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President Donald Trump on Thursday offered his first expression of sympathy in observance of the milestone of 100,000 American coronavirus deaths, tweeting his condolences after drawing criticism for failing to reflect on the human cost of the outbreak in recent days. “We have just reached a very sad milestone with the coronavirus pandemic deaths reaching 100,000,” Trump wrote online. “To all of the families & friends of those who have passed, I want to extend my heartfelt sympathy & love for everything that these great people stood for & represent. God be with you!” (Forgey, 5/28)

The Trump administration is extending the federal deployment of more than 40,000 National Guard troops aiding coronavirus relief efforts in nearly every state and federal territory, reversing plans for an earlier cutoff following bipartisan backlash and pressure from top defense officials. The federal government will now keep funding National Guard troops across the country through mid-August, President Donald Trump tweeted Thursday. (Ollstein, 5/28)

Trump tweeted his decision to lengthen the National Guard's Title 32 orders on Thursday after defense officials said their services would likely be needed further into the summer and politicians complained that some guardsmen would narrowly miss out on educational and retirement benefits under the original June 24 cutoff. (Seyler, 5/28)

The Trump administration has set its sights on Africa as an important front in the fight against the coronavirus — and against China. In April, President Donald Trump launched a flurry of phone calls to African leaders, promising to send ventilators to help as the coronavirus continued its march across the globe. The outreach came on the heels of a fresh pledge from the State Department to send millions of dollars to several African countries to help combat the pandemic. And earlier this month, the Trump administration said it would donated up to 1,000 ventilators to South Africa, which has the highest number of coronavirus cases on the continent. (McGraw, 5/29)

President Trump signed an executive order on Thursday targeting legal protections that keep people from suing social media websites. The move follows his anger at Twitter over its decision this week to append fact-check labels to several of his tweets about mail-in voting, along with links to accurate information on the topic. Much of the president’s order consists of complaints about social media companies and their efforts to flag or remove content deemed inappropriate. Here is an explanation of the legal issues surrounding the components of the order that would — or might — do something. (Savage, 5/28)

In a post late Thursday, Twitter described the executive order as “a reactionary and politicized approach to a landmark law.” It said Section 230 protects innovation and freedom of expression, and that “attempts to unilaterally erode it threaten the future of online speech and Internet freedoms.” Facebook on Thursday said that repealing or limiting section 230 would “restrict more speech online, not less” and “would penalize companies that choose to allow controversial speech and encourage platforms to censor anything that might offend anyone.” (McKinnon and Ballhaus, 5/29)

Announced with fanfare, the president’s action yet appeared to be more about politics than substance. He aims to rally supporters after he lashed out at Twitter for applying fact checks to two of his tweets. Trump said the fact checks were “editorial decisions” by Twitter amounting to political activism and that such actions should cost social media companies their liability protection for what is posted on their platforms. Trump, who personally relies heavily on Twitter to verbally flog his foes, has long accused the tech giants in liberal-leaning Silicon Valley of targeting conservatives by fact-checking them or removing their posts. (Miller, 5/29)

Trump wants to “remove or change” a provision of a law known as Section 230 that shields social media companies from liability for content posted by their users. Trump said U.S. Attorney General William Barr will begin drafting legislation “immediately” to regulate social media companies. (Bose and Mason, 5/28)

The executive order that Mr. Trump signed on Thursday seeks to strip liability protection in certain cases for companies like Twitter, Google and Facebook for the content on their sites, meaning they could face legal jeopardy if they allowed false and defamatory posts. Without a liability shield, they presumably would have to be more aggressive about policing messages that press the boundaries — like the president’s. That, of course, is not the outcome Mr. Trump wants. What he wants is the freedom to post anything he likes without the companies applying any judgment to his messages, as Twitter did this week when it began appending “get the facts” warnings to some of his false posts on voter fraud. Furious at what he called “censorship” — even though his messages were not in fact deleted — Mr. Trump is wielding the proposed executive order like a club to compel the company to back down. (Baker and Wakabayashi, 5/28)

Barr declined to provide details on legislative effort, saying the department is considering options for what it will look like, but indicated litigation was likely on the horizon as well. "One of the things that I found has the broadest bipartisan support these days is the feeling that this provision, Section 230, has been stretched way beyond its original intention, and people feel that on both sides of the aisle," Barr said. Both Democrats and Republicans raised the prospect of changes to Section 230, though for opposite reasons. The Democrats want more fact-checking of misinformation and misleading posts, such as those by Trump that Twitter slapped with warning labels. (Overly, 5/28)

Already, tech companies are discussing whether to fight back with a lawsuit challenging the executive order, according to two people familiar with the deliberations who spoke on the condition of anonymity because no decision has been made. Legal experts said the directive will almost certainly be challenged in court, arguing it threatens to undermine the First Amendment. A wide array of critics in Congress, the tech industry and across the political spectrum also accused the White House of deputizing government agencies to carry out Trump’s personal vendettas. (Romm and Dwoskin, 5/28)

Its first part states ,“No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider. ”In effect, that means websites are not legally responsible for what other people post there. That applies to every site on the internet, whether they’re social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, sites that depend on customer reviews such as Yelp and Amazon, or any website with a comment section, from the Los Angeles Times to your personal blog. Section 230 is a small piece of the 1996 Telecommunications Act that has, in many ways, created the internet we all use today. (Dean, 5/28)

Twitter said early Friday that a tweet from President Trump implying that protesters in Minneapolis could be shot violated the company’s rules against glorifying violence, in a move that threatens to escalate tensions between Mr. Trump and his favorite social media megaphone over its content policies. The company prevented users from viewing Mr. Trump’s message without first reading a brief notice describing the rule violation. Twitter also blocked users from liking or replying to Mr. Trump’s post. (Zhong and Goldman, 5/29)

The White House has taken the unusual step of deciding not to release an updated economic forecast as planned this year, a fresh sign of the administration’s anxiety about how the coronavirus has ravaged the nation just months before the election. The decision, which was confirmed Thursday by a senior administration official who was not authorized to publicly comment on the plan, came amid intensifying signals of the pandemic’s grim economic toll. (Taylor, Boak and Madhani, 5/29)

“We’ve taken action in the interest of preventing others from being inspired to commit violent acts, but have kept the Tweet on Twitter because it is important that the public still be able to see the Tweet given its relevance to ongoing matters of public importance,” Twitter said on its official communications account. (Purnell, 5/29)

Trump's tweet came after protesters took to the streets in Minnesota to voice their anger against the recent killing of a man by local law enforcement. In a tweet, Twitter said it violated the company's policies "based on the historical context of the last line, its connection to violence, and the risk it could inspire similar actions today." (Scott, 5/29)

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg argued Wednesday that private companies should not be the “arbiter of truth” online, implicitly rebuking fellow tech titan Jack Dorsey after the Twitter CEO flagged a pair of President Donald Trump’s posts with fact-check warnings that provoked the White House’s ire. “We have a different policy than, I think, Twitter on this,” Zuckerberg told Fox News host Dana Perino in an interview set to air Thursday. (Forgey, 5/28)

The Trump administration with no advance notice removed warnings contained in guidance for the reopening of houses of worship that singing in choirs can spread the coronavirus. Last Friday, the administration released pandemic guidance for faith communities after weeks of debate flared between the White House and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those guidelines posted on the CDC website included recommendations that religious communities “consider suspending or at least decreasing use of choir/musical ensembles and congregant singing, chanting, or reciting during services or other programming, if appropriate within the faith tradition.” (Sun and Dawsey, 5/28)

The governors of Illinois and California took somewhat different tacks Thursday night as they urged the Supreme Court not to get involved in disputes over the impact of virus-related lockdown orders on churches in their states. Hours before a deadline to respond to two churches’ request for an emergency stay to allow them to have more than 10 people in attendance at Pentecost services this Sunday, Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D-Ill.) announced that he was dropping all legal restrictions on religious gatherings and replacing them with voluntary “guidance.” (Gerstein and Kapos, 5/28)

The Supreme Court is set to decide on a religious freedom claim from a south San Diego County church that wants an exemption from California’s COVID-19 rules, which limit large gatherings for services. Lawyers for the South Bay United Pentecostal Church in Chula Vista argue that the 1st Amendment’s protection of the “free exercise” of religion outweighs the state’s power to enforce a quarantine during a pandemic, at least when churches are subjected to stricter limits than other businesses or groups. (Savage, 5/29)

Facing a supply crunch for sorely needed medical equipment like masks and gowns, the federal government has turned to a long list of untested suppliers -- some of which have failed to deliver. Nearly one out of every five Covid-19-related federal contracts for $1 million or more went to companies that had never won a contract with the federal government before the crisis broke out, according to a CNN analysis of procurement data. While some of the first-time contractors have substantial experience in the Personal Protective Equipment industry, others are small firms with no record of producing or procuring medical equipment, CNN found.  (Tolan, 5/27)

The federal government is spending billions of dollars to combat the coronavirus, and spending shows no sign of slowing down. Explore who the U.S. is buying from, what it’s buying and how much it’s paying. (Syed and Willis, 5/27)

