Category: Covid-19

Executive Summary

Human evolution has wired us to stigmatized sick people. But thats dangerous. During the current pandemic, shunning Covid-19 survivors will exacerbate mental health issues. It also will contribute to the spread of the disease as mildly ill patients will be reluctant to admit they are sick. We need leaders and celebrities to normalize the disease, corporate leaders to make clear that a companys diversity values extend to Covid-19 patients, and managers to make sure there is no stigma around being sick at work. Finally, we all need to reach out to make social contact with people who have been sick or have close friends and family who are sick.Pandemics remind us of how connected we all are. Our shared vulnerability to this virus is a source of solidarity.

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If you dont already, you will soon know someone who has been ill with Covid-19 and survived. They will be our friends, our family, our neighbors and our colleagues. History will judge us by the way we treat them.

Unfortunately, as my and others research makes clear, stigma has exacerbated the suffering from every major infectious disease epidemic in our history, and it will certainly play a role in the current Covid-19 pandemic. Stigma is an evolutionary response: We are hard-wired to physically distance ourselves from others who could infect us. We have an entire suite of evolved reactions, called parasite avoidance, to prevent us from maintaining contact with others who may carry communicable diseases. These reactions are what make us feel disgusted by signs of sickness, such as vomiting or skin lesions, whether or not these signs represent an actual threat to our own health.

There is a moral as well as physical component, as well. We tend to believe that bad things happen to bad people. This just-world fallacy tricks us into thinking that people who are infected with a disease may have done something wrong to deserve it. Maybe people who have become infected with Covid-19 didnt wash their hands long enough, touched their face too much, or didnt socially distance enough. This belief is comforting, helping us believe that we are in control of our own fate. It tells us that if we do everything right, we wont become infected. Yet, we simply dont live in a just world: We could do everything right, wash our hands for 60 seconds instead of just 20, and still become infected with Covid-19.

My decades of research show that stigma harms the mental and physical health of people with disease. This stigma can take the forms of social rejection, gossip, physical violence, and denial of services. Experiencing stigma from others can lead to elevated depressive symptoms, stress, and substance use. Alarmingly, people dont have to experience stigma from others to be negatively affected by it. Just anticipating stigma from other people perhaps because youve already seen sick people be ostracized or judged for their illness can lead to anxiety and stress. Infected people may also internalize stigma, believing that they did something wrong or are a bad person because they became infected with a disease. The fact that many Covid-19 patients are medically isolated compounds the problem patients under such separation orders have been shown to be at greater risk of distress.

Stigma does not only impact people who are sick, but extends to people who have an actual or perceived association with a disease. Family members of people with disease and healthcare providers caring for people with disease are at high risk of experiencing stigma from others during epidemics. In the context of Covid-19, stigma has additionally been directed at Asian Americans and people who have traveled to areas affected by the pandemic.

Stigmatizing anyone during a pandemic poses a threat to everyone. Research from HIV, Ebola, Hansens Disease, and other infectious disease epidemics shows that stigma undermines efforts at testing and treating disease. People who worry that they will be socially shunned if they are sick are less likely to get tested for a disease or seek treatment if they experience symptoms. Because of the just-world fallacy, they may also not believe that they could have a disease after all, theyre a good person who has taken precautions to avoid the illness.

The good news is that scientists working in diverse disease contexts have identified tools that can be leveraged to address stigma during Covid-19, including strategies for both reducing stigma and strengthening resilience, so that even if people are exposed to stigma they may not be as negatively affected by it.

Education is one of the most popular tools to deconstruct stigma. It can dispel harmful stereotypes, such as that Asian Americans are more likely to have Covid-19. Local and national leaders who fall ill to Covid-19 should be open about their diagnosis to help normalize the disease. When NBA star Magic Johnson announced he was HIV positive, HIV testing rates increased dramatically across the nation. In this regard, social media posts from celebrities who have the disease are also likely to help lift the taboo. Ive been reminding colleagues and friends: If Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson can get Covid-19, we all can.

