Reuters: U.S. Coronavirus Cases Now Over 2 Million: Reuters Tally
Total U.S. coronavirus cases surpassed 2 million on Wednesday, according to a Reuters tally, as health officials urge anyone who took part in massive protests for racial justice to get tested. Nationally, new infections are rising slightly after five weeks of declines, according to a Reuters analysis. Part of the increase is due to more testing, which hit a record high on June 5 of 545,690 tests in a single day but has since fallen, according to the COVID-Tracking Project. (Shumaker, 6/10)

Politico: U.S. Coronavirus Cases Surpass 2 Million
It took the U.S. nearly three months to officially hit 1 million confirmed cases on April 28, but just six weeks to double it. Reporting of Covid-19 cases got off to a slow start amid the Trump administration’s delays in rolling out widespread testing capacity. Testing has now ramped up significantly, from nearly 6 million conducted in late April to over 21 million as of this week. But there are also signs of increased spread, as numerous states have started to see a spike in cases. (Roubein, 6/11)

NPR: U.S. Hits 2 Million Coronavirus Cases As Many States See A Surge Of Patients
Texas set new records for COVID-19 hospitalizations on three consecutive days this week, with a total of 2,153 hospitalized patients on Wednesday. The state was among the first to start the reopening process, and Gov. Greg Abbott is moving forward with plans to raise occupancy limits for bars, restaurants, amusement parks and other businesses. Florida is seeing its own new surge, with more people testing positive for the coronavirus on Saturday than any day in the past two months. Since June 2, the state has reported more than 1,000 new cases every day, even as the number of COVID-19 deaths has dropped to double-digits. (Chappell and Stein, 6/10)

CNN: US Coronavirus Cases Surpass 2 Million As Hospitalizations Go Up In Some States 
"If the US is unable to check the growth in September, we could be facing worsening trends in October, November and the following months if the pandemic, as we expect, follows pneumonia seasonality," said Dr. Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington School of Medicine. (Karimi and Sutton, 6/11)

Bloomberg: Second U.S. Virus Wave Emerges as Cases Top 2 Million
After a national shutdown that arrested the spread, rising illness had been expected as restrictions loosened. The trend has been observed across 22 states in recent weeks, though many increases are steady but slow. In New York, the state hardest hit by Covid-19, Governor Andrew Cuomo only recently started reopening by region. New York City, the epicenter, began the first of four phases Monday. (Court and Baker, 6/10)

NPR: Protesting? Here's How To Help Keep Your Family Safe From COVID-19 When You Go Home
Protesting during a pandemic likely leaves participants with at least two questions: Did I get infected? And might I be putting others at risk?Given that COVID-19 has an incubation time of up to two weeks, experts say it will take a couple of weeks before the impact of the protests on community transmission is known. But in the meantime, there are critical steps you can take to minimize the risks to yourself and those you live with. (Godoy, 6/10)

Bloomberg: Positive Protest Tests Raise Virus Spread Concerns: Protest Wrap
A protester who attended a Black Lives Matter rally in Melbourne, Australia, last weekend has tested positive for the coronavirus, raising concerns that global protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death may contribute to a second wave of virus spread. Some National Guard members in Washington D.C. had earlier tested positive after responding to protests there. The mayor of Los Angeles urged protesters in his city to consider self-quarantining for 14 days. (6/10)

CIDRAP: US COVID-19 Cases Top 2 Million As First Protest-Linked Infections Noted
Some members of the Washington, DC, National Guard—deployed over the past 2 weeks of protests and civil unrest in the wake of the George Floyd murder—have tested positive for COVID-19, a National Guard spokesperson confirmed with McClatchy news services yesterday, and US cases today topped 2 million. Though it's not clear how many of the 1,300 troops active in DC in recent weeks are infected, the news dampens optimism that outdoor protests with masked participants would not necessarily spread the novel coronavirus. The National Guard is encouraging all troops deployed during protests to be tested for COVID-19 within 14 days. (Soucheray, 6/10)

The New York Times: Why Are So Many N.Y.P.D. Officers Refusing To Wear Masks At Protests?
Riot helmets, ballistic vests, shields, batons — fully decked-out police officers have become staples in New York City as the protests against racism and police brutality approach their third week. But increasingly, one piece of equipment has attracted attention with its absence: the face mask. On any given day, any corner, any group of officers, some or all of them are not wearing masks. Others wear them below their chin. With masks having become as ingrained as shirts and shoes in the vast majority of New Yorkers’ wardrobes, their widespread absence on the police is striking — and to a mayor and governor still fighting the coronavirus pandemic, troubling. (Wilson, 6/11)

Reuters: Washington, D.C. Urges Anti-Racism Protesters To Get Tested For Coronavirus
Washington, D.C. on Wednesday urged people who had participated in protests against police brutality and systematic racism to get tested for the coronavirus. The federal district joins a number of other locales, including Boston, Dallas and the state of New York, that have asked protesters to be tested, after thousands of people flooded the streets in demonstrations amid the pandemic that has sickened nearly 2 million Americans and killed about 112,000. (6/10)

The Hill: Fauci Underscores Concerns About Protests Spreading Coronavirus 
Anthony Fauci early Wednesday expressed concern that recent mass protests against police brutality and racism would spread the novel coronavirus because of a lack of social distancing. Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert and member of the White House coronavirus task force, told ABC's “Good Morning America” he isn’t surprised that members of the Washington, D.C., National Guard who mobilized in response to the protests had tested positive, but he called the development “disturbing.” (Chalfant, 6/10)

Reuters: Pence Says No Rise In U.S. Coronavirus Cases Seen Yet Due To Protests
U.S. Vice President Mike Pence said on Wednesday there had been no sign yet of an increase in coronavirus cases from two weeks of nationwide protests over police misconduct and racism. “What I can tell you is that, at this point, we don’t see an increase in new cases now, nearly two weeks on from when the first protests took effect,” Pence said in an interview on Fox Business Network. (6/10)

The New York Times: Meet The ‘Grandmother Of Street Medics’
As protests against police brutality have swept the country, in some cases leading to additional police aggression, toward demonstrators, a loosely organized group of trained volunteers has been on call to intervene and treat injuries. Street medics, who may be medical professionals or first aid practitioners with only basic training, bandage cuts and rubber bullet wounds. They treat symptoms from tear gas, Mace and pepper spray, using water and saline to flush protesters’ eyes. And, working as teams, they help move marchers out of harm’s way. (Bromwich, 6/10)

Kaiser Health News: Fighting COVID And Police Brutality, Medical Teams Take To Streets To Treat Protesters
Amid clouds of choking tear gas, booming flash-bang grenades and other other “riot control agents,” volunteer medics plunged into street protests over the past weeks to help the injured — sometimes rushing to the front lines as soon as their hospital shifts ended. Known as “street medics,” these unorthodox teams of nursing students, veterinarians, doctors, trauma surgeons, security guards, ski patrollers, nurses, wilderness EMTs and off-the-clock ambulance workers poured water — not milk — into the eyes of tear-gassed protesters. (Dawson, 6/11)

Los Angeles Times: LAPD Investigating 56 Claims Of Police Misconduct During Protests
The Los Angeles Police Department is investigating 56 allegations of misconduct by officers during protests against police brutality in the wake of George Floyd’s death, officials said Wednesday. Of the 56 investigations, 28 involve alleged use of force, the LAPD said Wednesday in a statement. Seven officers have been taken out of the field pending the outcome of the investigations. The LAPD has tasked 40 investigators with looking into the allegations of misconduct, excessive force and violations of departmental policy during the protests. (Winton, 6/10)

The New York Times: For A Day, Scientists Pause Science To Confront Racism
Galvanized by the reaction to the killing of George Floyd and continued reports that minority researchers feel marginalized and disrespected, almost 6,000 scientists and academicians said they would participate in a one-day strike on Wednesday. The event was organized by a loosely affiliated group of physicists and cosmologists operating under various hashtags, including #Strike4BlackLives, #ShutDownStem and #ShutDownAcademia. (Overbye, 6/10)

The Hill: Over 5000 Scientists Stop Work In Protest Against Systemic Racism In STEM 
Thousands of scientists pledged to halt research on Wednesday as part of a protest over systemic racism against black academics and STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) professionals. More than 5,000 academics from institutions across the globe signed an online pledge to strike posted by Particles for Justice. As of Wednesday evening, Particles for Justice said it was no longer accepting pledges to strike, but is encouraging everyone to participate and acknowledge this is “only one of many days” needed for action and support. (Klar, 6/10)

Stat: For Black Youth, A Time Of Upheaval Takes A Toll On Mental Health 
From his room in Los Angeles, Cecil Hannibal worries about his grandmother getting Covid-19 every time she goes to the supermarket in Louisville, Ky. In northern Georgia, Visaysha Harris puts limits on her news consumption, to keep from “taking too much of it all in.” In Dallas, Ashley Otah makes sure to follow reminders on her mindfulness apps. In New Jersey, Zane Keyes unwinds by riding his bike. “Since George Floyd’s murder, I feel angry, frustrated, unheard,” he says. (Glaser, 6/11)

Stat: Geneticists Weigh In On How 23andMe Can Tackle Racial Inequity In The Field
At the consumer genetics giant 23andMe, CEO Anne Wojcicki last week issued a remarkable statement calling her product “euro-centric” and saying her company is “part of the problem.” Competitor Ancestry put out its own statement saying it has “a long, long way to go to make our product experience as inclusive as it can possibly be for everyone.” And the DNA testing startup Nebula Genomics published a blog post about the lack of diversity in their field — a post that was drafted months ago, but which the company held off on publishing because of concerns about how it would be received. (Robbins, 6/10)

The Hill: Author Joel Kotkin Discusses Urban Communities, Young People Being Hit Hardest By Effects Of COVID-19 
Author Joel Kotkin on Wednesday said that urban communities and young people are being hit hardest by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and will have a tougher time recovering. Kotkin, a presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University, told Hill.TV that small businesses in inner-city communities face a “really rough turn” and predicted that many will never reopen after the coronavirus shutdown. “What you’re really seeing and, I think it’s really tragic, is that the small businesses that were deemed nonessential are — many of them are never gonna reopen,” he said. (6/10)

The Washington Post: Lawmakers Grapple With Policing And Race As Focus Shifts From The Streets To The Capitol
The national response to the police killing of George Floyd began transitioning from America’s streets to the halls of Congress on Wednesday, as lawmakers held their first hearing on a Democratic policing reform proposal and Republicans promised soon to release legislation of their own. It marked the first time in years that leaders from both parties expressed determination to offer legislative remedies for racial injustice in policing, but their ability to find common ground remained far from a sure bet. (Olorunnipa and Bailey, 6/10)

