Fox News hosts go mum on the covid-19 drug they spent weeks promoting

At the height of Fox News’s coverage of a would-be treatment for the novel coronavirus, the network’s medical correspondent, Marc Siegel, offered a remarkable testimonial during Tucker Carlson’s show. Siegel said his 96-year-old father, suffering from symptoms of the virus and fearing he would die, made a full recovery thanks to the drug, hydroxychloroquine, and a course of antibiotics. “He got up the next day and was fine,” Siegel told an astonished Carlson. Siegel’s miraculous-recovery story was part of a near-campaign for hydroxychloroquine by Fox News and its sister network, Fox Business. Echoing President Trump’s description of the drug as a “game changer,” Carlson, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs and “Fox & Friends” hosts spoke of its potential benefits in dozens of segments from mid-March to mid-April. They also criticized those in the media and the medical establishment who raised concerns, turning a debate among researchers and scientists into another front in the culture wars. But in the past week or so, Trump has all but stopped talking about hydroxychloroquine. And so have Fox News’s hosts. The relative silence follows disappointing, even alarming, new research about hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for covid-19, the disease caused by the virus. A study released this week on 368 male Veterans Affairs patients with the disease showed that the death rate among those given the drug, both in combination with another drug and alone, was higher than for those who were not. Researchers also said its use made no difference in the need for ventilators. Like other fast-moving research about covid-19 treatments, the study by VA and academic researchers hasn’t undergone the typical peer-review process and isn’t the kind of formal clinical trial, like those underway elsewhere, that will offer more definitive answers. However, it was based on one of the largest collections of data about the drug’s use. Another study, released by French researchers last week, offered more discouraging clues. It found no statistically significant difference in the death rates among 181 covid-19 patients who had taken hydroxychloroquine within 48 hours of being admitted to a hospital and those who hadn’t. The study also highlighted dangerous side effects; eight developed arrhythmia, or abnormal heart rhythms, and had to stop taking it. On Tuesday, an expert panel convened by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases advised physicians against prescribing hydroxychloroquine with the antibiotic azithromycin because of the potential side effects. The


Trump says he ‘strongly’ disagrees with Ga. Gov. Kemp’s decision to reopen businesses

County on Feb. 6 and Feb. 17 but that testing of their remains for the infection had been delayed. The revelations shifted the timeline in this country of the virus’s arrival and spread, which has now caused more than 47,000 deaths. Meanwhile, doctors across the nation were discovering and sharing information on puzzling peculiarities of the disease, originally thought primarily to affect respiration. In many patients, it also causes mysterious blood-clotting complications in organs throughout the body, which may be the reason death has often appeared so suddenly, even in patients without severe symptoms. News about the pandemic, the economic and social havoc it has wreaked, and the likelihood of an early recovery continued its roller-coaster trajectory. Governments in Germany and Britain approved human testing of potential vaccines against covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, and some trials were slated to begin as early as this week. A Boston hospital reported that it had figured out how to produce up to a million swabs daily for virus tests — supplying a commodity whose scarcity has slowed the rate of testing — with the help of 3-D printers. New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D), who discussed the testing issue Tuesday with Trump in Washington, said Wednesday that he and the Democratic governors of New Jersey and Connecticut were launching an “ambitious” program to test, trace and isolate infected people. The spread has diminished in countries where testing and tracing the contacts of those infected, followed by isolation, have been far more extensive than the United States. Former New York mayor and Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg has volunteered to contribute $10 million and to develop the “first-ever testing, tracing and isolation program” in the state, Cuomo said. Cuomo, while not announcing any easing of the New York lockdown, has started to outline the early stages of a reopening. Trump said that national parks, many of which have been closed, would reopen as long as Americans “continue to take reasonable precautions, and hopefully it will be just reasonable.” He gave no timeline for the openings. White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said that Trump would “move swiftly” to expand use of the Defense Production Act to boost private production of medical supplies, including swabs, for the pandemic, as well as future crises. Critics have accused Trump of being too slow to use his power to enforce the act, which allows


more weeks. A spike in the virus threat led to the closure of another pork production plant, Tyson Fresh Meats in Waterloo, Iowa. Tyson’s largest pork plant, representing about 4 percent of the nation’s processing capacity, employs 2,800 and processes 19,500 hogs a day. The closure, following earlier shutdowns at plants run by Smithfield Foods, JBS USA and other companies, added to concerns about the nation’s meat supply. As the pandemic continued to upend lives around the world, the World Bank said global remittances — the money that foreign workers send home — were expected to fall by 20 percent, or nearly $110 billion, this year as unemployment grows. Many families in low-income countries depend on the remittances from relatives in wealthier places such as the United States and the Persian Gulf. In Washington, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo continued to attack the World Health Organization for failing to press China for information on the virus’s origin and a lack of transparency. China, he said at a State Department news conference, failed to adhere to international rules that obligate it to “communicate to WHO timely, accurate and sufficiently detailed public health information.” Instead, he said, China “covered up how dangerous the disease is. It didn’t report sustained human-to-human transmission for a month until it was in every province inside of China. It censored those who tried to warn the world, it ordered a halt to testing of new samples, and it destroyed existing samples.” The same international rules, he said, “also gave the director-general of the WHO encouragement and the ability to go public when a member country wasn’t following those rules, and that didn’t happen in this case, either.” The WHO, Pompeo said, “clearly failed during this pandemic.” Other governments, and some U.S. lawmakers, have said that the WHO could have acted more strongly but that it lacks the power to force member countries to do its bidding. Some have suggested that Trump has used the WHO to distract criticism of the administration’s performance. In Geneva, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus defended the agency’s work and warned that the pandemic would be “with us for a long time.” “Most countries are still in the early stages of their epidemics,” he said, adding that there were “worrying upward trends” in Africa, Central and South America and Eastern Europe. He warned that public unrest against social distancing measures now seen


With 15 new covid-19 deaths in hard-hit D.C., Bowser urges more testing

D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser expressed alarm Wednesday about the harsh impact of the novel coronavirus on the poor, sick and elderly in the nation’s capital, as officials reported 15 new fatalities — including several people who died without being hospitalized. Ten of the dead were from wards 5, 7 and 8, the poorest and most heavily African American parts of the city, mirroring a national trend in which blacks have been disproportionately affected. Nine of the dead were older than 80; one was a 100-year-old woman and another a 98-year-old woman. The District’s tally of covid-19 deaths is 127, a per capita rate of 18.6 per 100,000 residents that is the highest in the region, according to a Washington Post analysis. Bowser (D) is urging older residents and those who live in long-term-care facilities or group homes to get tested if they feel ill, particularly if they have underlying health problems. Although tests are in short supply nationally, the District currently has more available than people requesting them. “We are concerned about people who have underlying conditions who could possibly not have very good outcomes with this virus, so people who have high blood pressure and asthma and diabetes, and everybody especially who falls in those categories who is over the age of 65,” the mayor said. “And that is why you see us asking those people to be very aware of how they feel, to reach out to their providers and to get tested.” The overall tally of known coronavirus infections in the District, Maryland and Virginia climbed to 28,295 on Wednesday. There were a total of 1,185 known deaths. Nearly a month into a general shutdown of schools, business and normal life, officials are still watching for signs that the pandemic is slowing down. The restrictions have led to tens of thousands of layoffs in the region. Among them are 427 workers with the Inova Health System in Northern Virginia, officials there said Wednesday. The workers are all “non-clinical” employees, many of them in management positions, who will be let go over the next two weeks, a spokeswoman said. She said the move will not affect Inova’s ability to treat covid-19 patients. “Every decision will be made toward us being able to provide care to the patients,” J. Stephen Jones, president and chief executive of Inova, said in a statement. “So no one should be worried about


to help as many as four covid-19 patients recover from the disease more rapidly, the hospital system said in a news release. Officials are under growing pressure to find a way to control the virus and ease restrictions. The frustration some feel about the pandemic was on display again Wednesday in Richmond, where protesters in honking cars and trucks circled the streets around Capitol Square calling for the economy to reopen. The demonstration was aimed at Northam and the Virginia General Assembly, which was meeting for its annual veto session with extraordinary social distancing measures in place. Among other things, the Senate and House of Delegates were working to pare down the state budget to handle the loss of revenue resulting from the pandemic. Earlier in the day, two Virginia Republican lawmakers filed a lawsuit on behalf of a group of Gold’s Gym franchises seeking to force Northam to allow those businesses to open. The lawsuit — filed in Culpeper County’s circuit court by state Sens. William M. Stanley Jr. (Franklin) and Ryan T. McDougle (Hanover) — argued that Northam did not have the authority to close down fitness clubs under an executive order barring nonessential businesses from operating that is set to expire May 8. “The doors of these health clubs should no longer remain shuttered,” Stanley said in a statement. “They . . . should be a part of the immediate solution as we move forward in overcoming this virus together.” A judge in southwest Virginia earlier this month rejected a lawsuit arguing that the order’s ban on religious gatherings was discriminatory. Maryland reported 46 new covid-19 fatalities Wednesday, bringing its total to 705. Prince George’s County, which has the most cases in Maryland, accounted for 14 of the deaths, its highest one-day tally so far. Neighboring Montgomery County reported 10 new fatalities. At a news conference at Laurel Medical Center in Prince George’s, which has been reopened as a full-service hospital for covid-19 patients, Hogan said the state signed a contract to hire about 750 contact-tracing workers to identify and potentially isolate new patients before they can spread the virus. The contract is with the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center. It was not immediately clear when the workers would be able to start, but their hiring will meet a state goal of having 1,000 such workers, officials said. Hogan also said he will announce on


