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The Lost Summer of 2020 drew to a close Monday with many big Labor Day gatherings canceled across the U.S. and health authorities pleading with people to keep their distance from others so as not to cause another coronavirus surge like the one that followed Memorial Day. Downtown Atlanta was quiet as the 85,000 or so people who come dressed as their favorite superheroes or sci-fi characters for the annual Dragon Con convention met online instead. Huge football stadiums at places like Ohio State and the University of Texas sat empty. Many Labor Day parades marking the unofficial end of summer were called off, and masks were usually required at the few that went on. (Collins, 9/7)

Infectious-disease experts are warning of a potential cold-weather surge of coronavirus cases — a long-feared “second wave” of infections and deaths, possibly at a catastrophic scale. It could begin well before Election Day, Nov. 3, although researchers assume the crest would come weeks later, closer to when fall gives way to winter. An autumn surge in covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, would not be an October surprise: It has been hypothesized since early in the pandemic because of the patterns of other respiratory viruses. (Achenbach and Weiner, 9/5)

As the United States braces itself for a likely "second wave" of COVID-19 this fall, many experts are anticipating a spike in cases -- but some say that may not translate into an equally dramatic spike in deaths. A lot has changed since the pandemic first hit the U.S. earlier this year, when the nation's hospitals were overwhelmed with patients suffering a new, mysterious illness. Fast forward to September, and the pandemic is still surging out of control in many parts of the country, but relatively speaking, fewer patients are dying from the virus. (Von Oehsen, 9/7)

A key forecasting model often cited by experts and used by the White House has revised its prediction of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S., now estimating a peak of 410,451 by Jan. 1. The model created by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington posted an update Friday predicting an additional 224,000 Americans will die by the beginning of next year. (Moreno, 9/4)

And India overtakes Brazil to be the world's No. 2 hot spot —

India's recorded coronavirus case total has surpassed that of Brazil, making India the second worst-affected country in the world after the United States. India overtook Brazil on Monday after registering 90,802 fresh cases — the highest single-day increase any country has recorded so far during the pandemic. India's total cases are now more than 4.2 million. (Pathak, 9/7)

India overtook Brazil to become the country with the second-highest number of coronavirus cases in the world as infections continue to accelerate in this country of more than 1.3 billion people.India added 90,802 cases — a fresh global record in the pandemic — in the last 24 hours, pushing its total past 4.2 million. Only the United States, with 6.2 million cases, has recorded more. Brazil had 4.1 million cases as of Sunday evening. (Slater and Masih, 9/7)

Several drug makers developing Covid-19 vaccines plan to issue a public pledge not to seek government approval until the shots have proven to be safe and effective, an unusual joint move among rivals that comes as they work to address concerns over a rush to mass vaccination. A draft of the joint statement, still being finalized by companies including Pfizer Inc., Johnson & Johnson and Moderna Inc. and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, commits to making the safety and well-being of vaccinated people the companies’ priority. The vaccine makers would also pledge to adhere to high scientific and ethical standards in the conduct of clinical studies and in the manufacturing processes. (Loftus and Hopkins, 9/4)

In a statement, the companies pledged to “make the safety and well-being of vaccinated individuals our top priority.” The vaccine developers said they would continue to impose high ethical and scientific standards on the vaccine-testing process, and apply for government authorizations only “after demonstrating safety and efficacy through a Phase 3 clinical study.” The group of nine companies includes Moderna, AstraZeneca, and the ongoing collaboration between Pfizer and BioNTech — three of the Covid-19 vaccine efforts that have advanced into late-stage clinical trials, and whose vaccine candidates are likely to be considered for emergency approvals in the coming months. Top executives at Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Sanofi, and Novavax also signed the pledge. (Facher, 9/8)

The pharmaceutical companies are not the only ones pushing back. Senior regulators at the Food and Drug Administration have been discussing making their own joint public statement about the need to rely on proven science, according to two senior administration officials, a move that would breach their usual reticence as civil servants. (Thomas, Weiland and LaFraniere, 9/4)

Vaccine scientist Peter Hotez on Monday called a safety pledge by pharmaceutical companies for the development of a coronavirus vaccine “smart business.” “They want this vaccine to work and they want people to trust their pharmaceutical company,” Hotez, the dean of Baylor College of Medicine’s National School of Tropical Medicine, told CNN. (Budryk, 9/7)

President Donald Trump hinted Monday that the U.S. could approve a coronavirus vaccine in October, ahead of the November election, as Joe Biden demanded transparency from the government as it studies the shots. “This could’ve taken two or three years, and instead it’s going to be -- going to be done in a very short period of time,” Trump said during a news conference in which he criticized Biden for his skepticism that the FDA is operating free of political pressure. (Epstein, 9/7)

President Donald Trump used a Labor Day press conference to continue to push back on allegations he disparaged members of the military and to attack his Democratic opponents over the timing of a potential coronavirus vaccine. Speaking from the North Portico of the White House, Trump echoed many of the same themes he has raised on the campaign trail – repeatedly criticizing Democratic nominee Joe Biden and defending his record on the economy and the COVID-19 pandemic. (Fritze and Jackson, 9/7)

Biden and Harris, Trump said, "should immediately apologize for the reckless anti-vaccine rhetoric that they are talking right now, talking about endangering lives. It undermines science, and what happens is all of the sudden you'll have this incredible vaccine and because of that fake rhetoric, it's a political rhetoric ... that's all that is." The Biden campaign responded on Twitter, pointing to a MSNBC reporter who fact-checked the president's comments and pointed out that Harris was not questioning the reliability of vaccines, but rather the president's rhetoric. (Bowden, 9/7)

President Donald Trump on Monday suggested Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris is sabotaging a prospective coronavirus vaccine for political ends. He argued that his political foes are using the unprecedented rapid speed of vaccine research to attack him, creating doubts that may mean people are afraid to take it. "Okay. Let's disparage the vaccine," he said at a Labor Day press conference. "That's so bad for this country. So bad for the world to even say that." (Luthi, 9/7)

Republican President Donald Trump, accused by Joe Biden of putting lives at risk in his handling of the coronavirus, on Monday called his Democratic rival “stupid” and demanded an apology for what Trump called anti-vaccine rhetoric. Trailing in national opinion polls as the U.S. death toll from the virus approaches 190,000, Trump unleashed a broad attack against both the former vice president, his opponent in the Nov. 3 election, and Biden’s running mate, U.S. Senator Kamala Harris. (Mason, 9/7)

Also —

President Trump declared Friday that the United States is “rounding the turn” on the novel coronavirus, projecting optimism about the progress on a vaccine and the economic recovery even as health experts warn of the potential for another wave of the disease in the fall during flu season. At a news conference, Trump touted the jobs report released Friday showing that the U.S. economy added 1.4 million jobs in August and the unemployment rate dropped to 8.4 percent. He called the economic recovery “unprecedented” and described it as taking the shape of a “super V.” (Chalfant, 9/4)

Despite repeated promises to produce a healthcare plan, Donald Trump hasn’t done so and it’s hurting him in his presidential campaign against Democrat Joe Biden, polls and healthcare analysts indicate. A month ago, Trump said he planned to introduce a new healthcare plan, saying: “we're signing a health-care plan within two weeks, a full and complete health-care plan.” And he has said that several times, dating back to his plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, as he said less than a month after he was inaugurated in 2017. (Japsen, 9/6)

Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris said that President Donald Trump's word alone on any potential coronavirus vaccine is not enough. Asked by CNN's Dana Bash in a clip released Saturday whether she would get a vaccine that was approved and distributed before the election, Harris replied, "Well, I think that's going to be an issue for all of us." (Kelly, 9/5)

Harris also expressed concern that Trump has continued to contradict his own health officials amid a pandemic and suggested Friday that a vaccine would “probably” be available in October for the virus, which has killed more than 188,000 people in the U.S. as of Saturday. “If past is prologue ... they'll be muzzled. They'll be suppressed,” Harris said of health experts and scientists. “They will be sidelined because he’s looking at an election coming up in less than 60 days, and he's grasping for whatever he can get to pretend he has been a leader on this issue when he has not.” (Semones, 9/5)

Sen. Kamala D. Harris visited Milwaukee on Monday for her first in-person campaign stop since being named the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, highlighting the campaigns’ continued convergence on Wisconsin, the epicenter of ongoing protests against police violence and a state President Trump won by fewer than 30,000 votes in 2016. Hours after Vice President Pence toured an energy facility in La Crosse — and just days after Biden himself visited Kenosha and Milwaukee — Harris toured an International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers training facility and held a roundtable with Black business owners in Milwaukee. President Trump also visited Kenosha last week. (Janes, 9/7)