Corporate leaders can clarify that organizational values of inclusion, acceptance, and diversity extend to people who are affected by Covid-19. In some instances, enforcing anti-discrimination policies may be necessary. A patient who is fully recovered from Covid-19 is no longer infectious and should not be treated any differently from his or her colleagues. Corporate leaders can also create clear and confidential guidelines for reporting and responding to Covid-19 cases among employees, so that employees feel safe reporting if they become sick and secure that they will have a job when they have recovered. Organizations should also invest in wellness programs that promote resilience to stigma and other stressors. For example, mindfulness activities help to improve resilience to a wide range of stressors and there are a variety of platforms facilitating access to them.

While leadership is important, we all play a vital role in removing stigma during a pandemic. Indeed, one of our best reduction and resilience tools is simple social support. Employees can schedule virtual coffee hours, lunches, and happy hours with their co-workers to check in on them. We can call and send texts to our neighbors, especially those who have been sick, to update them on our lives and express hope of re-connection after social-distancing measures are lifted. We should also talk openly about the mental health struggles we are all facing opportunities to talk with others about stressors including stigma can promote positive coping and mental well-being.

Although stigma is an evolved reaction to disease, it is not an inevitable one. Stigma divides and turns us against each other, but pandemics remind us of how connected we all are. Our shared vulnerability to this virus is a source of solidarity. We must remember that the virus not people with Covid-19 or affected by Covid-19 is the enemy.

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Don't Let Fear of Covid-19 Turn into Stigma - Harvard Business Review

There are now so few coronavirus cases in China that some days, authorities don't see any local transmission. China has gone from reporting thousands of cases a day in February to reporting one or two a day now. Over the past week, officials with China's National Health Commission reported just five new domestic cases. The total of new cases was higher, but almost all of them were imported cases in travelers who had recently returned from abroad.

China has driven coronavirus transmission down to nearly zero. (Although there's some question among international academics about China's case reporting and whether some cases are being overlooked, it's generally agreed that the nation has suppressed transmission to a very low level.) But some undetected cases are still probably floating around, and the virus can always be brought back in from abroad.

So life has not yet returned to normal. Many restrictions from the health crisis are still in place. Isolation wards are still open for patients even with mild symptoms. Quarantine centers are housing suspected patients and contacts of confirmed patients. Testing labs are still running. And monitoring systems are still on high alert for new cases.

"We are very aware that there could still be a second wave in China. That is possible," says Kylie Ainslie, a research associate at the MRC Center for Global Infectious Disease Analysis at Imperial College London.

"However, we haven't seen that occurring yet."

Ainslie and her colleagues have been looking at how China is emerging from one of the largest lockdowns in human history. They've been analyzing GPS tracking data of human movement to monitor how social restrictions are being eased or tightened in any given area.

"Areas where the outbreak was less had movement restrictions removed sooner," she says. "But that didn't mean completely. It meant first they started major factories and started letting those people who work there go back to work so that they could restart their industries."

Movement restrictions basically orders for people to stay home are still in place for some areas, and some people are still considered to be high risk.

Most factories in Wuhan, which was the epicenter of the outbreak, for instance, have not yet cranked up their production lines.

"One of the things that China is doing is while it is relaxing social distancing measures, it's not removing them entirely," Ainslie says. "And it's not removing them haphazardly."

For instance, schools in much of the country remain closed.

In several provinces where reported cases have gotten down to zero or close to zero for some period of time, case numbers have rebounded. But those upticks have primarily been driven by travelers arriving from Europe.

Ben Cowling, an epidemiologist at the University of Hong Kong, says these "imported" cases are much easier to contain and don't pose as much of a threat of wider transmission.

"There's less opportunity for infections to get into the general community from those travelers because they are being monitored so carefully," Cowling says. Anyone arriving in China must go into 14 days of quarantine where officials can keep a close eye on their health. "So if they do turn out to be infected, which is a small minority, then they're isolated. Their contacts are traced and put into quarantine. And that's going to slow down any any leakage into the general community."

Cowling says public health officials in China and elsewhere have two sets of tools to contain its outbreak social distancing and case management. Social distancing makes it harder for the virus to find new people to infect. Case management tracks down cases and potential cases individually and then isolates them and the virus. China wielded both of these tools aggressively.