States rushing to reopen are likely making a deadly error, coronavirus models and experts warn

ultraviolet lights that kill germs. But he noted such measures would need to be designed to suit specific establishments. Studies emerging in the past week are also changing scientists’ understanding of how the virus spreads, which will make efforts to reopen society even harder. A growing body of evidence suggests the virus is most contagious in people before they develop a fever or even feel a tickle in their throat. That suggests silent spreaders are seeding new cases. When severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) — the cousin to this new coronavirus — emerged in 2002, Asian countries were able to stop it because people became physically ill roughly at the same time they became contagious. That made it far easier to isolate and prevent the spread of disease. A study published in the journal Nature Medicine last week estimated that people infected with the novel coronavirus are contagious almost two and a half days before symptoms appear — and that peak contagiousness occurs about 17 hours before people start feeling sick. In a sample of patients from China, the study estimated 44 percent of cases spread from person to person before symptoms appeared. A study of Iceland’s population found that 43 percent of the people who tested positive didn’t have symptoms at the time of the test. And a recent New England Journal of Medicine study of 210 pregnant women in New York found that 14 percent tested positive but had no symptoms. Warning signs are also emerging from abroad. For months, Singapore has served as an exemplar, with its pandemic response praised and emulated around the world. Despite its proximity to China and early cases, Singapore used massive testing and contact tracing to keep its disease curve flat. It even deployed police to trace people’s movement with security camera footage and credit card records. Those painstaking efforts kept schools and businesses open and its economy afloat — until this month, when the virus found and exploited a weak point: low-wage migrant workers living in densely packed dormitories. “It only takes a few people to let down their guard, and the virus will slip through,” said Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, who begged citizens to maintain discipline. The daily number of new cases has soared from 200 last month to 1,426 on Monday. In recent days, the government shut down schools, made masks mandatory and forced hundreds of thousands of


How travel destinations are staying visible (and tidying up) during the pandemic

you can listen to the rustling leaves and the flowing water of the mangrove-covered shoreline. A room fills with organ music, and users can zoom in on the tiniest detail of the Italian furniture. A lot of forward-looking destinations have rolled all these initiatives into a single page. Whidbey and Camano Islands Tourism, an organization representing resort islands near Seattle, has a Web page full of engaging videos about matters of interest ranging from orcas to bees. It’s encouraging aspiring travelers to create some online buzz by reposting them using the tagline #Escapeitall. Destination DC, a nonprofit that supports Washington tourism, has a microsite, DCTogether, with links to social media initiatives and virtual tours during the coronavirus lockdown. You can find out which hotels are still open or play DC’s Social Distancing Bingo, an online game that connects you to what’s happening in the nation’s capital. But what about rebound plans? Behind the scenes, attractions and hotels are getting ready for what they hope will be a quick return to normal. In Gulf Shores and Orange Beach, Ala., officials have taken advantage of the empty beaches to do some deep cleaning. A fleet of custom-designed tractors, used to sanitize the shoreline after the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, is digging up driftwood and other debris to prepare the beaches for summer. “In interesting irony, the estimated peak day for the virus in Alabama happened 10 years to the day the oil spill started,” says Kay Maghan, a spokeswoman for Gulf Shores & Orange Beach Tourism. At the RT Lodge, a 57-room boutique hotel in Maryville, Tenn., the staff is spending the downtime getting ready for the coming season. “We’re pressure-washing, painting, gardening, event planning, updating staff manuals, and cleaning offices,” says Katherine Stinnett, the property’s sales and marketing manager. “Our chef is using this time to work on a new seasonal menu offering for the restaurant.” In the early days of the crisis, tourism officials tried to give hotels, tour operators and museums a helping hand as they weathered the first squalls of the storm. Now they’ve changed gears. “We want to dull the pain as much as possible,” Tia Troy, a spokeswoman for Visit Casper in Casper, Wyo., told me last week. “Right now, it’s not about bringing people to their destination. The focus is on doing what’s possible to ensure that the destination — including its residents


D.C. reports another single-day high in covid-19 deaths; Laurel hospital reopens to absorb surge in virus patients

The number of known coronavirus cases in the District, Maryland and Virginia was 28,295 on Wednesday, with 14,788 cases in Maryland, 10,297 in Virginia and 3,210 in the District. The number of virus-related deaths was 705 in Maryland, 353 in Virginia and 127 in the District, for a total of 1,185 fatalities. Here are some of the most significant recent developments as the region responds to the pandemic of the novel coronavirus, which causes the disease covid-19: • The Inova Hospital System in Northern Virginia on Wednesday said it will lay off 427 of its employees during the coming week, a result of the economic impact of the covid-19 crisis. The laid-off employees will not include any doctors, nurses or other “front-line workers." • The District, Virginia and Maryland on Wednesday reported 87 covid-19 fatalities, raising the regional death toll to 1,185. • Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) announced Wednesday the once-shuttered Laurel Medical Center is now open and will be able to take 135 coronavirus patients, with 35 of them in a new intensive care wing, in an effort to absorb a surge of covid-19 cases in Prince George’s County, Maryland’s hardest hit jurisdiction. When might local restrictions ease?


If you get covid-19, leaving your house may be the best way to protect your family

“Doctor, I tried to sleep on the couch in my living room; then I tried to sleep in my son’s room; and then I just could not breathe,” a 39-year-old female patient of mine told me last week. Then, through labored gasps and coughs inches from my face, she confessed her gravest fear: “I don’t want to infect my family.” She was a nursing assistant who had been infected on the job, and while she had done her best to self-isolate at home, she came to the hospital not just because her condition was deteriorating, but because she thought protecting family members had become impossible. My patient was right to be concerned: Home isolation is nearly impossible for many patients — an underappreciated factor in the spread of covid-19. Many of my patients recently have been infected by family members who were already sick, despite their best efforts to stay more than six feet apart, wash their hands, wear masks and clean surfaces regularly. When I called the sister of a patient for more history about how she had gotten sick, the response was, “Which sister?” All of my interlocutor’s sisters had been admitted to the hospital that same week. They all lived together, and only she remained uninfected. In treating some patients, I’ve seen an entire family become infected over the course of several days, leaving no one healthy enough to help the others. As a doctor, I’ve concluded I cannot in good conscience send covid-19 patients who don’t warrant admission to the hospital back home, if they live with other people. For such patients, we urgently need more large-scale facilities where people can recover in genuine isolation. Such sites are equally important for the isolation of those patients who have been admitted to the hospital and discharged — but aren’t yet fully recovered. They could also likely help patients who have covid-19 symptoms but whose doctors tell them to stay home until things get worse. If we can fix the home isolation conundrum, we will have solved a notable challenge in this outbreak. In Massachusetts, where I work, we are fortunate to have Boston Hope, in effect a field hospital in what was previously the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. It has been repurposed into a 1,000-bed facility for those who are covid-19 positive but do not require acute hospitalization. (Five hundred beds are reserved for covid-positive homeless


Denied a diploma, April Dunn made sure other students with disabilities had options. She died of covid-19.

autistic son will graduate with a diploma because of the legislation. “It put a face to the issue.” Dunn, 33, fell ill with coronavirus-like symptoms in mid-March after returning from a work trip with Polotzola and another colleague to help people in southern Louisiana advocate for accessible and affordable housing. All three women tested positive for covid-19. Dunn died in a hospital March 28. Her death underscored the virus’s merciless impact on people with disabilities and underlying health problems, who face vastly greater risks of hospitalization and fatal infection than the rest of the population. Dunn was well aware of the dangers. In her last Facebook post, shared shortly after she developed symptoms, she uploaded a picture of herself and some friends, along with an inscription reading: “Only the vulnerable will be at risk. Your ‘only’ is my everything.” News of Dunn’s death fell especially hard on Louisiana’s disability community, where her tireless work advancing the rights of society’s most marginalized earned her many admirers. “She was a humanitarian in the best sense of the word,” said her colleague Jamar Ennis, assistant director of disability affairs in the governor’s office. “To put it simply, she’s the most determined person I’ve ever met.” She was also a highly respected presence in the state capitol, unafraid to call officials at all hours of the day to discuss her efforts. “She brightened everyone’s day with her smile, was a tremendous asset to our team and an inspiration to everyone who met her,” Edwards said in a statement. Dunn was born July 6, 1986, and grew up in Covington, La., and Baton Rouge. Her biological mother put her up for adoption as an infant. At 5 months old, she was adopted by Joanette Dunn, a teacher. “I was told by a social worker, ‘I don’t know if this baby will ever walk or talk,’ ” Joanette Dunn recalled. “I looked at that baby and said, ‘There’s more to her than meets the eye.’ ” Dunn lived in a tightknit household with her mother and grandmother, who taught her not to let her disabilities hold her back. She earned a red belt in karate, sang in choir and was involved in the ladies auxiliary at her church. On weekends, the family would go shopping at Walmart, get their hair done at the salon and eat lunch together in town. When she wasn’t hanging out with


More people are going hungry in D.C. Feeding them in a crisis is an enormous challenge.

