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

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

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

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

Los Angeles Times: U.S. Coronavirus Deaths Pass 100,000 Mark In Under 4 Months
The first U.S. death was reported Feb. 29, a patient in the Seattle area, but several earlier fatalities — not attributed at the time to COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus — have since come to light. Today, the United States, despite its wealth and scientific prowess, has the world’s highest numbers of both cases and deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University’s widely cited global tracker. The efforts to contain the contagion have closed businesses, sent unemployment to Depression-era levels, spurred Congress to pass four relief measures totaling nearly $3 trillion, with more promised, and upended the year’s political contests for the White House and control of Congress. (King and Calmes, 5/27)

CNN: As US Covid Deaths Reach 100,000, A Moment Of Reflection 
The virus has been disproportionately infecting communities of color. Black Americans represent 13.4% of the American population, according to the US Census Bureau, but counties with higher black populations accounted for more than half of all Covid-19 cases and almost 60% of deaths as of mid-April, a study by epidemiologists and clinicians found. The virus has also exploited monetary divides, as infections at meat-packing plants show, while many white-collar workers work from home. (Collinson, 5/28)

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

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

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

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

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

WBUR: 'We All Feel At Risk': 100,000 People Dead From COVID-19 In The U.S.
Public health experts said the coronavirus has exposed the vulnerability of a wide range of Americans and the shortcomings of a U.S. health care system faced with a deadly pandemic."What is different about this is, it is affecting all of us in a variety of ways, even if some of us are able to social distance in more effective ways than others," said sociology professor Kathleen Cagney, who directs the University of Chicago's Population Research Center. "But we all feel at risk." (Welna, 5/27)

The Hill: Trump Confronted With Grim COVID-19 Milestone 
President Trump’s plans to attend a historic space launch were spoiled Wednesday by bad weather, causing him to return to Washington without giving a planned address as the nation crossed the grim threshold of 100,000 coronavirus deaths. The launch and Trump’s remarks thereafter would have represented an opportunity for the president to draw on a positive narrative of U.S. advancements under his administration and highlight priorities beyond confronting the coronavirus pandemic. “This is a very exciting day for our country,” Trump said at a launch briefing less than an hour before SpaceX canceled the launch because of inclement weather. “We have been at this long and hard for three and a half years.” (Chalfant, 5/27)

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

ABC News: Trump, Downplaying Deaths, Once Claimed US Would Never See 100,000 Milestone 
Casting himself as a "wartime president" in command of the country's response to an "invisible enemy," he has suggested American casualties were inevitable. He has deflected questions about what death toll he finds acceptable in exchange for reopening the economy by saying "one death is too many." He acknowledged Tuesday, in a tweet, that it "looks like" 100,000 "will be the number." (Cathey, 5/27)

ABC News: Faces Of The Coronavirus Pandemic: US Crosses Grim Milestone Of 100,000 Deaths 
The novel coronavirus pandemic has left an indelible mark on Americans of all ages and from all walks of life, with the death toll reaching the grim milestone of 100,000 -- more than the deadliest flu season in recent years and at such a startlingly quick pace that it forced the unprecedented shutdown of the country's economy. Those we've lost come from all backgrounds and include the very people -- first responders and medical staff -- who have been working so diligently and selflessly to stem the tide of the infection and care for the sick. (Shapiro, Brown, Lloyd and Miller, 5/27)

CNN: Understanding The Massive Scale Of Coronavirus In The US
In a matter of months, the coronavirus crisis has exploded into a pandemic of historic proportions. Like a wave, the numbers of those sickened and killed by the virus have swelled in quick succession, leaving many bereft, isolated and wondering, “How did we get here?” Less than four months after the United States’ first recorded Covid-19 death in February, more than 100,000 deaths have been reported on American soil. A timeline of this grim reality reveals a country trying to come to terms with the crisis while the death toll continues to rise, surpassing the losses of major wars, the attacks on 9/11 and numerous other outbreaks. (Willingham, Rigdon and Merrill, 5/27)

Los Angeles Times: The Coronavirus Death Toll, In U.S. Historical Perspective
The log of our great catastrophes takes in disasters both natural and man-made. We stack them up, place them side by side, but there is no comparing. Each is unique and uniquely tragic. Numbers lend perspective. They allow for rankings. But they can’t measure the true extent of loss. Pictures are insufficient. Words fail. (5/27)

Sacramento Bee: Coronavirus US Death Toll, CA Case Total Each Pass 100,000 
One hundred thousand. Two different totals surpassed that milestone on Wednesday. After roughly 10 weeks of growth — explosive at some points, steadier at others — the U.S. death toll from the coronavirus surpassed 100,000 on Wednesday, according to data maintained by Johns Hopkins University. The tally comes four months after federal officials confirmed the first known case in the country. (McGough, 5/27)

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

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

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

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

Boston Globe: Wearing A Face Mask With A Valve? It Might Be Time To Find Something Else, Some Experts Say 
Masks and other face coverings have become as necessary as your smartphone or wallet when leaving the house amid the coronavirus pandemic. But as people begin to ease back into public life, experts are warning that certain types of masks could actually be putting others at risk — and users should think twice before slipping them on. (Annear, 5/27)

Boston Globe: What’s The Deal With Shifting Guidance On Masks During The Coronavirus Pandemic? 
Guidance on masks has shifted during the COVID-19 pandemic, with experts initially saying they were largely unnecessary before reversing course and advising people to don face coverings whenever they can’t practice social distancing. So what changed? An entry on the CDC website suggests the recommendation on masks evolved as researchers learned more about the potential for asymptomatic coronavirus carriers to unknowingly spread the disease to others. (Andersen, 5/27)

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

And in other news from the White House —

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

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

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

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

Reuters: Trump's Executive Order Targets Political Bias At Twitter And Facebook: Draft
U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to order a review of a law that has long protected Twitter, Facebook and Alphabet’s Google from being responsible for the material posted by their users, according to a draft executive order and a source familiar with the situation. (Bose and Shepardson, 5/28)

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

The Washington Post: Trump’s Executive Order Expected To Target Twitter, Facebook And Google
Trump’s directive chiefly seeks to embolden federal regulators to rethink a portion of law known as Section 230, according to the two people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a document that could still evolve and has not been officially signed by the president. That law spares tech companies from being held liable for the comments, videos and other content posted by users on their platforms. The law is controversial. It allows tech companies the freedom to police their platforms for abuse without fear of lawsuits. (Romm and Dawsey, 5/28)

The Wall Street Journal: Trump Draft Order Could Seek To Limit Protections For Social-Media Companies
The order would direct the Commerce Department to petition the Federal Communications Commission to set up a rule-making proceeding to clarify the scope of Section 230, the people said. Federal regulators including the Federal Trade Commission also would strengthen an existing online bias reporting tool the administration set up earlier. The FTC could begin to take enforcement action against companies that limit users’ speech in a manner that isn’t fully disclosed in their terms of service. And federal agencies would be directed to review their advertising contracts with companies that engage in speech censorship. (McKinnon and Ballhaus, 5/27)

Politico: Trump To Sign Executive Order On Social Media Amid Twitter Furor
The statute has helped tech giants earn many billions of dollars from users' tweets, posts, likes, photos and videos, with limited legal liability, while giving them broad leeway to remove material they consider "objectionable." But Trump and his supporters contend they are abusing that power. "These platforms act like they are potted plants when [in reality] they are curators of user experiences, i.e. the man behind the curtain for everything we can see or hear,” an administration official familiar with the issue said Wednesday night. The person said the order, which was described as broad and high level, would address complaints that the online platforms are deceiving people by picking and choosing what content to allow or block instead of acting as politically neutral platforms or moderators. (Lima, 5/27)

Politico: How Covid-19 Pushed Twitter To Fact-Check Trump’s Tweets
It was the pandemic, Twitter says, that freed the company to attach fact-check warnings to a pair of Present Donald Trump’s tweets this week. Critics have complained for years that Twitter lets Trump run wild on the platform. But the company had generally taken a hands-off approach to the president, partly because of a company policy that considers it in the public’s interest to know what world leaders are thinking, and partly because Twitter judged many of Trump’s tweets to fall into a gray area not covered by its rules banning specific behaviors like abuse or posting hateful content. (Scola, 5/27)

