Fact Sheet: American Pandemic Preparedness Plan Annual Report
Today, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), in coordination with relevant departments and agencies across the U.S. Government, released the First Annual Report on Progress Towards Implementation of the American Pandemic Preparedness Plan, which details crucial advancements towards pandemic preparedness, including providing priority areas for investment and additional efforts needed in the years ahead.
The Biden-Harris Administration is creating transformative capabilities in vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics research and development (R&D) that is producing tools to stop, treat, and detect pandemic threats. The plan is also strengthening early warning of emergent threats – so that the nation has the concrete capability to detect viral threats anywhere in the world within days or weeks of their emergence. This is leading to new approaches and systems to detect new threats – as well as old threats like Polio – by genome sequencing, wastewater sampling, and stronger global early warning networks to aggregate and analyze pathogen data.
Tracking threats circulating in human populations has also improved by combining diagnostic, epidemiological, sequencing, and environmental data. And, as a key component of future response, the U.S. Government is now placing increased emphasis on public engagement, trust building, and recognition and resolution of previous harms and challenges in public health.
The following are examples of many recent efforts demonstrating how the Biden-Harris Administration is taking an all-of-government approach to fostering innovation and mitigating the threat of future pandemics.
Transforming our Defenses: The COVID-19 vaccine investments by the U.S. Government demonstrated unprecedented acceleration of safe and effective vaccine development, with investments in six vaccines yielding positive clinical trial results and four of the six vaccines receiving Emergency Use Authorization – including two vaccines with pediatric authorizations. . . .
Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics: Through U.S. Government support and public private partnerships, many diagnostic tests for SARS-CoV-2 were rapidly developed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) used pre-COVID-19 investment in molecular diagnostics platforms to speed up the availability of SARS-CoV-2 tests and combination SARS-CoV-2 plus influenza tests across laboratory, point-of-care, home-use, and limited testing resource settings such as nursing homes and clinics. To date, 29 Emergency Use Authorizations have been supported by BARDA funding, and BARDA has supplied more than one-fifth of the total molecular lab test volume. . . .
Health Equity Efforts: Innovative state and local health departments have been using real-time data to identify and describe underlying disparities that were exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Public health leaders used these data to inform the allocation of medical countermeasures, including diagnostics, vaccines, therapeutics, and personal protective equipment to at-risk communities and regional healthcare workers. . . .
Manufacturing Innovation: Innovation is critical to advancing pandemic preparedness. For innovation to actually reach and benefit all Americans, however, innovation must be coupled with readiness and scalability. To ensure readiness, the U.S. Government views the pandemic innovation ecosystem and pandemic preparedness more broadly as a portfolio, from early investment through scaling. . . .
First Annual Report on Progress Towards Implementation of the American Pandemic Preparedness Plan
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/09-2022-AP3-FIRST-ANNUAL-REPORT-ON-PROGRESS.pdf
Fact sheet:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/news-updates/2022/09/01/fact-sheet-american-pandemic-preparedness-plan-annual-report/