Sens. Hickenlooper, Cassidy introduce bill to modernize biosurveillance

U.S. Sens. John Hickenlooper (D-CO) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA) introduced legislation Thursday that would modernize programs currently focused on surveilling and forecasting future pandemic-causing viruses.

Called the Modernizing Biosurveillance Capabilities and Epidemic Forecasting Act, the bill would update and codify the current Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) programs and will be included in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing on PREVENT Pandemics Act, a package of legislation focused on pandemic preparedness.

“To prevent a full-blown pandemic or develop a vaccine, we must spot infectious diseases sooner,” Hickenlooper said. “This bill will help us move faster and stop the next outbreak from becoming a pandemic.”

The bill will provide $324 million in federal funding for modernizing biosurveillance capabilities and infectious disease data collection and reporting. The bill will also update the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ strategy and implementation of pandemic preparedness plans while codifying current CDC activities to analyze, model, and forecast infectious diseases outbreaks.

“We need to start working and preparing now to combat the next pandemic. Our bill allows federal agencies to better coordinate our response to public health crises and increase information sharing within health data systems,” Cassidy said.