WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congressman Neal Dunn, M.D. (Florida-02) and Congresswoman Debbie Dingell (Michigan-06) recently introduced the Ensuring Sufficient Supply of Testing Act (H.R. 3840), which will help to equip the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) with the necessary tools to combat a future pandemic. This bill will ensure that our nation’s clinical laboratories are able to contract directly with the SNS. Labs are on the front lines when it comes to pandemic response, and it is essential that diagnostic testing supplies and equipment needed to develop new tests and to run testing at scale are available and accessible to clinical laboratories.

“In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, testing was one of the few tools at our disposal to understand the nature of the pathogen. The Ensuring Sufficient Supply of Testing Act will ensure efficiency for our response efforts,” said Congressman Dunn. “I appreciate my colleague, Congresswoman Dingell, for working with me to better prepare the nation for public health emergencies.”

“Swift laboratory testing was vital in our pandemic response, but during peaks in the pandemic, we heard alarming reports of it taking up to two weeks for a patient to receive their test results,” said Congresswoman Dingell. “This legislation will help make our testing supply chains more resilient and capable of handling surge situations, ensuring we’re better prepared for future public health emergencies.”

H.R. 3840 will ensure that clinical laboratories can enter SNS contracts. It is critically important that the Strategic National Stockpile includes test kits, reagents, precision plastics, and other tools that labs rely on to scale their response activities rapidly.

Read more about the bill here.

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