Media Coverage

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. When it comes to COVID-19, what happens in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas. Las Vegas casinos reopened June 4, and they have become a likely hotbed for the spread of the novel coronavirus, public health experts said. But if tourists return home and then test positive for COVID-19, the limitations of contact tracing in the midst of a pandemic make it unlikely such an outbreak would be identified.

The University of North Carolina abandoned in-person classes at the first sign of infections on campus. The University of Notre Dame and Michigan State punted even before they got started. There are dozens of large institutions planning to hold in-person education, while the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is using a hybrid model, mixing in-person and on-line classes. Can the U. of I. succeed where so many others have and will fail?

When schools and nonessential offices closed this spring, the need for cleaning supplies (and toilet paper) shifted from the institution to the home. Consumers snapped up cleaning products seconds after they arrived on store shelves, if they arrived at all. Cleaning and disinfectant product manufacturers, and their retail customers, are continually out of stock and unable to keep up with the demand, said Howard Bochnek, VP of technology and scientific affairs at American Infection Control, a company developing and licensing disinfectants.

The development of vaccines for the coronavirus is moving along, but there is widespread agreement among public health officials that there won’t be enough doses initially for everyone. How should the initially scarce, potentially life-saving vaccines be distributed? The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security released a suggested framework for vaccine distribution, though the decision will be up to the federal government, which is buying several hundred million doses.

NCSU professor Dr. Julie Swann said it's not the semester everyone wanted it to be, but it was a decision that had to be made.