In other news from the Biden-Harris campaign —

Debbie George, 61, a yoga instructor in Charlotte, North Carolina, said she "desperately" wants Joe Biden to carry her battleground state and defeat President Donald Trump in the general election. But from what George, a lifelong Democrat, said she has seen so far, Biden just isn't doing enough to galvanize support among Democrats and independents to win the state. "He needs to come. He needs to address North Carolinians. Some kind of socially distanced event, a small conference or roundtable," she said. "These rehearsed speeches in front of no one are not cutting it." (Edelman, 9/7)

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden denounced the QAnon conspiracy theory as "dangerous" and "embarrassing" Friday, suggesting those that support it should seek mental health treatment. "I've been a big supporter of mental health," Biden said. "I'd recommend the people who believe it maybe should take advantage, while it still exists, of the Affordable Care Act." (Choi, 9/4)

It’s called Operation Warp Speed. And — regardless of one’s politics, one’s level of concern about Covid-19, or one’s views of therapeutics and vaccines — it inarguably ranks as one of the most ambitious scientific endeavors in modern U.S. history. Is it working? (Branswell, Herper, Facher, Silverman and Florko, 9/8)

Skepticism about getting a coronavirus vaccine has grown since earlier this summer, and most voters say if a vaccine were made available this year, their first thought would be that it was rushed through without enough testing. Just 21% of voters nationwide now say they would get a vaccine as soon as possible if one became available at no cost, down from 32% in late July. Most would consider it but would wait to see what happens to others before getting one. (de Pinto, 9/6)

A majority of voters say they expect a coronavirus vaccine will be available to the public by next year, according to a new Harvard CAPS-Harris survey released exclusively to The Hill on Friday. Sixty-three percent of respondents said they think a vaccine for the virus will be available in 2021, while 37 percent said they believed it would be available by the end of the year. (Manchester, 9/4)

Another federal official is making it clear that despite President Trump's predictions, there's hardly any chance a vaccine will be available to Americans by Election Day. "I don't know any scientist involved in this effort who thinks we will be getting shots into arms any time before Election Day," said the official, who is familiar with Operation Warp Speed, the federal government's effort to develop coronavirus vaccines. (Cohen, 9/7)

In related vaccine news —

A second U.S. government agency is now reviewing whether Moderna (MRNA) properly disclosed millions of dollars in federally funded awards in several patents and patent applications the company filed for its vaccines. The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority is reviewing contracts awarded to the vaccine maker in response to a request from an advocacy group that analyzed dozens of patent applications. To date, BARDA has awarded the company up to $955 million to develop a vaccine based on its mRNA technology that would be jointly invented by the National Institutes of Health. (Silverman, 9/4)

Australia expects to receive its first batches of a potential COVID-19 vaccine in January, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Monday, as the number of new daily infections in the country’s virus hotspot fell to a 10-week low. Morrison said his government has struck a deal with CSL Ltd to manufacture two vaccines - one developed by rival AstraZeneca and Oxford University, and another developed in CSL’s own labs with the University of Queensland. (Packham, 9/6)

U.K. health secretary Matt Hancock on Monday said a COVID-19 vaccine would “most likely” be available in the first few months of 2021, as the country recorded a sharp rise in daily coronavirus cases. Speaking on national news radio station LBC, Hancock said the government has already started production of the U.K. government’s initial order of 30 million doses of its coronavirus vaccine, which is being developed by pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca AZN, -1.07% in collaboration with the University of Oxford. (Saigol, 9/8)

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Monday that under agreements his government had struck, Australians could have 3.8 million doses of the Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccine by January or February next year. The first doses would be imported but the rest of 84.8 million shots for Australia and its regional neighbours would be produced in Melbourne. However, when that claim was put to the British Health Secretary on London talkback radio hours later, Matt Hancock maintained the UK would be ahead of Australia. (Bourke, 9/8)

On Friday, a team of Russian scientists published the first report on their Covid-19 vaccine, which had been roundly criticized because of President Vladimir Putin’s decision last month to approve it before clinical trials had proved it safe and effective. In a small group of volunteers, the scientists found that the vaccine produced a modest level of antibodies against the coronavirus, while causing only mild side effects. The research has not yet shown, however, whether people who are vaccinated are less likely to become infected than those who are not. (Zimmer, 9/4)

Results of coronavirus vaccine trials in Russia have shown an antibody response within three weeks in all participants tested, according to findings released Friday. “The vaccine is safe, well tolerated, and induces strong humoral and cellular immune responses in 100 percent of healthy participants," the researchers said of a vaccine, called Sputnik V, in a study published in the journal The Lancet on Friday. (McGorry, 9/4)

Russian authorities have singled out teachers -- as well as doctors -- as key workers who will get access to the vaccine first, even before crucial phase 3 human trials have finished. But that's not gone down well with some sections of these frontline workers who don't buy Putin's claims of the efficacy of the vaccine and are reluctant to be used as human guinea pigs. (Ullah and Chernova, 9/6)

In other news on the global vaccine race —

Chinese firm Sinovac Biotech Ltd (SVA.O) said on Monday its coronavirus vaccine candidate appeared to be safe for older people, according to preliminary results from an early to mid-stage trial, while the immune responses triggered by the vaccine were slightly weaker than younger adults. Health officials have been concerned about whether experimental vaccines could safely protect the elderly, whose immune systems usually react less robustly to vaccines, against the virus that has led to nearly 890,000 deaths worldwide. (9/7)

Several vaccines are currently in large-scale studies to see if they can prevent COVID-19, and more are on the way. President Trump has been hinting that a vaccine could be ready before the end of October, but Moncef Slaoui, chief scientific adviser to the administration's Operation Warp Speed, downplayed that possibility in an interview on NPR's All Things Considered. "There is a very, very low chance that the trials that are running as we speak could read before the end of October," Slaoui said. (Palca, 9/7)

For the past few months, Joachim Kuhn has scrambled to rework his factories and rapidly ramp up production of temperature-controlled containers — a critical but often overlooked part of the global supply chain that will be needed to deliver Covid-19 vaccines around the world. Container supplies are among the countless challenges facing companies that are part of a vast, behind-the-scenes global network planning to quickly transport huge numbers of Covid-19 vaccines. (Silverman, 9/8)

The coronavirus pandemic has prompted one of the fastest peacetime mission shifts in recent times for the world’s intelligence agencies, pitting them against one another in a new grand game of spy versus spy, according to interviews with current and former intelligence officials and others tracking the espionage efforts. (Barnes and Venutolo-Mantovani, 9/5)

Cough, fever, chills — with fall fast on the way, symptoms alone won’t be useful in distinguishing Covid-19 from similar-looking cases of the flu. That means routinely testing for both viruses will be crucial — even, perhaps, after some patients have already died. That will at least be true in New York, where officials recently announced a ramp-up in post-mortem testing for the coronavirus as well as the flu. Deaths linked to respiratory illnesses that weren’t confirmed before a person died are to be followed up with tests for both viruses within 48 hours, according to the new regulation. (Wu, 9/6)

The share of virus tests coming back positive in New York State has stayed below 1 percent for 30 straight days, suggesting that the state’s aggressive approach to containing its outbreak — once the most severe in the country — has largely worked. The state’s positivity rate, announced on Sunday, remained below 1 percent even as parts of the economy gradually reopened, the number of people being tested continued to trend upward, and other states grappled with sharply rising case counts. (9/6)

In other testing news —

Low vitamin D levels may increase risk for coronavirus, according to a retrospective study. Researchers at the University of Chicago Medicine found those who were deficient in vitamin D (< 20ng/ml) and not treated, were nearly twice as likely to test positive for COVID-19 compared to those who had sufficient levels. “The relative risk of testing positive for COVID-19 was 1.77 times greater for patients with likely deficient vitamin D status compared with patients with likely sufficient vitamin D status, a difference that was statistically significant,” the authors stated in the recently published study in JAMA Network Open. (McGorry, 9/4)

Rapid antigen tests could play a pivotal role in curbing the spread of the coronavirus, according to some of the country’s top medical professionals. Antigen tests are the type of tests the White House just ordered from Abbott Laboratories in a $750 million deal that will reportedly buy 150 million of its new rapid coronavirus tests: the BinaxNOW COVID-19 Ag Card. (Carlton, 9/5)

