To safely reopen the country, a group of prominent public health officials say the government needs to provide $12 billion to hire 180,000 contact-tracing workers, and $34.5 billion to provide stipends and hotel rooms to those who need to self-isolate.
"We believe the next step is to complement that investment with the additional support required to allow states to track and isolate infected populations, which will be a vital part of safely reopening the economy," they write.
$12 billion to help expand the contact tracing workforce. The officials estimate the workforce needs to increase by 180,000 until a vaccine is on the market. $30 billion to offer 18 months of income support — a per-person stipend of $50 a day, like jury duty — for those voluntarily self-isolating. The public health officials who also signed the letter include Mark McClellan, who served as both FDA commissioner and head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services under President George W. Bush; and Vivek Murthy, former surgeon general in the Obama administration and now adviser to former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
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