State health officials are working to quiet concerns that a bill would allow for the quarantine of people with HIV.
The bill is aimed at protecting emergency responders, making it easier to test an accident victim's blood to test for HIV or other infectious diseases. But, some were concerned that the bill removed long standing protections for persons with HIV/AIDS, and might open the door for them to be quarantined.
Those concerns generated news reports, some of them in national publications. In response, members of a House/Senate negotiating committee inserted some new language into the bill.
It says that people can be quarantined only when it is "reasonable and medically necessary." State health officials say that people with HIV do not meet either of those triggering thresholds.