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

The Washington Post: Coronavirus: N.Y. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo Presses Trump To Spend Big On Infrastructure To ?Supercharge? Recovery
New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Wednesday used a White House meeting to pitch President Trump on a massive investment in train lines, bridges and other building projects as a way to “supercharge” an economy laid low by the novel coronavirus. The third-term Democrat, who has had a contentious relationship with his fellow Queens native, emerged proclaiming that the president “gets it,” saying he and Trump talked as New Yorkers and that he appealed to Trump’s instincts as a builder. (Witte, 5/27)

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

Meanwhile, elsewhere in New York —

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

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

Reuters: A Pandemic Nurse's Love Letter To New York 
The coronavirus pandemic has restricted almost everyone’s freedoms in America but for Meghan Lindsey it has done the opposite. This is the freest she has ever felt. Traveling to New York City at age 33 to work as a COVID-19 nurse was the first time that Meghan, a married mother of two, had ever left southwest Missouri. (Stapleton and Baldwin, 5/28)

ProPublica: Masks Sold By Former White House Official To Navajo Hospitals Don’t Meet FDA Standards
The Indian Health Service acknowledged on Wednesday that 1 million respirator masks it purchased from a former Trump White House official do not meet Food and Drug Administration standards for “use in healthcare settings by health care providers.” The IHS statement calls into question why the agency purchased expensive medical gear that it now cannot use as intended. The masks were purchased as part of a frantic agency push to supply Navajo hospitals with desperately needed protective equipment in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. (Torbati and Willis, 5/27)

Boston Globe: Questions Mount Over Mask Decontamination Machine Once Hailed As A Game-Changer
Hailed as a “game changer" in the region’s quest for much-needed protective medical gear, a massive machine used to sterilize respirator masks that was rushed into emergency use has come under increased scrutiny in recent weeks. The machine, which Partners HealthCare arranged to bring to the Boston area in April, has been sharply criticized by some health care workers, with one group saying it treats nurses “like guinea pigs in an experiment.” (Arnett, 5/27)

The Washington Post: For Paramedics, A Constant Question: Put On More Protective N95 Masks Or Conserve Them?
One view reflects a nationwide reality: With limited supplies of virus-blocking N95 face masks, paramedics responding to 911 calls should limit their use to the most contagious of settings. The other view, from paramedics told to use a less effective mask in the tight confines of an ambulance next to a coughing patient, is just as compelling. And where these views collide — as seen in the operations of one large Maryland fire department — remains a daily source of tension for first responders battling the pandemic. (Morse, 5/27)

The Associated Press: In Pandemic, Using Drones To Drop Medical Supplies From Sky
With a loud whir and a whoosh, a fixed-wing drone slingshots out of a medical warehouse, zips through hazy skies at 80 mph, pops open a belly hatch and drops a box of medical supplies. Slowed by a little parachute, the box drifts downward and lands with a plop, less than 8 minutes after launch. For North Carolina Department of Transportation’s Basil Yap, it is a eureka moment. (Mendoza, 5/27)

Modern Healthcare: Novant Health To Deliver PPE With Drones
Novant Health will deliver personal protective equipment and medical supplies to its facilities via drones, the health system announced Wednesday. Novant Health has partnered with drone startup Zipline for the program, which the organizations say marks the first time a U.S. hospital has used drones to respond to to the COVID-19 pandemic, for "contactless" distribution of supplies to the health system's facilities in the Charlotte, N.C., metropolitan area. (Cohen, 5/27)

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

The Oklahoman: Coronavirus In Oklahoma: Food Bank Assisting Those Who Test For COVID-19
The Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma announced Wednesday that it has partnered with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to provide emergency food boxes to individuals who test for COVID-19 at health departments in 28 Oklahoma counties. The food bank, through the department's disaster household distributions, is providing boxes full of non-perishable food to those who test and state they are food insecure. (Willert, 5/28)

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

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

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

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

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

CNN: What A Second Peak Of Coronavirus Could Look Like 
Coronavirus will surge again when summer ends; infectious disease experts are almost certain of that. But they don't know how severe that resurgence will be. The World Health Organization offered one bleak hypothesis for what the next few months of coronavirus could look like. While we're still living through the first wave of the pandemic, and cases are still rising, infections could jump up suddenly and significantly "at any time." (Andrew, 5/27)

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

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

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

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

Politico: Newsom Faces Growing Concerns That He's Reopening California Too Quickly
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s rapid reopening strategy is drawing concerns from lawmakers and public health officials who fear the governor is basing decisions more on political pressure than science. Newsom’s reopening plan started just over two weeks ago with a handful of rural counties with relatively few cases allowing restaurant dining and shopping in stores. (Colliver and Marinucci, 5/27)

Albuquerque Journal: Virus May Have Peaked For Navajo Hospitals 
Navajo Nation health care facilities may have reached their peak of COVID-19 hospitalizations in late April, several weeks ahead of earlier projections, according to an updated surge plan from the Indian Health Service. (Davis, 5/27)

Los Angeles Times: California Is Reopening Too Quickly, Health Officer Warns 
lifornia’s increasingly fast pace of lifting stay-at-home restrictions. In particular, Dr. Sara Cody, health officer for Santa Clara County — home to Silicon Valley and Northern California’s most populous county — said she was concerned by the decision to allow gatherings of up to 100 people for religious, political and cultural reasons. (Lin, 5/27)

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

The Washington Post: D.C. To Join Northern Virginia In Slight Reopening Friday; Maryland Suburbs Not Sure
The District will join Northern Virginia suburbs Friday in taking tentative steps toward ending their prolonged economic shutdown, the start of a gradual reopening of the coronavirus-battered Washington region. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) also will ease statewide restrictions to allow for outdoor dining and youth day camps this summer, but the leaders of populous Maryland suburbs that border the District have not yet said whether they will join in. (Nirappil, Davies and Wiggins, 5/27)

The Washington Post: Coronavirus On The Border: California Hospitals Overwhelmed By Patients From Mexico
When Manuel Ochoa started feeling sick — his body sore, his breathing restricted — he drove from his mother’s home in Mexicali, Mexico, to the U.S. border. The 65-year-old retiree parked his car at the international bridge and tried to drag himself to the country where he has permanent residency, and where his health insurance is valid. Just before he approached the port of entry, he collapsed in the sun. (Sieff, 5/27)

Los Angeles Times: Coronavirus Infection Rates In Some Parts Of L.A. County Jails Are 40% Or Higher
As extensive testing for the novel coronavirus gets underway in the vast Los Angeles County jail system, high infection rates are emerging, with nearly 60% of one group of inmates testing positive. Among 600 inmates at North County Correctional Facility in Castaic who were without symptoms and living in the general population, 40% tested positive, indicating that herd immunity “is starting to take effect,” Sheriff Alex Villanueva said at a news briefing Wednesday. (Chang, 5/27)

NPR: LA Sues California Company, Alleging 'Sophisticated' COVID-19 Fraud
The city attorney of Los Angeles announced Wednesday that his office is suing Wellness Matrix Group for allegedly engaging in a "fraudulent scheme" related to the COVID-19 pandemic that was both "sophisticated" and "wide ranging." The lawsuit alleges that the California-based company sold purported "at-home" tests for the coronavirus, falsely claiming that the tests were FDA approved. The company also sold a supposedly coronavirus-killing "virucide," claiming that the product could "build a force field around your event or even spray your entire city." (Dreisbach, 5/27)

Sacramento Bee: What Will Sacramento CA Fund With Federal COVID-19 Funding? 
The Sacramento City Council Tuesday approved a list of items to fund with roughly $29 million in federal stimulus money and laid out a plan to get public input to decide how to spend the remaining $60 million it received. The council approved about $24 million in CARES Act funding in projects Mayor Darrell Steinberg called “early wins” and about $5 million in items that the city already funded in emergency response to the pandemic. (Clift, 5/27)

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

Las Vegas Review-Journal: Gaming Control Board Updates Policies For Casino Reopenings 
The state Gaming Control Board on Wednesday updated its health and safety policies for reopening casinos, ordering licensees in resort hotels to provide for temperature screening for its hotel guests upon arrival or have a medical professional on-site. The board amended its May 1 notice with five key updates, including requiring a designated area where hotel guests may be tested for COVID-19 and await their test results. It also will require hotel guests to complete a symptom self-assessment upon check-in. (Velotta, 5/27)

