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President Donald Trump on Friday signed an $8.3 billion measure to help tackle the coronavirus outbreak that has killed 12 people in the U.S. and infected more than 200. The legislation provides federal public health agencies with money for vaccines, tests and potential treatments and helps state and local governments prepare and respond to the threat. The rapid spread of the virus has rocked financial markets, interrupted travel and threatens to affect everyday life in the United States. (Taylor, 3/6)

That speedy action by an otherwise bitterly divided Congress underscored just how seriously the government is taking the threat of the coronavirus. A slew of new cases have been confirmed in the U.S. in recent days, and health officials have warned that the virus is on the verge of becoming a pandemic. (Hirsch and Breuninger, 3/6)

The finally tally for the Senate vote was 96-1. Sen. Rand Paul was the lone senator to vote against the measure. Ahead of the vote on final passage, the Kentucky Republican also offered an amendment to the coronavirus funding package that would offset costs by canceling some foreign aid spending. But the Senate voted to table, or kill, the motion. (Foran and Barrett, 3/5)

The legislation, which passed the House overwhelmingly on Wednesday, funds research efforts to develop a vaccine, allocates money to state and local governments to battle the outbreak and sends dollars overseas to assist response efforts. It also eases requirements on Medicare beneficiaries receiving telemedical services and provides $20 million to fund an increase in U.S. small business loans. (Duehren, 3/5)

The legislation would provide more than $2 billion to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for public health funding for prevention, preparedness and response. It also would allocate more than $3 billion to a public health emergency fund and the National Institutes of Health to research and develop vaccines, treatment, and testing of the coronavirus. The bill would also provide nearly $1.3 billion to help protect the health of Americans living abroad from the virus. (Shabad, 3/5)

"This is an awfully robust start," said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), top Republican on the House panel that funds the Department of Health and Human Services. "I'm pretty pleased that this has been accomplished in a bipartisan way in the middle of an election year, with very intense polarization. So we can still get some things done around here in the interest of the American people." The debate over a national response continues to be tinged, however, with partisanship and criticism of the Trump administration's handling of the crisis as federal departments prepare to put the newfound billions to use in combating the outbreak. (Scholtes and Emma, 3/5)

The drug industry is showing that even in a crisis, it can use its influence in Washington to fight off efforts to cut into its profits. Industry lobbyists successfully blocked attempts this week to include language in the $8.3 billion emergency coronavirus spending bill that would have threatened intellectual property rights for any vaccines and treatments the government decides are priced unfairly. (Karlin-Smith, 3/5)

Progressive Democrats are pushing to constrain how much drug makers can charge for a coronavirus vaccine. A group of lawmakers held a press conference Thursday to pressure the Trump administration to impose price controls on any coronavirus-related treatment, and to call on their colleagues to reconsider some of the ambitious drug pricing legislation they have put forward this Congress. (Florko, 3/5)

And in other news —

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said there are no plans to close the Capitol building to tourists or members of Congress in the event of a coronavirus outbreak, as lawmakers prepared contingency plans for their offices. “We’ll be ready should something come along,” said Mrs. Pelosi, citing efforts by Capitol staff to ensure lawmakers and staff could work from home as needed, and encouraging hygiene practices such as hand washing for officials and visitors. But she noted the limitations of the approach. (Andrews and Wise, 3/5)

Sen. Elizabeth Warren wants the Trump administration to immediately suspend implementation of a new public charge rule, which makes it harder for some immigrants to get green cards if they use public benefits. This comes as public health and legal experts across the country are raising concerns about making sure documented and undocumented immigrants feel safe accessing health care as fears increase around the new coronavirus. (Dooling, 3/5)

Confusion and delays appear to persist in testing Americans for coronavirus even after an outcry from state and local health authorities that the United States was behind in determining the extent of the outbreak. Vice President Mike Pence, who is leading the administration's response to the coronavirus crisis, acknowledged Thursday there was a shortfall in the number of testing kits required to meet demand. "We don't have enough tests today to meet what we anticipate will be the demand going forward," Pence told reporters while touring 3M facilities in Minnesota. (Liptak, 3/5)

Trump administration officials doubled down on their promise to deliver 1 million tests for the coronavirus this week as states reported limited testing supplies and federal lawmakers expressed doubts about the government's timeline. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told reporters Thursday that a private manufacturer authorized to make the tests expects to ship the kits to U.S. laboratories by week's end. That amounts to the capacity to test roughly 400,000 people, given that it takes multiple test samples to a confirm a result. (Perrone and Stobbe, 3/5)

"Right now, it is a challenge if you are a doctor wanting to get somebody tested," Azar said, following a briefing with lawmakers, adding that physicians could only reach out to a limited network of public health labs. "That experience will get better over the next week, week and a half, two weeks. But do not be surprised if you hear concerns of doctors saying: 'I have a patient. I don't know how to get this done,'" Azar told reporters. (3/5)

It doesn’t matter if boxes upon boxes of kits are available if labs are struggling to set up the tests or are short on staff to run them. At the end of the day, what I want to know (and I imagine, what everyone wants to know) is how many people can be tested. That’s the unit that I am pressing public health officials and lab directors for when I interview them. Here are some basics that may be useful to keep in mind: The CDC test kits can be thought of somewhat like a Blue Apron meal kit; there’s some assembly required before a lab can begin testing. It’s not like a protein bar, ready to eat straight out of the wrapper. As of Wednesday, the Association of Public Health Laboratories, which represents public health labs across the United States, told me that each CDC test kit can run about 700 specimens. (Chen, 3/5)

You have a fever. You're in respiratory distress. And you might even be hospitalized with pneumonia. Doctors worry you may have been infected with the novel coronavirus. What happens next? Ideally, you'll be tested for the virus, which has sickened tens of thousands of people worldwide and killed more than 3,000. (Azad, 3/5)

In other testing news —

U.S. military laboratories have started receiving their own testing kits to determine whether American troops have the new coronavirus, officials said, after relying on outside testing in the roughly two months since China reported the first cases. But capacity is still limited, as is the distribution of the test kits, they say. (Stewart, 3/5)

It's been a busy week at the virology lab run by UW Medicine, which includes the University of Washington's medical school and hospitals. "We've already gone to three shifts," says Dr. Keith Jerome, a professor in the department of laboratory medicine who runs the lab. "People are going to be here basically all the time." (Hamilton, 3/5)

"I'm sure you've heard of the troubled story of rolling out testing to the state public health laboratories," Dr. Larry Madoff of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health told lawmakers Wednesday. "I'm happy to say that we've overcome those obstacles now, and that testing is going on, has been going on since last week at the state public health laboratory." That "troubled story" refers to widespread complaints that the supply of tests from the federal government has fallen far short of what's needed. Now, the federal criteria for testing have been broadened to allow doctors more discretion to order tests, and Madoff told lawmakers the supply is expanding. (Goldberg, 3/5)

A day after Vice President Mike Pence assured Americans that lab tests for coronavirus would be covered by private and government health insurance, that promise appears to be less than airtight. The bottom line: Medicare, Medicaid, and “Obamacare” insurance plans will cover the tests, officials said Thursday. Major insurers also said they will cover such tests. But people with employer-provided insurance should check with their plan because copays and deductibles may apply. State health departments will test for free. (Alonso-Zaldivar and Murphy, 3/5)

America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) said its members, which include Cigna Corp (CI.N) and Anthem Inc (ANTM.N), will cover diagnostic testing when ordered by a doctor, ease network, referral and prior authorization requirements and/or waive patient cost sharing. The group also said it will “take action so that patients will have continuous access to their regular prescription medications.” Washington state on Thursday issued an emergency order requiring all state-regulated health insurers to waive co-payments and deductibles for any consumer requiring testing for the new coronavirus. (Beasley, 3/5)

Other states are weighing similar moves. In Rhode Island, where at least two people have been confirmed infected, the state insurance regulator is considering whether to ask or potentially require insurers to waive cost-sharing for coronavirus testing, according to a spokesman. “We want to be sure we have an effective response,” he said. The regulator is meeting with insurers Friday. The states are taking action amid concerns that consumers, even those with insurance, might avoid getting tested or treated because they would face large out-of-pocket costs. In a poll in March of last year, the Kaiser Family Foundation found that more than half of U.S. adults said they or a family member had put off health care due to costs. Among those with insurance, 34% said it was difficult to pay the cost of their deductibles. (Wilde Mathews, 3/5)

