At the end of last week, U.S. Rep. Neal Dunn, R-Fla., showcased his “Ensuring Sufficient Supply of Testing Act.”
The bill, which Dunn introduced at the start of the month, “will help to equip the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) with the necessary tools to combat a future pandemic” and will ensure that our nation’s clinical laboratories are able to contract directly with the SNS.”
Dunn’s office offered some of the reasons why the North Florida congressman introduced the proposal.
“Labs are on the front lines when it comes to pandemic response, and it is essential that diagnostic testing supplies and equipment needed to develop new tests and to run testing at scale are available and accessible to clinical laboratories,” Dunn’s office noted, insisting the bill “will ensure that clinical laboratories can enter SNS contracts” and arguing that it “important that the Strategic National Stockpile includes test kits, reagents, precision plastics, and other tools that labs rely on to scale their response activities rapidly.”
Dunn and U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., who is co-sponsoring the bill, weighed in on the proposal on Friday.
“In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, testing was one of the few tools at our disposal to understand the nature of the pathogen. The Ensuring Sufficient Supply of Testing Act will ensure efficiency for our response efforts,” said Dunn. “I appreciate my colleague, Congresswoman Dingell, for working with me to better prepare the nation for public health emergencies.”
“Swift laboratory testing was vital in our pandemic response, but during peaks in the pandemic, we heard alarming reports of it taking up to two weeks for a patient to receive their test results,” said Dingell. “This legislation will help make our testing supply chains more resilient and capable of handling surge situations, ensuring we’re better prepared for future public health emergencies.”
The bill was sent to the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee. So far, Dingell is the only co-sponsor and there is no companion measure over in the U.S. Senate.
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