[Are you in need of food? Do you want to contribute or volunteer? See the info at the bottom of this article.] When someone in the D.C. area can’t feed himself or his family anymore, the Capital Area Food Bank’s hunger hotline is often the place to turn for help. Since the novel coronavirus struck the region, shutting down schools, stores and businesses and leaving hundreds of thousands jobless, the phones have been ringing off the hook. The calls are coming in day and night, three times more than before the virus, said the food bank’s CEO, Radha Muthiah. “Many often start with an apology: ‘I’m really sorry that I have to do this,’ ” Muthiah said. “They’ve never had to go through this process before.” Muthiah says that before the coronavirus crisis, about 400,000 residents of Washington, Northern Virginia, and Montgomery and Prince George’s counties in Maryland were unable to afford enough food to feed their families all month. Now, she predicts that number will be 20 percent higher. Another 70,000 to 80,000 people will rely on the food bank — not just now, but perhaps for a year or longer. And those who already used the food bank need more food. Previously, most clients needed help for about three to five days a month, Muthiah said. Now, as those families have lost all or part of their meager paychecks, they might need one or two weeks’ worth of groceries monthly. It’s a challenge that Daniel Warshawsky, a Wright State University professor whose research focuses on food systems, fears U.S. food banks cannot handle. “We see food banks stretched over their limit right now in every single city across the United States,” he said, noting that food banks have carried a growing share of the burden of hunger in America as federal food stamp assistance became more difficult for some people to access. “They’re running out of resources very quickly. … We’re seeing here the limits of the nonprofit sector dealing with a crisis of this magnitude." In Washington, supplying more food to a region that is suddenly hungrier is a tremendous operational and logistical challenge. Almost all of the food that goes to hungry people in the area comes from the Capital Area Food Bank, a nonprofit group funded in part by the federal and local governments but mostly by private donations. The food bank provides the groceries


for more than 400 distribution sites — think food pantries at churches and nonprofit organizations — throughout the region. (With many sites closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, some that remain open are giving out food on more days of the week and for longer hours.) Where does the food bank get its food? About 20 percent comes from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and goes to specific populations, like children. The remaining 80 percent goes to anyone who comes to a food pantry hungry — no documentation of income is needed. In ordinary times, about $2 million worth of food per month comes from corporate contributions — generally, items donated by grocery stores once the stores think they can’t sell them. But now, those grocery store shelves are being picked bare. Stores are donating only one-fourth as much as they used to give. To replace the missing donations, and fill the needs of far more consumers on top of that, the food bank has to buy food. At first, Muthiah said, she ordered an extra 34,000 pounds. When she saw how fast the distribution sites ran through that, she ordered more than 3 million pounds. But the same supply-chain snags that have kept grocery stores from stocking items like eggs and toilet paper during the crisis are hitting the food bank, too. Muthiah said that orders that used to arrive in two weeks are now taking eight weeks to be delivered. The food bank’s data analytics team is constantly crunching the numbers — when what foods will arrive; how many people will be unemployed by then; how many people will have gotten their stimulus checks, and how many will have used them up. At the moment, all of the region’s food pantries that are still operating are seeing tremendous need. Monsignor John J. Enzler, chief executive of Catholic Charities D.C., said his organization’s food pantry in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood usually sees 100 people at its weekly distribution. Two weeks ago, 600 people showed up, forming a line far down the street. For the first time Enzler had seen, they ran out of food and had to turn people away empty-handed. Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks (D), who recently helped hand out 65 boxes of food in 35 minutes at Ebenezer AME Church in Oxon Hill, described the number of people seeking food assistance as “stunning.” She said


Small businesses, banks brace for mad dash as $310 billion loan program rolls out

money. “For about an hour I was pretty hopeful, then my hopes were quickly dashed,” Foley-Hughes said. Now, Foley-Hughes is back in a holding pattern with only two weeks before she will be out of money and unable to pay employees, rent or other bills. Wells Fargo has not said where her application stands in the queue, but Foley-Hughes is holding on to hope. She has bought face masks from Etsy in preparation for reopening and begun to sketch out plans for running the 600-square-foot cafe while keeping proper physical distance between employees and customers. “Having a negative mind-set doesn’t help you, doesn’t move anything forward,” she said. In interviews over the past week, nearly a dozen small-business owners tied the fates of their companies to securing one of the government loans. Many say they are frustrated that banks appear to be giving preferential treatment to their larger customers, while leaving mom-and-pop business owners in the dark. For Carlin, who owns the North Carolina clothing store, there isn’t much time left. She estimates she has until the end of the month before it will be too late to recover. The hardest part is “not knowing what the next step is, not knowing if I am going to need to sell off inventory and close,” she said. “Without any kind of support or loan, it will be virtually impossible for me to get out of this.” Congress has earmarked $60 billion of the $310 billion infusion into the program for small banks with no more than $50 billion in assets, in hopes that more of the money will reach mom-and-pop businesses and companies in rural areas. But that does not guarantee everyone will be able to secure a loan, industry officials say. “It could be a burn rate of $30 [billion], $40 billion a day with all of the loans already in the pipeline,” said Paul Merski, an executive vice president at Independent Community Bankers of America. “Everyone has applications in hand that are ready to go into the pipeline,” he said. “If it took two weeks last time to go through the entire $349 billion, I would be certain that it would take less than two weeks to get through the system this time.” Citizens Bank of Edmond, a small community bank in the suburbs of Oklahoma City, is preparing for a mad rush. The bank secured about $15 million


Covid-19 could devastate minority-owned businesses, amid fears they’ll also miss out on aid

they also tend to be in industries severely affected by the pandemic, advocates and researchers say. At the same time, there are fears that these groups’ businesses are primed to miss out on government aid. As banks warn that the expanded funding could quickly run out again, some see minority-owned business as one more front in the uneven societal toll from a virus that has disproportionately infected and killed African Americans. “The fissures of inequality that were there prior to the pandemic are going to be worse if we don’t immediately, you know, bring in mediating institutions … who can make the loans where we know it will make a difference,” said Lisa Mensah, president of a national association of community financial institutions focused on people typically underserved by mainstream banks, including low-income minority business owners. Hundreds of those organizations, known as Community Development Financial Institutions, are unable to participate in the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) due to the Treasury Department’s eligibility restrictions, according Mensah’s group. Mensah said that is despite a conversation with “noncommittal” department officials. In a statement to The Washington Post, the Treasury Department said it is working with the Small Business Administration to prioritize Community Development Financial Institutions as well as minority-, women- and veteran-owned businesses, but it did not give details. The statement did not address other questions about lender eligibility. Anxious would-be PPP borrowers quickly flooded the Washington Area Community Investment Fund (Wacif) with hundreds of calls, said executive director Harold Pettigrew. Unable to take applications, all the fund could do was become a sympathetic help center as $349 billion in aid dried up in two weeks, he said. “It’s just frustrating and disappointing,” Pettigrew said, because Wacif, whose clients are mostly low-income and African American, “could actually be at the front lines of deploying these much-needed resources to small businesses that need it most.” Fueling the concern about minority-owned businesses is the fact that 58 percent of black and Latino households in the United States “do not have enough income to cover three months of expenses without income,” compared to 29 percent of white households, according to a statement from the NAACP and several minority financial groups. Layoffs and pay cuts are also disproportionately hitting black and Latino households, according to the Pew Research Center. “When Hurricane Katrina or Maria or the housing crisis or the tech crisis happened, those without wealth took


The Daily 202: Reopening debate pits mayors against governors. Atlanta vs. Georgia is a preview.

system after infection, and closely following their presence will help researchers determine whether immunities have or can be developed. … There is also a trove of data inherent to military life: a meticulous accounting of where everyone is at nearly all times.” [Everyone also has detailed medical histories.] “Mexican families typically send bodies home, for flower-strewn Catholic burials, and to give relatives the chance to glimpse their loved ones again after long separations. The tradition is so important that Mexican consulates around the country have long helped to repatriate the bodies of immigrants. But that sacred rite has come to a halt,” the Times reports. “Officials in the area are not issuing the transit permits needed for repatriation, and parts of Mexico have closed their borders to bodies, fearing contagion. The Mexican Consulate in New York, which has temporarily shut its doors, is advising families who call to consider cremation; ashes can far more easily be sent home.” “The Treasury Department is considering taking unprecedented control over key operations of the U.S. Postal Service by imposing tough terms on an emergency coronavirus loan from Congress, which would fulfill Trump’s longtime goal of changing how the service does business,” Jacob Bogage and Lisa Rein report. “The borrowing terms have only been discussed among both agencies’ leadership and have not been made public because the Postal Service hasn’t officially requested the loan.” Separately, Mnuchin is considering the creation of a government lending program for oil companies that would be run out of the Federal Reserve, Bloomberg News reports. The legislation, approved 388-5 as many lawmakers wore masks on the House floor, will restart the Paycheck Protection Program after passing the Senate earlier this week. “Lawmakers from both parties are already talking about pursuing more large spending bills to try to contain the pandemic’s economic fallout, but the measure Thursday could be the last one for at least several weeks as divisions emerge between the parties about how much more to do,” Erica Werner reports. “The Treasury Department on Thursday issued guidance making it much harder for publicly traded companies to qualify for money that was supposed to go to small businesses, threatening penalties in some cases if firms don’t repay money they had already received. And the Federal Reserve announced that it would be disclosing the names of companies that receive funding from some of its assistance programs after complaints that the


Virginia, Maryland governors unveil early plans for bringing states out of economic shutdown; region reports 102 more fatalities

The number of known coronavirus cases in the District, Maryland and Virginia was 31,782 on Friday, with 16,631 cases in Maryland, 11,619 in Virginia and 3,532 in the District. The number of virus-related deaths was 806 in Maryland, 415 in Virginia and 154 in the District, for a total of 1,375 fatalities. Here are some of the most significant recent developments as the region responds to the pandemic of the novel coronavirus, which causes the covid-19 disease: • Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) pledged to work with business leaders and coordinate across the region to chart a cautious path, but made it clear that things are far from returning to normal. Hogan (R) announced a three-tiered plan to reopen, but said it would begin only when data shows the virus’s spread is under control and the health system is prepared for any future spike in infections. Northam said his administration will plan for a phased re-emergence of the state’s economy, but will follow federal guidelines for deciding when to begin reopening. • The District, Maryland and Virginia reported 102 new covid-19 fatalities Friday, bringing the regional death toll to 1,375. Single-day rises in covid-19 deaths have hovered around 100 for the last four days across the District and two states as leaders monitor data for signs of the virus’s decline. • After a barrage of calls to its hotline, the Maryland Emergency Management Agency on Friday warned residents not not use disinfectant products to treat the coronavirus. Mike Ricci, a spokesman for Hogan, tweeted Friday that the administration decided to post to social media after the agency received more than 100 calls to the hotline in response to President Trump’s comments on Thursday. When might local restrictions ease?


