In just seven months, the COVID-19 pandemic swept the world. More than thirteen million individual cases have been shown and more than a share of a million Americans have died from COVID-19. Here in the United States, more than 3.4 million Americans have swelled up and more than thirteen5,000 Americans have lost their lives to the virus. Millions more have noticed that their lives have changed radically because of the related economic crisis.
COVID-19 has demonstrated a clear lack of good enough preparation for a pandemic that is attributed only to an administration or party in Congress. For decades, Republicans and Democrats in the administration and Congress have paid inadequate attention and resources to critical elements of our public health care system.
Inattention or investment may no longer be anywhere in the public fitness system
our nation’s ability to verify effectively, successfully and accurately. COVID-19 made it clear that our country’s diagnostic control capacity did not meet the criteria needed for Americans before the coronavirus outbreak.
COVID-19 has highlighted public policy disorders similar to diagnostic verification, but these disorders are not new. For more than 3 years, Representative Diana DeGette (D-CO) and I have been running for the law on diagnostic control reform. We brought this law, the VALID Act, just as COVID-19 was beginning to spread widely in the United States and it was clear that our country’s control capacity was inadequate for the challenge posed by the virus.
The VALIDE Act would identify a comprehensive, risk-based framework for monitoring diagnostic tests, giving laboratories greater flexibility and certainty to respond to public fitness emergencies while ensuring patient safety.
While the VALIDE Act addresses many long-standing disorders similar to diagnostic tests, the ultimate immediate desire is the COVID-19 diagnostic test, in particular, strengthening the testing capacity of our country’s public fitness laboratories and ensuring that patients have to go immediately – care tests. – especially in under-neglected communities.
While personal laboratories play an indispensable role in our fitness system, public fitness laboratories play an essential role in identifying and managing large-scale threats to the public fitness. However, the existing verification capability of our public fitness labs is limited due to the lack of high-speed verification platforms, which can verify thousands of samples using automated processes.
The White House Coronavirus Working Group has focused on the use of high-speed platforms in reaction to the COVID-19 crisis, however, 46% of our public fitness labs don’t even have a high-speed testing platform on-site for singles. To help test the ability of our country’s public fitness laboratories, DeGette and I introduced the Public Health Laboratory Diagnostic Testing Act (H.R. 7025). This law would provide resources for public fitness laboratories to acquire high-speed testing platforms and analytical materials to address a critical need in our country’s public fitness system.
In addition, it is vital that we develop the ability to test at the point of service so that patients can be evaluated and get quick effects. To help expand testing at the point of service, DeGette and I also introduced the Community Rapid Testing Act (H.R.7026). This law would extend testing at the point of service in the areas of the country that are unattended. By expanding the immediate time it takes to perform outdoor testing in a lab, patients can be evaluated and get the effects directly from their fitness service provider while staying in the doctor’s office, offering some other toolbox tools for our fitness workers.
Until a vaccine or effective remedy for COVID-19 is developed and widely available, the key to restricting the spread of the virus is detection. Together, the expenses that Representative DeGette and I have brought would increase the ability to test and shorten the processing time of the results.
These expenditures are a step in the right direction to combat COVID-19, but more work is being done to reform diagnostic tests and our pandemic preparedness. Our country’s ability to largely manage immediate and accurate diagnostic tests is a challenge facing our country if we are to succeed over the COVID-19 pandemic and protect us from long-term epidemics with the ability to become a pandemic.
Republican Larry Bucshon is a U.S. representative for the Indiana district.