Tester Announces More Than $5 Million to Protect Montana Patients and Health Care Workers from COVID-19

American Rescue Plan funding will help strengthen and equip local health departments addressing pandemic

U.S. Senator Jon Tester today announced that more than $5 million in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding is headed to Montana to help protect patients and health care workers from COVID-19.

The funding—administered by the Center for Disease Control—will help strengthen and equip state and local public health departments and other partner organizations with the resources needed to better fight infections in U.S. healthcare facilities, including COVID-19. Tester was the only member of Montana’s Congressional delegation to vote to deliver this funding.

“With the Delta variant continuing to surge across our state, Montana health care providers are once again working around the clock to heroically respond to this crisis, and they need all the help they can get,” Tester said. “I am proud to have helped secure these funds to help protect those providers, as well as their patients, from this and other deadly diseases, and I will continue pushing to make sure all of Montana’s health care workers have the resources and support they need to keep our communities, and themselves, safe.”

Montana will receive $2,692,676 to improve state-based nursing home and long-term care infrastructure by allowing state and local health departments to staff, train, and deploy strike teams to help skilled nursing facilities, nursing homes, and other long-term care facilities with known or suspected COVID-19 outbreaks. The strike teams will provide surge capacity to facilities for clinical services and staffing and to strengthen infection prevention and control activities to prevent, detect, and contain outbreaks, including support for COVID-19 vaccination.

Another $2,749,578 will go to state and local health departments to help health care workers prevent infections from occurring in health care settings more effectively, including by providing funding for rapid response and outbreak detection, increased data collection, and to engage in innovation targeted at combating infectious disease threats across healthcare settings.

Tester worked tirelessly to ensure the American Rescue Plan Act provides targeted resources to create jobs and build back Montana’s economy, including funding to ensure local mayors have the resources to keep police officers and firefighters on the beat, every Montanan who wants a vaccine can get one, schools can fully re-open safely, and badly-needed relief for hard-hit Montana workers and small businesses.