At the height of the coronavirus lockdown, President Donald Trump and his top health advisers trumpeted a new test that would help Americans reclaim their lives — one that would tell them if they already had the virus and were protected from getting it again. Their arrival would help “get Americans back to work” by showing those who might have “the wonderful, beautiful immunity,” said Trump, a point repeated at the daily briefings last April. (Perrone, 9/7)

In testing news from Louisiana and Oklahoma —

More than 240 of the state's nursing homes have received rapid-coronavirus testing equipment, which in time could bring testing levels up to where officials will consider loosening the restrictions that have kept most elderly and infirm residents in strict lockdown since March. The testing kits have been delivered as part of a federal program to aid in the rapid and frequent testing of nursing home residents and staff, a necessary step to stem the spread of the virus among the population in which it has proved most lethal. (Roberts, 9/4)

Most Oklahoma nursing homes will receive rapid COVID-19 testing machines this month.The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is supplying nursing homes across the country with the machines to better test staff, and in some cases, residents. The testing machines go hand-in-hand with new federal requirements requiring nursing home staffers to be tested regularly for COVID-19. Testing frequency will depend on the severity of local community spread. (Forman, 9/6)

As Oklahoma reached the six-month mark on Sunday since its first confirmed case of COVID-19, the state approached another milestone: 1 million specimens tested. Through Friday, the Oklahoma State Department of Health had reported 939,500 specimens tested, not counting antibody tests. At the current rate of testing, the total should reach 1 million by mid-week. (Casteel, 9/6)

A team of experts on food contamination says it is highly unlikely that food is a source of Covid-19 transmission. The International Commission on Microbiological Specifications for Foods (ICMSF) looked at the evidence that coronavirus might be carried on food or its packing and found very little. Their finding mirrors earlier reporting from the US Food and Drug Administration that there is no real risk of getting the virus that causes Covid-19 from food or food packaging. (Johnson and Thomas, 9/7)

Twenty-year-old Janan Moein vaped his first pen a year ago. By late fall, he was blowing through several THC-laced cartridges a week — more, he said, than most people can handle. Then in early December, he found himself in the emergency room of Sharp Grossmont Hospital in San Diego with a collapsed lung and a diagnosis of vaping-related lung illness. His hospital stay plunged him into a medically induced coma, forced him onto a breathing machine and stripped nearly 50 pounds off his 6-foot-1-inch frame in just two weeks. (Wu, 9/4)

The new coronavirus is a killer with a crowbar, breaking and entering human cells with impunity. It hitchhikes across continents carried on coughs and careless hands, driven by its own urgent necessity to survive. It has a gregarious side that makes it hard to resist. It loves a party. The persistent social climber claims its victims around the world by riding on moments of the most innocent of human interactions—a shared laugh, a conversation, an embrace. And it is a liar. SARS-CoV-2, which causes Covid-19, often misleads the body’s immune systems. (Lee Hotz and Kahn, 9/7)

In pediatric news —

Fatigue, headache and fever are the most common symptoms of coronavirus in children, with few developing a cough or losing their sense of taste or smell, researchers have found, adding to calls for age-specific symptom checklists. The NHS lists three symptoms as signs of Covid-19 in adults and children: a high temperature, a new, continuous cough, and a loss or change in the sense of smell or taste. (Davis, 9/7)

Parent and child well-being has taken a serious hit during the COVID-19 pandemic, three studies published this week in Pediatrics show. The first study consisted of collecting survey data on daily moods from 645 hourly service workers with children 2 to 7 years old in large US cities from Feb 20 to Apr 27. The researchers also analyzed data from 561 subsample survey respondents collected from Mar 23 to Apr 26. (Van Beusekom, 9/4)

Being overweight may be linked to an increased risk for dementia. British researchers used data on 6,582 men and women, age 50 and older, who were cognitively healthy at the start of the study. The analysis, in the International Journal of Epidemiology, tracked the population for an average of 11 years, recording incidents of physician-diagnosed dementia. (Bakalar, 9/3)

Living at high altitudes may be associated with giving birth to smaller babies who grow more slowly through childhood. Researchers studied 964,299 children in 59 low- and middle-income countries in Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, the Caribbean and Latin America. Among them, 106,441 lived above an altitude of 1,500 meters, or about a mile high. (Bakalar, 9/3)

It’s a question many parents of children with dwarfism have contemplated: If a medication could make them taller, would they give it to them? Now, that possibility is becoming less hypothetical. A study published this weekend in the journal The Lancet found that an experimental drug called vosoritide increased growth in children with the most common form of dwarfism to nearly the same rate as in children without the condition. (Solomon, 9/5)

Chickenpox and shingles vaccines are both highly effective, so why is the latter only available to older adults? How many young adults get shingles in the first place, and does the F.D.A. age recommendation for the Shingrix vaccine prevent them from getting it? (Szczypinski, 9/3)

For most of her 34 years, Stephanie Parker didn't recognize she had an eating disorder. At age 6, she recalls, she stopped eating and drinking at school — behavior that won her mother's praise. "It could have started sooner; I just don't have the memory," says Parker. In middle school, she ate abnormally large quantities, then starved herself again in the years after. This spring, it all came to a head: She was confined and alone in her New York City studio apartment, as COVID-19 ripped through the city. The pandemic fomented fear and, for Parker, called up past trauma and aggravated the obsessive compulsive disorder that had started to become apparent years earlier. She realized then her relationship with food was life-threatening. (Noguchi, 9/8)

Zoila fell fast for the soft-spoken day laborer, moving in with him last year just two weeks after their first date. But after El Salvador imposed a strict coronavirus lockdown, she says, the man she thought she knew became an inescapable menace. “The quarantine changed everything,” she said. (Faiola and Vanessa Herrero, 9/6)

Elizabeth Cuthrell, a Manhattan-based film producer, used to work in an ergonomic office space: comfortable desk chair, monitor at eye level, external keyboard. Then came Covid-19. During stay-at-home she worked on a laptop from a wicker chair, or sometimes on a couch with “cushions like marshmallows.” A month later she felt pain in her neck, wrist and shoulders that sent her to a chiropractor. “It’s hard to quantify, but this has been a really, really big issue for a lot of my patients,” said Karen Erickson, the chiropractor who treated Ms. Cuthrell. Chiropractors report a surge of injuries and discomfort stemming from the nationwide push to work from home, as millions of workers have spent months clacking away on sofas and beds and awkward kitchen counters. Out with ergonomics, in with hunching over laptops. (Wilser, 9/4)

No one is touching anything, and everyone is cleaning everything. Despite initial reports warning people that the novel coronavirus can be transmitted from contaminated surfaces, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has told Americans in no uncertain terms that the virus is primarily transmitted person-to-person, through breathing, speaking, shouting and singing. While it may be possible to catch the coronavirus from a doorknob or a package, it’s a long shot, and “not thought to be the main way the virus spreads,” says the agency. (It still recommends disinfecting high-touch surfaces.) Yet, six months into the pandemic, Americans seem determined to Clorox their way to absolution. They’re wiping down soccer balls, Lysoling beach chairs, touching PIN pads with “touch tools” and gloves, and cleaning bags of Tostitos with diluted bleach. (Judkis, 9/7)

As a doctoral engineering student, Kai Lui had never really thought about what the invisible spray of a human sneeze looks like. But that’s what he spends most of his time analyzing lately. Working from his apartment, he punches numbers into a program linked to a supercomputer at the University of Florida. He follows a list of equations developed by an international team of researchers, tweaking measures to simulate how saliva particles move through the air. (Reeves, 9/8)

What should I look for in a hand sanitizer? Pick one that contains mostly alcohol, and has few other ingredients. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says hand sanitizers should be at least 60% ethyl alcohol or 70% isopropyl alcohol. Other approved ingredients may include sterile distilled water, hydrogen peroxide and glycerin, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. You should avoid anything with methanol or 1-propanol, both of which can be highly toxic. The FDA also warns people to watch out for hand sanitizers packaged in food and drink containers, since accidentally ingesting them could be dangerous. (9/8)

Animals can catch the coronavirus, but that doesn’t mean you need to keep your distance from the family pet. Disease experts say the chance of your pet catching the virus from you or another pet in the neighborhood or at the park is tiny. If they do, the chance they get sick is smaller still. And the chance you catch the virus from your pet is close to zero. (Douglas, 9/7)

