Eric Lander [Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Sipa USA(Sipa via AP Images)]

White House seeks $65B to pre­pare for fu­ture pan­demics in 'Apol­lo'-like ef­fort

Er­ic Lan­der, the famed ge­neti­cist who now serves as the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion’s top sci­ence ad­vi­sor, un­veiled a sweep­ing plan Fri­day to trans­form the US’ pre­pared­ness for fu­ture pan­demics, draw­ing a par­al­lel to the am­bi­tious Apol­lo pro­gram that put the first hu­mans on the moon.

The plan calls for $65 bil­lion in spend­ing over the next 7 to 10 years, in­clud­ing an im­me­di­ate $15 bil­lion ask in the cur­rent $3.5 tril­lion bud­get rec­on­cil­i­a­tion ef­forts cur­rent­ly mov­ing through Con­gress. Lan­der said the pro­pos­al would in­clude fund­ing for vac­cine and drug de­vel­op­ment, as well as im­prov­ing test­ing and pan­dem­ic de­tec­tion sys­tems.

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