Sec. 2. Findings

378 words·~2 min read·/bill/117/hr/2118/ih/section-2

A research copy — for the controlling text, always check the official state or federal source. Not legal advice.

Congress finds the following: Due to increasing population and population density, human mobility, and ecological change, emerging infectious diseases pose a real and growing threat to global health security. While vaccines can be the most effective tools to protect against infectious disease, the absence of vaccines for a new or emerging infectious disease with epidemic potential is a major health security threat globally, posing catastrophic potential human and economic costs.

The COVID–19 pandemic has infected more than 119,960,700 individuals and has killed at least 2,656,822 people worldwide, and it is likely that unreported cases and deaths are significant. Even regional outbreaks can have enormous human costs and substantially disrupt the global economy and cripple regional economies. The 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa killed more than 11,000 and cost $2,800,000,000 in losses in the affected countries alone. While the need for vaccines to address emerging epidemic threats is acute, markets to drive the necessary development of vaccines to address them—a complex and expensive undertaking—are very often critically absent.

Also absent are mechanisms to ensure access to those vaccines by those who need them when they need them. To address this global vulnerability and the deficit of political commitment, institutional capacity, and funding, in 2017, several countries and private partners launched the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI). CEPI’s mission is to stimulate, finance, and coordinate development of vaccines for high-priority, epidemic-potential threats in cases where traditional markets do not exist or cannot create sufficient demand.

Through funding of partnerships, CEPI seeks to bring priority vaccines candidates through the end of phase II clinical trials, as well as support vaccine platforms that can be rapidly deployed against emerging pathogens. CEPI supported the manufacturing of the United States-developed Moderna COVID–19 vaccine during its Phase 1 clinical trial, and CEPI has initiated at least 12 partnerships to develop vaccines against COVID–19. CEPI is co-leading COVAX, the vaccines pillar of the ACT–Accelerator, which is a global collaboration to quickly produce and equitably distribute safe and effective vaccines and therapeutics for COVID–19.

Support for and participation in CEPI is an important part of the United States own health security and biodefense and is in the national interest, complementing the work of many Federal agencies and providing significant value through global partnership and burden-sharing.