White House to spend $1.7 billion on fighting variants

The Biden administration announced Friday it is allocating $1.7 billion to fight coronavirus variants, as the virus continues to mutate into more deadly and infectious forms.

The spending is aimed at improving the detection, monitoring and mitigation of the variants, as the original strain of the novel coronavirus now makes up only about half of all cases in the country. The White House said a central goal of the effort will be increasing the country’s capabilities for genomic sequencing to better understand and track mutations.

The funding, which comes from the American Rescue Plan and will be allocated through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, comprises $1 billion to expand genomic sequencing; $400 million to support innovation, including establishing six Centers of Excellence in Genomic Epidemiology; and $300 million to build and support a National Bioinformatics Infrastructure.

The funding will be distributed to states in two batches, the first to be sent in early May. The second round of funding will be invested over the next several years.

“At this critical juncture in the pandemic, these new resources will help ensure states and the CDC have the support they need to fight back against dangerous variants and slow the spread of the virus,” White House coronavirus testing coordinator Carole Johnson said in a statement.

An earlier investment of $200 million from the White House helped U.S. laboratories scale up genomic sequencing from 8,000 coronavirus samples a week in early February to 29,000 samples a week. The latest round of funding will help the CDC and states identify variants and monitor their circulation.