The California Department of Insurance and Department of Managed Health Care ordered all full-service commercial and Medi-Cal plans to “immediately reduce cost-sharing — including, but not limited to, co-pays, deductibles or coinsurance — to zero for all medically necessary screening and testing for COVID-19, including hospital, emergency department, urgent care and provider office visits where the purpose of the visit is to be screened and/or tested for COVID-19.” (Pender, 3/5)

More than 60 Massachusetts lawmakers signed onto a letter Thursday urging Governor Charlie Baker to require Massachusetts health insurers to waive co-pays for coronavirus testing.The 62 legislators, led by state senators Eric P. Lesser and Joanne M. Comerford and state Representative Mindy Domb, say in the letter that some patients around the country tested for the new COVID-19 virus have been “hit with large medical bills when they least expected it.” (Fox, 3/5)

It’s not yet clear how much the commercial tests will cost, but it's likely they will vary. Patients who are tested for the coronavirus might also face costs related to visiting the doctor, emergency room or urgent care. If they test positive and require hospitalization, they would face charges for that, too. Seema Verma, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, told reporters Thursday that Medicaid and Medicare would cover testing, likely without cost-sharing requirements. But she acknowledged that people with private plans should ask their insurance companies if cost-sharing will be required. (Hellmann, 3/5)

For now, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is covering the cost of coronavirus testing, but private labs will soon charge for their own tests. "Insurers would set a lot of people's minds at ease if they committed to covering coronavirus testing with no patient cost-sharing," Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, said in an email. "Healthcare providers would still need to ensure that only people who are clinically advised to get tested do so to preserve limited testing resources. But, for the health of individuals and the community at large, cost shouldn't be a barrier to get tested." (Livingston, 3/5)

As leading public health experts from across the government have tried to provide clear and consistent information about the deadly coronavirus, they have found their messages undercut, drowned out and muddled by President Trump’s push to downplay the outbreak with a mix of optimism, bombast and pseudoscience. Speaking almost daily to the public about an outbreak that has spread across states and rocked the markets, Trump has promoted his opinions and at times contradicted the public health experts tasked with keeping Americans safe. (Olorunnipa, 3/5)

Donald Trump is finally securing the presidency he’s always wanted: He rallies the people. Mike Pence governs them. As Trump prepares to decamp to his oceanfront club in West Palm Beach this weekend, surrounded by GOP donors and top aides, the vice president will travel to Florida for a Saturday meeting with cruise ship operators about the rapidly evolving coronavirus crisis. The striking split-screen view that has played out this week and will continue in Florida — of a president dispensing questionable theories about the virus and prioritizing his 2020 campaign, while his hyper-focused deputy tackles a life-or-death problem of governance — has put a longstanding Trump practice in its starkest relief yet. (Orr and Kumar, 3/6)

President Donald Trump is stuck — caught between his nationalistic impulses and a globalist disease. The Trump playbook has long been to hammer an “America First” agenda, glossing over international cooperative organizations and focusing on internal safety. But that approach doesn’t map well onto the coronavirus, a disease that can hop borders with just a droplet on a plane. And it’s posing unusual challenges to Trump’s way of doing business with the world. (Heath and Okun, 3/6)

President Trump is trying to ease anxieties about coronavirus. Public-health experts say he may be sowing confusion in the process. Mr. Trump drew fresh scrutiny after an interview on Fox News Wednesday in which he questioned the death rate associated with the virus and the severity of its impact on the public. “A lot of people will have this, and it’s very mild,” Mr. Trump said to host Sean Hannity. “They will get better very rapidly. They don’t even see a doctor. They don’t even call a doctor.” (Lucey, 3/5)

President Trump has made a series of rosy — and sometimes false — claims about the coronavirus, including the risks to Americans and how his administration is responding. Here is a timeline of some of his comments, placed in context and fact-checked. (Qiu and Bouchard, 3/5)

President Donald Trump and his officials are falsely asserting that they’ve accelerated coronavirus testing by easing a restrictive policy introduced by the Obama administration. Trump also appeared to suggest that people with the infectious disease should go to work as long as they feel OK, advice that defies the warnings of his health officials that such people shouldn't leave their homes unless they need care. (3/5)

The administration has been under fire for its failure to quickly expand testing for coronavirus across the United States; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had distributed flawed tests to state and local health departments. The lack of tests, compared with countries like South Korea that have tested tens of thousands of people, has meant the possible spread of the virus in the United States may be hidden. Trump suggested the problem instead was an “Obama rule” on testing that his administration had recently overturned. But this turns out to be completely wrong. Let’s explore. (Kessler, 3/6)

In the spring of 1983, even before the virus that causes AIDS had a name, a young Army doctor named Deborah L. Birx suffered excessive bleeding while giving birth. Moments before she passed out from pain, she screamed an order at her husband: “Do not let them give me blood!” She may have saved her own life. The blood she would have received was later discovered to be contaminated with H.I.V. “That was Debbie’s first brush with AIDS, and it literally changed her,” John Kerry, then the secretary of state, said in 2014, after President Barack Obama put Dr. Birx in charge of addressing the global AIDS epidemic. “It made her think hard not just about the perils of this new disease, but about her responsibility to fight it.” (Stolberg, 3/6)

There will be a notable omission when Vice President Mike Pence visits Washington state Thursday as part of the Trump administration's coronavirus response: health Secretary Alex Azar. The White House on Wednesday also benched Azar from a coronavirus task force press briefing, the latest sign of diminished standing for an official who was the face of the U.S. response to the disease just a week ago. (Diamond, Owermohle and McGraw, 3/5)

During infectious disease outbreaks, public trust in the government and health agencies becomes critical. Officials need to convince millions of people that they are telling the whole truth, and that their guidance on what to do — and not do — should be followed. How's that going as coronavirus has begun spreading in some parts of the U.S.? (Simmons-Duffin, 3/5)

Vice President Pence on Thursday greeted Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) and other local officials with elbow bumps in lieu of handshakes as he traveled to the state to discuss its coronavirus response. The vice president stepped off Air Force Two in Tacoma, where he bumped elbows with Inslee and several members of Congress who were there to greet him. (Samuels, 3/5)

With US coronavirus cases topping 220 across 19 states and the death toll climbing to more than a dozen, state governments have asked thousands of residents to seclude themselves from the rest of the community to help contain the virus. In New York alone, more than 2,500 people were instructed to self-quarantine as health officials scour for anyone who may have been exposed to the state's first coronavirus cases. At least 22 have tested positive and are in isolation. (Maxouris, 3/6)

The steady spread of the coronavirus is disrupting basic aspects of daily life in the U.S. as health officials rush to contain the outbreak. Schools, businesses and places of worship near hotspots across the country are temporarily closing or scaling back gatherings to prevent the spread of the virus. Public events and private conferences have been canceled, and public health officials are warning against international travel. (Lane and Budryk, 3/6)

Twenty new cases of coronavirus have been confirmed in King County, Washington, health officials there said on Thursday, bringing the total to 51. "This is a critical moment in the growing outbreak of COVID-19 in King County. All King County residents should follow Public Health recommendations. Together, we may potentially impact the spread of the disease in our community," the county said. (3/5)

Just after dawn on Thursday morning, a Microsoft shuttle bus idled at its regular stop in North Seattle — but no passengers were there to board. The day went on like that: Coffee shop sales were way down. Schools were closed in one suburban area. The downtown was oddly quiet. Traffic was a breeze. People were hunkering down. A new reality has set in for the Seattle area, the first region in the United States where the authorities have issued sweeping recommendations that people stay home to slow the spread of coronavirus. (Weise and Johnson, 3/5)

The hardest day of Debbie de los Angeles’s life had been the day she put her mother into a nursing home. That was before coronavirus. As fatal infections spread through the Life Care Center in suburban Seattle, where her 85-year-old mother lived, Ms. de los Angeles had tried not to worry. Nurses were monitoring her mother’s temperature. They reassured Ms. de los Angeles that her mother had no fever, cough or other signs of infection. But at 4:15 a.m. on Tuesday, a nurse called with troubling news. Her mother, Twilla Morin, had developed a 104-degree fever. They were giving her Tylenol. Then the nurse confirmed her do-not-resuscitate orders. (Healy, Weise and Baker, 3/5)

By the time the global coronavirus outbreak arrived in New York this week, the city was armed with hundreds of hospital beds, a growing stockpile of diagnostic testing kits and enough disinfectant to wipe down the entire subway system. Mayor Bill de Blasio's vaunted health department had honed its response to the potential crisis in recent years by tamping down swine flu, Ebola and other epidemics before they could paralyze the nation's financial capital and most crowded metropolis. (Allen and Layne, 3/5)