White House promotes new lab results suggesting heat and sunlight slow coronavirus

irresponsible for us to say summer will kill the virus,” Bryan said, calling summer conditions “another tool in toolbox” to use against the virus. Outside experts contacted by the Washington Post said the results suggest that the coronavirus behaves similarly to the flu in that it is most efficient at spreading during the colder months, when people are indoors and the air is cold and dry. “If true, these results would point to preferred transmission in winter indoors (where we spend 90 percent of our time) when the air is dry. It suggests that in summer we could see some drop in virus activity in the Northern Hemisphere (again indoor humidity — both [relative humidity] and [absolute humidity] — is higher in summer),” said Jeffrey Shaman, a leading infectious disease expert at Columbia University, in an email. Shaman cautioned that these results have not been published in a peer reviewed journal, and should be treated with some skepticism. Likewise, David Heyman, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and current chair of the World Health Organization’s advisory committee on infectious hazards, said it’s difficult to evaluate the results without them being published, and that some mitigation measures should be maintained even if they’re correct. “This is another laboratory study but the interest is what happens in humans — the virus continues to circulate in Singapore in hot and humid conditions, and the precautionary measures in place (keeping surfaces clean and washing hands) that consider surfaces contaminated and a potential source of self-infection by hands touching the face should remain until proven otherwise, because this is [the] best practice in public health,” he said via email. Trump said the results vindicate him for his much-criticized suggestions that the virus would ebb with the arrival of warm weather. “I just threw it out as a suggestion, but it seems like that’s the case, because when it’s on a surface, that would last for a long time. When that surface is outside, it goes very quickly. It dies very quickly with the sun,” Trump said. When he made those comments in February, the virus was spreading quickly, going largely undetected in many communities, and the administration was far behind in distributing functioning test kits as well as supplies for hospitals that would soon see a flood of new cases. “[Y]ou know, a lot of people


Authorities are sending mixed messages

The April 19 Retropolis column, “In 1955, a tainted polio vaccine sickened children,” recalled how a live infectious virus in a single batch of polio vaccine sickened or crippled thousands of children. Under intense political pressure, it was rushed to market without proper scrutiny and testing. When a seasoned scientist warned her supervisors at the National Institutes of Health that this vaccine batch gave monkeys polio, her concerns were dismissed. About 120,000 children got the bad batch; 51 were paralyzed, and five died. The April 20 front-page article “FDA never vetted dozens of for-sale antibody tests” detailed the stampede by some 90 companies, with little or no federal oversight, to make blood serum tests that, if accurate, could let Americans know if they have any immunity to the coronavirus. But it is not known whether the presence of antibodies bestows immunity or for how long for this virus. Unscrupulous companies selling unproven snake oil should not be unleashed on frightened citizens desperate for the elusive silver bullet. Nor should covid-19 be an opportunity for rapacious vendors and pharmaceutical retailers to make a buck on the back of a killer disease. This month, the Trump administration fired, without cause, the inspector general assigned to oversee the disbursement of billions in relief meant for small businesses and those made jobless by covid-19. Early reporting showed that without vigilant scrutiny, major inequities occurred. This is no time for the fox to be guarding the henhouse. Joan McQueeney Mitric Regarding Eugene Robinson’s The news media should stop carrying the president’s daily coronavirus briefing. As both pieces concluded, except for a few minutes of real information each day, all we get is a self-serving review from the president. It certainly is not a briefing on the coronavirus pandemic and its impact. Mr. Robinson correctly noted that “these stage-managed afternoon performances are not really briefings at all. Sometimes, they are campaign rallies designed to stoke passion among Trump’s loyal base. Sometimes they are blame-shifting exercises.” The Style article summarized the daily briefings as a combination of “a pity party, a patriotic pep talk, a media scrum, a tantrum, a sermon, a mood ring, an infomercial, an airing of grievances [but only by the president himself], a rally without ralliers . . . [and] a glimpse of an alternate reality.” They are not fact-based information-sharing of the reality of what the country is facing. The American public


The news media’s reporting on a pandemic spike in violence against women. It might actually be declining.

the share of women who endorse men’s right to control women declined sharply between 2003 and 2011, as you can see in the figure below. Reporting and talking about violence strengthens norms condemning violence Few women who suffer sexual and physical gender-based violence report it to police, health care workers, or social services. Analysis of demographic and health surveys from 24 countries reveal that victims’ reporting rates range from two to 14 percent, with a global average of seven percent. When a society accepts violence against women, no one talks about it. Women have little incentive to speak out, as those who do are often blamed, shamed, and ostracized; they rarely get support, let alone justice. As recently as 2016, police in India refused to file incident reports after rape victims sought help, and elected officials, judges, and health care workers blamed victims for being attacked. Women interviewed in Mexico in 2005 and 2006 said that police officers recommended that they have sex with their abusive partners to improve the relationship. Between the 1980s and 2000s, growth in reported rapes across 25 European countries was usually not accompanied by an increase in convictions. But across 30 wealthy countries, reports of sexual assault and harassment to police grew after 2017, the year of #MeToo. In other words, women’s willingness to speak out suggests that social attitudes have changed. Our analysis of data from Mexico shows that women’s tendency to report physical domestic violence has grown significantly over two decades. Before the country passed a 2007 federal law declaring that women had the right to lives free from violence, only 8 to 9 percent of female victims of physical domestic abuse said they reported it to authorities. By 2016, this grew to 18 percent. Violence may actually be declining Growing reports of violence suggest that conditions fostering violence against women may be declining, not increasing, across much of the world. The Mexican data we have analyzed show that the share of women who suffered severe domestic abuse in the year preceding the survey dropped from 13 percent in 2006, the year before the 2007 federal gender violence law, to eight percent in 2011 and 2016. This implies that across Mexico, approximately 1.5 million fewer women were physically abused by their partners every year after the law was passed. We will not know for a while whether or not the covid-19 pandemic has


Hablan los que luchan en primera fila contra el coronavirus

Aquí los testimonios de un médico en Madrid, una enfermera en Bogotá, un repartidor de pedidos a domicilio en México y una dominicana que cuida niños en Nueva York


The little book sellers that could: How indie stores managed to take a slice of Amazon business

pivot toward e-commerce are small neighborhood grocery stores, who have had a flood of customers as homebound Americans cook more and stock up on staples. The Market at Edgewood in Palo Alto, Calif., is an example of a small, family-owned grocery store that had no e-commerce until a few weeks ago — despite its location in Silicon Valley. When stay-at-home orders went into effect in Santa Clara County on March 17, Emel Mutlu, the store’s owner, threw together a basic site within an afternoon. “Basically, it says, ‘Send us a list the way you would write one for your spouse,’” she said. “We had to think scrappy and come up with something that would work.” Mutlu’s employees fill lists the best they can, making substitutions if needed, and then call customers to say the order is ready for pickup. Business is better than it ever has been and Mutlu has hired extra employees to keep up with the demand. She’s wanted to set up online ordering for some time, but something always came up. “It kept getting deprioritized,” she said. “You keep prioritizing the urgent things and not the important things. The pandemic has been a forcing function.” She’s been testing out new ideas, too. When customers order online, they are less likely to make impulse purchases, she realized. To keep things exciting, she added a “Surprise me” option to the online form in which customers can request to be surprised with 10, 15 or 20 dollars’ worth of items. She also began packing such bulk items as sugar, flour and pasta and selling them to customers. “We had these huge sacks, and those items were in short supply,” she said. One of Mutlu’s new customers is Gaurav Garg, a head of engineering at Uber. Before the coronavirus, Garg’s family did not use the neighborhood store, preferring the convenience and variety offered by larger chains. But the Market is able to fill orders within a few hours and Garg’s family finds it useful for such basics as milk, eggs and produce. “The situation is such that we’re happy with whatever we get,” Garg said of his orders with the Market. “If we ask for seven things and get five, we’re happy. In a normal situation, that would be painful.” Things are not perfect. It troubles the engineer in Garg that the store collects credit card information online in an insecure


