Lebanese Activists Fear Hezbollah-led Government Is Using Coronavirus to Solidify Power – VOA News

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Lebanese activists and journalists say they fear the Hezbollah-led Cabinet could be using the COVID-19 pandemic as justification to further consolidate its power through targeting dissent.

A state of emergency announced March 15 introduced strict restrictions on citizens. Activists deemed the step a "security plan that lacks regard for public health. They say the government could use its expanded powers to imprison activists who were involved in organizing protests last October.

The government activated criminal laws to arrest and charge people at a time that it did not stop flights from [coronavirus] epicenters like Iran and ignored taking necessary measures to protect the people, Jad Yateem, an activist and founding member of LiquaaTeshrin, told VOA.

LiquaaTeshrin is a group formed by Lebanese activists who demand government reform. The group last week called on the Lebanese government to change its state of emergency in the face the spread of the virus in the country. It said the government needed more effective measures to safeguard societys health and livelihood.

Lebanon has registered at least 333 coronavirus cases, and the number is growing, particularly in Beirut.

Since the announcement of the state of emergency, the government has shut public institutions and private businesses, closed ports and borders, and ordered its citizens to stay home unless they had an extreme need to get out. Activists see all of this as an unprecedented effort to increase the powers of the army and police without providing people with alternatives to secure their daily needs.

There is no transparency in revealing the readiness of the health sectors ability in Lebanon to deal with this issue, because this might uncover the amount of corruption, Yateem said, adding that many Lebanese families are unable to obtain essential needs during the lockdown.

Now this crisis is being used as a cover-up for former mistakes and to pass more political and economic gains by the ruling elite, he said.

Financial crisis

The epidemic comes as the country is facing its worst financial crisis in decades. Human Rights Watch said in a report last Tuesday that the virus spread had placed an additional strain on the deteriorating health sector marked by a scarcity of medical supplies.

The watchdog group in a separate report this month accused the government of pursuing a spate of prosecutions against journalists and activists critical of alleged government. The campaign was threatening free speech in the country, whose constitution says everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression, it said.

Lebanons criminal defamation laws are being instrumentalized by the powerful to silence many of the activists involved in the nationwide protest movement, the HRW report said.

Protests in Lebanon erupted in October after the government decided to increase taxes and gasoline prices. The demands of the protesters evolved to include combating alleged corruption and mismanagement by the ruling class. The widening protests later that month forced Saad Hariri to resign as prime minister.

Hezbollah influence

Many Lebanese politicians opposing the new Cabinet, led by Prime Minister Hassan Diab, say it is made up of Hezbollah and its allies. The new government, they argue, is excluding the mainstream Sunni bloc led by Hariris Future Party.

Some Lebanese experts say the economic and health crises, along with a growing discontent among the population, could take the country to the brink of collapse. The countrys officials say they are doing their best to salvage the economy, but the government's US $80 billion debt and increased instability are slowing their progress.

People dont trust in this government and they dont really know if they stopped the flights from Iran despite the governments announcement that they did close the airport, Hanin Ghaddar, a visiting fellow at the Washington Institute, told VOA.

Hezbollah is a Shiite radical group founded in 1982 and supported by Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The United States considers the group a terrorist organization that aims to advance Irans agenda in the Middle East.

When Iran became the first country in the region to record cases of coronavirus, the Lebanese government came under intense criticism from the opposition groups who said the government was unwilling to suspend flights with Iran because of Tehrans influence. To add to their frustrations, Lebanons first confirmed case of the virus was a woman who had returned from Iran.

The Hezbollah-led government initially rejected any reports about the outbreak, threatening to arrest journalists who reported on the case. Ghaddar of the Washington Institute said the governments initial denial and attacks on freedom of speech have only deepened the mistrust of the people.

With Hezbollah being in power today, if everything goes bad it will backlash against its government, because by the end of the day, they will be held accountable as the authority before the Lebanese people, she added.

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Lebanese Activists Fear Hezbollah-led Government Is Using Coronavirus to Solidify Power - VOA News

Ming Pao row: If we learn anything from the virus outbreak, it should be the importance of free speech – Hong Kong Free Press

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If we learn anything from the spread of COVID-19 around the world, it should be the importance of freedom of speech.

The Chinese Communist Partys decision to silence discussion of the emerging disease and punish doctors who raised the alarm created an ideal environment for this virus to spread throughout Wuhan, then across China, and eventually around the world.

File photo: GovHK.

As this virus continues to spread, infecting hundreds of thousands and killing tens of thousands, why would there be pressure in Hong Kong and beyond to silence discussion of this disease and punish doctors who are raising the alarm about its origins?

we will inevitably face SARS 3.0

On March 18,Mingpaopublished an opinion piece entitled This pandemic originated in Wuhan, the lessons of seventeen years ago have been completely forgotten. The authors Dr. Kwok-Yung Yuen and Dr. David Lung are unrivalled experts in their field. Dr. Yuen is a microbiologist whose SARS study group discovered the role of the coronavirus in the SARS epidemic in early 2003. Dr. Lung is also a microbiologist who has recently published on the detection of COVID-19 via saliva samples.

In their article, the authors offer practical advice on understanding the virus for the general reader. First, they explain how the World Health Organization and the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses name viruses, while also acknowledging that the colloquial use of Wuhan pneumonia is understandably more straightforward than COVID-19 or SARS-CoV-2 and thus does not need to be condemned.

Second, Yuen and Lung explain that genetic sequencing has shown the virus likely originated in horseshoe bats before spreading to an intermediate host in the Wuhan Seafood Market (most likely endangered pangolin), which then served as an amplification epicentre spreading from animals to humans, before mutating to enable human-to-human transmission.

Yuen Kwok-yung. File Photo: TVB screenshot.

Third, the authors point out that Chinas state-sponsored conspiracy theory tracing the origins of the virus the United States is completely baseless. The real source of this virus is Chinas wildlife trade, which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) failed to halt seventeen years after SARS spread from civet cats to humans. If this trade continues, the authors assert, in another decade or so, we will inevitably face SARS 3.0.

A frank discussion of the origins of this virus and the need to prevent another pandemic, written by two experts in microbiology who have been on the frontlines in researching and battling both SARS and COVID-19: this would appear to be precisely the type of opinion piece that we need at this moment.

Yet Yuen and Lungs article produced a storm of angry controversy on Chinese social media. Within a day, the authors had publicly retracted their piece. Yuen and Lung did not explain what pressures led them to this decision, but anyone who cares about increasingly fragile academic freedoms in Hong Kong should be deeply concerned by such developments.

Two types of stigma

The third section of Yuen and Lungs article discussing Chinas wildlife trade is undoubtedly the most controversial. The authors assert: the Wuhan coronavirus is a product of the poor culture of the Chinese people, recklessly capturing and eating wild game, treating animals inhumanely, disrespecting life, and continuing even today to eat wild game to satisfy their desires. The Chinese peoples deep-rooted bad habits are the source of this virus. If this remains unchanged, in another decade or so, we will inevitably face SARS 3.0.

File photo: GovHK.

It would be unfair, of course, to stigmatise the people of China as a whole for Chinas wet markets. It would also be unfair to denounce Chinese culture as a whole on account of the wildlife trade. This is not, however, what Lung and Yuen are doing.

It is not only fair, but indeed necessary, to stigmatise the wildlife trade and wet markets in China that have now produced two major illnesses (SARS and COVID-19) that have killed tens of thousands around the world.

It is not only fair, but indeed necessary, to stigmatise unscientific practices in Traditional Chinese Medicine that encourage the consumption of civet cats to nourish yourqior pangolin scales to treat male impotence. These are not, we must note, the beginning and the end of Chinese culinary or medicinal culture, but they are indeed components of these cultures that need to be confronted for the sake of global health.

It is not only fair, but also necessary, to stigmatise the political culture that has enabled the perpetuation of this wildlife trade despite obvious evidence of the risks involved. The CCP exercises extensive monitoring and control over so many aspects of life in China today, to the point that it can imprison civilians for random comments in private chats. Yet despite this power and control, the CCP has proactively chosen not to act against the wildlife trade for nearly two decades after SARS, facilitating the emergence of Covid-19.

Intra- and Inter-species Transmission of Coronaviruses. Source: Su et al. (June 2016). Epidemiology, Genetic Recombination, and Pathogenesis of Coronaviruses. Trends in Microbiology 24(6), 490-502.

It is also fair, and indeed necessary, to stigmatise the political culture of secrecy and suppression of bad news that has facilitated the spread of both SARS and COVID-19. The decision to reprimand Dr. Li Wenliang for comments on COVID-19 in a private chat among doctors shows both the Party-states reach and its horrid misuse of this reach.

These trends do not, of course, represent Chinese culture as a whole: there are other possibilities. These trends are, however, real components of the political culture in the Peoples Republic of China today which, just like the viruses they have covered over, cannot be simply denied away.

Political correctness facilitating political regression

If this story had ended with Lung and Yuens retraction of their article, this affair would have been just one more sad sign of CCP orthodoxies exerting pressure on academic freedom in Hong Kong. Yet on March 20th, Professor Jon Solomon of the Universit Jean Moulin in Lyon launched a petition onchange.orgaddressed to Zhang Xiang, the current vice-chancellor of the University of Hong Kong, pressuring Zhang to fire Kwok-yung Yuen. There is a counter-letter here.

Photo: Facebook.

In this petition, Solomon claims that Yuen and Lungs article resurrect[s] the vocabulary of historical racism and has done grave damage to the University of Hong as well as Hong Kong and global civil society. He then asks Zhang to provide a public explanation of the universitys support for Yuen. He calls for a panel to investigate the living history of colonial racism at the University of Hong Kong, and pending further investigation, asks that the university reconsider its appointment of Dr. Yuen.

In Solomons curious eagerness to draw attention to the colonial legacies behind the University of Hong Kong, legacies of which all are aware, he ignores two far more relevant legacies.