The number of confirmed cases of the new coronavirus in New York State doubled on Thursday to 22, with officials announcing eight new cases in Westchester County, one on Long Island and two patients in New York City who are critically ill. But the virus’s potential reach was underscored by a much larger number: The city Department of Health is keeping tabs on 2,773 New Yorkers currently in home isolation, most of them in self-quarantine, city officials said on Thursday. (Paybarah and Goldstein, 3/5)

The two patients were confirmed to have the virus late Wednesday night, the officials said. One is a Manhattan man in his 40s, and the other is a Brooklyn woman in her 80s, the officials said. Mayor Bill de Blasio said the man had an underlying respiratory issue from smoking and vaping and the woman had age-related health issues. Meanwhile, a city teacher who had recently traveled to Italy and had shown symptoms of the virus tested negative, Mr. de Blasio said. (Honan, Vielkind and King, 3/5)

Officials in New Jersey announced Thursday that a second person in the state had tested positive for the new coronavirus, just one day after they said that a 32-year-old man in Fort Lee was the first in New Jersey to test positive for the virus. The announcement came as more than 150 cases of the virus were confirmed across the United States in 18 states. New Jersey’s Department of Health said it was waiting for a more detailed analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to confirm “presumptive positive results” from both tests, which were conducted in a state laboratory. (Gold, 3/5)

Maryland declared a state of emergency today as three Montgomery County residents tested positive for coronavirus, state officials said Thursday evening. The patients, who contracted the virus while traveling overseas, are in good condition and are isolated in their homes, state officials said. Two of the patients are a couple in their 70s, and the third is a single woman in her 50s. They returned to the U.S. on Feb. 20, officials said. (Goldberg, 3/5)

Gov. Larry Hogan announced Thursday night that the state’s Public Health Laboratory in East Baltimore confirmed the cases, which are all in Montgomery County. Two are a married couple in their 70s and the third is an unrelated woman in her 50s who had traveled with them. They are all in isolation in their homes. Officials did not say where they had traveled, citing privacy reasons, but said they returned Feb. 20. Health officials had been in phone contact with people returning from several heavily affected countries, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notified the state Tuesday that the three needed to be tested. All three had symptoms, which were not severe and are now abating, officials said. (Cohn and Wood, 3/6)

Sheriff’s deputies were called to a Costco in Chino Hills on Thursday when a crowd of customers became unruly after finding that items such as water, paper towels and toilet paper were out of stock, presumably because of coronavirus-inspired buying, authorities said. San Bernardino County deputies sent to the store in the 13000 block of Peyton Drive at 10:15 a.m. were told that a large group of customers had become frustrated after learning certain products were not available, department spokeswoman Cindy Bachman said. (Money, 3/5)

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) announced Thursday that health officials have confirmed the first presumptive case of the coronavirus within the state. The patient in question is considered a “presumptive” case because they tested positive in a state-administered test but have not yet received results from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (Moreno, 3/5)

The first two cases of coronavirus have been confirmed in Harris County, Texas, public health officials there said on Thursday, in a man and woman from an unincorporated area north of Houston. (3/5)

The first two cases of novel coronavirus infection have been detected in San Francisco, Mayor London Breed announced at a press conference Thursday. The two patients are being treated in isolation at separate hospitals in San Francisco, and the cases appear unrelated. (Arcuni, 3/5)

Health officials from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are now in Rhode Island to try to contain an outbreak of the coronavirus that arose from a private school’s trip to Europe during February vacation, state officials said Thursday. Five experts from the CDC’s epidemic intelligence service are “embedded” with state health officials, according to Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott, director of the state Department of Health, “building our capacity to respond to the emergency event.” (Fitzpatrick, 3/5)

The nation's capital has pop up shops for food and drink, even marijuana. And now, coronavirus prevention supplies. As local stores sell out of masks and hand sanitizer, Adilisha Patrom, owner of a co-working and event space next to Gallaudet University, saw an opportunity and jumped on it. Inside, her storefront, different models of face masks and hand sanitizer bottles in various sizes are displayed along a stack of information sheets from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On Thursday, one man stopped by, asked how much the masks cost and then left. (Khalil, 3/6)

Kaiser Health News: Blood Drives — And Donors — Fall Off As Coronavirus Worries Grow
Mounting warnings that Americans should stay home and avoid crowds to stop the spread of a deadly new coronavirus are triggering an unexpected — and potentially ominous — downside: a drop in the nation’s blood supply. Dozens of blood drives have been canceled and regular donors are no-shows, industry officials said, especially in states like Washington and California, where the virus is spreading more broadly within communities and health officials are urging residents to avoid public gatherings to reduce risk. (Aleccia, 3/6)

Health officials are preparing for the novel coronavirus' arrival in Milwaukee by making changes to the 911 dispatch system, holding meetings to hash out roles and responsibilities, and determining how to best protect both workers and residents from the virus. When the virus might come to Milwaukee is unknown, but experts speaking at public meetings Thursday said there is little doubt it will come. (Dirr and Diedrich, 3/5)

Michigan more than doubled its novel coronavirus testing capability Thursday, when a new batch of tests were received from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The added test kits will allow state health officials to test more than 300 Michiganders for COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. (Seamus, 3/5)

The epidemic of COVID-19 coronavirus infection spreading around the world can be contained and controlled, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday, but only with a concerted response by all governments. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus voiced concerns at the growing number of countries with cases, especially those with weaker health systems and called on governments to harness all ministries to tackle the virus. (Nebehay and Kelland, 3/5)

Across the West, there was a sense of déjà vu as the virus’ spread prompted scenes that already played out in Asia, with workers foregoing offices, vigorous sanitizing in public places and runs on household basics. Even the spectacle of a cruise ship ordered to stay at sea off the California coast over virus fears replicated ones weeks ago on the other side of the globe. “The Western world is now following some of China’s playbook,” said Chris Beauchamp, a market analyst at the financial firm IG. Signs of the virus’ shift away from its origins in China were becoming clearer each day. (Sedensky, 3/6)

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) today said some countries are depending on their health ministry to shoulder the battle against COVID-19 and that a whole-of-government approach is needed, as the novel coronavirus spreads to more countries and fuels hot spots across multiple continents. New cases piled up again today at a brisk pace in three hard-hit countries—Iran, Italy, and South Korea. (Schnirring, 3/5)

When the coronavirus epidemic began its relentless march around the world, China’s diplomats reacted harshly toward countries that shut their borders, canceled flights or otherwise restricted travel. Italy was overreacting when it did so, Qin Gang, a vice minister of foreign affairs, told his counterpart in February. The United States was stoking fear and panic, a spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, said. “True feeling shines through in hardship,” she said back then. (Myers, 3/6)

As new coronavirus cases track downward in China, it is looking to burnish its credentials as a responsible power by sharing expertise and equipment with countries seeing a surge in cases and to repair an international image dented by the disease. China's diplomats have fanned out to deliver a message that it can control the outbreak and to call on countries to ease travel bans on Chinese people. They have given more than 400 media interviews and published more than 300 articles, according to the foreign ministry. (Zhai and Wu, 3/6)

Ventilators in short supply. Intensive care beds already overflowing. Some health workers buying their own face masks or hoods. And if cases of the deadly coronavirus surge in anything like the numbers some experts have predicted, doctors say they would have to consider denying lifesaving care to the frailest patients to prioritize those with better chances of surviving. “If we haven’t got ventilatory support to offer them, it’s going to end in death,” said Dr. George Priestley, an intensive care doctor and anesthesiologist in Yorkshire in northern England. “I don’t want to be alarmist. I just want someone to pay attention.” (Mueller, 3/5)

It is the option that nobody in the Olympic movement wants to talk about, but it is the one staring everyone in the face: a Tokyo Games this summer with no fans, just 10,000 athletes competing in front of seas of empty seats. As the coronavirus continues to spread, with more than 3,000 deaths and 90,000 documented cases worldwide, sporting events without fans are edging toward becoming a kind of new normal. Fans were barred from attending the International Biathlon Union’s World Cup event in the Czech Republic that began on Thursday. (Futterman, Panja and Keh, 3/5)

With the number of coronavirus cases in North America expected to climb, perhaps steeply, professional and amateur sports are already weighing the pros and cons of whether games and tournaments should continue as scheduled, or whether to shut down arenas and stadiums and have teams play in front empty seats. Such “social distancing” is already being instituted in some places across Europe, Asia, and Africa for sporting events, concerts, and other public gatherings, and it’s part of the debate over whether the Tokyo Summer Olympics should take place as scheduled. (Silverman, 3/5)