Budget experts said they were not aware of any previous White House opting against providing forecasts in this “mid-session review” document in any other year since at least the 1970s. Two White House officials confirmed the decision had been made not to include the economic projections as part of the mid-session release. The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said that the novel coronavirus is causing extreme volatility in the U.S. economy, making it difficult to model economic trends. (Stein and Dawsey, 5/28)

The White House will not release an updated round of economic projections this summer, breaking from precedent as the U.S. faces its deepest downturn since the Great Depression, two administration officials familiar with the decision confirmed to The Hill on Thursday. The Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), the internal White House economic team, will not release the typical midsummer review of its initial economic projections in July or August even as top Trump administration officials publicly predict a swift recovery from the crisis caused by COVID-19. The projections are typically produced jointly by the Office of Management and Budget, CEA and Treasury Department. (Lane and Chalfant, 5/28)

The U.S. economy shrank at a faster-than-expected annual rate of 5% during the first quarter, the Commerce Department reported Thursday. At least 2.1 million Americans lost their jobs last week, meaning an astonishing 41 million Americans have filed for unemployment benefits since shutdowns intended to prevent the spread of the coronavirus began in mid-March. (Taylor, Boak and Madhani, 5/28)

Administration officials said the data is too volatile to produce reliable projections and that federal agencies responsible for the numbers are overwhelmed with the implementation of federal legislation passed in response to the pandemic, including the $2 trillion CARES Act cleared by Congress in March. The data is “extremely fluid and would produce a less instructive forecast,” one senior official told POLITICO. (Emma, 5/28)

The coronavirus pandemic has derailed Democrats’ efforts in statehouses across the country to give more Americans government-backed health coverage. A once-unlikely deal in deep-red Kansas to expand Medicaid to about 150,000 poor people has been tabled for this year. In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom has abandoned plans to extend coverage to 27,000 undocumented immigrant seniors after the pandemic blew a $54 billion hole in the state budget. And in Colorado, the pandemic has stalled a heated legislative debate over a public option to compete with private insurers — a centerpiece of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s health care platform. (Goldberg, 5/28)

Cleveland Clinic reported an operating loss of $39.9 million in the first quarter of this year, which the system's chief financial officer attributes "entirely" to COVID-19. That loss compares with a $36.2 million net income for the like period last year. (Courtre, 5/28)

MetroHealth System, University Hospitals, Cleveland Clinic are collaborating with city officials and the Cuyahoga County Board of Health on a multiphase marketing campaign designed to "kick-start" the hospitality industry and reopen Cleveland to both residents and visitors. The program, called "Undefeated" and scheduled to launch June 3, was designed to help the region's businesses emerge as quickly and safely as possible from the COVID-19 crisis, according to David Gilbert, president and CEO of Destination Cleveland, a not-for-profit group that works to attract conventions and tourists. (Palmer, 5.28)

Sharon O'Keefe is retiring this summer as president of the University of Chicago Medical Center after nearly a decade in the role. Taking over will be Thomas Jackiewicz, CEO at Keck Medicine of the University of Southern California. O'Keefe, a Chicago native with a bachelor's degree in nursing from Northern Illinois University, joined UCMC as president in 2011 and was named chief operating officer of the greater UChicago Medicine health system in 2017. (Goldberg, 5/28)

Intensive care units in Montgomery, Ala., are overflowing with Covid-19 patients, pushing them into emergency departments that are not primed to care for them. And Alabama’s capital city could be a harbinger for other parts of the country. ICU beds are also starting to fill up in places like Minnesota’s Twin Cities; Omaha, Neb.; and the entire state of Rhode Island, according to local health officials and epidemiologists tracking such data, a warning sign of possible health care problems down the road. (McCaskill, 5/28)

Sparsely populated Lowndes County, deep in Alabama’s old plantation country, has the sad distinction of having both the state’s highest rate of COVID-19 cases and its worst unemployment rate. Initially spared as the disease ravaged cities, the county and other rural areas in the state are now facing a “perfect storm:” a lack of access to medical care combined with poverty and the attendant health problems, including hypertension, heart disease, lung disease, kidney disease and diabetes, that can worsen the outcomes for those who become sick with the coronavirus, said Dr. Ellen Eaton. (Reeves and Chandler, 5/29)

Sonoma County was one of the first regions in California to begin reopening after months of restrictions aimed at controlling the spread of the coronavirus. Public health officials loosened constraints on construction, car sales and landscaping services in early May. A week later, they began allowing retail stores to reopen for curbside pickup and delivery. Last week, outdoor dining, summer camps, drive-in religious services and other ceremonies were allowed to resume. (Fry, 5/28)

Weeks before Arizona officials eased stay-at-home rules, people looking for an escape from lockdown orders had discovered a poorly kept secret in the desert: Lake Havasu and the Colorado River were open for recreation. By the last week in April, empty hotel rooms in this resort town along a Colorado River reservoir with 45 miles of coastline started filling back up, with crowds growing week by week. People poured in even as most businesses were closed and restaurants offered only carryout. (Caldwell, 5/29)

Starting Friday, a tiny slice of pre-pandemic normality starts returning to the nation’s capital as a three-month old coronavirus stay-home order is replaced by the first phase of a reopening plan. Barbers and hair salons will begin welcoming back clients grown haggard from months of self-maintenance. Non-essential businesses, shuttered since late March, will be able to start offering curbside pickup. And restaurants that have operating solely on takeout will start limited outdoor seating. (Khalil, 5/29)

Faced with a ruined economy and mounting political pressure, Gov. Gavin Newsom has opted for a speedy reopening of the state after two months of sheltering in place. The decision has not been universally embraced, leading to a patchwork of policies among counties as life resumes in the shadow of the coronavirus. Most of the Bay Area is refusing to go along with the governor’s accelerated pace, and a handful of local health officers have criticized his plan as overly risky, especially with COVID-19 case counts still climbing across the state. (Allday and Koseff, 5/28)

Sonoma County Sheriff Mark Essick said Thursday that he will stop enforcing the county’s shelter-in-place order on June 1 because he believes the past and current orders put “significant restrictions on our freedoms.”In a Facebook post, Essick said the county’s initial and subsequent health orders since the start of the coronavirus pandemic have been “far more restrictive” than guidelines in neighboring counties and in statewide orders. (Hernandez, 5/28)

California’s stay-at-home order may still be active, but health officials in El Dorado County have a simple request after rescinding a travel ban into the Lake Tahoe basin: Please don’t visit unless absolutely necessary. The county’s ban on visitors was issued in early April due to concerns over a surge of coronavirus cases and insufficient critical health care infrastructure and resources, according to health officials. Fines of $1,000 were being issued to those who violated the order. But the county’s current capacity to test and contact-trace, as well as the ability to monitor COVID-19 indicators, led officials to rescind the order Wednesday. (Serrano, 5/28)

Long before Harmeet Dhillon became the leader of the legal fight against California’s stay-at-home order, she was a new elementary school student in North Carolina uncomfortable because she didn’t know the Christian prayer her classmates recited every morning. She told her mother, who had studied the Constitution for her citizenship test after the Sikh family emigrated to the United States from India. Her mother spoke to the principal about the legality of having public school students reciting a prayer. (Ronayne, 5/29)

Vinyl junkies will soon be able to visit Crooked Beat Records in Alexandria, Va., and flip through actual bins of actual record albums again. But you’ll have to wear a mask. “We’re going to enforce it strongly — you’ve got to have a mask on. If you don’t have a mask on, you can’t come in,” said Bill Daly, who has operated the shop for 22 years. “It’s just safe for you, it’s safe for me, it’s safe for everybody.” (Kunkle, Wiggins and Shapira, 5/28)

Hawaii Gov. David Ige on Thursday said he would extend the state’s 14-day quarantine requirement for travelers arriving in the state beyond June 30. The state mandated the quarantine beginning on March 26 to control the spread of the coronavirus. The governor told a joint online press conference held with the state’s four county mayors that an official announcement on the extension would be made later. (McAvoy, 5/29)

Illinois is joining many of its neighboring Midwest states in reopening some retail shops, restaurants, salons and other businesses Friday. But Chicagoans will have to wait until the middle of next week to get a haircut or manicure, or eat on a restaurant patio, as Mayor Lori Lightfoot is delaying the limited business reopening until Wednesday, June 3. (Schaper, 5/28)

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, a Democrat, had issued a stay-at-home order to slow the spread of COVID-19 nearly two months before, and it applied to all but the most urgent of judicial proceedings. But Multnomah County, home to Portland, like many places requires grand juries to hear all felony criminal cases. That meant the county's docket of pending cases was "bursting at the seams," said Circuit Judge Cheryl Albrecht, the county's chief criminal judge, in an interview. (Bolstad, 5/29)

With gyms closed, exercise enthusiasts across the nation have kept up with their fitness regimens by switching to online workouts, running and making use of household objects. Now that gyms have reopened in more than two dozen states, some fitness buffs will be able to return to in-person instruction and commercial-grade equipment. But should they? (Moore, 5/27)

The Grand Canyon is expanding access to its more popular South Rim entrance and planning to let visitors in around the clock next month after it shuttered temporarily over coronavirus concerns. The entrance station will be open from 4 a.m. until 2 p.m., starting Friday until June 5 when the national park will drop restrictions on the hours. The canyon’s North Rim also will reopen June 5, though the campground will be closed until July 1 because of construction. (5/29)

