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Officials across the United States reported more than 59,880 cases on Thursday, setting a single-day record for the sixth time in 10 days, according to a New York Times database. The surge has been driven largely by states in the South and the West that were among the first to ease restrictions established during the virus’s initial wave in the spring. At least six states set single-day case records on Thursday: Alabama, Idaho, Missouri, Montana, Oregon and Texas. (7/9)

More than 60,500 new COVID-19 infections were reported across the United States on Thursday, according to a Reuters tally, setting a one-day record as weary Americans were told to take new precautions and the pandemic becomes increasingly politicized. (Shumaker and Younis, 7/9)

Oregon smashed its previous daily record for COVID-19 cases on Thursday with a 389 new diagnoses and six deaths. The number of cases was the highest seen in the state since the start of the pandemic, the Oregon Health Authority said, and brings total cases statewide to 11,188. There have been at least 220 deaths. (7/9)

Wisconsin health officials confirmed about 750 more cases of COVID-19 in the state Thursday.The state has now seen 33,908 confirmed cases since the pandemic began in March. That’s an increase of 754 cases from Wednesday. Health officials recorded two more COVID-19-related deaths on Thursday, bringing the overall death toll to 809. (7/9)

Illinois had more than 1,000 new coronavirus cases for the first time in five weeks, the health department said Thursday.COVID-19 deaths, meanwhile, rose by 20 to 7,119. The state said the rate of positive cases over the past seven days was 2.6%. (7/9)

Navajo Nation health officials have reported 61 more coronavirus cases and four additional known deaths. Tribal Department of Health officials said 8,042 people on the vast reservation that spans parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah have tested positive for COVID-19 with 386 known deaths as of Wednesday night. (7/10)

In related news —

New Mexico will halt indoor restaurant service, close state parks to nonresidents and suspend autumn contact sports at schools in response to surging coronavirus infections within its boundaries and neighboring Texas and Arizona, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced Thursday. (Lee, 7/10)

More than 1,000 employees at the Transportation Security Administration have tested positive for the coronavirus, according to figures the agency released Thursday. Nearly all of them are security officers who have continued to work screening passengers at airports throughout the pandemic. (Duncan, 7/9)

Gov. Gavin Newsom is facing mounting pressure to release inmates as corrections officials scramble to contain outbreaks of coronavirus at state prisons. The outbreak at San Quentin State Prison, where more than half of the Covid-19 cases in state prisons have been reported, has claimed the lives of at least seven incarcerated people, according to a tally from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. (Chavez, 7/10)

Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, said Thursday that hard-hit states should not be moving forward with reopening, but stopped short of calling for full shutdowns. "I would think we need to get the states pausing in their opening process, looking at what did not work well and try to mitigate that," Fauci, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, told The Hill's Steve Clemons. "I don't think we need to go back to an extreme of shutting down." (Sullivan, 7/9)

COVID-19 is a public health official's "worst nightmare," Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's leading infectious disease doctor, said Thursday. "What is the worst nightmare that a public health official could have and what are the things that we fear the most?" Fauci said. "The answer is consistent among me and my colleagues: The emergence of a respiratory illness that is highly transmissible it its efficiency of going from person to person that has a significant degree of morbidity and mortality." (Miller, 7/9)

The rising number of coronavirus infections in the U.S. proves the pandemic is far from abating. New cases are setting single-day records in several states and declining in only two. While the nation’s top medical officials say states should pause reopening in order to control virus spread, the Trump administration insists schools should resume as normal this fall. (Alcindor, 7/9)

They raced to shut down their economies in March, and many opened them just as quickly in May. Now, governors across the country are facing growing pressure from public health experts and local leaders to reimpose stay-at-home orders as the only way to regain control of coronavirus outbreaks that threaten to overwhelm hospitals and send the death count rocketing. (Witte, 7/9)

President Donald Trump’s top health officials can no longer use the White House briefing room as a daily bullhorn for public safety messaging during the pandemic, so they’ve settled on a different strategy: contradict Trump on other platforms. Anthony Fauci on Thursday used a panel discussion on the future of health care to warn that “we’re still in a significant problem,” an assessment at odds with the president’s assertion that things are getting better. (Cancryn and Ehley, 7/9)

Four months after she helped convince President Trump that the U.S. needed to shut down to tackle the coronavirus outbreak, Deborah Birx again faces the difficult mission of counseling the president about the serious public health ramifications of the pandemic. Administration officials said Mr. Trump is focused foremost on boosting the economy, adding that he is adamant the country should remain open despite record coronavirus case numbers. ... Yet Dr. Birx, the White House’s coronavirus coordinator, remains an influential figure in the administration, even as Mr. Trump has marginalized other health officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert. (Restuccia and Armour, 7/9)

The rising tide of coronavirus cases in the U.S. South and West, coming four months into the outbreak, emerged amid a patchwork of often confusing or conflicting rules across government that have proved inconsistent and often difficult to enforce, making the pandemic harder to halt. (Campo-Flores, Ballhaus and Bauerlein, 7/9)

The sprawling Camp Ozark in Mount Ida, Arkansas, was shuttered after an undisclosed number of campers and a counselor contracted the coronavirus. Harvard University students will take courses online, even those living on campus. In Florida, nearly 50 hospitals on Thursday had intensive care units at full capacity. The big US reopening of the pandemic summer, it turns out, has gone way off track. (Sanchez, 7/9)

The COVID-19 pandemic is testing the world – and humanity is failing because of a lack of leadership and unity, the head of the World Health Organization declared in a passionate speech Thursday. "How is it difficult for humans to unite and fight a common enemy that is killing people indiscriminately?" WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus asked at a briefing in Geneva, his voice rising with emotion. (Chappell, 7/9)

The director-general of the World Health Organization has condemned a "lack of leadership" in fighting the coronavirus pandemic and made an emotional plea for global unity, as cases soar in multiple countries and the world struggles to contain the devastating virus more than six months after it was first identified. "My friends, make no mistake: The greatest threat we face now is not the virus itself," Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a passionate speech in Geneva on Thursday. "Rather, it's the lack of leadership and solidarity at the global and national levels." (Picheta, 7/10)

President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw the U.S. from the World Health Organization will damage global efforts to combat the COVID-19 pandemic as well other deadly diseases such as polio, tuberculosis and HIV, public health experts say. The WHO, which was created by the U.S. and other world powers in the wake of World War II, plays a unique role in collecting and disseminating vital information to foreign governments on infectious diseases, coordinating vaccine research and providing crucial medical advice and equipment to low-income countries, experts said. (DeLuce, 7/8)