How to start regrowing green onions and other vegetables on your windowsill

The isolation imposed by the coronavirus has awakened a latent homesteading spirit within many of us. The proliferation of sourdough was an early indication that people were seeking, even in small ways, self-sustainability, as grocery-store shelves were often frustratingly bare. Now, there’s a wave of people attempting farming on a (very) small scale. The latest trend to sprout up on social media: images of green onions, presumably purchased at the store, their roots submerged in water glasses and tucked onto sunny windowsills, where their owners hope they will grow. This trend has many roots, some practical — perhaps it’s a way to entertain cooped-up children, or maybe to ensure a supply of some fresh vegetable. Others are more abstract. Participating in coronavirus-era mini trends, whether it’s goofy TikTok dances or re-creating classical works of art with pets, can be fun. And a green thing, sprouting in the sun, feels hopeful, something we all could use now. For Christopher Koentz, a pharmacist and a brewer in Illinois, the motivation was a little of both. A friend had given his family a bundle of scallions from a restaurant that was closing because of the virus. He and his wife had used them in ramen and risottos, but they still had plenty left over. So when his wife saw a photo someone posted of their own propagation efforts, they threw some in a glass and waited. It began as an effort to give their four young children something to do, but as he saw more people sharing photos of their own little crops, it also created a feeling of community. “It’s a way to connect with people doing other interesting stay-at-home things,” Koentz says. Growing such a connection is easier than mastering the “Savage” choreography. Of all the foods you can grow from kitchen scraps — and there are lots, including onions, garlic, shallots, carrots, beets, ginger and avocados — green onions are by far the simplest, experts say. The instructions are straightforward, says gardening author Niki Jabbour: Cut them down to the whites and a little bit of green, plop them in a glass with a little bit of water (top up and change every few days), and you’ll see new growth in about a week. For those looking to expand beyond the scallion, bear in mind that propagating might not yield what you’re hoping for — at least not right away,


It appears the Trump administration is doing all it can to drive away health professionals

from India matched to a residency in New York. This doctor is actually already in the United States; he arrived on a visitor visa earlier this year for his residency interviews, got stranded due to the pandemic and is now staying with family friends. He’s ready and able to help with the covid-19 response but can’t work until his new skilled-worker visa gets approved. (Like others I spoke with awaiting visas, he asked me to withhold his name because he fears retaliation from immigration authorities.) The State Department has said U.S. embassies and consulates around the world continue to process visas and conduct visa interviews for medical professionals, even though they have otherwise suspended routine visa services. But many foreign-national physicians abroad are struggling to get appointments. William Stock, former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, told me he had not heard of anyone actually being able to schedule an appointment before June or July. Others have not been able to reach anyone at their home embassy at all. “I have a fellow from India who’s supposedly starting on July 1,” said Ricardo Correa, a physician and program director for the endocrinology, diabetes and metabolism fellowship at the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix. “We’ve called, emailed, written, no answer.” Medical professionals are relieved to be exempted from the new executive order, but many say they’re still concerned about its ominous language suggesting further immigration restrictions may be coming. They also worry how four more years of Trump might affect an already protracted timeline for getting permanent residency. Trump somehow made a system that was already uncertain and arbitrary even more hostile. Meanwhile, even before the pandemic, other countries have taken advantage and are recruiting skilled immigrants (including those in medicine) who might be frustrated with their treatment in the United States. Among them is Kamalika Roy, an Oregon Health & Science University professor who practices in a medically underserved area. With her current visa due for an extension in June, she has been looking at jobs in Canada and Australia. She warns that other doctors may do the same in the years ahead — when the United States will continue to be in dire need of their help. “This virus, it’s not only one rodeo,” she said. “It’s going to be here this year, next year and the year after that.” She and her colleagues may not be.


Limits on coronavirus testing in Brazil are hiding the true dimensions of Latin America’s largest outbreak

researcher at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, a scientific institution. “Information is paramount. The more we have, the more we can make the population aware of what it is exactly that we are facing.” Without that information, said Paulo Buss, one of Brazil’s preeminent public health experts, “the consequences are clear.” The consequences were clear last month for Bruna Marques, a 24-year-old woman in São Paulo state. Her mother, diabetic, asthmatic and pregnant, had become so sick she could barely stand. She was having difficulty breathing. Her temperature had risen to 104 degrees. Two hospitals turned her away without testing for the virus. The third, 30 minutes away, finally admitted her. But within days, she was dead, the baby was lost and the funeral was over. Marques stood over her mother’s grave, furious. All around, she said, were other families, equally mystified by the sudden deaths of loved ones. The hospital told Marques her mother had died of acute respiratory failure, she said. For weeks afterward, she said, she has called daily, asking if it was covid-19. But she never heard anything. “Sometimes they don’t even wait for me to say my mother’s name before hanging up,” she said. “Nobody tells me what really happened to her. It was all very fast, and we just wanted an answer. It’s inhumane.” A gravedigger at São Paulo’s Vila Formosa Cemetery, one of Latin America’s largest, said he started noticing strange deaths in early March — weeks before Brazil’s first confirmed coronavirus death. The causes of death — pneumonia, respiratory failure — were what he would expect to see during the Southern Hemisphere’s winter, not peak summer. “One day, I saw on the news that in all of São Paulo there had been 20 burials of coronavirus victims,” said the man, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he didn’t have permission to give an interview. “But I knew at my cemetery alone, there had been 27.” Pereira feels the same frustration. Some days, he can’t believe the number of people out in the street. If they were seeing what he saw, no way would they be outside. No way would there be a national debate over reopening the economy. No one would be listening to claims that the pandemic had been overblown. Bodies don’t lie, he said. And here came another one. Sex: male. Age: 100. Cause of death: insufficient respiration. terrence.mccoy@washpost.com


The Energy 202: Trump’s plan to reopen national parks sparks worry about coronavirus spread

their households or neighborhoods, the Associated Press reports. “Still, the CDC is recommending that people prevent their pets from interacting with people or animals outside their homes — by keeping cats indoors and dogs out of dog parks, for instance,” the AP adds. “We don’t want people to panic. We don’t want people to be afraid of pets” or to rush to test them en masse,” said CDC official Casey Barton Behravesh. “There’s no evidence that pets are playing a role in spreading this disease to people.” It appears, however, that some animals can contract the virus from people. While wildlife may be thriving in deserted parks and streets, the Los Angeles Times reports the Oakland Zoo is home to a number of animals that appear bored with all that solitude. Another problem with the lack of visitors: There’s a dearth of funds needed to feed the animals, a task that takes $800,000 a year. These searing temperatures have been seen from South Texas to South Florida, but its in the latter region that long-standing records have been shattered, Matthew Cappucci and Samenow report. “Meteorologists say the steamy weather is linked to abnormally warm temperatures in the adjacent waters of the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean and a persistent high pressure zone heating the air,” they wrote. “… Miami’s scorching 97 degrees Monday was not only a record for the day and the month, but also was the earliest in the year Miami has been that hot — by over five weeks. The day’s average temperature tied as the fourth-warmest day recorded in the city’s history — coming some three months before the typical onset of such summer-like warmth.” Bill Johnson, who was appointed to lead San Francisco-based gas and electricity provider last year to help the company through bankruptcy, will step down at the end of June, the Wall Street Journal reports. The move follows a troubled year for the utility. It filed for bankruptcy protection in January 2019 after its power lines sparked deadly wildfires in California. “Whoever succeeds Mr. Johnson will immediately face a tough task trying to shore up the company’s aging power lines, right as California enters its annual wildfire season, which peaks in the fall,” the Journal adds. “It has been abnormally dry throughout much of PG&E’s 70,000-square-mile service territory, adding to the risk that the company’s equipment could spark another destructive fire.”


Coronavirus hits Mexico’s economy where it hurts most: Oil, tourism, remittances and trade

MEXICO CITY — The Mexican economy was already in recession, having contracted in 2019 for the first time in a decade and projecting more losses in 2020. The peso was among the worst-performing currencies in the world. Then came the coronavirus. The pandemic is wreaking financial havoc everywhere. But in Mexico, it’s taking specific aim at the pillars of the Mexican economy: trade, oil, remittances and tourism. Economists here are now predicting an economic collapse worse than the “tequila crisis” of the 1990s, when inflation soared, poverty deepened and migration surged. One economic think tank warns of a downturn that could force 22 million Mexicans into poverty this year. The International Monetary Fund expects gross domestic product to contract by 6.6 percent, a decline second in Latin America only to that of collapsing Venezuela. Bank of America predicts an 8 percent contraction. “Mexico is like someone who was about to fall down the stairs, and then coronavirus came and pushed him,” said Valeria Moy, an economist at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México. “He was going to fall anyway. But now he’s going to fall farther and faster.” Downturns in the 1980s and ’90s coincided with greater violence in Mexico, and pushed more migration to the United States. Still, Mexico’s government has done less than others in Latin America to stabilize the economy amid the unfolding crisis. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who is deeply concerned about increasing the national debt, has focused a modest recovery package on the country’s poorest citizens, while offering little to small and medium-size businesses. The limited scope of López Obrador’s stimulus plan — it includes expediting an existing small-business loan program worth about $10 billion — has raised concern among members of Mexico’s central bank. “To provide liquidity to firms, that’s a place the government could step in. But it seems this government isn’t willing to accept a fiscal deficit,” said Jonathan Heath, the deputy governor of the Bank of Mexico. “The president is talking about helping the poor and doesn’t leave much room to help out small and medium firms. It’s not very orthodox.” Of all the countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, the IMF reports, only the Bahamas is spending less as a percentage of its GDP to support households and businesses during the crisis. More than half the people in Mexico’s workforce hold informal jobs — they’re housekeepers, vendors, day


a refinery against the advice of engineers and economists, the halting last month of a $1 billion brewery project. “There’s just no trust between AMLO and the business community,” said Duncan Wood, director of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center, referring to López Obrador by his initials. “We’ve seen the impact of that on investment.” Mexico is now the United States’ largest trading partner. But economists say businesses have been reluctant to spend more money until López Obrador offers more certainty. If Mexico is slow to recover from its outbreak, many here worry that more trade could be lost to China. “China is starting to open its economy, and the U.S. is a bit ahead of Mexico on the pandemic curve, so when they start looking for suppliers in Mexico, it could still be closed, and they’ll look to China,” Moy said. “Those production chains that took years to build are at risk of being destroyed.” In northern Mexico, workers in factories run by major American companies have staged protests, refusing to work during the pandemic. Lear Corp., Regal Beloit and Honeywell International have all reported covid-19 deaths. This week, for the first time in history, Mexico’s oil export price dipped into negative territory — yet another blow to one of the country’s most important industries. Last week, Moody’s downgraded the debt of the national oil company, Pemex, to junk status. Pemex is weighed down by more than $100 billion in debt. It will now shut newly finished oil wells that the government once saw as an engine for growth. Tourism generates 17 percent of Mexico’s GDP — a larger percentage than in any emerging country other than Thailand. It was one pillar of the economy that was largely unaffected by economic uncertainty. But as countries around the world have declared lockdowns, and flights and hotel reservations have been canceled, the industry has been hit harder than almost any other during the pandemic. Globally, the World Travel and Tourism Council warns that 75 million jobs could be lost. In Mexico’s tourist resort of Cancún, hotel room occupancy fell last week to 2.8 percent. Mexico’s Tourism Ministry has begun to plan a new marketing campaign aimed at the United States, Europe and parts of Asia, to be rolled out as the virus ebbs. Tourism Secretary Miguel Torruco Marqués has outlined what the campaign will look like. One tag line:


