Washington, DC – “The COVID-19 relief package passed by the Senate today is a good first step and provides great financial support to small businesses and healthcare organizations; but it does not go far enough. While many are eager to reopen the economy, the only way that we can safely do so is with funding to support an extensive and centralized contact tracing effort. While we applaud the $11-billion put toward COVID-19 testing, funds must be allocated specifically to contact tracing. We urge Congress to provide at least $3.6-billion to hire, train and deploy 100,000 contact tracers, and $1-billion to add 8,000 Disease Intervention Specialists that we desperately need in order to ensure our country can reopen safely,” says David C. Harvey, executive director for the National Coalition of STD Directors (NCSD).