First Edition: April 2, 2020

Kaiser Health News: California Hospitals Face Surge With Proven Fixes And Some Hail Marys
California’s hospitals thought they were ready for the next big disaster. They’ve retrofitted their buildings to withstand a major earthquake and  whisked patients out of danger during deadly wildfires. They’ve kept patients alive with backup generators amid sweeping power shutoffs and trained their staff to thwart would-be shooters. (Hart and Barry-Jester, 4/1)

The Wall Street Journal: Affordable Care Act Sign-Ups Total 11.4 Million For This Year
About 11.4 million consumers signed up for health coverage on the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges in the 50 states and Washington, D.C., this year, according to data released Wednesday by the Trump administration, marking the third straight year sign-ups have remained steady. Among consumers in the 38 states that use the HealthCare.gov platform, the average monthly premium before subsidies was $595 in the 2020 open enrollment period, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. (Armour, 4/1)

Politico: Trump Hints At Using Federal Programs To Provide Coverage After Obamacare Decision
President Donald Trump said he is considering using federal programs like Medicare and Medicaid to cover the rising ranks of the uninsured after his administration decided it would not reopen the Obamacare insurance markets to address the coronaivrus crisis. Both Trump and Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday were very vague about any forthcoming proposals that would flesh out their promise that people wouldn’t have to worry about the costs of treating the coronavirus. But at the daily White House task force briefing, they indicated they were looking at some version of Medicaid and Medicare to fill in at least some cost gaps. (Luthi, 4/1)

The Washington Post: U.S. Coronavirus Deaths Surge Past 4,600 As Officials Start To Compare Struggle With Italy?S Outbreak
Coronavirus deaths in the United States passed 4,600 Wednesday as Vice President Pence issued an ominous warning that America’s situation is most comparable to Italy’s struggle with the virus, which has pushed that nation’s hospitals to capacity and has left more than 13,000 people dead despite a weeks-long lockdown. The prediction was among a fresh batch of reminders that as the United States makes its agonizing march toward the peak of the covid-19 pandemic, each day will bring more suffering than the last. (Zapotosky, Miroff and Duncan, 4/1)

The Associated Press: New York State’s Virus Deaths Jump To More Than 1,900
Coronavirus deaths soared. New York City playgrounds were targeted for shutdown to help slow an outbreak projected to grow worse for another month. Overtaxed hospitals began transferring patients north of the city. And residents near one struggling hospital have become all too used to ambulance sirens. “It’s very eerie. I think everyone’s just doing what they can, but at the same time it bothers you. Especially if you’re around Elmhurst because you can hear all the ambulances,” said Emma Sorza, near Elmhurst Hospital in Queens. (Bumsted, Villeneuve and Hill, 4/2)

The Washington Post: New York’s Scramble To Brace For Peak Crisis A Siren For The Rest Of U.S.
The Empire State Building blinked red this week as New York became the central terrain in the international battle against the coronavirus — a siren not just for battered Manhattan but for state and local authorities across the country racing to avoid a similar fate. New cases this week drove the state’s total above 75,000, surpassing China’s Hubei province, where the virus emerged in December. (Buarino and Stanley-Becker, 4/1)

The New York Times: City Deploys 45 Mobile Morgues As Virus Deaths Strain Funeral Homes
New York City has already set up 45 new mobile morgues. Local crematories are now allowed to work around the clock. At one Brooklyn hospital, the in-house morgue was filled to capacity on Tuesday. The next day, the nursing staff ran out of body bags. As the coronavirus epidemic enters its second month, the casualties in New York are starting to severely tax the city’s ability to accommodate its dead. With more than 1,000 deaths so far and thousands more projected, city officials are working hard to stave off an emergency. In the past few days, the city’s medical examiner’s office has taken over the collection of bodies, dispatching the fleet of new refrigerated trailers to hospitals in all five boroughs, some of whose morgues have already filled up. (Feuer and Salcedo, 4/2)

