Biden Administration Commits $1.7B to SARS-CoV-2 Variant Sequencing, Surveillance

According to the White House, $1 billion will go toward helping the US Centers of Disease Control and Prevention and jurisdictional health departments conduct, expand, and improve activities around SARS-CoV-2 genome sequencing and mutation identification such as specimen collection and data sharing. An initial tranche of $240 million will be provided to states beginning in early May, with additional funding coming over the next several years. Among the states, double-digit million awards are scheduled to go to California ($23.5 million), Texas ($17.7 million), Florida ($12.7 million), and New York ($12.5 million).

Another $400 million will be used to establish six Centers of Excellence in Genomic Epidemiology that will work with state health departments and academic institutes to develop new genomic epidemiology technologies such as surveillance tools to track pathogens and bioinformatic workflows.

A total of $300 million will be used to build a national bioinformatics infrastructure that will enable the sharing and analysis of sequence data throughout the US while maintaining privacy. The funding will also be used to increase sequencing in clinical settings and expand the CDC’s bioinformatics fellowship program.

Source: https://www.genomeweb.com/sequencing/biden-administration-commits-17b-sars-cov-2-variant-sequencing-surveillance