The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced Tuesday that the Biden Administration would invest more than $3 billion from the American Rescue Plan to discover, develop, and manufacture antiviral COVID-19 medicines.
The investment is part of the administration’s “whole of government” approach to combating the COVID-19 pandemic.
Departments within HHS, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and its National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), as well as the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, would collaborate as part of the Antiviral Program for Pandemics and respond to the urgent need for antivirals to treat COVID-19 with new medicines. The group would also build a sustainable platform for discovering and developing antivirals for other viruses with the potential to become pandemics.
“New antivirals that prevent serious COVID-19 illness and death, especially oral drugs that could be taken at home early in the course of disease, would be powerful tools for battling the pandemic and saving lives,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to the President and NIAID Director. “Through multidisciplinary collaborations among leading scientists in academia and industry, this investment from the American Rescue Plan to create the Antiviral Program for Pandemics will help inspire medical innovation and build on the extraordinary success we have seen in developing the COVID-19 vaccines.”
The plan accelerates and expands the administration’s efforts to support clinical trials to test drug candidates for COVID-19 and to support the development of promising therapies. Working through a public-private partnership called ACTIV (Accelerating COVID-19 Therapeutics and Vaccines), nearly 20 therapeutic agents have been prioritized for testing in rigorous clinical trials for outpatients and inpatients with COVID-19. Last week, the administration announced it would procure more than 1.5 million regimens of a Merck investigational antiviral treatment if it receives emergency use authorization from the FDA.
“With the President’s leadership, this Administration has vaccinated millions of people. Even with very effective vaccines, some people may remain vulnerable to the virus, including people who are immunosuppressed or who are unvaccinated,” said Dr. David Kessler, Chief Science Officer for the Biden Administration’s COVID-19 Response. “An easily administered oral antiviral drug would be an important part of our therapeutic arsenal that would complement the great success of our vaccine efforts. Our Administration is going to harness the power of American ingenuity to spur the creation and development of these drugs that can save lives both here in the United States and around the world.”