The Biden administration announced last week that it will invest $1.7 billion towards tracking the highly infectious coronavirus variants that now comprise about half of all cases in the United States. The funds, which will be drawn from the most recent $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, will be used to help improve the nation's viral detection, monitoring and mitigation public health infrastructure.
The White House said that $1 billion of the viral tracking investment will be used to help the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), states and other jurisdictions expand their genomic sequencing capabilities, which will help laboratories identify mutations in patient samples.
Meanwhile, $400 million of the investment will go towards genomic epidemiology research and the establishment of six "centers of excellence" that will be partnerships between health departments and academic institutions, according to the White House.
The final $300 million will go towards improving the nation's bioinformatics infrastructure. The White House outlined that this investment will create a "unified system for sharing and analyzing sequence data in a way that protects privacy but allows more informed decision making."
The Biden administration plans to give an initial $240 million of the funding to U.S. states and territories in early May, with the states of California, Texas and Florida receiving the largest amounts. The rest of the public health investments will be given out over the next several years.
Global epidemiologists have predicted that COVID-19 will become an endemic, meaning that it will continue spreading as a mild, flu-like illness after the pandemic is over. If it does become an endemic, scientists and researchers may need to regularly produce booster shots to protect against new emerging variants.
Leading COVID vaccine makers Pfizer