Brazil has confirmed eight cases of the new coronavirus as of Thursday, including the first instances of likely local transmission, as the infectious disease spreads up the coast to tourist hotspot Rio de Janeiro and neighboring Espirito Santo state, the Health Ministry said. That is up from three cases on Wednesday. Currently, six of the cases are in Sao Paulo state, while Rio and Espirito Santo states have one case each, the ministry said. (3/5)

Japanese star swimmer Rikako Ikee, who stunned fans last year with news she was battling leukemia, has launched an urgent appeal for people to give blood after steps to curb the spread of coronavirus led to a sharp drop in donations. Ikee, who left hospital in December and has vowed to target the Paris 2024 Olympics, said on Twitter there were people whose lives depended on donations and the "drastic decrease" was causing anxiety. (3/5)

The first case of the novel coronavirus in South Africa has been diagnosed, the country's health minister announced Thursday. The patient, a 38-year-old man, is part of a group of 10 people, including the man's wife, that returned March 1 to South Africa from Italy, Dr. Zweli Mkhize said in a statement. The patient went to a general practitioner on March 3 with fever, headache, malaise, sore throat and cough, Mkhize said. A nurse took a swab, and it was delivered to a lab. (McKenzie and Adebayo, 3/5)

The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 has ballooned after emerging at the end of last year. According to World Health Organization figures, the majority of these cases are in mainland China, with Italy, Iran and South Korea emerging as the countries with the next largest number of confirmed cases. (Vinopal and McGrew, 3/5)

When Jenny Managhebi comes home to her husband and two children these days, she wonders about the people she treated at UC Davis Medical Center — the ones who coughed and the ones who sneezed. Ever since a patient with covid-19 was brought to the Sacramento hospital Feb. 19, Managhebi, who has been a cardiology nurse for 13 years, has grown concerned about catching the coronavirus, which causes the disease, and spreading it to other patients. She worries about whether she should still be volunteering in her 6-year-old’s classroom. She worries about whether she is adequately protected. (Mettler, Hernandez, Wan and Bernstein, 3/5)

In the fight against the coronavirus, nurses play a critical role, but some on the front lines in the hardest-hit areas in the United States say they fear that their health is not being made a priority. Nurses in Washington State and California said they have had to beg for N95 masks, which are thicker than surgical masks and block out much smaller particles, and have faced ridicule from colleagues when expressing concerns about catching the highly contagious virus. Some have complained about being pulled out of quarantine early to treat patients because of staff shortages. (Stockman and Baker, 3/5)

As more than 100 hospital workers remain in self-imposed quarantine in California, a proposed regulation designed to protect them from infectious diseases such as the coronavirus languishes inside a federal agency. The draft regulation would require employers to provide protective gear for health-care workers and to create infection-control plans, which could include building isolation rooms. The Obama administration was working to adopt the regulation, but the Trump administration in 2017 moved it to a less urgent, long-term agenda and work on it stopped. (Kindy, 3/5)

A quarantined nurse in a northern California facility said Thursday that they have not been tested for coronavirus due to issues with the federal government’s bureaucratic roadblocks. “As a nurse, I’m very concerned that not enough is being done to stop the spread of the coronavirus,” the nurse wrote in a statement shared by their union, the California Nurses Association. (Klar, 3/5)

As officials ramp up efforts to curtail the spread of the new coronavirus, San Francisco General Hospital’s nurses and doctors fear the overcrowded and understaffed medical center is not prepared to handle an imminent local outbreak. The public health emergency — including two confirmed cases in San Francisco — underscores the potential dire consequences of the hospital’s chronic lack of resources, city health workers said at a rally and Board of Supervisors committee hearing on Thursday. (Bauman, 3/5)

Kaiser Health News: On Front Lines, First Responders Brace For Coronavirus ― And Their Own Protection
When first responders answered roughly 10 calls from a long-term care center in Kirkland, Washington, over the course of a week, they did not expect to become patients themselves. Entering the Life Care Center of Kirkland last month exposed them to the novel coronavirus that sickens people with an illness known as COVID-19. Because the emergency calls came before authorities realized the virus was circulating in the community, some of the responders did not wear protective gear. (Heredia Rodriguez, 3/6)

The Grand Princess, which was returning to San Francisco after a two-week cruise to Hawaii, remained offshore and in limbo at the request of California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D). About 100 people were expected to be tested, among them 11 passengers and 10 crew members who have shown potential signs of covid-19, the respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus. Results were expected Friday. The fraught situation was the latest in an outbreak marked by confusion and uncertainty. As the U.S. death toll rose to 12 on Thursday and the virus spread to new states — including three cases in Montgomery County, Md. — the stock market again plunged. (Albergotti, Sampson and Dennis, 3/5)

A normal day on board the Grand Princess cruise ship might go like this: Sleep late under a “European-inspired duvet.” Take a dip in one of the pools on deck. Afternoon tea promises white tablecloths and finger sandwiches. Dinner could be lobster tails and steak on a private balcony. And all evening, there are plenty of things to do, from theater to gambling to dancing. “Expect the extraordinary,” the company says in its advertising. (Arango, Mervosh and Gross, 3/5)

First, the food buffet was shut down as gloved staff scurried about wiping every surface in sight. Then the ocean liner's gym, bar, casino and boutiques were closed, with passengers urged to keep to themselves. Finally, they were confined to their staterooms. Once the captain announced their vessel may be tainted with coronavirus, Grand Princess cruise ship guests like Kathleen Reid were left with little to do but contemplate the prospect of extended isolation at sea, or worse. (3/6)

Police began blocking access to the home of California’s first fatality attributed to the coronavirus in Rocklin on Thursday as worried neighbors stood in their yards asking for information. The 75-year-old man who died Wednesday had tested positive for COVID-19 after returning from a cruise to Mexico last month. He died a day after tests confirmed he had the coronavirus. “That’s close to home,” said one neighbor, who asked not to be identified as he stood on his lawn. “I’m in my 70s, so this is a big deal.” (Gutierrez, 3/5)

The spread of a novel coronavirus has triggered a wave of school closures around the world. But a public-health mystery over what role children may play in spreading the disease has led officials to apply the strategy unevenly—catching parents and teachers by surprise and sowing confusion about whether classrooms are safe. The school-closure strategy, part of the established arsenal for slowing epidemics, was quickly adopted in countries with major coronavirus outbreaks like China and South Korea. Other countries, including Iran, Japan and the United Arab Emirates, since followed suit. This week, Italy imposed a nationwide shutdown that impacts some 8.4 million students and Washington state closed some schools, too. (Schechner and Kostov, 3/6)

A week after Japan closed its schools in an attempt to check the spread of coronavirus, Yuko Hashimoto is still struggling to figure out child care for her three children. She and her husband each spent a day working from home, but that is not a full-time option. So on Thursday, the kids took the train across Tokyo to her mother’s house, a 90-minute journey each way. On Monday and Tuesday, Hashimoto left them lunch. The children — a ­13-year-old boy and two daughters, 11 and 9 — stayed home alone. (Denyer and Kashiwagi, 3/5)

Like many Seattle residents, Andrew Davidoff is demanding schools close to slow the country’s deadliest coronavirus outbreak, but as in other U.S. cities school officials are resisting that, saying closures could make things worse. Davidoff, a Microsoft Corp employee, has been told to work from home to slow the spread of the virus. He thinks his daughter, and other children in Lake Washington School District (LWSD) should do the same after 11 people died in the state from COVID-19. (Hay and O'Brien, 3/6)

A suburban Seattle school district launched the farthest-reaching school closures in the U.S. Thursday in an attempt to contain the coronavirus, directing more than 23,500 students to stay home for up to two weeks in a last-resort step that districts across the country are considering. (Calfas and Hobbs, 3/5)

The Sacramento City Unified School District recently sent a newsletter to families about the novel coronavirus that is spreading around the world — it’s already in Sacramento — to explain the measures the school system is taking to protect students, teachers and others. The first point of action was this: “School Nurses are advising and providing classroom lessons on handwashing and proper coughing/sneezing etiquette.” (Strauss, 3/5)

First, while global knowledge of Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, is growing every day, much remains unknown. Many cases are thought to be mild or asymptomatic, for example, making it hard to gauge how wide the virus has spread or how deadly it is. Second, much of the risk comes not from the virus itself but from how it affects the societies it hits. (Fisher, 3/5)

