Updated at 10:17 p.m. ET

Hours after the White House rejected the idea of appointing a coronavirus czar, President Trump on Wednesday put Vice President Pence in charge of the administration's response to the disease.

"We're doing really well, and Mike is going to be in charge," Trump said, noting that Pence's experience as governor of Indiana made him adept at working with state and local health authorities.

"This is not a czar," the president later added.

Kim Thomas felt drawn to being a home health aide after caring for her own ailing mother. Human dignity, she says, can be simple, like a bath and a favorite snack.

When Thomas first started visiting homes to care for patients, she made $7 an hour. That was in North Carolina about 16 years ago. Her pay inched up over time, to $10.50. To try to make ends meet, she sometimes would work through the night, dozing in patients' homes.

As fears spread of a wider coronavirus outbreak in the U.S., experts in global health pandemics as well as some of President Trump's leading political adversaries contend that the federal government's response may be lacking a key figure: a coronavirus czar.

A split Michigan Senate has approved changes to the process by which hospitals can do multi-million dollar construction or renovation projects. Senators also voted Wednesday to exempt hospitals from needing state regulatory approval to add psychiatric beds. The Republican-sponsored bills go to the House for consideration next. The legislation would change what's known as the certificate of need program, which is intended to ensure only needed health services are added in Michigan.

The state of Michigan and nonprofits groups are launching a $16 million outreach campaign to push people to be counted in the 2020 census. Officials said Wednesday the census will take less than 10 minutes to complete once residents start getting invitations on March 12. They say the census is important because undercounting will mean communities get less federal funding for education, health care and other important programs. This is the first once-a-decade census in which most people will be encouraged to answer questions via the internet. They also can be counted by phone or mail.

Kazuhisa Hashimoto, the man who invented the "Konami code" cheat that became pervasive in video gaming and pop culture, has died.

To use the code, players would press up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A and the Start button on the controller to make games easier. It was named after the popular Japanese gaming and entertainment company Konami, where Hashimoto worked.

Konami confirmed Hashimoto's death in an email to NPR and said in a tweet that it was saddened to hear the news. His age has been variously reported as 61 and 79.

The Trump campaign is opening field offices in swing states targeted directly at attracting black voters, a demographic the president has been aggressively courting in his re-election efforts.

The offices are planned for 15 cities with large African American communities and will be used for campaign events and activities, as well as meet-and-greets with surrogates.

Updated at 2:50 pm ET

Riots and mob violence have rocked neighborhoods for three nights in New Delhi — the Indian capital's worst sectarian tumult in decades. At least 20 people have been killed in the fighting, which follows months of mostly peaceful protests over a new citizenship law that excludes Muslim refugees.