VOLUME 5 ISSUE 11
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WWW.NSJONLINE.COM |
WEDNESDAY, MAY 6, 2020
the Wednesday
NEWS BRIEFING
State hospitals receive $390 million for COVID-19 treatment Washington, D.C. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is processing payments from the Provider Relief Fund to hospitals with large numbers of COVID-19 inpatient admissions and to rural providers in support of the national response to COVID-19. “These new payments are being distributed to healthcare providers who have been hardest hit by the virus: $12 billion to facilities admitting large numbers of COVID-19 patients and $10 billion to providers in rural areas, who are already working on narrow margins,” said HHS Secretary Alex Azar. “HHS has put these funds out as quickly as possible, after gathering data to ensure that they are going to the providers who need them the most. “ North Carolina highimpact providers will receive $79 million from Provider Relief Fund COVID-19 High Impact Payment Allocations, rural providers will receive $282 million, and hospitals treating low-income and uninsured patients will receive $30 million. NSJ STAFF
Suit challenges power of 4 Mecklenburg towns to run charter schools Raleigh A state law that allows four Charlotte-area municipalities to operate charter schools was challenged in North Carolina court last week. The North Carolina and Charlotte-Mecklenburg NAACP chapters and two parents filed the lawsuit against the state and Republican legislative leaders. The plaintiffs argue the law, which granted the option to Matthews, Mint Hill, Huntersville and Cornelius, essentially creates new town school districts that siphon funds from the CharlotteMecklenburg school system. Elected officials in the towns have said the new authority had nothing to do with race, but rather to address overcrowded public schools. The towns had been at odds with the CharlotteMecklenburg school board, arguing it wasn’t willing to construct enough new schools in their areas despite negotiations. ASSOCIATED PRESS
UK prime minister: At low point, doctors prepared my death announcement London Prime Minister Boris Johnson has offered more insight into his hospitalization for coronavirus, telling a British newspaper that he knew doctors were preparing for the worst. The 55-year-old Johnson, who spent three nights in intensive care during his treatment, said he was aware that doctors were discussing his fate. Johnson couldn’t believe how quickly his health had deteriorated and had difficulty understanding why he wasn’t getting better. Medical workers gave him “liters and liters of oxygen’’ but he said the “indicators kept going in the wrong direction.” “The bad moment came when it was 50-50 whether they were going to have to put a tube down my windpipe.” Johnson acknowledged when he left the hospital that his fight to survive “could have gone either way.” ASSOCIATED PRESS
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ROBERT CLARK | NORTH STATE JOURNAL
Flyover salutes health care workers and first responders On Friday, May 1st, F-15E Strike Eagles from the 4th Fighter Wing at Seymour Johnson AFB showed appreciation and support for Eastern North Carolina medical professionals and first responders during a regional flyover to eight hospitals at Vidant Medical Center in Greenville.
NORTH
STATE
JOURNaL ELEVATE THE CONVERSATION
Meat processing bottleneck, but no closures for now in NC By David Larson and A.P. Dillon North State Journal RALEIGH — With large meat processing facilities closing in the Midwest, concerns have been raised over meat supply chain disruptions in North Carolina, a major supplier of pork and other meat products. Smithfield’s facility in Tar Heel is the largest pork processing plant in the world, and after reports of COVID-19 outbreaks affecting workers, concerns only increased. The Tar Heel facility, which processes around 35,000 hogs per day, has had to reduce their hours and put in place extra precautions such as plexiglass barriers between workers, facemasks and temperature tests. A Tyson’s plant in Wilkesboro also grabbed headlines after an outbreak among their more than 1,000 workers. Despite the fear of these plants closing, no meat processing facilities have closed in the state as of May 5. “Our North Carolina facilities remain operational,” Smithfield Foods representative Leah Weightman told North State Journal. Andy Curliss, CEO of the NC Pork Council, which represents the state’s hog farmers, told NSJ, “I’m not aware of any closures. We haven’t had here what has happened in the Midwest. But we do have reduced capacity.” The reduced hours and increased absences by spooked workers mean there is a “bottleneck” in the food supply chain that farmers can’t ignore. But according to Curliss, the state’s hog farmers have been able to adapt to this reduced capacity as meat processing plants are fighting to stay open. “We’ve been managing through the reduced capacity of the plants,” Curliss said. He named a few strategies they are implementing, including slowing feedings and breeding, rationing feed, and finding and managing empty spaces. “We’ve dealt with closures and slowdowns in North Carolina, and certainly the Mid-Atlantic, before with hurricanes and ice storms. So I’d say we’re managing through that.” N.C. commissioner of Agriculture Steve Troxler and N.C. Farm