Montana’s three entrances to Yellowstone National Park will reopen to visitors Monday, as the state moves to its second phase of restarting the economy after shutdowns because of the coronavirus. Parts of Glacier National Park could open in mid-June, Gov. Steve Bullock added Thursday, but a specific day has not been set. (Hanson, 5/29)

The 124th annual Boston Marathon has been canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic. The Boston Athletic Association announced the move in a statement on Thursday, saying that the marathon will instead be held as a virtual event. All participants who were set to run in the event initially slated for April 20 and later pushed back to Sept. 14 will be offered a full refund of their entry fee and have the opportunity to participate in the alternative. (Horn, 5/28)

One of Washington’s most cherished events has been felled by the novel coronavirus. The National Book Festival, set to celebrate its 20th anniversary this year, will not be held as planned, the Library of Congress announced Thursday. The literary extravaganza, which in recent years has drawn an estimated 200,000 people to the Washington Convention Center, was scheduled for Aug. 29. But due to the ongoing covid-19 crisis, the presentations by scores of best-selling and award-winning authors will be moved to the weekend of Sept. 25-27 and presented online only. (Charles, 5/28)

The right to a haircut may not be enshrined in the Constitution, though it's a pretty big deal in Michigan these days if the ongoing feud between hair stylists, barbers and the governor is any indication. The stylists are pushing to reopen "immediately," arguing they can cut, color and shampoo hair safely amid the pandemic. But the governor has said it's still too soon. (Baldas, 5/29)

To contain the spread of Covid-19, Alaska is planning to triple its number of contact tracers. Utah has retrained 150 state employees. And New York and other states are hiring thousands of people. And that, health experts say, might not be enough. (Joseph, 5/29)

A cell phone app to alert Alabama users if they’ve come in close contact with a person who tests positive for COVID-19 will not compromise users’ privacy, say the teams working on its development. The app is currently being developed by Birmingham-based tech company MotionMobs, in collaboration with the Alabama Department of Public Health and the University of Alabama at Birmingham. It would notify users if they spent about 15 minutes or more within 6 feet of someone who later tested positive. (Pillion, 5/29)

Scientists looking for new ways to identify potential coronavirus outbreaks are turning their attention to what could be an early warning sign: the stuff you flush down the toilet. New studies increasingly show that the coronavirus's genetic code can be detected in the remnants of fecal matter that flows through sewers and into sewage facilities, either in raw wastewater or in what is euphemistically known as sludge. The genetic information represents such a good cross-section of a city or region that taking just a few samples can be the equivalent of testing millions of people in a given day. Using one method, just 14 samples could test the prevalence of the virus in all of New York City. (Wilson, 5/28)

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo made it very clear who was in charge as coronavirus began to infiltrate his state. The governor — in near-daily nationally televised appearances — said he would make difficult but necessary choices to contain the spread and would take the blame for any negative effects on New Yorkers' lives. “The buck stops on my desk,” Cuomo said to both a New York and national audience on March 17, after ordering bars and restaurants to close across the state. “Your local mayor did not close your restaurants, your bars, your gyms or your schools. I did. I did. I assume full responsibility. ... If you are upset by what we have done, be upset at me.” (Gronewold and Durkin, 5/29)

The Trump administration is accelerating efforts to seize private property for President Trump’s border wall, taking advantage of the coronavirus pandemic to survey land while its owners are confined indoors, residents along the Rio Grande say. “Is that essential business?” asked Nayda Alvarez, 49, who recently found construction markers on the land in Starr County, Texas, that has been in her family for five generations. “That didn’t stop a single minute during the shelter in place or stay at home.” (Kanno-Youngs, 5/29)

A sharp political and public policy rift emerged Thursday between Gov. Gavin Newsom and his fellow Democrats in the California Legislature over how to navigate the bleak economic road ahead after a state Senate panel rejected more than half of the spending cuts in the $203.3-billion proposed budget he unveiled two weeks ago. The alternative budget adopted by Senate Democrats differs from the governor’s proposal to address the state’s pandemic-generated deficit in several key ways. It exceeds Newsom’s plan in its funding for K-12 schools, though it delays full payment of those funds. (Myers, 5/28)

Democratic state leaders in Pennsylvania are accusing GOP counterparts of endangering everyone at the statehouse after a representative, who'd attended meetings, announced he tested positive for the coronavirus. Rep. Andrew Lewis, who represents Dauphin County, revealed on Wednesday he tested positive for COVID-19 on May 20 after he experienced flu-like symptoms two days earlier. (Pereira, 5/28)

Kaiser Health News: As COVID Cuts Deadly Path Through Indiana Prisons, Inmates Say Symptoms Ignored 
Scottie Edwards died of COVID-19 just weeks before he would have gotten out of the Westville Correctional Facility in Indiana. Edwards, 73, began showing symptoms of the disease in early April, according to the accounts of three inmates who lived with him in a dormitory. He was short of breath, had chest pain and could barely talk. He was also dizzy, sweaty and throwing up. (Harper, 5/29)

The union representing workers at a meatpacking plant near Los Angeles where at least 153 employees have come down with COVID-19 called on Thursday for the plant’s immediate closure, saying measures to control the outbreak were not working. The outbreak has hit over 10% of the workforce at the Smithfield-owned Farmer John plant, said John Grant, president of the local chapter of the United Food and Commercial Workers union. (Ross, 5/28)

The Oklahoma State Department of Health more than quadrupled its COVID-19 testing in May, delivering results on over 90,000 specimens as the rate of positive cases dropped to its lowest point since the pandemic began, according to Oklahoma State Health Department leaders. The actual number of COVID-19 cases has “flatlined” in recent weeks rather than dropping, but that is primarily because of outbreaks in isolated areas, interim state epidemiologist Aaron Wendelboe said. (Casteel, 5/29)

A new map on Ohio's coronavirus website, coronavirus.ohio.gov, shows where you can go for a test. The map pinpoints testing centers – private companies that offer testing – and community health centers across the state, according to the website. The map also provides an address and phone number for each testing location. (Mitchell, 5/28)

Investigators in Michigan with the Department of Homeland Security are refocusing some of their efforts on fraud tied to the coronavirus pandemic as scammers seek to take advantage of an anxious public. Federal agencies "have multiple investigations going on" at ports of entry in Michigan of fake or shoddy personal protective equipment, said Jared Murphey, the Homeland Security Investigations assistant special agent in charge of Michigan and Ohio. HSI is part of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is under the Department of Homeland Security. (Warikoo, 5/28)

On Dec. 15, 2016, the nation’s largest nursing home lobby wrote a letter to Donald Trump, congratulating the president-elect and urging him to roll back new regulations on the long-term care industry. One item on the wish list was a recently issued emergency preparedness rule. It required nursing homes to draw up plans for hazards such as an outbreak of a new infectious disease. Trump’s election, the American Health Care Association, or AHCA, wrote, had demonstrated that voters opposed “extremely burdensome” rules that endangered the industry’s thin profit margins. (Furlow, Brosseau and Arnsdorf, 5/29)

A 91-year-old man in a North Carolina nursing home calls his wife four times a day just to hear her voice. At a New Jersey facility where 285 staff and residents have tested positive for the novel coronavirus, a Navy veteran says the pandemic is worse than war. A grandmother living alone in Brooklyn feels her heartbeat quicken when she hears ambulance sirens close in on her block. And in Dallas, a 71-year-old has started to dread the daily calls from friends and family telling her another person from her hometown in rural Louisiana has died. Across the country, nursing homes and assisted-living facilities are being pummeled by the coronavirus. (Chason and Tan, 5/28)

California’s health department has issued new instructions to all skilled nursing facilities to test everybody in their facilities in hopes of slowing the spread of the coronavirus, a move that overrules a more lax testing policy allowed by Los Angeles County. Nursing homes have become ground zero for the COVID-19 pandemic because elderly people with underlying health conditions living in close quarters provide an almost perfect breeding ground for the lethal new virus. (Dolan, 5/28)

Nursing homes and other long-term care facilities in Massachusetts have been disproportionately affected by the coronavirus — collectively, they account for almost 62% of all COVID-19 related deaths in the state. And after weeks of media pressure, the state Department of Public Health finally released figures for individual facilities, and committed to reporting this information every week. (Wasser, 5/28)

Watchdog groups want President Trump's new coronavirus vaccine czar to disclose all of his ties to drug companies. Moncef Slaoui, who leads "Operation Warp Speed," the administration's initiative to find a COVID-19 vaccine, has extensive ties to the pharmaceutical industry and has come under fire from advocates and Democrats including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) for potential conflicts of interest. However, his position in the administration is on a contract and he is not considered a government employee. As such, he is not subject to the same federal disclosure rules that would require him to list his stock holdings and other potential conflicts. (Weixel, 5/28)

When it was announced two weeks ago that Moncef Slaoui would head up "Operation Warp Speed" to find and distribute a vaccine, the administration described him as “chief advisor,” but did not explicitly say he would not be a formal government employee. As a private contractor, he is not bound to the same disclosure regulations and criminal ethics laws as many formal executive branch employees, ethics experts told ABC News. (Kim, Rubin, Faulders and Mosk, 5/29)

