential election, should he run in 2024. (Orr, 5/8)

The New York Times: ‘Full Steam Ahead’ For Trump’s Convention? North Carolina Has Doubts
President Trump has made clear that he wants a traditional political convention in Charlotte, N.C., in late August, with thousands of sign-waving delegates from out of state filling an arena to acclaim his renomination. But in North Carolina, they are not so sure. Even the Republicans.As the relaxing of shutdown orders across the country leads to alarming projections of a surge in coronavirus cases, some leaders of the president’s party in the state that is hosting the convention are striking a less rosy view. (Gabriel, 5/8)

The Wall Street Journal: Coronavirus Hijacks The Body From Head To Toe, Perplexing Doctors
Garvon Russell was having trouble breathing when he arrived sick with Covid-19 at a New York City emergency room. By the time he left the hospital two weeks later, he had battled the new coronavirus all over his body. His lungs were inflamed, their tiny air sacs filled with fluid that made it hard for oxygen to get into his bloodstream. His kidneys failed with Mr. Russell in septic shock from his infection. Then, when it looked like he had turned the corner, his bedside nurse noticed his left leg was swollen. Doctors found a blood clot in a deep vein. (McKay and Hernandez, 5/7)

The New York Times: In The Fight To Treat Coronavirus, Your Lungs Are A Battlefield
Ventilators have become the single most important piece of medical equipment for critically ill coronavirus patients whose damaged lungs prevent them from getting enough oxygen to vital organs. The machines work by forcing air deep into the lungs, dislodging the fluid and accumulated pus that interfere with the exchange of oxygen, a process orchestrated by tiny air sacs known as alveoli. (Grondahl, Jacobs and Buchanan, 5/8)

The New York Times: Coronavirus May Lurk In Semen, Researchers Report
Scientists across the world are trying to piece together a perplexing puzzle: how exactly coronavirus affects the body, and how it spreads from person to person. In recent months, they have learned that the virus can live on some surfaces for three days and that it can stay suspended in tiny aerosolized droplets for about 30 minutes. The virus has been detected in saliva, urine and feces. Now researchers in China have found that the coronavirus, or bits of it, may linger in semen. (Murphy, 5/7)

CNN: Coronavirus Found In Men's Semen 
A team at Shangqiu Municipal Hospital tested 38 male patients treated there at the height of the pandemic in China, in January and February. About 16% of them had evidence of the coronavirus in their semen, the team reported in the journal JAMA Network Open. About a quarter of them were in the acute stage of infection and nearly 9% of them were recovering, the team reported. (Fox, 5/7)

The Washington Post: Blood Thinners Show Promise For Increasing Sickest Coronavirus Patients’ Chances Of Survival
Treating coronavirus patients with blood thinners could help boost their prospects for survival, according to preliminary findings from physicians at New York City’s largest hospital system that offer another clue about treating the deadly condition. The results of an analysis of 2,733 patients, published Wednesday in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, are part of a growing body of information about what has worked and what has not during a desperate few months in which doctors have tried dozens of treatments to save those dying of covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. (Cha, 5/7)

CIDRAP: Autopsies Of COVID-19 Patients Reveal Clotting Concerns
A study of autopsy findings of the first 12 patients who died of COVID-19 in a hospital in Hamburg, Germany, has found that 7 (58%) of them had undiagnosed deep vein thrombosis, suggesting that the virus may cause abnormal blood clotting. In the prospective cohort study, published yesterday in the Annals of Internal Medicine, researchers discovered that the direct cause of death in four patients was massive pulmonary embolism from deep vein blood clots in the legs that lodged in a lung artery, causing a blockage. (Van Beusekom, 5/7)

The Washington Post: Blacks In Britain Are Four Times As Likely To Die Of Coronavirus As Whites, Data Show
Coronavirus is no great equalizer, and new data out of Britain underscore how certain ethnic groups are more at risk: Blacks are four times as likely to die of covid-19 as whites, according to the Office for National Statistics. This, however, is not a surprise to many in these communities, whose members are more vulnerable to the virus because of their health and economic disadvantages, and perhaps other reasons yet to be isolated. (Adam and Berger, 5/7)

ABC News: 8-Year-Old Rushed To Hospital Due To Mystery Illness Linked To COVID-19 
Jayden Hardowar, 8, of Richmond Hill, Queens, spiked a mild fever sometime around April 23. A pediatrician told Jayden's parents not to worry and to continue taking children's Tylenol, his father, Roup Hardowar, told ABC News on Thursday... But on April 29, while watching Pokemon on TV, Jayden called out for his mother and threw his hands up, struggling for air before going into cardiac arrest. (Moehlman, 5/7)

