Health

"Congressional investigators say Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield may have directed officials to delete a contentious email sent by a Trump appointee that demanded the health agency halt weekly COVID-19 mortality reports that the official called CDC “hit pieces on the administration.”

"The coronavirus pandemic has slowed efforts to make safer the often hazardous job of dismantling old ships in Bangladesh, officials said, following the latest worker fatality."

"Ms. Fudge, a House member from Ohio, would be the second African-American Biden cabinet member chosen in two days. Mr. Vilsack would reprise his role from the Obama administration."

"WASHINGTON — President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. has selected Representative Marcia L. Fudge, Democrat of Ohio, to serve as the secretary of housing and urban development, people familiar with the transition said on Tuesday, the second African-American he has chosen for his cabinet in two days.

"Elevated levels of a PFAS compound were associated with more severe forms of Covid-19, according to a Danish study now undergoing peer review. The research, which involved 323 patients infected with the coronavirus, found that those who had elevated levels of a chemical called PFBA were more than twice as likely to have a severe form of the disease."

"State police brandishing firearms Monday raided the Tallahassee home of Rebekah Jones, the former Department of Health data scientist who built the state's much-praised COVID-19 dashboard before being fired over what she said was refusing to "manipulate data.""

"The Trump administration on Monday declined to tighten controls on industrial soot emissions, disregarding an emerging scientific link between dirty air and Covid-19 death rates."

"President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. has selected Xavier Becerra, the Democratic attorney general of California, as his nominee for secretary of health and human services, tapping a former congressman who would be the first Latino to run the department as it battles the surging coronavirus pandemic."

"EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said in a statement Wednesday that he has been exposed to Covid-19 and will quarantine until he's 'gone through the proper testing protocols.'"

As the nation's hospitals are being overwhelmed by coronavirus patients, the federal data system for tracking them, poleaxed this summer by the Trump administration, is giving inaccurate and unreliable data to officials trying to manage the crisis.