SARASOTA, Fla — Update: Florida Senator Rick Scott released the following statement:
"We are facing a public health crisis, and Senator Rick Scott believes nothing should get in the way of Americans’ ability to protect themselves and get tested for the Chinese Coronavirus – especially cost. Senator Scott is calling for free testing to be available for anyone experiencing symptoms, and for Congress to include funding for these tests in the emergency supplemental appropriations bill and pass this funding now. He’s also called on DHS to immediately increase screening at Florida’s international airports and work with the newly-infected countries to make sure they are conducting proper screenings of outgoing passengers."
Original story:
We've heard from doctors the response to contain the coronavirus is a changing and fluid situation.
Over the weekend, three labs in Florida, including one in Tampa, began testing for the virus.
Congressman Vern Buchanan says after talking with doctors at two Sarasota hospitals, he's going to push for more sites to be able to test for the virus. Doctors at Sarasota Memorial say it would speed up their process for diagnosing patients.
“That is a pure bottleneck, not having that test to be able to rule that patient out, remove them from the negative pressure room so as to allocate the resources in a different manner. It's very frustrating. I think that is something that's going to change in one to two weeks as new testing methodologies and kits become available,” Dr. Joey Seaman said.
Sarasota Memorial Hospital’s president and CEO echoed his sentiments.
“Our goal is to test more, and more frequently. We talked about that earlier this morning with Congressman Buchanan and others at the state level that we want to be able to test faster, test more frequently for coronavirus specifically, and physicians be able to order those tests,” David Verinder said.
Meanwhile, Congressman Vern Buchanan is back in Washington working on a bi-partisan effort to get about $7 to $8 billion for the coronavirus response. Lawmakers are going to be talking about money to speed up efforts to stop the virus.
“I'm going to go back and do everything I can to make sure we get the resources that we need. We might not need all of it, but talking with the leaders and others,” Buchanan said.
A spokesperson for the congressman also tells 10News, "he expects a large portion of the funding to go towards the Department of Health and Human Services and the National Institutes of Health to help develop a vaccine as well as to reimburse state and local governments for their efforts to test and contain the virus.
"The congressman is optimistic that the bill will include new funding and not pull from previously appropriated funds, such as those to combat the Ebola virus and other dedicated accounts."
The congressman says he's also going to be pushing to get protocols changed to expand the number of sites that can test for the virus.
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