White House health officials warned that new pandemics could prove more serious than Covid-19 in a report that reviews efforts to prepare for the “high likelihood” of future serious outbreaks.
(Bloomberg) — White House health officials warned that new pandemics could prove more serious than Covid-19 in a report that reviews efforts to prepare for the “high likelihood” of future serious outbreaks.
While the Biden administration has pushed repeatedly for funding to combat that sort of threat, Congress has yet to allocate more money. In the meantime, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is embarking on a reorganization based on lessons learned during Covid, and another government office is being given new powers to help coordinate responses to health emergencies.
“As staggering as the losses of the last nearly three years have been, COVID-19 was a moderate pandemic,” Biden administration officials from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Covid-19 Response Team said in the report. “The US government must seize the moment to transform its scientific capabilities in preparation for the increasing frequency of biological threats on the horizon.”
The 30-page review is an update to the American Pandemic Preparedness Plan that was released a year ago. Since then, the science office, also known as the OSTP, and the White House Covid-19 team joined forces to launch a new task force focused entirely on advancing pandemic preparedness. The group is led by OSTP’s Matthew Hepburn and the Covid-19 team’s Nahid Bhadelia.
The report outlines the need for sustained investment in basic research and development for vaccines, drugs and diagnostic tools, and “strong top-down leadership with clear decision-making authority.”
A year since calling for funding to support those goals, the Biden administration hasn’t obtained new money from Congress, nor has the administration been given tens of billions of dollars it requested for other pandemic planning.
Without funding, the task force has served mostly as a coordinating body. The review details a number of unconnected programs that have been launched by various government stakeholders, spanning from the Departments of Health, Defense and Energy, among others like the US Agency for International Development.
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