Biden seeks $65bn to deal with future pandemics
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The White House wants to spend $65bn over the next 10 years to plan for future pandemics, including setting up a new office of pandemic preparedness at the heart of the US government.
Officials said on Friday they wanted to overhaul the way the federal government responded to outbreaks, streamlining the regulatory process for new drugs and making it easier to manufacture tests and protective equipment.
The plans are part of the Biden administration’s wider attempts to revamp the country’s public health bodies in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, even as the disease continues to kill about 1,000 people every day in the US.
Eric Lander, scientific adviser to president Joe Biden, said on Friday: “Five years from now we need to be in a far stronger position to stop infectious diseases before they become global pandemics, like Covid-19.”
The US has recorded nearly 40m Covid infections since the start of the pandemic and more than 640,000 deaths, despite previously being rated as one of the world’s best prepared countries to face such an outbreak.
Health experts argue that many of those infections and deaths could have been avoided early in the pandemic had the US not suffered shortages of tests and protective equipment, and had the Trump administration been more consistent in its response to the outbreak.
As part of its efforts to make sure the US is better prepared to face future pandemics, White House officials said on Friday they would ask Congress for an initial $15bn-$20bn as part of the $3.5tn budget Biden is trying to push through without Republican support. It will seek the rest of the money through separate negotiations with Congressional committees.
If approved, the money will be spent in part setting up a new pandemic “mission control”, which would co-ordinate response efforts across the government.
That office will be in charge of overseeing a range of ambitious goals, including that the US should be able to produce a vaccine against any human virus within 100 days of it being identified as a potential pandemic threat. The plans also say there should be manufacturing capacity to produce enough doses to vaccinate the entire world within 200 days.
To achieve this, the White House is proposing streamlining the US drug trial and approval process. Officials said for example that the Food and Drug Administration should be able to approve a company’s entire platform — such as the mRNA technology used by Pfizer and Moderna — rather than each new drug or vaccine made using that technology.
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The plan also calls for stricter international rules on scientific research on dangerous biological agents, something many experts have called for as the debate over the pandemic’s origins continues to rage.
The goals laid out in the White House plan aim to make the next global pandemic shorter and less deadly. But the document does not give a deadline for when they should be achieved nor detailed plans for making sure they are.
Biden has already re-established the global health security team within the National Security Council which was disbanded under the Trump administration. Officials said this new team, however, would do more work across different parts of the US government, including working with health regulators and the private sector.