According to today's data release, in Colorado there have been 593,794 people tested, 51,039 positive cases, 6,627 hospitalized, 1,863 deaths among cases (1,746 deaths due to COVID), 514 outbreaks at residential and non- hospital health care facilities, 63 of 64 counties with positive cases. In Adams County we have 6,529 cases and 176 deaths. Read More from CDPHE HERE

The State of Colorado has established a COVID-19 testing site in Adams County, located at Water World, 8801 N. Pecos St., Federal Heights. The site will operate daily from 8 a.m. – 4 p.m., through September, with the possibility of an extension based on community need. Up to 2,500 tests will be administered each day, and there is no cost to get tested. Visitors do not need an identification card, a social security number, or insurance to get a test. Read More from Adams County HERE and 9 News HERE

A new drive-up COVID-19 testing site opened on Monday morning at the Aurora Sports Park. The site will be open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily. Testing is free to anyone, with or without symptoms. Those who get tested aren’t required to show identification or insurance coverage. Read More from The Denver Post HERE and 9News HERE

Governor Jared Polis signed an Executive Order extending relief to public utility customers to mitigate, respond to, and recover from the current economic disruption due to the presence of COVID-19 in Colorado. The Governor extended an Executive Order providing boards of county commissioners with broader discretion and greater flexibility to implement restrictions on open burning. The Governor also amended and extended an Executive Order concerning limiting in-person contact for the 2020 elections and the Secretary of State’s operations due to the presence of COVID-19 in the State. Read More from Governor Jared Polis HERE

Colorado can provide the required state match for President Donald Trump’s ordered $400 unemployment supplement for two to three weeks. Hopefully that will buy Congress enough time to work through a deadlock over a new coronavirus relief package, including the extension of a $600 unemployment supplement that has expired. State labor officials said they are investigating whether and how the state could implement Trump’s order given that it requires states to pay $100 per person. Read More from The Denver Post HERE

Colorado is among the 10 states that the National Governors Association will assist in improving data collection around impaired driving, using a grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Minnesota, North Carolina, North Dakota, Vermont, Virginia and Wyoming are the other states involved in the initiative, which take place in September and October. Read More from Colorado Politics HERE

Eleven people were wounded Sunday in a pair of drive-by shootings in the Denver area that happened just hours and miles apart. The first shooting happened about 4:30 p.m. in Byers and Pecos Park in Denver’s Valverde neighborhood. Nine people were shot during a family gathering. All of the victims are expected to survive. Witnesses said they heard gunfire and then saw people running from the area. A 10th person was hurt when they were struck by a car while trying to flee the gunfire. Read More from The Colorado Sun HERE

The Regional Transportation District Board will vote Tuesday on whether to cut its security budget by tens of millions of dollars in favor of more mental health, medical and social outreach workers at its stations and on its buses and trains. The resolution was written by board member Shontel Lewis and has support from two other directors. It comes as RTD faces a lawsuit after the brutal April 2018 beating of Denver artist Raverro Stinnett by an Allied Universal security officer while three others stood guard outside a bathroom in an underground bus facility near Union Station. Read More from CPR HERE

A record number of Coloradans died of drug overdoses in 2019, while deaths from the synthetic opioid fentanyl quadrupled in the last four years. There were 220 fentanyl deaths in 2019, representing 20% of all overdose fatalities. Particularly in Denver, fentanyl overdoses were nearly three times their 2019 total in the first five months of 2020. Read More from Colorado Politics HERE

Lafayette became yet another victim of a cyber attack late last month that hijacked computer files and resulted in a disruption to the city’s computer network, phone lines and email. To avoid further disruption, officials paid the ransom. Read More from The Colorado Sun HERE

Sunday was another challenging day of hot and dry conditions for crews trying to control the very active Pine Gulch fire burning north of Grand Junction. The fire, which is burning in Mesa and Garfield counties, grew about 2,000 acres overnight Saturday. It’s nearly 24,000 acres -- or about 37 square miles. On Saturday, Garfield County issued an evacuation order for the small number of residences on county roads 200 and 202, and, as the fire continues to move northeast, a pre-evacuation order for all residences on county roads 204, 207, 209 and Clear Creek Road. Read More from CPR HERE

As talks between the White House and Democratic leaders on a coronavirus package remain stalled, the Senate will remain in session but with no scheduled votes. The vast majority of senators are out of town with a 24-hour notice to return if a vote is scheduled. President Donald Trump issued a series of executive actions on Saturday that he said would address the ongoing economic crisis from the coronavirus pandemic, including a moratorium on evictions, deferring student loan payments and interest, extending federal unemployment benefits at a lower rate, and cutting payroll taxes. Read More from Politico HERE

