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Center for Health Security expert Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo testifies at first open congressional hearing on 2019-nCoV

On February 5, 2020, Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo, senior scholar at the Center for Health Security and associate 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 the first open congressional hearing on the 2019-nCoV outbreak.

The hearing, The Wuhan Coronavirus: Assessing the Outbreak, the Response, and Regional Implications, was convened by the United States House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asia, The Pacific, and Nonproliferation.

Dr. Nuzzo’s testimony provided an update on the current outbreak, knowns and unknowns; the international response; and trends in global readiness for epidemics and pandemics. She offered 5 recommendations to the subcommittee:

International engagement recommendations:

1. Halt the current US policy of denying visas to travelers from China and quarantining Americans returning from China.
    
2. Engage in a productive, collaborative dialogue with China to in order to ensure continued access to data and critical medical supplies.

Domestic response recommendations:

1. Ensure health departments have the resources they need to conduct surveillance to promote proven mitigation measures, such as case isolation outside a hospital to the extent possible.
    
2. Ensure hospitals and other health facilities have the resources needed to safely treat a surge of patients.
    
3. Facilitate the development of medical countermeasures, such as diagnostics, vaccines, and therapeutics.

Read the full testimony. (PDF)

Watch the testimony.