The first is the legacy of critical intellectual work which extends, despite a parallel legacy of repression, from the origins of political writing in China to the present. While Solomon undoubtedly envisions himself as a valiant warrior struggling against Orientalism, it is in fact oddly Orientalizing to assume that a critical discussion of cultural practices must be rooted in colonial racism, as if the people of China were simply sitting around for a few millennia failing to recognize the potential for critical reflection, and as if any critical discussion of culture since then is shaped by colonial racism.

Jon Solomon. Photo: The Jean Moulin University Lyon 3.

This spectre of the colonising white devil who haunts cultural critique, however, serves a crucial role in this narrative by recasting Solomon as white savior. Yet we must ask, from what exactly is Solomon rescuing the people of China: an article inMingpaothat called on people to be honest about the origins of the virus? One hundred years after the May Fourth Movement, is eating pangolin now off-limits for critical discussion?

The second legacy that Solomon ignores yet also ironically enables is the CCPs increasingly obvious deployment of political correctness to protect its own political regression. With its typical essentialism, the Party is redeploying vigilance against stigmatising people as a protection against the urgently necessary stigmatisation of dangerous practices and political secrecy. The laudatory ideal of protecting people from stigmatisation then ironically serves the purpose of protecting from criticism the powers and practices that put the Chinese people and the entire world at the greatest risk.

If Solomon disagreed with Yuen and Lungs article, there is no clear reason why he could not write an article inMingpaoarticulating his disagreement and explaining his own understanding of the emergence of COVID-19. To instead publicly write to one of the authors vice-chancellors demanding an explanation and reconsider[eration] of his appointment is a clear threat to academic freedom, operating on the level of the thugs who have repeatedly rallied for the University of Hong Kong to fire Benny Tai.

Pro-Beijing demonstrators at a rally calling for Benny Tai to be sacked from HKU. Photo: Apple Daily.

What actual benefit would there be for Hong Kong if Yuen was in any way reprimanded for his reflections? And what real risks could there be for the world if Hong Kongs leading specialists in coronavirus research grow afraid to speak frankly?

Such suppression of academic freedom would be worthy of condemnation in any context. In the context of Hong Kong today, where both academic freedom and freedom of speech are under increasingly grave threat from a Party-state pushing the same line as Solomon, such suppression is doubly deserving of condemnation. And when such suppression of free speech got us into this mess twice and is likely to do so again, repeating this mistake is nothing short of dangerous.

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Ming Pao row: If we learn anything from the virus outbreak, it should be the importance of free speech - Hong Kong Free Press

Sign of thanks for health care workers brightens hospital lawn – WOWT

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OMAHA, Neb. (WOWT) -- Healthcare workers across the metro are getting a sign of appreciation. An owner of a local company is doing her part to say thank you.

It's just three words. Heroes work here. But to the people working inside of Bergan Mercy Hospital, it means so much more.

"Well, it's very heartwarming to know that people are thinking about us. I know all of the doctors and the healthcare workers, in general, are all under stress and working very hard. So we really appreciate that people have us in their minds and in their hearts, said Dr. John Aucar, Interim Trauma Medical Director.

The signs were donated by Sign Gypsies Omaha, a Texas-based company, Kris Howery runs this affiliation.

The idea behind placing these outside of hospitals was started in Texas and it spread from there.

The signs can be seen as hospital staff walk from the employee parking lot into work - it's Howery's way of saying thank you.

"I want them to understand that they are cared for outside of their profession. And if I can offer -- if I can offer some kind of support for them then I'm gonna do it, said Howery.

Howery can't help but get emotional, her nephew is a nurse inside. She tells us she chose the words and colors in this sign carefully.

"They're on the front lines, just like our military. They're on the front lines, they're facing this every day. They're putting their lives on the line for us, said Howery.

These signs won't be here for long, after Wednesday they'll be moving to a new hospital somewhere in the metro.

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Sign of thanks for health care workers brightens hospital lawn - WOWT

Derby family creates masks for health care workers and first responders – KSN-TV

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DERBY, Kan. (KSNW) A local family is not letting social distancing get in their way of giving back. In fact they are using it as a time to come together and support the people on the front lines.

We never dreamed it would be this many, said Candace Wright.

A table covered in colorful cotton masks is just a sample of what the Wyatt the Warrior Foundation has sewn in the last week. Wright originally made a couple masks for her son Wyatt, who has a rare autoimmune disease , so he could travel to see his doctor in Ohio.

Well it started out just making one or two for a couple of friends that had asked about it, said Wright.

Then, her daughter made a post online offering free masks for health care workers.

It went crazy, said Tihler Church, Candaces daughter. My phone instantly started blowing up with messages and I think I had over 120 messages in five minutes.

Now, theyve made more than 400 masks. The whole family pitching in to help.

Theres several of us been on machines sowing and ironing and pinning, said Wright.

Grandmas been teaching us all how to sew because not many of us knew how to use the sewing machine.

Rose Hill Family Medcenter is one of the recipients.

It just brightens our day to see something bright on those masks, said Dr. Marty Turner. We really appreciate all the support were getting out there. Whether were able to use it or not its still good just to know that people are out there helping and have our backs for us.

They are the ones who take care of all of us during this time and so we need to protect them for that, said Wright.

The family has also donated masks to area hospitals and nursing homes. They say they are going to take a break after they finish the current orders which they expect to total close to 445 masks.

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Derby family creates masks for health care workers and first responders - KSN-TV

Health care workers say they’ve never faced a medical emergency of this scale – Crain’s New York Business

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As of Sunday night, New York state had confirmed nearly 60,000 cases of Covid-19, with about 34,000 people sick in New York City. In the city there were 6,600 people hospitalized, about 1,500 of whom were in intensive care. Queens and Brooklyn had the highest number of cases, and 776 city residents had died from complications with the respiratory illness.

Cuomo has instructed hospitals that they must increase the number of beds in their facilities by at least 50%, with some hospitals tasked with doubling their capacity. The state anticipates needing 140,000 beds at the outbreak's peak.

Some of the city's largest gathering spaces are candidates to house patients. A 1,000-bed medical facility was built at the Javits Convention Center, and Cuomo said last week he is considering creating more facilities at Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens, the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, CUNY's Staten Island campus and the NY Expo Center in the Bronx.

Hospitals have been setting up tents outside their doors to triage patients. Refrigerated trucks have been stationed outside the city medical examiner's office in Manhattan as a potential temporary morgue.

Efforts to close schools and businesses have all been aimed at delaying the apex of the outbreak, so the hospital system might have more time to ramp up its capabilities and acquire ventilators.

It is the ventilators that have truly vexed the Cuomo administration, which anticipates needing 40,000 when the largest number of patients are hospitalized. The state estimated it had 3,200 a few weeks ago. It now says it has about 12,000 and is exploring converting anesthesia machines and splitting the breathing machines using tubes to treat several patients at a time.

The problem was particularly pronounced at the city-run Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens, where 13 patients died from Covid-19 during one 24-hour period, The New York Times reported.

"So many people are saying it's going to be OK, everything's fine, we have what we need," Dr. Colleen Smith, who works in Elmhurst's emergency department, said in a video shared with the Times. "And if this goes on for a month or two, or three or five like it did in China, and we're already this strained, we don't have what we need."

Dr. Eric Wei, an emergency medicine physician and chief quality officer at NYC Health and Hospitals, said the public hospital system has diverted more resources to Elmhurst Hospital as well as Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx and Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan, which have been treating the largest numbers of patients, he said.

Wei said the system hasn't determined the origin of the cluster of cases in Elmhurst. Certain factors, such as the density of the population there, might have been responsible, he said.

"I'm very proud of how we handled this as a system," Wei said. "We've never come close to running out of PPE or ventilators."

He said workers' concerns about inadequate supplies are understandable but said the system has procured 100 more ventilators. A city spokeswoman said Friday it was sending thousands of pieces of safety gear and dispatching 105 nurses to Elmhurst Hospital.

Dr. Amy Plasencia, chief medical resident in internal medicine at Brookdale University Hospital Medical Center in Brooklyn, said she is concerned not everyone has had consistent access to protective gear. Resident physicians in the emergency department get one N95 mask per shift, she said, but those in lower-risk specialties have been asked to reuse the masks.

Plasencia spent the first three weeks of March working in the medical ICU, where her shift ran 6:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m.

"We do what we can with what we have. If that means that we have to reuse masks, we'll reuse masks," Plasencia said. "We protect ourselves in the ways that we can, but we're not going to stop treating our patients because of suboptimal conditions."

Plasencia has been alarmed by patients who are in their 30s and 40s who become critically ill with Covid-19. Those patients typically were obese but didn't have other underlying medical conditions, she said.

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Health care workers say they've never faced a medical emergency of this scale - Crain's New York Business

Ford, GE Healthcare to produce 50000 ventilators by July 4 – FOX 2 Detroit

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HOLMDEL, NJ - MARCH 24: A general view of the Ford Motor Company logo on March 24, 2020 in Union, NJ. (Photo by Rich Graessle/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Ford has announced it is partnering with GE Healthcare to build at least 50,000 ventilators for patients who are sick with coronavirus/COVID-19.

The company announced the initiative on Monday, saying it expects to build 50,000 ventilators in the next 100 days and make 30,000 more each month after, as needed.

The ventilators are licensed by GE Healthcare from Florida-based Airon Corp. and responsive to the needs of most COVID-19 patients. The simplified design operates on air pressure and does not require electricity.

RELATED:America's next producers of ventilators could be Ford and General Motors

Ford is providing the manufacturing capabilities to quickly scale production while GE Healthcare provides clinical expertise to license the design.

The Ford and GE Healthcare teams, working creatively and tirelessly, have found a way to produce this vitally needed ventilator quickly and in meaningful numbers, said Jim Hackett, Fords president and CEO. By producing this ventilator in Michigan, in strong partnership with the UAW, we can help health care workers save lives, and thats our No. 1 priority.

