Biden Pandemic Preparedness Plan: Big Steps Forward on a Long Journey

By David Beier and Sri Devabhaktuni

President Biden is taking bold action with his new set of sweeping vaccine measures. While we await more detail on his $65B spending plan, it’s already clear that more work will be needed in the weeks ahead to fight COVID.

Military history teaches us that no battle plan fully survives engagement with the enemy. In contrast to his predecessor, it is refreshing to watch a leader roll out a plan and then go execute it to the best of his ability.

The Biden effort is quite good, albeit a work in progress in some respects. High level attention to diversity, health equity and assuring access to care is as vital as the latest biological discoveries. We await with hope further detail on how those principles and values will be brought to life in distressed communities across the nation.

The three-legged stool of renewed, innovative focus and funding for vaccines, treatments and diagnostics offers a more stable and sustainable health care delivery platform. I particularly applaud the explicit reference to the urgent need for point-of-care diagnostics. Since 2017, I have been pressing for easy, free access to customer friendly point of care tests, including inexpensive antigen tests for schools and large scale events. Finally, the US government appears all in on that structure by invoking the Defense Production Act to produce these tests and distributing them at cost through major retailers.