There’s a better way to reopen society, and it’s no secret

and other “non-essential” activities resulted in a huge spike in unemployment, economic hardship for tens of millions of citizens, and near-collapse of the economy. Pressure is building for release of the restrictions and a gradual return toward normalcy. Ending restrictions without plans based on sound public health principles, however, will almost surely result in a new wave of cases, putting us right back where we were in early March. The virus is lurking just under the surface of our frustration. The vast majority of Americans remain susceptible. It doesn’t matter if the restrictions are lifted on May 1, June 1 or July 1 — without reentry plans grounded in science, we’re headed for Amity Island outcomes. Most of the current state proposals for reopening society rely on social distancing, screening workers for symptoms of covid-19, asking those who feel ill to refrain from coming to work and frequent hand-washing. These are nice steps. But since up to 50 percent of transmissions of the virus occur before symptoms develop, with the peak time of transmission beginning in the five to eight hours before the onset of symptoms, these safeguards are not enough. The proposed interventions alone will almost certainly fail and result in a new surge of cases. It will take 14 to 28 days for the spike to be noticed, and probably another week or two for a second stay-at-home order to be issued. By that time, the health-care systems will be once again swamped, fatigued health-care workers will be called on to again perform heroic feats, and the cry will go up, “Will this ever end?” There’s a better way to reopen society — and it’s no secret: It’s testing. Public health officials use this approach every day in controlling infectious diseases such as tuberculosis. It employs aggressive, early testing of those with symptoms (index cases), along with isolation and testing of all those who had close contact with the index case until their status is determined. Other countries, including South Korea, Israel and Germany, are accomplishing contact tracing with the aid of an expanded workforce and information technology. The index cases are treated and placed in quarantine. This process minimizes exposure and can allow us to gradually lift restrictions and begin safely returning toward normalcy. The final piece of the public health approach involves widespread random testing to identify who has had prior infection and thus might have


As the world looks for coronavirus scapegoats, Muslims are blamed in India

NEW DELHI — On a bright morning earlier this month, a former army officer was riding his motorcycle down a rural road south of India’s capital when he reached an improvised barricade. He had no idea the villagers were looking for a scapegoat. He slowed his bike to a stop. The men at the barricade quickly identified him as a Muslim from the neighboring area in the state of Haryana. “These people are spreading the coronavirus,” said one of the villagers, according to a police complaint filed by the man’s family. “Grab him.” Sahimuddin, 49, who goes by only one name, felt a rope thrown around his neck. The attackers tightened the noose until he fell unconscious, the complaint said. He was later rushed to a hospital coughing blood, where doctors performed emergency surgery on his ruptured vocal cords and damaged trachea. He will require two more operations in the weeks ahead. The assault reflected one of the oldest — and ugliest — human impulses: the desire to blame calamity on those who are different. In India, the search for scapegoats during the coronavirus pandemic has focused squarely on the country’s sizable Muslim minority, a community of 200 million that felt under threat even before the advent of covid-19. News channels and some ruling-party officials rushed to blame Muslims for the rising number of coronavirus cases in the country after an Islamic missionary group in New Delhi emerged as a super-spreader. In recent weeks, Muslims have been assaulted, denied medical care and subjected to boycotts — all in the name of fear of the virus. While India stands out for the wave of vitriol directed toward its Muslim community, it is by no means alone. In the United States and Europe, there have been reports of discrimination and attacks on people of Asian descent. In China, Africans have been evicted and refused entry to restaurants amid fears that foreigners could spark a new round of infections. In Pakistan, activists say that the Hazara ethnic minority has been unfairly blamed as the source of the virus. The United States has expressed concern about the scapegoating of religious minorities during the pandemic. Sam Brownback, who holds the title of U.S. ambassador at large for international religious freedom, recently urged governments to “step up and pushback on these false narratives.” He declined to comment on India’s treatment of Muslims. This type of crisis


Chianti Jackson Harpool, longtime Baltimore social worker, dies of coronavirus

1993 and a master’s degree in human resource development and social work from Bowie State University three years later. She worked at the Johns Hopkins Broadway Center for Addiction, Behavioral Health System Baltimore and Health Care for the Homeless. In 2015, she left social work to attend a six-month program at the International Culinary Center in New York. After she returned home, she started a home-based chocolate-making business, Chianti’s Chocolates. She would later volunteer for Mosby’s campaign for state’s attorney and ultimately joined her staff as a senior executive assistant. “She was very organized — I relied on her,” Mosby said. “I could trust her.” Catalina Byrd, a close friend, said Jackson Harpool had an infectious laugh and could find humor in any situation. “It didn’t matter if you were both tired, no matter the circumstances, she was just a yellow aura of energy,” Byrd said. “That’s Tiki.” Adrian Harpool first noticed her sitting in the pew in front of him at City Temple church of Baltimore about 13 years ago. She was with her parents. The next Sunday, her parents didn’t attend service, and she invited him to sit beside her. And so began their romance, Harpool said. Harpool remembers his wife’s love of music and fast cars. She enjoyed jazz, R&B, classic rock, electronica and Baltimore house music, but at the top of her list was Prince. And her dream car: a Porsche or a Mustang. She special-ordered a manual-shift BMW X5, her husband chuckled, adding that she could almost name a car based on the sound of the engine. Jackson Harpool died April 8 after a short battle against the coronavirus. She spent a week at home waiting for test results, then was rushed to the hospital as her condition deteriorated. While in the hospital, her husband said, her kidneys began to fail, and doctors found a cancerous tumor and treated her with chemotherapy. The weekend before she died, Jackson Harpool told her husband that she was sorry. “What are you sorry about?” he recalled asking. “I didn’t know I was this sick,” she said. Harpool told her he loved her. Later that day, doctors put her on a ventilator. The two never talked again. In addition to her husband, Jackson Harpool is survived by her parents, Dennis Jackson Sr. and Melissa Jackson; her son, Brian; stepchildren, Laura and Ian Harpool; and brother Dennis Jackson Jr. ovetta.wiggins@washpost.com


‘Mom, I just don’t know how to stay well’: Inside the nation’s worst known outbreak of coronavirus at a youth prison

Her 17-year-old son was despondent on the call, wondering how much longer he could avoid the coronavirus that made Bon Air Juvenile Correctional Center in Virginia the scene of the nation’s worst known outbreak at a prison for youths. The teen was nervously awaiting the results of his second coronavirus test as resident after resident fell ill around him. The first — negative — came after a fever. Prison officials had stopped visitors, suspended schooling, ended counseling and locked at least some teens in their cells 23 hours a day to stem the outbreak, the mother said. Still, it wasn’t enough. The mother said her son’s cellmate, with whom he shared a bunk bed, began showing coronavirus symptoms. Her son phoned her in a depression after undergoing yet another test. “He said, ‘Mom, I just don’t know how to stay well anymore,’ ” the mother recalled. “That would break any mother’s heart, because I didn’t know what to tell him, either.” He tested negative. Nearly a quarter of the publicly reported cases of the novel coronavirus at U.S. youth detention centers are at this single facility outside Richmond, according to a tally maintained by The Sentencing Project. Bon Air houses roughly 190 male residents between the ages of 14 and 20 from across Virginia. The unfolding medical crisis that has sickened 26 inmates and seven staff members is the very type that youth advocates have feared could sweep such centers. Even as thousands of adult inmates have been released to head off covid-19 behind bars, Virginia and some other states have been slow to release youth offenders, leaving conditions for a tinderbox, they say. “This is a warning sign to other youth correctional facilities across the country. And what’s so tragic is that it was so predictable,” said Rachael Deane, the legal director for the JustChildren Program at Virginia’s Legal Aid Justice Center. “In correctional facilities . . . the virus spreads like wildfire.” Deane said clients inside Bon Air “are reporting chaos.” The Legal Aid Justice Center wrote in a letter to prison officials this week that one had not been seen by a doctor despite having tested positive for the coronavirus, another had symptoms but couldn’t get a test, numerous residents diagnosed with covid-19 were not provided adequate information about the disease, some parents had not been informed about their child’s positive tests, and protective gear for residents