Politico: Democrats Stiff-Arm GOP's 'Cosmetic' Police Reforms
Senate Democrats are voicing deep skepticism toward the GOP’s newfound embrace of police reform. And they may soon have to decide whether they’ll accept incremental measures or nothing at all. Though careful not to pre-emptively dismiss South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott’s work designing a police reform package, Democrats said in interviews Wednesday that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is unlikely to endorse the type of far-reaching legislation needed to respond to police killings of black people and nationwide unrest. (Everett, 6/11)

Politico: ‘I'm Tired': George Floyd's Brother Pleads For Police Reforms
The brother of George Floyd, an unarmed black man killed last month by a Minneapolis police officer, pleaded with lawmakers Wednesday to implement sweeping restrictions on the use of force by police. Philonise Floyd described the anguish his family felt after videos surfaced of an officer, Derek Chauvin, putting his knee on his brother's neck for nearly nine minutes as his brother cried for air until he drew his last breath. That anguish quickly consumed a nation already paralyzed by coronavirus lockdowns and economic turmoil. (Cheney, 6/10)

Reuters: George Floyd's Brother Decries 'A Modern-Day Lynching' In Testimony To Congress 
The House of Representatives Judiciary Committee held the first congressional hearing to examine racial injustice and police brutality following George Floyd’s May 25 death after a Minneapolis policeman knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes. His death prompted a wave of protests in U.S. cities and abroad. “They lynched my brother. That was a modern-day lynching in broad daylight,” Philonise Floyd, 42, of Missouri City, Texas, near Houston, told the committee, his voice breaking with emotion. (Morgan and Cowan, 6/10)

NPR: Philonise Floyd Tells House Judiciary Justice Has To Be Served
Democrats have promised to hold hearings to shine light on the lost trust between communities of color and the police as part of a broader plan to overhaul law enforcement policies. Wednesday's hearing is the beginning of that effort in the House. Throughout the hearing, lawmakers on the panel staked out their positions on the state of policing — diverging on issues of police funding and what types of reforms are needed. Members of both parties condemned the killing of Floyd. (Naylor and Snell, 6/10)

The Washington Post: Beleaguered And Besieged, Police Try To Come To Grips With A Nation's Anger
The crowds have thinned and the smoke has cleared, with more than a week of nationwide protests leaving in their wake a nation increasingly resolved to change a broken law enforcement system. But they also have left police officers badly shaken, and in some cases physically bruised. Nationwide, police leaders say the rank and file are struggling to come to grips with the level of animus they encountered on the streets, as epithets, bricks and bottles all came hurtling their way. (Witte and Miroff, 6/10)

The Wall Street Journal: More Cities Ban Chokeholds, Similar Restraints In Wake Of George Floyd Protests
A growing number of cities and states are moving to ban the use of neck holds by police following protests over the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. That city, along with Houston, Raleigh, N.C., San Diego, Denver and others have all taken or announced actions against chokeholds or other kinds of neck restraints that can incapacitate someone by cutting off airflow or blood flow. A sweeping Democratic-backed police-reform bill in the U.S. House includes a chokehold ban. (Kamp and Calvert, 6/10)

Los Angeles Times: Disband The Police? Camden Already Did That
When Gabe Rodriguez started as a rookie cop in this impoverished New Jersey city, his training officer gave him a tip. If a comrade radios for backup, just park your patrol car in a vacant lot and let someone else handle it. The police had given up trying to control Camden’s rampant violent crime, so seven years ago the state gave up on the city’s police. Officials took the unprecedented step of disbanding the department and starting over. The old logo came off police headquarters and a new one went up in its place. (Megerian, 6/10)

Politico: Minneapolis Police Chief Ends Negotiations With Police Union In A Bid For Reform
Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo announced on Wednesday that he would withdraw from contract negotiations with the force’s police union in an effort to kick-start reform amid criticism over the police killing of George Floyd. The move comes amid heightened awareness of the role police unions sometimes play in stifling reform efforts that aim to combat police brutality. (Cohen, 6/10)

The Washington Post: Remember Neli Latson, The Black Teen With Autism Who Seemed ‘Suspicious’ Sitting Outside A Library? Ten Years After His Arrest, He Still Isn’t Fully Free.
Neli Latson’s life changed in the same swift way the lives of so many other black people have: with a stranger’s call to the police. He was 18, sitting outside a library in his Virginia neighborhood, waiting for it to open, when that call was made. It came into a sheriff’s office at 8:37 a.m., and suddenly it didn’t matter that Latson was a special-education student with autism who often took long walks by himself and saw the library as a social outlet. (Vargas, 6/10)

Houston Chronicle: Houston OKs $5.1B Budget That Increases Police Spending Despite Calls To ‘Defund’ HPD 
City Council on Wednesday unanimously approved Mayor Sylvester Turner’s $5.1 billion budget for the next fiscal year, slightly increasing funds for the Houston Police Department even as some cities are under pressure to cut law enforcement spending amid nationwide protest over police violence and the death of George Floyd. As the council took up budget, chants of “Black lives matter” and “No justice, no peace” could be heard from protesters outside City Hall. Dozens of police reform advocates had asked city council the day before to divert funding from HPD’s massive budget to other services, such as health care and affordable housing. (McGuinness and Scherer, 6/10)

Boston Globe: Providence City Council Hears Debate Over ‘Defunding The Police’
The public safety commissioner said he is saddened by stories of police misconduct, but he called policing a “noble profession" that includes people working hard under difficult conditions. The police union president warned that defunding the Providence police would result in higher crime rates, lower property values, and an exodus of businesses. The police chief said public safety officials have denounced what happened to Floyd and racism in general, but he defended the city police force. (Fitzpatrick, 6/11)

WBUR: Boston City Council Hears Calls To Move Money From Police 
Boston residents are calling on the city to reallocate some of the more than $400 million spent on policing, in favor of other community services they say could respond better. The calls come amid nationwide protests, including in Boston, over racial injustice and police brutality. (Becker, 6/10)

San Francisco Chronicle: Marchers Gather Outside Oakland Mayor’s Home, Call For Defunding Police 
Public dissatisfaction with the role that police play in communities — a concern brought into sharp focus by the killing of Minneapolis resident George Floyd on Memorial Day by a police officer there — played out Wednesday in cities across the Bay Area. This included a march at dusk toward the home of Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf that drew hundred of mostly young protesters. But there also were events as disparate as a “virtual town meeting” in Redwood City on the topic of community policing and a pledge by nine mayors in Sonoma County to review their cities’ policies with regards to how public safety. (Kawahara and King, 6/10)

Dallas Morning News: George Floyd Wasn’t The First Victim Of Police Violence. Families Of North Texas Victims Want To Remind Us Of That
With each day of social reckoning since the world watched George Floyd’s 8 minutes and 46 seconds of agony on a Minneapolis street, I can’t shake this question: What about Atatiana Jefferson, Jordan Edwards, Botham Jean and other North Texans killed by police officers who were sworn to protect their lives? Those names became social media hashtags. Community members railed to local leaders about the circumstances of their deaths. Multiple news stories were devoted to each and opinion writers called out the injustice. (Grigsby, 6/10)

USA Today: For Black Mayors, Police Reforms are a Personal Mission to Make Sure 'Another Black Man Doesn't Die the Way George Floyd Did'
Mayor London Breed has a spacious office in an ornate building, but for all the pomp of her position, her roots remain in the city’s rough Western Addition neighborhood. Her sister died of a drug overdose, her brother is in jail and a cousin was killed by local police. For Breed, and other African American mayors, the current cry for a policing reform after the death of George Floyd —  a 46-year-old black man in Minneapolis who was pinned to the ground by officers after being accused of passing a fake $20 bill at a store — is deeply personal.“ The black people in communities with black mayors know we understand these experiences like no one else can,” says Breed. “There’s no way we’re not going to hold law enforcement accountable like never before.” (della Cava and Stanley, 6/11)

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Georgia Lawmaker Wants To Cut Athens Police Department In Half
An Athens-Clarke County commissioner is looking to shrink the local police department by 50% during the next decade and replace that personnel with mental health and social work first responders. Mariah Parker, who chose a copy of Malcolm X’s autobiography, rather than a Bible, for her 2018 inauguration, is proposing spending $50,000 on a study on how to make that transition, a proposal that is set for a June 16 vote. (Darnell. 6/10)

Politico: Quarantine Fatigue: Governors Reject New Lockdowns As Virus Cases Spike
The coronavirus is spiking in more than a dozen states and intensive care beds are filling again, but several governors have no plans to reimpose shutdown measures or pause reopenings, a sign that the political will to take drastic measures has dissipated even as the virus is still raging. In Texas, where total cases have shot up by one-third in the last two weeks, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott is moving ahead with plans to let virtually all businesses keep expanding capacity by the end of this week. (Ollstein and Goldberg, 6/10)

The Washington Post: As Coronavirus Cases Rise Nationwide, Public Health Experts Urge Caution
When Gov. Doug Ducey allowed Arizona’s stay-at-home order to expire on May 15, 340 patients were in intensive care units statewide due to the novel coronavirus — the largest number since the beginning of the pandemic. Public health experts at the University of Arizona spent the week before publicly pleading with Ducey to postpone reopening, suggesting cases in the state were still projected to grow. About two weeks later, the maximum amount of time it takes the virus to incubate, Arizona began seeing a precipitous rise in cases and a flood of new hospitalizations, straining medical resources and forcing the state’s top medical official to reissue a March order urging all hospitals to activate emergency plans. (Janes, Stanley-Becker and Weiner, 6/10)

ABC News: Tsunami Or Ripple? Forecasting The 2nd Wave Of Coronavirus 
As some states see declining COVID-19 cases and gradually reopen, infectious disease experts warn that a second wave of COVID-19 is inevitable, though the extent of the resurgence remains unclear. The "second wave" of a pandemic refers to a recurrent rise of infections following an overall decline in spread from the initial cluster of cases. (Johnson, 6/11)

ABC News: In Some States Coronavirus Hospitalizations On The Rise, Experts Point To Lack Of Social Distancing 
Hospitalizations for the novel coronavirus are on the rise in at least eight states, in what experts and officials said was in part an expected consequence of states reopening their economies, but also made worse by some people who have begun to disregard social distancing guidelines and aren't appropriately wearing masks. The states in which the hospitalization numbers are increasing are Arizona, Arkansas, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Utah, according to a new analysis by ABC News of public data from the past two weeks. (Rubin, Kim, Dukakis and Romero, 6/11)

Los Angeles Times: Newsom Says No Turning Back On California Reopening Plans
California officials remain confident about the rapid reopening of the economy even as coronavirus deaths and new cases continue to rise, saying they have no plans now to slow the efforts. They said they expected cases to tick upward as businesses reopened but stressed the overall metrics still support the reopening strategy, which took another major step forward on Wednesday. (Shalby, 6/10)

