The White House is readying an urgent budget request to address the deadly coronavirus outbreak whose rapid spread is spooking financial markets and restricting international travel.
The request is still being developed but is likely to come this week, a senior administration official confirmed Monday.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has already tapped into an emergency infectious disease rapid response fund and is seeking to transfer more than $130 million from other HHS accounts to combat the virus but is pressing for more.
Additional funds are needed to cover the costs of quarantines at military bases, airport, port and border screening efforts as well as to expedite the development of potential vaccines and treatments for the virus that has killed more than 2,600 people worldwide.
HHS Secretary Azar is slated to testify before the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday, and the US response to the outbreak is sure to be a major topic as the White House and HHS prepare to request additional emergency funding (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
The outbreak, which began in December in China’s Hubei province, has already outpaced both SARS and MERS, the last new coronaviruses to emerge and spread around the globe, beginning in 2002 and 2012, respectively.
With nearly 80,000 cases worldwide, the unforeseeable outbreak has taken a toll not only on human health but global economies.
Oxford Economics have estimated the coronavirus and the illness it causes – now known as COVID-19 – could cost the world economy $1.1 trillion in lost profits.
But slowing or stopping the spread of the new respiratory disease before it can further deplete global productivity means spending more up front.
The US has – or had – a reserve of some $105 million for exactly these kind of public health calamities.
That money quickly dwindled to nothing as the HHS and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) scrambled to design and implement travel restrictions, reroute tens of thousands of incoming passengers to the US from China, set up quarantines, disseminate a diagnostic test and initiate vaccine and drug development.
Among the beneficiaries of additional funds would be the Pentagon, which is housing evacuees from China – who are required to undergo 14-day quarantines – at several military bases in California.
Military bases there and in Texas, Washington and Nebraska scrambled to set themselves up as quarantines and give wary travelers the warmest welcome to confinement possible.
But transporting, housing, feeding and monitoring the health of some 800 people, unexpectedly, has been no small or cheap feat.
And these measures were really just the beginning of the many steps it takes to address the outbreak that’s stuck 35 Americans so far.
Screening for the virus at ports and even via lab tests administered to quarantined Americans continues to be an imperfect process, one the government would like to bolster, while also ramping up drug and vaccine development.
Democrats controlling the House wrote HHS Secretary Alex Azar earlier this month to request funds to help speed development of a coronavirus vaccine, expand laboratory capacity, and beef up screening efforts at US entry points.
It’s difficult to estimate what the total cost of this nearly-unprecedent outbreak could be, but vaccine development alone may cost $200-$500 million – for any one of the several the US government has partnered to create.
Azar is slated to testify before the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday, and the US response to the outbreak is sure to be a major topic.
The White House budget office, led by Russell Vought, a stout conservative, is working with HHS to shape the request, with the agency seeking more than the White House is likely to approve.
There is a receptive audience for the request on Capitol Hill, though stand-alone emergency spending bills can be tricky to pass since they are invariably a target for lawmakers seeking add-ons.
The quickly spreading virus has slammed the economy of China, where the virus originated, and caseloads are rapidly increasing in countries such as South Korea, Iran, and Italy.
The official required anonymity because the request is not public.