Centers for Disease Control and Prevention fell $ 11.4 billion in funds allocated in response to the pandemic to state and community health services, non -governmental organizations and international beneficiaries, the Ministry of Health and Social Services confirmed on Tuesday.
“The Covid-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of dollars from taxpayers who respond to an nonexistent pandemic that the Americans have moved years ago,” said HHS communications director Andrew Nixon in a statement. “HHS favors funding projects that will deliver President Trump’s mandate to combat our chronic disease epidemic and make America healthy.“”
HHS oversees 13 agencies, including the CDC, which is responsible for protecting the health of the country. Notices began to go out on Monday and the winners have 30 days to reconcile their expenses. The figures are likely to change.
The oblique financing bar comes to other cuts under the new secretary of health and social services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., including the cancellation of Hundreds of millions of dollars In subsidies for research on vaccination hesitation, LGBTQ populations and support HIV prevention.
“Now that the pandemic is over, subsidies and cooperative agreements are no longer necessary because their limited objective has been exhausted,” read the dismissal notices sent to beneficiaries on Monday and shared with NBC News.
The federal urgency of public health ended on May 11, 2023, but more than 1.2 million people in the United States died from COVID, According to the CDC. Although the infection has slowed down and the disease has become softer, hundreds of people still die every week According to the symptoms coid and long, continue to cause debilitating medical problems in some cases.
The clawed back funds were largely used for covid tests, vaccination, community health workers and initiatives aimed at combating health disparities cocovated among high -risk and ill -served populations, including populations of racial and ethnic minorities and rural communities, as well as global COVID projects, depending on the Word of CDC. electronics to agency ministries on Tuesday.
The CDC has reviewed a list of the coastal subsidies provided by the HHS and the cooperation agreements and identified the programs that were no longer necessary, depending on the discussion points.
A list of projects for canceled funds was not immediately available.
In recent years, COVVID funding had been used for other critical functions in state health services, according to a senior CDC who was not authorized to speak on behalf of the agency.
In a statement to NBC News, Kristina Iodice, director of communications for the Colorado Ministry of Public Health and Environment, has echoed concern, noting that cuts could affect more than simple programs aimed at Covid.
“We are concerned about the fact that this sudden loss of federal funding threatens the capacity of Colorado to follow the trends of COVID-19 and other emerging diseases, to modernize data systems on diseases, to respond to epidemics and to provide critical access, awareness and education to make communities more vulnerable to future public health crises,” said Iodice.
Nine state health services confirmed that they had received a notice from the funded funds.
Greg Flynn, director of media relations in the Mississippi State Department of State, said the State “is currently working to assess the potential impacts on our agency”. Charla Haley, information manager at the Utah Ministry of Health, said in an email: “We are currently assessing the impact”.
Until now, HHS has made the deepest budget on the government’s level in the Trump administration’s efforts to radically reduce federal funding, according to a statement listed on the website of the government’s ministry of efficiency.
HHS also canceled $ 877 million in subsidies in Texas Department of Health and $ 482 million in the Florida Department of Health, among other discounts this week, according to the DOGE website.