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How we can work together to address the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic poses an unprecedented challenge for our country, threatening our health, wellbeing and democracy. Now more than ever, we need to work together to ensure that our government has a coordinated, strategic response to safeguard the public’s health, protect consumers from emerging dangers and ensure people can still participate fully in our democracy.
U.S. PIRG has assembled a COVID-19 response team of policy experts, state advocates, organizers and researchers. And we are coordinating the efforts of the PIRGs around the country through our national lobbying office (U.S. PIRG). If we all pull together, we can find concrete ways to protect public health, consumers and our democracy. Here’s how you help:


If we ever want to get this virus under control, and get some semblance of our lives back, we have to start doing things differently, and our leaders need to help us make the collective sacrifices it will take to save the lives of our family, friends, neighbors and fellow citizens.

We need to come together in a bold and immediate way to get more tests to the people that need them.

If a trained hospital technician can repair a lifesaving piece of medical equipment, such as a ventilator, they should be allowed to do so -- especially during a global pandemic. But manufacturers often restrict access to service information for the devices they make, making it unnecessarily difficult for hospitals to maintain their own equipment. We're working to pass a Medical Right to Repair bill to end hospital repair restrictions.

We’re months into the COVID-19 crisis, and health professionals in some areas of the country still lack the supplies they need to protect themselves and care for patients. That's why we're calling on Congress to immediately pass the Medical Supply Transparency and Delivery Act, which would establish a central, transparent system for procuring and distributing critical medical supplies directly to impacted areas.

Some businesses are still significantly inflating prices for critical supplies. We need stronger action from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to prevent sellers from taking advantage of consumers.

How do you avoid phishing and other online scams? Can you get a refund for travel expenses? How do you protect your credit? We’ve assembled a set of consumer tips and guides, and will add more in the days to come.