While violent police encounters involving Black people dominate headlines, the news is having a detrimental impact on the mental well-being of Black Americans, some experts say. In the weeks following the graphic video of George Floyd pinned under the knee of a now former Minneapolis police officer, U.S. Census Bureau data found that anxiety among Black Americans had increased by 26% and depression increased by 22%. (Shepard, 9/5)

For Lani Thomas, it was a jarring, heart-wrenching introduction to sexuality outside of society’s rigid norms. In the early hours of June 12, 2016, a gunman took the lives of 49 victims and injured more than 50 at Pulse Nightclub in Orlando. It would become one of the deadliest mass shootings in United States history — a targeted attack against the gay community during the club’s Latin Night. (Snipe, 9/8)

Facebook on Saturday blocked live broadcasts from a chronically ill bed-ridden man who appealed to French President Emmanuel Macron for a medically-assisted death and who wanted to show what he expects will be a painful end to his life after he announced that he was stopping all food and drink. Prostrate on his bed, Alain Cocq posted video of himself Friday after taking what he said would be his last liquid meal. “I know the days ahead are going to be very difficult,” he said. “But I have taken my decision and I am serene.” (Leicester, 9/5)

Kaiser Health News: Altered Mindsets: Marijuana Is Making Its Mark On Ballots In Red States 
When Tamarack Dispensary opened in the northwestern Montana city of Kalispell in 2009, medical marijuana was legal but still operating on the fringes of the conservative community. Times have changed. Owner Erin Bolster no longer receives surprised or puzzled looks when she tells people what she does. Now, her business sponsors community events and was recently nominated as a top marijuana provider by a local newspaper. “We’ve become a normal part of the community, and it feels good that the community has finally accepted us,” Bolster said. (Franz, 9/8)

In obituaries —

Ms. Smith would admit to injecting Mr. Belushi with a combination of heroin and cocaine during her interview with The Enquirer, for which she was paid $15,000. The article resulted in a renewed investigation and, in 1983, her indictment by a grand jury in Los Angeles County on one count of second-degree murder and 13 counts of administering a dangerous drug. Ms. Smith, one of pop culture’s most notorious footnotes, died on Aug. 16 in Maple Ridge, British Columbia. She was 73. (Genzlinger, 9/4)

Roughly 400,000 New Yorkers—first responders, residents, workers, students and others—were exposed to caustic dust and toxic pollutants in the 9/11 dust-and-debris cloud, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. New Yorkers who survived the attacks and the aftermath suffer from dozens of medical conditions, ranging from asthma to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and cancers. These are all dangerous underlying conditions that can make a case of Covid-19 far more serious, according to doctors at the World Trade Center Health Program at Mount Sinai, part of a federal program to track responders’ health. (Grayce West, 9/7)

Forty hours after treating her first coronavirus patient, on March 30, Angela Aston came home to her family with a cough. “Gosh, your throat is scratchy,” her husband told her. Right away she knew she had likely been infected with Covid-19. As a nurse practitioner, Ms. Aston, 50, was confident she knew how to handle her symptoms, and disappeared to her bedroom to quarantine and rest. By day 50 of her illness, that confidence had disappeared. In late May, she was still experiencing daily fevers and fatigue. She went to bed each evening worried that her breathing would deteriorate overnight. Particularly frustrating was the difficulty she felt explaining to her colleagues, friends and family that after eight weeks she was still sick. (Goldberg, 9/7)

The psychological toll inflicted by the coronavirus pandemic is finally becoming clear, as new evidence shows symptoms of depression and anxiety have surged since the outbreak disrupted American life this spring. But Black Americans, who have disproportionately suffered from COVID-19 and its economic fallout, are also shouldering an ever heavier mental health burden as a racial justice movement has ripped open centuries-old wounds of systemic oppression. (Pan, 9/7)

Many young people navigating this pandemic are asking themselves a two-part health question: What are the odds that I get infected? And if I do get infected, is that really a big deal? ... The most universal answer must begin with the observation that death is not a synonym for risk. (Thompson, 9/7)

Jails and prisons continue to be among the largest clusters of Covid-19 in the United States, and experts believe disease will continue to spread inside them and out into the surrounding community without more concerted containment efforts – chief among them, releasing people from confinement. (Glenza, 9/8)

Isolation in the pandemic is hitting elderly people especially hard, wrote Betsy Morris in a recent Wall Street Journal article. Many nursing homes and retirement communities instituted restrictions on visits and socializing in an effort to protect their vulnerable residents from the coronavirus, but loneliness and perceived isolation have also been linked to poor health outcomes. Many readers wrote in to share their own experiences with these challenges. (Sanchez, 9/7)

Kaiser Health News: Behind The Byline: ‘At Least I Got The Shot’ 
Photojournalist Heidi de Marco’s stunning images transport viewers to two California hospitals near the U.S.-Mexico border where the influx of patients with COVID-19 overwhelmed local intensive care units in late May. To capture these scenes at El Centro Regional Medical Center in Imperial County and Scripps Mercy Hospital Chula Vista in San Diego County, de Marco donned personal protective equipment and followed each facility’s safety guidelines. Still, she acknowledges, the work increased her risk of exposure to the coronavirus. She also risked bringing the virus home to her family. For her it was worth the risk, in order to give readers a window on health care in the midst of a pandemic — and to share her work with the world. (de Marco, 9/8)

Shannon Spear’s family had just finished dinner when the phone rang. It was a Friday night in March, and Spear’s school district was calling to announce that her daughter’s high school was moving to remote learning.  This was no surprise: Like other parents whose children attend the Contoocook Valley schools in New Hampshire, Spear had received dozens of emails from the district preparing families for the change. Earlier that day, teachers had even reminded Spear’s daughter to make sure that her school-issued Chromebook and charger were in her backpack before the final bell rang. (Heyward, 9/7)

Joanna Dolgoff, a pediatrician in Paulding County, Ga., cringed when she saw the photo on Facebook: a crowded high school hallway full of maskless students, an image that quickly went viral. “I was shocked at how closely the kids were packed together and that they weren’t wearing masks,” she says. Then it got worse. “I didn’t know where the photo was from,” she says. The moment she learned these students were from North Paulding High School, where some of her patients attend classes, “I got a sinking feeling in my stomach,” she says. “These are my kids. These are the patients I take care of.” (Cimons, 9/5)

The initiative is one of many ways the city and some local charter school organizations are getting creative to help students who are most at risk of falling behind during virtual learning, including those in poverty and kids who are learning English for the first time as they attend class.The community hubs, run at recreation centers around the city, somewhat resemble the privately-run "pandemic pods" that have popped up among mostly middle and upper-class families. (Hasselle, 9/7)

Kaiser Health News: With Schools Starting Online, Vaccinations Head For Recess
Dr. Chris Kjolhede is focused on the children of central New York. As co-director of school-based health centers at Bassett Healthcare Network, the pediatrician oversees about 21 school-based health clinics across the region — a poor, rural area known for manufacturing and crippled by the opioid epidemic. From ankles sprained during recess to birth control questions, the clinics serve as the primary care provider for many children both in and out of the classroom. High on the to-do list is making sure kids are up to date on required vaccinations, said Kjolhede. (Heredia Rodriguez, 9/8)

Also —

With millions of children going to school remotely this fall because of the coronavirus outbreak, the Four Seasons Resort Orlando at Walt Disney World Resort (and other hotels) is now trying to corner the very stressed-out parent market by tempting them with “schoolcation” promotions .It’s school, at a luxury resort, with Disney World in your backyard (if you can afford it). Can real school ever feel special again? “This new offering exclusively for our Resort guests will be both helpful to parents, as well as something really fun for kids to experience,” said Thomas Steinhauer, the resort’s general manager, in a press release. (Compton, 9/4)

A college professor in Argentina died on Wednesday after she struggled to breathe and collapsed during a virtual zoom lecture following a weeks-long battle with the coronavirus, according to reports. Paola de Simone, 46, taught at the Universidad Argentina de la Empresa (UADE) in Buenos Aires. She was married and had a daughter, according to Clarin, a newspaper in the country. De Simone had previously detailed her struggle with COVID-19 in a Twitter post on Aug 28, writing that her symptoms had failed to subside after four weeks. (Aaro, 9/4)