It has been two months since China announced a previously unknown virus had been identified as the cause of a new outbreak in the city of Wuhan. In the weeks since then, the coronavirus — now called SARS-CoV2 — has raced around the globe, igniting major outbreaks in Iran, South Korea, Italy, Japan and now, it seems, Seattle. There are still many, many questions about this virus and the disease it causes, Covid-19. But in a matter of mere weeks, a number of features of the disease have come into focus, through extraordinarily rapid sharing of research. (Branswell, 3/6)

It's been a week of dizzying coronavirus developments in the United States, with fear growing as deaths skyrocketed within days from one to 14 people nationwide. There are now 228 confirmed cases in the United States alone and that may go up as testing becomes more accessible. Here are the key things we've learned this week. (Karimi, 3/6)

The global outbreak that has sickened nearly 100,000 people across six continents may actually be fueled by two variants of the same coronavirus: one older and less aggressive and a newer version whose mutations may have made it more contagious and more deadly, according to a controversial new study. Chinese scientists who compared the genetic sequences of 103 viral samples from patients infected with COVID-19 said their evidence suggests that the virulent version of the coronavirus — which they tagged the “L-type” version — was the dominant strain in the earliest phase of the outbreak that began in Wuhan late last year. That strain, they said, appeared to recede as the epidemic progressed. (Healy, 3/5)

First, the mother and nanny were hospitalized with pneumonia, suspected of being infected with the novel coronavirus. The next day, the father fell ill with a fever and sore throat and was hospitalized too. With no one to care for him, the baby was brought to the hospital to be cared for in an isolation unit. The child — a 6-month-old boy — came to the hospital with no symptoms of COVID-19. He seemed perfectly healthy, was breathing fine and had no fever on his arrival at the hospital, medical professionals observed. (Lin, 3/5)

A World Health Organization-China Joint Mission report from last month found that kids comprised only 2.4 percent of cases, and that they generally suffered less severe respiratory symptoms than adults. Most children experienced cold-like symptoms such as a fever, runny nose and cough. Vomiting and diarrhea were extremely rare. And children are, so far, not experiencing acute respiratory distress syndrome or septic shock, which is occurring in some adults.  (McClurg, 3/5)

You’ve seen it on social media, heard it at a dinner party, and maybe you’ve even said it yourself. “The flu has killed tens of thousands more people,” the line goes. “So why is everyone freaking out about the coronavirus?” It’s a reasonable question. After all, both viruses produce similar symptoms — fever, body aches, cough, fatigue — and if you live in the United States, you are currently much more likely to catch the flu than the new coronavirus that originated in China late last year. (Netburn, 3/5)

A study involving 28 COVID-19 patients in Japan has shown that the virus's serial interval—the time between successive cases—is close to or shorter than its median incubation period, suggesting pre-symptomatic transmission may play a key role in the outbreak and case isolation alone might not be as effective as hoped. Also, a separate study today outlines how Hong Kong protected 413 healthcare workers from infection with the novel coronavirus as they cared for patients without contracting the disease. (Beusekom, 3/5)

As the novel coronavirus -- and panic about the coronavirus -- continues to spread around the world, so too are bogus claims, conspiracy theories and misinformation about the disease. There's so much inaccurate information floating around out there that the World Health Organization is calling it an "infodemic." In perhaps the clearest sign of the times, WHO has joined TikTok to help set the record straight. (Kaur, 3/5)

The spread of the new coronavirus is shining the spotlight on a little-discussed gender split: men wash their hands after using the bathroom less than women, years of research and on-the-ground observations show. Health officials around the world advise that deliberate, regular handwashing is one of the best weapons against the virus which causes a flu-like respiratory illness that can kill and has spread to around 80 countries. (3/5)

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is arming consumers with a list of disinfectants that people can use to protect themselves from the novel coronavirus. The federal agency released a five-page list of chemicals and products Thursday that it says are strong enough to ward off "harder-to-kill" viruses than SARS-CoV-2, the virus that's responsible for the disease. (Zdanowicz, 3/5)

Now that we know that it’s bad to touch our faces, how do we break a habit that most of us didn’t know we had? Throughout the day, we touch a lot of surfaces — doorknobs, elevator buttons, subway poles — where viruses, including the new coronavirus, can linger for days. From there, microbes can piggyback on our fingertips to our noses, mouths or eyes, all of which are entry portals for the coronavirus, as well as other viruses and germs. (Gross, 3/5)

Denatured alcohol can be used to strip floors and make shellac, but don’t put it in your homemade hand sanitizer to fight the COVID-19 coronavirus. The Internet has exploded with homemade sanitizer recipes as it becomes harder to find Purell and other hand sanitizer brands, even in Ohio, where there are no confirmed cases of the illness. Akron-based GOJO Industries, which makes Purell, is ramping up production to try and meet demand as people stock up ahead because of coronavirus worries. (Bamforth, 3/5)

Lisa Casanova is a microbiologist and environmental health professor who did her Ph.D. thesis on how long some coronaviruses survive on surfaces. And every workday she commutes from her southeast Atlanta home to her Georgia State University job on MARTA, touching poles and railings with no visible concern about germs that might be lurking there. She hasn’t changed her habits since the new coronavirus emerged. (Kempner, 3/6)

With talk of the coronavirus saturating the news and social media, how should parents frame discussions with their children to hit the right notes and prevent unneeded anxiety? Here are some pointers from experts on what to say to your kids about the virus (as well as what you should avoid). (Smith, 3/5)

The rapid and global spread of the deadly new coronavirus caught households, business leaders, investors and policy makers off guard, but health experts and economists who study pandemics say it shouldn’t have come as a surprise at all. Epidemics of infectious diseases have become a regular part of the global landscape in the past quarter-century, thanks in part to economic trends including urbanization, globalization and increased human consumption of animal proteins as society becomes more prosperous, these experts say. (Hilsenrath, 3/6)

Researchers at Harvard and Imperial College London estimate that, on average, only one-third of the illnesses exported from China have been observed, a calculation that is still likely to be incomplete. “It’s not accounting for those who are asymptomatic,” said James Hay, a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “The number including those without symptoms or with mild symptoms is likely to be higher than that.” The estimate is based on assessments of how many infected people traveled to other countries from Wuhan before movement was restricted. (McGinty, 3/6)

Adam Kucharski studies how diseases spread, but he’s not handling viruses in the lab or treating sick people in the hospital. He’s a mathematician at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, and he uses math to understand outbreaks of diseases like Ebola, SARS, influenza and now Covid-19. His goal is to design better ways to control outbreaks. In an eerie coincidence, he wrote a book called “The Rules of Contagion,” before the current outbreak, which has been published in Britain and will be released in September in the United States. In it he talks about the math of contagion involving not only physical diseases, but also ideas, rumors and even financial crises. (Gorman, 3/5)

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) made a startling pronouncement this week when he estimated the global mortality rate of the coronavirus to be 3.4 percent – much higher than the seasonal flu. Experts warn that the figure from WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus comes full of caveats and is likely to change as more people get tested and undergo treatment for the virus. (Weixel, 3/6)

Demand for N95 face masks—the kind that keeps out at least 95% of particles—is surging amid more U.S. coronavirus cases. But some mask manufacturers worry they could be held liable if someone gets sick anyway. The companies have been seeking for years to get Congress to pass legislation giving them immunity from liability lawsuits, including in a current bill to authorize about $8 billion to be spent on coronavirus readiness. The bill, approved Thursday, didn’t include the provision. (Burton, 3/5)

As coronavirus cases in Washington state mounted and the country’s first death was announced Saturday, health authorities scrambled to get more specialized masks for front-line clinicians who need to protect themselves from the highly contagious disease. Washington state authorities sent an urgent request for 233,000 respirators and 200,000 surgical masks to be released from the federal government’s Strategic National Stockpile. The stockpile is a repository of drugs and supplies for deployment in major public health emergencies, such as an infectious disease outbreak. (Sun and Goldstein, 3/5)

The global coronavirus outbreak may have erased $5 trillion in world stock values last week, but it is providing a windfall for Roman Zrazhevskiy and his family-owned company that makes and distributes gas masks and other protective gear. The demand for respirators, hazmat suits and other safety equipment, fueled by growing concern about a possible global COVID-19 pandemic, is dwarfing a January sales spike triggered by a U.S. air strike that killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, which prompted fears of retaliation. (3/5)

The United States is not alone in facing medical equipment shortages that make it harder to fight the epidemic —

In an open expanse of desert in Dubai, seven World Health Organization workers are racing to sort, package and send out hundreds of shipments of medical supplies to countries around the world battling a new virus that has spread fast, disrupting life for millions of people. Demand for protective medical supplies like masks, gloves and gowns is skyrocketing as the virus spreads far beyond China, where the illness originated late last year. Worldwide, some 95,000 people in about 80 countries have been infected. (3/5)