From how it spreads to where it originated, here's a look at everything you need to know about the deadly contagion.

Ford will send a team to Florida to work with Airon and by April 20, it plans to start production at the Rawsonville plant in Ypsilanti, Mich.

By the end of April, the company expects to produce 1,500 ventilators, 12,000 by the end of May and 50,000 by July 4. The company said this is helping the federal government meet the goal of producing 100,000 ventilators in 100 days.

Ford's plant in Ypsilanti will be staffed by 500 paid volunteer UAW-represented employees working on three shifts and will produce ventilators nearly around the clock.

Currently, Aion produces three of the ventilators each day at its plant in Melbourne, Florida. Ford expects to be making 7,200 of these ventilators per week, at full production.

From the days of Rosie the Riveter, UAW members have stepped up during difficult times in this nations history for the good of us all, said UAW International President Rory Gamble. Todays announcement by Ford that UAW employees will make ventilators at Rawsonville is in that tradition. We are working very closely with Ford to make sure that all CDC guidelines are followed and that we are exercising an abundance of caution inside the plant. Ford and our UAW Ford members should be commended for stepping up in these very uncertain times.

This new ventilator is the second Ford-GE Healthcare ventilator collaboration. Last week, the two companies produced another design from GE Healthcare to increase the output of the R19 Ventilator.

In addition to whether the virus can spread from mail or packages, the WHO notes if certain remedies or treatments are effective in preventing infection.

We applaud Ford for its efforts to lend its manufacturing capabilities to help quickly scale the Airon-licensed Model A-E ventilator and arm clinicians in the fight against COVID-19, said GE Healthcare President and CEO Kieran Murphy. Our deep understanding of the health care industry with Fords supply chain and production expertise will help meet the unprecedented demand for medical equipment. We continue to be encouraged by how quickly companies are coming together in innovative ways to address this collective challenge.

RELATED: Is it the flu, a cold or COVID-19? Different viruses present similar symptoms

Symptoms for coronavirus COVID-19 include fever, coughing, and shortness of breath.

To protect yourself, wash your hands well and often, keep them away from your face, and avoid crowds and standing close to people.

Are you showing symptoms? Try Beaumont's virtual screening tool

And if you do find yourself showing any of these flu or coronavirus symptoms - don't go straight to your doctor's office. That just risks making more people sick, officials urge. Call ahead, and ask if you need to be seen and where.

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Ford, GE Healthcare to produce 50000 ventilators by July 4 - FOX 2 Detroit

Brooks Brothers fights coronavirus by making protective equipment for health care workers – Fox Business

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Macy's will furlough a majority of their employees as sales have evaporated. FOX Business Susan Li with more.

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Up to 500 Brooks Brothers employees will go back to work this week as the menswear retailer pivots production to make medical masks and gowns for health care workers on the front lines battling the coronavirus.

The menswear retailer announced Monday it will convert its factories in New York, Massachusetts and North Carolina from manufacturing ties, shirts and suits to medical masks and gowns to combat the ongoing shortage of personal protective equipment.

The New York City-based clothing company will use its facilities to make up to 150,000 masks per day to help healthcare workers at hospitals and other facilities in needbattling the spread of the coronavirus.

Factory workers will return to work this week following a two-week precautionary self-quarantine, the company said. Brooks Brothers said it will also practice social distancing on-site at all facilities to protect staff.

CORONAVIRUS PROMPTS RETAILERS TO MAKE PROTECTIVE CLOTHING

"These are challenging times that are impacting us all. We are deeply grateful to the medical personnel at the frontlines who are fighting the pandemic, and we are honored to do our part and join our peers in retail to provide protective masks that our health care system critically needs,"Brooks Brothers CEO Claudio Del Vecchio said in a statement.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its guidance, saying hospitals that run low on surgical masks may consider ways to reuse them or to use them over the course of anentire shift. And if hospitals run out, the CDC said, scarfs or bandanas could be used "as a last resort,"however, some health officials warned cloth masks might not work.

Brooks Brothers is the latest retailer to pivot manufacturing efforts to supplies for healthcare workers.Neiman Marcus Group,JOANN Stores, Canada Goose, Nike and Hanes have also started producing non-surgical materials such as masks, gowns and scrubs.

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The Race to Keep Health Care Workers Protected From Covid-19 – WIRED

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The prognosis is grim. We're all anticipating that the situation is going to get worse, says Elissa Schechter-Perkins, an emergency room physician at Boston Medical Center. As the coronavirus spreads across the United States, health care workers are reckoning with how to protect themselves while helping Covid-19 patients in increasingly harrowing circumstances. Access to personal protective equipment (PPE) is severely limited in many parts of the country, testing remains inadequate, and the likelihood of shortages of everything from masks to ventilators to hospital beds has left many workers stressed out, angry, and, in some cases, resigned to endure bedlam.

Ideally, we would be wearing full PPE for all patients that we're seeing in the emergency department, Schechter-Perkins says. Yet, in many cases, they are not. She has witnessed patients come in for unrelated reasons only to later show signs of infection, after theyd already been looked after by hospital staff. Some of them have gone on to become confirmed cases of Covid-19. Because the nurses and doctors attending to these patients didnt immediately categorize them as coronavirus cases, she says colleagues wound up completely unprotected.

We have known, kind of from the beginning, that there is not a sufficient supply of PPE and there's not a confirmed supply chain for getting more anytime soon, Schechter-Perkins says. So right from the beginning, we have been placed in really difficult circumstances in which we need to ration our PPE in ways that are potentially quite unsafe.

Across the country in Los Angeles, an emergency room physician is aghast at the equipment limitations he and his fellow health care workers face. (The doctor asked that his name not be used.) When asked whats on short supply, he rattles off a list: masks, goggles, face shields, copper equipment, glovesand disinfectant wipes. Were using diluted bleach and a spray can instead, he says. Not as effective. All of this adds up to a hospital staff that is especially vulnerable amid a pandemic. Increasingly, this is the norm at hospitals in cities with surging Covid-19 outbreaks. In California, most ER physicians are classified as independent contractors. This can impact what kind of equipment they have ready access to. The ER doctor says one of the companies contracting him offered a stipend of $250 for personal protective equipment rather than obtaining it for the medical staff. I went out and bought my own goggles on eBay.

Even when the correct protective gear is provided, it is often in short supply. Schechter-Perkins is one of several doctors and nurses who told WIRED theyre reusing N95 masks, which are thick, particle-filtering face coverings designed for single use. We are storing them in paper bags in between patients, she says. Then, at the end of the shift, we are storing them in paper bags so that we can use them the next day.

In parts of the country where the coronavirus has yet to turn into a full-fledged outbreak, doctors are faring significantly better. Everybody is working on their own timeline through this, James Beckerman, a cardiologist in Portland, Oregon, says. When I was on call last weekend, we had what we needed, but its a moving target right now. Infection prevention epidemiologist Saskia Popescu, who is currently working in Arizona, hopes hospitals currently outside of hotspots can see what is going wrong in other regions to avoid their own catastrophes. So many of us are looking at New York and seeing what they are going through, which is devastating, and trying to use that as a teaching moment, she says. New York is a warning for a lot of us.

Read all of our coronavirus coverage here.

New York City is now the frantic heart of the coronavirus outbreak in the United States, with more than 790 confirmed deaths, and so its the part of the nation where health care workers are in the most jeopardy. After Kious Kelly, a 48-year-old assistant nurse manager at Mount Sinai West, died this week in what appears to be the first coronavirus death among New York nurses, his coworkers emphasized their lack of protection on social media. One nurse captioned a photograph of Kelly on Facebook with a hashtag: #GetUsPPEs. Another nurse decried the official response in her own Facebook post: We do not have enough PPE, we do not have the correct PPE, and we do not have the appropriate staffing to handle this pandemic. And I do not appreciate representatives of this health system saying otherwise on the news. The public needs to know that we are not prepared, that this is serious, that they need to stay home to flatten the curve. How many more of my friends have to get sick, have to die, for the world to take this seriously?!

The hospitals are trying to catch up. Nurse practitioner Peggy Desiderio, who works at Mount Sinais Morningside location, says the protective gear situation there isnt sufficient, but that access has improved as frontline medical workers have asked for additional supplies. Im not saying that its great, or that its going to last forever, or that we wont get shortages, she says. But theyre listening. (Mount Sinai did not respond to a request for comment.)

However, many New York hospital workers continue to eye their limited equipment with worry. Recently, doctors and nurses at Queens Elmhurst Hospital Center began speaking out about the conditions they are facing as a surge of critically ill patients arrive. Benjamin Laitman, an ENT resident at Elmhurst, has seen the strict budgeting of protective gear firsthand. Its a crisis mode, he says. The hospital isnt out of anything yet, but the scarcity is an enormous preoccupation. We have it because weve been rationing it.

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The Race to Keep Health Care Workers Protected From Covid-19 - WIRED

Millions of Americans are about to lose their health insurance in a pandemic – The Guardian

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The tragic effects of our battle with the novel coronavirus are seemingly endless. But arguably the most mind-blowing is this: the very pandemic that threatens to infect and kill millions is simultaneously causing many to also lose their health coverage at their gravest time of need.

Heres how: the virus has caused a public health crisis so severe that people have been forced to stay home, causing businesses to shutter and lay off workers. And with roughly half of Americans getting their health insurance from their employer, these layoffs mean not only losing their income but also their medical coverage. In other words, just as our need for medical care skyrockets in the face of a global pandemic, fewer will have health insurance or be able to afford it. According to one recent report, the cost of treatment for Covid-19 can run around $35,000. As the patient in the report exclaimed: I was pretty sticker-shocked. I personally dont know anybody who has that kind of money.

So, how did we get to such a dire place? Many will sadly lose their jobs over the coming weeks with one estimate projecting as many as 30%. And as they do, Americans are about to learn something horrifying: how irrational and irresponsible it is for so many to be dependent on employers for health insurance. Take it from me. Im a former health insurance executive who once profited from this system. Its time for it to stop.