The Hill: Americans Divided On Return To Regular Routines: Poll 
Americans are divided on returning to their regular routines about three months after the country shut down because of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a poll released Wednesday. A CNN poll conducted by SSRS found that 49 percent of respondents said they feel comfortable returning to their normal routines after the shutdowns, compared to 50 percent who say they do not. In May’s poll, 41 percent said they felt comfortable returning to regular life, and 58 percent said they did not. The level of comfort is split among partisan lines, with 73 percent of Republicans, 53 percent of independents and 23 percent of Democrats polled saying they are comfortable returning to regular life. (Coleman, 6/10)

NPR: Coronavirus: Thousands Of Workers Say Their Jobs Are Unsafe As Economy Reopens
The past few months have weighed heavily on Edgar Fields. He's been meeting with workers at chicken processing plants around Georgia and nearby states. His union represents them, and many have become sick. Some have died. "You know, you lay in the bed and you can't sleep because stuff is on your mind? I've got to do this. I've got to do that," he says. "That's what I wake up in every morning thinking, what can I do to protect my members to where they have a safe work environment to go to?" (Arnold, 6/11)

CNN: Grocery Stores And Universities Should Reopen First, New Research Suggests 
New research suggests grocery stores, banks, dentists, universities and big box stores like Walmart should reopen earlier and face fewer restrictions as communities open up after pandemic lockdowns. The study, released on Tuesday, also determined that cafes, gyms, sporting goods stores, bookstores, tobacco and liquor stores should be kept closed until later. The researchers who took part in a Massachusetts Institute of Technology-led initiative did a cost benefit analysis of 26 different location types to determine what the tradeoff would be between someone's relative risk of getting infected during a visit and the importance of that establishment in that person's life and to the economy. (Christensen, 6/11)

The Hill: Maryland To Lift Restrictions On Indoor Restaurants, Gyms, Casinos 
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) on Wednesday lifted a host of COVID-19 restrictions in the biggest wave of reopenings to date in the state. Hogan said casinos, day cares, gyms, amusement parks, malls and indoor dining will all be able to resume with restrictions over the next 10 days. Hogan also urged local schools to schedule outdoor graduation ceremonies with capacity and distancing restrictions in place. (Weixel, 6/10)

The New York Times: Libraries Strive To Stay ‘Community Living Rooms’ As They Reopen
In pockets of Virginia, Illinois, Missouri and Ohio, there are books sitting in quarantine. They are public library books that have been returned, and then spend at least three days sitting on tables or in big metal carts, carefully labeled with the dates they came in. After that, they can they go back on the shelves. Libraries around the country are tiptoeing toward reopening, but they’re not just trying to figure out how to safely lend out books. These are community hubs where parents bring their toddlers for story time, where people come to use the computer, where book groups meet. (Harris, 6/11)

The Washington Post: Hogan Announces Wave Of Reopenings, Including Day Cares And Gyms, As Region Lifts More Restrictions
The Washington region is further reopening in the coming days, and although health officials warned that the coronavirus pandemic is far from over, Maryland and Northern Virginia are letting more businesses resume after months of closures. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) announced Wednesday that the state’s day cares, gyms, malls, school buildings, casinos and amusement parks can reopen within the next 10 days — an extension of its Phase 2 reopening. Restaurants will be able to offer indoor dining with 50 percent capacity. (Wiggins, Cox, Sullivan and Hedgpeth, 6/10)

The Wall Street Journal: Day-Care Centers Are Reopening. Will Families Return?
As the hard-hit day-care industry prepares to reopen from its coronavirus shutdown, Dina Longo, like many parents around the country, is debating whether it is safe to send her 2-year-old daughter back to her New Jersey child-care center. The emergence of multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, a serious condition potentially associated with Covid-19 that has affected more than 30 children in New Jersey and over 200 in New York, has given her pause, Ms. Longo said. California, Washington and Louisiana have recorded cases as well. (De Avila and King, 6/10)

NBC News: Coronavirus Is Making A Comeback In Arizona Three Weeks After Governor Lifted Stay-At-Home Order
Three weeks after Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey lifted his stay-at-home order, the state has seen a big spike in the number of coronavirus cases.With nearly 1,100 dead and hospitalizations spiking rapidly, lawmakers and medical professionals are warning there might not be enough emergency room beds to handle what could be a big influx of new cases. More than 1,500 new cases were reported along with 25 new deaths in the past 24 hours, officials said. (Hillyard and Siemaszko, 6/10)

PBS NewsHour: As Coronavirus Rises In Alabama, Experts Worry Over Lack Of ‘Guardrails’ In Reopening 
Although Americans are trying to move closer to their pre-pandemic routines, there are signs the coronavirus continues to spread in places that have eased restrictions. One of those is Alabama, among the last states to issue a stay-at-home order and the earliest to lift it. (Yang, Baldwin and Buhre, 6/10)

Dallas Morning News: Dallas County Reports 300 New Coronavirus Cases, Another Record Single-Day Increase
Dallas County reported 300 new coronavirus cases Wednesday — its highest single-day count — and three new deaths.The county has had a total of 12,945 and 274 deaths. The most recent fatalities included a Dallas woman in her 40s and a DeSoto man in his 70s who both had underlying health conditions, and a Garland woman in her 80s who was a resident of a long-term care facility. More than a third of COVID-19 deaths in the county have been associated with such facilities. (Jones and Branham, 6/10)

Politico: Google And Apple’s Rules For Virus Tracking Apps Sow Division Among States
The global rush to halt the coronavirus led countries like Australia and South Korea to launch smartphone apps to track its spread, using the technology as a key part of their push to tamp down the pandemic and restart their economies. But U.S. efforts to do the same are running into an all-too-familiar problem that has plagued the pandemic response: a lack of national coordination. And Silicon Valley’s attempts to help aren’t resolving the confusion. (Overly and Ravindranath, 6/10)

Stat: Telehealth Is A ‘Silver Lining’ Of The Pandemic, But Implementing It Permanently Won’t Be Easy
The coronavirus pandemic has stretched hospital resources beyond their capacity, disrupted the delivery of care, and drained providers of billions of dollars of revenue for canceled elective procedures, office visits, and tests. It may also have permanently changed U.S. health care for the better. (Ross, 6/11)

The Associated Press: EU Wants Tech Giants To Do More To Counter Virus Fake News
A senior European Union official warned online platforms like Google and Facebook on Wednesday to step up the fight against fake news coming notably from countries like China and Russia, but she praised the approach of Twitter for fact-checking a tweet by U.S. President Donald Trump. Unveiling a plan to fight disinformation linked to the coronavirus, European Commission Vice President Vera Jourova said she wants online tech companies to provide far more detailed reports each month than currently on the action they are taking to prevent a fake news “infodemic.” (Cook, 6/10)

Modern Healthcare: ONC Seeks Comments On Draft Questionnaire For Evaluating EHRs
A Washington, D.C.-based think tank contracted to create HHS' electronic health record reporting program has released a draft questionnaire that clinicians, pharmacists and hospital information technology staff would use to evaluate software products. Under the 21st Century Cures Act, HHS is required to collect data on health IT software certified by the agency. The ultimate goal is to publish interoperability, usability and other data from software users and developers, so that users can compare products before purchasing them. (Cohen, 6/10)

The Wall Street Journal: Now Made In New York City: Much-Needed Coronavirus Test Kits
New York City officials are building a supply line of locally made coronavirus viral test kits, which they say is essential to safely reopening the economy. Two New York City companies and one college are on track to deliver 100,000 test kits a week by the end of June, according to the New York City Economic Development Corp., which is coordinating the effort. Having a reliable and local source of testing materials is critical as the city moves forward with reopening its businesses and offices, said EDC Chief Executive James Patchett. (King, 6/10)

The Washington Post: States Are Wrestling On Their Own With How To Expand Testing, With Little Guidance From The Trump Administration
In Maryland, drive-through coronavirus testing sites are now open to all residents, whether or not they show signs of illness. In Oregon, by contrast, officials have said that generally only people with symptoms of covid-19, the illness associated with the coronavirus, should be tested — even in the case of front-line health-care workers. (Weiner and Helderman, 6/10)

And in other testing news —

Reuters: Europe Sets Sights On Dud Antibody Tests Amid COVID-19 Free-For-All
The market for COVID-19 antibody tests is red-hot. It has ballooned in a matter of months as hundreds of products flood the world for people who want to find out whether they’ve already had the virus. The problem is, some of them don’t work properly. As a result, European authorities aim to tighten regulation of the new sector, to weed out tests that give consistently inaccurate results and crack down on companies that make false claims, three sources familiar with the plans told Reuters. (Guarascio, 6/11)

CNN: Medical Supply Company Threw Out Products After Donald Trump Toured Its Facility 
A medical supply company said Tuesday that it discarded the products it had produced during President Donald Trump's visit to its headquarters in Maine last week. Puritan Medical Products said it had decided ahead of Trump's visit on Friday to throw away the swabs it produced due to the number of people who would be visiting the facility, including government officials, security personnel and the media. (Nedelman, 6/10)

The Washington Post: Arrayit President Mark Schena Charged With Fraud In Connection To Covid-19 Test
The Justice Department said Tuesday that it had brought its first criminal securities fraud case related to the coronavirus pandemic against a California biotech executive in connection with an unapproved blood test that purported to detect the novel coronavirus. Mark Schena, president of Sunnyvale-based Arrayit, was charged with securities fraud and conspiracy to commit health-care fraud in the Northern District of California. The charges stem from an existing allergy test the company said it wanted to bundle with a coronavirus test. (Lerman, 6/9)

Reuters: Special Report: Pandemic Exposes Systemic Staffing Problems At U.S. Nursing Homes
One night in April, as coronavirus swept through the Hammonton Center for Rehabilitation and Healthcare, Robyn Esaw, a double amputee, signaled for help with her bedpan. She said she hit the bedside button that turns on a red hallway light. None of the few remaining staff showed up - and one of them turned the light off. Esaw only got help, eventually, by wheeling herself to the nursing station and yelling. (Kirkham and Lesser, 6/10)

The Wall Street Journal: Nursing Homes Say Some Protective Gear Sent By FEMA Is Unusable
A major federal effort to ship protective gear to nursing homes during the coronavirus pandemic is providing equipment that some facilities say is unusable, including plastic gowns that they say don’t meet their infection-control requirements. The shipments, coordinated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, are ultimately supposed to provide two weeks’ worth of gloves, gowns, surgical masks and eye protection for each of approximately 15,000 facilities. A FEMA spokeswoman said that as of Tuesday, 13,654 packages have been sent, with more slated for the coming weeks. (Mathews, 6/11)