"With a lot of testing capacity, they were able to bring down the numbers of infections quickly," Cowling says. "I think more quickly than we will find case numbers decline in New York or northern Italy or Spain or France. And that's because in China, the lockdown was a more extreme version of a lockdown. It was a total lockdown."

People were ordered to stay in their homes and were forbidden from traveling.

"In addition to the lockdown, there was also heavy use of testing, isolation and quarantine," Cowling says. "So all of those measures are like really, really trying very hard to get the numbers down."

China is now in a "suppression" phase of the epidemic. They've gotten transmission down to nearly zero, but some undetected cases are still probably floating around, and the virus can always be brought back in from abroad.

To make sure that another major outbreak doesn't occur, China is experimenting to see how much it can ease off the highly restrictive social distancing while keeping its testing and quarantine apparatus up and running.

"We're going to see within a month or two whether it's possible to get back to relatively normal social mixing and just be able to rely on testing, tracking, isolating, quarantine" to keep the virus at an extremely low level in China, he says.

European countries and the U.S. hope to soon address the challenge of figuring out how to relax social distancing without allowing the virus to come roaring back. But the U.S. may have a harder time doing this than China is. Cowling says one problem facing the U.S. is that there are many different outbreaks that are being managed primarily at the state level and might peak at different times.

"It's possible that New York could be coming out of lockdown, having got the numbers to a low level. But there are other cities where they're having a lot more infections, and it is going to be very difficult to have travel restrictions," Cowling says. "And the worst-case scenario is that infections are kind of bouncing around the U.S. And so, the lockdown is relaxed and then infections come back and then you have to lockdown again and nobody wants that to happen. So it really is a urgent question to figure out what's the best way to suppress transmission across the whole of the U.S."

Watching how China navigates this suppression phase may offer guidance to the U.S. and the rest of the world.

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China Enters The Next Phase of Its COVID-19 Outbreak: Suppression - NPR

Employee Gina Hansen (right) hands documentation to a client outside the Daniel J. Schaefer Funeral Home in Brooklyn on Thursday. John Minchillo/AP hide caption

Employee Gina Hansen (right) hands documentation to a client outside the Daniel J. Schaefer Funeral Home in Brooklyn on Thursday.

The fast-growing number of cases of COVID-19 around the country is also bringing a surge in the number of deaths. In New York City alone, the death toll is in the thousands and rising steeply every day.

There, and in places such as Detroit, Seattle and New Orleans, funeral directors are struggling to meet the increased demand. Joseph Lucchese, who owns and directs a funeral home in the Bronx, says it's unlike anything he's ever seen and it's dispelled any doubts he once had about the severity of the coronavirus pandemic.

"When this first started, I really thought this was bull****, and it's not," he says. "There is a lot of people dying out there. And it's really, really scary."

Funeral homes in the New York City area are being called on to bury more people. At the same time, because of the coronavirus, they have to take precautions that limit the number of funerals they can conduct each day. Lucchese says, under New York rules, the funerals are limited to no more than 10 people, and he can conduct just three a day.

"In between every family, we'll clean and disinfect every funeral home so there's very little chance of cross-contamination from families," he says.

With the pandemic, the process of transferring bodies from hospitals has changed.

"We go to just about every hospital and nursing home in the Bronx," Lucchese says. "Most of the hospitals have gotten these refrigerated trailers in."

Instead of going into the hospital, he says, sometimes funeral home staff members are asked to wait outside while the hospital does the paperwork.

"You need the doctors to come down and physically sign the death certificate," he explains. It's done electronically, he says, "but it's still overwhelming when they have so many deaths in the hospital."

Mike Lanotte, the head of the New York State Funeral Directors Association, says that in New York City and surrounding suburbs, the deaths are double normal levels.

"There has definitely been a stress on the system," Lanotte says. "Our funeral directors are working at maximum capacity."

One problem, he says, is scheduling burials and cremations. Crematories in New York state have been given permission to extend their operating hours and some, he says, are operating nearly around the clock.

In the Detroit area, where there's also been a sudden rise in the number of deaths from COVID-19, Timothy Schramm directs the Howe-Peterson Funeral homes.

