Consider This from NPR - Restaurants Are Closing. Again.

Episode Date: June 18, 2020

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the Trump administration's plan to end DACA — Deferred Action For Childhood Arrivals — was "arbitrary and capricious." The ruling is welcome news for recipients of the program, some of whom are essential workers on the front lines of the fight against COVID-19.As areas reopen, officials are working to ensure businesses are adopting safety precautions to avoid the spread of the coronavirus. Officials in Los Angeles found that half of the restaurants they surveyed violated rules and safety standards. Plus, NPR's Selena Simmons-Duffin with an update on which communities across the country have sufficient staff in place for contact tracing. Check out the state-by-state breakdown here. Sign up for 'The New Normal' newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Email the show at [e-mail]. This episode was recorded and published as part of this podcast's former 'Coronavirus Daily' format.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR and the following message come from the Kauffman Foundation, providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, gender, or geography. Kauffman.org. It did not sound like a story that would end well. In late May, a hairstylist in Springfield, Missouri, went to work sick. Not just once or twice. Eight shifts over nine days.

Well, last 9 to 10, we told you about the hairstylist in Springfield, Missouri. Eighty-four customers were exposed, and that wasn't all. Turns out another hairstylist from that Great Clips location has tested positive for the virus as well, possibly exposing another 56 people. Public health officials expected some cases. has tested positive for the virus as well, possibly exposing another 56 people. Public health officials expected some cases. After all, at least 140 people had close contact with those two stylists. Plus, 200 to 300 more people had been in the salon.

But now, more than three weeks later, there is not a single documented case from either stylist. I think it's solid evidence of the value and protective nature of masking. Local health director Clay Goddard gave just one explanation for the lack of spread. Masks. Both stylists wore masks. The customers were required to wear them too. If you're in close proximity for an extended period of time with somebody who is symptomatic, maybe masking is going to be a mitigating factor. So that's really valuable.

By the way, in yesterday's show, we told you about a COVID cluster at a bar in Jacksonville Beach, Florida. Those people did not wear masks. This is Coronavirus Daily from NPR. I'm Kelly McEvers. It's Thursday, June 18th. real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. Okay, so here on the show, we've been telling you that we're going to start bringing you stories about more than just the pandemic. And as part of that, you're also going to hear some new voices guiding you through the show. Today, that is NPR host Elsa Chang. She's going to take it from here. It was the middle of the night at an ER in Vancouver, Washington. A man came in struggling to breathe. We got him in the middle of the night in respiratory distress. His oxygen levels were really low.

And I just remember him telling me, I can't breathe. Estefania Betancourt Macias was on the night shift. She was just 29. This was her first year on the job. And the man, he had COVID-19. Nurses prepped a ventilator, but the patient only spoke Spanish, which meant Estefania was the only nurse who could communicate with him. And I just remember him like he was crying. He was in distress. In the heat of the moment, I'm a nurse first, but I also had to be a human being and I had to comfort this man. And I was able to connect with him and, you know, tell him, like, I know you're scared, but we are here to help you. Meanwhile, more than 2,000 miles away at Houston Methodist West Hospital, Javier Quiroz Castro had been through the exact same thing. You know, he was very, very emotional, very scared. He really thought that he was going to die.

A young father in the COVID-19 unit where Javier worked needed to be intubated. I don't like making promises that I can't keep, but I just, I had to tell him, yeah, you're going to make it. You're going to hold your daughter again. You know, he showed me a picture of his daughter. I showed him a picture of my daughter. I was like, how do you not want to do everything you can? That guy could easily be me. Estefania and Javier are both DACA recipients,

the program that protects some 650,000 immigrants who came to the country illegally as kids. On Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration's plan to end that program was, quote, arbitrary and capricious. And the court said the administration had not come up with a good justification for ending DACA. Javier spoke to NPR before the Supreme Court's ruling when the uncertainty around DACA was still hanging over his head. Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, when I'm at work, I can't think of DACA or the Supreme Court. I have to focus on my job. But when I'm outside of work, it definitely, you know, hits me.

You realize, you know, there's people in this country that don't want you here. Javier's patient, the man with the daughter, he survived, as Stefania never found out about the man she cared for that night. But now both of them can keep working. My patients don't know that I'm an undocumented person living in the U.S. They just see that I'm their nurse and I just see them as my patient. President Trump, under the court's ruling, could still try to end DACA another way. But for now, an estimated 27,000 health care workers with DACA status are safe from deportation.

Across the country, restaurants are closing again. The Washington Post reported today on closures in Phoenix, Myrtle Beach, Houston, Orlando, all in states that were starting to reopen, only to see new cases of the virus crop up. That is exactly what local public health officials are trying to avoid. Officials like L.A. County Public Health Director Dr. Barbara Ferrer. We've only got two things right now. We need to distance and we need to wear our face coverings. Ferrer recently sent staffers to check in with over 2,000 restaurants in Los Angeles, and her staff found that half of those restaurants were in violation of rules and safety standards, mostly rules about face coverings and social distancing. First, the requirement that all of the wait staff

need to be wearing face shields. We saw very few in the restaurants where people weren't in compliance. We also saw some places tables were right next to each other, which absolutely cannot happen. In some places, we actually had managers say we thought they were recommendations. We thought we could do what we wanted. The first time Ferreira's team gives the restaurant a warning and a chance to get better informed about the requirements. After a second and third inspection, the restaurant could be issued a citation or be forced to shut down completely. The truth is, this was our second weekend going out, and the first weekend, the results were much worse. So this was an improvement. It was actually an improvement. Our protocols are actually directives. They're not recommendations here in L.A. County. And the restaurants must comply. So there was a lot that restaurants had to do to get ready. So I want to start by acknowledging that, you know, having half of the reopening of the economy, that is just one part of a job that has gotten a lot bigger for you this year.