Boston Globe: Is It Coronavirus Or Something Else? Harvard Medical School Study Offers Insight For Clinicians Evaluating Symptoms
A recent Harvard Medical School study offers insights on determining whether patients with coronavirus symptoms are infected with the contagion or with a different ailment. The study, published April 20 in Mayo Clinic Proceedings, was conducted by researchers at the medical school and Harvard-affiliated Cambridge Health Alliance, the school said in a statement. Researchers crunched data from 1,000 patients who visited an outpatient COVID-19 clinic in Greater Boston. (Andersen, 5/7)

Kaiser Health News: Eerie Emptiness Of ERs Worries Doctors As Heart Attack And Stroke Patients Delay Care
The patient described it as the worst headache of her life. She didn’t go to the hospital, though. Instead, the Washington state resident waited almost a week. When Dr. Abhineet Chowdhary finally saw her, he discovered she had a brain bleed that had gone untreated. The neurosurgeon did his best, but it was too late. (Stone and Yu, 5/7)

The New York Times: After Recovery From The Coronavirus, Most People Carry Antibodies
A new study offers a glimmer of hope in the grim fight against the coronavirus: Nearly everyone who has had the disease — regardless of age, sex or severity of illness — makes antibodies to the virus. The study, posted online on Tuesday but not yet reviewed by experts, also hints that anyone who has recovered from infection may safely return to work — although it is unclear how long their protection might last. “This is very good news,” said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University in New York who was not involved with the work. (Mandavilli, 5/7)

NPR: Do Antibodies Against The Novel Coronavirus Prevent Reinfection?
But scientists don't know whether people who have been exposed to the coronavirus will be immune for life, as is usually the case for the measles, or if the disease will return again and again, like the common cold. "This to me is one of the big unanswered questions that we have," says Jeffrey Shaman, a professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University, "because it really says, 'What is the full exit strategy to this and how long are we going to be contending with it?'" (Harris, 5/7)

The Hill: New COVID-19 Study Raises Immunity Hopes For Recovered Patients 
The study, which was published in the Nature Medicine journal by researchers at Chongquin Medical University, “brings much-needed clarity, along with renewed enthusiasm” to efforts to develop and implement widescale antibody testing, National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins wrote Thursday in a blog post. “Although more follow-up work is needed to determine just how protective these antibodies are and for how long, these findings suggest that the immune systems of people who survive COVID-19 have been primed to recognize SARS-CoV-2 and possibly thwart a second infection,” he wrote, using the technical name for the specific coronavirus causing the disease. (Hellmann, 5/7)

The New York Times: Scientists Consider Indoor Ultraviolet Light To Zap Coronavirus In The Air
As society tries to rebound from the coronavirus pandemic, some scientists hope a decades-old technology could zap pathogens out of the air in stores, restaurants and classrooms, potentially playing a key role in containing further spread of the infection. It has the ungainly name of upper-room ultraviolet germicidal irradiation, and it is something like bringing the power of sunlight indoors. “We have struggled in the past to see this highly effective, very safe technology fully implemented for airborne infections,” said Dr. Edward A. Nardell, a professor of global health and social medicine at Harvard Medical School. “We’ve done the studies. We know it works.” (Chang, 5/7)

The Washington Post: Frontier Just Became The First U.S. Airline To Require Temperature Screening
Frontier Airlines said Thursday it will require passengers to have their temperatures taken before boarding flights, starting June 1, in an effort to make traveling safer during the coronavirus pandemic. Anyone with a temperature of 100.4 or higher will not be allowed to fly, the budget carrier said. While the move is a first for U.S. carriers, according to the airline, Air Canada announced a similar measure earlier this week. (Sampson, 5/7)

The New York Times: Summer Is Coming, But The Virus Won’t Be Going 
“Everybody hopes for seasonality” when it comes to the coronavirus pandemic, Peter Juni of the University of Toronto acknowledged. Maybe, just maybe, the summer will diminish the spread of Covid-19. But a new study, by Dr. Juni, an epidemiologist, and his colleagues in Canada and Switzerland, offers very little encouragement for warm-weather worshipers. In countries around the world, his research found, variations in heat and humidity had little to no effect on the spread of the pandemic. Differences in how the disease spread were instead strongly associated with public health measures like social distancing and school closures. (Gorman, 5/8)