America needs to finally get out of the business of linking health coverage to job status. Even in better times, this arrangement was a bad idea from a health perspective. Most Americans whose families depend on their employers for coverage are just a layoff away from being uninsured. And now, when many businesses are shutting down and considering layoffs, its a public health disaster. Across the country were seeing reports of layoffs in almost all industries. As we approach a global recession, some analysts suggest that a million or more US workers will lose their jobs in April alone. Consider what this means for health care in this country.

Weve seen this before. During the last big recession, researchers at Cornell University found that 9.3 million Americans lost their health insurance between 2007 and 2009. Why? As people lost work, their employer-provided insurance went away. During this time, roughly six in 10 Americans who lost their jobs became uninsured. And this problem compounds itself. If the reason you lost your health insurance is that you no longer have steady employment, how are you now going to be able to afford monthly premiums for some other private health care plan? This problem becomes particularly acute when you consider that premiums for health plans sold on exchanges are projected to soar, as well, due to unexpected Covid-19 costs.

Its worth noting that even in good times, the employer-based model fails to cover enough of us, with the number of Americans covered through an employer steadily dropping in general. Since 1999, the percentage of those with job-based coverage has declined by nine points. And it most certainly will drop like a rock in the coming weeks and months.

Its now clear that this system cannot handle our current reality. With so many Americans sadly on the verge of unemployment, the number that will lose health coverage will be crushing. As we rebuild our countrys economic base and reimagine the roles various industries play in our new future, we must also begin a difficult conversation about health care. If were dependent on jobs in order to have it, a lot of us will be left out in the cold. And at a time in our nations history where more will need quality care than ever before, the human cost will simply be too much to bear.

Wendell Potter, a former vice-president for corporate communications at Cigna, is president of Business for Medicare for All

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Millions of Americans are about to lose their health insurance in a pandemic - The Guardian

NY health care executive fired over posts on coronavirus and Trump supporters | TheHill – The Hill

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A New York health system executive has been fired after a Facebook post suggesting supporters of President TrumpDonald John TrumpCuomo grilled by brother about running for president: 'No. no' Maxine Waters unleashes over Trump COVID-19 response: 'Stop congratulating yourself! You're a failure' Meadows resigns from Congress, heads to White House MORE should pledge to give up their ventilators for someone else amid the coronavirus pandemic.

In an exchange first flagged by Republican strategist Michael Caputo, Laura Krolczyk, vice president for external affairs at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center in Buffalo, posted an article about the Trump administrations reluctance to pay Ventec and General Motors $1 billion to produce ventilators, according to The Buffalo News.

In a conversation with Hauptman Woodward Medical Research Institute Director of Development Lisa LaTrovato, Krolczyk wrote, "Trump supporters need to pledge to give up their ventilators for someone else ... and not go to the hospital."

In response, LaTrovato wrote, "I think they should be the only ones in packed churches on Sunday," to which Krolczyk replied, "They should barricade themselves in there and ride this out."

When another Facebook user accused the two of "saying we[decide] who lives and [who dies] based on political views," Krolczyk wrote, "That's literally what he's saying. Take your 'wow' and comprehend what your hero is saying. Your hero is saying YOU don't need a ventilator. So don't take one."

After Caputo highlighted the exchange, Roswell Park said in a statement that the remarks were inappropriate, adding, "This behavior is not tolerated at Roswell Park. If any team members act in a way that does not accord with that commitment, we will take swift and appropriate action, just as we did in this instance."

Krolczyk was initially placed on administrative leave but has since been fired, Annie Deck-Miller, a spokeswoman for the hospital, told The Buffalo News on Saturday. Hauptman Woodward said it has placed LaTrovato on leave.

"Leadership is addressing this regrettable personnel matter directly with the individual involved, who has been placed on administrative leave pending further internal review," the research institute said.

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NY health care executive fired over posts on coronavirus and Trump supporters | TheHill - The Hill

Heres What the Stimulus Bill Would Mean to the Health-Care Industry – Barron’s

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The stimulus bill meant to help mitigate the damage caused by the Covid-19 pandemic includes billions of dollars for the health-care industry, which will need to treat an expected deluge of critically ill patients.

Senators released the text of the bill late Wednesday night, after a day in which some details of the plan emerged while others remained sketchy.

The full bill, which will allocate roughly $2 trillion in total, is more than 800 pages long, and will be poured over extensively in the coming days. The House is expected to vote on the bill on Friday.

Here are some highlights from the Senate text of how the bill will affect the health-care industry.

Despite the bill nearing the finish line, S&P 500 futures were down 0.9% Thursday morning.

Write to Josh Nathan-Kazis at josh.nathan-kazis@barrons.com

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Heres What the Stimulus Bill Would Mean to the Health-Care Industry - Barron's

What Happens If Health-Care Workers Stop Showing Up? – The Atlantic

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If someone is going to risk their life, then they deserve the best possible care to save them. We understood this during Ebolathe first treatment center built by the U.S. government in Liberia was the Monrovia Medical Unit, specifically for Ebola-infected health-care staff. Providers need the reassurance that they will get preferential access to care and medications in exchange for their sacrifice. This is not just fair, but practicalkeeping clinicians alive means that they will be able to continue to provide care. Just knowing that the MMU was opening made recruiting providers easier.

Providers who become infected also deserve fair compensationfull pay while they are sick or if they are forced to quarantine to protect their patients. They should all have disability and life insurance. The families of those who sacrifice their life deserve great compensation.

Read: Grocery stores are the coronavirus tipping point

I have seen little evidence of this. Emergency-physician message boards are full of concern about the lack of preparation by their hospitals. Few of these financial arrangements exist. I havent received any special training, mostly just a few emails about the situation. That doesnt protect me. PPE is already being rationed, and there are dire predictions that it will run out long before this pandemic is over. Should I still have to go to work knowing I will get infected and have a 5 percent chance of dying? Why do my colleagues have to pay for a separate apartment when forced to self-quarantine away from their families?

Thus far, the attitude has been: Whats the big deal? Its just COVID-19, with a mortality of less than 1 percent. But tell that to the two emergency physicians in critical care right now, or the infected health-care providers in Arkansas, Washington, New York, and other states. Tell that to their families.

Six months into the 15-month Ebola epidemic, health-care providers stopped coming to work. They had little PPE. They saw their friends die without any special care. Their colleagues began abandoning their jobs, one by one, until there was no one left. There was nowhere for people to obtain treatment for stomach pain, childbirth, heart attacks, car crashes, or any other routine or unpredictable health event. As a result, experts estimate that more people died from illnesses like malaria and diarrhea than Ebola.

When health-care providers get sick, become disabled, or die, they can no longer provide care for anyone, not just infected patients.

In Italy, at least 2,000 health-care workers have been infected and are not providing care. Some have died. Some hospitals cohort, or group, providers so that they care for only infected patients, leaving others to care for the uninfected. Others providers cant work, because they are quarantined after possible exposures or because of known infections. But that is the way it has to be. The core ethics principle for physicians and nurses is primum non nocereFirst, do no harmand the last thing we want to do is spread the infection to our patients or other health-care staff.

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What Happens If Health-Care Workers Stop Showing Up? - The Atlantic

$100 Billion-Plus in CARES Act for Healthcare: 3 Ways to Get It – HealthLeaders Media

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The $2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act has more than $100 billion in aid for healthcare organizations, but in some cases, leaders had better act fast to get it.

While previous versions of the legislation contained less assistance for providers large or small, recent versions recognized the existential financial threat many healthcare organizations are under as they fight the COVID-19 outbreak.

"The intent of the CARES Act is to deliver relief to providers who face the double whammy of the loss of elective procedure revenue and the costs of preparation for the pandemic," says Martie Ross, managing principal, Kansas City Office of Knoxville, Tennesseebased PYA, P.C.

The bill contains provisions that range from payroll-based loans under a Small Business Administration (SBA) Act provision, as well as Medicare payment acceleration for providers already losing elective volume revenue. In certain cases, the funding remains unallocated, so finance teams may need to act fast to get first in line.

According to Ross and David McMillan, CFO and managing principal of PYAs consulting practice, there are three provisions of the CARES Act that healthcare providers should analyze immediately for their direct financial impact:

The SBA has underwritten loans for years to provide relief for companies to meet working capital obligations after a natural disaster. The "Paycheck Protection Program" is an expansion of the SBA Act that may provide up to $10 million in loans at 4% interest for business (including 501(c)(3)s) with fewer than 500 employees. The largest benefit, however, may be the provision that allows borrowers to apply to have all or a portion of the loan forgiven.

"Its a way to protect and help businesses continue to employ their workforce," McMillan says.

The loan amount is based on a formula that takes the average monthly payroll expenditure for the previous 12 months and multiplies that by a factor of 2.5. Businesses receive loan amounts equal to the lesser of that amount or the $10 million limit, McMillan says.

The unforgiven portions of the loan are repayable over 10 years. While repayment deferrals ranging from six to 12 months are also available, the unique aspect of the program is its forgiveness provision. For businesses that maintain their workforce for an eight-week period after the funds are received, a portion or all the loan may be forgiven. And whatever portion is forgiven is tax free, McMillan says.

The CARES Act adds $100 billion to the Public Health and Social Services Emergency Fund to reimburse providers for expenses and lost revenue attributable to COVID-19. Presently, this fund is administered by the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). In a single act, this agency goes from administering an annual budget of $2.6 billion to a $100 billion program.

Guidance is still pending, much of it may be on whether parts of the fund are allocated for rural hospitals, or cancer hospitals, or other specific providers, or whether the program is "first-come, first-served," Ross says.

"At this point, my advice would be first to file, until they say something differently," Ross says. "The language in the statute is that there's just no categorization. It's just a hundred billion dollars." The provisions cover not only lost revenue, but also certain capital expenditures that may result from COVID preparedness, Ross says.