Kaiser Health News: Federal Help Falters As Nursing Homes Run Short Of Protective Equipment
Around the country, nursing homes trying to protect their residents from the coronavirus eagerly await boxes of masks, eyewear and gowns promised by the federal government. But all too often the packages deliver disappointment — if they arrive at all. Some contain flimsy surgical masks or cloth face coverings that are explicitly not intended for medical use. Other are missing items or have far less than the full week’s worth of protective equipment the government promised to send. Instead of proper medical gowns, many packages hold large blue plastic ponchos. (Rau, 6/11)

WBUR: HHS Secretary Was Warned Of 'Crisis' At Holyoke Soldiers’ Home Earlier Than Administration Has Said, Documents Suggest 
Gov. Charlie Baker has repeatedly said that he and Health and Human Services Secretary Marylou Sudders first learned about the deadly coronavirus outbreak at the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home around 9 p.m. on Sunday, March 29. But emails and phone records provided to WBUR show Sudders may have known about the sudden and catastrophic increase in cases and deaths nearly 24 hours before that time. (Wasser, 6/10)

Boston Globe: Members Of Congress Ask About Bedford VA Staff’s Role In Spread Of Coronavirus Among Veterans 
In a letter to VA leaders, Senators Edward Markey and Elizabeth Warren and Representatives Seth Moulton and Lori Trahan said they are concerned that staffers who tested positive continued to work and had “unsafe encounters” with staff, patients, and emergency responders. The members of Congress said they had gotten complaints that employees with COVID-19 symptoms were required to keep working, and that some didn’t follow social distancing rules or were not wearing the required protective equipment. (Estes, 6/10)

The New York Times: Why 2 Crises May Finally Force N.Y.C. Schools To Integrate
When New York City became the national epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, its once-sacrosanct practice of sorting thousands of children into selective public schools suddenly collapsed: The metrics that dictate admissions evaporated as schools shuttered. Then, the city erupted in protest over the killing of George Floyd, and the fact that the proudly progressive city is home to one of the nation’s most racially divided school districts took on fresh urgency. New York is now inadvertently running an experiment in how to operate without high-stakes admissions screens. (Shapiro, 6/11)

The New York Times: Pandemic-Stricken Schools Tell Senate They Need Help To Reopen
Without a large federal investment in the nation’s public school system, districts hit hard by the coronavirus will struggle to meet the needs of their pupils this fall as they try to reopen their doors, educators told a Senate panel on Wednesday. In testimony before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, education leaders from around the country said budget challenges were among their chief concerns as they drafted plans to resume in-person classes. That is particularly true for students who have borne the brunt of the economic, educational and racial injustices that have been exacerbated by the pandemic. (Green, 6/10)

The Wall Street Journal: New York City Proposes Health, Safety Criteria For Reopening Schools
New York City Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza offered a glimpse into the kinds of safeguards that would need to be in place before schools can reopen, which he said would ideally occur in September. In an email sent Tuesday to school administrators and other stakeholders, Mr. Carranza outlined an eight-point checklist that must still be blessed by unions, stressing the details are still being debated.“We can’t predict what will be true in September, but as of now we are anticipating that social distancing will remain in effect,” the chancellor wrote. (Hawkins, 6/10)

CNN: Will Schools Be Safe This Fall? Experts Weigh In 
Teachers, parents and, yes, even children are anxiously waiting for schools to reopen in the fall, but the biggest questions on everyone's mind are when and how that can happen safely. With so much still unknown about how coronavirus affects children and how it spreads, CNN asked health and education experts about the pros and cons of reopening schools. (Grayer, 6/11)

The Hill: State, City Education Officials Press Congress For More COVID-19 Funds 
Education officials from various parts of the country called on Congress Wednesday to appropriate more funds to help students return to school this fall amid the coronavirus pandemic. Officials from Tennessee, Nebraska and Denver told members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee that school budgets are stretched thin by the combination of funding cuts and much-needed enhancements to allow students to resume learning safely in classrooms. (Bikales, 6/10)

The Associated Press: Homes For Disabled Hit Hard By COVID, Faced Past Violations
Neil Sullivan was angry, frustrated and crushed with guilt. His brother Joe had been rushed by ambulance from his home for the developmentally disabled to the emergency room with a possible case of the coronavirus. Neil had known the people at the Elisabeth Ludeman Developmental Center near Chicago were at risk. Regulators had flagged the facility over the years for violations such as neglect of residents and not keeping restrooms stocked with soap and paper towels. And now, in the middle of a pandemic, a staffer told Neil they were still short of life-saving equipment like surgical masks, gowns, hand sanitizers and even wipes. (Mohr, Weiss and Dunklin, 6/11)

The Wall Street Journal: Coronavirus Pandemic Pressures Special-Needs Caregivers
Darius Stewart, who provides care for people with special needs such as autism and Down syndrome, hasn’t left the residential home where he works since late April. All three employees and four residents of the Silver Spring, Md., home had tested positive for the new coronavirus. After 14-hour shifts, Mr. Stewart said, he watches television news and sees nurses, doctors, retail workers and others being singled out for praise. The 28-year-old wonders why his profession never seems to get a mention. “We are barely even recognized as health-care workers,” he said. (MacDonald, 6/11)

And in other news —

Bangor Daily News: Portland Company Settles With MaineCare Over Providing Childcare With No License 
A home healthcare company in Portland will repay $111,200 to MaineCare to settle allegations that the company provided services for 45 intellectually disabled children four years ago despite lacking necessary licenses, the U.S. Attorney’s office said Wednesday. Noble Home Health Care, Inc. of Portland and its owner Mohamed A. Hassan submitted false claims to MaineCare from May to September 2016 for the services despite several warnings from Maine Department of Health and Human Services officials that Noble could not provide or bill MaineCare for, according to a civil-court complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Portland. (Sambides Jr., 6/10)

Stateline: Many Faithful Say It’s Time To Gather. Some Governors Disagree. 
Gathering to pray feels more important than ever for many Americans of faith, as COVID-19 cases top 2 million in the United States and communities roil with anger about police brutality and systemic racism. Yet many governors and city leaders still prohibit large religious gatherings, angering some clergy — even those who backed pandemic-related restrictions imposed months ago — who see the continuing curbs on services as an attack on their civil rights. (Van Ness, 6/11)

The Associated Press: Hawaii Extends 14-Day Quarantine For All Incoming Travelers
Hawaii Gov. David Ige extended the state’s mandatory 14-day quarantine for all arriving travelers on Wednesday in a bid to keep coronavirus cases in the islands low. Ige said the rule is being extended to the end of July as the state works to solidify a screening process that could soon allow travelers to return in some capacity. Officials said they are planning to install thermal screening stations and facial recognition technology at the airports by the end of the year. (Jones, 6/11)

The New York Times: Hotels Transformed New York’s Social Life. Now What?
There was a time in the not so far-off past when hotels lived or died by being an out-of-towner’s fantasy: the Plaza, the Four Seasons, the St. Regis. Then, as new money poured into real estate in the mid-1990s, and as Mayor Rudolph Giuliani cracked down on dance clubs like the Sound Factory and Tunnel, as food culture ascended and laptop computers and Startac phones enabled the self-employed to work outside their homes, a new group of boutique hotels became the new New York’s fantasy of itself: ritzy, but not fusty. (Bernstein, 6/11)

San Francisco Chronicle: San Francisco Latinos Ask Mayor For Help As The Coronavirus Soars In That Group 
Latino groups in San Francisco are urging Mayor London Breed to provide financial and social assistance to end long-standing inequities that have made Latino residents particularly vulnerable to COVID-19. Nearly 60% of people with a known ethnicity who have tested positive for the coronavirus in San Francisco are Latino, though they make up just 15% of the city’s population, according to the most recent data from the city’s Department of Public Health. Similar disparities have been reported in counties across the Bay Area and California. (Sanchez, 6/10)

Dallas Morning News: UT Dallas Professor Working To Stop Spread Of Coronavirus By Collecting Patient Data
A University of Texas at Dallas computer science professor is working on a software project that would allow researchers to collect medical information about COVID-19 patients while still protecting their privacy. Scientists are collecting patient data to help them better understand the virus and help stop its spread. (Webster, 6/10)

Bangor Daily News: Maine Saw Fewer New Virus Cases Even With More Tests Over The Past Week 
Several indicators of the spread of the coronavirus suggest that the deadly virus has declined in Maine over the past few weeks, although it is still too early to say whether recent large public gatherings might lead to an uptick in cases. (Piper, 6/10)

CNN: Two Missouri Hairstylists Who Had Coronavirus Saw 140 Clients But No One Got Infected 
Two Missouri hairstylists who worked while they had coronavirus did not infect the 140 clients they served even though they had symptoms at the time, local health officials said. Both stylists worked at the same Great Clips location in Springfield for more than a week in mid-May. The clients and the stylists all wore face coverings, and the salon had set up other measures such as social distancing of chairs and staggered appointments, the Springfield-Greene County Health Department said this week. (Karimi, 6/11)

The New York Times: Coachella And Stagecoach Canceled As Officials Fear Virus Resurgence
The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, the marquee pop extravaganza that was postponed in March as the coronavirus pandemic led to shutdowns across the United States, is officially canceled for the year. Riverside County, Calif., which encompasses the Coachella Valley and hosts the event, said that its public health officer, Dr. Cameron Kaiser, called off the weekend-long concert series on Wednesday, along with Stagecoach, a country music festival that is also held annually at the Empire Polo Club in Indio. (Coscarelli, 6/10)

Albuquerque Journal: State Announces Dedicated Virus Testing Times For Food Workers 
Beginning Monday, June 15, the New Mexico Department of Health is designating special COVID-19 testing hours for all employees in the food and beverage industry, according to a news release from the department. Employees of restaurants, grocery stores, farmers’ markets, distribution centers and food manufacturing facilities will be able to receive free testing every Monday at Department of Health field offices from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. (Martinez, 6/10)

The New York Times: Trump 2020 Campaign Will Return With Rally In Tulsa
President Trump will return to the campaign trail on June 19 with a rally in Tulsa, Okla., for the first time since the coronavirus outbreak forced most of the country into quarantine three months ago, a campaign official said Wednesday, as polls show former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. establishing a significant national lead over Mr. Trump and the president’s approval ratings plummeting. Oklahoma, a deep-red state Mr. Trump won four years ago by 36 percentage points, began lifting restrictions on businesses on April 24 and moved into Phase 3 of its reopening on June 1, allowing summer camps to open and workplaces to return with full staffing levels. (Karni, 6/10)

The Hill: Trump To Hold First Post-Coronavirus Rally In Oklahoma 
“We’re going to start our rallies back up now. We’ve had a tremendous run at rallies. I don’t think there has been an empty seat since we came down on the escalator,” Trump told reporters Wednesday, referencing the launch of his 2016 presidential campaign. (Chalfant, 6/10)