The New York Times: 12 Fraught Hours With E.M.T.S In A City Under Siege
“Back up, sir!” shouted Kenny Kiefer, a Fire Department battalion chief, his N95 mask muffling his words. “What?” replied the frail older man leaning out the doorway of a shelter and addiction treatment center, who had called 911 because he was having trouble breathing. Smiling timidly, he began to venture down the stairs. Alarmed, Chief Kiefer stepped back and thrust out his palm. “Stay right there!” (Hoffman, 4/1)

The New York Times: A Month Of Coronavirus In New York City: See The Hardest Hit Areas
The coronavirus has ravaged all of New York City, closing schools, emptying streets and turning stadiums into makeshift hospitals. But data made public by city health officials on Wednesday suggests it is hitting low-income neighborhoods the hardest. (Buchanan, Patel, Rosenthal and Singhvi, 4/1)

ProPublica: New York Wants Health Workers To Join The Fight Against COVID-19. Will It Pick Up Their Medical Bills If They Get Sick?
As patients infected with the novel coronavirus begin to overwhelm hospitals in parts of the country, and more medical staff become ill, states are asking retirees, recent medical school graduates and other health professionals to step into the breach. New York City, the current epicenter of the pandemic with more than 44,915 cases, is recruiting medical volunteers with exhortations that recall World War I and World War II-era posters, “We want you for medical work now.” (Campbell and Buford, 4/1)

The New York Times: Coronavirus In Florida: Governor Finally Orders Residents To Stay Home
Florida’s coronavirus cases kept ballooning, especially in the dense neighborhoods of Miami and Fort Lauderdale. Hospitals in Fort Myers and Naples begged for donations of masks and other protective equipment. Young people started to die. And still, Gov. Ron DeSantis resisted. The man entrusted with keeping many of the country’s grandparents safe did not want to dictate that all Floridians had to stay at home. What it took for Mr. DeSantis to change his mind on Wednesday and finally issue a statewide order were a phone call with President Trump and a grave reckoning. A day earlier, the White House had projected how many American lives might be lost — up to 240,000 — without a national commitment to immediate, drastic action in every state. (Mazzei and Haberman, 4/1)

Reuters: Most Americans Huddle Indoors As Coronavirus Deaths Keep Spiking
Four new states imposed sweeping stay-at-home directives on Wednesday in response to the coronavirus pandemic, putting over 80% of Americans under lockdown as the number of deaths in the United States nearly doubled in three days. The governors of Florida, Georgia, Mississippi and Nevada each instituted the strict policies on a day when the death toll from COVID-19 shot up by 925 to more than 4,800 nationwide, with 214,000 confirmed cases, according to a Reuters tally. (Whitcomb, 4/1)

The Washington Post: Social Distancing For Coronavirus Is Flattening The Curve, California And Washington Data Show
Mandatory social distancing works. The earlier the better, preliminary data from two weeks of stay-at-home orders in California and Washington show. Those states were the first to report community cases of covid-19 and also the first in the nation to mandate residents stay at home to keep physically apart. Analyses from academics and federal and local officials indicate those moves bought those communities precious time — and also may have “flattened the curve” of infections for the long haul. (Fowler, Kelly and Albergotti, 4/1)

The New York Times: U.S. And Europe: How Do The Outbreak Patterns Compare?
The United States now leads the world by many measures of the coronavirus outbreak, whether it’s a dubious distinction like the largest number of confirmed cases or a more positive one, like total coronavirus tests. But the United States is one of the most populous nations in the world. It might lead these measures simply because of its size, not because there’s anything unique about its coronavirus outbreak or response. (Cohn, 4/2)

The Wall Street Journal: Democrats Push To Address Infrastructure In Fourth Coronavirus Stimulus Package
House Democratic leaders said they would push for a five-year $760 billion infrastructure plan that they unveiled earlier this year to be part of the next coronavirus stimulus package, saying that a broad plan would provide jobs and spur economic activity. That figure is in line with President Trump’s $2 trillion plan for a 10-year infrastructure bill, Democrats said, because they also want to give more funding to public housing and schools. President Trump hasn’t released a written infrastructure plan, though he has consistently called for widespread funding to rebuild the nation’s highways and airports. He reiterated that call on Wednesday at his daily press conference. (Andrews, 4/1)

