Washington, DC – 6th District Congressman Derek Kilmer and Senator Patty Murray are leading a charge to get the Centers For Disease Control to let individual states process their own diagnostic tests for patients suspected of having coronavirus.
As it stands, all patient samples have to be shipped to Atlanta, Georgia in order to be tested by the CDC, drastically increasing the time it takes for local health officials to confirm the diagnosis.
We spoke with Kilmer on Monday.
“Right now samples have to be sent to the Centers for Disease Control. Getting some of those resources closer to the cases, I think, could stem the tide of any sort of an outbreak. And it’s a legitimate concern. You’re seeing loss of life in China, and I think it’s legitimate to look at some of these travel restrictions, some of the testing that’s happening, to ensure that we don’t see a massive global outbreak.”
Following Health and Human Service’s declaration that the new coronavirus is a public health emergency, Kilmer joined Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate health committee, to lead 48 bipartisan lawmakers from both the House and the Senate in a letter calling on the CDC to distribute rapid diagnostic tests for coronavirus as quickly as possible, prioritizing states with confirmed cases, such as ours, to receive the first available test kits.
The full text of the letter can be found here.