CNN: Pence Deletes Tweet Showing Trump Campaign Staff Not Wearing Face Masks Or Social Distancing 
Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday evening tweeted, and then deleted, a photo showing a large group of President Donald Trump's reelection campaign staff not wearing face masks or social distancing, two recommendations of the coronavirus task force that Pence leads. "Stopped by to see the great men and women of the Trump-Pence Team today!" the tweet read. "Thank you for all of the hard work, keep it up!" (LeBlanc, 6/11)

The Wall Street Journal: Trump Considers Ways To Address Police Abuse
President Trump and his advisers are weighing a possible executive order or other policy actions to address abuses by police, responding to widespread public anger following the killing of George Floyd in police custody last month. Advisers to the president have been conferring with Republican lawmakers about legislation and are considering an executive order, a presidential directive that doesn’t go through Congress and could be reversed later. White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany said on Wednesday that Mr. Trump has been “working on proposals to address the issues that the protesters raised across the country,” adding that the “body of work I’m told is reaching its final edits and we hope to produce it for you in the coming days.” (Lucey and Duehren, 6/10)

NPR: Trump To Address 'Disparities' At Dallas Event
President Trump on Thursday will meet with pastors, law enforcement officials and small business owners at a church in Dallas, Texas, on Thursday and is expected to discuss plans for a national "holistic revitalization and recovery," a White House official said. In his latest response to protests over police brutality, sparked by the May 25 killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, Trump is expected to discuss ways to address "historic economic, health and justice disparities in American communities" at the event, the official said. (Wise, 6/11)

And in other news on the Trump administration —

Stat: Trump's Decision To Leave WHO Came With Bluster, But No Action So Far
Nearly two weeks have passed since President Trump announced he was withdrawing the United States from the World Health Organization. To date, none of the levers that would need to be pulled to follow through on that decision has been pulled. The Trump administration has not formally notified the WHO that it is withdrawing, a spokesman for the agency told STAT. The administration has also not paid outstanding financial obligations to the WHO, a step that would be required before the United States could pull out under a joint resolution signed by Congress. (Branswell, 6/11)

Reuters: WHO Hopes To Work With U.S. On Ebola Despite Trump Criticism
The World Health Organization hopes to work “side by side” with the United States to contain an outbreak of Ebola in Congo, its chief said on Wednesday, despite their differences over the new coronavirus. President Donald Trump said last month he was ending the U.S. relationship with the WHO over its handling of the coronavirus pandemic. But WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he had met U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar last week. (Farge and Koltrowitz, 6/10)

Politico: The ‘Hard Slog’ Of Waiting For A Coronavirus Vaccine
What if all it took for the world to return to normal was a shot in the arm? Politicians are repeating the mantra that a coronavirus vaccine is the exit strategy. But getting there is neither simple nor even guaranteed. "A vaccine is not a given," said David Heymann, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology and distinguished fellow at Chatham House. There are hundreds of vaccine candidates in development, but the vast majority will fail. Assuming one is successful, it could take years to manufacture billions of doses for the entire globe. (Deutsch and Martuscelli, 6/10)

The Hill: Final Testing Stage For Potential Coronavirus Vaccine Set To Begin In July 
The final testing stage for a potential coronavirus vaccine developed by Moderna is set to begin in July, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) confirmed to The Hill on Wednesday. John Mascola, the director of the vaccine research center at NIAID, told The Wall Street Journal that the trials will involve about 30,000 people at more than 50 sites, which will mostly be within the U.S. The third phase of testing for potential vaccines developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca will begin in August while the last trials for one developed by Johnson & Johnson will start in September, NIAID confirmed to The Hill. (Coleman, 6/10)

Reuters: J&J Moves Up Start Of Coronavirus Vaccine Human Trials To July
Johnson & Johnson moved up the start of human clinical trials for its experimental vaccine against the highly contagious coronavirus by two months to the second half of July, as the drugmaker rushes to develop a prevention for COVID-19, the company said on Wednesday. The acceleration should allow J&J to take part in the massive clinical trials program planned by the U.S. government, which aims to have an effective vaccine by year end. (Steenhuysen and Joseph, 6/10)

The Washington Post: Coronavirus Vaccine: AstraZeneca, Moderna Chase Outbreaks Before They Disappear
The top teams rushing to develop coronavirus vaccines are alerting governments, health officials and shareholders that they may have a big problem: The outbreaks in their countries may be getting too small to quickly determine whether vaccines work. A leader of the Oxford University group, one of the furthest ahead with human trials, admits the reality is paradoxical, even “bizarre,” but said the declining numbers of new infections this summer could be one of the big hurdles vaccine developers face in the global race to beat down the virus. (Booth and Johnson, 6/10)

The Wall Street Journal: Hit Hard By Coronavirus, Russia Joins Global Race For A Vaccine
From state-run Siberian labs where scientists are experimenting on rats to military garrisons where servicemen are isolating ahead of participation in a clinical trial, Russia’s top scientists are racing to answer a daunting demand from President Vladimir Putin: Develop a coronavirus vaccine by the fall. The global pursuit of a vaccine against the respiratory coronavirus disease Covid-19 has been likened to the 1960s space race that pitted the Soviet Union against the U.S. (Kantchev and Hinshaw, 6/11)

Boston Globe: Testing Accelerated For Coronavirus Vaccine Developed By Beth Israel, Johnson & Johnson 
An experimental COVID-19 vaccine developed partly by Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center will be tested in humans starting in July, two months earlier than originally scheduled, according to Johnson & Johnson, the health care giant collaborating with the Boston hospital. Johnson & Johnson said Wednesday that the vaccine appeared so promising in preclinical studies that the partners were able to push up the start for testing in healthy volunteers to the second half of July. The vaccine uses a common-cold virus to deliver a coronavirus antigen into cells to stimulate the immune system to fight off an infection. (Saltzman, 6/10)

Reuters: Exclusive: Lilly COVID-19 Treatment Could Be Authorized For Use As Soon As September - Chief Scientist
Eli Lilly and Co could have a drug specifically designed to treat COVID-19 authorized for use as early as September if all goes well with either of two antibody therapies it is testing, its chief scientist told Reuters on Wednesday. Lilly is also doing preclinical studies of a third antibody treatment for the illness caused by the new coronavirus that could enter human clinical trials in the coming weeks, Chief Scientific Officer Daniel Skovronsky said in an interview. Lilly has already launched human trials with two of the experimental therapies. (O'Donnell and Erman, 6/10)

Reuters: U.S. FDA Commissioner Says Agency Seeks Fast Review Of COVID-19 Products
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is seeking to review treatments and tests for COVID-19 “as fast as we can” for emergency clearance, with the priority on those using high-level science, the agency’s commissioner said on Wednesday. The FDA aims to expedite products with the greatest chance of making it through the clinical trial process and eventually helping people, FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn said during a conference held by the Biotechnology Innovation Organization. (Beasley, 6/10)

Modern Healthcare: Millions At High Risk Of Severe COVID-19 Outcomes Lack Coverage To Cover Costs
More than 18 million people who were most at risk of experiencing severe outcomes from COVID-19 at the start of the outbreak had the least access to healthcare because they were either uninsured or underinsured, according to a new study. Researchers found some of the most vulnerable populations—including African Americans, Native Americans, lower-income individuals, those residing in rural areas and in states that have not expanded Medicaid—were both more likely to be at high risk of severe COVID-19 illness and lack adequate healthcare coverage to get care if they did get sick, according the study, published Wednesday in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. (Johnson, 6/10)

CIDRAP: Study: Risk Of Severe COVID-19 Imperils Millions Of Uninsured
Researchers at Harvard Medical School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and City University of New York at Hunter College in New York City analyzed data from the 2018 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). They found that 18.2 million people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma, heart or kidney disease, diabetes, or body mass index of 40 kg/m2 or higher and those 65 years and older were uninsured or underinsured. That number represents 16.9% of the US at-risk population. Underinsurance was defined as having to skip at least one doctor visit within the last year because of the expense. (Van Beusekom, 6/10)

In other health industry news —

Modern Healthcare: NYC Systems Report Millions Of Dollars In Losses Due To COVID-19
City hospitals are no longer seeing a steady stream of COVID-19 patients through their doors, but now they are left to clean up the financial mess from the pandemic. Most of the region's biggest health systems are reporting massive financial losses for the first three months of the year. (LaMantia, 6/10)

Modern Healthcare: COVID-19 Reshapes Healthcare Utilization
Healthcare professional services utilization dropped by nearly 70% in April year over year, resulting in a 50% decline in revenue, according to Fair Health's new analysis of 31 billion commercial claims. COVID-19 hit the Northeast the hardest as utilization of professional services—defined as any service provided by a practitioner instead of being billed by a facility—fell 80% and revenue decreased 79%. (Kacik, 6/10)

Modern Healthcare: New Tax Rule Could Boost HRAs, But Don't Expect A Big Impact
According to a proposed rule from the Internal Revenue Service, payments for direct primary care arrangements and healthcare sharing ministry memberships would become so-called "qualified medical expenses" under the tax code. They would also be tax-deductible under many circumstances, and employers would be able to reimburse their employees for those expenses through health reimbursement arrangements, or HRAs. (Brady, 6/10)

Stat: Coronavirus Immunity Is A Mystery. Scientists Are Trying To Crack The Case
Scientists stress that just because someone has recovered from Covid-19 and produced antibodies to the coronavirus does not mean they are protected from contracting it a second time. No one’s yet proven that. That, then, leaves open the question: What does immunity look like? (Joseph, 6/11)

The Associated Press: What Is Herd Immunity And Could It Work With COVID-19?
What is herd immunity and could it work with COVID-19? Herd immunity is when a virus can no longer spread easily because enough people are immune to it. That lowers the chances of the virus jumping from person to person and reaching those who haven’t been infected yet. People can become immune to certain viruses after surviving infection or being vaccinated. (6/9)

The Wall Street Journal: Tested Positive For Coronavirus Antibodies? Don’t Let Your Guard Down
After a rocky rollout, higher-quality coronavirus antibody tests have emerged that, among other uses, are beginning to give a clearer picture of the pathogen’s spread. But for people who are simply curious about whether they’ve unknowingly been infected, some doctors and public-health authorities are still hesitant to recommend antibody tests. The reliability of these tests for any one person, they say, comes down to a matter of probability: As with most other medical tests, that depends not only on a test’s quality but also on a disease’s prevalence within a community. (Abbott, Wang and Roland, 6/10)