Detroit Free Press: Health Care In Michigan Dramatically Changed Because Of COVID-19
Even before the first pair of novel coronavirus cases were confirmed March 10 in Michigan, the state's health care systems and hospitals were making plans for a surge in COVID-19 patients who would soon need critical care. They took stock of ventilators, tried to build their supplies of personal protective equipment like masks, gloves and gowns, and planned to convert regular hospital rooms into intensive care units as the demand grew. (Shamus, 5/28)

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

The Wall Street Journal: Disney World To Reopen Gradually Starting July 11
Walt Disney Co. said it plans to begin reopening its Disney World theme park at reduced capacity in mid-July. The Orlando, Fla., park’s Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom areas are to reopen on July 11, according to Jim MacPhee, senior vice president of operations at the park. The park’s Epcot and Disney Hollywood Studios areas are to follow on July 15. (Schwartzel, 5/27)

State House News Service: Baker: No Reason To Delay Menthol, Flavored Tobacco Crackdown 
Restrictions on the sale of flavored tobacco products, including mint and menthol cigarettes, are set to take effect next week and Gov. Charlie Baker said he sees no reason the ongoing coronavirus pandemic should delay that. The law restricting the sale of flavored tobacco products, including mint and menthol cigarettes, to smoking bars for on-premise consumption is set to take effect June 1, but the New England Convenience Stores & Energy Marketers Association has been pressing Gov. Charlie Baker to use his executive authority to delay the ban for one year. (Young, 5/27)

WBUR: Dental Offices Open Up For More Care, But The Threat Of COVID-19 Lingers 
When dental workers perform any procedure, just about every powered tool they use – anything that spins, buzzes or shoots air or water – can spray droplets of the patient's saliva into the air. If the patient happens to have COVID-19, then the coronavirus will get sprayed into the air, too.So, now dental workers are taking extra care to reduce the danger. (Chen, 5/28)

Boston Globe: Colleges Prepare To Reopen But Aren’t Entirely Confident About Having Extensive Testing In Place
Officials from Massachusetts colleges and universities, who are working doggedly to figure out a safe return to campus in the fall, say they are not entirely confident that they will have the needed testing, tracing, and protective equipment in place to do so. State higher education leaders are also urging the governor and Legislature to change the law so that institutions are held legally harmless if they reopen and people get sick, highlighting the risks many colleges and universities are facing as they weigh how and whether to bring half a million students back to campuses across Massachusetts this fall. (Fernandes, 5/27)

San Francisco Chronicle: Thermometers, Masks And Lonely Lunches: State Schools Chief Previews What’s In Store For Students
Schools across California are scheduled to reopen in just over two months, but few districts have figured out how to safely resume classes while covering the increased costs of in-person instruction during the coronavirus pandemic. So far, there is more state guidance on how to operate a hair salon than a school. (Trucker, 5/27)

Politico: New Jersey Hits Testing Benchmark, Plans Stronger Contact Tracing Next Month
New Jersey is recovering from Covid-19. The question now is whether the state can pull together the resources it will need to sustain that recovery and blot out future outbreaks. “We are far better equipped to deal with a second wave than we … were for the first wave,” said Gov. Phil Murphy Wednesday during his daily briefing, recounting a conversation with Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. (Sutton, 5/27)

The New York Times: Camping In The West? Like Everything These Days, It’s Complicated
In the West, cabin-feverish parents yearning to take their children into the woods, couples trying to escape quarantine pods, and all campers who miss their beloved outdoors will this summer find a complicated camping landscape, one of new and conflicting laws, closings and reopenings, and strict requirements on social-distancing and hand-washing. (Knopper, 5/28)

Boston Globe: With New Rules, Rhode Islanders Are Getting Ready To Return To The Gym Next Week
You’ll have to wear a face mask, even if you’re running on a treadmill, or else stay 14 feet away from other people. You’ll have to make a reservation, like you’re going to a restaurant, and provide your name and phone number in case there’s an outbreak. You’ll have to stay in groups or classes of no more than 15 people. And forget about using locker rooms and taking part in contact sports like boxing or wrestling. Those were some of the new rules that Governor Gina M. Raimondo outlined on Wednesday as she aims to reopen gyms and fitness centers on Monday as part of Phase 2 of reopening the Rhode Island economy. (Fitzpatrick, 5/27)

Las Vegas Review-Journal: Desert Research Institute Shifts Focus During Pandemic
When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, scientists at the Desert Research Institute quickly realized that their projects could be modified to help with coronavirus research in Nevada. The institute is known for the environmental research its name implies, but it also studies community health and the economic and social factors that tie into it. (Michor, 5/26)

KQED: Deaths Of Homeless People Spike In San Francisco
San Francisco public health officials are reporting an alarming increase in the number of homeless people who died this spring but said the increase is not directly caused by COVID-19. Instead, they said the deaths are more likely due to overdoses from fentanyl and indirect impacts from the coronavirus pandemic. (Small and Solomon, 5/27)

Boston Globe: For The First Time, State Divulges Death Toll By Nursing Home, And More Than 80 Have 20 Or More COVID-19 Deaths
More than 80 different long-term-care facilities in Massachusetts have each recorded at least 20 COVID-19 deaths among residents, a sign of the pandemic’s widespread toll on facilities that care for the elderly and disabled, according to state data released Wednesday night. It is the first time Baker administration officials have divulged details of the deaths at nursing homes and rest homes that have contributed to the staggering mortality rate among the state’s older residents. (Weisman and Ostriker, 5/27)

Boston Globe: For Nursing Home Staffs, It’s Grit, Teamwork, And An Us-Against-The-World Mindset 
For those on the front lines at Massachusetts nursing homes, the job stresses have grown. And the public cheering for health care workers is barely audible. They report to work each day and don protective gear. They care for old and frail residents who are confined to their rooms, with sickness and fear all around. They help residents get out of bed, get dressed, eat, and go to the bathroom. And sometimes they sit by their side when they die. (Weisman, 5/27)

The Wall Street Journal: Covid-19 Pandemic Hits Nursing-Home Finances
The biggest U.S. nursing-home company said its operations are being pressured by fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, pointing to a sharp drop in occupancy and rising expenses that are rippling through the entire elder-care sector. Genesis Healthcare Inc. GEN -12.93% said in an earnings call Wednesday that it had seen cases of Covid-19, the coronavirus illness, in 187 of its 361 facilities, largely concentrated in five Eastern states with heavy community spread of the virus. (Wilde Mathews and Kamp, 5/27)

The Star Tribune: Four Minn. Nursing Homes With COVID-19 Outbreaks Cited For Serious Violations
A troubled nursing home in Moorhead transported a coronavirus patient to a dialysis center without notifying staff at the center or the driver of the patient’s infection, potentially exposing at least nine people to the deadly virus. At a nursing home in west-central Minnesota, a resident with symptoms of the virus was allowed to attend communal meals and group bingo games, endangering 17 other residents of the facility. (Serres, 5/28)

Pennlive.Com: Pa. Lawmakers Plan To Steer Federal Stimulus Funds To Nursing Homes, Small Businesses And Counties
Pennsylvania nursing homes, small businesses and counties would be among the biggest recipients of some of the federal stimulus money under a plan that the House Appropriations Committee is expected to consider on Thursday morning. The plan proposes to distribute two-thirds of the state’s $3.9 billion allotment of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, or CARES Act, money. (Murphy, 5/28)

Colorado Sun: Coronavirus Deaths At Colorado Nursing Homes Slow, Reach 737; Outbreaks At Restaurants, Stores Continue To Climb
The pace of coronavirus deaths among Colorado nursing home and senior care center residents slowed during the past week, rising by 26 to 737, according to state health officials. That’s a stark difference compared to recent weeks in which the state counted nearly 100 new fatalities each week. (Brown and Paul, 5/27)

Detroit Free Press: More Than 1,200 COVID-19 Deaths Associated With Nursing Homes
Preliminary numbers released by the state Wednesday show there have been at least 1,216 coronavirus-related deaths and 4,920 cases of infection associated with Michigan nursing homes. That number is expected to grow as more facilities report to the state, Michigan's Department of Health and Human Services Director Robert Gordon said during a state Senate oversight committee hearing Wednesday afternoon. (Anderson and Tanner, 5/27)