In one of the harshest punishments imposed to date against students for violations of coronavirus safety protocols, Northeastern University dismissed 11 first-year students this week and declined to refund their $36,500 tuition after they were discovered crowded into a room at a Boston hotel serving as a temporary dormitory. About 800 students are staying in two-person rooms at the hotel, the Westin, which is less than a mile from Northeastern’s Boston campus. (9/5)

In-person classes will be canceled at West Virginia University’s Morgantown campus on Tuesday, with nearly all undergraduate classes moving online on Wednesday through at least Friday, Sept. 25, according to a school news release. The only exception to online undergraduate courses is health sciences courses where students are already engaged in clinical rotation, according to the school. Online classes will continue as usual. Graduate and professional courses will continue to be offered in person. (9/7)

A cluster of Covid-19 cases has been linked to a fraternity party at the University of New Hampshire, health officials say. The state Department of Health and Human Services said Sunday that it is investigating a potential outbreak tied to a Theta Chi event last weekend. University officials said more than 100 people, including students, attended the August 29 party and few wore masks. (Kaur, 9/7)

Active coronavirus cases in the Kansas State University area spiked more than 400% since classes resumed in mid-August. Active Riley County, Kansas cases increased from 125 on Aug. 17 — the first day of classes — to 679 as of Friday, The Manhattan Mercury reported Sunday. (9/7)

When University of Pittsburgh senior Stana Topich returned to campus in early August amid the coronavirus pandemic, it wasn’t to the 19-story freshman dorms where she had expected to close out her college experience as a resident assistant (RA). Instead, she moved into the Residence Inn Pittsburgh Oakland/University Place, a newly renovated three-star hotel with an indoor pool and stylish suites. Along with two nearby hotels, the property is exclusively hosting Pitt students this semester, with masks required and capacity limitations in place. The school says it’s working with area hotels to “de-densify” campus housing and help reserve some dorms for quarantining and testing. The hotel housing comes at no extra cost to students, the University of Pittsburgh told The Washington Post. (McMahon, 9/4)

The debate rages over whether to send college students home —

Frightened students quarantined in dormitories or locked down in hotels. Instant suspensions for not social distancing. Regular tests of residence hall sewage. American colleges are a mess right now. And public health experts and school administrators are still deciding whether the best strategy is to forge ahead with in-person instruction, send kids home with a Zoom syllabus and risk spreading the virus, or shelter them in place. The last option could be a potentially miserable experience for a teen riding out the pandemic alone in a dorm with ramen noodles and Pop-Tarts. (Goldberg and Ehley, 9/5)

As colleges deal with coronavirus concerns, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warned parents [last] week to keep kids who contract COVID-19 at school, and not let them convalesce at home. "It's the worst thing you could do," Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said during an interview on NBC’s "TODAY" show Wednesday. "When you send them home, particularly when you're dealing with a university where people come from multiple different locations, you could be seeding the different places with infection.” (McGorry, 9/4)

The top-seeded women's doubles team has been pulled from competition at the U.S. Open after one of the players came in contact with a third player who tested positive for COVID-19, tournament organizers announced Saturday. The U.S.Tennis Association said in a statement that Kristina Mladenovic of France was identified as having "prolonged close contact" and must be quarantined. (Hoyos, 9/5)

Spectators will be allowed at the French Open this month despite the growing number of coronavirus cases in the country, organizers said on Monday. They unveiled the health protocols for the clay-court grand slam, which will take place at Roland Garros in western Paris from Sept. 27 after being postponed from its May start due to the pandemic. (9/7)

President Donald Trump believes the Big Ten is getting closer to a return to football. But Michigan and Michigan State might not be part of it, and he blamed a familiar face: Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, along with governors from Illinois and Maryland. He tweeted Sunday morning: "Big Ten Football is looking really good, but may lose Michigan, Illinois, and Maryland because of those Governors’ ridiculous lack of interest or political support. They will play without them?" (Marlowe Alter, 9/6)

The moment could have prompted Los Angeles Clippers forward Paul George to explain a recent shooting slump with conventional reasons. George could have contended he took quality shots that just did not drop into the basket. He could have credited the Dallas Mavericks’ swarming defenses. He could have admitted feeling additional pressure of competing in a playoff game. Instead, George offered the real reason that showed his courage and vulnerability with discussing a sensitive topic."I underestimated mental health," George said. "I had anxiety. A little bit of depression. Us being locked in here, I just wasn’t there. I just checked out." (Medina, 9/7)

Last summer while out on a bike ride, 35-year-old Andrew Bernstein of Boulder, Colo., was hit by a van that knocked him off the road and kept on going. A passing driver spotted Bernstein lying, unmoving, in a ditch and called 911. Bernstein’s injuries were life threatening. After multiple surgeries, 10 weeks recovering in the hospital and more than three weeks in inpatient rehab, Bernstein has spent the better part of every week since then working with a number of practitioners to help him progress to where he is today — in a wheelchair and walking with the assistance of a full-length leg brace and crutches. (Loudin, 9/7)

In recreational news —

Theme park operators who spent months installing hand sanitizing stations, figuring out how to disinfect roller coasters seats and checking the temperatures of guests at their gates so they’d come back in the midst of the pandemic are finding many reluctant to return. Some parks have reduced operating days, slashed ticket prices, and closed early for the year because of lower-than-hoped attendance — expectations weren’t high to begin with — along with the uncertainty of what’s to come with the coronavirus. A few parks have been unable to open their gates at all because of state and local health restrictions. (Seewer, 9/7)

The Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved a new drug from Blueprint Medicines for patients with lung cancer driven by a rare gene mutation. The Blueprint drug, a once-daily pill called Gavreto, is the second treatment approved to treat lung tumors that harbor alterations to a gene called RET. In May, Eli Lilly won approval for a similar drug called Retevmo. (Feuerstein, 9/5)

In November 2014, a little less than six years ago, Chinese scientist Jingwu Zang set up his own drug company, Third Venture Biopharma. The former head of China R&D for GlaxoSmithKline wanted to develop innovative biologics that can treat various cancers and autoimmune diseases. (Chan, 9/4)

In other pharmaceutical and tech news —

The giant blood plasma processing company Grifols on Monday said it has agreed to buy Alkahest, a Silicon Valley startup founded by Genentech alums that’s betting that proteins in plasma can fight diseases including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. The planned acquisition is primed to bring new resources and recognition to the quixotic, often controversial search for an elixir for diseases associated with aging. (Robbins, 9/7)

Tech's biggest, richest companies have proved powerless to help stop or stem the pandemic — largely because the companies' own products have destabilized the public sphere. The big picture: When the greatest public health disaster of our lifetimes hit, the industry, despite earnest efforts, found that the information environment it had shaped via the internet and social media was profoundly vulnerable to misinformation, partisan division, ignorance and fraud. (Rosenberg, 9/8)

Dr. Janice Bacon was exactly the person Kay McField hoped to talk to when she found herself spending most of her days in bed, feeling too depressed to get up as the coronavirus pandemic threatened those around her. As she watched those closest to her test positive for the virus — a goddaughter and her uncle, whom she cares for, among them — McField said she was terrified that she or her daughter, who both suffer from autoimmune diseases, would fall ill. When she wasn’t in bed, the 51-year-old single mother was cleaning her house compulsively. (Willingham, 9/7)

The medical mistakes that befell the 87-year-old mother of a North Carolina pharmacist should not happen to anyone, and my hope is that this column will keep you and your loved ones from experiencing similar, all-too-common mishaps. As the pharmacist, Kim H. DeRhodes of Charlotte, N.C., recalled, it all began when her mother went to the emergency room two weeks after a fall because she had lingering pain in her back and buttocks. Told she had sciatica, the elderly woman was prescribed prednisone and a muscle relaxant. Three days later, she became delirious, returned to the E.R., was admitted to the hospital, and was discharged two days later when her drug-induced delirium resolved. (Brody, 9/7)

In other health industry news —

State inspectors fanned out across Georgia this summer to conduct federally-required checks of infection-control protocols at every nursing home, reporting few problems. But when August arrived, the numbers told a different story: It was the worst month yet for COVID-19 deaths and infections at Georgia’s facilities caring for vulnerable seniors. (Teegardin, 9/4)

The vast majority of Department of Veterans Affairs clinics across the state will remain closed to face-to-face visits until there is a significant downward trend in the number of coronavirus infections, VA officials said Friday.Department Secretary Robert Wilkie, in Atlanta to tour the Atlanta VA Health Care Center in Decatur and get updates on its COVID-19 response, pointed out that VA doctors in the region have completed more than 20,000 telehealth appointments a month during the pandemic. (Quinn, 9/4)