Reuters: Explainer: Summer Might Slow Coronavirus But Is Unlikely To Stop It
The arrival of warmer weather in the Northern Hemisphere raises the question of whether summer could slow the spread of the coronavirus outbreak. Here is what science says. While warmer weather typically ends the annual flu season in temperate zones, climate alone has not stopped the COVID-19 pandemic from sweeping any part of the globe. In fact, outbreaks in hot and sunny Brazil and Egypt are growing. Still, recent data about how sunlight, humidity and outdoor breezes affect the virus gives some reason for optimism that summer could slow the spread. (Kelland, Mishra and Soares, 6/10)

Reuters: Temperature, Humidity Affects Virus Life On Surfaces, C-Section May Raise Risk For Infected Mothers
Temperature, humidity affect how long virus ‘survives’ on surfaces. A new mathematical model adds to evidence that hotter, dryer conditions may diminish the amount of time virus-packed droplets remain contagious on surfaces. Once droplets emitted by an infected person dry, the virus particles inside it become inactive, researchers said on Monday in the journal Physics of Fluids. "The outdoor weather ... determines the duration of drying of respiratory droplets deposited on surfaces. The drying time is linked to the survival of the coronavirus inside the droplets," coauthor Rajneesh Bhardwaj of the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay told Reuters. (Lapid, 6/10)

Reuters: Short-Term Ventilator Sharing May Be Viable For COVID-19 Patients: Study
Ventilators could be safely shared by two COVID-19 patients for up to two days, a small U.S. study found, validating an experimental method followed by hospitals struggling to handle the onslaught of lung failure cases with limited equipment. At the peak of the coronavirus outbreak, the New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center in Manhattan began having selected pairs of surgery patients with healthy lungs share a ventilator. This approach freed up as many machines as possible for COVID-19 patients, but some medical experts criticized it, saying it could worsen outcomes. (Joseph, 6/10)

Reuters: South Korean Doctors Find Risk Factors For Severe COVID-19 Cases
South Korean doctors have found certain underlying conditions that may make some COVID-19 patients more severely affected by the disease, a professor at Yeungnam University Medical Center said on Wednesday. The findings could help doctors identify and prioritise high-risk patients at an early stage of the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus, Ahn June-hong, professor of internal medicine, told Reuters. (6/10)

CIDRAP: Study Highlights Mode Of COVID-19 Household Spread, Coinfections In Kids
A study of 68 children in China with COVID-19 reveals that 96% were household contacts of infected adults who had developed symptoms earlier, and 51% of those tested for common respiratory pathogens also had another type of infection. The study, published today in Pediatrics, involved a retrospective review of electronic medical records of pediatric patients admitted to the Qingdao Women and Children's Hospital and Wuhan Children's Hospital from Jan 20 to Feb 27. (6/10)

Houston Chronicle: New Coronavirus-Triggered Syndrome Could Be Life-Threatening For Kids
While pediatricians around the world breathed a collective sigh of relief at the understanding that coronavirus would spare children, the recent emergence of multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, or MIS-C, is giving doctors pause. While the diagnosis is rare, the effects can be life-threatening. Symptoms include fever, abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea, rash, bloodshot eyes, fatigue and neck pain, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which issued emergency warning signs, including trouble breathing, pain or pressure in the chest, confusion, extreme exhaustion, severe stomach pain and bluish lips or face. (Peyton, 6/10)

WBUR: Genetic Sleuthing Finds Many Sources, Mostly From Europe, For Coronavirus Outbreak In Boston
According to a genetic analysis of over 300 cases of COVID-19 identified at Massachusetts General Hospital from early March to early April, the novel coronavirus entered the state at least 30 separate times, including the introduction with the UMass Boston student. The researchers published a working draft of their study, which examines how the coronavirus entered and spread through Massachusetts, on Virology.org this week. (Chen, 6/10)

The New York Times: Beyond Georgia: A Warning For November As States Scramble To Expand Vote-By-Mail
The 16 statewide primary elections held during the pandemic reached a glaring nadir on Tuesday as Georgia saw a full-scale meltdown of new voting systems compounded by the state’s rapid expansion of vote-by-mail. But around the country, elections that have been held over the past two months reveal a wildly mixed picture, dominated by different states’ experiences with a huge increase in voting by mail. Over all, turnout in the 15 states and Washington, D.C., which rapidly expanded vote-by-mail over the past few months, remained high, sometimes at near record levels, even as the Democratic presidential primary was all but wrapped. (Corasaniti and Wines, 6/10)

Politico: Coronavirus Chaos In Georgia, Wisconsin A 'Warning Sign' For Democrats
Even the act of voting has become a partisan issue with racial implications in 2020. Republicans are far more likely than Democrats to say they’re willing to vote in person during a pandemic, while Democrats outpace Republicans in wanting to vote by mail, according to new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll, which also shows racial differences as well. (Caputo, 6/11)

The New York Times: Georgia’s Election Mess: Many Problems, Plenty Of Blame, Few Solutions For November
Before Georgia’s embattled election officials can fix a voting system that suffered a spectacular collapse, leading to absentee ballots that never got delivered and hourslong waits at polling sites on Tuesday, they must first figure out who is responsible. As multiple investigations begin into what went wrong, and as Democrats accuse the state’s Republicans of voter suppression, a picture emerged Wednesday of a systematic breakdown that both revealed general incompetence and highlighted some of the thorny and specific challenges that the coronavirus pandemic may pose to elections officials nationwide. (Fausset and Epstein, 6/10)

Politico: ‘An Embarrassment’: Georgia Democrats Decry Disenfranchisement After Election Fiasco
The electoral fiasco, paired with the failure to achieve swift justice in the case of Ahmaud Arbery — a young black man fatally shot by a white man and his son in Georgia’s Glynn County earlier this year — had exposed the need for a “new Civil Rights Act and a new Voting Rights Act to secure the franchise for all Georgians and all Americans, and to secure equal justice for every citizen,” Ossoff argued. “We have a system in Georgia that seemingly by design fails in areas where there’s high density of voting in high volume, and in counties that lack as much resources and as much equipment,” he said, criticizing the “overall architecture of voting in Georgia,” as well as the state’s “problem with mass disenfranchisement” and “major purges” of voter rolls. (Forgey, 6/10)

The Washington Post: Voting Debacle In Georgia Came After Months Of Warnings Went Unaddressed
The warnings came from all sides in the months leading up to Georgia’s disastrous primaries on Tuesday: local election officials, voting rights advocates and even the state’s top election official. The combination of limited training on new voting machines and reduced polling locations due to the novel coronavirus could produce crushingly long lines and severely hamper voting access, they cautioned. (Gardner, Lee and Boburg, 6/10)

USA Today: U.S. Voter Registration Plummets During Coronavirus Pandemic
The registration of new voters dropped dramatically in the U.S. amid the coronavirus pandemic, challenging efforts of both major political parties to enlist new supporters in battleground states ahead of the 2020 election. The number of new voters registered across 11 states in April 2020 decreased by 70% compared with April 2016, according to a report from the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research released Thursday. (Garrison, 6/11)

The New York Times: With Jobless Benefits Set To Lapse, Congress Is At Odds Over An Extension
With expanded jobless benefits put in place to help laid-off workers weather the pandemic set to expire by the end of July, Republicans and Democrats in Congress are at odds over whether to continue to provide substantial payments to tens of millions of Americans who are still out of work. Lawmakers in both parties and administration officials appear to agree that Congress should consider some form of assistance to workers as part of another round of coronavirus aid that is likely to be debated in the coming weeks. But while Democrats want to continue a supplement of $600 a week past July 31, when those benefits are set to lapse, Republicans and the White House — citing an unexpected improvement in jobs numbers — are resisting the move, arguing that doing so could discourage people from returning to work. (Cochrane and Tankersley, 6/11)

The New York Times: Fed Leaves Rates Unchanged And Projects Years Of High Unemployment
The head of the Federal Reserve on Wednesday offered a grim assessment of how quickly the U.S. economy will recover from its pandemic-induced recession, suggesting that millions of people could remain out of work for an extended period as central bank officials estimated unemployment will be at 9.3 percent by the end of 2020. The Fed chair, Jerome H. Powell, said the labor market might have “hit bottom” after recording a 14.7 percent unemployment rate in April, but made clear that it was too soon to know for certain. (Smialek and Rappeport, 6/10)

Politico: Fed's Dire Outlook: GDP Seen Shrinking By 6.5 Percent This Year
“This is the biggest economic shock, in the U.S. and in the world, really, in living memory,” Fed Chair Jerome Powell said at a press conference after central bank officials met in Washington. ”We went from the lowest level of unemployment in 50 years to the highest level in close to 90 years, and we did it in two months.” Incumbent presidents are historically unlikely to be reelected when the economy is in dire straits, putting pressure on Trump to ensure a quick rebound. But the circumstances of the recession — a broad economic shutdown to stop the spread of a pandemic — could soften voter views of the president, who has consistently polled well on economic matters even as he lags behind Democratic rival Joe Biden overall. (Guida, 6/10)

The New York Times: $130 Billion In Small-Business Aid Still Hasn’t Been Used
In April, when the federal government offered $349 billion in loans to small businesses reeling from government shutdown orders in the pandemic, the funding ran out in just 13 days, prompting Congress to swiftly approve a second round of $310 billion. Small businesses have since grown more wary of taking the money. As of Tuesday, more than $130 billion was left in the fund, known as the Paycheck Protection Program. (Cowley, 6/10)

ABC News: Minority-Owned Small Businesses Still Struggle To Access Billions In Stimulus 
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said definitively on Wednesday that he feels another economic relief package will be necessary to help pull the U.S. economy out of a recession in the wake of coronavirus-related shutdowns. "I definitely think we are going to need another bipartisan legislation to put more money into the economy," Mnuchin said at a Senate Small Business Committee oversight hearing. (Kolinovsky, 6/10)

The New York Times: Where The Money Is For Small Businesses
The pain and insecurity of the shock of the coronavirus on small business owners have been overwhelming. Entrepreneurs have taken extreme steps to stay operational, and many are deeply worried about their prospects in the coming months and beyond. But help is out there. Federal, state and local governments, as well as communities, corporations and foundations have stepped up with financial resources. (Hannon, 6/11)

ProPublica: 'I Can’t Speak Negatively About The President,' Says Official Charged With Stimulus Oversight
When Congress was considering passing the more than $2 trillion coronavirus bailout two months ago, President Donald Trump made his vision for oversight clear. “I’ll be the oversight,” he said. The CARES Act empowers a number of different offices to make sure the money is spent wisely and without favoritism. Shortly after he signed it into law, Trump ousted the inspector general who was slated to lead the oversight — one of five watchdogs the president has purged in less than two months. (Marritz and Sullivan, 6/10)

