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Crunching the numbers
- The Department of Veterans Affairs gave a company with no experience selling medical equipment a $34.5 million contract to provide 6 million N95 face masks. The deal marked up the manufacturer’s price by 350 percent.
- Almost 60 percent of college officials are considering or plan to have an online-only fall semester, according to a survey from the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.
- More than 165 antibody tests that detect previous covid-19 infections have not been authorized by the Food and Drug Administration.
Eye on local news
- From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: After a covid-19 outbreak at the St. Louis nursing home where she worked, Cynthia Whitfield had symptoms of the illness but was waiting for a test result. The nursing home wouldn’t give her paid sick leave, so Whitfield kept working until the day before she was hospitalized, and she died of covid-19 in April. Under the CARES Act relief package, health care providers are exempt from requirements to provide employees up to 10 paid sick days and 10 weeks of paid medical leave.
- From Oklahoma Watch: According to the state education department, almost 1 in 4 students don’t have access to the internet at home.
- From the San Francisco Chronicle: California’s attorney general sued Uber and Lyft over allegations that they misclassified their workers as independent contractors.
New on Big If True
Oklahoma’s threadbare affordable housing system is anticipating a crescendo of evictions and homelessness due to the pandemic.
Local and state housing authorities have waitlists in the thousands for Section 8 programs that offset rent. And the Oklahoma City Housing Authority lacks funding to provide any new Section 8 vouchers for the rest of the year.
This story is part of a collaborative series from Big If True, The Curbside Chronicle and the Oklahoma Gazette.
And if you missed it, Big If True is shifting away from factchecking and toward in-depth reporting focused on low-income Americans during the pandemic.
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Send me feedback, questions and tips: bryant@bigiftrue.org and 405-990-0988.
– Mollie Bryant
