WA Sen. Patty Murray calls for $30 billion to expand coronavirus testing
Apr 15, 2020, 9:38 AM | Updated: Oct 8, 2024, 6:56 am
WA Sen. Patty Murray. (Getty Images)
(Getty Images)
Alongside a handful of Senate Democrats, Washington Sen. Patty Murray laid out a plan Wednesday to expand the country’s coronavirus testing capacity at the federal level.
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That includes a call for $30 billion in emergency funding to “enable faster scaling of testing, and development of different types of tests,” with a focus on “rapid response tests.”
In addition to funding increased testing resources, the coalition of Senate Democrats proposed using funds to strengthen the national supply chain, “to address shortages and bottlenecks wherever they arrive,” and to ensure those resources can get to states in a timely manner.
The proposal also calls on the federal government to “develop and communicate a detailed strategic plan to rapidly scale and optimize COVID-19 testing.”
Murray and fellow Washington Senator Maria Cantwell issued a letter Tuesday voicing a similar proposal, demanding the Trump Administration provide more data and information and exactly what testing resources look like at the federal level right now. Up until now, that sort of information has largely come straight from states.
“Currently, the federal government is not meeting its responsibility to coordinate testing capacity among states and Indian Tribes and is failing to release crucial information to the public,” the letter reads.
Health experts have pointed to a vastly expanded system of testing, tracing, and isolating patients as an absolute necessity for beginning to relax social distancing measures in the U.S. Meanwhile, current deficiencies in the U.S. testing system have some researchers believing we’ve only been able to confirm as few as one in every 20 total infections.
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The proposal from Senate Democrats to vastly expand the U.S. coronavirus testing infrastructure states that “these ideas should be bipartisan,” while stressing that “they should be put in action as soon as possible.”
“Our country cannot wait,” it warns.