Kaiser Health News: ‘An Arm And A Leg’: She Tangled With Health Insurers For 25 Years — And Loved It 
Barbara Faubion’s boss, an insurance broker, used to tell clients: “Listen, you don’t need to be on the phone for four hours with Blue Cross Blue Shield. Let us do that. I have a person.” Faubion was that person. And she got up every day psyched to go to work, which she said puzzled her friends. “They’d go, ‘You love your job?!? You spend your whole day talking to an insurance company. Are you kidding me?’” (Weissmann, 9/8)

In obituaries —

Dr. Seymour Schwartz, an eminent surgeon and prolific polymath who was the founding editor of the 1,800-page surgery textbook, first published in 1969, that became a bible for medical students, died on Aug. 28 in St. Louis. He was 92. Dr. Schwartz died at the home of his son Dr. David Schwartz, whom he was visiting, according to another son, Richard Schwartz. He lived in Pittsford, N.Y., near Rochester, and had been affiliated with the University of Rochester since 1950. (Roberts, 9/3)

Susana de Sant’Anna hasn’t been able to take a full breath of air since about June 2015.That was when she was hospitalized in San Francisco with severe sepsis, complicated by Lemierre’s syndrome – a rare infectious disease - and an abscess of the left lung. She underwent two lung surgeries, and in the two years it took her to recover, she burned through all her savings and became homeless. Sant’Anna has spent the last five years bouncing between shelters, transitional housing and friends’ couches. Now, with wildfire smoke choking the city, fog for weeks on end and the lingering threat of a virus that affects the lungs, she spends her days hiding in a hotel room paid for by donations that she stretches by cutting back on food, knowing that just one breath of the smoky air outside could set her recovery back. (Ho, 9/7)

About 50 hikers spent a second night at a wilderness resort near Fresno, Calif., on Monday with all escape routes cut off by the growing Creek Fire in the Sierra National Forest, “an unprecedented disaster” that ravaged the state over the holiday weekend and nearly doubled in size on Monday alone, fire officials said. Fresno Fire Battalion Chief Tony Escobedo initially said in a news conference late Monday that one person had died in the fire, but the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office later clarified that an older man died due to a “medical episode” after EMS were unable to respond due to the fire conditions. (Bella, 9/8)

New wildfires ravaged bone-dry California during a scorching Labor Day weekend that saw a dramatic airlift of more than 200 people trapped by flames and ended with the state’s largest utility turning off power to 172,000 customers to try to prevent its power lines and other equipment from sparking more fires. California is heading into what traditionally is the teeth of the wildfire season, and already it has set a record with 2 million acres burned this year. The previous record was set just two years ago and included the deadliest wildfire in state history — the Camp Fire that swept through the community of Paradise and killed 85 people. (Jose Sanchez and Weber, 9/8)

As California endures one of its worst wildfire seasons ever, a new rash of fires stoked by extreme heat has destroyed homes, cloaked much of the state in smoke, forced thousands of people to evacuate and threatened another round of rolling blackouts. One of the fires, a 7,000-acre blaze in San Bernardino County erupted after a family set off a “smoke-generating pyrotechnic device” to announce their baby’s sex. (Healy, Taylor and Penn, 9/7)

In other California updates —

The San Francisco Public Health Department has issued a new health order letting nursing home residents receive visitors outdoors — a victory for hundreds of people like Teresa Palmer, who hasn’t seen her 103-year-old mother since March and feared she would never see her in person again. The city changed its policy Friday, a day after The Chronicle contacted the health department with questions about its months-long ban on such visits, one of the strictest visitation orders in the state. (Ravani, 9/4)

More than 320 coronavirus cases associated with day care facilities have been confirmed in the Bay Area, according to Sept. 3 data from the California Department of Social Services. More than 6,000 day care providers are open in the region, meaning that on average, there have been about five cases reported for every 100 facilities.But major unknowns remain. Because the state data do not indicate exactly how many children and staff are associated with each day care facility, there appears to be no way to calculate the rate of coronavirus transmission. Without that figure, it is impossible to compare the risk in a child care facility with the overall rate of transmission. (Kramer, 9/5)

Gov. Brian Kemp wants to block Georgians’ access to the Affordable Care Act health insurance exchange, instead directing them to buy insurance on the private market where he says they will have more options. Advocacy groups, though, contend the move could result in perhaps 60,000 people going without health insurance, while others may wind up with policies that won’t cover health needs. ...Georgia currently has nearly the highest rate of uninsured people of any state, tied with Oklahoma for second-worst, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. (Hart, 9/4)

The case is emblematic of the difficulties families can face when something goes wrong in a senior care home in Georgia and they feel they aren’t getting straight answers. While DCH talks and meets regularly with the industry it regulates, it has a reputation for being less than forthcoming with affected family members and the general public. (Schrade, 9/4)

More than 300 Georgia companies scrambled to produce or resell life-protecting equipment during the coronavirus pandemic, according to the Georgia Department of Economic Development. Nearly six months in, some are still at it, pumping out items such as masks, face shields and bottles of hand sanitizer, but not, apparently, crucial government-certified N95 masks or ventilators. (Kempner, 9/4)

In news from Florida —

With his pink button-down shirt and jeans, Johnny’s outfit seems to blend with the rest of the passersby on Washington Avenue in South Beach. But a closer look illustrates the contrast that exists in South Florida’s commercial hubs: Johnny’s clothes are worn out and he carries all of his belongings in an overflowing carriage latched to a bicycle. For the past 20 years, he has lived on the streets where others shop, eat and transit. When the coronavirus pandemic hit, people were told to stay home and to practice personal hygiene. These guides were manageable for those with roofs over their heads, but for Johnny and the almost 4,000 individuals who make up Miami-Dade’s homeless population, protecting themselves from COVID-19 suddenly became another daunting task. (Luisa Paul, 9/5)

For months, protesters and advocates have made the argument that police officers shouldn’t be handling calls involving mental health issues on their own. City Council member John Dingfelder has been listening. Last week, at the city’s first public budget hearing, Dingfelder, a citywide member, proposed that the city funnel $1 million to efforts to bolster and, perhaps, supplant police response to people in mental distress. (Frago, 9/8)

Florida reported 1,838 new cases of COVID-19 on Monday, the lowest single-day number of new infections reported by state health officials since June 15. But health officials across the state were waiting to see if the Labor Day weekend might produce an uptick in the number of coronavirus cases, as might have been the case following the Fourth of July holiday — when the largest single-day surge in new cases was reported about a week later.To date, the state has recorded more than 648,200 cases of COVID-19. (9/7)

In news from Hawaii, Montana and Michigan —

The public health leadership in Hawaii appears to be in turmoil amid the coronavirus pandemic after the state’s embattled epidemiologist was placed on paid leave Friday. Earlier in the week, Bruce Anderson, director of the state Health Department, announced he was stepping down, and Dr. Emily Roberson, who only recently was appointed to lead Hawaii’s contact tracing operation, requested to be placed on leave, the Star Advertiser of Honolulu reported. (Calicchio, 9/5)

Millennium Health reported a 34% increase in urine samples that tested positive for methamphetamine after President Donald Trump declared a national state of emergency on March 13. The company compared results from Jan. 1 through March 12 against the results from March 13 through May 31. The findings were included in a report the company published in July showing increased illicit drug use nationwide in the early weeks of the pandemic. (Tollefson, 9/7)

People who advocate for returning citizens say the pandemic is exacerbating the many challenges to reentry after prison. When it comes to getting an ID, advocates say the process is slowed down, by months in some instances, because Secretary of State branches are open by appointment only. It's a problem that the Department of Corrections says it is addressing through a program it's rolling out across the state later this month that will ensure that people walk out of prison with an ID or a driver's license. (Jackson, 9/7)

In news from Texas and West Virginia —

Foster children have contracted the novel coronavirus at nearly double the rate of Texas’ general population, according to testimony Friday in a federal lawsuit. In the seven days before Aug. 28, the rate by which the 10,300 children in the state’s “permanent managing conservatorship” tested positive for COVID-19 was 20%, compared with just 12% among all Texans, said a filing by court-appointed monitors late Thursday. (Garrett, 9/4)