ABC News: Yes, COVID-19 Is Mutating, Here's What You Need To Know 
As the virus that causes COVID-19 traveled out of China and proliferated across the globe, it developed small mutations that accumulated into distinct versions of the virus. Scientists can now tell these versions apart by peering into the viral genome. For example, here in the United States, there is the "West Coast" version of the virus that came directly from Asia, and a slightly different "East Coast" version which traveled through Europe. But is one version of coronavirus more dangerous than the other? And should we be afraid of these new mutations? The short answer according to virologists, is no. (Baldwin and Salzman, 5/7)

The Wall Street Journal: Leading Cause Of Death In U.S.? Hint: It Isn’t Covid-19
Has Covid-19 become the leading cause of death in the U.S.? At its worst, the new coronavirus has killed 2,584 Americans in 24 hours. Daily totals aren’t available for heart disease—generally considered the country’s leading killer—but some reports have compared the average, currently around 1,900 a day, to Covid-19’s high. That makes the virus look deadlier. But so far this year, three times more people have died of heart ailments. (McGinty, 5/8)

Reuters: Facebook, YouTube Remove 'Plandemic' Video With 'Unsubstantiated' Coronavirus Claims
Facebook Inc and YouTube, the video service of Alphabet Inc’s Google, said on Thursday that they were removing a video that made medically unsubstantiated claims relating to the novel coronavirus pandemic. The 26-minute video dubbed “Plandemic” went viral this week across social media platforms. It features Judy Mikovits, an activist among people who contend that many common vaccines are dangerous. (Culliford, 5/7)

NBC News: As '#Plandemic' Goes Viral, Those Targeted By Discredited Scientist's Crusade Warn Of 'Dangerous' Claims
A video from a discredited scientist promoting a hodgepodge of conspiracy theories about the coronavirus went viral across every social media platform Thursday. It was initially pushed by anti-vaccination disinformation peddlers, and then picked up steam when it was promoted by minor celebrities. In a matter of hours, the video became one of the most widespread pieces of coronavirus misinformation, drawing millions of views across major technology platforms. Its success underscores how misleading information about the coronavirus crisis continues to circulate, with some indications that growing fear and frustration are making conspiracy theories more appetizing to a larger audience. (Zadrozny and Collins, 5/7)

The Washington Post: 'Plandemic' Conspiracy Video Removed By Facebook, YouTube And Vimeo
The approximately 26-minute video was presented as an extremely long “trailer” for a full-length film titled “Plandemic” and features an extended interview with Judy Mikovits, a well-known figure in the anti-vaccination movement who has made various discredited claims about the effects of vaccines. A YouTube spokesperson said the company removes “content that includes medically unsubstantiated diagnostic advice for covid-19,” which includes the “Plandemic” video. A representative for Facebook said, “Suggesting that wearing a mask can make you sick could lead to imminent harm, so we’re removing the video.” (Andrews, 5/7)

The New York Times: The NYPD Arrested 40 People On Social Distancing Violations. 35 Were Black.
A police officer enforcing social distancing rules broke up a group of people on a stoop during a nighttime cookout in East New York, Brooklyn, punching one man in the face. Another dispute between officers and residents of the same predominantly black neighborhood over the guidelines led to a man being knocked unconscious. Days later, three men were arrested after taking part in a sprawling vigil at the Queensbridge Houses for a rapper who was said to have died of the coronavirus. Tensions are increasingly flaring in black and Hispanic neighborhoods over officers’ enforcement of social distancing rules, leading some prominent elected officials to charge that the New York Police Department is engaging in a racist double standard as it struggles to shift to a public health role in the coronavirus crisis. (Southall, 5/7)

The Associated Press: NYPD Distancing Arrests: Many Non-Whites, At Times Violently
Despite mounting pressure to stop using police to enforce social distancing and data showing that such arrests disproportionately affect people of color, Mayor Bill de Blasio stood by the practice on Thursday, saying: “We’re not going to sideline the NYPD.” “I am not making my decisions based on a very few interactions that were handled poorly or went bad,” de Blasio said. “I’m making my decisions based on the millions of interactions that are going right.” (Sisak, 5/8)

The Associated Press: Store Workers Become Enforcers Of Social Distancing Rules
Sandy Jensen’s customer-service job at a Sam’s Club in Fullerton, California, normally involves checking member ID cards at the door and answering questions. But the coronavirus has turned her into a kind of store sheriff. Now she must confront shoppers who aren’t wearing masks and enforce social distancing measures such as limits on the number of people allowed inside. The efforts sometimes provoke testy customers. (D'Innocenzio, 5/7)

