Where policy on coverage for COVID testing meets real people, the intended effect is snagging on two words: “medically appropriate.”

CEOs with the American Hospital Association, American Medical Association and American Nurses Association underscored the pandemic’s outsized impact on people of color in a letter to lawmakers sent Friday. 

Reports are arriving of filled hospitals turning away transfers, backlogged ambulances waiting hours to transport patients and shorthanded staffs appealing for relief workers.

One point of easier-than-normal entry is nonclinical employees working from home. Another is providers’ weakened state. Many are strapped for cash and, as a result, stretching resources.

It’s a painful paradox that hospitals can help COVID patients recover while helping the virus spread—and not only to non-COVID patients but also to healthcare workers, support staff and even visitors.

Once a widespread COVID outbreak is underway, encouraging personal responsibility works about as well at mitigation as mandating widespread lockdowns.

While COVID-19 was dominating the headlines in March and April, other causes accounted for 35% of excess deaths in the U.S., according to findings published July 1 in JAMA.

Decontaminating PPE for frontline healthcare workers—and potentially astronauts—is the mission as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration tests two new ways to sanitize reusable masks during the coronavirus pandemic.