As it stands, the program is not rolled out under the usual regulatory review and time frame, but guidance is soon expected from HHS on how the program is to be administered, Ross says. But dont wait. Get your numbers ready, Ross says.

"The sooner your team can come up with a reliable calculation of the loss you are experiencing because of declining electives or lower ER volume, the better. Also be prepared to quantify any additional expenses incurred due to the pandemic. You will want to have these numbers ready to plug into whatever formula they provide," Ross says.

There are three key provisions of the act that relate to Medicare, Ross and McMillan say:

"The first two are really game changers," Ross says. "Advance payments will allow providers that are losing revenue to apply to CMS to accelerate Medicare payments, essentially as an advance payment on future Medicare billing," Ross says. A more direct boost will be a temporary elimination of the 2% sequestration cut that will go into effect in May and continue for the rest of the year.

Both Ross and McMillan will be featured in a webinar, "The CARES Act: Your Piece of the $2 Trillion Pie" Monday, March 30 at 1 p.m. (ET). For more information, go to https://www.pyapc.com/insights/cares-act-webinar/

Jim Molpus is an editor for HealthLeaders.

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$100 Billion-Plus in CARES Act for Healthcare: 3 Ways to Get It - HealthLeaders Media

Companies join coronavirus fight by helping health care workers – Fox Business

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FOX Business' Lauren Simonetti breaks down how businesses are stepping up to build ventilators and making supplies more available to the public in order to combat the coronavirus.

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From distilleries to makeup manufacturers, companies across the nation have shifted operations to support health care workers in the fight against thecoronavirus pandemic.

As the world faces a shortage in critical medical supplies created by the rapidly spreading virus, businesses have launched efforts to donate supplies from ventilators, respirators, masks to hand sanitizer. Other companies have taken the initiative to manufacture their own products.

Here are some of thecompanies that have pledged support to those on the front lines of this fight.

A health care worker with the UNLV School of Medicine tests a patient for the coronavirus at a drive-thru testing site Tuesday in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher)

Airbnb

Airbnb launched a global initiative to provide health care professionals, relief workers and first responders free or subsidized housing. The company hopes to help house about 100,000 workers on the front lines of the fight against the virus.Airbnb will waive all fees for stays arranged through this initiative, the company announced Thursday.

Medical workers and first responders are providing lifesaving support during the coronavirus outbreak and we want to help, Airbnbs co-founder Joe Gebbia said. Weve heard from countless hosts around the world who want to provide a comforting home to heroic first responders. We are connecting our nonprofit partners, government agencies and others with our incredible host community to work together in these extraordinary times.

Hosts who provide homes will be asked to follow strict cleanliness protocols based on recommendations from medical experts.

The company is also partnering with the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the International Rescue Committee, International Medical Corps and other nonprofit organizations to help support their workers.

Apple

Apple has sourced and is donating 10 million masks to the medical community across the United States and the hardest-hit areas in Europe, AppleCEO Tim Cook announced on Twitter.

"These people deserve our debt of gratitude for all of the work they are doing on the front lines," he said. Its in these toughest times that we show our greatest strength and I know that we will rise to the occasion."

The company also raised $15 million worldwide "to help treat those who are sick and to help lessen the economic and community impacts of the pandemic," Apple said.

The company is also matching employee donations two-to-one to support the company's COVID-19 response efforts.

Armani

The Armani Group halted operations at its production plants tomanufacturing single-use overalls for health care workers on the front lines. This comes after Giorgio Armani allocated $2.2 million to hospitals in Italy as well as the Italian civil protection agency, Forbes reported.

Barco

The health care apparel company is donating10,000 scrubs each month for the duration of the coronavirus pandemic to professionals on the front lines.

"We are launching our scrub donation program to show our sincere thanks and demonstrate our immense gratitude to Healthcare professionals all over the country, all of whom have been so heroic in the fight against this pandemic, Barco's CEO David Murphy said.We are here to support the Healthcare workers as they take care of all of us.

Canada Goose

The winter clothing manufacturer is producing gear for frontline workers and patients in Canada. The company will be making suddenly hard-to-find medical supplies such as gowns and scrubs at manufacturing facilities across the country. Production and distribution will begin in Toronto and Winnipeg facilities next week, the company said.

"On behalf of our 5,000+ employees around the world, I want to express our deep gratitude to everyone who is working tirelessly on the frontlines, and our hearts go out to everyone who has been affected," Canada Goose said in a statement.

Crocs

The company is working to donate 10,000 pairs of shoes a day tothose on the front lines of the battle against the pandemic.The company already hasmore than 40,000 people in line for a pair.

In addition,Crocs is also donating up to 100,000 pairs of shoes to be distributed across select health care facilities and organizations.

Like everyone, weve been closely monitoring the news and working hard to map out a way to most effectively help where we can," CrocsCEO Andrew Rees said. "Over the past week, we have spoken to healthcare workers, their facilities and even their family and friends, and they have specifically asked for our shoes in an effort to provide ease on their feet, as well as ease of mind as they need the ability to easily clean up before they go home to their families."

Delta Air Lines

Delta said it would fly eligible medical volunteers round-trip for free to Georgia, Louisiana and Michigan, and look at expanding free flights to California, New York and Washington.

"We are witnessingthe heroic efforts of ourmedical professionals around the worldas theycombat COVID-19, and we have deep gratitude for their selfless sacrifice," saidBillLentsch,Delta's ChiefCustomer ExperienceOfficer. "Air travel plays a significant role in making connections in both good and challenging times, and our hope is that offering free travel gives more of these professionals the ability to help in critical areas of the U.S."

Eight Oaks Farm Distillery

The family-owned distillery plans converted their operation into a production line for the hand sanitizer. At this time, the Pennsylvania-based distillery is focused on making as much hand sanitizer to support organizations and nonprofits locally.

"The need for sanitizer is critical and even worse than we thought, and while we want to help everyone, supplies are limited and right now our commitment is to our local community and those mission-critical organizations," the company wrote.

ESTE LAUDER TO PRODUCE CORONAVIRUS-FIGHTING HAND SANITIZER

Este Lauder

Este Lauder committed to donating 10,000 bottles of hand sanitizer to every week to New York state for the coming weeks, New York Gov.Andrew Cuomo tweeted.

Additionally, the company has also recently pledged to donate $2 million to Doctors Without Borders/Mdecins Sans Frontires as a way to support coronavirus treatment in countries that have been severely affected or lack health care resources, according to a companypress release.

"The Este Lauder Companies is proud to contribute to the broader COVID-19 relief efforts by reopening our Melville manufacturing facility this week to produce hand-sanitizer for high-need groups and populations, including front-line medical staff,"a spokesperson for The Este Lauder Companies told FOX Business. "We are grateful to our employees who have worked tirelessly to make this possible. Compensated, employee volunteers will support this vital, meaningful effort."

Fanatics

The company has shifted from manufacturing uniforms for Major League Baseball to supporting health care workers fighting the pandemic. The company is utilizing its plant in Pennsylvania to produce masks and gowns out of the same jersey fabric that is used to make the uniforms worn by professional baseball players.

The company plans to make 1 million masks and gowns for hospitals and emergency management personnel across Pennsylvania with the goal of extending to New Jersey and New York, Fanaticsfounder and Executive Chairman Micheal Rubin said on Twitter.

"We have approx 100 associates working (extra distanced and in a very clean and safe environment of course)," he wrote in a tweet.

Ford Motor Company

The company is working with 3M andGE Healthcareand the United Auto Workers union to expand the production of critical medical equipment and supplies for health care workers, first respondersand patients fighting the virus.

Using a combination of parts with 3M, Ford is helping to scale production of powered-air purifying respirators. The company is also working with GE to expand the production of ventilators for patients.

Additionally, the company, with the help of the UAW, aims to produce roughly 75,000 face shields this week with plans to ramp up production to 100,000 face shields per week by April.

GE Appliances

The company is donating essential appliances to first responders and health care workers on the front lines in partnership with United Way as part of itsGEA4Heroes program.

GE announced Monday asignificant portion of the companys products made over the next two weeks will be donated to health care workers on the front lines who are fighting the rapidly spreading virus.

These appliances will be donated to individual health care workers, firefighters, paramedics and police officers. Firehouses, police stations and hospitals may also receive donations.

These men and women are working around the clock to keep us safe. Were relying on them, and they are relying on us and the products we make to keep their families safe and fed, GE AppliancesCEO Kevin Nolan said. Appliances are essential right now to help keep food and medicine safe, laundry and dishes sanitized, and food prepared forfamilies.Our country needs us now more than ever before and its essential that we take care of our fellow Americans, especially those who are taking care of us.

Google

Google announced a more than $800 million commitment to support businesses, health organizations, governmentsand health workers on the front lines.

Among its extensive list of relief efforts, the company is offering financial support to increase theproduction capacity for personal protective equipment and medical devices,Google CEOSundar Pichai announced Friday.

In working with Magid Glove & Safety, Google's longtime supplier and partner, the company is ramping up production of 2 million to 3 million face masks in the coming weeks. The masks will be distributed to the CDC Foundation, Pichai said.

Alphabetemployees, including those with Google, Verily and X, are also helping to facilitate increased production of ventilators, he added. Alphabet is the parent company of all three firms.

Hertz

The car rental company is offering free vehicle rentals through April 30 for health care workers. Workers can book as little as a week or up to a month with the company at no cost to them. To take advantage of the offer, employees must have a valid medical ID, emailwith a healthcare domain, and driver's license.

JetBlue

The airlineis working with nonprofit partners and government agencies to help get medical professionals and much-needed supplies where they are needed amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The company is also assisting students who need help traveling to family and friends or a permanent housing situation, the company said.

"Air travel is an essential global service and we are committed to meeting travel needs, some of which are critical," JetBlue said in a statement. "During this time of uncertainty, we remain committed to our mission of Inspiring Humanity and our social impact pillars community and youth/education. This includes our main resources flights and assets from our network of partners."