"In an epidemic or pandemic, there's going to be inherent delays at cemeteries or crematories because they can only handle a certain number each day," Schramm says.

A major concern for funeral home staff, as it is for health care workers, is making sure they're protected from contagion.

"We have seen funeral directors who've become ill as a result from getting the virus," Lanotte says about the situation in New York. "We also have some who are simply in quarantine because they've been in close contact with folks who have tested positive."

With the coronavirus, funeral home staff have stepped up the use of personal protective equipment (PPE).

"We have some concerns that they are running very low, if not out of those supplies," he says.

With the new safeguards, Schramm says at his funeral homes in Michigan, they're trying to conserve their supplies.

"Our team goes through a lot of PPEs on a daily basis when you look at a two-person transfer team (and) our embalmers operating in our care centers," he says.

Like hospitals and emergency managers around the country, funeral directors are scrambling to find supply chains with available masks and face shields to keep them operating.

In the New York City area, Lanotte says he believes the next six weeks will be very challenging for funeral homes, as the fatalities from COVID-19 will keep rising.

Patrick Kearns runs four family-owned funeral homes in Queens and Long Island. In the last two weeks of March, he says the numbers began to spike triple what they had been. The pandemic, he says, is tough on families who have to bury loved ones without a funeral or a visitation. It's also tough on his staff.

"It's an extremely emotionally and physically overwhelming task to be in a tractor-trailer that is just full of bodies," he says. "Even if you're a professional who's used at some level of being around death, to be surrounded by that much is really a lot."

David Cruz of member station WNYC/Gothamist contributed to this report.

Excerpt from:

Funeral Homes Overwhelmed With COVID-19 Cases - NPR

Gilead Sciences (NASDAQ:GILD) has made remdesivir, its Ebola-turned-COVID-19 drug, available to more than 1,700 patients through compassionate-use and expanded-access programs, according to an update from Gilead's chairman and CEO, Daniel O'Day, that was posted on the company's website on Saturday.

The number of COVID-19 patientstreated with remdesivir is likely to go higher. On Friday, EU regulators recommended expanding access to remdesivir for patients who are unable to partake in one of the nine clinical trials testing remdesivir that are ongoing or in the process of being set up.

Because remdesivir isn't approved to treat any disease -- it was never approved to treat Ebola given the lackluster clinical trial results and the waning Ebola virus outbreak -- there wasn't a warehouse full of the drug nor a manufacturing plant set up for large-scale production.

Image source: Getty Images.

Fortunately, Gilead recognized the potential for remdesivir to treat COVID-19 early and increased production at risk. O'Day noted: "Then, as now, there were many unknowns including how long the outbreak would last, at what scale, and whether remdesivir is a safe and effective treatment for COVID-19. We made the decision to invest and scale up regardless, because if remdesivir was going to be needed for patients, we had to be ready."

Through improved production times and increasing manufacturing at external partners, Gilead has been able to manufacture 1.5 million doses, which should be able to treat over 140,000 patients depending on the optimal dose, which is still being determined.

Longer term, Gilead is looking to have enough drug to treat more than 500,000 patients by October and more than 1 million treatment courses by the end of this year.

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Gilead Has Treated More Than 1,700 COVID-19 Patients With Remdesivir - Motley Fool

Entertainers from around the world will come together for a global televised special in support of the fight against the coronavirus pandemic, Lady Gaga said during a World Health Organization call Monday.

The singer said the special would take place April 18 and proceeds would go towardfunding protective equipment for health-care professionals.

"We are all so very grateful to all of the health-care professionals across the country and the world who are on the front lines during COVID-19," she said on the call.

The event will be hosted by Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert and feature characters from "Sesame Street" as well as a number of musical guests.

The slate of artists includes: Alanis Morissette, Andrea Bocelli, Billie Eilish, Billie Joe Armstrong, Burna Boy, Chris Martin, David Beckham, Eddie Vedder, Elton John, FINNEAS, Idris and Sabrina Elba, J Balvin, John Legend, Kacey Musgraves, Keith Urban, Kerry Washington, Lang Lang, Lizzo, Maluma, Paul McCartney, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Shah Rukh Khan and Stevie Wonder.