With stimulus talks stalled, President Donald Trump announced he would go around Congress to deliver aid to Americans affected by the pandemic. But a close read of the actual text of executive actions he signed Saturday suggests that even if they are deemed constitutional, they will not quickly deliver the aid Trump promised. They may not deliver much at all. Here's a breakdown of the actions, the many strings attached and questions about what they actually accomplish. Read More from CNN HERE and The White House HERE 

Americans hit hard by the coronavirus recession saw no relief in sight on Monday as presidential directives announced by President Trump on Saturday caused confusion and prompted criticism from some governors, even as top Democrats and administration officials remained at loggerheads over a new stimulus package. Mr. Trump had tried over the weekend to bypass Congress, saying he would deliver aid to needy Americans through executive measures that focus on four areas. Because Congress controls the federal budget, the measures will almost certainly be challenged in court. Read More from The New York Times HERE

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Monday defended President Trump's decision to sign a series of executive orders after talks with Congress on a coronavirus relief package collapsed, arguing that the president had to move forward. Mnuchin said that the signing of the controversial orders came after he and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows reported to Trump on Friday that talks with Democrats were at an impasse. Read More from The Hill HERE

Talks on a new round of COVID-19 aid have fallen apart on Capitol Hill, meaning that fresh financial assistance for struggling transportation industries looks less likely by the day. That includes airlines, which have warned that they may need to furlough tens of thousands of workers when CARES Act funding runs out at the end of September. It also includes airports — they would be in line to get $10 billion from Senate Republicans' proposed bill, but the measure didn’t come close to meeting Democrats’ demands in other areas. And it also means that transit agencies, the biggest of which are burning through millions of dollars a day, could be on their own to cope with soaring expenses and sliding demand. Read More from Politico HERE

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said last Thursday that the Senate will technically be in session this week but signaled he's letting senators leave Washington, D.C., until an agreement is reached on a fifth coronavirus relief package. The Senate was scheduled to start a four-week August break on Friday, not returning to Washington until early September. Read More from The Hill HERE

Talks around another coronavirus relief package have entirely collapsed, with a more than trillion-dollar gulf between Republicans and Democrats and seemingly no breakthrough in sight. The impasse leaves a lot of major question marks for funding for a litany of programs and policies, two with big implications on November: election security funding and the Postal Service. Read More from Politico HERE

In recent congressional testimony, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell repeated his earlier warning: The strength of any recovery will rely on the nation’s ability to contain the virus. The outlook for the U.S. economy, he said, is “extraordinarily uncertain.” Uncertain. If 2020 had to be condensed into a single word — and there are many, many words to describe it — uncertainty would hover at the top of the list. Read More from The Denver Post HERE

The novel coronavirus does not appear to wax and wane with the passing of the seasons, experts at the World Health Organization said Monday. “In the absence of control measures, very often, viruses can show seasonal patterns. We’ve certainly seen that with influenza. This virus has demonstrated no seasonal pattern as such, so far,” said Mike Ryan, who heads the WHO’s emergencies program. “What it has clearly demonstrated is, you take the pressure off the virus, the virus bounces back.” Read More from The Hill HERE

Five states set new highs last week for coronavirus infections recorded in a single day, according to the COVID Tracking Project and state health departments. This is the lowest number of states to see dramatic single-day increases since Axios began tracking weekly highs in June, and marks a continued decrease from late July. The U.S. saw infections fall or hold steady in most of the country last week. But, some Midwestern states are seeing more coronavirus tests come back positive — potentially an early indicator of a growing outbreak. Read More from Axios HERE

The US topped 5 million cases of coronavirus early Sunday -- and as experts have highlighted before, the true number of infections could be many times higher. The number means the country holds about a quarter of global cases of the virus and also tops the list with the most reported deaths in the world. Of the country's 5,036,387 estimated cases, 162,851 have been deadly. To put the number in perspective, that means the United States has had more Covid-19 cases than Ireland has people. The number of cases is also slightly higher than the entire population of Alabama. Read More from CNN HERE

More than 97,000 U.S. children tested positive for the coronavirus in the last two weeks of July, according to data from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association. That number represents more than a quarter of the number of children diagnosed nationwide since March. The jump in cases comes as children are entering close quarters for the first time in months as some schools reopen their doors to students. Many districts are operating remotely to start the school year, with some others using a hybrid plan that has students come in a few days a week to prevent crowding. Read More from The Washington Post HERE

