“Wisconsin continues to suffer due to an insufficient federal response to our state’s testing needs. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has been non-existent in its abilities to quickly get us the supplies we need or even information about the status of those supplies. Instead of addressing needs four weeks after requested by Governor Evers, they take credit for everything bought in the private sector and passed the buck to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for some supplies. There’s no ‘emergency management’ in failing to get us what we need during this emergency.

“Today, the CDC provided a more detailed picture of some of the supplies we received compared to what Governor Tony Evers requested in late March:

What Evers requested What CDC Delivered
Roche Plastic Tips for 60,000 tests 2,880 Roche Plastic Tips
MagNA Pure Nucleic Acid Reagent kits for 100,000 tests 4 MagNA Pure Nucleic Acid Reagent kits which can be used for 768 tests
TaqPath Master Mix for 80,000 tests 19 packets of TaqPath Master Mix for 19,000 tests

“For those on their calculators at home, that’s less than 5% of the requested plastic tips, less than 1% of the requested reagent kits used, and 24% of the requested Master Mixes. How are we supposed to ramp up testing capacity if the best this administration can give us is 1% of the reagents we need to process tests? We’ve gotten partial amounts of most of the requests highlighted here—everything else has been ignored. That’s over half a millions supplies we’ve requested, completely ignored.

“This is unacceptable. To be clear, these supplies from CDC are only available to Wisconsin’s public health labs. We’ve spoken with hospitals in the state and they have echoed concerns of a lack of adequate testing supplies. Hospitals have increased their testing capacity but can’t secure supplies through the normal supply chain and need the federal government’s help.

“This morning, I was on the phone with FEMA’s regional administrator and their response was they just needed to know what supplies Wisconsin needed. Governor Evers, Senator Tammy Baldwin, Representatives Gwen Moore, Ron Kind and I have all sent multiple letters outlining Wisconsin’s needs. We could not make this any clearer.

“This is not political—this is about the health of Wisconsinites. We can’t reopen our state without expanded testing capacity. Right now, the federal government’s inaction is our greatest roadblock”

The Governor’s original letters here highlighted to show what requests Wisconsin has partially received from the CDC, and anything not highlighted has been completely unaddressed.

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