KQED: For Daughter Of 96-Year-Old, COVID-19 Rules Against Seeing Mom Are Especially Painful 
As of early May, officials have recommended to all licensed facilities in California that they permit some exceptions to the lockdown, including support visits for end-of-life visitors, and for people experiencing cognitive impairments when medically necessary. What the state offers is guidance, not a rule. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends screening everyone who enters a nursing home and restricting visitors except in "compassionate care" situations. Those, too, are only guidelines. (Peterson, 5/27)

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

The Washington Post: House Casts First-Ever Remote Vote As Republicans Wage Constitutional Challenge
The new system of voting by proxy was pushed forward by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and fellow Democratic leaders this month as a temporary measure, they said, that would allow lawmakers’ full participation during the global coronavirus pandemic, which has made travel and in-person meetings hazardous. Several Democrats have fretted about the House’s effectiveness as the outbreak has sidelined lawmakers — while other parts of the federal government have adapted to the new reality and the Senate, with fewer members, has returned to Washington to vote on nominations and legislation. (DeBonis, 5/27)

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

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

ABC News: Democratic Senators Defend Planned Parenthood Affiliates’ Access To PPP Loans 
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and other Democratic lawmakers are accusing the Trump administration of unfairly targeting Planned Parenthood amid reports that some affiliated health care centers are being pressured by the government to return federally-funded, potentially forgivable small business loans granted through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) during the coronavirus pandemic. In a letter to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Small Business Administration (SBA) Administrator Jovita Carranza, Democrats argue that by seeking to reclaim the PPP funds, the SBA is taking an "ideologically-driven action" in order to "score political points for this administration by attacking nonprofit health care providers." (Crawford, 5/27)

NPR: PPP Loans: Why The Paycheck Protection Program Has Slowed Way Down
When the federal small business rescue program was announced, Krista Kern-Desjarlais scrambled to research it, talking to her banker and digging online. Kern-Desjarlais runs two restaurants in Maine — the Purple House in North Yarmouth and Bresca & the Honeybee, a summer-only food stand on Sabbathday Lake. She decided to hold off on that coronavirus rescue effort, the Paycheck Protection Program, or PPP. (Kurtzleben, 5/28)

ProPublica: House Democrats Demand Trump Administration Stop Rushing Through Deportations Of Migrant Children
Democratic congressional leaders expressed alarm Wednesday at a sudden acceleration in the deportation of migrant children and in a strongly worded letter requested that the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement “cease this practice immediately.” The letter signed by five key House leaders overseeing immigration cited a May 18 ProPublica/Texas Tribune story that found the U.S. government has aggressively begun to rush the deportations of unaccompanied children in its care to countries where they have been raped, beaten or had a parent killed, according to attorneys, court filings and congressional staff. (Kriel, 5/28)

Roll Call: Firefighters Seek Rough Parity With Police In Virus Aid Efforts
Police and firefighters weren’t forgotten when Congress passed a $2 trillion coronavirus relief package in March. Within a week of the law’s enactment, aid began flowing to states and cities through the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program, run by the Justice Department. Much of that aid goes to police departments across the country, which have received more than $143 million so far, according to a CQ Roll Call analysis of grant recipients. (Lerman, 5/27)

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

NPR: Coronavirus Blocks Naturalization Ceremonies In Election Year
An estimated 860,000 people were set to become citizens — with many also expected to become first-time voters. The crimp in the pipeline of new citizens is one of a series of unexpected challenges that could reshape the electorate ahead of the November general election. About a quarter of naturalized citizens live in Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania and Georgia, all potentially key states in the fall election, according to data from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. (Lopez, 5/28)

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

CNN: Texas Supreme Court Blocks Vote-By-Mail Expansion To Those Lacking Immunity To The Coronavirus
The Texas Supreme Court on Wednesday blocked a push to expand vote-by-mail to registered voters in the state amid the pandemic, saying that a lack of immunity to the coronavirus does not count as a "disability" for which a voter can apply for a mail-in ballot. "We agree with the State that a voter's lack of immunity to COVID-19, without more, is not a 'disability' as defined by the Election Code. But the State acknowledges that election officials have no responsibility to question or investigate a ballot application that is valid on its face," the opinion delivered by Chief Justice Nathan Hecht said. (Mena, 5/27)

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

The Associated Press: 41 Million Have Lost Jobs Since Virus Hit, But Layoffs Slow
Roughly 2.1 million people applied for U.S. unemployment benefits last week, a sign that companies are still slashing jobs in the face of a deep recession even as more businesses reopen and rehire some laid-off employees. About 41 million people have now applied for aid since the virus outbreak intensified in March, though not all of them are still unemployed. The Labor Department’s report Thursday includes a count of all the people now receiving unemployment aid: 21 million. That is a rough measure of the number of unemployed Americans. (Rugaber, 5/28)

CNN: 1 In 4 American Workers Have Filed Jobless Claims Since The Pandemic
It was the tenth-straight week in which claims were in the millions. America had never recorded a single week of 1 million jobless claims prior to the coronavirus crisis. The number of people claiming unemployment benefits for consecutive weeks rose to 21.1 million. (Tappe, 5/28)

Bloomberg: U.S. State Jobless-Benefit Rolls Post First Decline Of Pandemic
U.S. states’ jobless rolls shrank for the first time during the coronavirus pandemic in a sign people are starting to return to work, even as millions more Americans filed for unemployment benefits. (Dmitrieva, 5/28)

The Washington Post: Americans Have Filed More Than 40 Million Jobless Claims In Past 10 Weeks, As Another 2.1 Million Filed For Benefits Last Week
More Americans are vying against each other to snag a shrinking pool of jobs assisting offices, entering data and handling other responsibilities that can be predominately executed from home, offering early clues about a labor market crunch that will intensify this summer. ... The scramble for remote, socially distant employment reflects lingering fears on the part of U.S. workers about their physical and financial security as the coronavirus pandemic stretches into its third month. (Romm, 5/28)

The Wall Street Journal: Unemployment Claims Eased To 2.1 Million Last Week
A continued high level of jobless-benefit applications indicates that retailers, factories, municipal governments and other employers are laying off more workers, and that Americans out of work for weeks are managing their way through overwhelmed state systems. However, rising claims no longer necessarily means unemployment rising further because new job losses are increasingly offset by workers being recalled or otherwise finding employment. (Morath, 5/28)

In other news on the pandemic's toll on the economy and labor market —

Reuters: Exclusive: U.S. Taxpayers' Virus Relief Went To Firms That Avoided U.S. Tax
Last month Zagg Inc, a Utah-based company that makes mobile device accessories, received more than $9.4 million in cash from a U.S. government program that has provided emergency loans to millions of businesses hit by the coronavirus. The money was part of the $660 billion Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) — a linchpin of President Donald Trump’s economic rescue package, meant to save small firms convulsed by the pandemic and help them to keep workers on the payroll. (Bergin and Delevingne, 5/28)

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

Bangor Daily News: Work Release Prisoners Receiving Pandemic Unemployment Benefits Is Not An Outrage
A group of 53 inmates in Maine received a total of nearly $200,000 in unemployment benefits after losing their work release jobs because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Gov. Janet Mills ordered those payments to stop, and has called the situation “appalling” and “bad public policy.” To us it looks more like unemployed workers, who lost their jobs during widespread economic and public health upheaval, receiving unemployment benefits. (5/27)

Las Vegas Review-Journal: Nevada Uneployment Call Center For Gig Workers Down Until June 1 
The Alorica call center tasked with helping gig workers file for unemployment insurance benefits is still open for business, but filers will not be able to connect with an adjudicator until Monday. The Department of Employment, Training, and Rehabilition clarified that the message on its EmployNV website, where gig workers are to file for benefits, does not mean its call center for the federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program will be down. (Hudson, 5/27)

San Francisco Chronicle: SF Rolls Out Program To Help Low-Income Wage-Earners Who Contract COVID-19 
San Francisco officials rolled out a program Wednesday that seeks to provide some relief to workers who contract COVID-19, but can’t afford to miss a paycheck while in self-isolation. The city’s “Right to Recover” program will provide eligible workers who have COVID-19 with two weeks of wage replacement, or $1,285, based on San Francisco’s minimum wage. The program will be funded with $2 million from the city’s Give2SF program, San Francisco’s central charitable relief fund for those impacted by the coronavirus. (Fracassa, 5/27)