Novartis AG has agreed to manufacture a gene-based coronavirus vaccine being developed by scientists at Massachusetts Eye and Ear hospital, Massachusetts General and the University of Pennsylvania, paving the way for human testing to begin later this year. The Swiss drugmaker’s gene therapy unit AveXis is already making test batches of the vaccine and plans to start producing doses later in the summer that can be used for a clinical trial, said Dave Lennon, the unit’s president. (Roland, 5/28)

An early stage vaccine against Covid-19 based on the same basic technology used in gene therapy is gaining some support from some of that field’s biggest names. Earlier this year, James Wilson, a gene therapy pioneer, got a call from Luk Vandenberghe, who had been a graduate student in Wilson’s lab two decades ago. Vandenberghe wondered if a virus they had worked on as a potential component of gene therapies might work as part of a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes Covid-19. “It’s a great idea,” said Wilson, who heads the Gene Therapy Program at the University of Pennsylvania. “What can I do to help?” (Herper, 5/28)

Now that there are glimmers of hope for a coronavirus vaccine, governments, NGOs and others are hashing out plans for how vaccines could be distributed once they are available — and deciding who will get them first. (O'Reilly, 5/29)

The Trump administration mishandled the initial distribution of the only approved coronavirus medication, delaying treatment to some critically ill patients with covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, according to nine current and former senior administration officials. The first tranche of 607,000 vials of the antiviral medication remdesivir, donated to the government by drugmaker Gilead Sciences, was distributed in early May — in some cases to the wrong hospitals, to hospitals with no intensive care units and therefore no eligible patients, and to facilities without the needed refrigeration to store it, meaning some had to be returned to the government, said the officials familiar with the distribution effort. (Abutaleb, Dawsey, Sun and McGinley, 5/28)

Results from an ongoing phase 3 study published yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine showed no significant difference in the clinical status of hospitalized COVID-19 patients not requiring mechanical ventilation after a 5-day course of the antiviral drug remdesivir compared with patients who had a 10-day course. But the randomized, open-label trial lacked a placebo control, so the degree of benefit could not be determined. (Van Beusekom, 5/28)

The Department of Veterans Affairs has drastically scaled back the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat veterans with coronavirus infections after a major study raised questions about its efficacy and linked it to serious side effects, including higher risks of death. Testifying before the House Appropriations subcommittee on military construction, Veterans Affairs and related agencies, VA Secretary Robert Wilkie defended the continued use of the unproven drug but said it was used just three times last week. (Horton, 5/28)

The VA is now mostly using remdesivir and convalescent plasma, Wilkie said, after studies showed the treatments had a positive effect in COVID-19 patients. “We ratcheted that down as we brought more treatments on online and I expect that trend to continue in the future but we will our mission was to preserve and protect life,” he said. (Hellmann, 5/28)

President Trump is feeling “perfect” after taking hydroxychloroquine and would take the drug again if he felt he were exposed to the novel coronavirus, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Thursday. “He is feeling perfect,” McEnany told reporters. “He is feeling absolutely great after taking this regimen.” McEnany, who said she spoke with Trump about the subject just before the briefing, said Trump told her that he “would take it again if he thought he was exposed.” (Chalfant, 5/28)

A judge on Thursday dealt a blow to the Nevada osteopaths suing Gov. Steve Sisolak and other state officials over the governor’s emergency regulation limiting the routine prescribing of two existing anti-malarial drugs to treat COVID-19. Washoe County District Judge Scott Freeman denied a temporary restraining order that had been requested by the Nevada Osteopathic Medical Association against Sisolak, the Nevada State Board of Pharmacy and Nevada’s Chief Medical Officer Ihsan Azzam. (Lochhead, 5/28)

The heads of some of the world’s largest drug makers expressed a mix of confusion and resistance to a World Health Organization voluntary pool to collect patent rights, regulatory test data, and other information that could be shared for developing Covid-19 therapies, vaccines, and diagnostics. The WHO effort reflects mounting concern that some Covid-19 medical products may not be accessible for poorer populations. By establishing a voluntary mechanism under the auspices of the WHO, the goal is to establish a pathway that will attract numerous governments, as well as industry, universities and nonprofit organizations. But not every executive likes the idea. (Silverman, 5/28)

The blood business is booming. This normally obscure trade has been set alight by the race to develop Covid-19 antibody tests, which use blood to tell whether someone has already been infected with the coronavirus. The tests are seen as key to easing lockdowns that have shut down economies around the world. However, while surging demand has proven a boon for the traders known as blood brokers who source this commodity, diagnostic companies say high prices for the blood of recovered Covid-19 patients are posing a hurdle to developing tests. (Roland, 5/29)

The spread of aerosolized SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, inside public buildings could be suppressed using engineering controls such as effective ventilation, possibly with air filtration and disinfection and avoidance of air recirculation and overcrowding, according to a research letter published yesterday in Environment International. The international group of researchers said the evidence is sufficiently strong for aerosols as an important mode of coronavirus transmission, most of which occurs indoors, and that indoor measures to slow the spread are often easily implemented at relatively low cost. (Van Beusekom, 5/28)

Summer during a pandemic brings new questions about what is safe and how to best protect ourselves. Is it okay to go to a public pool? Travel by plane? Stay in a hotel? Send a kid to camp? On the upside, public health experts say, we can do more outdoors, where ventilation is better and sunlight and humidity might help destroy the virus. Working against us: Many of us cooped up for much of the spring are craving connection. (Shaver, 5/27)

The four children showed up at the Mount Sinai Kravis Children’s Hospital in late April and early May, almost exactly one month after the peak of New York City’s coronavirus surge. All had fevers, rashes and strange blood readings that did not look like any illness doctors had seen before. And yet, the cases looked remarkably similar to one another. A study about the children, ages 13, 12, 10, and 5, published in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine, provides the first detailed look at the rapid progression of a mysterious syndrome linked to covid-19 that has alarmed public health officials. (Cha, 5/28)

Scientists are turning to artificial intelligence in an attempt to develop the first diagnostic test for Kawasaki disease that will be available for widespread use. Kawasaki is a rare but dangerous childhood condition that was recently linked to Covid-19. The Seattle Children’s Research Institute, one of the country’s leading pediatric research centers, and life-science company Prevencio Inc. are tapping machine learning techniques to analyze blood samples for protein markers and other variables to accurately predict the presence of the disease. (Sreeharsha, 5/29)

Mounting evidence suggests the coronavirus is more common and less deadly than it first appeared. The evidence comes from tests that detect antibodies to the coronavirus in a person's blood rather than the virus itself. The tests are finding large numbers of people in the U.S. who were infected but never became seriously ill. And when these mild infections are included in coronavirus statistics, the virus appears less dangerous. (Hamilton, 5/28)

One of the few reliefs in our current pandemic is removing that mask when you arrive back home after a trip to the store. If you've got family there, however, a new study suggests you may want to keep it on. The study, which was published in BMJ Global Health on Thursday, showed that wearing a mask at home was 79% effective at preventing the spread of the virus -- but only when family members started wearing masks before symptoms emerged in the first person infected. Cleaning the house frequently with bleach or disinfectants was almost equally effective at 77%. (Lee, 5/28)

What is safe to do during the pandemic? As states begin to reopen, it might feel hard to tell. Should we still wear masks outside? (Some areas don’t require it, while Virginia just made them mandatory for all public indoor spaces.) Is it risky to get a haircut? (Several states have reopened salons, while others deem them still too dangerous.) And can we visit friends and relatives? (McGill and Jin, 5/28)

Only about 5% of patients with COVID-19 continue to test positive for more than a month, as did Joyce. But a study published this week out of Singapore found that 70% are still positive 15 days after the first sign of COVID-19. That means more than a million U.S. residents who’ve had the coronavirus might still test positive beyond the period when research shows they can infect others .More health systems and government agencies are moving away from the two negative test requirement to 10 days in isolation and a symptom assessment. (Bebinger, 5/29)

Cancer patients infected with the new coronavirus are dying at significantly higher rates than Covid-19 patients in the general population, a new study suggests. In the study, conducted by an international group of researchers and published online by the Lancet, researchers looked at data on 928 Covid-19 patients in the U.S., Canada and Spain who had cancer that was either active or in remission. Thirteen percent of those patients died within 30 days of their Covid-19 diagnosis, according to the study. In contrast, the case fatality of Covid-19 patients in the U.S. is 5.9%, according to global coronavirus data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. (Toy, 5/28)

As doctors and scientists continue to learn more about the novel coronavirus, researchers are laboring to figure out exactly who is the most susceptible to the virus. One vulnerable group that has not yet been extensively researched is people with cancer -- but a new study is helping to change that. Cancer patients face specific circumstances that may place them at higher risk for severe COVID-19 symptoms. Their immune systems may be weakened by anti-cancer treatment, additional supportive medications like steroids, and by cancer itself. (Baldwin, 5/28)

Published in The Clinical Infectious Diseases Journal, the observational research looks at the risk of hospitalization according to body mass index, or BMI. Researchers found obese adults under age 60 had a higher risk of admission to the hospital and the Intensive Care Unit compared to people who have a healthy weight, says lead author of the study Dr. Jennifer Lighter. (Hobson and Hagan, 5/28)

