PHOENIX – Arizona senior Senator Kyrsten Sinema and Republican Senator Mitt Romney (Utah) urged the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to implement a robust contact tracing system to protect Arizonans from the spread of the coronavirus and future pandemics.
“Protecting Arizonans from future waves of the coronavirus, or other dangerous diseases, requires comprehensive information on how the virus is spreading. I’m urging the CDC to implement a contact tracing system that will keep Arizonans safe and help save lives,” said Sinema.
The Senate’s recent supplemental coronavirus package provided the CDC an additional $1 billion for public contact tracing, test reporting, and workforce support. Sinema is calling for the CDC to implement a contact tracing system that protects individual privacy while aggregating case information from state and local health departments, physicians, hospitals, labs, and coroners; collects hospitalization rates from the disease broken down by underlying health conditions; notes patient treatment regimens; collects rates of ICU admissions, lengths of stay, recovery, and mortality; and includes appropriate demographic information.
Read Sinema’s full letter HERE.
In March, Sinema wrote Vice President Pence about the need for the federal government to implement a single online webform to begin contact tracing from travelers for more complete, accurate, and timely data. Following her letter, Sinema was joined by Republican Senator Ted Cruz (TX) on a separate letter to Vice President Pence and members of the coronavirus task force urging them to implement a single online webform that would allow the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to directly collect complete, accurate, and timely data to trace infected or exposed travelers.
In the recent Senate-passed coronavirus package, Sinema helped secure $310 billion for the Paycheck Protection Program, $60 billion for smaller, disadvantaged businesses, $60 billion for Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL) and grants, $75 billion for health care providers, and $25 billion for testing, including $11 billion directly to states. Sinema also helped secure a number of priorities in the sweeping coronavirus-response CARES Act law, including a $150 billion relief fund for state, local, and Tribal governments, $55 billion more in investments in hospitals and health care workers, and an increase in unemployment benefits. Sinema recently wrote a column in the Arizona Republic stressing what else must be included in the next Congressional coronavirus-relief bill.
Sinema has also added a resources page to her website, www.sinema.senate.gov/corona, for Arizonans looking for the latest information on coronavirus.
