(TNS) -- After TSA rolled out a series of new measures Thursday to encourage social distancing and stop the spread of COVID-19, Acting U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf said the agency is considering checking temperatures and thermal imaging to help screen for the virus.

Wolf, a Plano native who toured Alliance Airport in Fort Worth for a look at shipping infrastructure, said it is a possibility that passengers will be screened for elevated temperatures before they board planes.

As in 1918, New York may use staggered work hours to keep subway safe

As New York City makes plans to reopen in the coming months, officials are dusting off the playbook from the 1918 flu pandemic, when businesses were ordered to begin their work days at staggered times to prevent the subway from becoming a vector of disease.

A new report titled, “Strong Social Distancing Measures in the United States Reduced the COVID-19 Growth Rate” finds that steps taken to reduce the spread of corononavirus by state and local governments have had a major impact. The results imply that by April 27, the number of cases would have been 35 times higher without any of the measures — suggesting the U.S. would have reported 35 million (rather than 1 million) COVID-19 cases.

Authors of the new study — Charles Courtemanche and Aaron Yelowitz, both professors at the University of Kentucky’s Gatton College of Business and Economics; Anh Le, a doctoral student at University of Kentucky; Josh Pinston, a professor at the University of Louisville; and Joseph Garuccio, a doctoral student at Georgia State — evaluated measures taken by states and counties across the country.

(TNS) — As forecasters predict higher-than-normal chances of large fires in Northern California this year — as well as the usual risk of “large significant” burning in Southern California — fire authorities are growing increasingly concerned over their ability to muster a large, healthy force of firefighters in the face of COVID-19.

Realizing that wildfire smoke will steadily impair a firefighter’s immune system, and that traditional base camps can magnify the risk of infection, federal, state and county officials are urging a blitzkrieg approach to wildfires that will rely heavily on the use of aircraft.

(TNS) - Working from home with her children in another room and a cat lounging next to her laptop, Christina Zilke is a public-health nurse on the front lines of trying to contain COVID-19.

She is one of about 20 employees of the Washtenaw County Public Health Department currently involved in contact-tracing, which is the process of reaching out to individual coronavirus patients to stymie the chain of infection.

(TNS) — When Jorge Newbery finally got through to his 95-year-old mother, Jennifer, on a video call April 18, she could barely talk or move and her eyes couldn’t focus.

It was the first time he had seen her since California nursing homes shut their doors to visitors a month earlier. Immediately after the video chat, Newbery called the front desk in a panic.

“I said, ‘You gotta get her out, you gotta call 911,’ ” he recalled. “She’s looking like she’s about to die.”

THE KEY CHALLENGE: LEARNING ON THE FLY
The devastating COVID-19 outbreak has created a new and common challenge for many governments: how to plan and implement a safe transition from lockdown conditions and reopen societies and economies. Jurisdictions are operating on their own, often with widely varying timelines. Some are still in the midst of the crisis, some are preparing to exit and some have already done just that. Other countries have never been formally locked down. These varying timelines and approaches collectively constitute a rich experience catalogue, but they also share the common purpose of finding a viable path back to normality.

Although the majority of cases of the coronavirus have occurred in bigger cities, rural areas aren’t immune. In fact, infectious disease experts in some of those communities are reporting a steady increase in cases and predict a long, sustained outbreak for weeks and maybe months.

That was the message from speakers on an online media briefing hosted by the Infectious Disease Society of America this week, which featured a discussion about the coronavirus in rural America.

California’s State Compensation Insurance Fund on Monday announced another series of actions designed to support policyholders and workers affected by the COVID-19 crisis, including doubling the size of its newly announced Essential Business Support Fund announced earlier this week to $50 million.

Since the fund was announced last week, State Fund said it has received more than 700 applications for COVID-19 workplace safety support funds. The first several payments, all at the maximum $10,000 reimbursement, were sent to qualified applicants on Monday.

(TNS) - As the country buckles down to deal with the coronavirus pandemic, local governments are in constant contact with officials from the state and federal levels to ensure they have the necessary supplies.

Overseeing that process in Clark and Floyd counties are the emergency management agencies [EMA]. Each county’s EMA has set up emergency operations centers, where representatives from multiple organizations coordinate response efforts.