The House approved a bipartisan bill that would loosen requirements on hundreds of billions of dollars in small-business loans, responding to concerns from employers struggling to stay open during the coronavirus pandemic. The House bill reduces the level of Paycheck Protection Program funds that must be used for payroll to 60% from 75%. The bill also gives borrowers up to 24 weeks to use the funds, up from the eight set in the initial bill passed in March, and extends the deadline to rehire workers to Dec. 31. The bill passed 417-1 on Thursday, with many of the Democratic votes read into the record by their assigned proxy, taking advantage of a rule change this week that allows remote voting for the first time. (Andrews and Omeokwe, 5/28)

The vote came as the Labor Department reported that an additional 2.1 million Americans filed jobless claims last week, bringing the 10-week total to more than 40 million applications. The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) has emerged as one of the most visible elements of the $2 trillion Cares Act, which passed Congress in March and was meant to blunt the economic fallout from the pandemic. As of Saturday, more than 4.4 million loans had been issued under the program, with a total valuation of more than $500 billion. (Werner, 5/28)

Lawmakers say that additional changes to the program are needed following complaints from small businesses that they’re not able to take advantage of the loans under the current terms. Restaurants and hair salons, for instance, largely still face coronavirus-imposed safety restrictions and aren’t in a position to rehire all their employees in the time currently required to qualify for loan forgiveness. (Marcos, 5/28)

The House legislation's payroll tax deferral would also be a help to providers that employ highly compensated physicians, Willey said. Proskauer Rose partner Rick Zall said the extension of the time frame from eight to 24 weeks to spend PPP funds would be especially useful to physician practices that had to nearly or completely shut down due to the pandemic. "They are looking at the PPP as a bridge to be able to maintain staff and reopen promptly," Zall said. (Cohrs, 5/28)

In other news from Capitol Hill —

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on Thursday that Republicans should "stop sitting on their hands," after new figures put the number of unemployment claims since late March at 40 million. "The cost of Republican inaction grows every day. ... Senate Republicans ought to stop sitting on their hands and work in a bipartisan way to provide the immediate help workers and families need," Schumer said. (Carney, 5/28)

Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that she has never been tested for the coronavirus, offering a contrast to the daily tests taken by both President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence. The California Democrat — who is second in line to the presidency — has spent much of her time in the U.S. Capitol in recent weeks, where several cases have been reported among lawmakers, aides and other employees. Pelosi herself had once been in the same room with another member who was later diagnosed with a presumed case of the virus. (Ferris, 5/28)

Senior House Democrats are demanding more information on what they say is a bad deal for U.S. taxpayers struck by President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin involving ventilators. In a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the Democratic chairs said they have "grave concerns" that Trump recently agreed to provide 200 ventilators to Russia for free -- after paying $659,283 to Moscow for a separate Russian aid shipment that included 45 ventilators later deemed unusable. (Flaherty and Finnegan, 5/28)

Kaiser Health News: KHN’s ‘What The Health?’: Still Seeking A Federal Coronavirus Strategy
The Trump administration sent its COVID-19 testing strategy plan to Congress, formalizing its policy that most testing responsibilities should remain with individual states. Democrats in Congress complained that the U.S. needs a national strategy, but so far none has emerged. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump, noticing that his popularity among seniors has been falling since the pandemic began, unveiled a plan to lower the cost of insulin for Medicare beneficiaries. However, while diabetes is a major problem for seniors in general and for Medicare’s budget, only a small minority takes insulin. (5/28)

For millions of Americans left out of work by the coronavirus pandemic, government assistance has been a lifeline preventing a plunge into poverty, hunger and financial ruin. This summer, that lifeline could snap. The $1,200 checks sent to most households are long gone, at least for those who needed them most, with little imminent prospect for a second round. The lending program that helped millions of small businesses keep workers on the payroll will wind down if Congress does not extend it. (Casselman, 5/28)

A debate in Congress over whether to extend $600 a week in federally provided benefits to the unemployed looks sure to intensify with the number of people receiving the aid now topping 30 million — one in five workers. The money, included in a government relief package enacted in March, is set to expire July 31. Yet with the unemployment rate widely expected to still be in the mid-teens by then, members of both parties will face pressure to compromise on some form of renewed benefits for the jobless. (Rugaber, 5/29)

The IRS has to explain, yet again, a glitch in issuing stimulus payments. To help speed the delivery of up to $1,200 in economic impact payments to individuals made available under the $2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (Cares) Act, the Treasury Department last week began mailing prepaid debit cards to 4 million Americans. (Singletary, 5/28)

The coronavirus pandemic has plunged New York City into the most dire fiscal crisis it has faced in generations. More than 900,000 people have lost their jobs since February, and thousands of businesses have closed. The streets remain empty of workers and visitors: Nearly 117,000 people filed new unemployment claims in the second week of May, a staggering 2,206 percent increase from the previous year. Tourism, which generates roughly $70 billion a year in economic activity, has disappeared. (Ferre-Sadurni, Mays and McKinley, 5/29)

The mayor noted that the Legislature passed a measure in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that gave then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani the power to borrow money so that the city could continue to provide basic services. “There was no question about the importance of supporting New York City for the whole state and for all the people of this city,” Mr. de Blasio said. “The city took that borrowing authority, then used it wisely, allowing it to come back strong. That’s what I think can and should happen again now.” (De Avila and Honan, 5/28)

Amid record-breaking unemployment numbers, Nevada stands out. The jobs crisis hit the state early and dug in deep. Unemployment there has soared to more than 28% — the highest in the nation and the highest for any state since 1976, when the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking this data. The accommodation and food service industry has been hit the hardest, says David Schmidt, chief economist for the Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation, with a nearly 41% year-on-year loss of jobs at hotels, casinos and restaurants and other tourism-related businesses. (Kelly and Morell, 5/28)

The number of workers receiving unemployment benefits fell for the first time since February and new weekly claims continued to ease, offering evidence that layoffs related to the coronavirus pandemic are slowing. Initial claims for unemployment benefits declined to a seasonally adjusted 2.1 million last week from 2.4 million the prior week, the Labor Department said. The level of claims is still 10 times prepandemic levels but has fallen for eight straight weeks. (Morath, 5/28)

Ten weeks into the worst economic upheaval since the 1930s, the dust is settling but the path forward remains precarious: Even as people start returning to work, the loss of some 46 million jobs will leave lasting scars on the economy in Massachusetts and across the country. (Edelman, 5/28)

As America's COVID-19 death toll crossed the 100,000 mark yesterday, another 2 million Americans filed for unemployment in the 10th week since the novel coronavirus has upended life across the country. According to Reuters, a record 40.767 million people filed joblessness claims since Mar 21, when most states enacted stay-at-home mandates that shuttered non-essential businesses. (Soucheray, 5/28)

It was expected to be a last-minute salvo: As much of the world braced for a probable pandemic-era recession, some health tech startups nailed significant funding in the first quarter of 2020. Analysts eyed the data cautiously, warning that the trend was likely short-lived. But as March rolled into April, and then seeped like molasses into May, the money kept flowing. Just this month, three health tech companies raised more than $100 million each. (Brodwin, 5/29)

Since November, [Luz] Chavez has been waiting for the Supreme Court to decide the fate of the initiative and thus her own, a ruling that could come anytime in June. But nothing could have prepared her for this second crisis, which has raised the stakes even higher on that decision because now her family is dependent more than ever before on the money she brings into the household. (Ulloa, 5/27)

Republicans planning their party’s convention on Thursday gave North Carolina’s governor a deadline of June 3 to approve safety measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus during the event, planned for Charlotte in August. The move came as President Trump pressures Democratic leaders in the state to allow him to hold the kind of convention he wants, and as they cite public health concerns and say it is too soon to make a determination. The Republican National Committee chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, and the president of the convention committee, Marcia Lee Kelly, laid out the deadline in a joint letter to Gov. Roy Cooper. (Haberman, 5/28)

The Republican National Committee sent a letter to North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) on Thursday outlining safety protocols the party is ready to adopt so it can hold a full in-person national convention in Charlotte this August. The letter comes amid a standoff between Cooper, who has not committed to allowing a full in-person convention, and President Trump, who has threatened to pull the convention out of North Carolina and take it elsewhere if there are restrictions imposed on attendance due to the coronavirus outbreak. (Easley, 5/28)

Republican National Convention attendees would be given health surveys before traveling to North Carolina for President Trump’s nomination, and some would be subjected to thermal scans before boarding sanitized buses, the RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said Thursday. Those are some of the Covid-19 safety protocols that Ms. McDaniel suggested to North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, as the two sides tussle over how to proceed with the party’s convention scheduled for late August. In a letter sent to Mr. Cooper and Republican National Committee members, Ms. McDaniel and Marcia Lee Kelly, the convention’s chief executive, sought the governor’s approval for a list of eight measures that Republicans would take to reduce the risk of spreading the coronavirus. (Bender, 5/28)

“The people who will visit the Charlotte region during the Convention, as well as the businesses and workers who will benefit are looking to you to set the rules and requirements for the RNC to hold a safe, secure event,” the letter reads. “We still do not have solid guidelines from the State and cannot in good faith, ask thousands of visitors to begin paying deposits and making travel plans without knowing the full commitment of the Governor, elected officials and other stakeholders in supporting the convention.” (King, 5/28)