The special will be broadcast live starting at 8 pm ET on ABC, NBC, ViacomCBS Networks and iHeartMedia, as well as on Bell Media networks and platforms in Canada.

Internationally, BBC One will run the program on April 19, with international broadcasters that include beIN Media Group, MultiChoice Group and RTE.

The virtual broadcast will be a multi-hour digital broadcast and will also stream onAlibaba, Amazon Prime Video, Apple, Facebook, Instagram, LiveXLive, Tencent, Tencent Music Entertainment Group, TIDAL, TuneIn, Twitch, Twitter, Yahoo, and YouTube.

"As we honor and support the heroic efforts of community health workers, 'One World: Together at Home' aims to serve as a source of unity and encouragement in the global fight to end COVID-19," Hugh Evans, co-founder and CEO of Global Citizen, said in a statement. "Through music, entertainment and impact, the global live-cast will celebrate those who risk their own health to safeguard everyone else's."

The rest is here:

Lady Gaga announces COVID-19 benefit concert on WHO call, Billie Eilish, Paul McCartney, Elton John and more to perform - CNBC

Jason Hargrove was behind the wheel of a bus in Detroit when he said a passenger began to cough. The middle-aged woman let loose four or five times without covering her mouth, he said, and watching her do this at the same time Michigan was under a state of emergency for the coronavirus got him so upset, he felt compelled to vent his frustrations in a video afterward.

"I'm mad right about now because that s*** was uncalled for. I'm trying to be the professional that they want me to be, and I kept my mouth closed," he said, voice breaking with emotion. "I kept my mouth closed, but it's at some point in time we've got to draw the line and say enough is enough."

Now, nearly two weeks after he recorded the video, which viewers shared widely on Facebook Live, Hargrove himself has died of COVID-19. The Amalgamated Transit Union confirmed his death in a tweet posted Thursday.

The bus driver's death "should touch everybody in the city of Detroit, should touch everybody in the country," the city's mayor, Mike Duggan, said at news conference Thursday, noting that Hargrove "knew the risks, was vocal about the risks, he went to work anyway."

Duggan urged people to watch the video.

"Some of his language is graphic, but I don't know how you can watch it and not tear up. He knew his life was being put in jeopardy even though he was going to work for the citizens of Detroit every day by somebody who just didn't care, who didn't take this seriously," the mayor added. "And now he's gone."

Just days before Hargrove posted his video, bus drivers in Detroit refused to work, saying the city's authorities were not doing enough to protect their health. The walkout, which ground Detroit's public bus service to a halt, quickly prompted a spate of measures to keep drivers healthy amid the pandemic, including gloves for drivers and boarding at the back of buses.

Nevertheless, the danger has persisted partly because of riders like the one Hargrove described in his video, half a week after the work stoppage, "who don't take s*** for real while this s*** is still existing and still spreading."

"I feel violated. I feel violated for the folks that was on the bus when this happened," he said, adding: "To those who are watching, this this is real. And y'all need to take this serious."

Duggan said at his briefing Thursday that so far, eight Detroit Department of Transportation workers have tested positive for the coronavirus. Glenn Tolbert, who heads Hargrove's transit union local, told the Detroit Free Press that drivers across the city are "obviously scared" and seeking further protection from city authorities.

Tolbert told the paper that he has tested positive for the virus, as well.

"Every time I see images of a group of people still clustering in this city or this country," Duggan said Thursday, "I think about the Jason Hargroves on the buses, I think about the cops, I think about the nurses and the doctors in the hospitals who are going to work for you every single day. And for you not to honor the social distancing requests, you're putting really good people like Jason Hargrove's lives on the line."

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Detroit Bus Driver Who Called Out Coughing Rider Is Now Dead Of COVID-19 : Coronavirus Live Updates - NPR

ByJacob deNobel

When Johns Hopkins junior Jessie Kanacharoen put together a slideshow presentation about the importance of social distancing to slow the spread of COVID-19, she hoped the project might convince her parents and sister to stay home more often. What she didn't expect was that her YouTube video would soon be shared throughout her home country of Thailand and become a centerpiece to the Thai government's response to the disease.