The Associated Press: Masks To Become Part Of Life In California, But Rules Vary
For Californians venturing outside, donning a mask will be as common as putting on a cap or sunglasses when the state begins gradually easing stay-at-home orders on Friday. But rules about face coverings vary from county to county, and it’s unclear what enforcement might look like. Masks have been ubiquitous at essential businesses like grocery stores and medical clinics since the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. On the sidewalks of dense cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco, people have been wearing masks for weeks, giving wide berth to the small number of others whose faces aren’t covered. (Weber, 5/8)

NPR: One-Way Sidewalks And Parking Lot Dining Rooms: Is This The Future?
Small businesses are essential to cities and towns across the country. They create jobs, they create a sense of place — think of New York City without bodegas, Portland, Ore., without bike shops, or your town without its dance studio or hardware store — but they also create sales, income, and property tax revenues. "[It's] super important that we make it very easy for people to keep their purchases local," said Karina Ricks, director of the Department of Mobility and Infrastructure in Pittsburgh, Pa. (Krauss, 5/8)

CNN: Life Will Never Be The Same After The Pandemic Passes, Says Public Health Journalist 
In the years after coronavirus, nothing will be as it was before, Pulitzer-prize winning public health journalist Laurie Garrett said Thursday. "I think we're going to get four, five years from now and there will not be a single aspect of our lives that's been unchanged," she said at CNN's ongoing coronavirus townhall. "It's almost impossible to really fully envision what that will look like." (Holcombe, 5/8)

ABC News: What Offices May Look Like In A Post-Pandemic Era, If They Exist At All 
In recent years, offices have been changing shape. Largely gone were stuffy cubicles and dividers in favor of open spaces that encouraged collaboration, with coworkers in some cases sitting in long rows or around tables. The new shared format -- exemplified by coworking spaces -- allowed more people to work together and broke down barriers. But with the onset of the novel coronavirus, a highly contagious respiratory disease with no vaccine that has killed more than 75,000 in the U.S alone, all of that may go by the wayside. (Thorbecke, 5/8)

Kaiser Health News: Reopening In The COVID Era: How To Adapt To A New Normal
As many states begin to reopen — most without meeting the thresholds recommended by the White House — a new level of COVID-19 risk analysis begins for Americans. Should I go to the beach? What about the hair salon? A sit-down restaurant meal? Visit Mom on Mother’s Day?States are responding to the tremendous economic cost of the pandemic and people’s pent-up desire to be “normal” again. (Appleby, 5/8)

Stat: Telehealth Rules Have Shifted Rapidly. Are The Changes Here To Stay?
The Trump administration appears to be leaning in favor of permanently expanding telemedicine coverage as health systems dial up the pressure on Washington to preserve access to video visits beyond the pandemic. Officials at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have issued sweeping changes in recent weeks to make telehealth services easier to access as the Covid-19 crisis has made routine care more difficult to deliver. They have also repeatedly cited telemedicine as an example of innovation that is improving care and relieving some of the strain on the health care system. In one recent interview, CMS Administrator Seema Verma all but declared permanent expansion a fait accompli. (Ross, 5/7)

The New York Times: With Red Tape Lifted, Dr. Zoom Will See You Now
In late March, Mary Jane Sturgis got a call from her primary-care physician’s office, saying that her doctor was working from home during the Covid-19 crisis and suggesting an alternative for her scheduled checkup. Would Ms. Sturgis agree to a video appointment on Zoom? “I didn’t know what Zoom was,” Ms. Sturgis recalled. “But I said if I could figure it out, sure.” (Span, 5/8)

Modern Healthcare: Hackers Targeting Healthcare To Steal COVID-19 Info, U.S., U.K. Warn
Sophisticated hackers are targeting healthcare and medical research organizations to gain information about the novel coronavirus, according to U.S. and U.K. cybersecurity agencies. The Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the U.K.'s National Cyber Security Centre in a joint alert issued Tuesday said they have found evidence that "(advanced persistent threat) actors are actively targeting organizations involved in both national and international COVID-19 responses." (Cohen, 5/6)

The Wall Street Journal: Hospitals Deploy Technology To Reduce ICU Staff Exposure To Covid-19
Hospitals are exploring the use of artificial intelligence and robotics technologies to assess patients remotely as they look to protect overworked emergency-room and intensive-care personnel from Covid-19, the respiratory disease caused by the new coronavirus. A shortage of personal protective equipment in the U.S. has likely contributed to medical staff exposure to the virus. A recent survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found more than 9,000 health-care workers had contracted Covid-19. (Castellanos and McCormick, 5/7)