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

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

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

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

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

Politico: NIH Director: ‘No Way Of Knowing’ If Coronavirus Escaped From Wuhan Lab
National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins said the coronavirus is “absolutely not" manmade but he could not rule out the idea that it escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China, where the first known cases emerged. “Whether [the coronavirus] could have been in some way isolated and studied in this laboratory in Wuhan, we have no way of knowing,” he told POLITICO on Wednesday. (Brennan, 5/27)

CIDRAP: New Data Show Low Rates Of COVID-19 In Pregnant Women
A research letter published yesterday in JAMA revealed a 3.9% prevalence of COVID-19 among women giving birth at three Yale New Haven hospitals in Connecticut. A separate study published today in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology found a 7.9% prevalence of the novel coronavirus among symptomatic obstetric patients and a 1.5% prevalence among asymptomatic patients (those not having COVID-19 symptoms) at four Boston hospitals. (VAn Beusekom, 5/27)

CIDRAP: CDC Advises When It's Safe To Leave COVID-19 Self-Quarantine
Improving symptoms, no fever for 3 days, at least 10 days since symptom onset—those are criteria for when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says people with COVID-19 can leave self-quarantine and be around others again. The guidance was released earlier this week and will prove helpful as states continue to open up and people return to work. The CDC also said asymptomatic people who have tested positive for COVID-19 should wait 10 days after the positive test before resuming normal activities. (Soucheray, 5/27)

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

Stateline: This Disaster Season, 'Everything Is Complicated By COVID-19' 
If a hurricane bears down on Florida this summer, residents likely won’t be told to evacuate to the safety of a high school gymnasium or large civic building. Instead, they may be asked to download an app that assigns them to an open hotel room — a shelter from both the storm and the threat of a COVID-19 outbreak. State officials have mapped out all of Florida’s 5,000 hotels, along with the wind rating of each facility and whether it has a generator on hand. So far, they’ve persuaded 200 hotels to sign up to serve as shelters; they’re aiming to reach 1,000. (Brown, 5/28)

The New York Times: ‘Just Sitting In Limbo.’ For Many Professionals, Careers Are On Hold.
After five years at the wellness industry start-up she co-founded in San Francisco, Hasti Nazem decided it was time for her next adventure in Silicon Valley. Her last day was March 5. Two months later, the job market has imploded, promising leads have dried up, and Ms. Nazem, 35, is stuck in limbo. She is mining her network for introductions, but still without a full-time job. “I’m mostly having Zoom calls with strangers,” she said. (Gelles, 5/27)

The New York Times: They Predicted ‘The Crisis Of 2020’ … In 1991. So How Does This End?
They called it the Crisis of 2020 — an unspecified calamity that “could rival the gravest trials our ancestors have known” and serve as “the next great hinge of history.” It could be an environmental catastrophe, a nuclear threat or “some catastrophic failure in the world economy.” That was 1991. The scholars responsible were William Strauss and Neil Howe, whose book “Generations” introduced a provocative theory that American history unfolds in boom-to-bust cycles of roughly 80 years. (Peters, 5/28)

The Wall Street Journal: Why Does Zoom Exhaust You? Science Has An Answer
Tammy Sun, the quintessential Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur, fired off an uncharacteristically low-tech Tweet recently. “Zoom fatigue has me wanting a landline and a rotary phone,” wrote the founder and CEO of Carrot, a startup that provides fertility benefit plans for companies. Ms. Sun likes Zoom a lot. In fact, she says she’s a “power user,” spending nine out of 10 conversations on it, six days a week. The hours aren’t the problem, she says, it’s the real-time image of herself on the Zoom grid, reflecting her every move as if she were in front of a mirror. “I’m flat-out not used to that,” she says. (Morris, 5/27)

ABC News: Domestic Violence Centers Navigate Coronavirus Crisis As Calls Spike
Domestic violence has seen a dramatic increase during the novel coronavirus pandemic, with victims cooped up with their abusers under stay-at home orders and unable to access services they normally would utilize for support, according to officials. As resource centers face this new crisis, their services "are vital now more than ever," Keith Scott, the director of education at The Safe Center, a Long Island, New York-based domestic violence resource center, told ABC News. (Torres, 5/28)

ABC News: Battling Cancer And COVID-19: Patients And Survivors Worry About Lost Time 
For Meredith Minister, this was supposed to be a summer of living it up and dancing away fears of late-stage metastatic cancer. "I am in a place with cancer where I am just trying to make decisions to live my life as long as it lasts, and not trying to lengthen my life by decreasing its quality," said Minister, 36, a religious studies professor and amateur dance enthusiast, who is no longer receiving treatment for her disease... Many of the 15 million Americans living with cancer are coming to terms with a pandemic that has upended support systems and coping mechanisms, facing difficult choices about how to live fully in the era of social distance. (Dwyer, 5/28)

CNN: Practice Sun Safety To Stay Healthy Outside During The Pandemic 
As we welcome sunshine and warmer weather after being hunkered down for weeks, many of us will be more excited than ever to spend time outside. But whether you are simply looking for some fresh air during a walk or hoping to get an extra dose of the "sunshine vitamin" — that is, immunity-supporting vitamin D — dermatologists say it's as important as ever to practice safe sun to protect against skin cancer. (Drayer, 5/28)

The Wall Street Journal: A Truck Driver’s Long Haul During Coronavirus Crisis: ‘You Realize Just How Alone We Are’
Robert Greene’s lonely job has gotten even more isolating in recent months. The longtime truck driver’s income has plummeted, and places to eat, shower and sleep during his journeys have become harder to find. His wife’s recent battle with coronavirus only increased the stress felt by someone spending so much time on the road. Mr. Greene, a 52-year-old from Fairborn, Ohio, has been driving trucks for about three decades and logged thousands of miles in his big rig during the pandemic. He has recently hauled everything from meat to bodies bound for the crematorium. (Smith, 5/28)

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

Cincinnati Enquirer: Coronavirus: What To Know As You Reschedule Your Delayed Health Care
Health care across Southwest Ohio and Northern Kentucky is awakening from state-ordered closures to nonessential surgery and procedures imposed in March as part of the public health defense against the new coronavirus pandemic. It’s not clear yet what the new day will bring to Cincinnati area medicine, which lost millions of dollars in the six-week stop to hospitals’ most lucrative revenue stream. A few quickly employed tools, such as the pandemic-fueled push to telemedicine, will stick around. (Saker, 5/27)

Houston Chronicle: Texas Hospitals That Received Bailouts Are Suing Poor Patients For Failing To Pay Medical Bills  
Across Texas a growing number of poor, unemployed or unsuspecting patients are being sued for uncollected medical debt in a trend that some see as predatory. The hospitals suing are typically for-profit facilities, often operating in rural or small towns. Between January 2018 and February 2020, more than 1,000 lawsuits were filed by 28 hospitals in 62 Texas counties, according to a sweeping new analysis of hospital financial records and court data by national health care experts. (Deam and Tedesco, 5/27)

Modern Healthcare: Hospitals Lose Two-Midnight Payment Cuts Appeal
HHS doesn't owe hospitals for lost payments related to the two-midnight rule, a three-judge panel for a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday. According to an opinion by Judge Judith Rogers for the D.C. Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals, a lower court "reasonably addressed the problem" when it sided with HHS. Hospitals argued that the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia should have tossed out the rate-cutting payment rule and forced the agency to reimburse each hospital affected by the payment reductions for inpatient hospital services. (Brady, 5/27)

Modern Healthcare: Sutter Health's Operating Loss Margin Nears 20% In April
COVID-19-related expenses and procedure cancellations drove Sutter Health's operating loss margin to nearly 20% in April. Sacramento, Calif.-based Sutter revealed in a bond filing Wednesday that it lost $168 million on operations in the month of April alone, a loss margin of 18.6%. That factors in in a suite of COVID-19 relief programs, without which its operating loss would have surged to $360 million in April, a loss margin of 50.5%. (Bannow, 5/27)

The Wall Street Journal: Ill-Timed Health-Care Buyouts Bruise KKR And Blackstone
Two big health-care buyouts are shaping up to be among the worst-performing private-equity investments in recent years. The coronavirus pandemic is only the latest reason why. Physician-staffing firms Envision Healthcare Corp. and TeamHealth Holdings Inc., whose emergency-room workers are ubiquitous throughout the country, were purchased by KKR KKR 0.39% & Co. and Blackstone Group Inc. BX 0.44% in 2018 and 2017 for roughly $6 billion and $3 billion, respectively. (Gottfried, 5/28)