The [RNC] letter did not address some basic safety concerns, omitting, for example, whether attendees would be required to wear masks or take a coronavirus test before entering the Spectrum Arena where the convention would be held. Federal health authorities have strongly recommended the use of masks for any gatherings in which attendees cannot properly distance themselves — which would be the case in a convention drawing thousands of delegates and others. (Dawsey and Linskey, 5/28)

In other news on the elections —

President Trump can’t hold his large energetic rallies because of coronavirus. But his campaign has discovered the next best thing: massive pro-Trump flotillas that are taking his message to waterways across the country. The large boat parades — which began organically among MAGA devotees in South Florida and spread to Florida’s Gulf Coast, Arizona’s Lake Havasu, South Carolina’s Charleston Harbor and Southern California’s Newport Harbor during Memorial Day weekend — quickly caught the notice of the president and his campaign. (Caputo, 5/29)

In an effort to keep voters safe, states of all political complexions are finding ways to expand access to mail-in ballots as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Then there's Texas. The state has some of the most restrictive laws limiting vote by mail in the country. Under Texas law, the program is open only to people who are 65 or older, people who will be out of the county during the election, people who are in jail and not convicted, and people who are disabled. (Lopez, 5/29)

Amid President Donald Trump’s charge that voting by mail is ripe with fraud potential, there are worries that such claims, in addition to the subsequent lawsuits that have followed, politicize state efforts to expand mail-in voting, and could cost some Americans a vital opportunity to have their votes counted... Some election experts... argue that continued legal action, as states race against time and limited financial resources, could potentially have a negative effect on citizens looking to cast their vote amid concerns of a second coronavirus outbreak this fall. (Vann, 5/29)

If a second wave of the novel coronavirus emerges in the U.S. this fall, medical experts said patients arriving in American emergency rooms will likely have an entirely different experience than what urgently sick patients saw earlier this year -- the benefit of hard-learned lessons from the deadly disease. “If there is a second wave in September, we will be protecting our patients and our staff in better ways, and will have the knowledge of the first wave to guide us in the best ways to treat patients,” said Dr. Bill Jaquis, president of the American College of Emergency Physicians. (Bhatt, Rubin, Abdelmalek, Mosk and David, 5/29)

Outside Charlotte, North Carolina, white drones that resemble tiny airplanes are being loaded with personal protective equipment and launched into the skies to help a local hospital respond to Covid-19. The drones, which have an 11-foot wingspan, fly over neighborhoods, a reservoir and an Interstate highway at speeds of 63 mph on their way to Huntersville Medical Center. Once there, a compartment in the drone opens, and a package falls toward the ground. A parachute on the package deploys so the deliveries land gently on a gravel lot as the drone returns to the hospital's distribution center for another mission. These deliveries will play out about 10 times a day. (McFarland, 5/28)

Adaptable and modular spaces will now be top of mind as healthcare providers retrofit and design their facilities, construction and design experts said. The COVID-19 pandemic has given health system leaders a new perspective as hospitals have adapted to accommodate an influx of patients. To be better prepared, hospitals will invest in flexibility: convertible and expandable rooms, advanced air-filtration systems, built-in storage spaces, wider hallways and virtual compatibility, among other improvements, experts said. (Kacik, 5/16)

When Marcela Vasquez, a phlebotomist at Long Island Community Hospital, gasped for air in a quiet room at home, she wondered: If I die, who will take care of my children? As the fevers and body aches wracked her body, Ms. Vasquez’s 13-year-old daughter, Alyssa Barnes, feared the same. “I really need her,” Alyssa said of her mother, 38, who tested positive for the coronavirus in late March. “Just losing her, it would change my entire life.” (Ortiz, 5/27)

Hassan N’Dam, former middleweight boxing champion of the world, wanted to repay the French hospital that cared for his father-in-law through his bout with COVID-19. Perhaps with Champagne? Or chocolate? No, N’Dam thought: “These are things that won’t last. I wanted to leave something quite memorable.” (Pugmire, 5/29)

Kaiser Health News: Lost On The Frontline
A nurse who planned to donate blood and plasma once he recovered. A hospital security guard who could be counted on for anything. A travelling nurse who asked his mom to send tamales. These are some of the people just added to “Lost on the Frontline,” a special series from The Guardian and KHN that profiles health care workers who die of COVID-19. (5/29)

Although new daily coronavirus cases are declining, doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists, and other health care workers are struggling with exhaustion from long hours and a crushing emotional toll from the drawn-out crisis. They’re seeing more severe illness with fewer treatment options, and more death. Often working with far-from-ideal protective gear, they’re fearful of getting sick or infecting their families. (Martin, 5/28)

Nurses at MountainView Hospital in Las Vegas held a protest Thursday morning over what they say are planned layoffs and pay cuts by the hospital’s owner, HCA Healthcare.“ HCA is trying to make cuts in both staff and some other things such as pay raises due to the pandemic,” said Nicole Koester, a nurse at MountainView and chief nurse representative for the union National Nurses United. (Puit, 5/28)

With young patients and their parents worried about contracting COVID-19 and staying home, revenues are drying up. That has made the Pahlavan sisters increasingly anxious about how they’ll pay their 40 employees as they burn through cash reserves and an emergency small business loan from the federal Paycheck Protection Program. (Wu, 5/29)

An emergency medicine physician who says he was wrongfully terminated for publicly criticizing his Washington state hospital's coronavirus response is now suing his former employer. Dr. Ming Lin on Thursday sued PeaceHealth, a Vancouver, Wash.-based health system that owns the Bellingham, Wash. hospital where he had worked since 2003, and TeamHealth, the Knoxville, Tenn.-based physician staffing company that contracted him to work there. Richard DeCarlo, PeaceHealth's chief operating officer, is also listed as a defendant. (Bannow, 5/28)

It was not so long ago that the conventional wisdom in Washington was that a genuine crisis like the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks had the power to cool partisan hostilities, pulling elected officials together to present a united front to a stricken nation. In a pandemic that has now claimed more than 100,000 lives, that is not proving to be the case. House Republicans marked the grim milestone this week by filing a lawsuit against Speaker Nancy Pelosi, accusing Democrats of a pandemic-enabled, unconstitutional power grab when they instituted proxy voting so that some lawmakers could avoid travel to Washington during the coronavirus outbreak. (Hulse, 5/28)

It has become a political and cultural flashpoint, drawing a clear divide between the "masked" and the "masked-nots." The disdain runs between the consciously unmasked president of the United States and his deliberately mask-donning Democratic rival, all the way on down to those crossing paths — and often crossing each other — in the cereal aisle of the grocery store. "It's selfishness. Complete selfishness," says 57-year-old Tia Nagaki, of the barefaced shoppers she has encountered. (Smith, 5/29)

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo threw his weight Thursday behind businesses eager to stop the spread of the coronavirus by signing an executive order authorizing them to deny entry to any customer who doesn't wear a mask or other face covering. The governor's move comes in the wake of several well-publicized confrontations between companies that require face coverings and customers who have refused to follow orders. (Siemaszko, 5/28)

Call them the no-mask caucus. A contingent of House Republicans continues to defy the recommendations of public health experts and Congress' top physician to wear face coverings to limit the spread of Covid-19, refusing to wear them on the floor of the chamber, in the hallways of the Capitol or when chatting with aides and colleagues -- even when they're unable to maintain a social distance. (Raju, 5/28)

Kaiser Health News: Hate Unmasked In America
“You are the most selfish f—ing people on the planet.” I jerked my head to the left, where I saw a neighbor glaring at us from his driveway while unloading groceries from his trunk. “Where’s your f—ing mask?” he said. “Unbelievable.” My jaw dropped. I had just walked three blocks home with my toddler and my dad in our leafy, mostly empty Los Angeles neighborhood because my kid had thrown a tantrum in the car. (Almendrala, 5/29)

Experts from the University of California San Diego are emphasizing the need for everyone to wear a mask to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, while warning that the virus may float through the air farther than the well-known 6-foot spacing officials have asked people to maintain. The researchers, in a Perspective article published Wednesday in the journal Science, warned of the dangers of aerosols emitted by people who are infected by the virus and who don’t even know it. (Finucane, 5/28)

Martín Quezada was on a Zoom call with constituents when he heard loud bangs echoing across the open-air mall below, and the Arizona state senator rushed to his third-floor apartment window. He saw people fleeing and a man carrying a long object about 50 yards away, walking toward his building. “My first thought was, ‘Those are gunshots,’ ” said Quezada, who represents the 29th Legislative District, which includes the Glendale mall. “But I was hoping that it wasn’t gunshots. I was hoping that it was something else, like firecrackers.” (Klemko, 5/28)

Upon arriving at work, employees should get a temperature and symptom check. Inside the office, desks should be six feet apart. If that isn’t possible, employers should consider erecting plastic shields around desks. Seating should be barred in common areas. And face coverings should be worn at all times. (Richtel, 5/28)

Venice Ray was eager to return to work when Texas announced last week that child care centers, like the one she was laid off from in March, could immediately reopen. But re-enrolling her 4-year-old son? That gave her pause. As many restaurants, hair salons and shopping malls across the country welcome back customers, some states are allowing day care centers and preschools to reopen, acknowledging that child care plays a foundational role in the American economy. But for millions of working parents like Ms. Ray, the choice to send their children back to a place known for spreading germs, even in more normal times, is not an easy one. (Goldstein and Bosman, 5/29)

