Sens. Cassidy, Carper lead colleagues in seeking expansion of COVID-19 tracking framework

Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Tom Carper (D-DE) led 14 bipartisan colleagues in forwarding correspondence to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), urging the agency to expand its existing COVID-19 tracking framework.

The legislators are encouraging the CDC to determine and log who has developed antibodies and track who may be immune. The senators’ long-term vision for enhancing the framework for collecting coronavirus test results and other relevant data is to aid in determining who may be able to leave lockdown and return to work safely. The letter was also forwarded to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

“Building out existing capabilities to understand who may have gained some level of immunity to nCV does not represent a new or enhanced risk to privacy,” the senators wrote. “Instead, with improved access to testing, these systems may benefit from a rapid increase in voluntarily shared personal health data. These systems are already relied upon for their effectiveness and efficiency and could be important tools for responding to this virus when paired with work to ensure that both public and private labs are accurately reporting and sharing data as quickly as possible.”

The senators maintain employment and social interaction rules can be adjusted to benefit the employee, workplace productivity, public health, and stability while containing the spread of disease.

“To expeditiously begin this process, existing capabilities at HHS and the CDC should be expanded and used while states and territories build up their own detection and surveillance infrastructure,” the senators wrote. “These systems are governed by robust privacy laws. We urge you to build on the CDC and states existing systems so that this work can be completed as quickly and efficiently as possible.”