The Wall Street Journal: The Pandemic Has Made Sudden Heroes Of The Tech Companies—For Now
Technology companies: villains or heroes? Oppressive or empowering? The hazards of technology have vexed consumers even as they’ve enjoyed its warm embrace. But the pandemic has tilted the balance, at least for now. Shelter-in-place orders have, to varying degrees, kept the world inside. These mandatory shut-ins appear to have made us more enamored of the very same tech platforms users very recently loved to hate. (Forman, 5/8)

Crain's Detroit Business: Free COVID-19 App Aims To Help Companies Track Employee Health Checks, Distancing
As some industries return to work Thursday, Red Level Group is launching a free mobile app to help businesses address health screening and location capacity amid the deadly COVID-19 outbreak. The Novi-based IT services and application development company launched its COVID ClearPass app internally earlier this month to safely manage its essential workforce during Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's "Stay Home" order's recommendations for social distancing and health screening at work. (Walsh, 5/7)

The Associated Press: China, S. Korea See New Virus Cases As World Lockdowns Ease
China and South Korea both reported more coronavirus infections Friday after reopening economies damaged by devastating outbreaks. Around the globe, governments are opting to accept the risks of easing pandemic-fighting restrictions that left huge numbers of people without income or safety nets. (Tong-Hyung and Kurtenbach, 5/8)

The New York Times: Hidden Toll: Mexico Ignores Wave Of Coronavirus Deaths In Capital
The Mexican government is not reporting hundreds, possibly thousands, of deaths from the coronavirus in Mexico City, dismissing anxious officials who have tallied more than three times as many fatalities in the capital than the government publicly acknowledges, according to officials and confidential data reviewed by The New York Times. The tensions have come to a head in recent weeks, with Mexico City alerting the government to the deaths repeatedly, hoping it will come clean to the public about the true toll of the virus on the nation’s biggest city and, by extension, the country at large. (Ahmed, 5/8)

The Associated Press: Amid Pandemic, The World's Working Poor Hustle To Survive
From India to Argentina, untold millions who were already struggling to get by on the economic margins have had their lives made even harder by pandemic lockdowns, layoffs and the loss of a chance to earn from a hard day’s work. More than four out of five people in the global labor force of 3.3 billion have been hit by full or partial workplace closures, according to the International Labor Organization, which says 1.6 billion workers in the informal economy “stand in immediate danger of having their livelihoods destroyed.” (Batrawy and Schmall, 5/7)

Reuters: New Zealand Says It Backs Taiwan's Role In WHO Due To Success With Coronavirus
New Zealand on Friday weighed in on the debate around whether Taiwan should be allowed to join the World Health Organisation (WHO) saying the country has a lot to offer given its success in limiting the spread of the coronavirus. “Taiwan has something to offer at the WHO right at the moment,” Finance Minister Grant Robertson said at a news conference when asked if New Zealand would support Taiwan’s inclusion in WHO as an observer. (5/7)

Reuters: Pakistan Coronavirus Cases Surge Past 25,000, Pace Quickens: Reuters Tally
Coronavirus cases in Pakistan surged past 25,000 on Friday, just hours before the government was due to lift lockdown measures, with the country reporting some of the biggest daily increases in new infections in the world. Officials reported 1,764 new COVID-19 cases over the past 24 hours on Friday, taking the total to 25,837. Deaths rose by 30 to 594. (5/7)

Reuters: World Bank Approves $506 Million In Pandemic Aid For Ecuador
The World Bank’s board of directors on Thursday approved $506 million in emergency loans and grants for Ecuador to help the Andean country grapple with one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks in Latin America, the Bank said in a statement. The aid includes a flexible $500 million loan to help Ecuadorian authorities cover budget needs during the crisis and to promote economic recovery. It is a variable-spread loan with a 28-year maturity period and an 11-year grace period. (5/7)

CIDRAP: COVID-19 Surges In Russia, Brazil; WHO Warns Of Huge Death Toll In Africa
With an ongoing surge of COVID-19 activity, Russia's total is now the world's fifth highest, as cases soared in parts of Brazil, another pandemic hot spot. And in another development, the World Health Organization (WHO) today warned that smoldering uncontained outbreaks in the first pandemic year in Africa could kill as many as 190,000 people. (Schnirring, 5/7)