For months, parents and teachers, epidemiologists and politicians have chimed in with their views on the many still-unanswered questions about the extent to which the virus is a threat to children — and the extent to which they can fuel its spread. A report from leading pediatric health groups found that more than 97,000 U.S. children tested positive for the coronavirus in the last two weeks of July, more than a quarter of the total number of children diagnosed nationwide since March. As of July 30, there were 338,982 cases reported in children since the dawn of the pandemic. Read More from The Washington Post HERE

Over the weekend, President Trump signed an executive order requiring administration officials to "take all lawful measures to prevent residential evictions and foreclosures resulting from financial hardships caused by COVID-19." He also ordered cabinet officials to identify funds that could be used to aid distressed renters. But Trump's order neither bans evictions outright nor provides rental assistance — actions that need to be approved by Congress — and most housing activists say it will do little to stop the tidal wave of evictions that's coming. Read More from NPR HERE

The federal government spent nearly $250 billion on extra $600-a-week unemployment benefits from early April to the end of July, as millions of workers were laid off because of the coronavirus pandemic. Workers who permanently lost their jobs, were furloughed or had their hours cut were able to tap $600 in federal unemployment benefits on top of the amount they qualified for from the state, under a relief law Congress passed and President Trump signed in March. The benefits expired on July 31. Read More from The Wall Street Journal HERE

The Census Bureau will stop its 2020 census count including in-person, mail, by phone and online on September 30, a month sooner than scheduled despite the delays caused by COVID-19. Hansi Lo Wang, a national correspondent at NPR, joins PBS's Hari Sreenivasan to discuss how this change may leave out historically undercounted groups including communities of color and immigrants. Read More from PBS HERE

The Democrats vying to be Joe Biden’s running mate have made the rounds of the Sunday shows. They’ve enlisted surrogates to talk them up to the vetting committee and have been preparing for their one-on-one interviews with Biden himself. But as the vetting process enters its final stage, there's another lesser-noticed facet to the veepstakes: how much cash the contenders have raised for him, and their ability to juice donations if they're chosen. Read More from Politico HERE

President Trump tweeted on Monday that his campaign had narrowed down the list of venues for his acceptance speech to the Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania — a possibility first reported by Annie Karni of The Times last week — or the White House. Both choices could be fraught with legal and political complications for Mr. Trump, who last month scrapped plans to accept the Republican nomination at a party convention in Jacksonville, Fla., because of an outbreak of infections in the state. Read More from The New York Times HERE

Nearly 60M children in America are supposed to return to school in the coming weeks. Nobody knows how many will. President Donald Trump has insisted that schools reopen. He has even threatened to withhold funding from those that do not. Many teachers and school administrators, meanwhile, worry that the coronavirus is not yet under control, and that schools lack the resources needed to reopen safely, such as masks, extra classroom space and access to frequent testing. On July 28th the American Federation of Teachers, the country’s second-biggest teachers’ union, authorized its members to strike if their safety demands were not met. Read More from The Economist HERE

Against this long overdue nationwide reckoning, community leaders are searching for policy solutions that can transform systems and structures and make meaningful progress toward racial equity. Disaggregated data at the local level is crucial to this endeavor. The Racial Equity Index is the nation’s first-ever tool designed to support communities in advancing equity solutions by measuring the state of equity in the 100 largest U.S. cities, the 150 largest metros, and all 50 states on key indicators of prosperity and inclusion by race. Read More from the National Equity Access HERE

Hundreds of people looted high-end shops on Chicago's Magnificent Mile overnight and early Monday morning with police officers exchanging gunfire with at least one individual. Law enforcement officials say the violence was linked to social media calls for looting after police shot and injured a male suspect in Englewood, on the city's South Side, on Sunday afternoon. To staunch the unrest, bridges over the Chicago River were lifted to reduce traffic in and out of downtown, and bus and train service were temporarily restricted to the area. Read More from NPR HERE

At the beginning of the pandemic, it was nearly impossible to find toilet paper, cleaning supplies or canned soup. Five months later, supplies of those goods are recovering. But shelves remain generally emptier than they were before the pandemic, and it could get worse before it gets better. Read More from The Wall Street Journal HERE

The U.S. Space Force chose Centennial-based rocket company United Launch Alliance and its rival SpaceX to handle national security space launches over several years, selecting them over Northrop Grumman and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin. The award qualifies ULA and SpaceX, based in Hawthorne, California, to bid for billions of dollars’ worth of work launching U.S. military and intelligence satellites and spacecraft through 2027. Read More from Denver Business Journal HERE

Lebanese Prime Minister Hassan Diab and his cabinet resigned Monday under pressure from protests that have sought to overturn the country’s political leadership following last week’s deadly explosion that devastated large parts of central Beirut. Beirut has been rocked by protests in recent days, with thousands of people demanding justice for the more than 150 killed in the blast. Read More from The Wall Street Journal HERE