The world will demand answers on covid-19 until China explains what happened

places “to determine the origin and evolution of the virus.” The letter stressed: “Samples collected as early as possible in the outbreak in Wuhan and samples from wildlife would be particularly valuable.” Chinese researchers did some careful research in January and February, when the virus was spreading. But research was subsequently tightly controlled, and in at least one case with scientists in Guangzhou, suppressed. A senior military doctor was put in charge of the Wuhan Institute of Virology in late January, and President Xi Jinping announced a new biosafety regime Feb. 14. In late March, the Chinese government announced special vetting for any academic papers dealing with the outbreak, according to CNN. The recent commotion about conspiracy theories comes partly from an unpublished paper by several maverick European scientists that was privately circulating last week. The authors argued that covid-19 was a “purposefully manipulated” virus created partly through “gain of function” research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. A 2015 paper by Chinese and American scientists had described such an effort to enhance the potential infectivity of bat coronaviruses so they could be studied and treated better. But both U.S. and British intelligence analysts are skeptical that covid-19 resulted from deliberate human engineering. The claims about “engineered origins” in the paper were “not substantiated” by British government scientists, a British official told me. U.S. intelligence analysts are also confident that the virus wasn’t created in a laboratory, but they haven’t ruled out the possibility that a natural organic virus that was enhanced for scientific reasons may have leaked accidentally in Wuhan. “Science is not going to shift this from a ‘could have been’ to a ‘probably was,’ ” messaged Richard H. Ebright, a leading biosafety expert at Rutgers. “The question whether the outbreak virus entered humans through an accidental infection of a lab worker . . . can be answered only through a forensic investigation, not through scientific speculation.” Ebright told me the Chinese government should launch a forensic investigation by reviewing “facilities, samples, records, and personnel.” The pandemic that began in Wuhan last year was a history-changing event, with catastrophic effects. The world should keep demanding answers until China explains clearly and transparently what happened. Beijing should realize that this is a situation where suppression of information will only make things worse. Read more from David Ignatius’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.


Trump’s bizarre effort to tag Obama’s swine flu response as ‘a disaster’

ranged from a low of 8,868 to a high of 18,306. As we noted, Trump often cites this figure as 17,000. But that was an after-the-fact report, based on statistical modeling of excess mortality. (Watch the video explainer above.) What was the CDC reporting as the swine flu pandemic unfolded? Here’s a comparison of the first 86 days of the 2009 swine flu in the United States and first 86 days of the 2020 covid-19 outbreak. Swine flu Covid-19 The 2009-2010 swine flu pandemic is considered to have been relatively mild — and in the United States, it hit harder in a second wave in the fall. Clearly, covid-19 is striking with much more force — and faster. Only after the swine flu pandemic had passed did researchers use a time series analysis to estimate how many excess deaths in a given period could be attributed to the swine flu but were not counted in the official death statistics. About 6 in 7 deaths are believe to have been missed in the laboratory-confirmed count during the swine-flu pandemic, though such calculations count any death in which the flu might have been a contributing factor. Many deaths are triggered by the flu but occur later, via secondary bacterial infection or exacerbation of underlying chronic diseases, even as flu symptoms may have disappeared. In other words, when Trump began criticizing Obama over the swine flu, he was comparing apples and oranges — later calculations vs. real-time figures. Now, with the covid-19 real-time death toll more than double the after-the-fact calculations, it’s an especially bizarre comparison. And what about the administration’s handling of the pandemic — which came at the same time Obama also was dealing the economic fallout from the Great Recession? In general, Obama got pretty high marks. Going through the after-action reports and Inspector General investigations, it’s hard to find much that would qualify as a “disaster” or “debacle.” On April 26, 2009, when only 20 cases of H1N1 — and no deaths — around the country had been confirmed, the Obama administration declared H1N1 a public health emergency. The administration quickly sought funding from Congress, receiving almost $8 billion. Six weeks later, the World Health Organization declared a pandemic. A New York Times assessment in 2010 noted that some flaws in the system were discovered, but overall the government was praised for its response — in part because it


Trump and his allies are using the pandemic to push an unrelated agenda

the traditional means by which foreigners reach this country and achieve residency and citizenship. By saying he would sign an executive order to “temporarily suspend immigration,” and by announcing Tuesday that the suspension would last 60 days, the president, predictably, grabbed headlines. But how much can that mean when Mr. Trump has already effectively closed the borders with Canada and Mexico, including to asylum seekers; banned European and Chinese visitors from entering the country; strangled the decades-old refugee program; expanded an existing travel ban to include Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country; shut down visa-granting U.S. consular offices around the world; persuaded the Supreme Court to uphold his prohibition on immigrants who might need public assistance; and pursued litigation that would empower the administration to deport hundreds of thousands of “dreamers,” reared and educated in this country after being brought here as children? The ostensible public health rationale for further sealing the nation off from the rest of the world — potentially by shutting down immigrant visas for foreigners who would enter the United States to work or join relatives — is thin, given that the novel coronavirus has already permeated every state and most cities and counties. So is Mr. Trump’s other stated justification — to protect American jobs. In the course of U.S. history, immigration continued through major crises, albeit at lower levels, including the Great Depression and World War II, during which more than 100,000 members of the armed forces became naturalized citizens. And in ensuing years, the economy flourished. In fact, Mr. Trump’s announcement, whatever the forthcoming particulars, is of a piece with his recent moves during the pandemic to pursue unrelated priorities in his agenda — for instance, slashing emission levels for commercial vehicles, among other rollbacks of Obama-era environmental measures. Similarly, Republicans in Texas, Louisiana and elsewhere have cited the pandemic as a pretext for banning abortions, speciously lumping them together with other “elective” surgical procedures. Democrats have used similar tactics in a few cases, for example by pushing a $15 minimum wage and strict limits on executive pay as conditions for helping rescue companies reeling from the economy’s partial shutdown. In many instances, the veneer of relevance to combating the pandemic looks more like a smokescreen to pursue pet agendas. It’s a sad day when a mortal threat to public health is seized on as just another weapon in a war of partisan attrition.


Go grocery shopping every two weeks? You can — and without hoarding.

This story has been updated. Among the essential activities allowed during mandatory stay-at-home orders caused by the coronavirus pandemic is grocery shopping, but most experts agree that residents should cut back on the number of trips they make to the store as part of their social-distancing strategy. One key to doing that is to create a list of essentials and stick to it, said Joanna Michalowska, a dietitian and doctoral candidate from the Medical University of Poznan in Poland, who worked with a team of health professionals there to create a tool — the Omni Food Calculator — designed to help people understand how much food they need for a two-week period. “When something like this happens, we don’t know what’s going on, how to behave,” Michalowska said. Her advice is to first do an inventory of the pantry, refrigerator and freezer. Then, create a healthy meal plan for the next two weeks. Finally, make that grocery list. The team at Poznan demonstrated how to do this by using software designed to create a handful of healthful meal plans that emphasize lean protein, fruit, whole grains and vegetables. They subbed in items with longer shelf life. For example, you won’t find strawberries under fruit, but you will find apples. The team then applied multipliers, so people can enter the number of adults and children in their household and calculate how much perishable, nonperishable, canned/frozen and fresh foods they might need to follow the meal plans. The recommendations in the calculator must be adjusted to suit your own tastes and the availability of foods. The calculator is based on the specific meal plan developed by Michalowska. Those daily eating plans are plant-based with little meat included. They rely heavily on eggs, for example, as a protein source. So, while she might recommend that three people need 45 eggs for a 14-day period — about one egg a day per person — if your family gets its protein from another source, you may require fewer eggs. Also, because there is a shortage of eggs right now, substituting other sources of lean protein, such as chicken breasts or tofu, may be required. “You’ll be surprised at how little you need, even for 14 days,” she said, stressing that the team also wanted to discourage hoarding. “Don’t panic-buy,” she said. “That’s the most important thing. Think: What do you need and what will you


Facing devastating losses, small farmers pivot to sell directly to consumers

ordered restaurants to close their dining rooms. Some moved to takeout and delivery only, yet the farm-to-table business evaporated almost overnight. But then a surprising thing happened: Chefs were quickly replaced by individual customers, families who wanted food they knew the source of — or just food at all, as people snapped up the goods from grocery stores and big boxes. “Out of the blue, all these people have found us, and it’s been fabulous,” Beckie says. She’s not entirely sure how the turnabout came. Social media isn’t her forte, she chuckles. But accommodating the new customers took some hustle. Restaurant customers were fewer and placed larger orders than the smaller but more numerous families she’s now catering to. So she had to increase her staff. She added a second truck from her own farm and borrowed a neighbor’s to make deliveries. She added a delivery fee to make up for some of the increased cost. Elsewhere in Maryland, Emma Jagoz was pulling off a similar shift at Moon Valley Farm. Their organic vegetables and herbs could typically be found on plates of Baltimore and Washington’s finest restaurants, including Woodberry Kitchen, Tail Up Goat, the Dabney and Maydan. But these days they’re more likely to turn up on suburban kitchen tables. Jagoz watched news about the virus’s spread early this month in alarm. She’d been hearing from chef clients about stagnating business and empty dining rooms, and she knew it was a matter of time before a sizable chunk of her business vanished. So she emailed the members of the community-supported agriculture program the farm operates, which typically doesn’t start up until May, announcing the farm was offering home delivery of boxes filled with sweet potatoes, kale, mushrooms, microgreens, radishes and carrots. She enlisted her sister, a woodblock artist, to make a graphic announcing the offering that she posted on Instagram. Her mother, who recently moved in with her family after her father sustained a brain injury, has been staffing the phones and coordinating the deliveries, hundreds of them a week. “I feel grateful to still have a business that can function at this time,” Jagoz says. “I’m grateful to have the support of the community and to have the infrastructure to make a pivot that works right away.” Other farmers, though, aren’t poised to adapt so easily. Clay Oliver, whose farm in Pitts, Ga., produces artisanal cold-pressed oils from