Undark: Covid-19 Reignites A Contentious Debate Over Bats And Disease
In the past few months, Arinjay Banerjee has gotten an unexpected taste of Internet fame. Since December, when news of Covid-19 began to shudder across the world, Banerjee — who studies the immune systems of bats at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada — has pivoted his research to focus on SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus behind the pandemic. Now among the small minority of scientists still regularly doing laboratory experiments, he’s watched his Twitter following grow and his email inbox fill, often with words of encouragement and queries about how and when the virus will be stopped. (Wu, 5/5)

Politico: Experts Knew A Pandemic Was Coming. Here’s What They’re Worried About Next.
You might feel blindsided by the coronavirus, but warnings about a looming pandemic have been there for decades. Government briefings, science journals and even popular fiction projected the spread of a novel virus and the economic impacts it would bring, complete often with details about the specific challenges the U.S. is now facing. It makes you wonder: What else are we missing? What other catastrophes are coming that we aren’t planning for, but that could disrupt our lives, homes, jobs or our broader society in the next few years or decades? (Graff, 5/7)

The Atlantic: How The Coronavirus Affects The Rural South
This spring as the coronavirus tore through New York City and spread to places like New Orleans, Marcus Campbell knew his home of Sumter County, Alabama, was particularly vulnerable. Rural residents die at higher rates from heart disease, cancer, and stroke than those in cities, and black people in rural areas die at especially high rates. Roughly 75 percent of the areas most vulnerable to the coronavirus are in the South, according to the Surgo Foundation, a research group that built an index to survey COVID-19 vulnerability. Likewise, 75  percent of the people in Sumter County, in the rural Black Belt of West Alabama, are black. The county’s residents expect to live 74 years; five years less than the national average. Forty-five percent of the people who have died of the virus in Alabama have been black. The numbers simply weren’t on their side. (Harris, 5/7)

The New York Times: A Shadow Medical Safety Net, Stretched To The Limit
In March, New York City began moving homeless shelter residents believed to have Covid-19 to “isolation units” within existing facilities. In April, it began using the city’s inventory of empty hotels, which were supposed to be for residents who weren’t yet sick enough to need hospital care. There was plenty of space available; the problem was how to staff it. For one hotel, the city contracted with Housing Works, a nonprofit focused on homelessness and H.I.V./AIDS. Housing Works brought in Callen-Lorde Community Health Center, which serves L.G.B.T.Q. New Yorkers. Callen-Lorde’s staff learned the hotel’s exact location, in Queens, late in the morning on Friday, April 3. There were 133 rooms, expected to hold more than 170 patients. They had only a few hours to get the place ready: The first patients would begin arriving that night. (Schwartz, 5/6)

The New York Times: Will Americans Lose Their Right To Vote In The Pandemic?
In March, as a wave of states began delaying their spring primaries because of the coronavirus, Wisconsin’s election, scheduled for April 7, loomed. The ballot for that day included the presidential primary, thousands of local offices and four statewide judgeships, including a key seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. On March 17, the day after Ohio postponed its spring election, voting rights groups asked Wisconsin’s Democratic governor, Tony Evers, to do the same. “No one wanted the election to happen more than us, but it felt like this wave was about to hit our communities,” Angela Lang, the founder and executive director of the Milwaukee group Black Leaders Organizing for Community, a nonprofit organization, told me. (Bazelon, 5/5)

The Washington Post: The Real Scandal Isn’t What China Did To Us. It’s What We Did To Ourselves.
The Trump administration is trying to whip the country into an anti-Chinese frenzy because the novel coronavirus might have been accidentally transmitted from a laboratory rather than a wet market. But surely the larger question we should be asking is why we have been seeing viruses jump from animals to humans with such frequency in recent years. SARS, MERS, Ebola, bird flu and swine flu all started as viruses in animals and then jumped to humans, unleashing deadly outbreaks. Why? (Fareed Zakaria, 5/7)

The New York Times: An Epidemic Of Hardship And Hunger
Covid-19 has had a devastating effect on workers. The economy has plunged so quickly that official statistics can’t keep up, but the available data suggest that tens of millions of Americans have lost their jobs through no fault of their own, with more job losses to come and full recovery probably years away. But Republicans adamantly oppose extending enhanced unemployment benefits — such an extension, says Senator Lindsey Graham, will take place “over our dead bodies.” (Actually, over other people’s dead bodies.) (Paul Krugman, 5/7)