In related news —

The World Health Organization announced an independent review of the international response to the Covid-19 pandemic on Thursday, an action the organization’s member states tasked it with earlier this year. Former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, and Helen Clark, former prime minister of New Zealand, will lead the review, the WHO director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, announced in Geneva. (Branswell, 7/9)

Two World Health Organization experts will spend the next two days in the Chinese capital to lay the groundwork for a larger mission to investigate the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. An animal health expert and an epidemiologist will meet Chinese counterparts in Beijing on Saturday and Sunday to fix the “scope and terms of reference” for a WHO-led international mission aimed at learning how the virus jumped from animals to humans, an agency statement said. (McNeil, 7/10)

Under growing pressure from researchers, the World Health Organization acknowledged Thursday that the coronavirus can linger in the air indoors and potentially infect people even when they practice social distancing. The United Nations agency had maintained that such airborne transmission occurred only during certain medical procedures and that nearly all infections occur when people inhale respiratory droplets expelled in their immediate vicinity or when they touch contaminated surfaces. (Read, 7/9)

In an open letter published this week in a journal, two scientists from Australia and the U.S. wrote that studies have shown “beyond any reasonable doubt that viruses are released during exhalation, talking and coughing in microdroplets small enough to remain aloft in the air.” The researchers, along with more than 200 others, appealed for national and international authorities, including WHO, to adopt more stringent protective measures. (7/9)

An aerosol is a respiratory droplet so small it may linger in the air. In its latest description of how the virus is spread, the agency said transmission of the virus by aerosols may have been responsible for “outbreaks of Covid-19 reported in some closed settings, such as restaurants, nightclubs, places of worship or places of work where people may be shouting, talking or singing.” (Mandavilli, 7/9)

Also —

The World Health Organization has expanded its coronavirus guidance to include the possibility in certain circumstances of airborne transmission, in which the virus could be spread through tiny droplets that linger in the air. The update came Thursday after an open letter signed by more than 200 scientists pressed the agency this week to acknowledge the potential role that tiny droplets, or aerosols, play in airborne transmissions among people in crowded, indoor settings for prolonged periods of time. (Chow, 7/10)

Researchers found the coronavirus and antibodies against it in the umbilical cord blood, breast milk, placentas and vaginas of some pregnant infected women, another suggestion that the virus can be passed to fetuses and newborns, according to results of a small study released Thursday. (Bernstein, 7/9)

A small study strengthens evidence that a pregnant woman infected with the coronavirus might be able to spread it to her fetus. Researchers from Italy said Thursday that they studied 31 women with COVID-19 who delivered babies in March and April. They found signs of the virus in several samples of umbilical cord blood, the placenta and, in one case, breast milk. (Marchione, 7/9)

President Donald Trump on Thursday said he would likely wear a mask while visiting Walter Reed medical center this weekend, taking another step back from his previous reticence toward facial coverings as coronavirus cases continue to soar nationwide. Speaking with Fox News' Sean Hannity in a live phone interview, Trump said "it's fine to wear a mask if it makes you feel comfortable." (Choi, 7/9)

The president was spotted behind the scenes during a tour of a Ford factory last month wearing a mask, but he did not wear one on camera, saying he did not want to give reporters there the satisfaction of seeing him with a face covering. "I have no problem with a mask. I don’t think you need one when you’re tested all the time, everybody around you is tested, you’re quite a distance," Trump said Thursday. (Samuels, 7/9)

Trump, who had become increasingly isolated within the Republican Party for not promoting wearing a mask, has in recent weeks spoken more favorably about their use as COVID-19 cases have surged in the United States. More than 60,500 new COVID-19 infections were reported across the United States on Thursday, according to a Reuters tally, setting a one-day record as weary Americans were told to take new precautions and the pandemic becomes increasingly politicized. (Beech and Mohammed, 7/9)

As for the president's weekend campaign rally in New Hampshire —

As the president’s rally looms, some residents, store owners, and elected officials fretted about the coronavirus pandemic and the divisiveness of the expected crowd, while a growing chorus of health care professionals and others asked Governor Chris Sununu to require masks at the event. (Greenberg and Annear, 7/9)

The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday struggled to say what federal guidance might look like for the nation’s schools to reopen this fall, after the president said the current advice was too tough, President Donald Trump asserted without evidence his political opponents wanted them to remain shut, and Vice President Mike Pence promised a new approach next week. After for months saying decisions about reopening should be left to states, Trump and his administration this week demanded schools reopen in the fall. "Open our schools," Trump said at the White House Thursday. "Stop this nonsense."(Phelps, 7/9)

Keeping schools closed in the coming academic year is a greater risk to children’s health than reopening them, even amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Robert Redfield, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday. Redfield said the guidelines the CDC has given on operating schools during the pandemic are designed to facilitate their reopening, and he would be “disappointed” if they were used as a rationale to keep them closed. (O'Donnell, 7/9)

Redfield demurred when asked about the need for more funding on Thursday. "I think we've got to see the plans that the different schools and jurisdictions come up with," he said. (Sullivan, 7/9)

In other CDC news —

House Education and Labor Committee Chairman Bobby Scott (D-Va.) on Thursday asked Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Robert Redfield to testify before his panel later this month to discuss how schools can safely reopen this fall. Scott asked Redfield in a letter to testify before the panel's subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education on July 23 so that lawmakers could "engage directly with you concerning the CDC’s guidance to schools on how to safely reopen as the country continues to grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic." (Marcos, 7/9)

As the country enters a frightening phase of the pandemic with new daily cases surpassing 57,000 on Thursday, the CDC, the nation’s top public health agency, is coming under intense pressure from President Trump and his allies, who are downplaying the dangers in a bid to revive the economy ahead of the Nov. 3 presidential election. In a White House guided by the president’s instincts, rather than by evidence-based policy, the CDC finds itself forced constantly to backtrack or sidelined from pivotal decisions. (Sun and Dawsey, 7/9)

In just a matter of weeks, tens of millions of children will start a new school year, and what that will look like has become the nation’s thorniest political and epidemiological issue. School officials have to figure out how to resume schooling while limiting the risks to children, their teachers, school staffers and their communities. This pivotal moment in the coronavirus pandemic comes as scientists are still trying to understand precisely how the virus affects children and how children affect the spread of the virus. (Achenbach, Meckler and Janes, 7/9)

As the White House, the nation’s pediatricians and many worn-down, economically strapped parents push for school doors to swing open this fall, local education officials say they are being crushed by the costs of getting students and teachers back in classrooms safely. (Goldstein, 7/9)

Gov. Ron DeSantis, in his push to reopen classrooms this fall, said Thursday that if retailers are allowed to operate, schools should be, too. The risk of children getting sick is “extremely, extremely low,” DeSantis said, and if fast food eateries and hardware stores could operate as “essential” businesses during the coronavirus pandemic, then schools should reopen as well. (Fineout, 7/9)