Modern Healthcare: Employer, Physician Groups Want Calif. Insurers To Pay Primary Care $2.5 Billion
The Pacific Business Group on Health and the California Medical Association are asking California state legislators to shore up vulnerable primary-care practices during the COVID-19 crisis. The organizations are urging lawmakers to require health insurers to make $2.5 billion in prospective payments to independent primary-care providers for 2020 and 2021. (Livingston, 5/27)

The Oklahoman: Insurance Observers Worried About The Future Of Insure Oklahoma
Though it’s been praised by President Donald Trump and modeled by other states, an 18-year-old public-private, state health insurance program — on which thousands of small employers in Oklahoma rely to provide health insurance to their low-income workers for as little as $80 a month — may end if Oklahomans vote to expand Medicaid next month. As lawmakers considered their own plan to expand Medicaid ahead of the vote, state officials indicated they might shut down the program entirely. (Burkes, 5/28)

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

Bloomberg: Covid-19 Vaccine Is A Long Way Off, Forecasters Say
People who get paid to make forecasts say there’s only a 9% chance that there will be a widely available vaccine for Covid-19 before next April. That’s according to Good Judgment Inc., a company that maintains a global network of forecasters to make predictions for clients based on publicly available evidence. (Coy, 5/27)

ABC News: Coronavirus Vaccine Update: Possible By The End Of The Year? 
With top White House officials indicating a coronavirus vaccine may be available by January 2021, scientists and vaccine experts outside the Trump administration are cautious but optimistic that a vaccine could be delivered on such an accelerated timeline. Experts interviewed by ABC warned that developing a vaccine within a 12-month time frame could mean throwing normal scientific standards out the window, but added that a vaccine could be available by the new year if everything goes perfectly. (Salzman, 5/27)

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

Bloomberg: Coronavirus Vaccine: Glaxo To Make 1 Billion Doses Of Booster
The adjuvant can reduce the amount of vaccine required per dose, allowing more people to be immunized, and create longer-lasting immunity, Glaxo said in a statement Thursday. The U.K. drugmaker in April agreed to provide its technology to help develop an experimental vaccine with French pharma giant Sanofi. Glaxo is among dozens of companies in the hunt for a vaccine, seen as the key to halting the pandemic and reopening economies around the world. The global death toll has climbed past 350,000. (Fourcade and Paton, 5/28)

CNN: In Race For Coronavirus Vaccine, Hurled Insults And The Wisdom Of Spider-Man
Ethicists and physicians are concerned that, amid a desire to put an end to the Covid-19 pandemic, developers of drugs and vaccines have become overly enthusiastic about the chances their products will work. While several vaccine developers have issued statements looking into the future -- setting possible timetables for study completion and vaccine manufacturing -- the ethicists and doctors say one group in particular stands out as being the most aggressive in painting the rosiest picture: the University of Oxford in England. (Cohen, 5/27)

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

In other pharmaceutical news —

Express News: With Coronavirus Treatment Drug Still In Short Supply, San Antonio Hospitals Confront Rationing It To Patients
The antiviral drug remdesivir has emerged as one of the only options for treating the sickest COVID-19 patients, but nearly a month after federal regulators fast-tracked its use, supplies are scarce. (Caruba, 5/26)

Boston Globe: Penn Researchers Take Inventory Of Drugs That Have Been Tried To Treat Coronavirus 
More than 100 drugs have been tried around the world in the battle against the deadly coronavirus pandemic, according to a team from the University of Pennsylvania that is taking an inventory of them. Many drugs approved to treat other diseases are being tried against the coronavirus, a use that’s known as “off-label." (Finucane, 5/27)

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

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

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

In other news on the opioid crisis —

The New York Times: Big Pharmacy Chains Also Fed The Opioid Epidemic, Court Filing Says
Through years of lawsuits and rising public anger over the opioid epidemic, the big American pharmacy retailers have largely eluded scrutiny. But a new court filing Wednesday morning asserts that pharmacies including CVS, Rite Aid, Walgreens and Giant Eagle as well as those operated by Walmart were as complicit in perpetuating the crisis as the manufacturers and distributors of the addictive drugs. The retailers sold millions of pills in tiny communities, offered bonuses for high-volume pharmacists and even worked directly with drug manufacturers to promote opioids as safe and effective, according to the complaint filed in federal court in Cleveland by two Ohio counties. (Hoffman, 5/27)

Roll Call: Physicians, ACLU Sue FDA Over Abortion Pill Limits
A group of medical providers represented by the American Civil Liberties Union sued the Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday, challenging federal requirements that limit how medication abortions are dispensed. The medical group coalition, led by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, opposes an FDA restriction on mifepristone, a drug used to end a pregnancy or for miscarriage management. Medication abortions use a two-pill regimen to end a pregnancy. (Raman, 5/27)

NPR: Lawsuit Asks FDA To Lift Restrictions On Abortion Pill
In a federal lawsuit filed in Maryland on behalf of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and other groups, the American Civil Liberties Union requests an emergency order lifting regulations requiring patients in the United States to pick up the drug at a hospital or medical facility. Julia Kaye, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, said that requirement is putting patients at risk during the COVID-19 pandemic. (McCammon, 5/27)

Bloomberg: Doctor Groups Sue FDA To Ease U.S. Restrictions On Abortion Pill
“When it comes to patients who need to end an early pregnancy or treat a miscarriage, the administration is forcing them to travel unnecessarily to a hospital, clinic, or medical office just to pick up a pill they are already permitted to swallow later at home,” ACLU attorney Julia Kaye said in a statement. “It is unconscionable that the administration is singling out these patients for life-threatening risks.” The FDA regulates more than 20,000 drugs, but the abortion pill is the only one that the FDA requires be picked up in person, according to the ACLU. Mifepristone is sold as a brand drug by Danco Laboratories LLC and in a generic pill by GenBioPro Inc. (Koons, 5/27)

The Washington Post: The FDA Relaxes Food Label Rules For Fifth Time During The Pandemic
The Food and Drug Administration has temporarily loosened labeling and information rules for food manufacturers for the fifth time during the novel coronavirus pandemic. The changes are intended to ease manufacturers’ supply-chain snags, but advocacy groups say they are concerned that the changes will become permanent and that they will present problems for consumers concerned about tracking the provenance of their food. (Reiley, 5/27)

Stat: FDA Finds 'Unacceptable' Levels Of Possible Carcinogen In Diabetes Pill
After months of testing, the Food and Drug Administration reported finding unacceptable levels of a possible carcinogen in some metformin diabetes pills, marking the third time in two years that the same impurity was discovered in a widely used medicine. In a brief statement, the agency noted that traces of a possible carcinogen known as NDMA were found in extended-release versions of metformin, but not in immediate-release versions. As a result, the FDA is contacting manufacturers to take “quick and appropriate action,” but did not say whether any recalls have so far occurred. (Silverman, 5/27)

The Associated Press: 'Didn't Give A Damn': Inside A Ravaged Spanish Nursing Home
Zoilo Patiño was just one of more than 19,000 elderly people to die of coronavirus in Spain’s nursing homes but he has come to symbolize a system of caring for the country’s most vulnerable that critics say is desperately broken. When the Alzheimer’s-stricken 84-year-old succumbed in March on the same day 200 others died across Madrid, funeral homes were too overwhelmed to take his body and he was instead left locked in the same room, in the same bed, where he died. (Parra, 5/28)

The Associated Press: UN: Virus Could Push 14 Million Into Hunger In Latin America
The U.N. World Food Program is warning that upward of at least 14 million people could go hungry in Latin America as the coronavirus pandemic rages on, shuttering people in their homes, drying up work and crippling the economy. New projections released late Wednesday estimate a startling increase: Whereas 3.4 million experienced severe food insecurity in 2019, that number could more than quadruple this year in one of the world’s most vulnerable regions. (Armario, 5/28)

The New York Times: ‘It’s Not The Virus’: Mexico’s Broken Hospitals Become Killers, Too
The senseless deaths torment doctors and nurses the most: The man who died because an inexperienced nurse unplugged his ventilator. The patient who died from septic shock because no one monitored his vital signs. The people whose breathing tubes clogged after being abandoned in their hospital beds for hours on end. In Mexico, it’s not just the coronavirus that is claiming lives. The country’s broken health system is killing people as well. (Kitroeff and Villegas, 5/28)

