Amina Waheed

Ucedrah Osby heard the terrible news in a way nobody ever wants to: from a local television report, at the same time as everybody else in Bakersfield, California who tuned in. “They were doing interviews,” she recalled. “They were saying that the facility had a COVID outbreak.” Osby’s uncle, Clyde Lee Cooper, 76, lived in Kingston Healthcare Center, the nursing home in question.

It took a pandemic, unseen in our lifetimes, to break the political impasse around paid leave in Washington. For 30 years, advocates for a federal paid leave programme have lobbied, often in painful increments, to try and pass legislation on the matter. On Wednesday, the Senate is set to pass, and President Donald Trump expected to sign into law, a coronavirus response bill, good for one year, allocating billions of dollars to expand access for testing and for paid sick leave.

Producer: Amina Waheed, Presenter: Joon Chung, Editor: Brian Toro, Animations: Hope Sincere, Shooter: Shruti Parekh This year’s flu season is bad, with record hospitalizations and hundreds of deaths.Something that could help stop the spread of this public health epidemic? Mandatory, nationwide, paid sick leave. Sick leave isn’t good just because it’s a basic human right. It would also help the U.S. become a better, healthier, more prosperous country.