A guy walks into a bar, which still isn’t allowed in Texas. But Jeff Brightwell owns this bar. Two months into an indefinite shutdown, he’s just checking on the place — the tables six feet apart, the “Covid 19 House Rules” sign instructing drinkers not to mingle. All the safeguards that didn’t keep the doors open because Dot’s Hop House & Cocktail Courtyard is a bar under Texas law. And bars, in a pandemic? “Really not good,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s infectious disease expert, told Congress in June. (Weber, 9/6)

A COVID-19 outbreak that killed five people at a Monroe County nursing home has stabilized, although several residents and staff members are still infected, the Bluefield Daily Telegraph reported on Sunday. The outbreak began with three positive cases reported on Aug. 18 at the Springfield Center, a skilled-nursing facility in Lindside. (9/7)

More states are encouraging residents to get a flu shot —

With a black suit jacket shrugged off her left shoulder, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer didn't flinch while getting a flu vaccination on live television last week. "Literally the easiest thing I will do today," said Gov. Whitmer, who called the press conference to underscore preparations for this coming flu season. "Preventing the flu will help us save lives and preserve the health care resources we need to continue fighting Covid-19," she said. "It's more important than ever." (Smith, 9/8)

Flu season is just around the corner. With the coronavirus pandemic still present in our daily lives, it is perhaps more important than ever to get the flu shot, both for your own health and for the health of all Mainers. There are still unknowns as to how the annual flu will interact with the coronavirus. That has public health professionals concerned not only about the strain on Maine’s health care system from a confluence of the flu and a pandemic, but also about the potential to have both at the same time. (Schipani, 9/8)

China announced Friday that it will require travelers taking direct flights to the country from the U.S. to test negative for the coronavirus within 3 days of their trip. China’s embassy in the U.S. said in a statement that those traveling to China from the U.S. and any passenger transiting from a country that Beijing has designated as requiring the screening must provide negative results from a COVID-19 nucleic-acid test conducted within 72 hours of boarding a flight at their last layover destination. The rules will take effect on Sept. 15. (Axelrod, 9/5)

Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Tuesday praised China’s role in battling the coronavirus pandemic and expressed support for the World Health Organization, in a repudiation of U.S. criticism and a bid to rally domestic support for Communist Party leadership. Xi told a televised assembly at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing that China’s battle against COVID-19 demonstrated the strengths of its socialist system and traditional Chinese culture in stirring motivation, building consensus and pooling resources. (9/8)

Hong Kong will expand the size of public gatherings to four people and re-open more sports venues from Friday as the Asian financial hub relaxes strict curbs against a third wave of the coronavirus. The measures come as new daily cases have dropped into the single digits from three figures. Last week gyms and massage parlours re-opened and night-time dining hours were extended. (9/8)

In other global news —

The U.K. on Monday recorded nearly 3,000 new coronavirus cases for the second day running and unveiled a new “islands policy” that will require anyone returning to England from seven Greek islands, including Crete. Mykonos and Santorini, to self-isolate for 14 days. According to the Department of Health and Social Care, the U.K. reported 2,948 daily new coronavirus Monday, down from the previous day’s number of 2,988, which had been the highest since May. (Pylas, 9/7)

Ángela López hardly fits the profile of a rule-breaker. But the mother of a 7-year-old girl with respiratory problems has found herself among parents ready to challenge Spanish authorities on a blanket order to return to school. They are wary of safety measures they see as ill-funded as a new wave of coronavirus infections sweeps the country. They fear sick students could infect relatives who are at higher risk of falling ill from COVID-19. And they claim that they have invested in computers and better network connections to prepare for online lessons, even preparing to homeschool their children if necessary. (Puig, 9/8)

Dr. Ahmed el-Rabii spent years treating Palestinians wounded by Israeli fire during wars and clashes in the Gaza Strip. Now that the coronavirus has reached the blockaded territory, the 37-year-old physician finds himself in the unfamiliar role of patient. El-Rabii is the first Gaza doctor diagnosed with COVID-19 and is among dozens of health-care workers infected during the local outbreak, which was detected late last month. The spread among front-line workers has further strained an already overburdened health-care system.Speaking from one of the two hospitals designated to treat coronavirus cases, el-Rabii said the threat in many ways is more terrifying than war. (Akram, 9/8)

Suellen de Souza could no longer endure the confinement. After six months of precautions, the Brazilian nursing technician decided that Sunday would be her first day at the beach since the pandemic began.“This week it was very hot ... the truth is I really wanted to come” to the beach, said the 21-year-old at Rio de Janeiro’s Ipanema beach, which is technically still closed to sun-bathers though few respect the prohibition and authorities seldom enforce it. (De Sousa, 9/6)

Scott Atlas is the newest member of the White House senior staff. Appointed barely a month ago, he’s undergoing a public hazing. His brief as a special adviser to President Trump, he tells me in an interview by Zoom, is to “advise the president on integrating the science and developing a policy for how we deal with the coronavirus pandemic.” Still living out of “multiple suitcases” in a Washington hotel, he was paid a mighty Beltway compliment this week when two national newspapers ran hit pieces on him. (Tunku Varadarajan, 9/4)

In January, when covid-19 seemed like a distant threat, I had a patient with the flu. The infection hit her hard; she had to be put on a ventilator and was given intravenous steroids. I took care of her during her long hospital stay after she was released from intensive care. Each day, the resident physicians and I would ask her: “Any thought about getting the vaccines we discussed?”Every day, the answer was the same: No. We told her that we got the flu shot every year, that her recent illness would have been prevented by the vaccine, that her asthma and other medical problems put her at risk for serious complications from another bout of influenza. It didn’t matter. “I don’t trust shots,” she told us. (Erin N. Marcus, 9/4)

Sen. Kamala Harris suggested Saturday that she might refuse a vaccination for Covid-19 because “I would not trust Donald Trump.” My father, 96, feels the same way about Gerald Ford. “No way,” he says when I tell him I hope he gets the new shot as soon as it’s available. “I got the swine flu vaccine in 1976. I was in bed for three days, and my memory hasn’t been the same since.” That fiasco has fueled many anti-vaxxers since. More than 40 million people received a rushed, flawed vaccine against a virus that never emerged, and at least 500 cases of the paralyzing Guillain-Barré syndrome were linked to it, along with thousands of cases of other unreported symptoms like my father’s. (Marc Siegel, 9/7)

Jose Velasquez, a 79-year-old father from Bexar County, Texas, tested positive for the coronavirus on March 26 and died on April 17. During those weeks, the staff at the nursing home where he lived assured his family that he showed no symptoms of Covid-19 and, according to a lawsuit filed by his children, failed to ensure that he received proper medical care. The staff did not transfer him to a hospital as he deteriorated or even warn his family that he was sick, according to the suit. Mr. Velasquez’s family says that just hours before he died, the staff at the home reported he was “doing fine.”The facility had a bad safety record, according to the lawsuit, was chronically understaffed, had received citations for failing to carry out basic infection-control programs and, in the months after the coronavirus erupted, its operators did not heed state guidelines for keeping the virus in check. (9/5)

All of the fears I nurtured in 2016 about Donald Trump’s unfitness for the presidency, and the dangers of putting him in the White House for the sake of judicial appointments or tax cuts or any other policy goal, have seemingly been vindicated so far in 2020. Combine Trump’s conduct throughout the Covid-19 pandemic — the month of denial, the veering messaging and policy, the rage-tweeting, the shrugging surrender to a summer spike — with the growing toll of American dead, and you have the strongest case for NeverTrumpism, distilled: Never mind his policy positions, never mind the perils of liberalism; the risk of a once-in-a-century catastrophe with this guy in charge is just too high.It’s precisely when events seems to vindicate your deepest anxieties, though, that you should be careful about your conclusions. (Ross Douthat, 9/5)

Gov. DeSantis choked up during a press conference last week. He took a time-out — several seconds of silence in front of the media, to compose himself before continuing to discuss his order to allow family members back in to the nursing homes and assisted living facilities where their loved ones have been isolated … since March. The sight was, at once, heart-warming and heart-rending. We have no idea what exactly rendered him speechless that day, but it was a display of empathy that has been missing for far too long from his handling, and mishandling, of the coronavirus pandemic in Florida. (9/7)

The nation has learned a lot of new words and phrases this year. Coronavirus. Contact tracing. Social distancing. Mask up. And, of course, essential workers, who have taught America just how much we depend on one another to conduct our daily lives. And, often, how much we take for granted the work of others. (9/7)