Sacramento City Unified School District released a draft of the precautions and recommendations for the fall as they plan to reopen schools. The 44-page draft laid out precautions students and staff must take, which include daily student monitoring for symptoms and temperature screenings on campus. (Morrar, 7/9)

Leaders of the Los Angeles teachers union on Friday will call for campuses to remain closed and for distance learning to continue when the school year begins on Aug. 18, The Times has learned. Union leaders have concluded it is not safe to bring children back on campus as COVID-19 cases in Los Angeles County surge to new highs. (Agrawal and Blume, 7/9)

Kaiser Health News: KHN’s ‘What The Health?’: ‘Open The Schools, Close The Bars’ 
How to safely open the nation’s schools this fall has become the latest spat in attempting to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence have decried the guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as too complicated and expensive and ordered a new set. Meanwhile, tests for the virus remain difficult to get, particularly in states experiencing spikes, and getting results to patients is taking increasingly longer, making contact tracing effectively impossible. (7/9)

Also —

Everyone agrees it’s not healthy to keep kids stuck at home, with the American Academy of Pediatrics encouraging school districts to resume in-person class time for the health of the nation's children. But when it comes to the virus and its potential to spread quickly, it’s less clear what will happen when they return. (Flaherty, 7/9)

Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology filed suit Wednesday against DHS and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, in an attempt to halt a proposed federal policy that could deport international students taking online-only courses at U.S. colleges. (Perez Jr., 7/8)

California sued the Trump administration Thursday to challenge new visa rules that bar international students from staying in the U.S. if they take all of their classes online, arguing it could worsen the spread of COVID-19 to require attendance in person. (McGreevy, 7/9)

International students completing their medical and doctoral degrees in the United States are wrestling with frustration and uncertainty following the release of federal rules this week that could bar them from staying in the country. In an emergency ruling Monday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said that students who are on an F-1 visa — usually reserved for international students enrolled in degree programs in the U.S. — will have to leave the country if their schools have opted for online-only classes in the fall. The rules also apply to students who are here on an M-1 visa, which is for completing vocational training and other technical courses. (Chakradhar, 7/10)

International students worried about a new immigration policy that could potentially cost them their visas say they feel stuck between being unnecessarily exposed during the coronavirus pandemic and being able to finish their studies in America. The students from countries as diverse as India, China and Brazil say they are scrambling to devise plans after federal immigration authorities notified colleges this week that international students must leave the U.S. or transfer to another college if their schools operate entirely online this fall. Some say they are thinking about returning home or moving to nearby Canada. (Naishadham, Mumphrey and Powell, 7/10)

Twenty of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies on Thursday announced the creation of a $1 billion fund to buoy financially strapped biotech start-ups that are developing new antibiotics to treat the mounting number of drug-resistant infections responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. (Jacobs, 7/9)

A coalition of more than 20 leading pharmaceutical companies today announced the launch of a new fund to provide financial incentives to boost antibiotic development efforts and help the smaller companies engaged in much of the research on new, innovative drugs to tackle antimicrobial resistance (AMR). (Dall, 7/9)

In response to heightened concerns over antibiotic resistance, two dozen of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies have formally launched a $1 billion for-profit venture fund to replenish the global medicine chest with novel treatments. The new Antimicrobial Action Fund will look to buy or invest in small antibiotic companies and their products, and will work with the World Health Organization and the European Investment Bank to identify promising prospects. (Silverman, 7/9)

In other pharmaceutical news —

The antiviral drug baloxavir (Xofluza) prevented influenza in household contacts of infected patients, according to a study yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine, but a US expert outlined several caveats about the findings. The multicenter randomized controlled trial assessed the prophylactic effectiveness of baloxavir over 10 days in 749 household members of index patients with flu during the 2018-19 season in Japan. Participants were given a single dose of either baloxavir or a placebo. (Beusekom, 7/9)

Despite the economic hardships the Covid-19 pandemic has created for many Americans, drug makers raised list prices on 42 brand-name medicines by an average of 3.5% this month, surpassing the number of price hikes taken by the pharmaceutical industry at this time a year ago. The price increases added to the average 6.8% price hikes that companies took on 857 brand-name and generic drugs between January and June, according to data compiled by GoodRx, which tracks prescription drug pricing and provides free coupons for discounts on medications. (Silverman, 7/9)

Both the Trump administration and presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden in recent days have ramped up rhetoric about onshoring production of medical supplies and certain drugs. The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the American healthcare system's dependence on foreign manufacturing. Many providers are hoping a push to onshore some production could result in a more stable, if more expensive, pipeline of supplies, while others believe that U.S. manufacturing isn't prepared for the transition. (Cohrs, 7/9)

The announcement follows other Florida health systems including BayCare Health System, Jackson Health System, Memorial Healthcare and Baptist Health that have halted non-urgent procedures again. But responses to spikes in COVID-19 cases across the country have varied by organization as doctors and administrators weigh the impact of delayed care and steep revenue losses versus strict containment efforts. (Kacik, 7/9)

Oscar told members of its health insurance plans in an email last week that it may not cover costs associated with COVID-19 antibody testing. It had cited those costs in a May filing as a reason it would need to raise premiums in 2021. The email informed members that the insurer would cover the tests, which can show that a person has been exposed to COVID-19, only for specific reasons. (LaMantia, 7/9)

New York could make health insurance more affordable for people with student loan debt if it allows them to deduct their student loan payments from the ACA's tax credit calculation when they seek coverage on the state marketplace, the not-for-profit United Hospital Fund said in a report Thursday. Experts worry that recent graduates are losing health coverage because they're entering a tightening job market and losing school-sponsored insurance at the same time. Without the ability to secure coverage through an employer, many young adults could forgo insurance. That's especially true for graduates who are too old to be covered by their parent's insurance or whose parents recently lost their jobs. (Brady, 7/9)

A San Francisco judge on Thursday denied Sutter Health's request to further delay approval of an antitrust settlement, but said she'd consider allowing more time if COVID-19 cases overwhelm the health system's hospitals in the coming weeks. The decision follows Sacramento, Calif.-based Sutter's filing in June arguing that the pandemic had led to significant financial losses for the health system and it needed an extra 90 days before the preliminary settlement approval to determine whether things would get worse. Sutter said it had lost $168 million on operations in the month of April alone. The class-action lawsuit accused Sutter of anticompetitive business practices that drove up the cost of healthcare in Northern California. (Bannow, 7/9)

