The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has notified the California Department of Public Health that it has suspended grants it has provided to support the state’s infection response during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The directive will go to all 50 states and cancel approximately $12 billion in funds. California officials said they couldn’t immediately say how the cuts would affect state services.
“We are working to assess the impact of these actions,” Erika Pan, director of the State Department and state public health officer, said in a statement.
The funds were awarded during the Covid-19 pandemic to support a nation with respiratory virus surveillance, testing and response, vaccinations and vaccines in children, and to address health disparities.
The cut was previously reported by NBC News. This said, citing a statement from Andrew Nixon, a spokesman for the U.S. Health Service, “The Covid-19 pandemic is over and HHS won’t waste billions of taxpayer dollars in response to a nonexistent pandemic that Americans have been moving for years.”
It is unclear how much money has been awarded and how much money has been withdrawn at the moment, and the CDC has awarded a $37 million grant to help strengthen the state’s health infrastructure, workforce and data systems.
According to the release, the grant awards were launched on December 1, 2022 and were scheduled to continue until November 30, 2027.
Although it was not possible to immediately determine how much of the awards were already spent, many of them were designated to support the county health department, including the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, Riverside County Department of Public Health, Long Beach Health Department, Orange County Department of Health, and San Bernardino County Department of Public Health.
Additionally, it was offered to California by the CDC shortly after the COVID pandemic. It is $1.7 billion as part of the 2020 $555 million grant and the 2021 Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplementary Budget Act.
The state’s Department of Public Health did not immediately respond to requests for comment on programs that could be affected by the cancellation of CDC funding, or how the state’s disease surveillance, testing, response and vaccination programs will be affected.
The Los Angeles County Public Health Department has received a notification from the federal government that community-related funds will be withdrawn, a department spokesperson said. I also received an informal notice from the state that Covid-related grants for vaccination services will likely end.
“In total, these actions are to be withdrawn… Covid-related funds will affect more than $45 million at the core of LA County’s public health funds,” the spokesperson said. “Many of this funding supports disease surveillance, public health lab services, outbreak investigations, infection control activities at health facilities, and data transparency. We are working to determine the impact of this funding loss announcement.”
Gov. According to Gavin Newsom, it allocated $5.1 billion to the state’s health department. That approximately $2.3 billion comes from federal funding.
The legislature initially approved funding for the state’s health program as part of the Community Relief Bill, but has since been permitted to cover other programs, such as testing and surveillance for other respiratory viruses.
California has been ground zero for H5N1 bird flu since March last year. Thirty-eight people in the state have been infected with the virus, most of whom are dairy workers working with infected cows and milk. But the two were children. The cause of their infection has not been determined.
The virus has also infected herds of 756 dairy cows. Over 75% of the state’s total dairy products.
In addition, there have been eight measles cases since the start of the year, in addition to thousands of seasonal influenza, Covid-19, norovirus and RSV cases.
Pan said the state will continue to work to advance public health and protect people.
“Every Californians deserve to live in a healthy, prosperous community, a public health role,” she wrote in a statement, saying that her department is “committed to seeking the resources they need to keep people healthy and support the critical life-saving infrastructure they need to protect people from infectious diseases, vaccine-preventable diseases and health emergencies.”