The Associated Press: Patrons Under Plastic: Restaurants Get Creative In Virus Era
Dining at a table where each person is enclosed by a clear plastic shield might look and sound futuristic, but it could be one way for some restaurants to reopen. It also might help out if your companion orders escargots, heavy on the garlic. The prototype plastic shields are known as the “Plex’eat,” and they resemble big clear lampshades suspended from the ceiling. They are being showcased temporarily at H.A.N.D., a Parisian restaurant seeking a way to reopen its dining room as coronavirus restrictions are relaxed. (Adamson and Cetinic, 5/28)

Reuters: 'No Evidence' Reopening Of Finland Schools Has Spread Virus Faster
Finland has seen no evidence of the coronavirus spreading faster since schools started to reopen in the middle of May, the top health official said on Thursday. “The time has been short, but so far we have seen no evidence,” Mika Salminen, director of health security at the Finnish Institute of Health and Welfare, told a news conference. Finland started to reopen schools and daycare centres from May 14 following an almost two-month shutdown. (5/28)

The Wall Street Journal: Brazil’s Daily Coronavirus Death Toll Surpasses That Of U.S.
Brazil has reached a grim milestone, reporting more Covid-19 deaths in one day than the U.S., which until recently had logged the most daily fatalities from the disease. Brazil’s Health Ministry reported that 1,039 people had died from the disease caused by the new coronavirus in the 24 hours through Tuesday evening, while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 592 deaths in the U.S. on the same day. (Lewis and Magalhaes, 5/27)

The New York Times: Larry Kramer, Playwright And Outspoken AIDS Activist, Dies At 84
Larry Kramer, the noted writer whose raucous, antagonistic campaign for an all-out response to the AIDS crisis helped shift national health policy in the 1980s and ’90s, died on Wednesday morning in Manhattan. He was 84. His husband, David Webster, said the cause was pneumonia. Mr. Kramer had weathered illness for much of his adult life. Among other things he had been infected with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, contracted liver disease and underwent a successful liver transplant. (Lewis, 5/27)

The Associated Press: Larry Kramer Used Voice, Pen To Raise Consciousness On AIDS
Time never softened the urgency of Larry Kramer’s demands. Theatergoers leaving a celebrated revival of Kramer’s “The Normal Heart” in 2011 were greeted by the playwright himself, deep in his 70s by then, handing out leaflets outside the Broadway theater demanding they do more to stop AIDS. “Please know that AIDS is a worldwide plague. Please know there is no cure,” the leaflets read. (Kennedy, 5/27)

The Wall Street Journal: AIDS Activist Larry Kramer Dies At 84
Mr. Kramer helped form the Gay Men’s Health Crisis and ACT UP, two advocacy groups devoted to combating the epidemic. His Broadway play “The Normal Heart” (1985) and the essays collected in “Reports from the Holocaust” (1989) chronicled his tactics, which combined demonstrations, civil disobedience, and opinion pieces. “I know that unless I fight with every ounce of my energy I will hate myself,” he wrote. Early in his activist years, Mr. Kramer often criticized Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and now a leader in trying to combat the Covid-19 pandemic. During the AIDS crisis, activists often saw the agency as too slow to pursue research on treatments. In time, Dr. Fauci gave Mr. Kramer credit for his impact. (Brody, 5/27)

The New York Times: ‘We Loved Each Other’: Fauci Recalls Larry Kramer, Friend And Nemesis
“How did I meet Larry? He called me a murderer and an incompetent idiot on the front page of the San Francisco Examiner magazine.” Speaking as he passed though a fever check on his way into the White House, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, recalled some of his fondest memories of his friend Larry Kramer, who died early Wednesday morning. Nearly every anecdote in our brief interview had the same plot: the country’s best-known AIDS activist publicly abusing the country’s best-known AIDS doctor — and then privately apologizing afterward, saying he hadn’t meant it, that it was just how to get things done. (McNeil, 5/27)

Urban Institute: Uninsured New Mothers' Health And Health Care Challenges Highlight The Benefits Of Increasing Postpartum Medicaid Coverage
Alarming increases in US maternal mortality have generated national attention and a search for policy solutions to promote maternal health. This analysis uses 2015–18 data from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) to document access and affordability challenges facing uninsured new mothers and 2015–17 data from the Pregnancy Risk Assessment and Monitoring System (PRAMS) to describe the health status of women who lost Medicaid coverage following their pregnancies. About 1 in 5 uninsured new moms reported at least one unmet need for medical care because of cost in the past year, and over half were very worried about paying their medical bills. (McMorrow et al, 5/28)

Health Affairs: Disparities In Outcomes Among COVID-19 Patients In A Large Health Care System In California
As the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic spreads throughout the United States, evidence is mounting that racial and ethnic minorities and socioeconomically disadvantaged groups are bearing a disproportionate burden of illness and death. We conducted a retrospective cohort analysis of COVID-19 patients at Sutter Health, a large integrated health care system in northern California, to measure potential disparities. (Azar et al, 5/21)

JAMA Internal Medicine: Outbreak Investigation Of COVID-19 Among Residents And Staff Of An Independent And Assisted Living Community For Older Adults In Seattle, Washington
Detection of SARS-CoV-2 in asymptomatic residents highlights challenges in protecting older adults living in congregate settings. In this study, symptom screening failed to identify residents with infections and all 4 residents with SARS-CoV-2 remained asymptomatic after 14 days. Although 1 asymptomatic infection was found on retesting, a widespread facility outbreak was avoided. Compared with skilled nursing settings, in assisted/independent living communities, early surveillance to identify asymptomatic persons among residents and staff, in combination with adherence to recommended preventive strategies, may reduce viral spread. (Roxby et al, 5/21)

JAMA Internal Medicine: Effects Of A Workplace Wellness Program On Employee Health, Health Beliefs, And Medical Use: A Randomized Clinical Trial
This randomized clinical trial showed that a comprehensive workplace wellness program had no significant effects on measured physical health outcomes, rates of medical diagnoses, or the use of health care services after 24 months, but it increased the proportion of employees reporting that they have a primary care physician and improved employee beliefs about their own health. (Reif et al, 5/26)

American Academy Of Pediatrics: In Utero Antidepressants And Neurodevelopmental Outcomes In Kindergarteners 
Exposure to SSRIs or SNRIs during pregnancy was associated with an increased risk of developmental vulnerability and an increased risk of deficits in language and/or cognition. Replication of results is necessary before clinical implications can be reached. (Singal et al, 5/1)

CIDRAP: Review Finds Test Antibiotics Unreliable For Diagnosing TB
New research by scientists from the United Kingdom and Africa suggests a long-standing practice of using antibiotics to test whether an individual may have tuberculosis (TB) is an unreliable method for diagnosing the disease. In a systematic review and meta-analysis of a handful of studies that investigated the use of trial antibiotics as a diagnostic test in adults with TB symptoms, the researchers found that trial antibiotics performed poorly in ruling TB in or out in suspected cases, with sensitivity and specificity estimates that were well below internationally recommended standards for TB diagnostics. (Dall, 5/20)

Stat: Beating Covid-19 Will Change How New Therapies Are Developed 
The global Covid-19 pandemic has left families and communities around the globe grieving for lost loved ones, exhausted from prolonged social isolation, and anxious about their financial future as unemployment reaches levels not seen since the Great Depression. But it is also driving an unprecedented transformation of the global medical research ecosystem through the search for effective new therapies and vaccines that can help ease symptoms and prevent death among people with Covid-19, restart economies, and ultimately protect people from the disease. (John F. Crowley and Kush M. Parmar, 5/27)

The Wall Street Journal: When Covid ‘Science’ Is A Smokescreen 
The word “science” has been hollowed out by politicians, who have stripped it of its substance and power and replaced them with emotional pabulum. These politicians discard the scientific method and deploy the term merely as a weapon against their opponents. This trend isn’t new, but it has been magnified during the fight against the novel coronavirus. In his first tweet on the subject, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee used the word “science” in a snarky attack on Vice President Mike Pence, who had called to see how the federal government could assist the state in dealing with the nation’s first Covid-19 cases. (Todd Myers, 5/27)