Two individuals sued telemedicine giant Teladoc Health on Wednesday for repeated robocalls selling health insurance and memberships to its services. Plaintiffs April Hale and Len Cline accused Teladoc of hiring Health Insurance Innovations to make telemarketing calls on the company's behalf. The calls allegedly violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which requires telemarketers to get consent from consumers before contacting them with automatic dialing systems or pre-recorded voice messages, according to the complaint. The plaintiffs, who filed their complaint in a New York federal court are seeking class action status. (Cohen, 7/9)

As coronavirus cases surge in much of the country, issues with testing availability and access have once again arisen in nearly every aspect of the testing supply chain, local officials and hospital leaders in several states told ABC News — a troubling echo of the shortages that plagued the nation's initial response to the virus months ago. Testing issues have manifested differently in different parts of the country, from states in the midst of a renewed battle against COVID-19 and those who still fear one might be coming, officials said. (Kim, Rubin and Dukakis, 7/10)

Wyoming will test all inmates and employees at its five correctional facilities next week, the state Department of Corrections announced Wednesday. On Monday Wyoming will start a one-time testing of all inmates and employees at the state's five correctional institutions in rotation. Wyoming Department of Corrections Director Bob Lampert said in a statement that once the state’s baseline is established, the corrections department will institute “ongoing surveillance testing” in the manner as done in nursing homes to maintain “the safest possible living and work environment.” (Klar, 7/9)

Kaiser Health News: As COVID Testing Soars, Wait Times For Results Jump To A Week — Or More
While hospital patients can get the findings back within a day, people getting tested at urgent care centers, community health centers, pharmacies and government-run drive-thru or walk-up sites are often waiting a week or more. In the spring, it was generally three or four days. The problems mean patients and their physicians don’t have information necessary to know whether to change their behavior. Health experts advise people to act as if they have COVID-19 while waiting — meaning to self-quarantine and limit exposure to others. But they acknowledge that’s not realistic if people have to wait a week or more. (Galewitz, 7/9)

The Trump administration’s erratic approach to testing for the novel coronavirus has left state leaders and commercial laboratories confused, frustrated and unprepared for the fall, Democrats on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions found in a report released Thursday. (Weiner, 7/9)

Public health officials and politicians repeatedly have touted widespread coronavirus testing as a key piece of containing the deadly pandemic and allowing Californians to get back to school, work, shopping and socializing. But as California topped 300,000 cases on Thursday and reached records for average daily infections and deaths, an effort to dramatically expand the scope of testing appears to be cracking at the seams — hampered by supply shortages, mixed messaging, delayed testing results and a rash of new outbreaks. (Deruy, Kelliher and Wu, 7/9)

Also —

Chelsea has the highest coronavirus infection rate in Massachusetts and among the highest in the country. While the city has seen a marked drop in new, daily positive cases, the rolling average is still about four times higher than the state as a whole. On Friday, the Baker administration launched an expanded testing program in Chelsea and seven other hard hit communities to try and stop the spread. (Bebinger, 7/10)

As President Trump’s rally in Portsmouth on Saturday approaches, elected officials and public health experts in New Hampshire are asking Governor Chris Sununu to require masks at the event, concerned that the large gathering could lead to an increase in COVID-19 infections. “Science says wear a mask or we’ll end up like Tulsa,” Portsmouth City Councilor Deaglan McEachern tweeted this week, referencing the apparent spike in coronavirus cases linked to a recent Trump rally in Oklahoma. “[Governor Sununu], your job isn’t only staying safe yourself, it’s keeping NH safe. Do your job.” (Annear, 7/9)

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said Thursday the state is considering steps to ensure more Michiganders wear masks in public places, but she gave few details and made no announcements at a news conference. "Right now, the law requires that anyone in an enclosed public space has to wear a mask," Whitmer said, referencing an executive order she issued under Michigan's state of emergency related to the coronavirus pandemic. (Egan, 7/9)

Starbucks announced on Thursday that it would require all patrons to wear face masks at its locations across the United States.The order will take effect on July 15, according to a statement from Starbucks. (Horn, 7/9)

Face masks will be mandatory inside all University of Wisconsin campus buildings statewide under a policy adopted unanimously Thursday by the Board of Regents after interim President Tommy Thompson said there was no way to open safely amid the coronavirus pandemic without the mandate. (Bauer, 7/9)

But resistance to the idea continues -

A circuit judge ordered Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear on Thursday to cease issuing or enforcing executive orders related to Covid-19 on the same day that the Democrat signed an executive order mandating that Kentuckians must wear a facial covering or mask in public in certain situations. Scott County Circuit Judge Brian Privett issued a temporary restraining order against Beshear in a case filed by Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles and agritourism business Evans Orchard and Cider Mill, LLC, challenging the governor's use of executive power during the pandemic. Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, a Republican, joined the lawsuit last week. (Riess and Kelly, 7/9)

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced a mandatory face mask mandate last week, sparking a slew of controversy. Resistance towards masks has, to some, become a political statement or health concern, to which experts say there are no negative effects for most. However, public outcries over an enforced safety regulation is nothing new to Texans, who expressed similar sentiments over something that is a common, life-saving necessity — wearing a seat belt. (Fernandez, 7/9)

As more local officials wrestle with whether to mandate mask use in public, metro Atlantans are taking a clear stand with their own mouths and noses: Most already are wearing masks. About 80% of shoppers wore face coverings inside local groceries during spot checks by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The informal checks were made this week of 100 shoppers in each of certain Kroger stores in Duluth, Johns Creek, South Fulton, Marietta, Lithonia and Atlanta. (Kempner, 7/9)

Four in 10 Kansans live in counties that have overruled Gov. Laura Kelly’s statewide mask order even as coronavirus cases in the state soar.More than 90 of the state’s 105 counties have opted out of the mandate issued last week under a new state law that allows local leaders to follow or discard Kelly’s pandemic-related executive orders. (7/9)

In related news —

Researchers at MIT and Brigham and Women’s Hospital say they have designed a new mask that can be sterilized and used many times to protect the wearer from inhaling coronavirus particles. The mask is made of silicone rubber and includes one or two detachable N95 filters, but those filters require much less N95 material than a traditional N95 mask, the university said in a statement. Silicone rubber is used in baking sheets and a number of other products. (Finucane, 7/9)

The conference cited medical advice in making its decision and added ominously that the plan would be applied only “if the conference is able to participate in fall sports.” Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren said it was “much easier if we’re just working with our Big Ten institutions” in terms of things like scheduling and traveling. (Zenor, 7/10)

The Big Ten Conference’s fall sports teams will play only within the league, a decision that will affect football, men’s and women’s cross country, field hockey, men’s and women’s soccer, and women’s volleyball — assuming public health officials advise playing at all amid the coronavirus pandemic. (Brassil and Blinder, 7/9)

