Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear has issued an apology to a man named Tupac Shakur, a Lexington resident who recently filed for unemployment. Tupac Malik Shakur, 46, who goes by Malik, worked as a cook when the coronavirus shut down restaurants. The governor said a few “bad apples including a person who filed an unemployment claim under the name of the late rapper Tupac Shakur are responsible for slowing down the state’s unemployment processing.”
Our Community
Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer expressed the need for more COVID-19 testing in low-income communities in the county to slow the spread of the virus. Nationwide, people who reside in wealthier communities have been tested more because of more accessible testing locations and the availability of testing supplies.
Washington, D.C. landmark, Ben’s Chili Bowl, has been approved for a Paycheck Protection Program loan after public outcry. The restaurant, which fed protestors during the Civil Rights Movement, applied for federal assistance on March 27. Owners were forced to close all of its locations except for one. The Payroll Protection Program, aimed at helping small businesses weather the financial storm caused by COVID-19, ran out of money just days after opening.
Former NBA Player Sebastian Telfair announced the deaths of his brother and mother from COVID-19. Telfair’s 64-year-old mother, Erica, died early Monday and his brother, Ethan, lost his battle with the virus on March 28.
Oscar-winning actress Octavia Spencer is partnering with Mikucare to donate respiratory monitors to hospitals in her home state of Alabama and New York. Miku, which makes no-contact breathing and sleep monitors for babies, is using its product to help doctors fight the pandemic.
Politics
A spokesperson for Vice President Mike Pence said it was not a mistake for Pence to forgo wearing a mask during a tour of the Mayo Clinic’s COVID-19 testing lab yesterday. In a Twitter post that has been deleted, the clinic said the vice president was informed of the mask requirement before he visited.
The Pandemic
Donald Trump is receiving backlash from the employees of meat processing plants after signing an executive order requiring meat processing plants to stay open. Several companies, such as Tyson Foods, were considering only keeping 20% of their facilities open. Closing plants would have reduced processing capacity in the U.S. by as much as 80%. The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union reported that 20 meatpacking and food processing workers have died so far.
As states such as Texas, Georgia, and Minnesota begin to lift stay-at-home restrictions, no state that has opted to reopen has met the federal target of 14 consecutive days of declining coronavirus cases. The U.S. has surpassed 1 million cases, accounting for one-third of the world’s total.
According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the U.S. trails many countries in the number of COVID-19 tests that have been administered. The 36-country organization reports the U.S. has performed 16.4 tests per 1,000 people, while Spain and Italy have tested 22.3 per 1,000 people and 29.7 per 1,000 people, respectively.
A group of psychiatrists have launched a hotline to help doctors who are struggling with the emotional and mental toll of treating patients with the coronavirus. This comes after the suicide of Dr. Lorna Breen. Dr. Smita Gautam, a Chicago-based psychiatrist and a co-founder of the hotline, said she fears Breen isn’t the only one suffering. The number for the Physician Support Line is (888) 409-0141.
As of Wednesday, at least 500 Transportation Security Administration employees have tested positive for the coronavirus. The majority of those cases, 435, are those employees who screen passengers and handle baggage. Nearly 40 percent of the cases are at airports in the New York City area.
The United Nations warns that more than 47 million women worldwide could lose access to contraception in the coming months, leading to 7 million unplanned pregnancies. This access to family planning is caused by shortages of contraceptives and skipping medical appointments from fear of contracting coronavirus.
