Biden Signs American Rescue Plan

Publication Date: Mar 2, 2021

President Joe Biden today signed the bill implementing the American Rescue Plan. The measure provides $1.9 trillion in overall funding to address the COVID-19 pandemic and to support the U.S. economy. Included in the funds the legislation provides are $400 billion to address the COVID-19 pandemic. Approximately $50 billion of this funding is earmarked to support laboratory testing for COVID-19. The measure includes numerous provisions supported by ASCP, and is the focus of a current ASCP Advocacy Alert.

The money provided for testing supports the detection, diagnosis, tracing and monitoring of SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 infections and related strategies to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. The measure would also establish and expand federal, state, local and territorial testing and contact tracing capabilities, including investments in laboratory capacity, community-based testing sites, and mobile units, particularly in medically underserved areas.

The measure also provides $10 billion to support U.S. federal efforts to address certain medical supply shortages, such as laboratory testing supplies and personal protective equipment (PPE), using the Defense Production Act as necessary. In addition, the measure provides $7.7 billion to support the public health workforce. The funds would be provided to state, local, tribal and territorial public health departments and can be used to support recruiting, hiring, and training of key members of the public health workforce, such as laboratory testing personnel and informaticians.

In addition, legislation known as the Tracking COVID-19 Variants Act was recently added to improve U.S. detection and surveillance of COVID-19 variants. This ASCP-supported legislation would provide $2 billion in funding to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to support a robust, national sequence-based surveillance program to better protect public health and to address the evolution the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to the Act’s sponsors, Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Representatives Ami Bera, MD (D-CA) and Scott Peters (D-CA), the U.S. is currently conducting sequence-based surveillance of approximately 0.3 percent of coronavirus cases, ranking 43rd worldwide. It is critical, these members of Congress argue, that the U.S. scale up its efforts to survey at least 15 percent of cases in order to better grasp new and evolving variants, understand their origins, and develop appropriate mitigation strategies.

To support passage of this legislation, ASCP urges ePolicy readers to use ASCP’s Advocacy Alert to send their Senators a message asking them to support the American Rescue Plan.

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For more information regarding ASCP's advocacy initiatives and policy positions, please contact ASCP's Center for Public Policy at (202) 408-1110.
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ASCP ePolicy News is supported by an unrestricted grant from Hologic.

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