“We are focused on how to play this season in a safe and responsible way based on the best advice of our medical experts,” said Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren on Thursday. He also allowed for the possibility of not playing at all this fall, saying: “It’s important to get across that we’re also prepared not to play should the circumstances dictate. We’re taking this one step at a time.” (Higgins and Bachman, 7/9)

Also —

The California Community College Athletic Association is moving all sports, even football, to the spring. The decision announced Thursday was one of three potential scenarios approved by the CCCAA Board of Directors last month. (7/10)

The rate of kids sports and recreation-related emergency room visits for traumatic brain injuries declined 32% from 2012 to 2018, after more than a decade of increasing rates, a new study finds. The decline seems to be largely related to the decreasing number of kids playing tackle football and the increase in the additional contact limitations put on the game. (Christensen, 7/9)

Cinderella Castle has sat silent for 116 days. That's how long Walt Disney World has closed its doors because of the coronavirus pandemic. On Saturday, Disney will welcome guests back to its flagship theme park in Orlando, Florida, and reopen a cornerstone of its business. (Pallotta, 7/9)

At the start of the coronavirus pandemic, Donna Joe says her adult daughters had all kinds of advice to keep her safe. They signed up the 64-year-old retired civil engineer for online grocery delivery, shipped sanitizer to her home in Marietta, Ga., and checked in regularly to make sure she was following the latest protocols. (Brady, 7/9)

Hollywood’s technical expertise can awe us with monsters and imaginary worlds. But is it capable of delivering a simple screen kiss during a pandemic marked by masks and social distancing? Yes, according to the soap opera producer who is making that happen with a strategic approach to romance. “The Bold and the Beautiful,” in the vanguard of TV series that have resumed taping after an industry-wide shutdown in March, is relying on health advisers and coronavirus safeguards to bring cast and crew together. (Elber, 7/9)

Hope Gilmore, a call center worker on Staten Island, New York, hasn't forgotten those bewildering early weeks of the coronavirus pandemic when colleagues were getting sick, her employer didn't provide any masks or gloves and people used the elevator one at a time to socially distance. "We're on the frontlines like sacrificial lambs," Gilmore said Thursday. (Ortiz, 7/9)

Kaiser Health News: Lost On The Frontline 
America’s health care workers are dying. In some states, medical personnel account for as many as 20% of known coronavirus cases. They tend to patients in hospitals, treating them, serving them food and cleaning their rooms. Others at risk work in nursing homes or are employed as home health aides. “Lost on the Frontline,” a collaboration between KHN and The Guardian, has identified 782 such workers who likely died of COVID-19 after helping patients during the pandemic. (7/10)

In other public health news —

The Supreme Court's ruling Wednesday to allow an employer or university with a religious or moral objection to opt out of covering contraceptives could cost women hundreds of dollars each year in out-of-pocket expenses, experts say. The court ruled 7-2 to uphold President Donald Trump's move to let more employers opt out of the Affordable Care Act mandate guaranteeing no-cost contraceptive services for women. (Kindelan, 7/9)

Los Angeles County prosecutors have filed six more counts of sexual assault and battery against disgraced USC gynecologist George Tyndall, who was arrested last year after he was accused of sexual misconduct by hundreds of former students. (Queally, 7/9)

The Kentucky Supreme Court has canceled in-person bar exams this year as a precaution due to the coronavirus pandemic. The change is meant to protect the health and safety of bar applicants, employees and volunteers, officials said. (7/10)

A coalition of local and national health care providers and LGBTQ rights organizations filed a federal lawsuit in Boston Thursday seeking to block a rule rescinding sex discrimination protections for transgender people in medical care. Fenway Health; the Boston Alliance of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Youth; and other groups are suing the US Department of Health and Human Services, and have asked the US District Court to set aside the regulation and declare it unconstitutional, according to court documents. (Fox, 7/9)

Students, women’s rights and education groups are suing to block Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s campus sexual assault rules from taking effect next month, with plaintiffs as young as 10 joining arguments that the rules will harm students and burden institutions. (Green, 7/9)

There are nearly 20,000 mental health apps that will do everything from tracking a person’s suicidal thoughts to soothing someone experiencing a panic attack. A new online tool from researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center aims to help patients sort through the noise for almost 200 of them — and counting. (Ortolano, 7/10)

Do the places where we choose to spend time have any part in shaping our personalities? The answer lies in the GPS data captured by nearly every app on our phones, according to a new study by Sandra Matz, a computational scientist at Columbia Business School, and Gabriella Harari, a social psychologist at Stanford. The study, published in June in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, shows that people’s persisting characteristics as well as their fleeting states of mind can be reliably predicted by the geographic breadcrumbs they leave behind. “Where you are tells us something about who you are and how you currently feel about yourself. And that’s not something you necessarily want to reveal to everyone,” said Prof. Matz. (Pinker, 7/9)

Kaiser Health News: Colorado, Like Other States, Trims Health Programs Amid Health Crisis
As a teenager, Paulina Castle struggled for years with suicidal thoughts. When her mental health was at its most fragile, she would isolate herself, spending days in her room alone. “That’s the exact thing that makes you feel significantly worse,” the 26-year-old Denver woman said. “It creates a cycle where you’re constantly getting dug into a deeper hole.” (Hawryluk, 7/10)

When it first kicked off last month, the activist encampment that billed itself as Occupy City Hall was viewed as the latest wave of the city’s George Floyd protests — an innovative political space that, under summer skies, attracted peaceful crowds to speeches and teach-ins focused on a narrow goal: cutting $1 billion from the New York Police Department’s budget. In the past week, however, the number of protesters has dropped off sharply and those who have remained have taken on a new responsibility: caring for dozens of homeless people who were drawn to the compound for its free food, open-air camping and communal sensibility. (Feuer and Kim, 7/9)

Once thought of as a predominantly urban issue affecting cities like San Francisco and Oakland, homelessness has hit Bay Area suburbs like Pacifica hard in the past few years, pushing into the corners of every county across the region. Some suburbs registered exponential increases between 2017 and 2019 in the biennial point-in-time counts of the homeless population in each county. Yet the suburbs have historically been less prepared to handle the homeless, with less emphasis on affordable housing, political pushback on safe parking and fewer social services to address some of the reasons people landed on the streets in the first place — job loss, substance abuse, mental health issues and family crisis. (Tucker, Christian and Trumbull, 7/9)

In yet another study demonstrating racial disparities in the pandemic, a University of Chicago analysis has found that black people are twice as likely as whites to test positive for COVID-19. (7/9)