The new coronavirus knows no national borders or social boundaries. That doesn’t mean that social boundaries don’t exist. “En route to Paris,” Gwyneth Paltrow wrote on Instagram last week, beneath a shot of herself on an airplane heading to Paris Fashion Week and wearing a black face mask. “I’ve already been in this movie,” she added, referring to her role in the 2011 disease thriller “Contagion.” “Stay safe.” (Williams and Bromwich, 3/5)

Business districts around the world began to empty and stock markets tumbled on Friday as the number of coronavirus infections neared 100,000 and the economic damage wrought by the outbreak intensified. (White and Whitcomb, 3/6)

After a string of deaths, some heart-stopping plunges in the stock market and an emergency rate cut by the Federal Reserve, there is reason to be concerned about the ultimate economic impact of the coronavirus in the United States. The first place to look for answers is China, where the virus has spread most widely. The news has been grim with deaths, rolling quarantines and the economy’s seeming to flat line, though the number of new cases has begun to fall. (Goolsbee, 3/6)

Empty jumbo jets arriving at deserted airports. Masked passengers disinfecting their own seats. Stone-faced airline executives huddling with President Trump. With the coronavirus outbreak continuing to spread around the globe, the aviation industry is being jolted. Airline stocks dropped sharply on Thursday as investors reckoned with the prospect of canceled flights, lost sales and substantial reductions in service for months to come. Several carriers — including United Airlines, Jet Blue and Lufthansa — announced new route closings in recent days. An industry trade group said the coronavirus could wipe out between $63 billion and $113 billion in worldwide airline revenues this year. (Gelles and Chokshi, 3/5)

Amazon is struggling to stamp out third-party sellers charging exorbitant prices for virus-killing cleaning supplies, hand sanitizer and other products in high demand amid coronavirus fears. The company said it has removed tens of thousands of items because of unreasonably high prices and it is taking action against sellers making unsubstantiated claims. “There is no place for false claims and price gouging on Amazon,” Dharmesh Mehta, Amazon’s vice president of world-wide customer trust and partner support, said Wednesday at a consumer-protection hearing in Washington, D.C. (Terlep, 3/5)

At Facebook on Thursday, the questions from spooked employees came thick and fast. The evening before, the social network had disclosed that the coronavirus had been diagnosed in a contractor in its Seattle office and had said all employees in that city should work from home until March 31. Other Facebook employees, some of whom had recently traveled for work, soon began asking their managers and one another: Who was the contractor? Had that person been near them? And what did that mean for their work? (Isaac, Yaffe-Bellany and Weise, 3/5)

For a taste of what's in store for Americans, look to Hong Kong, where businesses have been enforcing work-from-home arrangements for six weeks due to coronavirus fears. The social experiment of teleworking en masse has unearthed pitfalls, comical moments and potential opportunities. With the virus hitting the United States and Europe, millions more will likely need to crowd into homes with children and spouses while finding a way to stay productive. (Mahtani, 3/6)

Restrictions intended to control the global outbreak of novel coronavirus continue to increase. In many countries, schools are closed, travelers face quarantine and business has ground to a halt. (Brangham, 3/5)

Kaiser Health News: With Coronavirus Lurking, Conferences Wrestle With Whether To Cancel
Nearly 100,000 pop culture fans flocked to Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle last year, including many dressed as superheroes, aliens and robots. But something scarier than a comic book villain is roiling the conference this year — the spread of the coronavirus. Ten people have died from novel coronavirus in King County, Washington, where Seattle is located, according to the Washington State Department of Health. At least 70 people have tested positive statewide. (Szabo, 3/6)

The impact of the Coronavirus hit the White House travel schedule on Thursday, as a global health care group cancelled a conference set for next week in Orlando, Florida, where President Donald Trump had been set to speak on Monday. (Dupree, 3/5)

The Democratic presidential nomination has essentially boiled down to a two-way race, and healthcare policy is a key point of contrast between former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Moderate Democrats have coalesced around Biden as the leading alternative to self-proclaimed democratic socialist Sanders, who wants to push for a single-payer healthcare system. While Sanders' Medicare for All plan has been scrutinized on debate stages, Biden's healthcare plan to strengthen the Affordable Care Act and create a public insurance option has garnered significantly less discussion so far. (Cohrs, 3/4)

Swing-seat Democrats aim to repeat 2018 success in 2020: Run on protecting and expanding the Affordable Care Act, with former Vice President Joe Biden at the top of the ticket. Both of those prospects became more clear-cut after this week, with Biden consolidating the non-Bernie Sanders vote and the Supreme Court deciding to take up a Republican challenge to the ACA, likely after the election. Biden jumped on the news, calling it a “life-and-death reminder how much is at stake” in the election. National Democrats used the court’s announcement to boost its challengers and vulnerable incumbents, noting that their top GOP Senate targets have voiced support for the lawsuit against the ACA. (Rubin, 3/6)

Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is trying to expand federal taxation on a scale not seen since World War II, pursuing policies that would end the nation’s run as one of the industrialized world’s lowest-taxed countries. Mr. Sanders’s combination of taxes on wealth, income, financial transactions, corporate profits, payrolls, estates and capital gains would hit rich Americans from every direction. If Congress were to pass all his plans, the total U.S. tax burden—including federal, state and local taxes—would resemble Canada’s or Germany’s rather than being near the bottom of the pack of rich nations. (Rubin, 3/6)

Vulnerable Senate Republicans are dodging questions about whether they support a lawsuit seeking to overturn the Affordable Care Act. The Supreme Court said this week it would take up the case, thrusting the issue to the forefront and posing a headache for Republicans in tough races this year. President Trump supports the lawsuit, which would strike down the entire health law, but ObamaCare’s popularity has risen to a record high, posing a danger for Republicans in seeking to strike it down. (Sullivan, 3/6)

Kaiser Health News: KHN’s ‘What The Health?’: A ‘Super Tuesday’ For The Health Debate?
The Super Tuesday presidential primaries have left only two major Democratic candidates standing: former Vice President Joe Biden and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Whoever prevails to face off against President Donald Trump in November will shape how the party confronts Republicans on health care. Meanwhile, Congress and the Trump administration are working to address the continuing spread of the novel coronavirus, while the Supreme Court heard its first major abortion case in four years and agreed to decide the fate — for the third time — of the Affordable Care Act. (3/5)

The Department of Veterans Affairs has for decades unlawfully turned away thousands of veterans with other-than-honorable discharges, rendering some of the most vulnerable veterans invisible and desperate for help, according to a study released Thursday. Systemic misunderstanding of the law within VA about which veterans it should care for — and which should be denied services — has triggered improper mass denial of care since 1980, the Veterans Legal Clinic at Harvard Law School said in the study, leaving an estimated 400,000 more at risk of never gaining access to health care they may have earned (Horton, 3/5)

The Trump administration's effort to track children separated from their families at the border is plagued by communication problems that raise questions about the accuracy of the data, a watchdog reported Thursday. The administration created the tracking system following its “zero tolerance” policy in 2018 where more than 2,500 children were separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border, though the watchdog has estimated that figure could be much higher. (Long, 3/5)

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is about to shake up how sexual assault and harassment charges are handled at every college campus and K-12 school. This much is clear: If your child is a victim of sexual misconduct at school, or an accused offender, administrators must soon respond to their cases in major, untested ways. That could mean a courtroom-like hearing where lawyers would cross-examine youthful witnesses and challenge their credibility, a huge shift from traditional behind-the-scenes investigations of highly sensitive and damaging allegations. (Perez and Quilantan, 3/6)

West Virginia communities seeking a $1.25 billion settlement with the opioid industry are set to go on trial against the companies in late August, a federal judge said Thursday. The Aug. 31 trial date will serve as a deadline for the proposed settlement, which would be a first of its kind deal even as opioid businesses consider settling thousands of lawsuits across the country. (Izaguirre, 3/5)

The Missouri Senate is set to debate legislation next week that would create a statewide prescription drug monitoring program, and it appears to have a better chance of finally passing, leaders said. The program is designed to stop the misuse and abuse of opioids. Missouri is the only state in the country without such a program. The measure passed through a Senate committee last week after passing the House earlier in February. (Driscoll, 3/5)