As a physician and former U.S. congressman whose committee had oversight of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health, I have been asked questions about COVID-19 public policy. I am not an infectious disease specialist or epidemiologist. However, I have studied this pandemic closely. It is a tragedy. To date it has worldwide caused 25 million known cases and about 1 million deaths, of which about 180,000 are U.S. deaths. Had this pandemic been contained by earlier isolation steps in China and had knowledge of human-to-human transmission been shared by the World Health Organization, there is no question there would have been fewer deaths. (Greg Ganske, 9/6)

Accidents happen. Nonetheless, there is a desire to ascribe blame or fault. It has been asserted, in the absence of evidence, that the COVID-19 Pandemic will open the floodgates for COVID-19 related lawsuits against businesses. As a result, companies will hesitate to re-open. Senate Bill 4317, one of several pandemic-related proposals Senate Republicans introduced on July 27, 2020, co-sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), provides what is tantamount to absolute immunity from COVID-19 related lawsuits under the pretense of precluding unsubstantiated COVID-19 claims and protecting health care professionals. (Brian Marks, 9/7)

If you liked 2018’s Proposition 8, which put tens of thousands of medically vulnerable Californians in the middle of a multimillion-dollar battle between dialysis clinics and the union that wants to organize them, then you’ll love this year’s Proposition 23. The statewide initiative reprises the same dreary contest in slightly different form, forcing voters to weigh in twice on a matter that shouldn’t have been put to them once. While the earlier initiative would have capped dialysis clinics’ profits, the key provision of Prop. 23 would require them to have a physician on site during treatment hours. Despite the superficial appeal of the idea, putting voters in charge of specialized medical staffing doesn’t make much more sense than asking them to micromanage the clinics’ finances. But sense is not really the point so much as dollars. (9/5)

The Missouri attorney general’s office has once again hitched the state to an extremist partisan endeavor with other red states, this time in defense of President Donald Trump’s right to lie to America about election security. Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt and his counterparts from three other Republican-run states have banded together to back the administration’s push to prevent social-media flagging of Trump’s false claims about voter fraud. This comes after Schmitt continued his predecessor’s involvement of Missouri in a federal lawsuit seeking to kill the Affordable Care Act, endangering the medical coverage of potentially a million Missourians with preexisting medical conditions (9/5).

Overwhelmingly, those facing mental health crises don’t need handcuffs. They need help. Yet, more than 2 million people with mental illness are booked into jails each year. Data also shows a troubling correlation between calls to 911 related to mental health crises and the incidence of excessive force. With our nation still in the throes of a long and overdue national conversation about systemic racism and the impact of policing on communities of color, it is critical that we find new ways to address individuals in crisis. This urgency is underscored by the approaching “second pandemic” of mental health crisis that the novel coronavirus has caused because of social isolation, economic disruption and traumatic stress. (Tom Hucker, 9/4)

With students starting to return to classrooms across the country as COVID-19 infection rates shrink, parents, teachers and the public as a whole are watching anxiously. There already have been some worrisome stories about kids who crowded in hallways or on bus lines, infections that cropped up within days and campuses that closed again as a result.But it’s hard to know what all this means. Were people catching the virus from one another at school, or were these cases from the community at large? Does an outbreak of positive test results at school then translate into people becoming seriously ill and maybe even dying, or are outbreaks almost entirely benign? These are valid questions in uncertain times. The biggest concern of all, though, is that helpful answers might not be forthcoming. (9/8)

As the school year begins, we find ourselves in a complicated, difficult situation. We want to safeguard our kids and communities, and we don’t want to harm teachers or create vectors of infection. At the same time, we know schools are important not only for learning, but also for providing stability, safety, mentoring, food and child care. Our challenge is to find ways to make school as safe as possible in the era of COVID-19. Where can schools look to find an example of how to open in a safe and balanced manner? Summer camps can provide important lessons to aid our return to school. (Steve Baskin, 9/7)

Coronavirus data has flooded our world for six months. The public is scared. At the same time, physicians continue to work every day and many do not seem frightened at all. Physicians, including me, are most concerned about patients who avoid needed care and fear medical settings, which are actually safe. Physicians know something the public does not. How? (Thomas W. Lagrelius, 9/7)

It’s back-to-school time again in California. This year, of course, looks so much different from any previous one I’ve experienced during my 37-year career as a school custodian. The vast majority of our students are learning from home and most of their teachers and instructional assistants are working from home as well. But that doesn’t mean our campuses are quiet.At most any school site in California, you’ll find the informational technology staff prepping laptops and programming systems for learning remotely and office staff registering and keeping track of students every day to make sure they are engaged in distance learning. (Ben Valdepena, 9/7)

To say that autumn 2020 may bring surprises is the classic understatement. Can you imagine a year ago seeing a September when kids are in front of a screen at home instead of in a classroom at school? Or an October when talk about college football playoffs isn’t beginning to percolate? Or a Halloween when … well, you get the point. Talk about surprises! Even a couple weeks ago, I could not imagine autumn of this year without kids and families being supported by Congress and yet, unless the U.S. Senate and U.S. House get down to serious business, the secondary impacts of COVID-19 are going to devastate – and that verb is not hyperbolic – Kentucky’s children. Whether it’s child care or K-12 education, a stable place to live or food to eat, real economic supports or broader health care needs, kids are being forgotten as this next round of a Congressional response to the pandemic rolls ahead. (Terry Brooks, 9/3)

Since the onset of the pandemic, more than 1.5 billion children worldwide are isolated in their homes with digital devices for companionship and connection. Traffickers are moving from the street to the smartphone to seek opportunity for exploitation of vulnerabilities. In the first month of the COVID-19 shutdown, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reported a threefold increase in reports of online exploitation and abuse, soaring from 300,000 reports to more than 1.1 million, with more than 70% of those reports coming from social media messaging. (Jessica Peck, 9/6)

Countries contemplating giving the green light to heritable genome editing received specific guidance from an international commission this week on how to prepare for a future in which the technology is safe and effective enough to use in human reproduction. The commission was created in response to the news almost two years ago that a scientist in China had edited the genomes of two babies when they were single-cell embryos. (It subsequently emerged that a third baby with an edited genome had been born.) (Josephine Johnston, 9/4)

So why have she (Maggie Kuhn) and the Panthers been mostly forgotten? In part, it’s because Kuhn was such a charismatic leader that once she died, the organization began to drift. In the decades since, there’s been a shift away from activism on the part of older people and toward more institutionalized forms of political power; these, in turn, have certainly seen some success. Starting in the 1980s, the American Association of Retired Persons expanded and built up its lobbying activities. Now called simply AARP, it focuses almost exclusively on issues affecting older people, like ageism and preserving their safety net. Its magazine combats stereotypes but emphasizes self-actualization, not activism, a safer and often more comfortable message. It does not seek to unite old and young in the name of broader social justice efforts. Today we’re seeing the limitations of that narrower agenda. (Susan J. Douglas, 9/8)

If you’re a man thinking about ordering that second beer or glass of wine with your pizza, the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) recommends you reconsider. This group of nanny-state bureaucrats has suddenly decreed that the definition of what constitutes “moderate” alcohol consumption for both men and women should top out at one drink per day, a rather extreme conclusion. (Gerard Scimeca, 9/7)

Health care conferences like the North American Cystic Fibrosis Conference are as much professional events and critical evaluators of progress as they are times to connect with old friends and make new ones. Almost universally, they are missing one thing: patients. Health care conferences without patients are like birthday parties without the birthday girl or graduation parties without the graduates. (Gunnar Esiason and Emma D'Agostino, 9/8)

Healthcare IT teams raced to provide telehealth, remote care, predictive analytics and other tools to help monitor patients and manage what remains a public health emergency in the U.S. The pandemic continues to place demands on healthcare organizations that innovative IT teams are trying to meet.The last thing IT leaders need right now is another disruption, but that is what they face with a looming federal policy deadline. (Andrew Tomlinson, 9/2)

Despite population increases, the arrival of new obstetrician-gynecologists has remained flat since 1980, worsening “maternity deserts” and health provider shortage areas. Now, at least nine counties have no OB/GYN doctors at all and 19 other counties have five or fewer. A critical shortfall of obstetrical care is projected in less than five years.Fortunately, our state’s cadre of well-trained midwives is ready to step up. A bill I co-wrote with my Los Angeles colleagues, Sen. Holly Mitchell and Assemblymember Autumn Burke, would allow midwives to practice with more independence, freeing them to attend routine cases now requiring the supervision of a sometimes-elusive doctor. (Bill Dodd, 9/4)