TRUMP AIDE SICK

Presidential valet has virus, didn’t wear mask.

BLOOD THINNERS

Anticoagulants may boost survival of sickest patients.

MORE 3M MASKS

Company to increase N95 production to 95M a month.

N.Y. CONNECTION

Testing reveals Big Apple key source of viral spread.

T H E C O R O NAV I RU S’ TO L L

VA R I ET Y

TO P N EWS M I N N E S OTA B U S I N E S S

3.84 million cases worldwide

269,000deaths worldwide

1.25 million cases in the U.S.

70,002deaths in the U.S.

9,365cases in Minn.

508deaths in Minn.

Mary Mack attack: Minneapolis comic gets another shot at fame with animated series from “Rick and Morty” vets. E1

Arrests in Ga. slaying: Father and son are held in shooting of black jogger. A2

75 years since V-E Day: On May 7, 1945, World War II in Europe ended. A2

Back to U in the fall: That’s one of three scenarios regents are weighing. B1

Unclogging Hwy. 10: Ramsey seeks $138M to remove bottlenecks. B1

Coal plant to close early: Major N.D. coal-fired power plant to shut in 2022. D1

Retail giant falls: Nei-man Marcus files for bank-ruptcy protection. D3

Numbers as of 10 p.m. Thursday • Sources: Johns Hopkins University (worldwide), COVID Tracking Project (U.S.), Minnesota Department of Health (Minnesota)

STAR TRIBUNE Minneapolis, St. Paul MNVolume XXXIX • No. 34May 8, 2020

More of what matters to Minnesota. All day. Every day.

ONLINE: startribune.com • TIPS: 612-673-4414 • COMMENTS: 612-673-4000SUBSCRIPTIONS: Call 612-673-4343 or go to startribune.com/subscribe

By JEREMY OLSON and GLENN HOWATT • Star Tribune staff

State officials unveiled a “battle plan” Thursday to address the rising COVID-19 death toll in long-term care facilities, including universal testing in facilities with out-breaks and the use of incen-tives and even the National

Guard to fill worker shortages when caregivers get sick.

Minnesota lacked testing and other resources to deploy this strategy until now. That partly explains why residents of nursing homes and long-term care facilities account for 15% of the state’s confirmed cases, 23% of hospitalizations, and 407 of 508 deaths.

“We have been in what I would call a reactive mode since the beginning,” said state Health Commissioner Jan Mal-colm, though her agency has provided regular guidance to care facilities and instituted a visitor ban when the pandemic first reached Minnesota.

COVID-19 is a respira-tory illness caused by a novel

coronavirus, which presents the double blow of spreading easily in the confined quarters of these facilities and causing more severe symptoms and deaths among people who are elderly or have other health problems. These include heart, lung and kidney dis-eases, as well as diabetes.

Infections are probably due

to workers being asymptom-atic and bringing the virus into long-term care facilities with-out knowing it, Malcolm said. Some work at multiple facili-ties and may carry the virus from one to another.

Immediate testing of all staff and residents in facilities with known cases could limit the breadth of such outbreaks.

Altogether, 330 long-term care facilities have seen at least one confirmed case among residents or staff. It has hit 1 in every 5 skilled nursing homes and 1 in every 10 assisted living facilities.

The new approach will consume as many as 80,000 to 90,000 diagnostic tests

‘Battle plan’ for nursing homes

By SPENCER S. HSU, DEVLIN BARRETT and MATT ZAPOTOSKY • Washington Post

WASHINGTON – The Justice Department moved Thursday to drop charges against Presi-dent Donald Trump’s former national security adviser

Michael Flynn, a stunning reversal that prompted fresh accusations from law enforce-ment officials and Democrats that the criminal justice sys-tem was caving to political pressure from the adminis-tration.

The unraveling of Flynn’s

guilty plea for lying to the FBI came after senior politi-cal appointees in the Justice Department determined lower-level prosecutors and agents erred egregiously in the course of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the

2016 election.In court documents filed

Thursday, the Justice Depart-ment said: “After a considered review of all the facts and circumstances of this case, including newly discovered and disclosed information … the government has concluded

that [Flynn’s interview by the FBI in January 2017] was unte-thered to, and unjustified by, the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into Mr. Flynn” and that it was “conducted without any legitimate inves-tigative basis.”

DOJ seeks to let disgraced Trump adviser Flynn walk

Former national security adviser Flynn pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to the FBI.

