Top U.S. health authorities will testify on Tuesday to a Senate committee looking into plans for reopening the nation’s businesses, schools and other sectors of the economy closed because of the coronavirus pandemic, as experts recommend doing so cautiously, Reuters informed.
Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield, Assistant Secretary of Health Brett Giroir and Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn are scheduled to testify before the panel.
Fauci, Redfield and Hahn have been taking self-quarantine steps after announcements they had come into contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19, the highly contagious respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
Each of the witnesses will be testifying remotely at Tuesday’s hearing, according to a committee aide, Reuters adds.
Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander is also self-quarantining in his home state of Tennessee for 14 days after a member of his staff tested positive for COVID-19. He will chair the hearing virtually, his office said on Sunday.
The shuttering of businesses to combat the spread of the coronavirus has led to mass layoffs of workers, sparking the greatest economic disruption to the United States since the Great Depression nearly a century ago.
Republican President Donald Trump, who previously made the strength of the economy central to his pitch for his November re-election bid, has encouraged states to reopen businesses that had been deemed non-essential amid the pandemic.
So far, the Trump administration has largely left it to states to decide whether and how to reopen. State governors are taking varying approaches, with a growing number relaxing tough restrictions enacted to slow the outbreak, even as opinion polls show most Americans concerned about reopening too fast.
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