In New York City, a police officer caught on video appeared to slap, punch and then drag a dark-skinned man. Police said that they had spotted the man filming officers who were arresting a couple for allegedly violating the city’s social distancing orders and that he had taken a “fighting stance.” In Chicago, police set up checkpoints, checked IDs and barred nonresidents from entering four city blocks with a culture of casual street-corner gatherings and, police say, open-air drug markets. The area’s population is mostly black, and civil liberties advocates questioned the legality of singling out one neighborhood. But police say disrupting all gatherings is part of their new public health mandate. (Ross, 5/28)

The adult male scarlet tanager is a medium-size songbird with glaring crimson feathers and jet-black wings. It can be hard to spot, because the species tends to forage among the upper branches of tall trees. But it does come down to earth, and sometimes can be caught hanging out with pigeons outside of the Freeport Wild Bird Supply store in Maine. It is the kind of sighting that can spark a lifelong interest in bird-watching, said Derek Lovitch, 42, a birder and biologist who runs the store with his wife, Jeannette. (Fortin, 5/29)

Breastfeeding advocates have seen an increased interest in nursing during this time of coronavirus, but they say the pandemic may be creating more challenges and concerns for new moms. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 60% of mothers generally do not end up breastfeeding for as long as they had originally planned to. Factors reducing the duration are varied and may include unsupportive hospital or work policies, problems with lactation or latching, or concerns about the baby's weight, the organization says. (Deliso, 5/29)

It has been said that disasters are relationship accelerators. They can cause a spike in marriage and babies — and they can also trigger divorce. Most of us are hunkering down with people we already had some sort of relationship with. But a few have chosen to ride it out with practical strangers. Gali Beeri is 37 and works as an executive assistant. Joshua Boliver is 42 and creates visual effects for movies. (Richman, 5/28)

Jennie Stejna made the ultimate comeback. The 103-year-old became seriously ill from the coronavirus but managed to make a full recovery. To celebrate, she enjoyed an ice cold bottle of Bud Light. (Sweeney, 5/28)

A woman managed to go into labor and give birth alone in a Texas jail cell without any corrections officers noticing until after she had delivered the child, a sheriff’s official said Thursday. The woman had the baby in a Fort Worth jail cell on May 17, according to Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Lt. Jennifer Gabbert. (Bleiberg, 5/29)

Whaley’s death in December 2017 is now the subject of a federal lawsuit that once again points to flaws in the medical care provided to Georgia’s state prison inmates. AJC investigations have repeatedly found that misdiagnoses and delayed or denied treatments have led to a grim legacy of deaths. Substandard prison medical care also has cost the state millions of dollars in lawsuit settlements in recent years. (Robbins, 5/29)

In what outside experts called the most rigorous and comprehensive survey of bacteria in human tumor samples, scientists have discovered distinct populations of microbes living inside different types of tumors: In other words, breast and brain and pancreatic tumors have their own characteristic microbiomes. Recent research has revealed an intriguing relationship between microbes and cancer, including how bacteria in the gut can affect the way immunotherapies like checkpoint inhibitors or even standard chemotherapy work to shrink tumors. (Cooney, 5/28)

In April, AstraZeneca halted a clinical trial of its genetically targeted lung cancer drug Tagrisso based on what it called an “overwhelming benefit” observed in patients with early-stage disease. On Thursday, details from the study were revealed for the first time. AstraZeneca wasn’t exaggerating. After two years of follow-up, 90% of the lung cancer patients given Tagrisso following surgery were alive without a recurrence of their tumors, doubling the benefit seen with patients offered a placebo. Overall, Tagrisso reduced the risk of lung cancer relapse by 83% compared to placebo — the strongest result ever reported for a clinical trial of this type. (Feuerstein, 5/28)

Aries is one of the first four children to test the Cap-based Transcranial Optical Tomography, or CTOT, a transcranial near-infrared optical imaging system developed by doctors at UTHealth. CTOT is a wired hat that uses infrared light to map a child’s brain, said Dr. Manish N. Shah, a pediatric neurosurgeon at UTHealth and director of the Texas Comprehensive Spasticity Center at Children’s Memorial Hermann. It’s the first device of its kind that can be used on children. (Garcia, 5/27)

Even cardiologists might not know — or pay attention to — the intracardiac nervous system. This “little brain of the heart” is a system of nerves working in concert with the brain itself to keep communication flowing smoothly and sometimes to go further, protecting cardiac muscle after a heart attack. A team of scientists from Thomas Jefferson University and the University of Central Florida have mapped out the network of neurons in the rat heart in 3D, creating a framework to better understand how this little brain works in animals and what could potentially be done for people when it’s disrupted by disease. (Cooney, 5/27)

The artificial intelligence model showed great promise in predicting which patients treated in U.S. Veterans Affairs hospitals would experience a sudden decline in kidney function. But it also came with a crucial caveat: Women represented only about 6% of the patients whose data were used to train the algorithm, and it performed worse when tested on women. (Robbins, 5/25)

Europe’s extensive social welfare net is showing signs of fraying under economic strain from the coronavirus, as protests erupted for a second day in Spain Friday against layoffs by French carmaker Renault, while Italy’s chief central banker warned that “uncertainty is rife.” Further afield, while New Zealand had all but eradicated the coronavirus with just one person in the nation of 5 million known to be still infected, developments elsewhere were generally grim. India reported another record increase in cases and Pakistan a record number of deaths. (Charlton, Barry and Perry, 5/29)

Over the past two months, as air travel ground to a halt, Mishel Zrian has crisscrossed the Atlantic and the United States dozens of times, sleeping in empty airports and unable to return home to see his family in Israel, all in a race against time to deliver life-saving transplants. Zrian is a courier hired by Israel’s Ezer Mizion bone marrow donor registry, which has had to perform logistical acrobatics to get its transplants to their destinations amid the travel disruptions caused by the pandemic. (Goldenberg, 5/29)

Six hundred miles from the North Pole, on an island the size of West Virginia, at the end of a tunnel bored into a mountain, lies a vault filled with more than 1 million samples of seeds harvested from 6,374 species of plants grown in 249 locations around the globe. The collection, the largest of its kind, is intended to safeguard the genetic diversity of the crops that feed the world. If disaster wipes out a plant, seeds from the vault could be used to restore the species. If pests, disease or climate change imperil a food source, a resistant trait found among the collection could thwart the threat. (McGinty, 5/29)

One by one, the children and adults line up for the centuries-old ritual of Holy Communion, trying to keep a proper social distance. The priest dips a spoon into the chalice of bread and wine, which the faithful believe is the body and blood of Christ, and puts it into the mouth of the first person in line. Then, with a move that would alarm an epidemiologist, he dips the spoon back into the chalice and then into the next person’s mouth. Again and again, through the entire congregation. (Becatoros and Kantouris, 5/29)

In an era of brash populists thumbing their noses at laws and customs, Mark Rutte, 53, the prime minister of the Netherlands and one of the longest-serving European leaders, believes in playing strictly by the rules. The Dutch electorate is so accustomed to his humble ways that few people blinked an eye when Mr. Rutte said this week that, in accordance with Dutch policies on the coronavirus, he had not visited his 96-year-old mother in a nursing home in the weeks before her death. (Erdbrink, 5/28)

You can always count on a robot for perfect timing. When Shaosong Hu saw robotic waiters serving food in China last fall, he knew exactly what he wanted for his restaurant in the Dutch beachside town of Renesse. He just didn’t have a clue how useful they would prove. The coronavirus pandemic has turned a whimsical idea into perhaps a window into a dystopian future where a human touch may make people cringe with fear, and a waiter clearing the table sends a customer tense with stress — only to be relieved by a soothing brush with plastic. (Furtula and Casert, 5/29)

Its coronavirus cases are skyrocketing, putting it among the world’s most worrisome pandemic zones in recent weeks. Nonetheless, India is reopening, lifting its lockdown at what experts fear may be the worst time. Migrant workers are becoming infected at an alarmingly high rate, leading to fresh outbreaks in villages across northern India. Public hospitals in Mumbai are so overwhelmed that patients have taken to sleeping on cardboard in the hallways. (Schultz and Yasir, 5/29)

In La Grande-Motte, a resort town in the south of France, a “static beach” has spawned, letting people sunbathe six feet apart. (5/29)

It took Las Vegas nearly a decade to recover from the subprime-mortgage-market collapse in 2008, but by February of this year, the city was rolling hot again. Unemployment in Nevada was less than 4 percent. ‘‘The economy in Vegas was really chugging along,’’ Karri Kratz, a bartender at the Mirage, told me. ‘‘We were doing great.’’ Then in mid-March, in response to the coronavirus, Gov. Steve Sisolak closed all of Nevada’s nonessential businesses, including casinos. A week later, he banned social gatherings of groups larger than 10. ‘‘I’m used to hearing the fountains and the music and people honking and partying and celebrating,’’ Lorena Peril, a performer in the Luxor’s burlesque show, ‘‘Fantasy,’’ said. ‘‘And now it’s so quiet.’’ She distracted herself from the crisis by staging shows around town out of her pickup truck. (Valdes, 5/28)

