Sick leave, the digital divide and a gig economy lawsuit

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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