Good morning. Elizabeth Cooney here to help you start your day. You can reach me at elizabeth.cooney@statnews.com.

The latest on Covid-19

The world continues to reel from the widening Covid-19 pandemic, with case counts climbing, canceled seasons mounting in sports (March Madness, NHL, MLB) and culture (darkened Broadway, art museums, concert halls), and rhetoric heating up on all sides.

• Local schools in Ohio, Maryland, and elsewhere in the U.S are trending the way of colleges and closing their doors.
• Democratic presidential candidates Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders countered Trump’s travel ban talk with their own coronavirus speeches. “This administration has left us woefully unprepared for the exact crisis we now face,” Biden said. From Sanders: “We have an administration ... whose incompetence and recklessness have threatened the lives of many, many people in this country.” And STAT's Matt Herper observes why Trump's words deepened panic instead of quelling it.
• More to the point, FDA and HHS have joined the American Red Cross in calling on blood donors to step up to fill in for blood drives that have been canceled. Type O and platelets are especially needed, the organization said. Appointments can be made through the Red Cross.
• Looking backward and forward, two data scientists opine for STAT that just as the levees of New Orleans stood little chance against the wrath of Hurricane Katrina, our overly complex and inflexible electronic health record systems aren’t ready for an average Sunday afternoon, let alone Covid-19.