Citing new county-level data acquired and published by The New York Times last week, members of the Cape Cod Reopening Task Force warned during a Thursday press call that Black residents are overrepresented in confirmed COVID cases compared to their population in Barnstable County. (Lisinski, 7/9)

COVID-19 cases in US federal and state prisons were 5.5 times higher—and death rates three times higher—than in the general population from Mar 31 to Jun 6, according to a research letter published yesterday in JAMA. (Beusekom, 7/9)

San Quentin State Prison in California has erected tents and is converting a warehouse to treat a coronavirus outbreak that's infected more than 1,800 inmates and staff. Aerial footage shows nine tents on the institution's baseball field, part of the prison's efforts to treat inmates with COVID-19 right on the grounds while opening up space for social distancing, quarantine and isolation in the crowded facility. (Deliso and Longo, 7/9)

In other news —

The state of Kansas settled a class-action lawsuit filed by child care advocates who accused the state of not providing foster children with adequate mental health care and moving them too frequently between homes. (7/9)

Women and racial minorities are disproportionately reliant on unemployment insurance, economic data shows, leaving them most vulnerable if Congress decides not to renew the expanded benefits that are set to expire at the end of the month. (Mueller, 7/9)

Autopsies on people who died of the coronavirus are helping doctors understand how the disease affects the body — and one of the most remarkable findings concerned blood clotting, a pathologist says. Dr. Amy Rapkiewicz, the chairman of the department of pathology at NYU Langone Medical Center, spoke to Erin Burnett on OutFront Thursday night. Some Covid-19 patients are known to develop blood clotting issues, but the degree and the extent to which that occurs was described as "dramatic" by Rapkiewicz. (Ellis and Kane, 7/10)

If there’s one thing we want to know about COVID-19, it’s probably this: What’s my risk of getting it? Researchers have identified certain things that make some people more vulnerable than others. ... Now there’s evidence that blood type could be a risk factor too. (Kaplan, 7/9)

In January, as a frightening new virus filled hospital wards in Wuhan, China, Stephanie Giordano, a 25-year-old researcher at the drugmaker Regeneron, in a suburb of New York City, began working on a treatment for the disease. By March, the deadly coronavirus had hit home. Fearing she would get infected on the train that took her to the lab every day, she moved from her apartment in East Harlem to an Airbnb five minutes from the company’s headquarters in Tarrytown, in Westchester County. (Thomas, 7/9)

In other science news —

Exercise has been shown to slow cognitive decline in aging, but scientists haven’t known why. Now, by transfusing blood from exercising mice into sedentary ones, researchers have found a single protein, produced in the liver, that seems to underlie restorative effects in the brain. (Gaffney, 7/9)

Scientists say they've identified an enzyme that could help explain how exercise can slow or even reverse some signs of aging in the brain. "Exercise in a bottle" isn't around the corner, but it's not out of the question either. The idea builds on an observation a few years ago that certain parts of the brain can actually grow, even in older people. (Harris, 7/9)

The statehouse in Mississippi has been closed as a surge in novel coronavirus cases now includes at least 26 lawmakers -- both representatives and senators -- and 10 Capitol employees. "That number will certainly grow," Dr. Thomas Dobbs, the state's health officer, said at a news conference on Wednesday, when at least five of the state's largest hospitals reported having zero available ICU beds, forcing patients to be sent out of state. (Pereira, 7/9)

The Ohio House of Representatives reinstated work-from-home status Thursday after a legislative aide tested positive this week for COVID-19.House Speaker Larry Householder told his colleagues to not report to the Riffe Center for work until further notice. (Amiri, 7/9)

Also —

Ohio state Rep. Nino Vitale (R) is urging his constituents not to get tested for the coronavirus, flouting advice from health officials — and from another Republican lawmaker, Gov. Mike DeWine. "This is what happens when people go crazy and get tested," Vitale wrote on Facebook this week. "STOP GETTING TESTED!" (Chappell, 7/9)

The Texas GOP is suing Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner (D) for canceling its in-person convention scheduled for next week amid the coronavirus pandemic. Texas GOP chairman James Dickey signaled that such a move was coming in a statement following Turner's announcement Wednesday, saying that the party would "evaluate all legal remedies available to us to fight back against the unequal treatment Mayor Turner has chosen to inflict on conservatives." (Johnson, 7/9)

Federal medical personnel are headed to Dallas’ Parkland Memorial Hospital to provide what local leaders say is much needed backup as COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations continue to climb The staff is heading to the city after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson requested support from the federal government. Tristan Hallman, the mayor’s spokesman, said that last Friday, Johnson made the request to Dr. Deborah Birx, the federal government’s coronavirus response coordinator. (Manuel, 7/9)

One year ago this month, Bill Loveday poured his family’s life savings into opening Bacaro Kitchen and Wine Bar, a restaurant that he hoped he might one day pass down to his children. “We decided rather than retirement, we would put our money into creating this brand,” Loveday, 59, told NBC News. But this spring, the Lovedays shuttered along with other restaurateurs when statewide stay-at-home orders were issued in March. (Obregon and Thompson, 7/9)

The COVID-19 outbreak at Canyon Creek Memory Care in Billings has led to three deaths since Monday, according to the Yellowstone County Health Department. All three people died at the senior care facility, according to RiverStone Health. Yellowstone County has now had seven deaths from COVID-19, more than any other county in Montana. RiverStone Health issued a press release Thursday morning announcing that on Monday a woman in her 70s died, on Wednesday a woman in her 80s died, and on Thursday a man in his 90s died. (Kordenbrock, 7/9)

The family of a woman who worked at a Pennsylvania long-term care center filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the facility, her employer and others alleging misconduct led to the spread of coronavirus and ultimately, the employee's death. In the complaint filed last week, the family of Elizabeth Wiles said she was a longtime housekeeping and laundry employee at Brighton Rehabilitation and Wellness Center, a long-term care facility in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, who died from Covid-19 "after exposure and infection" while working at the facility. (Casarez, 7/10)

The number of hospital beds available to treat critically ill patients is dropping across Georgia as COVID-19 hospitalizations soar past previous highs, raising alarms that time is running out to slow the spread of the virus before medical facilities reach crisis levels. Statewide, 2,322 people are currently hospitalized for COVID-19, well past the April 24 peak of 1,906, noted Emory University infectious disease expert Carlos del Rio. (Mariano, 7/9)

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) said Thursday he is issuing an executive order limiting indoor dining capacity to 50 percent capacity to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus. “The objective here is if you are going to eat inside to make sure there are as few people as possible inside that establishment,” Ducey said at a Thursday press conference. (Klar, 7/9)

Days after Brazil's president said he had contracted COVID-19, another South American leader, Bolivia's interim president, Jeanine Áñez, said she too had tested positive for the coronavirus. "I feel good, I feel strong, I will continue to work virtually from my isolation," Áñez said in a video posted to her Twitter account. (Neuman, 7/9)