KQED: California Courts Halt Plan To Lift Eviction Moratorium In August 
Tenant groups and advocates are breathing a sigh of relief, after the Judicial Council of California postponed a vote to remove emergency protections for renters and homeowners who have fallen behind on payments during the pandemic. The council, which oversees policy decisions in the state’s courts, first voted to halt new evictions and foreclosure filings on April 6, as courts were closing due to the coronavirus. (Solomon and Baldassari, 6/10)

The Wall Street Journal: U.S. Initial Unemployment Claims Fell To 1.5 Million Last Week
Initial unemployment claims fell to 1.5 million and workers receiving benefits fell slightly to 20.9 million in the latest week, the Labor Department reported Thursday. Although states continue to work through a backlog of claims, new applications for unemployment benefits have trended down since the pandemic and related lockdowns triggered a surge in claims at the end of March. (Chaney and Mackrael, 6/11)

Politico: Unemployment Claims Climbed By 1.5 Million Last Week, Despite Jobs Gains In May
Additionally, nearly 706,000 people applied for benefits under the new temporary Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program created for people who are ineligible for traditional unemployment benefits. With those workers added, the number of new claims filed last week could be higher than 2.5 million, despite every state loosening stay-at-home orders and allowing businesses to reopen in recent weeks. (6/11)

Reuters: U.S. Weekly Jobless Claims Seen Declining Further, But Millions Still Unemployed
The weekly jobless claims report from the Labor Department on Thursday, the most timely data on the economy’s health, will follow news last Friday of a surprise 2.5 million increase in nonfarm payrolls in May. It could reinforce views that the labor market has weathered the worst of the turbulence. (Mutikani, 6/11)

NPR: Another 1.5 Million File For Unemployment As States Continue To Reopen Economies
"The May employment report, of course, was a welcome surprise," Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said Wednesday. "We hope we get many more like it. But I think we have to be honest. It's a long road." (Schneider, 6/11)

Bloomberg: US Unemployment Benefits: 1.5 Million Filed Claims Last Week
Initial jobless claims for regular state programs totaled 1.54 million in the week ended June 6, down from 1.9 million in the prior week, Labor Department figures showed Thursday. Applications for unemployment insurance have fallen consistently each week since peaking at the end of March, but the volume of weekly filings is still more than double the worst week during the Great Recession. (Pickert, 6/11)

ProPublica: Advocates Sue Trump Administration Over Mass Border Expulsions
Advocacy organizations have sued the Trump administration to stop a 16-year-old boy from being summarily sent back to Honduras after he crossed into the U.S. last week to join his father. It’s the first challenge to the Trump administration’s policy of mass expulsions of border-crossers, under which nearly 45,000 migrants — including 2,000 children — have been pushed out of the U.S. The suit was filed Tuesday night in U.S. District Court in Washington by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Texas Civil Rights Project, the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies and Oxfam. A judge has put a 24-hour hold on the boy’s expulsion, pending further consideration of the case. (Lind, 6/10)

NBC News: New Trump Admin Proposal Would Make It Harder For Immigrants To Claim Asylum In U.S.
The Trump administration on Wednesday unveiled a proposal that would make it harder for immigrants to claim asylum in the U.S., even after the COVID-19 pandemic.If enacted after a public comment period, the rule would allow immigration judges to throw out asylum cases before holding a hearing. During the coronavirus pandemic, nearly all asylum hearings have been postponed. Existing policy, however, says that immigrants are given an asylum hearing if they can prove to an asylum officer that they have a reasonable fear of persecution or torture if they are returned to their home country. The new rule would allow immigration judges to throw out an asylum seeker's case if they think there are flaws in the application. (Ainsley, 6/10)

The New York Times: Amid A Pandemic, Churches Offer Prayer, Hope — And Testing
Ten days in May. Twenty-four churches around New York City. Nearly 20,000 coronavirus tests. Over the past few weeks, churches serving communities of color have been transformed overnight into mini-clinics offering free coronavirus tests to all comers. The initiative, a partnership of the churches, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s office and Northwell Health, is an effort to expand testing among black and Hispanic citizens, who have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic. (Lee and Rabin, 6/10)

The Associated Press: Is It Safe To Go Swimming During The Coronavirus Pandemic?
Is it safe to swim at a beach or pool during the coronavirus pandemic? Health officials say it can be safe, as long as swimmers stick to social distancing guidelines in and out of the water. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there is no evidence that the virus that causes COVID-19 can spread from person to person in water in pools, hot tubs, oceans or lakes. Pool disinfectants like chlorine should also kill the virus, providing another layer of protection. (6/11)

The New York Times: Masks, No Kissing And ‘A Little Kinky’: Dating And Sex In A Pandemic
Pandemic life is tough on everyone. But for a single person, the prospect of dating and sex — while social distancing to avoid a potentially life-threatening respiratory illness — feels impossible. How do you date without touching or kissing? How do you have sex without breathing on your partner and putting each other at risk? “I’ve gone at least two months without sex or other physical connection, and even in my 50s, that’s a long time,” said one man from Austin, who asked not to be named to protect his privacy. “My only venture outside has been to walk the dogs and run a very rare errand, for Pete’s sake. Dating seems even a more remote possibility.” (Parker-Pope, 6/11)

CNN: Can This Super-Simple Device Stop Virus Spreading On Airplanes? 
It's not flashy or futuristic-looking, but it's simple, cheap and apparently effective: British aircraft interior company RAS Completions says its new personal protection shield could help protect fliers from Covid-19. The shield, says RAS Completions, is designed to be installed between seats and doesn't involve taking the middle seat out of action. (Street, 6/11)

CNN: Summer Is Here, And Your Mask Is Sweaty. We've Got Solutions 
It's hot. You're sweaty. And if you're still coronavirus-conscious, then you're wearing your mask. Not that the thick humidity of summer makes it any easier. You may have the impulse to forgo a face mask until the fall. Don't, said Anne Rimoin, professor of epidemiology at UCLA and director of the university's Center for Global and Immigrant Health. (Andrew, 6/10)

The Washington Post: Pregnant With Covid-19, She Gave Birth On A Ventilator In Louisiana
A new baby was coming, so the aunts, uncles and cousins arrived by the dozens, their cars taking up the entire block and the lawn across the street, as they always did for Allen family parties. Carrying diapers and wipes, they gathered on the cracked driveway beneath the arching branches of an oak tree, waiting to learn whether Kenna Allen was having a boy or a girl. It was Saturday, March 7, just days before they would learn how dangerous gatherings like this one had become. In 48 hours, Louisiana would report its first case of a lethal new virus, a distant worry that no one mentioned as they boiled crawfish and took photos in matching shirts with the words “He or she, what will baby bee?" (Schmidt, 6/10)

The Washington Post: United Will Require Passengers To Complete Health Assessments Before They Fly
First face masks and now health questionnaires. United Airlines on Wednesday became at least the second U.S. carrier to ask travelers to answer questions about their health status before they fly. It’s all part of a strategy to ease the mind of travelers concerned about flying in the midst of the novel coronavirus pandemic. (Aratani, 6/10)

The Washington Post: Rio, Sao Paulo Favelas, Neglected By Bolsonaro's Brazil, Fight Coronavirus 
When the president of Viela da Harmonia walks down the street, her constituents take note. An elderly neighbor needs groceries. A mother is looking for diapers. Another family asks for soap. Just weeks ago, Laryssa da Silva didn’t know where her next meal would come from. Now the 24-year-old single mother is responsible for making sure the 70 families who live on her street survive Brazil’s coronavirus outbreak. (Lopes, 6/10)

The Associated Press: Resurgence Of Virus Threatens South Korea's Success Story
Just weeks ago, South Korea was celebrating its hard-won gains against the coronavirus, easing social distancing, reopening schools and promoting a tech-driven anti-virus campaign President Moon Jae-in has called “K-quarantine. ”But a resurgence of infections in the Seoul region where half of South Korea’s 51 million people live is threatening the country’s success story and prompting health authorities to warn that action must be taken now to stop a second wave. (Tong-Hyung, 6/11)

Reuters: In Post-Lockdown China, Student Mental Health In Focus Amid Reported Jump In Suicides
Some Chinese students returning to school after lockdown are grappling with familial conflict while others are stressing over how coronavirus disruptions have affected their academic performance, teachers and school counsellors say. The heightened post-lockdown anxiety has become a matter of central government concern as domestic media report a spate of suicides by young people. It has also led to unprecedented measures by schools and local governments to focus on student mental health - a topic that like suicide has often been taboo in Chinese society. (Zhou and Goh, 6/10)

Los Angeles Times: Would You Scan A QR Code To Go Clubbing? Here, It's Required
It had been more than a decade since Choi Kun last set foot in a nightclub. There are things you don’t do as a married man with children, the 42-year-old said — and going to a nightclub, which in South Korea often entails waiters bringing over female patrons to tables of men, is most certainly one. But on a recent night, his friend had dragged him to a club in Daejeon, a city an hour south of Seoul. (Kim, 6/10)

Reuters: UK Lockdown A Week Earlier Could Have Halved COVID-19 Death Toll, Scientist Says
Britain’s death toll from COVID-19 could have been halved if lockdown had been introduced a week earlier, a former member of the UK government’s scientific advisory group said on Wednesday. Britain has an official death toll from confirmed COVID-19 cases of over 40,000, rising to over 50,000 cases when deaths from suspected cases are included. Prime Minister Boris Johnson imposed the lockdown on March 23. (6/10)

Commonwealth Fund: 2020 International Profiles: Country Responses COVID-19 Pandemic
For a decade, the Commonwealth Fund and the London School of Economics and Political Science have collaborated to produce the International Profiles of Health Care Systems that show how health systems across the world are organized. The 2020 profiles — released last week — feature 20 countries across North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Australasia. While the profiles do not directly address pandemic preparedness, they do offer context for understanding how countries have responded to COVID-19. The profiles describe how decisions regarding health care and public health are made — including for infectious-disease control — at the national, regional, and local levels. This can help readers understand why some countries have been better positioned to monitor and limit the spread of the virus. (Tikkanen et al, 6/10)

Health Affairs: Varying Trends In The Financial Viability Of US Rural Hospitals, 2011–17
The financial viability of rural hospitals has been a matter of serious concern, with ongoing closures affecting rural residents’ access to medical services. We examined the financial viability of 1,004 US rural hospitals that had consistent rural status in 2011–17. The median overall profit margin improved for nonprofit critical access hospitals (from 2.5 percent to 3.2 percent) but declined for other hospitals (from 3.0 percent to 2.6 percent for nonprofit non–critical access hospitals, from 3.2 percent to 0.4 percent for for-profit critical access hospitals, and from 5.7 percent to 1.6 percent for for-profit non–critical access hospitals). (Bai et al, 6/3)