The Washington Post: Pelosi Should ‘Stand Down’ On Passing Another Rescue Bill In House, McConnell Says
One week after the Senate unanimously passed a $2 trillion emergency relief bill aimed at limiting the financial trauma from the coronavirus pandemic, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said he would move slowly on considering any follow-up legislation and would ignore the latest efforts by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to jump-start talks. (Costa, 4/1)

The Wall Street Journal: Another 3.1 Million Americans Likely Sought Unemployment Benefits Last Week
More Americans are expected to have filed for unemployment benefits in the past two weeks than in the prior six months, marking a drastic downshift in the U.S. labor market caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal expect about 3.1 million Americans filed for jobless benefits last week after a record 3.3 million sought benefits two weeks ago as the U.S. shut down parts of the economy in an effort to contain the virus. Jobless claims, a proxy for layoffs, provide temporary financial assistance for workers who lose their jobs. (Chaney and Morath, 4/2)

Los Angeles Times: Coronavirus Recession Now Expected To Be Deeper And Longer
As projections of the coronavirus death toll soar, forecasts for the ensuing economic carnage have also quickly turned much darker — both for the depth and duration of the damage. Where only days ago, economists were following President Trump’s lead in saying the U.S. economy would be back on track relatively quickly, a growing number now say the downturn will probably exceed the Great Recession of 2008-09. (Lee, 4/1)

Politico: Behind The Scenes, Kushner Takes Charge Of Coronavirus Response
Dozens of Trump administration officials have trooped to the White House podium over the last two months to brief the public on their effort to combat coronavirus, but one person who hasn’t — Jared Kushner — has emerged as perhaps the most pivotal figure in the national fight against the fast-growing pandemic. What started two-and-a-half weeks ago as an effort to utilize the private sector to fix early testing failures has become an all-encompassing portfolio for Kushner, who, alongside a kitchen cabinet of outside experts including his former roommate and a suite of McKinsey consultants, has taken charge of the most important challenges facing the federal government: Expanding test access, ramping up industry production of needed medical supplies, and figuring out how to get those supplies to key locations. (Cancryn and Diamond, 4/1)

The New York Times: Alarm, Denial, Blame: The Pro-Trump Media’s Coronavirus Distortion
On Feb. 27, two days after the first reported case of the coronavirus spreading inside a community in the United States, Candace Owens was underwhelmed. “Now we’re all going to die from Coronavirus,” she wrote sarcastically to her two million Twitter followers, blaming a “doomsday cult” of liberal paranoia for the growing anxiety over the outbreak. One month later, on the day the United States reached the grim milestone of having more documented coronavirus cases than anywhere in the world, Ms. Owens — a conservative commentator whom President Trump has called “a real star” — was back at it, offering what she said was “a little perspective” on the 1,000 American deaths so far. (Peters, 4/1)

CNN: As Tragic Toll From Virus Rises, So Do Questions About Trump’s Leadership 
President Donald Trump’s White House appears powerless to halt an increasingly tragic trajectory in the coronavirus pandemic as the death toll climbed by nearly 1,000 on a single, dark day. Vice President Mike Pence warned in a CNN interview that the most comparable example for what is to come is Italy, which has endured weeks of misery as the previous epicenter of the global crisis. (Collinson, 4/2)

The Hill: Trump Resists Pressure To Declare Nationwide Stay-At-Home Order 
President Trump is holding back on declaring a nationwide stay-at-home order, even as some governors resist imposing restrictions that Trump’s top public health officials say are needed to slow the spread of the coronavirus. The president has been reluctant to wade into matters he argues are better left to governors. But the pressure is growing for Trump to be decisive as Republican-led states like Texas, Iowa and Missouri are among the final holdouts to issue stay-at-home directives. (Samuels, 4/1)

The Washington Post: Fact-Checking President Trump’s Marathon News Conference
At a marathon news conference on March 31, President Trump acknowledged the death toll in the United States from the coronavirus outbreak could be staggering, with best-case scenario estimates ranging from 100,000 to 200,000. The message marked a sharp break from his many weeks of dismissing the seriousness of the outbreak in the United States. Still, even if his tone was more sober, the president continued to play fast and loose with the facts. Here’s a sampling from the nearly 13,000 words spoken by the president. (Kessler and Rizzo, 4/2)