Hormel’s Jennie-O turkey slaughtering plant in Melrose has 19 coronavirus cases, state health officials say.

1,161 Cases in Stearns

County

102 Confirmed cases

at two poultry pro-cessing plants in

the county

30%County’s case

increase Wednes-day from the past week, one of the

highest in the Midwest

By MARY LYNN SMITHmarylynn.smith@startribune.com

Cindy Wannarka is con-flicted when she looks at the line of northbound vehicles pulling boats behind them. Among them are the restless and the determined eager to celebrate a rite of spring — Minnesota’s fishing opener.

On the one hand, the rush of visitors to Minnesota’s lake country is a good sign that business is coming back in a place where tourism is the leading industry, said Wan-narka, president and chief executive officer of the Leech Lake Area Chamber of Com-merce.

But she also looks at the influx and wonders: “Is Grandma going to be OK?”

Throngs of out-of-towners could spread the highly con-tagious coronavirus in small rural communities, putting older residents, who are more vulnerable to the deadly dis-ease, at risk.

In part, that’s why state offi-cials are urging anglers to fish in areas no farther than where they can travel to and from on a tank of gas during Sat-urday’s fishing opener, which comes during the governor’s stay-at-home order, recently extended to May 18.

“We know the more people travel, the more spread there is,” Gov. Tim Walz said Thurs-day. “This is not about defying an order I put out. This is about defying public health warn-ings. Stay close to home. Use common sense.”

Anglers are ready, but travel’s the catch

By ABBY GOODNOUGHand MAGGIE HABERMAN New York Times

WASHINGTON – As Presi-dent Donald Trump rushes to reopen the economy, a battle has erupted between the White House and the Centers for Disease Control and Preven-tion over the agency’s detailed guidelines to help schools, res-taurants, churches and other establishments safely reopen.

A copy of the CDC guid-ance obtained by the New York Times includes sections for child-care programs, schools and day camps, churches and other “communities of faith,” employers with vulnerable workers, restaurants and bars, and mass-transit administra-tors. The recommendations include using disposable dishes and utensils at restau-rants, closing every other row of seats in buses and subways while restricting transit routes between areas experiencing different coronavirus infec-tion levels, and separating children at school and camps into groups that should not mix throughout the day.

But White House and other administration officials rejected the recommendations over concerns that they were overly prescriptive, infringed on religious rights and risked further damaging an economy that Trump was banking on to recover quickly. One senior official at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) with deep ties to reli-gious conservatives objected

Reopening guidelines from CDC sidelined

Council on American-Islamic Relations, who said his organization has interviewed “dozens” of workers who cited unsafe conditions at the Pilgrim’s Pride plant in Cold Spring.

The Muslim advocacy group on Thurs-day called for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to inves-tigate conditions at the plant.

A spokesman for the Minnesota Depart-ment of Labor and Industry, which admin-isters OSHA in Minnesota, confirmed Thursday that Minnesota OSHA opened an investigation at Pilgrim’s Pride on April 28 after receiving a complaint. The depart-ment generally doesn’t disclose who files

STEARNS COUNTY IS NEW COVID HOT SPOT

¬2019 LOCAL NEWS PULITZER FINALIST

*Will there be fans? *Will there be a game?SPORTS

PACK AT VIKES, WEEK 1*

51° 33°Sunny, but protect

those seedlings. B6

By JAMES WALSH and MIKE HUGHLETT • Photo by AARON LAVINSKY • Star Tribune staff

A COVID-19 outbreak at poultry pro-cessing plants near St. Cloud over the past two weeks has prompted increased test-ing of workers there and contributed to a spike in the number of cases reported in the central Minnesota region.

The outbreaks — at plants in the Stearns County cities of Cold Spring and Melrose — have quickly established the St. Cloud area as a COVID hot zone, sparking con-cern among advocates for local immigrants, who make up much of the workforce at the facilities, that not enough is being done to protect them and their families from the dangers of the fast-growing pandemic.

“It feels like Armageddon over there,” said Jaylani Hussein, executive director of

See FLYNN on A3 Ø

See VIRUS on A8 Ø

See MINNESOTA on A5 Ø

See CASES on A8 ØSee FISHING on A5 Ø

ZSW [C M Y K] A1 Friday, May. 8, 2020

FRIDAYMay 8, 2020