CORONAVIRUS LEADS SERTA TO DONATE 10,000 MATTRESSES TO NYC HOSPITALS

Krispy Kreme

The company is donating sweet treats to health care workers every Monday through National Nurses Week, which concludes on May 12.

Anyone who works at a hospital, as well as physicians, nurses, surgeons, psychologists, dentists, optometrists, pharmacists and their staff will be given free dozens of the original glazed doughnuts.

"Taking care of ourselves and each other never has been more important. Getting through this together by staying apart seems unnatural. But even now there can be joy. It can bring and keep us 'together'in this challenging, disruptive time," the company said. "AtKrispy Kreme, we love bringing smiles to others, especially those who need them the most."

Workers will need to show their ID at the drive-through in order to redeem the offer. There is a limit of up to five dozen per worker "due to varying production capabilities by location."

L'Oral

The company launched a multi-faceted initiative to support Americans during the pandemic.

The company's manufacturing facilitates in North America are producing alcohol-based hand sanitizers. The hard-to-find substance will be sent to company employees, partnersand health care professionals working on the frontlines. The company is also donating surgical and N95 respirator masks made in facilities in North Little Rock, Arkansas, and Franklin, New Jersey, to local hospitals.

We stand in solidarity with the brave people who are tirelessly and selflessly working to end this pandemic, and it is our hope that, through these actions, we are able to provide some relief during this challenging time," StphaneRinderknech, president and CEO of L'Oral USA, said.

The company is also donating money and resources to non-profits such as Feeding America and providing relief for small businesses.

Lowe's

Lowe's is donating$10 million in essential products for medical professionals. The donation is part of a$25 million commitment to help communities hit hardest by COVID-19 within the U.S. and Canada.

The home improvement company is working with national health care supply distributors to deliver essential items, such as respirators and other protective gear, to hospitals most in need across the country.

"Were proud of our teams who deployed N95 masks from Lowes distribution centers yesterday to support medical professionals across the country," the company wrote on Facebook."Were committed to serving our communities; and as an essential retailer, were open and ready to help."

The company is allocating $500,000 of the overall donation for the American Red Cross to help the organizationmaintain a sufficient supply of blood to help patients in need.

"The organization faces a blood shortage as blood drives are canceled, and it needs additional donors now more than ever," the company wrote.

Merck

Merck is donating masks forhealth care workers and other front-line responders battling thepandemic in New Jersey. The company announced this week it was donating 300,000 masks to New Jerseys Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness.

We extend our deepest appreciation to the many healthcare providers and volunteers here and around the world who are doing so much to help affected patients and communities, and to our own employees who are focused on delivering our critically important medicines and vaccines to the patients who need them," said Merck CEOKenneth Frazier.

Merck also said it's assuring that its "supply of medicines and vaccines reach our patients, contributing our scientific expertise to the development of antiviral approaches, and supporting our healthcare providers and the communities in which they serve."

Prudential Financial

The New Jersey-based insurance company donated 153,000 face masks and approximately 75,000 respirators to health care workers across the state.

"While the pandemic has become a global crisis, the fight against it is taking place locally and will be won at the community level,"Prudential's CEO Charles F. Lowrey said. "Our cities, towns and neighborhoods have always been there for us, in good times and bad. Their health, well-being and prosperity are vital to our future. We will not let them down in this hour of need."

The company also donated 300 bottles of hand sanitizer andcommitted $1.5 million in funding for local businesses, families in need and the nonprofit sector both in the U.S. and internationally.

Ralph Lauren

TheRalph Lauren Corporate Foundationis earmarking$10 million toward COVID-19 relief.

In part, the funds will go towardtheWorld Health Organizations COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund, which was created to help countries prevent, detectand respond to theglobal crisis, the company said. The funds will also go towardthe fashion community, employees and international cancer institutions, which are caring for people who are especially vulnerable during this time.

With help from its U.S. manufacturingpartners, the company is also working to produce 250,000 masks and 25,000 isolation gowns to help those in need.

"Our hearts and thoughts are with the global community," the company said.Our hope is to be a beacon of optimism and unity as we navigate this unprecedented time.It is in the spirit of togetherness that we willrise."

Serta Simmons Bedding

The company is donating10,000 mattresses to New York City hospitals and medical facilities fighting the coronavirus.

The donation, which will bein partnership withRelief Bed International, is meant to address the significant shortage of hospital beds cited byCuomo Tuesday.

"As the largest American producer of mattresses, Serta Simmons Bedding is committed to ensuring those who are hospitalized have a bed available where they can receive care and heal,"SSB Chairman and CEO David Swift said Wednesday. "We're calling on our peers in the bedding industry to join us in addressing this need."

The company also said it is capable ofproducing up to 20,000 additional beds per day "at the lowest possible cost if needed"to help in the fight against the coronavirus.

SmileDirectClub

Earlier this month SmileDirectClub began to utilize its 3D printing manufacturing facility in Tenessee to increase the production of medical supplies needed to combat the pandemic. The company announced it has the capacity to print up to 7,500 medical-grade face shields for health care workers. St. Luke's Boise Medical CenterinIdaho is slated to receive the first shipment of 1,000 shields.

The company is actively accepting orders from U.S. and Canadian health care organizations and governmental bodies.

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Companies join coronavirus fight by helping health care workers - Fox Business

Georgians gather to pray for health care workers battling coronavirus – FOX 5 Atlanta

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NEWNAN, Ga. - Hundreds of of Georgians displayed an incredible show of support for local health care workers on the front lines of the battle against the coronavirus.

Georgians gathered around the state to pray for the people on the front lines of battling the coronavirus.

Nearly every spot in Piedmont Newnan Hospital's parking lot was filled. In each car there were people to pray for the employees and patients inside.

In video shared by FOX 5 viewers, residents drove by honking their horns, flashing lights and singing "Amazing Grace."

Learn more about the coronavirus outbreak in Georgia

One nurse inside Piedmont Newnan told FOX 5 that working on the frontlines of the fight against COVID-19 is hard and draining, but he said seeing the support left him feeling blessed.

We all felt touched by this. Everyone's eyes were wet," Nurse Naman Patel said."We all left our family home to take care of patients. It's hard and draining. And to see this gives goosebumps. I feel blessed."

MORE:Hundreds gather to circle the Cartersville Medical Center in prayer

Piedmont Newnan wasn't the only hospital in Georgia where this show of support has happened recently. Another prayer gathering also happened Saturday at WellStar West Georgia Medical Center.

Georgians also gathered atNortheast Georgia Medical Center Braselton, playing music and holding their hands up in prayer.

Who is most susceptible to coronavirus? COVID-19 not just affecting older people

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Georgians gather to pray for health care workers battling coronavirus - FOX 5 Atlanta

Coronavirus in Europe: Thousands of Health Workers Out of Action – The New York Times

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MADRID Across Western Europe, health care professionals have used the language of war to describe the struggle against the coronavirus, which has left some hospitals on the brink of collapse.

And health care workers are the soldiers on the front lines.

Out of Spains 40,000 confirmed coronavirus cases, 5,400 nearly 14 percent are medical professionals, the health ministry said on Tuesday. No other country has reported health care staff accounting for a double-digit percentage of total infections.

But the problem is widespread throughout Europe. In Italy, France and Spain, more than 30 health care professionals have died of the coronavirus, and thousands of others have had to self-isolate.

In Brescia province, the center of Italys outbreak, 10 to 15 percent of doctors and nurses have been infected and put out of commission, according to a doctor there.

In France, the public hospital system in Paris has tallied 490 infected staff members, a small but growing proportion of the systems 100,000 or so employees.

The same dynamics are starting to take hold in Britain and the United States, where the contagion is bearing down but has yet to fully bite.

At the La Paz hospital in Madrid, one of the largest in Spains capital, 426 employees 6 percent of the medical staff are isolated at home, after testing positive or showing possible symptoms of the coronavirus, according to internal numbers provided by a labor union that represents doctors in Madrid.

At the smaller Igualada hospital in Catalonia, a third of the 1,000 hospital staff has been sent home.

The virus was already among us when we were really only testing those who came from Wuhan and then from Italy, said ngela Hernndez Puente, a doctor who is the deputy secretary general of the doctors union. Some of our doctors unfortunately worked without adequate protection and acted as vectors.

As doctors, nurses and other practitioners fall sick, the burdens increase on health care systems already groaning under the strain of an expanding epidemic. And infected workers and their hospitals are increasingly being recognized as vectors for the spread of the virus.

The number of cases in Spain has been doubling every four days, and the country is fast shaping up as Europes next epicenter of the contagion. On Tuesday, Spains coronavirus toll reached 2,700 dead, the second-highest in Europe after Italy.

In Madrid, the focus of Spains outbreak, so many are dying that bodies are being placed in an Olympic-sized ice skating rink that has been converted into an emergency morgue.

In some retirement homes, soldiers deployed to disinfect the premises found elderly people abandoned, or dead in their beds, prompting Spains public prosecutors to open an investigation.

It has not helped that Spains population, on average, is among the worlds oldest. But the government was also late to impose restrictions on the movement of people.

Even as a tragedy unfolded in northern Italy, mass events went ahead earlier this month in Madrid, and the government waited until March 14 to declare a state of emergency that has since forced people to stay indoors, barring exceptional circumstances.

Spain also did not shore up its stock of medical equipment early on. Doctors and nurses have had to work with a dangerous shortage of masks, gloves and other essential gear that has proved disastrous for them.

The grim situation has left many of Spains health care professionals overwhelmed and pleading for more equipment, doctors, nurses and ambulance crews have told The New York Times. For those who have been infected, a feeling of powerlessness has sunk in.

You are used to taking care of others and now youre being asked to stay home and take care of yourself, said Marc Arnaiz, a doctor in the internal medicine unit of the Igualada hospital, who tested positive earlier this month.

For most of us this job is a vocation, so its shocking and frustrating, he said.

