While Congress continues its debate of President Joe Biden’s proposed $2 trillion American Jobs Plan, 25 medical and healthcare stakeholder organizations are urging the legislators to support the $30 billion the plan would direct to prepare for future pandemics.
In a letter to Congressional leadership this week, the organizations — including the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, American Academy of Nursing, Nuclear Threat Initiative, and Vaccinate Your Family — noted that the funds in question could spur new public health jobs, encourage innovation in science and technology, and bolster the infrastructure for domestic medical countermeasures. The plan had called for the billions in investment to be made over a period of four years, but the signatories to this letter urged the investment to be included in a funding vehicle this year.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has shown the national and international consequences that deadly infectious disease epidemics can cause,” the signatories wrote. “Over the past two decades, outbreaks of SARS, Ebola, influenza, Zika, and others have cost the U.S. billions in lost productivity. The profound effects of this and other pandemics must galvanize the U.S. government to do everything in its power to prevent this from happening again.”
COVID-19 swept the world in a matter of months. Yet, the writers also warned of the threat posed by biological weapons, especially given the rapid advances in biological sciences. Novel pathogens, they argued, could be used to start new, major epidemics or pandemics.
According to the group’s assessment, a pandemic-free future is still achievable, and these funds would go a long way — through supporting faster vaccine development and production, bolstering the Strategic National Stockpile, increasing research into disease threats, building public health infrastructure and technologies, and training the personnel to meet these threats. While a great deal of funding has already been provided to anti-COVID-19 efforts, the group maintains that the supplemental funds involved are not enough to meet the longer-term needs of biological security.
“The next fast-moving, novel infectious disease pandemic could be right around the corner,” the authors said. “The United States must be prepared to move faster when the next potential pandemic emerges to avoid catastrophic loss of life and economic disruption. A significant new investment in pandemic preparedness is vital to our country’s economy and national security.”
To date, COVID-19 has led to more than 33 million cases in the United States. It has also been responsible for the deaths of more than 602,000 people in the United States and more than 3.8 million worldwide.