WASHINGTON—U.S. Senators Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) on Friday held a press conference after the U.S. Senate voted 96-1 to approve $8.3 billion in emergency funding to combat the COVID-19 outbreak. Connecticut is expected to receive millions of dollars in aid to support state efforts to prepare for and combat a potential outbreak. President Trump signed this funding into law on Friday.

On the issue of testing for coronavirus, Murphy said: “There were a lot of us that were stunned when the administration said at the beginning of this week they'd have a million testing kits out by the end of the week. We all knew that that was impossible, and it indeed has proved to be impossible. There's nowhere near a million of testing kits available.”

Murphy continued by stressing the importance of only telling the American people the truth: “So what's really important is that this administration deals only in the truth, doesn't try to sugarcoat this crisis for political purposes. What we need are facts. If there's only going to be a couple thousand testing units for Connecticut, then let us know so that we can plan. Don't paint a rosier picture than exists. Tell us what we can expect for health here in Connecticut.”

Murphy also discussed a letter he sent today to the federal government requesting more test kits: “We are sending a letter to the federal government today requesting more testing kits. We're doing that at the request of Governor Lamont, and we hope we will receive an answer very, very soon. We need the testing kits here in Connecticut. And, you know, I'm disappointed the administration didn't get to work on testing kits earlier, but we are where we are. And we're going to try to do the best with what we have.”

Murphy voted to support the bipartisan $8.3 billion supplemental funding bill in the Senate, which President Trump signed into law on Friday, and called for swift passage once it was released in the House. Earlier this week, Murphy questioned Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Deputy Director Dr. Anne Schuchat and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Dr. Stephan Hahn on the emerging threat of coronavirus and what officials are doing in response. Murphy also pressed U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar on the administration’s coronavirus response and slammed the Trump administration’s recent emergency funding request to protect from the coronavirus epidemic that was sent to Congress.

A full transcript of Murphy’s remarks can be found below:

“Thank you to Stephen and the team here at St. Mary's for inviting us back.

“I've spent a lot of time here having represented Waterbury for going on two decades now. It's great to be here with a committed group of public health professionals. Let me also thank Governor Lamont for the great work he's done to get Connecticut ready. Governor Lamont has stood up Connecticut's preparedness system early on, and while he's requesting additional help from the federal government, Connecticut is doing everything necessary to be ready for an outbreak here. Let me thank Mayor O'Leary for early on convening a task force here in Waterbury to make sure that the city was prepared.

“The risk of exposure for Americans today is still relatively low, but the risks still exists. And the difficulty today is that we don't know how many cases we have in this country because we don't have the ability to test. As of this morning, we had somewhere short of 200 confirmed cases across the country. But we know that's not the right number. We know there are far more than 200 people who have coronavirus, but we have not been able to reach that conclusion definitively because we don't have the ability to test. There could be people in Connecticut that have coronavirus – we don't know. What we need are more testing devices.

“And I share Senator Blumenthal's frustration at the overly rosy estimates that the administration has given us on the distribution of testing kits. There were a lot of us that were stunned when the administration said at the beginning of this week they'd have a million testing kits out by the end of the week. We all knew that that was impossible, and it indeed has proved to be impossible. There's nowhere near a million testing kits available. So what's really important is that this administration deals only in the truth, doesn't try to sugarcoat this crisis for political purposes. What we need are facts. If there's only going to be a couple thousand testing units for Connecticut, then let us know so that we can plan. Don't paint a rosier picture than exists. Tell us what we can expect for health here in Connecticut.

“The good news is with this supplemental emergency appropriations bill, we know the amount of funding that's going to be available to hospitals, to states, to municipal health departments, to the CDC and to NIH. $8.3 billion is going to be allocated under this bill. The first tranche of money will come to Connecticut within the next 30 days. 475 million will be distributed to 50 states to then be distributed out to local public health systems. Stay tuned for what that number will be for the state but we will within 30 days get the first round of funding. The NIH and the CDC is receiving money as we speak, ramping up their vaccine program, working on therapeutics and treatments. There's almost a billion dollars in this supplemental to reach out to the world and to make sure that we are helping vulnerable nations stem the reach and the spread of coronavirus.

“What we worry about is that even if we're able to contain it here in the United States over the course of the next several months if there are massive new outbreaks in countries with weak public health systems, that may ultimately harm our ability to contain the virus here in the United States. So pandemics are global. They don't care about state boundaries. They don't care about national boundaries. And this supplemental funding bill acknowledges that the United States, as the leading public health authority in the world, has to be deployed outside our boundaries as well.

“We are sending a letter to the federal government today requesting more testing kits. We're doing that at the request of Governor Lamont, and we hope we will receive an answer very, very soon. We need the testing kits here in Connecticut. And, you know, I'm disappointed the administration didn't get to work on testing kits earlier, but we are where we are. And we're going to try to do the best with what we have.

“It's important for us to all be on the same page here in Connecticut. And so we're working hand in hand with the Governor and the rest of the congressional delegation, with the legislative leadership in Hartford to be as ready as we can here in Connecticut.

“So, I think it's probably time for us to hear from some experts. I think Dick and I are trying to defer to experts as much as we can. So we'll talk about the funding and policy response, but then when it comes to the medicine and the epidemiology, we'll hand that over to Dr. Paul Porter and then Adam Rinko, Bill Quinn from the city and Shawna Edwards in that order,”

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