In just seven minutes, "The Real Deal on Covid-19" explains, in simple language, many of the most pressing questions people have about the ongoing coronavirus outbreak, including what the pandemic designation means, how the disease is transmitted, what its symptoms are, how it affects the elderly and immunocompromised, what it means to be an asymptomatic carrier, and the effectiveness of social distancing techniques at slowing the spread.

As an international student, Kanacharoen is one of the few remaining on the Homewood campus. After Hopkins announced its transition to remote learning on March 10, she gave her parents a call to tell them the news and check in on the family. In talking with them, she found that there was a lot of misinformation at home, and she wasn't sure how best to combat it.

"I was kind of frustrated, so I went on social media and I looked at the information my friends at Hopkins were sharing, then compared it to the info my friends from back home were sharing," said Kanacharoen, a pre-med molecular and cellular biology major. "There was a huge disparity. The information here was mostly factual and science-based, and the information people were sharing back home was either straight-up fake news about the virus or based in superstition."

Kanacharoen said she noticed that much of the most accurate information about COVID-19 in the early stages of the global spread was not available in Thai. To help her family prepare for the impacts of the disease, she began translating the information and pairing it with short animations and graphics.

With information sourced from the World Health Organization, the Johns Hopkins Center for Systems and Engineering, and The New York Times, the video quickly and simply summarizes what people need to know about the virus. The video is narrated in English but features Thai captions written for each slide to make it more accessible.

Coverage of how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting operations at JHU and how Hopkins experts and scientists are responding to the outbreak

"It's difficult to visualize how one person can make a massive difference by staying at home," Kanacharoen said. "So I wanted to help give people context they could understand."

After sharing with her parents and grandparents, Kanacharoen said she went back to her classes and forgot about the video. But while she was studying in Baltimore, at home her video was spreading through group chats and social media across the country, amassing thousands of views.

Soon, it was viewed by members of the Thai Medical Society who shared the video on their social channels and began using it in training for their COVID-19 response teams.

Kanacharoen, who only became aware of its popularity after friends in Thailand began sharing itnot knowing she was the creatorsaid it was surreal to see something she had created having such a large impact at home.

The video aired twice on Thailand's Workpoint TV, and it was translated into different dialects to be distributed to rural areas. Because the concepts are broken down into simple terms and concepts, Kanacharoen said officials have found the video useful for sharing with less-educated viewers.

"I'm very grateful that a lot of people found the information useful, but the media attention isn't that important to me, " Kanacharoen said. "What's important is that now I know that someone must have watched this video and thought 'Maybe I should stay at home,' and in that way, I have made some sort of difference."

Originally posted here:

Student's COVID-19 explainer video becomes an educational tool in Thailand - The Hub at Johns Hopkins

Key takeaways from Mondays RI COVID-19 briefing:

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) Gov. Gina Raimondo announced Monday that two more Rhode Islanders have died due to COVID-19 and 160 more people have tested positive, but said residents should take heart from the newly announced launch of a rapid-testing site run by CVS Health.

There are also 109 COVID-19 patients currently in the hospital, with 37 of them in the ICU and 26 of them intubated, according to the R.I. Department of Health.

Ive said all along these numbers are going to continue to go up, Raimondo said, adding, Its serious very serious but this increase is not cause for panic. Its totally consistent with what weve been planning for now for over a month.

The latest data means 27 people have died and 1,082 people have tested positive in Rhode Island since the state reported its first case of COVID-19 March 1.

Ten of the deaths, including one of the two announced Monday, have been linked to Golden Crest Nursing Centre in North Providence, according to Dr. James McDonald, medical director at the Health Department. The latest two people who died were in their 80s and 90s.

There are currently 17 nursing homes that have COVID-19 positive cases, according to the Health Department. A plan is currently being finalized to put all nursing home patients with COVID-19 together in the same facilities.

About one in three of the positive cases are health care workers, but none of them have died, according to McDonald.

Raimondo expressed excitement about the launch of CVSs new rapid-testing site in the parking lot of Twin River Casino in Lincoln.

Today is a good day in the fight against coronavirus in Rhode Island, Raimondo said. Georgia and Rhode Island are the first two states doing this with CVS, which is based in Woonsocket.