Grocery shopping during the coronavirus: Wash your hands, keep your distance and limit trips

This post has been updated. Food is an essential, so even with calls for “social distancing” because of the coronavirus pandemic, no one is suggesting that we stop shopping for groceries. Still, we know that we should limit our exposure to other people to help slow the spread of the virus. So, what steps can we take to shop with peace of mind? The advice is the same as for any time spent outside the home: Limit contact with groups of people, wash your hands as soon as you get home and avoid touching your face, said Bettina Fries, chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Stony Brook University in New York. People should go to the grocery store — or anywhere outside the home — only if they are feeling well and reasonably confident that they have not been exposed to the virus causing covid-19. Watch for symptoms Who shouldn’t grocery shop? Some people may be at higher risk for getting seriously ill from this virus, including older adults and people who have chronic health conditions, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Because of this, grocery stores across the country have begun offering “seniors-only” grocery shopping times. The biggest advantage to those special shopping times is that there should be fewer people in the stores, Fries said. “Because everybody is panicking, there are a lot of people in the grocery stores, so if you belong in that group of people who are 65 or older, or immune compromised, then it is best to get someone else to shop for you, if you can,” Fries said. Along with asking family or friends to shop, she also recommends having groceries delivered. Many delivery services offer no-contact drop-off, as well as electronic tipping. Such services are in high demand right now, so stay on top of your supplies and try to order a week or so before you have a need. How often should go to the grocery? Make less frequent and larger shopping trips. “It’s good to go once or twice a week” at the most, Fries said. There’s no need to take every can of black beans off the shelf for your household of four, but, if you can afford to, buy enough food to last for two to three weeks. Buy and enjoy fresh foods now and stock up on dried spices and fruits, eggs,


She gave birth to a son before dying of covid-19. She never got to see him.

Wogene Debele was eight months pregnant when, coughing and weak, she decided to return to Holy Cross Hospital a second time. Before leaving her family’s small high-rise apartment in Takoma Park, Md., she turned to her two sons, Naod, 10, and Asher, 4. “I’m just going to get a checkup. I’ll be right back,” her 17-year-old daughter, Mihret, later recalled her telling them. That was on March 25, the last time Debele’s children would have her in their midst. On Tuesday, after nearly a month of struggle, first at Holy Cross in Silver Spring and then at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore, Debele died of covid-19. She was 43. She left behind not only Naod, Asher, Mihret and her husband, Yilma Asfaw Tadesse, 50, but a newborn son, Levi. Born a month premature the day Debele was admitted to the hospital, the baby was whisked into the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), free of the virus, his mother unable to hold him or even see his face. The family emigrated from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, almost a decade ago and quickly became a warm and familiar presence within the Washington area’s large Ethiopian community and among their Takoma Park neighbors. There, families in million-dollar bungalows live alongside immigrants and others of lesser means who occupy the Essex House apartments, where Debele and Tadesse raised their family. All their children go to school together and play on the same soccer teams. That is how Anne Snouck-Hurgronje came to know Debele, a stay-at-home mother, and Tadesse, a Montgomery County school bus driver who sometimes worked more than one job. Snouck-Hurgronje’s son, Gabriel, and Naod are both in fifth grade at Piney Branch Elementary and have played soccer together for years in a local rec league and then a travel league. Snouck-Hurgronje said she mostly ran into Tadesse on carpool runs and was impressed by Debele’s warm graciousness when she invited Snouck-Hurgronje’s family to dinner one evening. Debele made a spicy Ethiopian stew and performed the traditional Ethiopian coffee ceremony afterward, roasting and grinding the beans before her guests. On another visit, when Snouck-Hurgronje stopped by for the Ethiopian Epiphany after Asher’s birth four years ago, “I was really struck by how many people came and went and could see they were part of a strong and loving community,” she said. Takoma Park Mayor Kate Stewart has publicly expressed sorrow over


she always put other people first,” Mihret said. Last month, just before the shutdown, Debele withdrew money from the bank to get her hair done, her daughter said. When she came home, Mihret told her she also craved a trip to the salon to look her best before running for vice president of the countywide student government association — just the kind of service position her mother always encouraged her to take on. So Debele gave her daughter the money instead. About a week later, Debele began to complain that she did not feel well. She lost her appetite and began coughing. She called her primary care doctor and confided that she could not feel the baby move in her belly. The doctor told her she thought she just had a cold. Later, her obstetrician told her to go to the hospital to get tested for the novel coronavirus. She went to the hospital on March 19, her family said, and was told she did not appear sick enough to be tested, that she was likely feeling poorly because of her pregnancy and should go home and take ibuprofen. As the week progressed, however, Debele lost her sense of smell and her fever rose, but doctors cautioned she should remain at home, the family said, because of the risk of contracting the coronavirus in the hospital. On March 25, she decided she had to go back to Holy Cross, telling her sons she would see them again soon. Then she called her family to say her breathing was troubled and the hospital was going to keep her overnight. That was the last time any of them heard her voice. The coronavirus test came back positive. Debele’s blood oxygen levels plummeted, her blood pressure spiked, and the hospital called the family to tell them they needed to induce labor. She had no one with her besides medical personnel. “I wasn’t able to share her pain or her joy,” Tadesse said. Levi was born a month premature that evening and immediately separated from his mother. Two days later, the hospital called her family to say Debele was having heart problems and that she would need to be transported to the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore and put on a ventilator. On March 28, she appeared to be improving. But after her lungs stabilized, her heart declined again, and then her


Trump claims controversial comment about injecting disinfectants was ‘sarcastic’

fever, it helps your body respond.” Then Trump started talking again, cutting her answer short. Other doctors stepped forward after the briefing to challenge the president, calling his comments “irresponsible,” “extremely dangerous” and “frightening” in interviews with The Post as they rushed to warn people of the dire consequences of ingesting caustic chemicals. “We’ve heard the president trying to practice medicine for several weeks now, but this is a new low that is outside the realms of common sense or plausibility,” said Ryan Marino, a medical toxicologist and emergency physician at University Hospitals in Cleveland. “I can understand looking to medicines that might have some effect or some sort of studies in a petri dish showing that they might work on a virus,” Marino added. “But talking about putting ultraviolet radiation inside of the human body or putting antiseptic things that are toxic to life inside of living people, it doesn’t make any sense anymore.” And not only were Trump’s statements baffling, doctors told The Post, but his remarks could also pose risks to the lives of those who interpret the words as a suggestion to try the unproven treatments themselves. “People will do extraordinary things if you give them the idea,” said Dara Kass, an associate professor of emergency medicine at Columbia University Medical Center. Even before the president’s musings, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report released Monday found that U.S. poison control centers were seeing a surge in calls about exposure to cleaners and disinfectants amid the coronavirus outbreak. Between January and March, there were 45,550 calls — a 20.4 percent increase from the same period last year. The report said that although the data did not include information indicating a “definite link” between exposures and cleaning efforts related to the coronavirus, “there appears to be a clear temporal association with increased use of these products.” Increased use of cleaners and disinfectants is associated with the possibility of improper use, it added. The CDC called for consumers to “always read and follow directions on the label,” avoid mixing chemical products, ensure adequate ventilation and store chemicals out of the reach of children. Some doctors likened Trump’s comments on disinfectants to his past remarks about chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, anti-malarial drugs that are being tested to determine whether they might assist in treating covid-19. One recent study found that the drugs were linked to higher death rates in


New D.C. hospital numbers suggest kids do face some risk of coronavirus hospitalization

care if you have an underlying problem,” she said. DeBiasi stressed that more analysis will be needed to dig into why more children are getting sicker in the D.C. area than on the West Coast. “It’s definitely different,” she said. “But we’re not sure yet why. Is it because we have a more densely packed population? Does it have to do with ethnic or racial representation?” According to DeBiasi, experts believe the cases that arrived on the East Coast were from Europe, whereas the West Coast coronavirus is believed to have arrived from China. “From my knowledge, there is no clear major genetic differences between the strands, but that would be another difference to look at one day.” The data from Children’s National also point to one of the more troubling aspects of the entire pandemic — a development that has frustrated efforts to accurately diagnosis patients. When the virus initially crashed onto American shores, public health officials advised a high fever and cough were the two main symptoms. But the following weeks have shown the virus presents itself in more ways than initially thought, including stomach issues, particularly in kids. DeBiasi said of the fever-plus-cough formulation, only 51 percent of Children’s National patients had both symptoms. “So 49 percent of them don’t have both,” she said. “There are also a lot of kids that have diarrhea, and it’s a little harder to tease that out, because if parents are coming in for respiratory symptoms, they don’t necessarily focus on the diarrhea.” The University of Minnesota’s Schleiss said that unlike “a lot of standard winter respiratory viruses” that target children, covid-19 is a virus that enters the bloodstream. “It can go anywhere in the body and do anything,” he said, explaining the range of symptoms. “It makes covid-19 more interesting and more scary.” Schleiss noted that the emphasis on covid-19-positive children is particularly important from a public health standpoint because kids don’t live alone. They often become the vector through which the virus jumps to other family members. If the coronavirus is making more kids sick nationally, it’s going to directly impact the adult population. “We can’t ignore the transmission of children,” he said. “Children often live in households with adults and the elderly. We already know this virus disproportionately targets African American families, and those are families where there might be multiple generations in one household, or less opportunities