Stat: Challenge Trials Can Speed Development Of A Covid-19 Vaccine 
Human challenge trials, also known as controlled human infection models, are an essential tool for developing new vaccines. But unless we start preparing now for Covid-19 challenge trials by quickly manufacturing an unadulterated version of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the disease, they might not be available in time to develop a vaccine against it. (Josh Morrison, 5/28)

The Washington Post: Conservatives Who Refuse To Wear Masks Undercut A Central Claim Of Their Beliefs
If you had asked me six months ago to predict which party would display extreme levels of concern about a deadly pandemic and which party would downplay the risk, I’d have thought you were tossing me a softball question. A disease that makes China look bad for a hapless initial response that let a new virus get established, followed by a coverup that let it infect the world? A disease that exposed the dangers of sourcing essential goods such as medical protective gear from a strategic rival? (Megan McArdle, 5/27)

The Hill: The PPP Excludes Black And Latino Small Businesses, So Fix It 
While the House prepares to revamp the government's small business aid program, there needs to be a serious reckoning about how this program is driving racial inequality in our country. As the leaders of two of the largest racial justice organizations in the country, we previously heard from our communities that the federal government was failing to support our country’s black and Latino entrepreneurs — and now we have the numbers to back it up. (Rashad Robinson and Janet Murguia, 5/27)

Boston Globe: Behind The Scenes Of The Supermarket Front Lines 
I understand people’s need to buy food, their desire to control at least one thing in this menacing COVID-19 universe. But let’s be clear: I hadn’t ever put myself on the front line. That’s reserved for doctors, nurses, and other critical personnel who are surrounded by tragedies on all levels. I am surrounded by canned goods and produce. (Mary Ann D'Urso, 5/28)

The Hill: If There's Another Stimulus Package, It Shouldn't Discourage Work 
The House Democrats’ $3 trillion stimulus bill is, thankfully, not going anywhere, but if Congress is going to move forward with any additional stimulus plan, not a penny should be approved without first fixing the loopholes which make not working pay so well. The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act of 2020 (CARES Act) extended economic relief in several ways to American workers to bridge the unemployment gap until they could get back to work. An unfortunate unintended consequence of this bill was to create disincentives to work because of overly generous unemployment benefits. (Patrice Onwuka, 5/27)

The Hill: The Coronavirus Just Ended Independent Contracting As We Know It 
Well, it was a good run, but soon it will be time to say goodbye to all those independent contractors, freelancers and the "gig" economy as we now know it. The rules are going to change significantly in the next few years, and we can thank the coronavirus for putting the final nail in the coffin. If you're a small business owner like me who relies on freelancers to do certain kinds of work, we're going to have to change our models — and pay more in the future. (Gene Marks, 5/27)

Houston Chronicle: Call Out Houston Businesses Endangering Public During Coronavirus Pandemic 
Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, who has been vocal about urging Houstonians to follow social distancing measures, said the city did not plan to be “heavy-handed” in enforcement of the governor’s guidelines. “If you work with us, nobody gets closed down,” the mayor said last week. “The fire marshals will simply be there to inform, to educate.” That’s a commendable approach to take with business owners, customers and local residents who are making good-faith efforts to adhere to social distancing measures — and there are plenty of those. Indeed, Harris County Fire Marshal Laurie Christensen has said most merchants have agreed to comply when told they are in violation. But businesses and other establishments flagrantly flouting rules meant to protect us all need to be held accountable. (5/27)

New England Journal of Medicine: Long-Term Care Policy After Covid-19 — Solving The Nursing Home Crisis
Nursing homes have been caught in the crosshairs of the coronavirus pandemic. As of early May 2020, Covid-19 had claimed the lives of more than 28,000 nursing home residents and staff in the United States. But U.S. nursing homes were unstable even before Covid-19 hit. They were like tinderboxes, ready to go up in flames with just a spark. The tragedy unfolding in nursing homes is the result of decades of neglect of long-term care policy. Since the U.S. coronavirus outbreak began in a nursing home in Kirkland, Washington, more than 153,000 residents and employees of 7700 U.S. nursing homes have contracted Covid-19, accounting for 35% of the country’s deaths. Here, as in many other countries, nursing homes have been ill equipped to stop the spread of the virus. They lacked the resources necessary to contain the outbreak, including tests and personal protective equipment, and their staff are routinely underpaid and undertrained. Furthermore, nursing homes were sitting ducks for Covid-19, housing people who are particularly vulnerable to poor outcomes of the virus, often in shared living quarters and communal spaces, making social distancing or isolation difficult, if not impossible. (Rachel M. Werner, Allison K. Hoffman, and Norma B. Coe, 5/27)

Modern Healthcare: Whistleblower Suit Alleges Retaliation Over Nursing Home COVID-19 Safety Concerns
An assistant director at a Chicago nursing home and long-term care facility alleges in a whistleblower lawsuit that she was fired in retaliation for "objecting to, reporting and refusing directives to participate in unsafe and unlawful conduct in violation of her professional nursing obligations" in relation to COVID-19 care and precautions. The complaint comes at a time when nursing homes and long-term care facilities nationwide are seeing outbreaks of COVID-19 cases and climbing death tolls. In Illinois, 47% of the state's 5,083 COVID-19-related deaths have been in long-term care facilities, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health. (Ginger Christ, 5/27)

Arizona Republic: COVID-19 Rages In Arizona Care Facilities With No Real Plan To Stop It
From testing to PPEs to data disclosure, Arizona’s response to the COVID-19 impact on long-term care residents has been frustratingly underwhelming. At what point will it turn around?Two weeks ago, Gov. Doug Ducey and his administration pledged, finally, to test all residents and staff in the state’s 147 nursing homes for the novel coronavirus and to secure personal protective equipment for the facilities. (Abe Kwok, 5/27)

Stat: Covid-19 Is Battering Independent Physician Practices
Autumn Road Family Practice is a small, six-doctor primary care practice that’s been caring for people in Little Rock, Ark., for more than half a century. On a Thursday in mid-March, the entire staff met to update the practice’s response to the coronavirus outbreak, since the first case had just been identified in Little Rock. The floor dropped out quickly... Covid-19 is pushing our entire health care system to the brink, from large hospitals in big cities with overwhelmed ICUs to small primary care practices in rural communities. (Andy Slavitt and Farzad Mostashari, 5/28)

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: How Nurses Can Combat Mental Health Stigmas During COVID-19 And After
Every nurse encounters mental illness in the course of a working day, even those who don't work in psychiatric or mental wellness settings. In the coronavirus pandemic, mental health issues are even more prevalent, both in medical staff, the patient pool, and the general public. (Rose Kennedy, 5/26)

The Hill: Time To Reform The Prior Authorization Process Of Health Insurance Companies 
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the prior authorization process had become the bane of doctors and patients. Physicians say that health insurers' authorization requirements, which can delay the use of drugs and treatments by days or weeks, are not just a small irritant. They can subject patients to serious harm. They can even be life-threatening. (Vincent J. Rogusky, 5/27)

CNN: Covid-19 Life Or Death: 31 Days At My Dad's Virtual Bedside 
I wrote a draft of my father's obituary on the evening of March 30th. He had been on a ventilator for 11 days. The attending physician at the intensive care unit had called that morning and asked whether they should include a Do Not Resuscitate order in my dad's chart. They had asked before. I had been indecisive. A successful resuscitation would extend his life. But it might also lead to brain damage. Now multiple organ systems were failing. They needed an answer. (Louis Foglia, 5/27)

The New York Times: The Coronavirus Pandemic Healed Our Broken Family
My brother, sister and I wouldn’t even answer the phone when our parents would call us. Years of damage from our father’s violence, years of disappointment at our mother’s acquiescence, years of their tag-team invalidation of our hurt had left us estranged from them but inseparable as siblings. But when my brother texted me and our sister that Mom was going to start coronavirus duty at the hospital where she works, the two fragments of our family snapped together in the face of this threat. (Caroline Shin, 5/28)

The Hill: We Cannot Ignore The Links Between COVID-19 And The Warming Planet
The emergence of COVID-19 suggests that global warming may present an even graver threat to human welfare than many recognize. As indicated in the scientific literature, not only could the current warming of our planet increase the likelihood of an air-borne pandemic such as COVID-19; it could also damage our health and welfare. (Richard Richels, Henry Jacoby, Gary Yohe and Ben Santer, 5/27)