But I want to ask, how are you doing personally? And I'm asking this because public health officials elsewhere in the country, even in neighboring Orange County, they have stepped down after receiving death threats. First of all, how's that happened to you? You know, I don't want it to be a focus on sort of what's happening to me. I think so many of us have received death threats. You know, people, unfortunately, across the country are angry. And in some ways, they have a right to be angry. This virus has upended thousands and thousands and thousands of people's lives. It would be really important to remember that public health officials did not create this virus, that we're also, you know, part of what we hope is going to be good solutions to the challenges that we're facing. We come in

to work every single day, prepared to do our very best, prepared to work with everyone, with all of our partners, to try to continue to contain this pandemic and to try to continue to minimize the loss of life. That's what we're here for. That's our jobs and that's our passion. Dr. Barbara Ferrer, Director of the L.A. County Department of Public Health. Remember contact tracing? It was supposed to be a key part of containing the virus. Well, the federal government said states were going to be in charge of hiring contact trace workers to contact people who test positive, to ask them to stay home, and to get in touch with anyone they'd been in contact with. Our nation's going to have to have a substantially enhanced public health workforce so that we have the public health resources to stay in the containment mode.

That was CDC Director Robert Redfield back in April when states had about 11,000 tracers in total, far shy of what experts said was needed. Well, now NPR health policy correspondent Selena Simmons-Duffin has an update on efforts to hire more contact tracers. She spoke to Morning Edition host Noelle King. Nationally, the contact tracing workforce has tripled. It's gone from 11,000 to more than 37,000. Now, that's far less than the 100,000 tracers or more that some influential public health experts have called for. And part of that may be the money estimated to be needed for that big workforce, one estimate was $12 billion. That hasn't come through from Congress. There still hasn't been a big investment or attention from the federal

government on contact tracing. I asked Crystal Watson what she thought of NPR's findings. She's a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. And here's what she told me. I am simultaneously impressed at all the efforts that have been undertaken, but I'm also at the same time concerned because we're seeing these increases in case numbers. And the reason why that's concerning is because this virus spreads really fast. A community can think they have enough contact tracers, but if there's an outbreak, that could change. And the tracers you have may not be enough to keep up and keep the outbreak in check. One of the confusing things here, though, or complicating factors, I guess I should say, is that the virus isn't spreading the same in all places in the U.S.

We've got some places relatively no cases and others have thousands and the numbers are rising. How do you figure out which states have enough and which states really need to scale up? So to figure that out, NPR used a contact tracing workforce estimator developed by researchers at the George Washington University's Mullen Institute. And it looks at how many COVID cases there have been in the past two weeks and then puts out the number of tracers you'd need to be able to handle that workload. So when NPR analyzed the data, we found seven states do have enough in this moment to trace their coronavirus cases. And those states are Alaska, Massachusetts, Montana, New York, Oregon, Vermont, and West Virginia, along with D.C. and the territories of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. And some states reported having reserve staff, maybe volunteers or government workers who've

been trained to trace and can be called on as needed. And if you add in that extra capacity, six more states have enough. But based on what you've just said, there are still dozens of states that don't have enough contact tracers. Are they saying that they'll hire more? Are they treating this like a serious problem? Well, some are. For instance, California is working towards 10,000 contact tracers. They've still got 4,000 to go to meet that goal. Nevada and New Jersey are planning to hire more, too. But many states indicated they feel they have enough tracers given the level of coronavirus where they are, and they aren't planning to add more. A few states that do not appear to be scaling up contact tracers are Alabama, Arizona, and Texas, which are all coronavirus hotspots right now.

NPR health policy correspondent Selena Simmons-Duffin. On our website, you can see if your state has enough contact tracers. There's a link in our episode notes. You heard additional reporting in this episode from host David Green and our colleagues at NPR's Morning Edition, who spoke to the DACA recipients you heard earlier. For more on the coronavirus, you can stay up to date on your local public radio station. If you own an Alexa device and want more coverage of the pandemic, ask it to Play News from NPR. You'll hear a mix of the latest national and international news, as well as stories from your own community. That's Play News from NPR. Kelly McEvers is back tomorrow. Thank you for listening. I'm Elsa Chang. For James McBride, racism in this country has been

a disease. It's been the cancer that has just been killing us. And now we want to address the problem. I mean, you can't address the cancer until you know you have it. And these people are seeing the cancer. Author James McBride on protests, a pandemic, and his new book. Listen to It's Been a Minute from NPR.