Center for Health Security senior scholar Dr. Caitlin Rivers testifies at US House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations on COVID-19 Response
Center News
May 6, 2020 – Caitlin Rivers, PhD, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering and the Department of Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, provided testimony at a congressional hearing on the COVID-19 response.
The hearing, COVID-19 Response, was convened by the United States House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations’ subcommittee on the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies.
Dr. Rivers’s testimony provided an update on the current outbreak and the US government’s response efforts to date. Rivers focused on the epidemic in the US, the early lessons learned, and the way forward.
Dr. Rivers called on the US government to renew the focus on the public health actions that are effective in defeating COVID-19. She outlined three capacities that must be prioritized: diagnostic testing, contact tracing, and healthcare capacity. “We must prioritize that work now so that we can minimize future public health and economic consequences of this pandemic,” explained Dr. Rivers.
Read the full testimony. (PDF)