The New York Times: After Threats, Anthony Fauci To Receive Enhanced Personal Security
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s leading expert on infectious diseases, who has become a regular at President Trump’s coronavirus briefings, will receive enhanced personal security after receiving threats following his repeated pleas for Americans to help slow the spread of the deadly pandemic, officials said on Wednesday. Dr. Fauci has been the Trump administration’s most outspoken advocate of social distancing rules that have shuttered the nation’s schools, forced businesses to close, kept people in their homes and battered the United States economy. (Benner and Shear, 4/1)

The New York Times: A Ventilator Stockpile, With One Hitch: Thousands Do Not Work
President Trump has repeatedly assured Americans that the federal government is holding 10,000 ventilators in reserve to ship to the hardest-hit hospitals around the nation as they struggle to keep the most critically ill patients alive. But what federal officials have neglected to mention is that an additional 2,109 lifesaving devices are unavailable after the contract to maintain the government’s stockpile lapsed late last summer, and a contracting dispute meant that a new firm did not begin its work until late January. By then, the coronavirus crisis was already underway. (Sanger, Kanno-Youngs and Kulish, 4/1)

The Associated Press: Can You Fix Ventilators? A Fuel Cell Engineer Figures It Out
It was late when engineer Joe Tavi’s boss called with an odd question: Could their company, which makes fuel cells, learn how to fix a ventilator?California had a bunch of broken ones, and the governor had asked if San Jose-based Bloom Energy could repair them so coronavirus patients could breathe. Tavi, an engineer who grew up taking apart the family vacuum cleaner to see if he could put it back together, said he would sleep on it. (Beam, 4/2)

Stat: System To Allocate Ventilators Gains Traction For Not Counting Any Group Out
Bracing for a surge of Covid-19 patients and facing shortages of the resources necessary to keep the sickest patients alive, hospitals and governments are grappling with the reality of having to answer an unimaginable question: If ventilators and intensive care unit beds must be rationed, who should get them? Several states have already issued guidance recommending that hospitals exclude certain patient groups from such care, such as those with late-stage cancer or Alzheimer’s disease — and in doing so, sparked a storm of criticism, as well as federal civil rights investigations. Professional societies and academic bioethicists are also putting forward alternative ethical guidelines. One, in particular, is gaining traction. (Thielking, 4/2)

The New York Times: Should Doctors Have The Right To Withhold Care From The Sickest Coronavirus Patients?
One patient had lymphoma and heart failure. Another was 85 years old with metastatic cancer. A third was 83 and had dementia and lung disease. All were critically ill with the coronavirus, and, a doctor said, all were hooked up to ventilators in recent weeks at a major Manhattan hospital. But soon, patients such as those might not receive similar aggressive treatment. As people with the virus overwhelm New York City hospitals, doctors have stepped up pressure on state health officials to give them a rare and unsettling power: the right to withhold care from patients who are not likely to recover. (Goldstein, Rothfeld and Weiser, 4/1)

The Associated Press: Call For Virus Volunteers Yields Army Of Health Care Workers
The work is exhausting and dangerous, the situation bleak. But an army of health care workers heeded New York’s call for help reinforcing hospitals overwhelmed by the coronavirus pandemic. So far, at least 82,000 people have volunteered for the state’s reserve force of medical workers — a group that includes recent retirees returning to work, health care professionals who can take a break from their regular jobs and people between gigs, according to health officials. (Neumeister and Villeneuve, 4/2)

The New York Times: How U.S. Coronavirus Diagnoses Are Lagging Behind The Outbreak
When there were just over a dozen official recorded cases of the new coronavirus in America, at least 50 people who later tested positive were already feeling ill. By the time 50 cases were officially confirmed, at least 1,200 people had already started showing symptoms of Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus. This new picture of the U.S. coronavirus outbreak is based on data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that estimates the date on which people who were later tested and confirmed positive for Covid-19 said they first started to experience symptoms. (Popovich, 4/1)

