Kaine visits Eastern Shore for COVID-19 discussion

Virginia’s junior Senator Tim Kaine(D) visited the Eastville Community Health Center on Monday afternoon for a COVID-19 round table discussion with the Eastern Shore’s healthcare community and wasted little time criticizing President Donald Trump.

“I think it has been horribly mishandled at the federal level because of frankly mixed messages and science denial,” said Kaine. “I think when you have science denial or mixed messages from the top, one thing I learned during emergency management when I was Governor… is that when people are scared you owe them a clear message and not a lot of confusion… because it’s easy in a time of challenge for people to assume the worst… for rumors to run rampant and all the sudden its hard to control a situation.”

Kaine reported the Senate passed four COVID-19 relief bills and this week plans to reconsider a fifth bill he voted against.

“There will be a vote this week, a re-vote, of an earlier bill put in the Senate in September… the House passed a fairly sizable bill in March, the Senate didn’t have a proposal on the table till mid-September. I voted against it on the ground that it was insufficient.”

Senator Kaine also added he didn’t think there would be a vote on a COVID-19 relief package before the election.

“I don’t think we are going to fund a package between now and election day… the good news is I do believe… it’s a near certainty we will do another COVID bill before the end of the year, no matter who wins the election on November 3rd.”

The conversation with healthcare officials covered a wide range of topics including the need for more federal funding for local healthcare, as well as how COVID-19 impacted local healthcare, a topic we will cover in tomorrow’s newscast.

Outgoing Eastern Shore Rural Health CEO Nancy Stern gave Kaine a tour of the new Eastville Community Health Center following the discussion.

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