The Hill: To Avert The Next Public Health Crisis, We Must Provide Support And Assistance For Mental Health Care 
As a senior member of the House Committee on Homeland Security and member of the House Budget Committee, I am writing to draw the attention of federal and state policy makers, health care professionals, first responders, the faith community, all enlightened Americans and impress upon them the urgent need to act in the face of one aspect of the collateral damage caused by COVID-19: the emerging mental health crisis... Mental illness has long received too little attention from policy makers and public health advocates who too often reflect upon and stress the importance of physical health insurance with little note of the importance of mental health coverage. COVID-19 should be the catalyst for the nation that spurs the adoption of universal public health policies that accept the necessity of dollar for dollar mental health coverage. (Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, 5/7)

The Wall Street Journal: Americans Need Hope As Well As Safety
New jobless claims came out this week, putting American unemployment at an estimated 33.4 million. ADP, the payroll-processing company, reports the private sector lost more than 20 million jobs in April alone. Earnings reports are dreadful, and whole sectors—air travel, hospitality—are being wiped out. Nothing will turn around soon. It is a catastrophe. But you know all that. (Peggy Noonan, 5/7)

The Washington Post: The White House’s Coronavirus Cure Is Even More Magical Than We Could Have Imagined
We’ve all hoped and prayed for something to save us from this pandemic. Will it be a vaccine? A therapeutic drug? Large-scale testing and tracing? An antibodies-rich llama or pack of virus-sniffing dogs? Nope. According to the White House, the real coronavirus cure is even more magical: tax cuts. At least the GOP is consistent. (Catherine Rampell, 5/7)

The New York Times: Coronavirus Group Testing Can Help Fight The Pandemic
Once we’ve beaten back the first wave of Covid-19 infections, the next phase of the fight against the pandemic begins. And that requires testing, lots of testing, much more testing than we’re doing right now in the United States, so we can isolate the sick from the well and keep the curve from kicking upward again. Researchers at Harvard say we need to triple our current capacity to test. How do we get there? One possible solution is happening right now in Nebraska. Instead of using more tests, the state is testing more people with the tests it has. (Jordan Ellenberg, 5/7)

The Wall Street Journal: Who Should Lead The Virus Fight?
One hopes the answer to the question in today’s headline will be the inventor of a vaccine or treatment. But until that day arrives, a new CNBC poll suggests that Americans are ready and willing to fight the coronavirus with common sense and without impoverishing government mandates. Like many other such polls, it shows President Donald with underwater approval ratings in general and for his response to the virus in particular. But his 44% approval rating on virus response is much better than the 30% rating earned by Congress and also better than the 37% rating for the federal government in general. (Freeman, 5/7)

Stat: Covid-19 Has Renewed America's Trust In Its Doctors. Will That Last?
I had a disturbing conversation with my younger sister about the public perception of doctors and Americans’ trust in them. We were home in Delaware for Thanksgiving. While telling me about her life as a college student in New York City and her new social circles, she mentioned being irritated by their hostility towards physicians. In casual conversations, and even in classroom discussions, these young people agreed that physicians are greedy and care only about money. (Jasani, 5/7)

The Washington Post: The U.S. Needs An Army Of Workers To Reopen. These Senators Have An Idea For Getting It.
We need an army of workers to reopen the country. The good news is, a group of senators has an idea for where to find one.Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.) and several colleagues introduced legislation this week to pay for 750,000 national service positions over the next three years. It’s a big number because it has to be: Experts estimate that the United States will require hundreds of thousands more public health employees to track cases, conduct tests and more. Contact tracing alone would call for almost 300,000 personnel to match the scale of successful efforts in Wuhan, China; more conservative estimates of what’s necessary still hover in the six-figure range. (5/7)

The Wall Street Journal: The Kindness Of A Funeral Amid Covid-19
Covid-19 has killed some 75,000 Americans—friends and co-workers—and many more will follow. This harrowing statistic brings to mind Pascal’s words in 1670: We shall die alone. The passing of those laid low by the novel coronavirus is especially solitary and alienating. Some victims die alone at home, while others suck their last desperate breaths through a ventilator, with loved ones ordered to await word from far away as doctors and nurses watch through a cloud of insulated plastic. (Rall, 5/7)

The New York Times: Hospitals Are Having To Ration Essential Care. Can They Do It Fairly?
Recent reports make clear that American hospitals have already had to ration lifesaving treatment for Covid-19 patients. Initially, the fear was that ventilators would be in short supply. For now, there seems to be enough. But some hospitals are short on dialysis machines as well as the staff members and supplies to run them. It’s excruciating to think of doctors being forced to decide which patients get care and which don’t. I teach moral philosophy, and as I read those reports, I couldn’t stop thinking about the philosopher John Taurek’s 1977 paper “Should the Numbers Count?” (Scott Hershovitz, 5/7)