Bureau President Shawn Harding recently held a joint media event where they discussed President Donald Trump’s executive order of the Defense Production Act for meat processors, the food supply and the important role North Carolina plays in meeting consumer demand. “This is unusual and unprecedented times,” said Harding at the meeting. “We appreciate our farmers, plant workers and grocery store workers for continuing to do their job. We also appreciate President Donald Trump’s executive order of the Defense Production Act for meat processors.” Key takeaways from Troxler and Harding’s discussion included messages that there is no food shortage, the food supply is safe and the critical nature of meat-processing facilities. Troxler told NSJ he didn’t know if more funding or actions might be needed from state legislators at this time. “We have requested $20 million from the legislature for euthanasia and disposal should that be needed, and it is included in both the House and Senate’s proposals,” Troxler said. “We want to be prepared, but we remain hopeful that it won’t be needed.” Curliss said right now, euthanizing healthy hogs to relieve overcrowding is not one of their strategies for dealing with the bottleneck. Curliss and other agriculture leaders cite the Midwest as the location where meat processing is seeing bigger hurdles after the region had three of the largest plants, which collectively supplied 15% of the nation’s pork supply, close. Farmers have had to euthanize hundreds of thousands of hogs that had nowhere to be processed to enter the food supply. While President Trump’s executive order will not necessarily directly help plants that are struggling to stay operational, many observers say it removes a liability issue where some companies were unsure if staying open put them in legal danger of worker lawsuits. “With what has been done at the national level with the Defense Production Act and working with our public health partners and the companies, I think we probably See HOGS page A2
COVID-19
General Assembly unanimously passes over $1.6B in relief DHHS funds come with data strings attached By A.P. Dillon North State Journal RALEIGH — The North Carolina General Assembly held a rare Saturday session to pass a pair of relief bills known as the “2020 COVID-19 Recovery Act.” “This legislation puts North Carolina on the right path to recovery. For weeks, our citizens have been anxious about their future because of this virus, and today we can assure them that action is being taken to allay their concerns,” said Senate Leader Phil Berger (R-Rockingham),
Senate Minority Leader Dan Blue (D-Wake), House Speaker Tim Moore (R-Cleveland) and House Minority Leader Darren Jackson (D-Wake) in a press release. The bills were sent to Gov. Roy Cooper for his signature the same day, and he signed the bills on May 4. “I am signing into law two critical relief bills that will provide assistance to families, schools, hospitals and small businesses as our state battles COVID-19,” said Cooper in a press release. “There is more work ahead of us, and I hope the spirit of consensus behind these bills will continue.” House Bill 1043 mainly deals See NCGA page A2
Here come COVID-19 tracing apps, privacy trade-offs The Associated Press AS GOVERNMENTS around the world consider how to monitor new coronavirus outbreaks while reopening their societies, many are starting to bet on smartphone apps to help stanch the pandemic. But their decisions on which technologies to use — and how far those allow authorities to peer into private lives — are highlighting some uncomfortable tradeoffs between protecting privacy and public health. “There are conflicting interests,” said Tina White, a Stanford University researcher who first introduced a privacy-protecting approach in February. “Governments and public health (agencies) want to be able to track people” to minimize the spread of COVID-19, but people are less likely to download a voluntary app if it is intrusive, she said. Containing infectious disease outbreaks boils down to a simple mantra: test, trace and isolate. Today, that means identifying people who test positive for the novel coronavirus, tracking down others they might have infected, and preventing further spread by quarantining everyone who might be contagious. That second step requires an army of healthcare workers to question coronavirus carriers about recent contacts so those people can be tested and potentially isolated. Smartphone apps could speed up that process by collecting data about your movements and alerting you if you’ve spent time near a confirmed coronavirus carrier. The more detailed that data, the more it could help regional governments identify and contain emerging disease “hot spots.” But data collected by governments can also be abused by governments — or their private-sector partners. Some countries and local governments are issuing voluntary government-designed apps that make information directly avail-
able to public health authorities. In Australia, more than 3 million people have downloaded such an app touted by the prime minister, who compared it to the ease of applying sunscreen and said more app downloads would bring about a “more liberated economy and society.” Utah is the first U.S. state to embrace a similar approach, one developed by a social media startup previously focused on helping young people hang out with nearby friends. Both these apps record a digital trail of the strangers an individuSee TRACKERS page A2