The mayor of Seoul, the country’s second-most powerful official and a potential presidential candidate, was found dead just days after a secretary in his office told the police that he had sexually harassed her since 2017, the authorities said on Friday. (Sang-Hun, 7/9)

Americans account for roughly a quarter of the more than 551,000 global deaths from COVID-19 so far — far more than any other country, according to the latest global data from Johns Hopkins University. A number of states, as well as the country as a whole, have begun breaking daily records repeatedly for newly confirmed cases, and Florida reported on July 9 that more than 80 percent of its hospital ICU beds are filled. (Santhanam, 7/9)

Asian and European officials pleaded with their citizens Thursday to respect modest precautions as several countries saw coronavirus outbreaks accelerate or sought to prevent new flare-ups, while the virus showed no signs of slowing its initial advance in Africa and the Americas. (Gec and Moulson, 7/9)

With just over a year to go until the Tokyo Olympics, medical experts say the event could pose a grave health risk to the Japanese public, predicting that few people will have coronavirus antibodies and that vaccines will not be widely available. (Takenaka, 7/9)

In just three weeks, India went from the world’s sixth to the third-worst hit country by the coronavirus pandemic, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. India’s fragile health system was bolstered during a stringent monthslong lockdown but could still be overwhelmed by an exponential rise in infections. (Schmall and Ghosal, 7/10)

The Fuji-Q Highland amusement park near Tokyo has an unorthodox request for its roller coaster riders. "Please scream inside your heart," and not out loud, the park is asking. The unusual ask is meant to reduce the risk of spreading the coronavirus. (Horn, 7/9)

A 36-year-old man in Brazil may be the first to experience long-term remission from H.I.V. after treatment with only a specially designed cocktail of antiviral drugs, researchers said on Tuesday. Just two people have been confirmed cured of H.I.V. so far, both after risky treatments involving bone-marrow transplants for their cancers. (Mandavilli, 7/7)

Judging when to tighten, or loosen, the local economy has become the world’s most consequential guessing game, and each policymaker has his or her own instincts and benchmarks. The point when hospitals reach 70 percent capacity is a red flag, for instance; so are upticks in coronavirus case counts and deaths. But as the governors of states like Florida, California and Texas have learned in recent days, such benchmarks make for a poor alarm system. Once the coronavirus finds an opening in the population, it gains a two-week head start on health officials, circulating and multiplying swiftly before its re-emergence becomes apparent at hospitals, testing clinics and elsewhere. (Carey, 7/2)

More than six months into the pandemic, the coronavirus has infected more than 11 million people worldwide, killing more than 525,000. But despite the increasing toll, scientists still do not have a definitive answer to one of the most fundamental questions about the virus: How deadly is it? (McNeil Jr., 7/4)

A few weeks after more than 100 people attended her husband’s funeral, the widow herself was on the brink of death. Her oxygen levels had fallen deadly low due to complications from COVID-19, and her heart stopped. Ten people, each in two layers of protective equipment, surrounded her hospital bed. Two climbed on opposite sides of the bed — one pressing on her chest, the other on her abdomen. (Merchant, 7/8)

They wrapped the dead in body bags and raced back to treat the living, crammed into a nursing home that, day after day, played the somber sound of taps over the speaker system so the veterans who lived there had the chance to say goodbye. The nurses and aides at the Southeastern Veterans’ Center in the suburbs of Philadelphia had watched so much go wrong since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. The communal dining that lasted into April, the nights that feverish patients were left to sleep beside roommates who weren’t sick yet. “Merry Christmas,” one nurse told another when they finally got N95 masks, weeks into the crisis and just before administrators stopped staffing the isolation rooms because too many people were feared infected. (Cenziper and Mulcahy, 7/7)

In mid-May, Merced County Sheriff Vernon Warnke had a lot to say about California’s stay-at-home orders to slow the spread of the coronavirus, none of it good. He posted a defiant message to Facebook saying he refused to enforce the state’s orders because they meant “economic slaughter” and he believed government had no right to tell him or anyone else it was too risky to get a haircut or dental checkup. (Branson-Potts, 7/7)

It was the moment that America needed.Days after George Floyd died at the hands of police officers in Minneapolis, a different scene was playing out in what was once the most dangerous city in the United States. Joseph D. Wysocki was marching in the streets of Camden alongside residents in “Black Lives Matter” t-shirts. He found the organizer of the protest: Yolanda Deaver. Wysocki introduced himself and asked if he could join her. Absolutely, she said, and the two started marching together, holding up a sign reading STANDING IN SOLIDARITY. And then they posed for a now-viral photo. (Landergan, 6/12)

For the past 16 years, Mauro Rios Parra has ridden his bike to a warehouse on Washington Boulevard to start his day as a paletero. And every day for 16 years, he’s stuffed the same pushcart with more than 300 ice creams and fruit bars, or paletas: coconut, tamarindo, pineapple, hibiscus, coffee, lemon, mamey sapote, nance and his personal favorites, vanilla and strawberry. Then there’s the ice cream cups and sandwiches, the Choco Tacos, the Tweedy and Spider-Man and Ninja Turtle bars with gumball eyes. (Pineda, 7/2)

Bad news for fans of buffet meals: It might be a long time until your next one. Pizza Hut, Ponderosa & Bonanza Steakhouses and other restaurant chains have roped off their buffets to prevent contamination and crowding as they seek to reopen dining rooms during the Covid-19 pandemic. And grocery stores such as Whole Foods Market and Wegmans Food Markets Inc. have kept hot-food bars closed since March, until lately a growing part of the business and a draw for customers. Now, those sales have plummeted given the risk of self-service food. (Haddon and Kang, 7/7)

As of this week, more than 208,000 people are projected to die of COVID-19 in the U.S. by November. That supersedes an earlier forecast of more than 179,000 deaths by October. Both of those projections were made by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), which I oversee. Since the White House coronavirus task force began releasing our forecasts in late March, we’ve received a great deal of attention — not all of it good, since many people do not understand how modeling works. Over the last few months, our projections have risen, fallen and risen again. (Christopher J.L. Murray, 7/10)

Coronavirus deaths in the United States recently climbed above 133,000, at the same time that other countries have found ways to keep the virus in check. In a country that prides itself on being the best, it seems prudent to examine the reasons why. Below you will find some countries that have recorded staggeringly few deaths. Sure, not every country tracks coronavirus cases the same way as the United States. But there are some things to learn from these countries, many of which have recorded coronavirus deaths in the single digits. (7/10)