Relatives of a Vermont woman whose obituary drew national attention for its discussion of her opioid addiction filed a lawsuit Thursday in which they accuse police and jail staff of denying her proper medical care and causing her death. The family of Madelyn Linsenmeir alleges in the federal lawsuit filed in western Massachusetts that law enforcement ignored the 30-year-old mother's repeated pleas for medical help before her October 2018 death caused by an infected heart valve. (3/5)

Business groups and Kansas' Republican attorney general are pushing for a state law that could prevent cities, counties and local school districts from suing big corporations such as opioid and vaping products manufacturers. Attorney General Derek Schmidt has worried that a raft of private lawsuits complicates efforts by states to broker broad legal settlements. An arm of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce contends that trial attorneys are pushing local officials into a wave a litigation amounting to a “shakedown.” (Hanna, 3/5)

Moderate alcohol consumption is associated with reduced levels of beta amyloid, the protein that forms the brain plaques of Alzheimer’s disease, a new study suggests. Korean researchers studied 414 men and women, average age 71, who were free of dementia or alcohol-related disorders. All underwent physical exams, tests of mental acuity, and PET and M.R.I. scans. They were carefully interviewed about their drinking habits. (Bakalar, 3/5)

The health benefits of the Mediterranean diet are renowned: Lots and lots of veggies, fruit, fish and olive oil have been shown to strengthen bones, improve brain health and reduce the risk for some cancers, diabetes, high cholesterol, heart disease and stroke. (LaMotte, 3/5)

Brushing your teeth frequently may reduce your risk for diabetes, new research suggests. Using Korean government health records and self-reports, researchers gathered health and behavioral data on 188,013 men and women, average age 53, who were free from diabetes. More than 17 percent had periodontal disease. Over the course of the 10-year study, 31,545 developed diabetes. (Bakalar, 3/5)

Children with type 1 diabetes who grow up in families that are close and affectionate are more likely to flourish as adults, a new study suggests. Based on surveys of over 400 young adults who developed type 1 diabetes as children, researchers found that adult flourishing depended more on past family connectedness than on how well the diabetes was controlled in the present. (3/5)

The number of people treated with approved gene therapies and gene-modified cell therapies like CAR-T cancer treatments in the United States and Europe has reached more than 4,500, according to an estimate from the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine. The figure comes from the trade group’s 2019 annual report, released Thursday. The alliance also reported that 1,066 clinical trials for gene therapies, cell therapies, and tissue engineering products were underway at the end of 2019. (Joseph, 3/5)

When patients cannot make their own decisions about life-prolonging care, many doctors feel "moral distress" acting on the choices of surrogates like family members, a small survey suggests. Doctors most often felt ethical strain when the patient was older or the surrogate wanted more life-sustaining treatment than the doctor felt appropriate, researchers report in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. (3/5)

Kaiser Health News: Listen: How Paramedical Tattoos Provide Healing
KHN Midwest correspondent Cara Anthony appeared on Illinois Public Media’s “The 21st” with host Jenna Dooley to discuss her recent story on the rise of paramedical tattooing. Anthony profiled tattoo artist Eric Catalano who specializes in reconstructive medical tattoos in his small Illinois shop. He’s part of a burgeoning field that generally isn’t covered by medical insurance, yet is supported by the booming cosmetic and plastic surgery industries. (3/5)

Colorado lawmakers unveiled legislation on Thursday that would create a privately administered public insurance option in the individual market, but hospitals are instead pushing an alternative policy. The Colorado Hospital Association opposes the public option program, which was developed by the state government and has been pushed by Democratic Gov. Jared Polis. (Cohrs, 3/5)

Despite long odds in a session that lasts only three months, lawmakers on Thursday rolled out the newest version of their “public option” bill, saying they were not discouraged by the limited timeframe and lack of support from key Republicans and the governor. The latest iteration of the proposal to expand government-subsidized health insurance would allow businesses with 50 or fewer employees, nonprofits of any size and labor unions to join the state-operated Connecticut Partnership plan, which already is available to municipalities. (Carlesso, 3/5)

Transgender students attending public school in Virginia can expect more comprehensive safeguards against harassment from peers, teachers and administrators under a measure signed Wednesday by Gov. Ralph Northam (D). The legislation, which mirrors policies adopted by roughly a dozen other states, requires the Virginia Department of Education to develop and publish rules regulating the treatment of transgender students in elementary, middle and high schools. The guidelines will span topics including bullying, dress codes, school record-keeping and the use of bathrooms. (Natanson, 3/5)

Key Connecticut legislators are calling for an expansion of the state's gun seizure law to allow relatives and medical professionals to report someone is too dangerous to possess firearms, a proposal coming under criticism from gun rights groups. The Democratic co-chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Sen. Gary Winfield and Rep. Steve Stafstrom, have introduced a bill to revamp Connecticut's 1999 “red flag" law, which was the first in the country to allow judges to order someone's guns seized upon evidence they are a danger to themselves or others. (3/5)

The State Senate endorsed a bill Thursday letting a judge impose much longer jail time for someone who, while driving negligently, kills another after previous drunk driving convictions. The bill (SB 743) is named Tyler Shaw’s Law after the Concord man who died in a 2018 crash caused by a repeat drunk driver, Joseph Leonard, 37, of Derry. Leonard, who had two DWI convictions prior to the fatal accident, was sentenced last year to a 6- to 12-month sentence for negligent homicide. (Landrigan, 3/5)

Republican Gov. Chris Sununu said New Hampshire will join 17 other states in defending the Affordable Care Act as a case that is aimed at repealing the law goes before the U.S. Supreme Court. While he does not believe the law known as “Obamacare” has cut health care costs, Sununu told WMUR-TV that repealing the law without an “adequate replacement” would be harmful to New Hampshire residents. (3/5)

South Carolina's largest health system Prisma Health will acquire two hospital systems from Brentwood, Tenn.-based rural hospital operator LifePoint Health, the organizations said Thursday. The acquisition includes Camden, S.C-based KershawHealth and Columbia, S.C.-based Providence Health, which together encompass three hospitals, a freestanding emergency department, and other facilities. (Livingston, 3/5)

The head of Missouri’s medical marijuana program is accusing lawmakers who have questioned his job performance of doing the bidding of campaign donors. Lyndall Fraker, appointed in December 2018 to oversee the program, has faced withering questions over the last month from the House government oversight committee. They include accusations that the program’s roll out was bungled and that conflicts of interest may have tainted the application process. (Hancock, 3/5)

A small group of women at a recent City Council meeting held hands and offered hushed prayers in an otherwise silent room. Everyone was waiting for the council members to decide whether their community would become the next “sanctuary city for the unborn.” No one was trying to build an abortion clinic in the Texas community of Lindale, population 6,000. But they wanted to keep it that way. (Searcey, 3/3)

Since Iran announced its first cases of the novel coronavirus more than two weeks ago, a growing number of analysts and physicians have questioned Tehran’s death toll tallies. Others, including one of Iran’s own members of parliament, have accused the government of deliberately covering up the extent of the outbreak in the country. Despite a rising domestic and international clamor, Iran has been unwilling to quarantine high-risk areas and has yielded to its clerical establishment by not barring the public from visiting major religious sites at the epicenter of the virus. The Iranian government’s policy blunders are now responsible for Iran’s status as the main center of contamination and exporter of the coronavirus outside China. (Afkhami, 3/3)

As panicked consumers buy up hand sanitizer, masks, and other supplies in the hopes of staving off the fast-spreading coronavirus, a shadowy array of grifters and opportunists are flocking to Amazon.com and other online booksellers to capitalize on public fear, producing a steady stream of books and manuals that claim to hold the secret to surviving the outbreak. Since late January, hundreds of titles related to Covid-19 — as the disease caused by the virus is known — have come up for sale online, many of which appear to be written under false or misleading names. One series of books, which includes “Coronavirus 101: Everything You Should Know to Avoid Illness and Protect Yourself from the Wuhan 2020 Outbreak” and “Coronavirus and Face Masks: The Truth,” claim to be co-authored by a Dr. Zoe Gottlieb. (Roberts, 3/6)

[A] 30-second ad, titled “Opposite,” was shown during the Democratic primary debate in Nevada; another, “Priorities,” ran during the one in South Carolina, part of a multimillion-dollar ad campaign in early battleground states. They were promoted online, across Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter, and in paid slots on YouTube’s home page. A similar ad, in Spanish and featuring a Hispanic mother and daughter, ran on Univision and on Spanish-language websites. All this was purchased by the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future, a group formed in 2018 and funded, you will not be shocked to learn, largely by groups representing the hospital, insurance and pharmaceutical industries. “Opposite” is notionally about health care, but if the sound was turned off, you would hardly know it. There are no hospitals or patients, no sickness or injury, no healing. (Yes, there’s the doctor, but she’s alone.) It’s as if the ad knows, deep down, that presenting a rosy picture of an actual American health care access scenario would risk too many viewers erupting in laughter. (Baker, 3/4)