The Hill: Fauci: Improved Testing And Tracing Can Help Reopen Country 
Dr. Anthony Fauci said Wednesday that improved coronavirus testing and tracing of infected people’s contacts will help the country eventually be able to ease up on measures such as stay-at-home orders. Fauci, a top official at the National Institutes of Health, said during a White House briefing that he would like to see enough capacity to test a wide range of people and the ability to determine who those that test positive have been in contact with. (Sullivan, 4/1)

The Washington Post: The Scramble For The Rapid Coronavirus Tests Everybody Wants
As Abbott Laboratories began shipping its new rapid-response tests across the country Wednesday, a new flash point emerged in the nation’s handling of the pandemic: where to deploy the covid-19 diagnostics that could be one of the most effective tools in combating the outbreak. Some White House officials want to ship many of the tests, which were approved Friday and can deliver results in five to 13 minutes, to areas where there are fewer cases, such as rural states and parts of the South. (Mufson, Eilperin and Dawsey, 4/1)

The Wall Street Journal: Coronavirus Tests Aren’t Hard To Find Everywhere
While many Americans with coronavirus symptoms struggle to get tested due to restrictive criteria and limited availability, June Bivins found it surprisingly simple. “Easier than getting a regular doctor’s appointment,” Ms. Bivins said of her experience getting tested last week in Roseville, Calif. The 60-year-old software sales rep visited a drive-through testing site that was part of a program run by the nearby University of California, Davis, School of Medicine. (Paul and Lazo, 4/1)

The Wall Street Journal: Some Nations Look To Mass Testing For Faster Way Out Of Coronavirus Crisis
Some Western governments are turning to mass testing for the new coronavirus, hoping that quickly isolating more new carriers could halt its spread and allow the gradual reopening of stores, offices and factories. With the economic cost of lockdowns rising and only faint signs of a slowdown in infections, officials and scientists in Europe, following the example of South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan, are advocating the new approach. (Pancevski, 4/1)

The Wall Street Journal: Japan, Bucking Consensus, Says Limited Coronavirus Testing Is Enough
At a time when the World Health Organization and many countries are pushing to “test, test, test” to help stop the coronavirus pandemic, Japan is swimming against the tide. The country is limiting tests for the new coronavirus to the most vulnerable and at-risk people, reasoning that this provides a good-enough picture of how the disease is progressing. Japan’s testing frequency stands at less than 6% of widely praised aggressive screeners such as Singapore and South Korea—yet it has yet to experience the explosive rise in cases that is supposed to result from limited testing. (Dvorak and Inada, 4/2)

Stat: New Digital Tools Could Speed Up Covid-19 Contact Tracing 
Every strategy for releasing Covid-19’s vise-grip on daily life starts with identifying cases and tracing their contacts — the laborious task of public health workers tracking down people who have crossed paths with a newly diagnosed patient, so they can be quarantined well before they show symptoms. That typically takes three days per new case, an insurmountable hurdle in the U.S., with its low numbers of public health workers and tens of thousands of new cases every day. Existing digital tools, however, using cellphone location data and an app for self-reporting positive test results, could make the impossible possible, the authors of a new analysis argue. (Begley, 4/2)

ProPublica: What We Need To Understand About Asymptomatic Carriers If We’re Going To Beat Coronavirus
In the early days of the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S., around the last week of February, I joked to a colleague that maybe now, finally, people would learn how to wash their hands properly. My remark revealed a naive assumption I had at the time, which was that all we needed to do to keep the novel coronavirus contained was follow a few simple guidelines: stay home when symptomatic and maintain good personal hygiene. The problem, I thought, was that nobody was following the rules. (Chen, 4/2)

The New York Times: Malaria Drug Helps Coronavirus Patients Improve, In Small Study
The malaria drug hydroxychloroquine helped to speed the recovery of a small number of patients who were mildly ill from the coronavirus, doctors in China reported this week. Cough, fever and pneumonia went away faster, and the disease seemed less likely to turn severe in people who received hydroxychloroquine than in a comparison group not given the drug. The authors of the report said that the medication was promising, but that more research was needed to clarify how it might work in treating coronavirus disease and to determine the best way to use it. (Grady, 4/1)

