CDC Needs $6 Billion To Distribute A Potential COVID-19 Vaccine

Director Robert Redfield says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention needs $6 billion to distribute a COVID-19 vaccine once it’s approved and told a Senate panel the matter is urgent.

Bloomberg reported Redfield's plea during testimony Wednesday puts added pressure on Congress to come up on a coronavirus stimulus deal.

The Department of Health and Human Services outlined a plan earlier this week for distributing a vaccine, dividing the country up into more than five dozen jurisdictions.

“Right now we've leveraged about $600 million, but we do not have the resources to support 64 jurisdictions to get this plan operational, so to me it’s an urgency,” Redfield said.

“The time is now for us to be able to get those resources out to the states, and we currently don't have those resources,” he added.

While both parties support the vaccine funding, there is no clear path for funding it outside of a larger stimulus deal, which has been stalled since Aug. 7, The Hill reported.

“If you have the vaccine and don't have either the plan or the resources to distribute it, that's a huge failure on the part of the Congress to provide the resources that we know are going to be necessary,” Sen. Roy Blunt, chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, which funds healthcare, said in response to Redfield.

He noted the skeleton coronavirus package the Senate failed to advance last week included the $6 billion for vaccine distribution, as well as an additional $20 billion HHS said it needs for further vaccine manufacturing and development, The Hill reported. HHS said the $6 billion would be used for all parts of the vaccine distribution process, which includes buying freezers to store the vaccine, figuring out the logistics of physically moving the vaccine from manufacturing facilities to pharmacies and establishing distribution centers. States were told to be prepared for distribution by Nov. 1.

Two of the leading vaccines, from Moderna and Pfizer, require storage at sub-zero temperatures, making buying sufficient freezers a key concern, The Hill reported.

With the urgent need for funds, Congress is under a time constraint for providing the necessary liquidity to the CDC.

President Trump said Tuesday a vaccine could be approved "in a matter of weeks."

The timeline raised concern among public health experts about an “October surprise.” Health officials are concerned vaccine approval is being driven by political considerations ahead of the presidential election, rather than science, the Associated Press reported.