Washington County family physician wants more aggressive plan to curtail coronavirus

HANCOCK, Md. (WDVM) — The COVID-19 pandemic must be attacked more aggressively from a public policy perspective, says a family physician with a practice in the small western Maryland community of Hancock.

Dr. Matthew Hahn has unveiled what he calls a “Marshall plan” to mass-produce one billion diagnostic tests and an equal number of N95 protective masks.

The plan also includes an abundant supply of hand sanitizer for every household, business establishment and building structure.

Dr. Hahn says the plan should proceed at lightening speed because prolonged isolation will ruin the economy. For consistent administration he says the federal government, and not the states, should execute it.

“The N95 masks decrease the likelihood of transmission of the virus a great deal,” says Hahn, “so that if we combine the mask with testing and everybody has N95 masks we could have a pretty safe return to normalcy.”

And Dr. Hahn is hoping his plan will get the attention of Washington, D.C. He is a candidate for Congress this year in West Virginia’s second district, from his hometown in Berkeley Springs.