Mr. Arnaiz, 31, said he had likely been infected by a patient. He noticed the first symptoms on March 9, the day his patient was confirmed positive, among the first in the hospital, which has since become one of the worst infection clusters in northeastern Spain.

While its impossible to know how many patients infected doctors and vice versa, the alarming spread within hospitals has forced the government to struggle with a shortage of both professionals and equipment.

Last week, the government launched an emergency recruitment plan to add 50,000 health care workers, ranging from medical students to retired doctors.

After employees began complaining openly about the stresses on the system, some Madrid hospitals told their staff not to speak out. Many of those interviewed by The New York Times were not authorized to comment publicly and asked that their full names not be used for fear of retribution.

One, Yolanda, has been a nurse for 30 years, working in a public hospital in Madrid. But earlier this month, as the outbreak worsened in Spain, she said she was moved instead to a makeshift emergency ward, where she had to learn new skills on the job while working without decent protective gear.

Weve been put on the front line not only without enough protection, but also sometimes with the stress of a very different work environment, she said, noting that she had never before handled intubated patients. The nurses in her unit wore face masks and gowns, but they had to reuse them because of a shortage.

Putting on a face mask again and again is as useless as sticking a piece of paper on your face, she said.

Last Thursday, Yolanda went home feeling feverish. On Sunday, she tested positive for coronavirus, along with about 30 colleagues. We have done our best, but some of us sadly became part of the contamination chain, she said.

Hospital workers unions were less hesitant to point fingers.

When we already knew that the virus was circulating in hospitals, we were still being told that the usage of protective gear should be limited to specific circumstances, said Juanjo Menndez, the communications director of SATSE Madrid, a nurses union. Its the kind of basic error that a student learns to avoid in the first year of medical school.

In Spain, France and Italy, officials and health care professionals said they were shocked by equipment shortages.

Giorgio Gori, the mayor of Bergamo, one of the hardest hit towns in Italy, said the doctors werent protected, and lacked the sufficient defenses, adding that he was still receiving requests for masks and gloves from doctors making home visits.

Jean-Paul Hamon, the president of one of Frances biggest doctor unions, told the LCI television broadcaster on Tuesday that he was particularly worried about workers who are not in hospitals but are still in close contact with patients, like general practitioners or retirement home employees.

Three of the five doctors who have died of Covid-19 so far in France were general practitioners, and one was a gynecologist. The state is absolutely unprepared, said Mr. Hamon, who is himself infected. The state is going to owe an explanation.

In Spain, doctors warned that hospitals were now paying the price of the loose measures announced in the early days of the outbreak.

The lack of protection is everywhere, the improvisation seems to be widespread, said Antonio Antela, a doctor who coordinates the infectious disease unit at the university hospital of Santiago de Compostela, in northwestern Spain. He has been hospitalized for a week after developing pneumonia and testing positive.

The lesson is: take care of your public health care system, because there will be other epidemics and we ought to be better prepared, he added in a telephone interview from his hospital bed.

At a medical center in the heart of Madrid, Mara, another nurse who is now isolated at home with coronavirus, said that she spent several days working without a face mask and gloves, handing out masks only to visitors who reported breathing problems or had recently been in Italy.

On March 11, the day she first felt fever, her medical center finally ordered all staff to wear masks. We probably didnt have enough face masks, but we also acted for far too long as if this was a limited problem, mostly imported from Italy, she said.

The Spanish government is now stepping up efforts to buy medical equipment, as well as distributing about 650,000 new test kits across the country. Two Chinese cargo planes filled with face masks and other gear landed in Madrid and Zaragoza on Tuesday.

We are a target like everybody else, but we are also a threat to other co-workers, said Juan, a 37-year-old doctor in a Madrid public hospital. Also, if you test everyone and theres no health care workers left in the hospitals, what can you do?

Raphael Minder reported from Madrid and Elian Peltier from Barcelona. Reporting was contributed by Jason Horowitz in Rome and Aurelien Breeden in Paris.

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Coronavirus in Europe: Thousands of Health Workers Out of Action - The New York Times

China’s new crew spacecraft looks like it could dock with the International Space Station – Space.com

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A next-generation crew spacecraft that China is preparing for a flight test this spring appears to be capable of docking with the International Space Station (ISS).

An image posted by the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology (SAST) shows the new spacecrafts docking system, which appears compatible with the International Docking System Standard (IDSS).

NASA, the European Space Agency and Russia's federal space agency, known as Roscosmos, use IDSS-compatible systems or adapters. These are in use on the ISS to facilitate rendezvous and docking with spacecraft.

Related: Photos of China's new spacecraft to take astronauts to the moon

The new spacecraft is designed to boost China's capabilities in sending humans into orbit, reduce costs through partial reusability and allow astronauts to survive the radiation environment and high-speed reentries of deep-space missions.

The as-yet-unnamed spacecraft is 28.9 feet (8.8 meters) long with a mass at liftoff of 23.8 tons (21.6 metric tons). It will be capable of carrying six astronauts, or three astronauts and 1,100 lbs. (500 kilograms) of cargo to Chinas planned space station.

A prototype of the next-gen crewed spacecraft is being prepared for a test flight at the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center. Launch on a Long March 5B rocket is expected in mid- to late April.

The IDSS docking mechanism is androgynous. A first such system was developed and used for the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, meaning neither the U.S. nor Soviet spacecraft had "male" or "female" mechanisms.

China has demonstrated rendezvous and docking capabilities with Shenzhou crewed spacecraft and the Tiangong-1 and Tiangong-2 space labs, as well as with the Tianzhou cargo spacecraft.

The rendezvous systems on spacecraft, which facilitate the maneuvering and matching of vectors and velocities for close approaches, may, however, need to be adapted to be compatible.

But even if the new Chinese crewed spacecraft can technically rendezvous and dock with the ISS, it is currently not possible politically.

While China cooperates with ESA and Russia, the United States has effectively excluded China from the ISS project. The US government in 2011 introduced text into legislation, referred to as the "Wolf Amendment," that severely restricts opportunities for NASA and other agencies from bilateral cooperation with entities linked to the Chinese government.

The test flight of the new spacecraft will also test China's Long March 5B launch vehicle. If successful, the new rocket will subsequently be used to launch the 20-metric-ton modules of the Chinese Space Station.

Follow Andrew Jones at @AJ_FI. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.

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China's new crew spacecraft looks like it could dock with the International Space Station - Space.com

In Photos: The Expedition 62 mission to the International Space Station – Space.com

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Expedition 62 to the International Space Station (ISS) began on Feb. 6, 2020, with the departure of the Soyuz MS-13 spacecraft. The Expedition currently consists of three crewmembers: Cmdr. Oleg Skripochka of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, as well as two NASA astronauts, Jessica Meir and Andrew Morgan.

The ISS will be back up to its usual population of six crewmembers with the arrival of NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and two Russian cosmonauts, Anatoli Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner. On April 16, Skripochka will hand over command of the ISS to Cassidy, marking the end of Expedition 62 and the start of Expedition 63.

See photos of the Expedition 62 crew in action and photos taken by the crew in space in this Space.com gallery.

Related: The International Space Station: inside and out (infographic)

The official Expedition 62 insignia includes the astronauts' names and an astronaut holding a star alongside another carrying a leaf.

This official crew portrait, taken April 17, 2019, shows (from left): Andrew Morgan of NASA, Oleg Skripochka of Roscosmos and Jessica Meir of NASA.

The three-member Expedition 62 crew Oleg Skripochka, Jessica Meir and Andrew Morgan pose together wearing their mission patch t-shirts at the International Space Station, on Feb. 7, 2020.

Below the International Space Station, California's San Francisco Bay, the Pacific Ocean and Washington State's Columbia River offer a spectacular view on Feb. 9, 2020.

Water floats in an undulating sphere as NASA's Expedition 62 flight engineer Jessica Meir looks on. This Feb. 9, 2020 photo displays the effects of microgravity on water.

NASA astronaut Jessica Meir participates in the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA) Cerebral Autoregulation experiment aboard the International Space Station on Feb. 10, 2020. The study investigates how microgravity effects how the regulation of blood flow to the brain changes in microgravity. A goal of the study is "applications to future space travelers and patients back on Earth," according to Meir.

Sunlight hits the International Space Station's solar arrays with a golden shimmer in this image by Jessica Meir on Feb. 10, 2020.

The highest clouds in Earth's atmosphere noctilucent, or "night shining" clouds glow in this image taken from the ISS on Feb. 12, 2020. Noctilucent clouds occur only when the sun shines on clouds from below Earth's horizon.

NASA astronaut Jessica Meir represents her alma mater, Brown University, while gazing at Earth through the Cupola observatory aboard the International Space Station, on Feb. 13, 2020. When she tweeted this photo, Meir said she tried "to spot the Van Wickle gates from space!"

NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Andrew Morgan "sit" on the shoulders of Russian cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka as they pose for another "zero-g" group photo on Feb. 14, 2020.

The last quarter moon looms behind the International Space Station's Canadarm2 robotic arm in this photo by NASA astronaut Jessica Meir. She and her Expedition 62 crewmate Andrew Morgan used Canadarm2 to grapple anarriving Cygnus cargo spacecrafton Feb. 18, 2020.

NASA astronauts Jessica Meir captured this vibrant view of Key West, Florida, from 266 miles (428 kilometers) above the Earth, on Feb. 17, 2020. "Many fond memories in idyllic #KeyWest #Florida, including @NASA_Astronauts flight training with landings @NASKeyWest," Meir tweeted.

In honor of Black History Month, Northrop Grumman named its 13th Cygnus cargo spacecraft after U.S. Air Force Maj. Robert H. Lawrence, Jr., the first African-American ever selected as an astronaut. The Cygnus NG-13 cargo spacecraft arrived at the International Space Station on Feb. 18, 2020, carrying more than 7,500 lbs. (3,400 kilograms) ofscience experiments, supplies and other vital gearfor the station's three-person Expedition 62 crew.

