The Trump administration announced plans Friday to speed up coronavirus testing, introducing an emergency hotline for companies and private laboratories developing quicker tests and seems on a path to a multi-billion-dollar federal plan with Congress amid reports the president will declare a national emergency later today.
"I hope he does it, it's the right thing to do, it will free up states and local communities to act more aggressively," Rep. Ami Bera (D-Calif. 7th District) told Cheddar on Friday.
The administration is catching up to warnings health officials have been making for weeks about the United States's lack of preparedness for what is now a pandemic. Bera, a physician himself, said the new measures will allow community health centers taking care of Medicaid patients to be reimbursed for telemedicine.
"If you can manage [sick patients] using technology, using telehealth, telemedicine and they can stay at home, that is actually a good thing, that will help slow the spread," he said.
Though telemedicine may help treat patients without potentially infecting those they come in contact with, a lack of test kits will impede physicians’ ability to track patients.
"What I’ve suggested to the administration is, look, if South Korea can do it, pick up the phone, call the Korean company that’s making these tests and see if you can’t just license those tests and get it sent over here if it’s taking so long for us to do it," he said.
While health workers attempt to slow the spread of the virus, politicians are still at work on a bill, which appeared to hit a roadblock today over disagreements about paid sick leave. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin have been negotiating the plan, which House Democrats are expected to vote on today.
"We're told that they're pretty close," Bera said. "Workers, families, those hourly wage folks, they're going to be hurt immediately. This is America, we don't let people fall down like that."
As President Trump prepared to meet on Friday with seven U.S. oil and gas executives at the White House, he announced today that Saudi Arabia and Russia had agreed to enormous cutbacks in their countries' crude production.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo made a plea to manufacturers in the state to step up and produce supplies desperately needed to combat the coronavirus outbreak.
The Payroll Protection Program, the centerpiece of the three small business lending programs outlined in the CARES Act, is designed to help businesses keep their employees at a time when income is mostly on pause but expenses are not.
The Democratic National Committee is delaying its convention until the week of Aug. 17. The move comes after prospective nominee Joe Biden said he didn't think it was possible to hold a normal convention in July because of the coronavirus.
The automaker revealed that it will be able to produce 50,000 ventilators in the next 100 days. The ventilators' design has been simplified by the private medical company Airon for easy set-up and quick usage in emergency settings.
It’s April 1, and if you rent your home, chances are good that your rent is due today. But with millions of Americans out of work due to coronavirus, those regular bills are even harder to manage.
President Donald Trump is resisting calls to issue a national stay-at-home order to stem the spread of the new coronavirus. This is despite his administration's projections that tens of thousands of Americans are likely to be killed by the disease.
In a letter to CEOs of DoorDash, Grubhub, Instacart, and Uber, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) called on the employers to provide gig workers with "basic rights and protections" as they perform "essential delivery work."
Stocks are sinking again on Wall Street as more signs piled up of the economic and physical pain being caused by the coronavirus outbreak.
Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci says he's bullish about financial markets, but he's less keen on the way his old boss is handling the coronavirus pandemic.