Stat: Will Bayh-Dole Be Needed To Get Affordable Covid-19 Treatments? 
As the Covid-19 pandemic strains the capacity of the U.S. health care system, attention is being focused on developing new drugs and therapies to fight it. Pharmaceutical company Moderna, for example, began clinical trials in Seattle for a new vaccine, providing welcome news to many. But what few Americans realize is just how much of their taxpayer dollars went into the development of these drugs long before Covid-19 emerged. (Mathur, 4/2)

The Associated Press: Nursing Home Infections, Deaths Surge Amid Lockdown Measures
Nursing homes across the country have been in lockdown for weeks under federal orders to protect their frail, elderly residents from coronavirus, but a wave of deadly outbreaks nearly every day since suggests that the measures including a ban on visits and daily health screenings of staffers either came too late or were not rigorous enough. Recent outbreaks in Tennessee, New Jersey, Ohio, West Virginia and Maryland have pushed the death toll at the nation’s nursing homes to at least 450 and highlight the biggest gap: Screenings of doctors, nurses, aides and other workers do not involve actual testing but the taking of temperatures or asking health questions that still allow infected, asymptomatic people to slip through. (Mustian, Condon and Choi, 4/2)

The New York Times: Biden Calls For Democratic Convention To Be Delayed Because Of Virus
Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Wednesday night called for moving the Democratic National Convention from mid-July to August, making him the most prominent member of his party to say the convention must be rescheduled because of the coronavirus outbreak. “I doubt whether the Democratic convention is going to be able to be held in mid-July, early July,” Mr. Biden told Jimmy Fallon on “The Tonight Show.” “I think it’s going to have to move into August.” (Epstein, 4/2)

Politico: Coronavirus Puts Governors Back In Presidential Pipeline
Andrew Cuomo’s poll ratings are soaring. Jay Inslee is drawing more attention than his failed presidential campaign ever did. Gretchen Whitmer is burnishing her credentials as a possible running mate for Joe Biden. The daily split screen between President Donald Trump and the nation’s governors over the coronavirus pandemic is advancing the political fortunes of a handful of Democratic state leaders, by contrasting their management of a crisis with the president’s disjointed response to it. (Siders, 4/2)

The New York Times: Home Depot Halts Sales Of N95 Masks Amid Shortage, Company Says
Home Depot has ordered all 2,300 of its stores in North America to stop sales of N95 masks to try to free them up for those on the front lines of the coronavirus emergency response, the company said on Wednesday. The announcement came on the same day that President Trump said that the federal government’s stockpile of personal protective equipment had nearly been depleted by the states. (Vigdor, 4/1)

The Associated Press: Los Angeles Mayor Tells 4 Million To Wear Masks
The mayor of Los Angeles urged 4 million residents to wear masks to combat the coronavirus when they walk out in public, even as state health officials shied away from requiring a coverup. Homemade cloth masks, or even a “tucked-in bandanna,” will help reduce the spread of the COVID-19 virus in the nation’s second-largest city and remind people to practice safe social distancing, Mayor Eric Garcetti said Wednesday as he donned a black cloth mask to make his point. (Jablon, 4/2)

Politico: Trump Suggests Wearing A Scarf Against Coronavirus. The CDC Isn’t So Sure.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday recommended wearing a scarf over the face to prevent the spread of coronavirus, even though the efficacy of such a measure remains unknown. Trump was asked during his daily news briefing whether he felt the public should be wearing masks when protective gear was in short supply for health care workers. The president responded that it wouldn’t hurt for the public to wear masks, but that scarves could be a perfectly suitable substitute if the wearing of masks en masse took them away from health care workers. (Choi, 4/1)

