On Wednesday, May 27, Republican state Rep. Andrew Lewis of Pennsylvania confirmed that he tested positive for COVID-19 and shared that he had been self-quarantining for several days before his positive test result. According to Lewis, he felt ill for several days before his test, which occurred on May 18. He reportedly tested positive on May 20 and noted that “out of respect” for his family, he decided to keep quiet about his diagnosis, but that “every member or staff member who met the criteria for exposure was immediately contacted and required to self-isolate for 14 days from their date of possible exposure.” Democratic representatives are furious, however, as they argue they only just found out about the risk of coronavirus spread in the shared state Capitol. One Democratic state rep, Brian Sims, has gone viral as of last night, sharing a passionate video on Facebook Live in response to the news.
Sims doesn’t hold back. “Every single day of this crisis this State Government Committee in Pennsylvania has met so that their members could line up one after one after one and explain that it was safe to go back to work,” he states in the video. He alleges that while members were testing positive, they notified one another, but “didn’t notify us.”
“I never ever, ever knew that the Republican leadership of this state would put so many of us at risk for partisanship to cover up a lie, and that lie is that we’re all safe from COVID,” he stated in the live video on Wednesday night.
“I just spent the better part of the last 11 weeks sitting across a room from people who would eventually test positive and decided not to tell us. They did do some kind of quarantine […] They did do some kind of contact tracing […] They, I guess, being Republican leadership,” Sims continued in the video that lasted over ten minutes.
Sims shared that he “secretly” donated a kidney to someone who was “dying of renal failure” in his city in January. “You have no idea how the people around you are impacted,” he stressed, “and that’s why it’s so important to notify people.”