Medicare Compliance & Reimbursement

The government continues to promote COVID-19 vaccination as the best bet to thwart the virus, but the feds also want to study and develop antiviral therapies, too. Read on for the latest news.

Then: In March, President Biden signed the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) into law, allocating billions for COVID-related tracing, testing, vaccinations, and research (see Medicare Compliance & Reimbursement, Vol. 47, No. 6).

Now: On June 17, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that the feds would be “investing more than $3 billion to accelerate the discovery, development and manufacturing of antiviral medicines as part of the Biden Administration’s whole-of-government strategy to develop the next generation of COVID-19 treatments,” notes an HHS release. The ARPA-funded research will be a collaborative effort between HHS and three of its auxiliary departments — the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and its National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA). The group research will be titled the “Antiviral Program for Pandemics.”

“This plan accelerates and expands the Administration’s ongoing efforts to support clinical trials to test prioritized drug candidates for COVID-19 and to support the advanced development of promising therapies,” the agency says.

Plus: In addition to the COVID research, the group also intends to utilize findings garnered from their clinical studies “to better prepare us for potential future viral pathogens,” indicates Francis S. Collins, MD, NIH Director, in the release.

Review the plan details at www.hhs.gov/about/news/2021/06/17/biden-administration-invest-3-billion-american-rescue-plan-as-part-covid-19-antiviral-development-strategy.html.