The New York Times: Coronavirus In L.A. County: Can Hospitals Handle A Surge Of Cases?
One is a top-ranked research hospital in West Los Angeles, with buildings named after Steven Spielberg and Barbra Streisand. Its hallways are hung with works by Picasso, Miro and Warhol, part of a 4,000-piece collection of donated art. Hollywood celebrities and royalty vie to recover in its first-come, first-served luxury suites. The other is a community hospital in South Los Angeles, surrounded by fast-food chains, liquor stores and discount shops. It, too, is a state-of-the-art institution, albeit one with far more limited resources, serving one of Los Angeles’s most vulnerable communities, home to the working poor and the uninsured as well as homeless tent encampments, where a significant portion of the population has underlying chronic health conditions. (Becker and Arango, 4/1)

Los Angeles Times: California Coronavirus Cases Closing In On 10,000
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti on Wednesday advised the Department of Water and Power to shut off utilities to nonessential businesses violating the city’s order to close, he said at an evening news conference. The mayor’s order follows a crackdown from city prosecutors targeting businesses that have been deemed nonessential and yet have remained open for business and given more opportunities for the coronavirus to spread in Southern California. (Fry, Vives, Luna and Lin, 4/1)

Politico: D.C. Leaders Fear An Outbreak That Cripples The Country
Imagine New York City now, except with hundreds of thousands of federal workers tasked with running the nation’s response to coronavirus living there. That’s where government officials and health experts across the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area fear the region is heading. The pandemic has gone easier on the capital than some other major metro areas, but it is about to hit hard, they say. And the scenario could have dangerous repercussions for the country, stifling the national response by federal employees on the front lines of fighting the virus. (Cadelago and McCaskill, 4/1)

The New York Times: 44 Texas Students Have Coronavirus After Spring Break Trip
Two weeks ago, amid the coronavirus pandemic, about 70 students from the University of Texas at Austin partied in Mexico on spring break. The students, all in their 20s, flew on a chartered plane to Cabo San Lucas, and some returned on separate commercial flights to Texas. Now, 44 of them have tested positive for the virus and are self-isolating. More students were monitored and tested on Wednesday, university officials said, after 28 initial positive tests. (Montgomery and Fernandez, 4/1)

The New York Times: About 2 Million Guns Were Sold In The U.S. As Virus Fears Spread
Americans bought about two million guns in March, according to a New York Times analysis of federal data. It was the second-busiest month ever for gun sales, trailing only January 2013, just after President Barack Obama’s re-election and the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. With some people fearful that the pandemic could lead to civil unrest, gun sales have been skyrocketing. In the past, fear of gun-buying restrictions has been the main driver of spikes in gun sales, far surpassing the effects of mass shootings and terrorist attacks alone. (Collins and Yaffe-Bellany, 4/1)

The New York Times: The Coronavirus Patients Betrayed By Their Own Immune Systems
The 42-year-old man arrived at a hospital in Paris on March 17 with a fever, cough and the “ground glass opacities” in both lungs that are a trademark of infection with the new coronavirus. Two days later, his condition suddenly worsened and his oxygen levels dropped. His body, doctors suspected, was in the grip of a cytokine storm, a dangerous overreaction of the immune system. The phenomenon has become all too common in the coronavirus pandemic, but it is also pointing to potentially helpful drug treatments. (Mandavilli, 4/1)

The Wall Street Journal: Coronavirus Seems To Be Infecting And Killing More Men Than Women
More infected men than women seem to be dying from the new coronavirus, according to data from countries hit by the pandemic, but an incomplete data set is clouding scientists’ ability to understand why. The pattern underscores the role that sex—and the associated social norms and behaviors—plays as an indicator of risk and response to infection and disease. (Camero, 4/2)

The New York Times: Some Coronavirus Patients Show Signs Of Stroke, Seizures And Confusion
Neurologists around the world say that a small subset of patients with Covid-19 are developing serious impairments of the brain. Although fever, cough and difficulty breathing are the typical hallmarks of infection with the new coronavirus, some patients exhibit altered mental status, or encephalopathy, a catchall term for brain disease or dysfunction that can have many underlying causes, as well as other serious conditions. These neurological syndromes join other unusual symptoms, such as diminished sense of smell and taste as well as heart ailments. (Rabin, 4/1)