CVS will be able to test 1,000 people a day and give them results in 15 minutes. The tests are by appointment for adult Rhode Island residents showing symptoms. No doctors note is needed. (Officials are asking people who dont have symptoms not to sign up for a test just because theyre curious, citing limited capacity.)

Details: Who can get a test and how at CVSs new RI COVID-19 testing site

We have quite literally, overnight, doubled our testing capacity in the state of Rhode Island, the governor said, calling it a huge announcement. She thanked CVS as well as members of her staff and the Rhode Island National Guard for getting the rapid-testing site up and running, calling it a game-changer.

Between the CVS site and the ones operated by the National Guard, Rhode Island will now be able to test more than 2,000 people a day, which Raimondo said would give it one of the highest per-capita testing rate in the country. The Department of Health said more than 1,300 COVID-19 tests were done on Sunday alone.

We have widespread community spread of the virus many, many, many of us are going to get sick, she said.

CVS is using Abbott Laboratories new high-speed testing machines for its site, and the federal government has separately sent Rhode Island an additional 15 of the machines. But she said each machine was supposed to come with 150 test kits for a total of 2,250 and instead only 120 were provided.

Asked about the latest projections from the University of Washington which now predict nearly 1,000 Rhode Islanders will die due to COVID-19 and the outbreak will peak in the state later this month Raimondo said the schools model has been updated after conferring with Rhode Island officials. She again declined to share the states own predictive modeling, but indicated she thinks the peak could be as late as mid-May.

If anyone tells you they know exactly when Rhode Islands peak is, and what the number of hospitalizations will be at that peak, theyre not being honest with you, she said.

In addition, good news arrived Monday for some Rhode Islanders who are out of work.

Raimondo announced the R.I. Department of Labor and Training will begin accepting applications Tuesday at 8 a.m. for the new unemployment program created under the $2 trillion federal CARES Act. The program will offer jobless benefits to self-employed individuals, gig workers, independent contractors and others not covered by traditional unemployment insurance.

The CARES Act will also add another $600 a week to unemployment benefits for all workers through the end of July. That money is expected to be provided retroactive to March 28.

More than 100,000 Rhode Islanders have filed for unemployment benefits since March 9. Raimondo said DLT employees are working to get payments out as quickly as possible, and said anyone who has been waiting two weeks or so should expect to get their money any day now.

(Story continues below.)

Raimondo again asked Rhode Islanders to maintain a daily log of anyone they come in contact with, something she says will help the Department of Health do contact tracing for individuals who eventually test positive. This is an unbelievable tool, she said.

Contract tracing information is retained longer than 14 days but is protected by HIPAA and will not be used for any other purpose, according to Health Department leaders.

Too many Rhode Islanders were still leaving their homes regularly as of a week ago, according to the governor.

We have been using cell phone information publicly available information about peoples cell phones allows us to track how mobile people are, how much people are moving, and I said the last time I checked on that data about a week or so ago, we were moving too much, she said.

Asked about the use of hydroxochloroquine to treat COVID-19, a hot topic as President Trump promotes it, McDonald noted there were limited studies about its effectiveness. Doctors have been given emergency authorization to try if they see fit, he said.

Eventually, Raimondo said, there will be blood tests to determine whether you previously had the novel coronavirus virus that causes COVID-19, and that will show how much of the population has immunity. We are a ways from that but it is coming, she said.

Speaking to people of faith, Raimondo acknowledged the ongoing ban on religious services will be hard for Christians marking Holy Week and Jews preparing for Passover. She noted that many services are available online, and said prayers are still needed.

Raimondo said she did spot checks at a few stores on Sunday and was pleased to see most people keeping their distance as ordered. She said she is not currently planning to fine offenders, though she left the door open to that down the road if she deems it necessary.

For the first time, Raimondo followed the on-camera news briefing with a telephone conference call where reporters could ask follow-up questions. Reporters have been submitting questions remotely for the daily briefing because of health officials guidelines barring large gatherings.

Listen to the full audio of the governors conference call with reporters here:

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2 more die of COVID-19 in RI as cases spike; jobless benefits expand Tuesday - WPRI.com

Three U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers based in the Rio Grande Valley tested positive for COVID-19.

