Republican Representative of Texas House District 83, Dustin Burrows, has filed a bill focused on supporting Texas first responders who must quarantine after being exposed to COVID-19.
House Bill 2037 states that city and county departments would be required to place a firefighter, police officer, or EMT on administrative leave with pay if they needed to quarantine due to on-duty exposure to COVID-19 or any other infectious disease.
A press release from Dustin Burrows dated Feb. 23 states, "While most city and county governments have covered costs and placed First Responders on administrative leave with pay when quarantined, some have not and refuse to, resulting in employees not reporting high risk exposures, since they may end up spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on quarantine expenses."
House Bill 2037 does state, however, that the first responder must have contracted the illness while in the line of duty, but it remains unclear how that would be definitively proven.