As the numbers of local coronavirus cases and deaths grow inexorably, Seattle-area citizens are paying the awful price of President Donald Trump’s disdain for science. Our sprawling metropolitan area has become the U.S. epicenter of this new disease, which could have been better contained had his administration not turned its back on prudent prevention and control efforts. The departure of Admiral Timothy Ziemer last May and the dissolution of his global health security team at the National Security Council by John Bolton left the Trump administration rudderless in confronting global pandemics such as the one now staring us starkly in the face. “America First!” unfortunately does not help corral viruses that can cross national borders almost as easily as the wind. The appropriate response to such global threats is inherently international. (Michael Riordan, 3/5)

Given the mounting economic risks posed by the spread of the novel coronavirus, Congress should act swiftly but thoughtfully to pass fiscal stimulus. This would be in addition to continuing to provide ample funding for medical research, testing, prevention and treatment. The stimulus’s total cost would be about $350 billion, but could be larger or smaller depending on how the economic situation unfolds. Congress should design it to be accelerated, big, comprehensive and dynamic. (Furman, 3/5)

In spring 2009, the H1N1 influenza virus surfaced in Mexico, swiftly evolving from “outbreak” to “pandemic” in just two months. As acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at the time, I led our work to issue preliminary warnings and evidence-based recommendations to help Americans reduce their risk of infection — very similar to what we’re hearing about covid-19 today. (Richard E. Besser, 3/5)

Generally, I don’t think about death during the day. My schedule is full and I focus on what is right before my eyes. It’s usually only when I go to funerals that I reflect upon deaths past, present and future; most of the time I think about life. Still, about once a month I wake in the night and know with absolute clarity that I will soon be gone. I have always felt my own finitude. My father had his first stroke at 45 and died at 54. My mother died of diabetes at 74. I am 72. I would like to attend my last grandchild’s high school graduation and meet at least one great-grandchild. However, with my family history, that is unlikely. Now, with the news filled with stories of the coronavirus, I am reminded of the many random diseases that can strike suddenly and lethally. (Mary Pipher, 3/6)

I’m a single guy, divorced, with grown kids. I’ve gotten past the initial fear of online dating — my pictures all have my ex-wife in them! I’ve also figured out my answers to big questions like “What do I say about myself?” “Do I want to try to be appealing to everybody — is Connecticut too far away for the right person? — or be more restrictive and respond only to people who seem like a good match?” I just haven’t solved the problem of finding “the one.” Sadly, online dating is not as efficient as online shopping. What looks good in the store, or online, doesn’t always fit. Now we are on the verge of a new worry in the dating world: how do we go about meeting new people, with the hope of making a connection, when social distancing is the new norm? I’m referring to the newest villain in the world of contagion: Covid-19, caused by a coronavirus. (Dan Simpson, 3/4)

My research on the long history of epidemics has taught me that when it comes to outbreaks of contagious respiratory infections, closing schools can help prevent many thousands of illnesses and deaths. Schools are community gathering places where large numbers of people are in proximity to one another and respiratory infections can easily spread among young people and adults alike. Shutting them down can be a key part of slowing the spread of easily transmissible viruses so that hospitals are not overrun with sick people, and it can help to buy time to allow for the development of antiviral medications, medical treatments or a vaccine. (Howard Markel, 3/6)

Whether we reside in Asia, the U.S., Europe or elsewhere, we humans are part of a biological ecosystem constantly under attack from infectious and mysterious agents. Today, public enemy No. 1 is the coronavirus COVID-19, which has been linked to bats in Wuhan, China. In just a few months, it has spread to over 70 countries, killing over 3,100 people and sickening more than 92,000. (Wayne Getz, 3/4)

It’s been a big week for what I refer to as “Hermit Tech.” Stock in technology companies that facilitate working from home have soared in a spiraling market otherwise anxious by an impending coronavirus pandemic. Netflix is preparing for the server strain of the bored but quarantined masses. Expensive Peloton stationary bikes and streaming workout services are seeing substantial spikes in interest. Tech guides are popping up suggesting everything from noise-canceling headphones, Wi-Fi signal boosters, and productivity hacks for families who’ll need to make close quarters work and life livable. (Charlie Warzel, 3/5)

Now that the coronavirus has become a real threat to the U.S., Michigan has to be ready for an outbreak. To help prepare for the inevitable, the state should reserve some funds in the budget to deal with the virus, should it come here.House Speaker Lee Chatfield, R-Levering, says those discussions haven’t happened yet during the ongoing budget negotiations. But they should — and quickly so that Michigan isn’t caught off guard. (3/5)

There is a strange in-betweenness to life in the nation’s coronavirus capital. Classes continue on the University of Washington’s campus, some half-empty, others completely full. I have been teaching here 13 years, and faculty members have been getting detailed, palpably anxious instructions from administrators on how to teach online and on hand-washing and social distance, and reminders that no one on our 46,000-student campus has tested positive for the coronavirus that causes Covid-19. For now. (Margaret O'Mara, 3/5)

SARS-CoV-2 — and Covid-19, the often-serious disease it can cause — has already spread to more than 80 countries. We are on the cusp of a global pandemic, and Boston has the unique biomedical environment to forge this crisis into solutions that benefit our community and the world. For physician-scientists, medical researchers, front-line clinicians, and epidemiologists in the Greater Boston area, this is not merely a call to duty. This is a historic opportunity to reimagine and revise the way we tackle future outbreaks. (Ronald B. Corley, George Q. Daley, Penny M. Heaton, Arlene H. Sharpe, and Bruce D. Walker, 3/5)

Prudently deciding that there’s just not enough hand sanitizer in the world to protect the more than 150,000 concert-goers expected, the city of Miami and the Ultra Music Festival organizers have canceled this year’s edition. Miami Mayor Francis Suarez was proactive, realizing it was foolish, to say nothing of dangerous, to host an internationally famous event in the face of the threat of coronavirus. (3/5)

If the reminder provided by the coronavirus isn’t reason enough for lawmakers to act, they should look to Maine, where a referendum to weaken that state’s strong new vaccination law went down in a landslide defeat Tuesday. It’s evidence that while anti-vaxxers might be loud, they’re not the majority. Indeed, if you went just by the people who showed up at legislative hearings or flooded the inboxes of lawmakers with angry e-mails, you’d think anti-vaccine passion was rampant. But the Maine referendum garnered the support of only 26 percent of voters. (3/5)

When the full and definitive story of the Affordable Care Act is finally written, future historians will struggle mightily to explain the Republican position — unless, that is, they are schooled in the ways and wiles of hypocrisy, gamesmanship, artifice, and revenge. Which makes it all the more fitting that the last chapter or so may tell the tale of how the GOP’s relentless and rabid assault on the law ultimately came back to bite the party in the butt. (Scot Lehigh, 3/5)

Voters on Tuesday sent several messages, including a key one about health care. Big ideas on health reform have dominated the Democratic primaries and been the focus of Congressional efforts. A “repeal and replace” effort threatened to uproot the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and turn Medicaid into lump-sum payments to states, disrupting insurance coverage for millions. Medicare for All proposals would insure nearly everyone but abolish private health insurance. Many states and the Trump administration are pursuing a lawsuit that would overturn the entire ACA, slashing public funding, while other states and candidates for president are advocating new public option insurance that could increase public funding. (Eric Schneider, 3/5)

March 2020 marks the 10th anniversary of the passage of the Affordable Care Act, also known as ObamaCare. In its first decade, ObamaCare has failed to solve many of the health care problems it was supposed to address. Even worse, it has compounded many of the issues it was meant to fix — the law of unintended consequences in action. First, then-candidate Barack Obama said his namesake act would “cut the cost of a typical family’s premiums by up to $2,500 a year.”In reality, the opposite has occurred. According to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), “premiums have doubled for individual health insurance plans since 2013, the year before many of Obamacare’s regulations and mandates took effect.” (Chris Talgo, 3/5)

When the economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton first published their research on “deaths of despair” five years ago, they focused on middle-aged whites. So many white working-class Americans in their 40s and 50s were dying of suicide, alcoholism and drug abuse that the overall mortality rate for the age group was no longer falling – a rare and shocking pattern in a modern society. (David Leonhardt and Stuart A. Thompson, 3/6)