There’s a mental block to comprehending the scale of the unemployment crisis in America right now. You could start with the fact that the official figure, a 14.7 percent national unemployment rate as of April, was the highest since monthly record keeping began in 1948; Goldman Sachs now projects that figure will rise to 25 percent, roughly equal to the highest rate in American history, at the nadir of the Great Depression in 1933. Or you could try to digest the scale of jobs lost (more than 38 million, as of May 21) by comparing it to the entire population of California (39.5 million) or Canada (37.9 million). You could even try to process some of the effects of all those job losses — like the astonishing spike in hunger, with more than 40 percent of mothers of children under 12 now saying (up from 15 percent two years earlier) that their families don’t have enough to eat. (5/28)

Ten years ago the 1,200 residents of the tiny, mostly Inuit village of Nain, in Canada’s far northeast, lived through a natural disaster unnoticed by most of the world. From January to March, the average temperature — typically in the low single digits Fahrenheit — hovered well over 10 degrees above normal. What little sea ice formed was thin, cracked, and pockmarked with open patches. Hunting became risky or impossible, food supplies ran low, and a community survey found that one in 12 ice travelers suffered accidents that year. That spring, at least one person drowned when their snowmobiles plunged through weak ice.Ice travel has never been risk-free, and for centuries Inuit have relied on traditional trails and time-tested knowledge for mitigating risk — paying attention to ice’s color, texture, or the resistance it offers a sharp blow with a harpoon. (Halliday, 5/27)

In mid-March, as San Francisco mayor London Breed issued a citywide stay-at-home order, Peggy Cmiel started getting prepared. Cmiel is the director of clinical operations at the San Francisco Center for Jewish Living, or SFCJL, a 9-acre senior housing complex in the Excelsior neighborhood that includes long-term care facilities, short-term rehab housing, and a memory care wing. The campus houses over 300 elderly residents, members of one of the populations most vulnerable to the deadly and highly infectious coronavirus that has spread across the globe. (Harrison, 5/29)

Donald Trump wants crowds, people packed tight, showing shoulder-to-shoulder support, cheering and chanting and sporting shirts and hats and waving banners and signs with his name when he makes his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention the last week of August in Charlotte. The president kicked off this post-Memorial Day week with tweeted demands of a “guarantee” of “full attendance” or else. Trump, of course, is elevating as a useful foil the Democratic governor of one of the six most important swing states come November, as local officials and shot callers accuse him of prioritizing political haymaking over public health considerations in the grip of a country-changing pandemic. (Kruse, 5/28)

Until quite recently, it seemed almost certain that Medicare-for-all would be a major issue in the presidential election. It came up at every Democratic presidential debate. President Trump turned it into a talking point to be used against a future challenger. And when the novel coronavirus pandemic hit, it all but made the case. Contagious viruses, after all, don’t check insurance status before striking. Now it’s crickets. (Helaine Olen, 5/28)

This week I had a conversation that left a mark. It was with Mary Louise Kelly and E.J. Dionne on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” and it was about how past presidents had handled moments of national mourning — Lincoln after Gettysburg, Reagan after the Challenger explosion and Obama after the Sandy Hook school shootings. The conversation left me wondering what America’s experience of the pandemic would be like if we had a real leader in the White House. If we had a real leader, he would have realized that tragedies like 100,000 Covid-19 deaths touch something deeper than politics: They touch our shared vulnerability and our profound and natural sympathy for one another. (David Brooks, 5/28)

Just hours after America reached the grim milestone of 100,000 people killed in the pandemic, President Donald Trump took a moment to promote a wild theory whose acceptance can only lead to more deaths. The President retweeted a link to an article claiming that wearing face masks has nothing to do with public health, and is instead a path to "social control." The article is the kind of harebrained analysis making the rounds in the moldy corners of the far right, where every manner of bizarre, anti-scientific, anti-establishment notion seems to grow like a bacterial culture, challenging the immune system of America's democracy. Of course, Trump had to amplify it to his millions of followers. (Frida Ghitis, 5/28)

Looking back on all the pain, frustration, and hardship of the last several months, there’s one thing that sticks out to me: it didn’t have to be this bad. We are more than capable of containing a virus if we catch it early. In fact, world leaders built an infrastructure for that exact situation over 70 years ago. Yet, months after coronavirus cases appeared in China, the World Health Organization (WHO) was still promoting lies and downplaying the severity of the virus to protect the Communist Party of China (CCP). (Rep. Kevin Hern, 5/28)

Shep’s Barber Shop, just outside Harrisburg, Pa., became the epicenter of the movement to defy Gov. Tom Wolf’s heavy-handed economic shutdown. Fighting back tears at a rally, owner Brad Shepler delivered a warning far clearer than anything the governor has said in weeks: “You need to realize, we’re all losing our rights as American citizens. And we should all be afraid of that.” State officials threatened to revoke Shepler’s barbering license and fine him up to $10,000 per day after he reopened his business without authorization. This individual revolt — and countless others — came just days after eight Pennsylvania counties threatened to ditch Wolf’s haphazard reopening process to make their own decisions. Meanwhile, state lawmakers have passed bill after bill to reopen critical industries and reverse Wolf’s refusal to abide by transparency measures in the state’s equivalent of the Freedom of Information Act. (Charles Mitchell, 5/28)

The scale of government spending to tackle COVID-19, paired with public support, needs to extend to an even deadlier crisis colliding with this pandemic — the climate crisis. Being one of the biggest contributors to global carbon dioxide emissions, and among the most hurt by climate damages, especially along the country’s West and East coasts, the United States is pivotal in reversing the climate direction. With greater acceptance of fiscal spending to tackle catastrophes, the U.S. — even if far-fetched in the current political environment — and the other leading emitters should spark a global green stimulus. (Vinod Thomas, 5/28)

In other editorials, views on the passing of Larry Kramer —

AIDS changed everything,” Larry Kramer once said. So he made it his life’s work to change how people perceived the disease, those living with it, and how medical research was done in the United States and around the world. Kramer, an outspoken AIDS activist, died Wednesday morning at age 84. (Patrick Skerrett, 5/28)

When the Stonewall riots began the modern LGBTQ liberation movement in the summer of 1969, Larry Kramer was still deeply in the closet in his first career as a film executive. He was careful to bring a woman with him to all the Monday-night executive screenings. And yet, he was also already using his power as an artist to promote the gay agenda. (Charles Kaiser, 5/29)

In much of the developed world, the coronavirus curve is slowly flattening, but this obscures a tragic reality — the second phase of the crisis has begun as the novel virus spreads to the developing world. Ten of the top 12 countries with the largest number of new confirmed infections are now from the ranks of emerging economies, led by Brazil, Russia, India, Peru and Chile. The resulting devastation would likely reverse years, if not decades, of economic progress. (Fareed Zakaria, 5/28)

When viewed through a prism of historic inequity, broken government promises and the perspective of what appears to be an apparent willingness to sacrifice black and brown lives all for the sake of patriotic progress -- communities of color worry that efforts to reopen come at a deadly price. "We’re opening too soon at the expense of poor and low-income working people, and at the expense of the American public. This false choice, that you have to either open up, or go to work and possibly die, is a choice, it didn’t have to be this way,” Reverend Dr. William Barber, co-chairman of The Poor People’s Campaign told ABC Nightline co-anchor Byron Pitts during the network’s recent series "Pandemic: A Nation Divided" speaking broadly of reopening's impact on low-income essential workers of all races. (Halimah Abdullah, 5/29)

As political leaders across the United States seek to make informed decisions about when to “reopen” based on inadequate scientific information, 2,500 men in an Ohio prison may hold the key to hold the key to releasing the rest of the country from coronavirus lockdown. The coronavirus has spread like wildfire in American prisons and jails, and at least 415 incarcerated people have died of virus-related causes. At the Marion Correctional Institution in Ohio, in April, about 80 percent of the 2,500 or so residents had tested positive. (Marc M. Howard, 5/29)

Frustrated and scared, health care workers have taken risks to speak out about the dangerous lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) and other safety provisions to care for patients during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many are being silenced, threatened, suspended, or dismissed from their jobs instead of being commended for their commitment to safety as they risk their lives to carry out their professional duties. (Susannah Sirkin, Elizabeth Kaselitz and Dr. Ranit Mishori, 5/28)

Before Covid-19 arrived in the U.S., the country was in the midst of a mental illness crisis. Suicide rates in the United States rose 33% between 1999 and 2017. In 2018, 1.7 million people had an opioid use disorder. Now a deadly virus and the resulting isolation and economic hardship threaten to exacerbate the crisis. (Jeffrey Geller, 5/29)

Without action, the lack of behavioral health care services in the U.S. will have social and economic consequences. As the country deals with unemployment, unprecedented economic pain, and as we look towards reopening the nation, we must take concrete steps to support the mental health of the American workforce. (Emily Dickens, 5/28)

As we watch the case numbers tick down and our state open up, there’s something health care workers would like you to know: They’re still on the front lines of this pandemic, still taking risks they never anticipated. And they’re still plagued by the dangerous shortages of personal protective equipment that so outraged us way back in March, when we celebrated them as heroes. (Yvonne Abraham, 5/27)