Students want more transparency around the refunding process Welcome to the Maclean's daily newsletter. As the coronavirus disrupts life in Canada, and Canadians get used to the notion of "social distancing" and "flattening the curve," Maclean's has expanded this newsletter to include everything you need to know about the global pandemic. You'll still find our best stories of the day at the bottom of the newsletter, but we'll also catch you up on news and notes from around the world.
QUOTE OF THE DAY: "We made the Vice-President and his staff aware of our policy regarding masking" — the Mayo Clinic told reporters after Mike Pence met with staff and patients at the Minnesota hospital without wearing the mandated face covering.
In Canada, the tally of COVID-19 cases passed 50,000, while the death toll is more than 2,900. Worldwide, 3.1 million people are infected with the virus, while 215,000 people have died from it. Today, the United States became the first nation with more than one million cases of COVID-19 (the nation with the second-highest number of cases is Spain, with 232,000). Ryan Struyk, who has been crunching COVID-19 data for CNN, tweeted that while it took 80 days for the U.S. to go from zero cases to 500,000, it took just 18 days to go from 500,000 to one million. The toll on health-care workers is high. The Calgary Herald reports that at least 472 health-care workers have contracted the virus, with 338 based in the hotspot of Calgary. Dr. Lorna Breen, head of the emergency department at New York-Presbyterian Allen Hospital, committed suicide on Sunday. She had been staying with her family while recovering from the virus, and had spoken of what she endured at the hospital. Her father told the New York Times that “when he last spoke with her, she seemed detached, and he could tell something was wrong. She had described to him an onslaught of patients who were dying before they could even be taken out of ambulances.” In Sports Illustrated, Laurent Duvernay-Tardif, who has a doctorate in medicine, tells the story of how he went from helping the Kansas City Chiefs to a Super Bowl victory less than three months ago to working on the front line of Canada’s pandemic response, in a long-term care facility in Quebec. Spoiler: he says “there are going to be bigger issues than not playing football.” New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern claimed victory over the virus. “There is no widespread undetected community transmission in New Zealand. We have won that battle,” she told the nation, which has reported just 19 deaths after undertaking a near-total shutdown—and now is cautiously starting to reopen, NPR reports. In completely non-COVID-19-related but otherwise fascinating news, the U.S. military released three short videos on Monday that show what it terms “unidentified aerial phenomena”—UFOs to everyone else. That they were released at all is due, in no small part, to years of pressing by Harry Reid, who was an influential senator from Nevada for three decades. Reid hinted that there is more information, tweeting, “I'm glad the Pentagon is finally releasing this footage, but it only scratches the surface of research and materials available." Your moment of LOL: Watch a video of self-isolating acting couple Mandy Patinkin and Kathryn Grody get delightfully befuddled when one of their children asks them to decipher pop culture acronyms. —Patricia Treble As of the latest update, this is the number of confirmed cases in Canada. We're updating this chart every day. 
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