CBP posted the number of confirmed cases on their website listing two officers in Rio Grande City and one officer in Brownsville.

A total of 160 CBP officers around the country have tested positive for the coronavirus.

If you have news you would like to contribute, you can reach The Monitor at (956) 683-4000.

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Zoox, the ambitious self-driving startup said to be worth over $3 billion, laid off almost all of its contract workers last week, including its backup drivers who ride around in the companys autonomous vehicles. Around 120 people are said to be out of work.

Zoox workers were informed in an email sent on Friday that their jobs were being terminated effective immediately. They were told that they were being locked out of the companys email, Zoom, and Slack, and would be required to turn in their company-issued laptops and badges. But Zoox also insisted that this should not be considered a standard layoff. The company said that it will hire everyone back once the shelter in place is lifted, unless stated otherwise.

Zoox has every intention to resume testing and normal business practices, and will need your efforts in getting back on track, the email said.

Several former workers interviewed by The Verge said they didnt expect Zoox to follow through on its promise. One former Zoox worker who left the company last December said the company had a high turnover rate, noting that of the seven people who joined Zoox when this worker was initially hired, five were laid off or fired three weeks later.

It would be amazing if Zoox brought everyone back, but Im doubtful, the worker said. That just sounds like they are all fired to me.

Zoox appears to be the first AV operator to eliminate jobs during the viral outbreak. Most of the industry has temporarily halted operations in response to the pandemic.

In a statement, Zoox said its adherence to Californias order to shelter-in-place until May 3rd comes with logistical and financial challenges to our operations, including a stop to payment of Zoox contractors beyond April 7th if they are unable to work remotely.

This decision was not made lightly, and is an unfortunate reflection of the difficult situation faced by many organizations in an uncertain economic climate, the company said, adding that contractors who are able to work remotely were not laid off.

Based in Foster City, California, Zoox was founded in 2014, with the ambitious mission of developing and building self-driving cars from the ground up, rather than retrofitting traditional vehicles like many of its competitors. The company gained some notoriety for its plans to build a vehicle that can travel in both forward and reverse directions without needing to turn around, which it planned to unveil by the end of 2020. The following year, Zoox said it expected to begin testing its own robot-taxi service.

The company has hundreds of full-time software engineers, AI researchers, and coding experts on staff. Like the vast majority of AV companies, it relies on third-party staffing agencies to fill a variety of other roles, such as safety drivers, mechanics, vehicle cleaners, and others involved in the daily operation of its fleet. Zoox has multiyear contracts with two such agencies, Aerotek and Experis. This keeps Zooxs costs down, as well as puts some legal space between it and many of its workers.

Zoox has 50 test vehicles registered in California, as well as a smaller fleet based in Las Vegas. In early March, as cities were beginning to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic by issuing shelter-in-place orders, Zoox said it would stop testing its vehicles on public roads in San Francisco and Las Vegas.

Initially, some of the companys contract workers were under the impression they were being laid off, according to online chats viewed by The Verge. One safety driver said they reached out to their Experis representative about the shutdown and received a link to information about unemployment insurance in response.

But Zoox dismissed those claims as the result of miscommunication, and promised to continue to pay workers until April 7th assuming they would be going back to work after that. The pandemic-imposed shutdown has continued unabated, so the company instead opted to lay off those workers.

Californias statewide shelter-in-place rule has been extended to May 3rd, which means many AV companies are or will be in a similar position as Zoox. Some are exploring how to get designated as an essential business so they can continue to test during the shutdown. But backup drivers have told The Verge they would be extremely reticent to go back to work without rigid social distancing guidelines in place.

Personally I dont think itd work, said one backup driver who has worked at three self-driving car companies over the years, including Zoox. But I also dont wanna go back to work if Im gonna be in a space with hella people and no indication of the virus slowing down.

Update April 6th, 3:28PM ET: This story was updated to include Zooxs statement, and to correct the number of vehicles in the companys fleet.

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Zoox, citing COVID-19 shutdown, lays off its autonomous vehicle backup drivers - The Verge