Congress remains on a State / district work period this week with the exception of one Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. The Wall Street Journal reports that

The [coming] week will be “the hardest and saddest week of most Americans’ lives,” Surgeon General Jerome Adams said on Fox News Sunday, drawing comparisons with the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Officials again urged Americans to stay home. “This is the moment to not be going to the grocery store, not going to the pharmacy, but doing everything you can to keep your family and your friends safe,” coronavirus response coordinator Deborah Birx said at a White House news briefing over the weekend.

HHS’s Office for Civil Rights, which enforces the HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules, called attention today to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s guidance “on defending against video-teleconferencing (VTC) hijacking (referred to as ‘Zoom-bombing’ when attacks are to the Zoom VTC platform). Many organizations and individuals are increasingly dependent on VTC platforms, such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams, to stay connected during the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.” This guidance is applicable to both business and personal users of these virtual meeting platforms.

And as this is the FEHBlog, not the COVIDblog, the FEHBlog wants to call attention to this FEDSmith article on how federal employees and annuitants can extend their FEHBP coverage post-mortem to their surviving spouses and children (under age 26 except in the case of total disability.) This unique federal employment benefit should be a top consideration in estate planning for federal employees and annuitants. Here is a link to the OPM website’s discussion of continued FEHB coverage for survivor annuitants. Here are OPM’s survivor annuity websites for the federal government’s legacy retirement system CSRS and its current retirement system, FERS.

Hang in there, my friends.