In a letter to Congressional leadership, ASCP and other similarly concerned organizations joined together to urge that federal funding for the Advanced Molecular Detection (AMD) program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) be doubled to enhance the agency’s surveillance capabilities for the coronavirus. The funding request would raise AMD’s budget to $60 billion for FY 2022.
The AMD program harnesses next generation sequencing (NGS) technologies to bring the concept of precision medicine to bear for “precision public health.” AMD provides the federal government with the tools necessary to detect disease faster, identify outbreaks sooner, and protect people from emerging and evolving disease threats. AMD has played a critical role in the response to the global COVID-19 pandemic, enabling the United States to sequence SARS-CoV-2 within one week of its detection last year. To further aid with these efforts, the CDC launched SARS-CoV-2 Sequencing for Public Health Emergency Response, Epidemiology and Surveillance Program, a national genomics consortium designed to coordinate sequencing across the U.S among public and private entities, in the spring of 2020.
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