Fighting COVID-19 has been hard enough, but fighting the state for a straight answer on numbers to gauge the past and current spike of new cases has been utterly exhausting. Floridians deserve better. The latest battle is getting Gov. DeSantis’ office to release complete daily hospitalization data for all 67 counties. It’s amazing that this is not routine already. Other elected officials have made their numbers public. In April, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez ordered hospitals in the county to report daily patient admissions, ICU capacity and ventilator inventory. (7/10)

The coronavirus pandemic has been a stark reminder "that things can change in a minute — and so you've got to be prepared," says Sunita Puri, medical director for palliative care at the Keck Medical Center at the University of Southern California. One of the ways to do this is to decide what sorts of treatments you would want (or not want) in the case you became critically ill — and then document those wishes and share them with loved ones. (Katherine Harmon Courage, 7/9)

Over the last several weeks, the number of people testing positive for COVID-19 at San Quentin State Prison has skyrocketed to more than 1,400, including six deaths so far. As a staff physician who provides medical care to incarcerated patients, I am devastated by the news, but sadly, I’m not surprised. On a daily basis, our medical teams work diligently within the constraints of the prison system to limit transmission, and our patients do what they can to protect themselves in their environment, but the undeniable fact is that the state prisons are well over capacity — despite court-mandated reductions over the past several years. (Joshua Connor, 7/8)

I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling more and more as if we’re all trapped on the Titanic — except that this time around the captain is a madman who insists on steering straight for the iceberg. And his crew is too cowardly to contradict him, let alone mutiny to save the passengers. A month ago it was still possible to hope that the push by Donald Trump and the Trumpist governors of Sunbelt states to relax social distancing and reopen businesses like restaurants and bars — even though we met none of the criteria for doing so safely — wouldn’t have completely catastrophic results. At this point, however, it’s clear that everything the experts warned was likely to happen, is happening. (Paul Krugman, 7/9)

As the world struggles to confront the Covid-19 pandemic, how to handle access to trade secrets — information that is valuable because others do not know it — is one of the myriad challenges to achieving safe and effective vaccines, diagnostics, and treatments for the people of the world. The most famous trade secret is the Coca-Cola formula. If someone accessed that formula who wasn’t supposed to, a misappropriation lawsuit from Coca-Cola would soon follow. While a scenario like that may seem foreign to the Covid-19 pandemic, trade secrecy spans a shockingly broad range of critical and lifesaving information. (David S. Levine, 7/10)

Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez has been making the rounds on national television for all the wrong reasons.No, it’s not a-star-is-born kind of story. The mayor has botched the county’s entry into the coronavirus “new normal,” buckling under political and public pressure to open too soon — and doing so without the proper enforcement of safety rules in place. (Fabiola Santiago, 7/10)

One moment in Texas’ battle against this ravenous pandemic signaled whether Gov. Greg Abbott would lead as the state’s top executive or a top political boss. Back in May, Abbott made the fateful decision to side with Dallas hair salon owner Shelley Luther instead of local leaders in major cities across the state such as Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo. That choice, to embrace partisan politics and a fringe populist backlash over common sense and sound medical advice from his own advisers, condemned the Lone Star State to the circumstances we face today: Hospitals near the breaking point. Nearly 3,000 Texans dead — and counting. (7/10)

The decision on how and when to reopen schools was hard enough before President Trump this week injected politics into the issue. Staying in character with another simplistic, bombastic declaration that ignores the nuances of the coronavirus, he tweeted Monday that “SCHOOLS MUST OPEN IN THE FALL.” Nevermind that COVID-19 cases continue to surge at alarming levels across the country, including here in California, and many hospitals are nearing capacity while Trump does nothing to slow the spread. He ramped up the pressure Wednesday by threatening to withhold federal funding from schools that do not resume in-person classes this fall, which is absurd for many and puts the lives of students, teachers and staff on the line for political reasons. Trump instead should pressure Congress to provide additional funding needed to make schools safer to reopen. (7/9)

Millions of Americans dutifully pay taxes with the promise that their children can get a first-rate education in the United States. The right to a publicly-funded education is an integral part of our social contract — it means any child can grow up to follow their dreams. If we fail to reopen our schools in the fall, we will fail to deliver on that promise for the 55 million students who depend on our public school system. We are at risk of having an entire generation of children fall permanently behind. If that happens, our children’s futures will be the biggest casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic. (Rep. Jim Banks, 7/9)

Two weeks ago, I asked Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, what a functioning Department of Education would be doing to prepare the country to reopen schools in the fall. “A functioning Department of Education would have been getting groups of superintendents and principals and unions and others together from the middle of March,” she told me. It would have created a clearinghouse of best practices for maintaining grab-and-go lunch programs and online education. By mid-April it would have convened experts to figure out how to reopen schools safely, and offered grants to schools trying different models.“None of that has happened,” said Weingarten. “Zero.” (Michelle Goldberg, 7/10)

No one wants to welcome students back to classrooms more than America’s educators. We know that nothing can replace the magic of a student’s curiosity when they are able to learn alongside their peers from a teacher who has dedicated her life to the success of other people’s children. But the Trump administration's plan is appallingly reckless. Concerned more with election dynamics than the lives of students and their educators, the White House pressure campaign presents a false choice between the health of our students and the health of our economy. (Lily Eskelsen García, 7/9)

All you parents throughout the land, you must obey Uncle Sam’s command! He needs you. Well, not really you. Your children. And not really Uncle Sam. Uncle Donald. He wants them back in school this fall. At their desks. In their seats.(Scot Lehigh, 7/9)

The decisions are coming quickly now. They are jarring and they are ominous, and they tell the same story, over and over again: the 2020 college football season is in big trouble. In the 24 hours since the Ivy League canceled all fall sports, Ohio State shut down the voluntary workouts of all its teams for a week due to multiple positive COVID-19 tests among its athletes; the ACC eliminated games in all fall sports until at least Sept. 1; and the Big Ten announced that its schools will play all their fall sports within the conference, eliminating every non-conference game. Another 24 hours like that and we’ll be well on our way to having no sports at all on college campuses this fall. (Christine Brennan, 7/9)

Anticipation fuels sports. You are constantly expecting something to stir your emotions: a superb matchup, a playoff run, the chase of a record, the dawn of a new season, the debut of a potential superstar. Depending on the teams you root for, what’s next can inspire some worry, but in general, sports are a domain of abundant hope. You can always conjure reason to believe the wait will be worth it. So, of course, as 2020 continues its inexorable march through misery, the novel coronavirus has invaded that happy place, too. Now that more American sports leagues are within weeks of their scheduled returns, the anticipation has encountered a redoubtable foe, one that muddles the comeback experience: trepidation. (Jerry Brewer, 7/8)