Senator Hassan on Fox News Discusses Latest COVID-19 Response Package, Importance of Social Distancing to Protect High-Risk Individuals

WASHINGTON – Senator Maggie Hassan went on Fox News today to discuss the latest bipartisan COVID-19 response package and why everyone should take social distancing seriously during this pandemic. Yesterday, Fox News published the senator’s op-ed on the importance of social distancing to help protect high-risk individuals like her son Ben, who has cerebral palsy, and who in December of 2017 contracted a serious case of pneumonia and had to be hospitalized.

Senator Hassan began the interview highlighting the strong bipartisan agreement on the third COVID-19 response package: "This is a really important bipartisan piece of work. We have been negotiating as you all know for the last several days and it's really important that the final deal provided critical assistance to individuals, to small businesses, and to our health care system overall.”  

The senator continued, “We haven't faced something of this magnitude pretty much since World War II. I agree with Senator Capito who was saying this is a wartime kind of expenditure because we are in a war with a very dangerous virus."

The senator highlighted three of her major priorities in the bipartisan response legislation: providing substantial funding to hospitals, getting direct cash assistance and expanded unemployment insurance to individuals, and providing direct cash assistance and incentives for small business to keep workers on their payroll.

Senator Hassan also spoke on the urgent need for people to take social distancing seriously, "We can't have a stable economy if we don't have our health, the two are absolutely related. As you all know I have been speaking out a lot about the importance of people staying home and socially distancing, not only to protect themselves from what is a deadly virus for which there is not a vaccine and is no current treatment, but also to make sure that they aren’t unknowingly spreading this virus to people who are high-risk or have pre-existing conditions.”

Ed Henry of American’s Newsroom pointed to the senator’s op-ed on Fox News, “You highlight in this story your son Ben, who has cerebral palsy, and you have been through a lot of harrowing moments in recent years, before this crisis, where you've had to rush him to the hospital. As I read it, it's quite emotional.”

The senator responded, “When I tell your viewers that it can take multiple doctors, expensive, highly specialized equipment to get Ben through a pneumonia and pull him out and get him healthy again, I want you to think about that because this virus hits people very hard in the respiratory system and it will take a lot equipment, a lot of medical expertise to pull some of the highest risk people through." 

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