Sen. Alexander: Congressional leaders should take Trump offer of rapid COVID-19 tests for members

Staff photo by Doug Strickland / U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander
Staff photo by Doug Strickland / U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander

NASHVILLE - U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander is calling on top congressional leaders to take President Donald Trump's administration up on its offer to provide rapid COVID-19 testing to the 100 senators and 435 House representatives.

The Tennessee Republican, chairman of the Senate Health Committee, said the issue isn't so much members' health but that of the general public, with senators and congressmen traveling to and from Washington and possibly contributing to community spread of the potentially deadly disease.

"With the increasing number of diagnostic tests available, I expect attitudes to change quickly about accepting the president's offer to test members of Congress for COVID-19, especially as the House of Representatives comes back to work," Alexander stated. "From a public health point of view, this is not mostly about protecting members of Congress. It is about protecting the people members might infect."

Alexander said "bringing 100 or 535 members from across the country to Washington, D.C. - a coronavirus hotspot - and then sending them home each weekend creates a highly efficient virus spreading machine. You would have to hire an army of public health workers to track and test all of those people that members of Congress might infect, not to mention their staffs and other Capitol workers."

Alexander's statement came following U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, turning their thumbs down last week to the Trump administration's offer to send rapid coronavirus test kits for congressional use. McConnell called senators back to the Capitol this week. Pelosi last week dropped earlier plans to reconvene the House.

"With the increasing number of diagnostic tests available, I expect attitudes to change quickly about accepting the president's offer to test members of Congress for COVID-19, especially as the House of Representatives comes back to work," Alexander stated. "From a public health point of view, this is not mostly about protecting members of Congress. It is about protecting the people members might infect."

Noting the U.S. will soon be able to test 2 million Americans each week, Alexander said, "This is enough to test 535 members of Congress each week before they go home to make sure they don't spread the disease from a virus hotspot into every section of the country."

Alexander, Tennessee's senior senator, has first-hand knowledge of the virus, announcing publicly in late March that his daughter had tested positive.

Friday evening, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar announced the Senate could receive three rapid-results testing machines and 1,000 tests. That would almost cover two tests for each of the 535 senators and representatives.

In their joint statement on Saturday, Pelosi and McConnell appeared to have an eye on how Congress' acceptance of the rapid COVID-19 test kits would appear to the public, with tests still in short supply across the country.

"Congress is grateful for the Administration's generous offer to deploy rapid COVID-19 testing capabilities to Capitol Hill, but we respectfully decline the offer at this time. Our country's testing capacities are continuing to scale up nationwide, and Congress wants to keep directing resources to the front-line facilities where they can do the most good the most quickly," the leaders wrote.

Contact Andy Sher at asher@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @AndySher1.

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