Northrup Grumman's Cygnus NG-13 arrives at the ISS on Feb. 18, 2020. The freighter, full of supplies for the space station, was named after a U.S. Air Force test pilot, Maj. Robert H. Lawrence, Jr., the first African American selected for a national space program.

The Expedition 62 astronaut crew is pictured inside a SpaceX Dragon resupply craft, on March 9, 2020. The crew is wearing portable breathing gear while entering to test the spaceship's atmosphere for particles and irritants that could have come loose while launching to space.

NASA astronaut Andrew Morgan tweeted this photo of an Irish flag floating in one of the windows of the Cupola observatory on St. Patrick's Day (March 17). Full story: Astronauts celebrate St. Patrick's Day 2020 with photos of Ireland from space

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Five MIT payloads deployed on the International Space Station – Space Daily

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Five research payloads from the MIT Media Lab's Space Exploration Initiative were recently deployed on the International Space Station for a 30-day research mission. Scientists, designers, and artists will be able to study the effects of prolonged microgravity, on-station radiation, and launch loads on experiments ranging from self-assembling architecture to biological pigments. The payloads launched on the SpaceX CRS-20 via the Dragon cargo ship atop a Falcon 9 rocket on March 6.

This first launch to the ISS represents a key milestone in the schedule of iterative microgravity testing that the Space Exploration Initiative (SEI) undertakes throughout each year, following a successful Karman line launch with Blue Origin and a second parabolic research flight over the past 12 months.

"Sending five concurrent payloads to the International Space Station - this is a huge milestone for the team, and something we've been working towards explicitly for nearly a year," says Ariel Ekblaw, SEI's founder and lead.

The payloads were integrated into the Nanoracks BlackBox, a locker-sized platform with mechanical mounting points and electrical connections for power, data, and communication capabilities. Payloads are fully integrated into BlackBox on the ground; when they reach ISS, the astronauts aboard integrate them into ISS experiment racks, then simply leave them alone - the boxes are completely self-contained and remotely commanded via Nanoracks from the ground. This system allows for larger and more complex research payloads on the ISS, as the astronauts aren't required to come near any potentially hazardous materials and don't need any special expertise to run the experiments.

The capabilities of this platform allow for precisely the kind of cross-disciplinary research that is the hallmark of the Space Exploration Initiative. The five payloads currently on the ISS represent SEI's unique approach to research, prototyping, and design for humanity's future in space.

Sojourner 2020 is payload of artworks, the first-ever international "open call" art payload to the ISS, selected by SEI's arts curator Xin Liu. Sojourner 2020 features a three-layer telescoping structure. Each layer of the structure rotates independently; the top layer remains still in weightlessness, while the middle and bottom layers spin at different speeds to produce centripetal accelerations that mimic lunar gravity and Martian gravity, respectively.

Nine artists contributed works in a variety of different media, including carved stone sculpture, liquid pigment experiments, and sculptures made of transgender hormone replacement meds. Sojourner 2020 highlights the ways in which the arts can contribute to new means of encountering space; by including projects from indigenous peoples and gender minorities, the project additionally emphasizes key values of human dignity, equality, and democratizing access.

Space Miso, a collaboration between Maggie Coblentz at the MIT Media Lab and Joshua Evans at the University of Oxford, aims to map the emergence of a new space "terroir." This research seeks to understand how the environment of space may uniquely alter the flavors of familiar foods, in particular through fermentation processes. This initial experiment sends a sample of miso to the ISS for 30 days and tracks how its microbiome and flavor chemistry may change compared to earthbound control samples.

The latest iteration of Ekblaw's self-assembling TESSERAE tiles tests new paradigms for in-orbit construction of satellites and future space habitats. The tiles (two pentagons, five hexagons) will be selectively released on-station to test autonomous self-assembly and docking over many days of sustained microgravity. These latest prototypes include an extensive suite of sensing and electro-permanent magnet actuation for full diagnostic capability (determining "good" and "bad" bonds between tiles as they join together) and structure reconfigurability.

Radiofungi: Biological Pigments for Radioprotection is a payload from the Mediated Matter Group. The Radiofungi team is researching the synthesis of biological pigments, including melanins and carotenoids, to explore the potential new strategies for radiation protection. Such pigments can be fabricated for a variety of applications, creating a new class of materials and coatings that can protect life on Earth, in deep space, and beyond. This payload examines the growth and behavior of five pigment-producing microorganisms during a one-month stint on the ISS.

BioX1 is a test of reagents to enable space-based genomics for human health and life detection, designed by a research team from MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, testing an experiment apparatus for DNA analysis that may become the basis for a future Mars rover experiment.

The experiment will analyze sequencing tools that assist in the Search for Extraterrestrial Genomes program, a NASA-funded life detection instrument that would detect nucleic acid-based life via single molecule sequencing.

The Nanoracks team supporting the MIT payloads is able to downlink data directly from the networked payload on the International Space Station, and then share directly to the researchers. The team is hard at work analyzing telemetry, sensor data, pictures, and videos to track each payload's current status.

These results will be paired with a full holistic report on each payload upon return of the hardware to Earth. After the 30-day mission, the BlackBox will be packed up as return cargo in the Dragon capsule, splash down in the Pacific Ocean, and then Nanoracks will acquire BlackBox to return to MIT.

Several of these projects directly address research supported by the NASA-guided Translational Research Institute for Space Health. All represent collaborations across disciplines - engineering, architecture, materials science, chemistry, art, technology, design, and more. This kind of cross-pollination and teamwork are core to SEI's mission.

For Ekblaw, that ethos doesn't extend only to research; it's about bringing people together, building communities of people with different interests and expertise with shared goals and common experiences. It's why she flew any of the researchers who were able to make the trip down to Cape Canaveral to watch the launch together, and why she hosted a dinner for the researchers, the artists, and the Nanoracks team.

"Our Space Exploration Initiative deployments are often MIT-wide endeavors - it's an honor to have the opportunity to support research and collaborations that span departments," says Ekblaw. "We are standing on the shoulders of giants, and are actively expanding our regular cadence of SEI launch opportunities, throughout the year, to an even broader community. This means building bridges across the space industry - with academia, business, and government - to profoundly democratize access to space."

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Five MIT payloads deployed on the International Space Station - Space Daily

NASA tasks SpaceX with sending cargo and supplies to future lunar space station – The Verge

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Despite the worsening coronavirus pandemic in the US, NASA is still looking ahead to its long-term goal of sending humans back to the lunar surface and is now asking SpaceX to start doing cargo runs to the Moon in the near future. NASA awarded the aerospace company with a new contract this afternoon, tasking SpaceX with sending cargo and supplies to a space station that NASA wants to build in the Moons orbit.

The new partnership is a big piece of NASAs Artemis program, an initiative to land the first woman on the lunar surface by 2024. As part of the program, NASA has proposed building a space station in orbit around the Moon called the Gateway, where astronauts can work and train before heading down to the lunar soil. Just like the International Space Station, the Gateway is going to need supplies and science experiments from time to time, and now SpaceX is the first company charged with making that happen.

SpaceX has been supplying cargo to the International Space Station for almost a decade now, packing supplies inside the companys Dragon capsule and launching them on top of a Falcon 9 rocket. To get supplies to the future Gateway, SpaceX is going to use some upgraded vehicles. The company is developing a new cargo vehicle called the Dragon XL, a cylindrical white spacecraft that can carry more than 5 metric tons of cargo to Gateway in lunar orbit, according to SpaceX. The supersized Dragon will launch on top of SpaceXs Falcon Heavy rocket, the much more powerful variant of the Falcon 9 that consists of three rocket cores strapped together.

Thanks to a fixed-price contract, SpaceX is on the hook to send multiple supply missions to the Gateway once the station is up and running. During each trip, the Dragon XL will stay docked to the Gateway for six to 12 months a time. The capsule will carry things like sample collection materials and other items the crew may need on the Gateway and during their expeditions on the lunar surface, according to NASA.

Returning to the Moon and supporting future space exploration requires affordable delivery of significant amounts of cargo, Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceXs president and COO, said in a statement. Through our partnership with NASA, SpaceX has been delivering scientific research and critical supplies to the International Space Station since 2012, and we are honored to continue the work beyond Earths orbit and carry Artemis cargo to Gateway.

SpaceX likely wont be the only company tasked with sending supplies to the Gateway. Ultimately, NASA has the option to add multiple cargo suppliers and has allotted up to $7 billion to spend on cargo contracts for Artemis. Each contract guarantees that NASA will order at least two cargo missions per provider and NASA can request missions for up to 12 years.

While the contract is a big step for SpaceX and NASA, a lot of questions remain about the future of the Artemis program. For one, its unclear when the Gateway will actually be built. For the last few years, NASA officials have argued that building the Gateway is a crucial part of the Artemis program as it will help the space agency establish a sustainable presence around the Moon, rather than just send astronauts to the lunar surface to leave flags and footprints. But the administration challenged NASA to land its first Artemis astronauts by 2024, and with that deadline quickly approaching, the space agency may not have enough time to build the Gateway if it wants to get humans back to the Moon in the next four years. In fact, NASAs newly appointed associate administrator for human exploration said that the Gateway is no longer critical for getting humans back to the Moon by 2024, according to Space News. That doesnt mean it wont get built, but it may not happen until after the first lunar landing deadline.

Meanwhile, its becoming increasingly unlikely that NASA will be able to meet its 2024 deadline at all, as the coronavirus pandemic has forced the agency to suspend production on some key programs. Notably, NASA shut down development of its next big rocket, the Space Launch System, which the agency plans to use to fly the first Artemis astronauts to the Moon.

As for SpaceX, the company is still operating during the pandemic as the company has been deemed mission essential by the state of California, due to its work with the Department of Defense. So its possible the company could still get a jump-start on the development of this new capsule. But its unclear when the Gateway will be ready to receive its first shipment.

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NASA tasks SpaceX with sending cargo and supplies to future lunar space station - The Verge