Letter to Mitch McConnell, Senate Majority Leader, and Chuck Schumer, Senate Minority Leader - Stabenow & Peters Call for Efficient, Coordinated Contact Tracing to Limit Spread of Coronavirus and Help Reopen Economy

Letter

Dear Majority Leader McConnell and Minority Leader Schumer:

Thank you for your bipartisan work to respond to the health and economic effects of the
novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in the United States. As you prepare for the next relief
package, we respectfully request at least $8 billion in new funding for contact tracing to help
states and localities recruit, hire, and train contact tracers and deploy voluntary digital tools that
can integrate data to quickly alert people who have crossed paths with a newly diagnosed
COVID-19 patient. Such a fund must include a small state minimum of no less than $50 million
to ensure that every state can bolster and maintain its testing and contact tracing infrastructure.

Contact tracers are a combination of disease detectives and social workers who can
swiftly track down and alert people who have been exposed to a confirmed COVID-19 case and
request that they quarantine and connect them to testing or treatment if needed. Contact tracers
must be trained to interview patients, identify potential sources of exposure, and monitor those at
risk with daily check-ins. The work is labor intensive, and much of the job can be done remotely
by people working from home. Contact tracers also work within the public health system to stay
in communication with individuals in quarantine and ensure that they have what they need to
stay healthy, such as food, medical supplies, and access to treatment.
We were pleased to support the Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care
Enhancement Act, which provided $25 billion to increase COVID-19 testing capacity and make
an initial investment in contact tracing. Now we need to build on this funding to enable states to
quickly diagnose patients and get them into appropriate care, as well as help us better understand
the spread of the disease, and provide a path forward towards eventually reopening the economy.

Reports by the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO) and
researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, as well as the National
Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) have found that 100,000 contact
tracing investigators will be necessary for full recovery, at a cost of roughly $3.7 billion, at a
minimum. Other experts like former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director
Thomas Frieden have said the need could be three times as much. As the initial wave of
COVID-19 cases recedes, it is critical that we are better prepared for a potential second wave as
social distancing and closure guidelines begin to be relaxed. Precision contact tracing can
mitigate major outbreaks by identifying those most at risk and alerting them to help limit further
infections. As such, additional resources are needed to create a training pipeline for a national
network of well-qualified contact tracers across the country.

Further, we must encourage the use of technology to aid in this effort, without infringing
on personal civil liberties. Management of public health data collected in this manner should
continue to follow established protocols, whereby state and local entities serve as the primary
data collectors and stewards of this information, which should only be shared as aggregated,
anonymized data with the CDC for purposes of public health surveillance, and not with law
enforcement or national security agencies. We must provide sufficient resources to partner with
the private sector to develop and deploy voluntary apps to improve data collection, support
contact tracing, and ultimately help public health officials better control the spread of the virus.
Additionally, such technology efforts should allow individuals to accurately and quickly receive
alerts regarding potential exposure to COVID-19, improving rates of self-quarantine.

Thank you for your attention to this critical need as you negotiate the next COVID-19
package. The only way to safely reopen the economy and get people back to work will be with
widespread testing and contact tracing, and we look forward to working with you towards that
goal.

Sincerely,