Top US Health Authorities to Testify in Senate on Coronavirus and Reopening of Economy

Top U.S. health authorities will testify on Tuesday to a Senate committee looking into plans for reopening the nation’s businesses, schools and other sectors of the economy closed because of the coronavirus pandemic, as…

ReutersMay 12, 20203 min read

WORKER SAFETY

But Trump and his task force coordinating Washington’s response to the coronavirus have faced questions on how U.S. workers will be kept safe during reopening, especially after two staffers working within the White House tested positive for the virus.

One of the staffers is Vice President Mike Pence’s press secretary, Katie Miller, the wife of senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller. The other is a valet to the president.

So far, the coronavirus has killed more than 80,000 people in the United States, the highest death toll of any country. Some experts say testing for the virus in most parts of the country continues to fall short of what would be needed to safely reopen.

Senate Democrats, including Patty Murray, her party’s senior member on the Senate health committee, called on Trump to allocate $25 billion in funding to ramp up testing.

Fauci’s appearance at the Republican-controlled Senate committee comes after the White House blocked the 79-year-old infectious disease expert from testifying to a Democratic-controlled House of Representatives panel, calling it “counterproductive.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is expected to unveil a sweeping coronavirus-response bill, possibly this week, that would likely provide more funding for testing, new state and local government aid and another round of direct payments to people to help them meet their daily living costs. Congress has already passed trillions of dollars in emergency relief.

(Reporting by Makini Brice and Richard Cowan; Editing by Peter Cooney)