Stat: Nursing Homes, Veterans' Homes Are Epicenters Of Covid-19
It is only Saturday afternoon and our emergency department has already seen the fourth patient with Covid-19 from one of the local nursing homes this weekend. She was fine just a few days ago; now she is disoriented and can’t catch her breath. At age 75 and with other chronic conditions, should we put her on an experimental therapy? A few hours later, an ambulance brings a patient from a different nursing home, one that already has 21 residents with Covid-19 cases, three of whom died in the past week. (Sunil Parikh, 5/8)

CNN: Valet's Diagnosis Threatens Trump's Fantasy
The danger is inside the house. A member of the US Navy who serves as a valet to President Donald Trump has tested positive for Covid-19. This means the deadly virus has likely circulated in the White House living quarters, threatening the president's health and, perhaps, the denial that has marked his response to a pandemic that has killed nearly 75,000 Americans in less than four months since he declared, "We have it totally under control." (Michael D'Antonio, 5/7)

The New York Times: We Need National Service. Now.
There is now a vast army of young people ready and yearning to serve their country. There are college graduates emerging into a workplace that has few jobs for them. There are more high school graduates who suddenly can’t afford college. There are college students who don’t want to return to a college experience. This is a passionate, idealistic generation that sees the emergency, wants to serve those around them and groans to live up to this moment. Suddenly there is a wealth of work for them to do: contact tracing, sanitizing public places, bringing food to the hungry, supporting the elderly, taking temperatures at public gathering spots, supporting local government agencies, tutoring elementary school students so they can make up for lost time. (David Brooks, 5/7)

The New York Times: The Anti-Lockdown Protesters Have A Twisted Conception Of Liberty
Most Americans support the lockdowns and want the government to bring the coronavirus under control before opening up the economy. But “most” is not “all,” and a small minority is eager to end all the restrictions now, even as the virus spreads and Covid-19 caseloads continue to grow. A small faction of that minority has taken to the streets in vocal opposition to stay-at-home measures and the politicians responsible for them. They carry guns and wave Confederate flags and denounce virus mitigation strategies as “tyranny,” an imposition on their liberty to shop, consume and do as they please. (Jamelle Bouie, 5/8)

CNN: How The 'Hinge Event' Of Covid Will Change Everything (Opinion) 
We all have a general sense of what "national security" means and what threatens it. But we need to rethink and update the term, now that our way of life is facing a dangerous threat, not from a foreign army, spy network or terrorist organization, but from a microscopic virus that has, quite suddenly, changed everything. (Peter Bergen, 5/7)

Stat: What The Covid-19 Pandemic Is Teaching Us About Community
Ata time when Americans are being asked to practice social distancing, this necessary isolation is taking a toll on the well-being of individuals and communities. But even as Covid-19 pandemic underscores the pain of disconnection, it can also inspire a revival of meaningful connection. As health care professionals working to coordinate care for individuals with complex conditions, we’ve struggled for decades to break down silos and foster cross-sector collaboration to meet the needs of our nation’s most vulnerable populations. (Lauran Hardin and Shelly Trumbo, 5/8)

The New York Times: Coronavirus And The Global Food Supply. What’s Going On?
Belgians are being told that they need to increase their consumption of frites. Across Britain, farmers have dumped millions of pints of milk down the drain instead of churning it into butter. In Iran, millions of baby chickens — which may have one day been bound for barbecues — have been buried alive. In India, farmers are feeding strawberries to cattle rather than sending them to markets.Is this what an “efficient” global food system looks like? (Jennifer Clapp, 5/8)

Los Angeles Times: Don't Screw Up L.A. Trail And Park Reopening. Wear A Mask
OK, Los Angeles, after a two-month eternity spent huddling at home with the occasional escape to walk around the neighborhood or travel to the grocery store, city and county leaders are reopening some stores, hiking trails and golf courses. It will be a relief to be outside again. It’s also going to be a nerve-wracking experiment to see whether Angelenos can safely return to some normalcy without triggering a surge of new COVID-19 cases. (5/7)

Fox News: Coronavirus Reaction — Is Your Government Embracing Tyranny? 
“Of all tyrannies,” C.S. Lewis once observed, “a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. We’re seeing the truth of these words play out right now all across the country, and if you don’t believe me, just look at the headlines. While we try to help each other stay healthy and safe, state and local authorities are seizing unprecedented amounts of power in the supposed pursuit of that goal, setting dangerous precedents along the way. (Sen. Rand Paul, 5/7)