In order to reopen the economy safely, a group of health experts sent a letter to Congress asking for $46.5 billion.
The money will go toward expanded contact tracing and isolation of infected people, The Hill reports.
"We are writing to propose Congress take swift action in upcoming legislation to give states the funding necessary to scale up our nation's contact tracing ability and support voluntary self-isolation of infected and exposed individuals," writes the 16 health experts. "This is fundamental to our ability to begin to reopen our economy while continuing to safeguard American lives."
The letter, sent Monday, calls for the funding to be included in the next coronavirus response bill.
The group includes former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb; former acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Andy Slavitt; former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn.; Mark McClellan, who was head of FDA and CMS under President George W. Bush; Atul Gawande, CEO of a joint health venture from Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JP Morgan Chase; and Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
The letter says $12 billion should be set aside to hire 180,000 new workers who would conduct contact tracing. Contact tracing involves interviewing infected people to find out who they have been in contact with and then notifying those people so they can self-isolate for 14 days. The experts say this is important until a vaccine is developed.
"The existing public health system is currently capable of providing only a fraction of the contact tracing and voluntary self-isolation capacity required to meet the COVID-19 challenge," the letter states.
The request would allocate $4.5 billion to pay for vacant hotels to be used to house infected people who volunteer to isolate away from their homes.
The biggest allocation of funds would pay people who need financial support while they self-isolate for 14 days. The request sets aside $30 billion, which would break down to $50 per day payments to people isolating. The group estimates the money would be needed by 40% of the people self-isolating.
The health experts acknowledge Congress has already dedicated $25 billion for testing initiatives, but they say more funding is still necessary.
"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," the experts write.
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