June 8, 2020 — A roundup of the latest news about COVID-19

The world has now lost more than 400,000 people to coronavirus, but a new study finds that shutdown orders saved millions of lives. And the protests rocking the country are intimately connected to the deadly epidemic. Catch up with the news from over the weekend:

• Far from being separate crises, the deadly epidemic and the sudden explosion of street protests against police violence are intimately connected, according to protesters and public and mental health professionals. Outside medical centers across the country, doctors and other health care workers have been stopping work in recent days for 8 minutes and 46 seconds to join in protesting the death of George Floyd, who was pinned down by a police officer in Minneapolis for that amount of time before his death.

• The U.S. government’s current supply of remdesivir, the only drug known to work against COVID-19, will run out at the end of the month, Dr. Robert Kadlec, a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services official, told CNN.

• Exactly 100 days since its first case of coronavirus was confirmed, New York City, which weathered extensive hardship as an epicenter of the worldwide outbreak, is set to take the first tentative steps toward reopening its doors today.

• While the contact-tracing challenges faced by Las Vegas are extreme, they highlight larger systemic problems in monitoring the coronavirus across the country.

• As America’s meat producers confronted outbreaks, Pacific Northwest seafood companies drafted rigorous plans for an industry where processors also work in close quarters. But just a few weeks into the summer season, the industry has been shaken by its first major outbreak aboard a huge vessel with an onboard fish processing factory. 

• Much of the attention to the toll COVID-19 has taken on older adults has rightly focused on long-term-care facilities. But far more Americans rely on paid home care than live in nursing homes and assisted living combined.

• Indians can now dine out, shop in malls, and pray at religious sites for the first time in nearly two-and-a-half months. But the easing of restrictions comes as the country records its biggest spike so far in new coronavirus cases in a single day. In nearby Pakistan more than 100,000 people have been infected, as a sharp increase in cases over the weekend underscored how the rapidly spreading outbreak could topple the country’s fragile hospital system.