JAMA Internal Medicine: Early Intervention Of Palliative Care In The Emergency Department During The COVID-19 Pandemic
During the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, it is particularly critical to ensure that life-sustaining treatment (LST) such as intubation and resource-intensive cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) are aligned with a patient’s goals and values, and to avoid LSTs in patients with a poor prognosis that are unlikely to be beneficial, but have a high risk of causing additional suffering. (Lee et al, 6/5)

Urban Institute: How Cities Are Leveraging Technology To Meet Residents’ Needs During A Pandemic
Amid stay-at-home orders and other tactics to stem the spread of COVID-19, millions of Americans’ daily lives have shifted online. Many employees work from home, students take online classes, and city officials rely on livestreams and social media to disseminate information. But the sudden shift to an online-based life has highlighted the inequity of access to reliable technology for many US households. To understand how city officials are addressing technology equity gaps to meet their residents’ needs, the Urban Institute surveyed Chief Technology Officers, Chief Information Officers, Chief Innovation Officers, and Digital Inclusion Leads in cities across the country. (Brown, Ezike and Stern, 6/9)

Health Affairs: Incarceration And Its Disseminations: COVID-19 Pandemic Lessons From Chicago’s Cook County Jail
Jails and prisons are major sites of novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) infection. Many jurisdictions in the United States have therefore accelerated release of low-risk offenders. Early release, however, does not address how arrest and pre-trial detention practices may be contributing to disease spread. Using data from Cook County Jail, in Chicago, Illinois, one of the largest known nodes of SARS-CoV-2 spread, we analyze the relationship between jailing practices and community infections at the zip-code level. We find that jail cycling is a significant predictor of SARS-CoV-2 infection, accounting for 55 percent of the variance in case rates across zip codes in Chicago and 37 percent in Illinois. (Reinhart and Chen, 6/4)

CIDRAP: Single-Dose Baloxavir Works As Well As 5 Days Of Tamiflu For Flu, Study Finds
A phase 3 trial of Shionogi's baloxavir marboxil (Xofluza) has found that a single dose of the antiviral flu drug was superior to placebo and similar to oseltamivir (Tamiflu) in shortening the duration of illness in adult and adolescent outpatients at high risk for flu-related complications. The study, published yesterday in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, also showed that baloxavir stopped viral shedding sooner and caused fewer adverse events, such as sinusitis, bronchitis, and nausea, than placebo, mostly in those receiving treatment within 36 hours of symptom onset. (Van Beusekom, 6/9)

The Washington Post: A Devastating Second Wave Is Possible. But There Are Ways To Avert It. 
Summer beckons, and the coronavirus pandemic is still running strong in the United States. Fortunately, there is more clarity now about how to fight it than in the terrible early weeks. A devastating second wave is possible — but can be averted.All available evidence points in one direction — that people and governments should be as relentless as the virus. Wear masks; wash hands; avoid crowded, confined spaces; and set up adequate testing and contact tracing. (6/9)

Stat: What Being Stricken With Covid-19 Taught A Biotech CEO 
On March 14, at 10 a.m., I got the call that I had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. At first, I was incredulous, trying to understand where I might have contracted it. Next, I got worried. Who had I been in contact with that I might have transmitted the virus to? Finally, I faced a nagging feeling that maybe, at 47 years of age and male, I might be at risk of a bad outcome. (Cedric Francois, 6/11)

The Washington Post: How Amateur Epidemiology Can Hurt Our Covid-19 Response
Although it’s wonderful to see widened interest in epidemiological principles that just a few months ago were obscure, it’s alarming to see the exponential rise of not only the novel coronavirus but also of clueless opinions about how to track and halt the spread of disease. This endangers our efforts to get the epidemic under control while we reopen our economy. Here are six of the most egregious amateur epidemiology errors and five places we should focus our attention instead. Cases. Obsession with case counts is misleading; we estimate that only about 10 to 15 percent of U.S. infections are diagnosed. (Former CDC director Tom Frieden, 6/10)

CNN: Trump's VA Is Treating Veterans With Unproven Drug
The Department of Veterans Affairs could learn an important lesson from their colleagues at SpaceX and NASA after the historic launch to the International Space Station last month was initially postponed due to inclement weather. When there's a storm rolling in, you don't fly into it, no matter how much a powerful person looking on wants it to happen. For months now, we've been hearing President Donald Trump tout the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a "game changer" without providing any evidence of its efficacy as a treatment for coronavirus patients. Trump, who took a two-week course of the drug as a prophylactic, has asked, "What do you have to lose?" (Paul Rieckhoff, 6/10)

Stat: A Pandemic, A Funeral, And A Chance To Help Heal The World 
At the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference for biotech investors in San Francisco this January, I was huddling with my colleagues on Johnson & Johnson’s external global leadership team when our executives from Shanghai and Australia shared scuttlebutt about a virus disrupting J&J’s Asia operations. Another SARS epidemic, I told myself: a serious but regional outbreak... It’s interesting the negotiating we do with ourselves as we try to process a paradigm-shifting catastrophe. (Michelle McMurry-Heath, 6/11)

The Washington Post: We Are Living In A Bipartisan State Of Denial About The Coronavirus
I have some good news and bad news. The good news: At last, there is some bipartisan agreement in America. The bad news: It’s a tacit agreement to pretend that the threat from the novel coronavirus has somehow gone away. Covid-19 has become the forgotten plague — and it’s nowhere near ending. The mass demonstrations following George Floyd’s death were well warranted, but they also posed a significant public health risk on both sides of the barricades. (Max Boot, 6/10)

St. Louis Post Dispatch: Dicamba Ruling Marks Another Trump Administration Letdown For Farmers
A federal court has come down hard on the Environmental Protection Agency for allowing farmers to continue spraying the weed killer dicamba on crops even though it was obvious the chemical was toxic to nonresistant crops. The immediate ban imposed by the court on continued dicamba spraying seems certain to deal a catastrophic blow to an agriculture industry that has grown heavily dependent on the herbicide. This is yet another Trump administration mess that should, by now, have farmers questioning why the president deserves any continued support. President Donald Trump launched a disastrous trade war with China that destroyed their biggest export market. His bungled response to the pandemic further evaporated markets and put a stranglehold on produce-distribution networks. (6/10)

Los Angeles Times: America's Coronavirus Response Is As Racist As Its Policing 
There are a gratifying number of private and public discussions underway this week in Los Angeles and elsewhere about how Black, Latino, and other communities of color have borne a disproportionate share of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, most notably deaths and financial hardships, and the role that systemic racism has played in such outcomes. It’s a natural outgrowth of the protests over George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis police custody and the nationwide reckoning they prompted over the endemic racism built into civic and cultural institutions. And happily, these discussions are translating into some action locally to adjust the ongoing pandemic response. (6/11)

The New York Times: Inequalities Existed In New York Long Before The Pandemic
Rather than erasing those differences, Covid-19 has shown the way that each of them is intricately linked. (6/11)

The Wall Street Journal: When Wisconsin’s Lockdown Ended 
We’re the Wild West.” That’s what Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers said on May 13, after the state Supreme Court threw out a stay-at-home order issued by his administration. The result, Mr. Evers added, would be “chaos” during a pandemic: “We’re going to have more deaths, and it’s a sad occasion for the state.” That isn’t what happened, at least according to a study published this week by the National Bureau of Economic Research. After some statistical analysis, five academic researchers find “no evidence” that the sudden lifting of Wisconsin’s order “impacted social distancing, COVID-19 cases, or COVID-19-related mortality” during the 14 days that followed. ...Political leaders need to trust Americans to follow health guidelines and get on with their lives. (6/10)

The Hill: We Are Protesting During A Pandemic: Local Authorities Should Act Like It 
Passionate protesters, fueled by centuries of racism, are taking to the streets and trying to do so responsibly: wearing masks and physically distancing. Still, the COVID-19 pandemic rages on, and local governments should start acting like it: health authorities should bring free, voluntary, curbside COVID testing and mask distribution to protesters; crowds should be given space and time to assemble, and crowding peaceful protesters into wagons and jails should cease. (Margo D. Simon, 6/10)

The New York Times: The Scandal Of The Predatory City
I coined the term “predatory cities” to describe urban areas where public officials systematically take property from residents and transfer it to public coffers, intentionally or unintentionally violating domestic laws or basic human rights. Ferguson, Mo., is one well-known predatory city. As a 2015 Department of Justice report showed, the police in Ferguson systematically targeted African-Americans and subjected them to excessive fines and fees. The U.S. Constitution does not allow judges to incarcerate defendants for unpaid debts without first determining their ability to pay. Nevertheless, local courts issued arrest warrants for unpaid fines and fees without these determinations. (Bernadette Atuahene, 6/11)

The Wall Street Journal: Covid, DNA And Blood Type
Millions of Americans have taken personal DNA tests from companies like 23andMe to find out whether their genes put them at higher risk for diseases like breast and colon cancer. Now these tests are identifying people who are more likely to get sick with Covid-19. 23andMe on Monday published a potentially significant finding that people with the blood type O were on average 14% less likely than other blood types (A, B, AB) to get Covid and 19% less likely to be hospitalized after accounting for age, sex, comorbidities, ethnicity and body mass. Among exposed individuals, O blood types were 19% less likely to test positive. There appeared to be little difference in susceptibility among other blood types. ...Studies have previously found links between blood types and infectious and chronic diseases. For instance, Os appear to have lower risk for cardiovascular disease and heart attacks. The blood type gene is located in a stretch of DNA that regulates inflammation and blood clotting, which play a significant role in Covid-19. (6/10)

The Hill: Dying To Connect Or Dying Unconnected: Two Realities Of The COVID-19 Pandemic 
Worldwide the coronavirus has drastically disrupted the way we live, work, play, worship, travel, mourn the loss of loved ones and friends, and even approach dying. Many people are anxious to get back to their normal activities across the globe despite the threat of a resurgence of a coronavirus infectious disease outbreak. (Janice Phillips, 6/10)

The New York Times: Brazil Is In Coronavirus Free Fall
Given the grimness of our statistics, one might reasonably expect that the population would start strictly adhering to health and safety protocols. But this is not happening. As the cases spread, so does the contempt of certain people in the streets for social-distancing measures. And it’s easy to pinpoint one of the main reasons for this contempt: our president. Since the beginning of the pandemic, Jair Bolsonaro has shown disdain for everything that doesn’t suit his personal agenda — especially if it’s fact-based news or scientific recommendations. (Vanessa Barbara, 6/8)

The Arizona Republic: Would Trump Really Hold A Rally In Arizona While COVID Cases Are Rising?
Cases of COVID-19 have been spiking in Arizona since Gov. Doug Ducey lifted restrictions meant to slow the spread of the virus. During the past two weeks, the state has reported its highest daily increases in cases, deaths and hospitalization rates. And now, to make matters worse, it appears that President Donald Trump has decided to hold a rally here. (EJ Montini, 6/10)