Biden administration announces new treaty with 50 countries

President Joe Biden announced the cooperative inititiative with 50 countries in order to close preparedness gaps and improve global national security threatened by biological weapons and health threats

• Effort meant to improve disease surveillance and prevent global health threats
• Fifty countries will be involved in closing preparedness and response gaps READ
• MORE: Bird flu detected in person who had contact with infected COW 

President Joe Biden’s administration will help 50 countries identify and respond to infectious diseases, with the goal of preventing pandemics like the COVID-19 outbreak.

Federal officials will work with the countries to develop better testing, surveillance, communication and preparedness for such outbreaks in those countries in order to  help ‘effectively respond to biological threats wherever they emerge.’

The announcement about the strategy comes as countries have struggled to meet a worldwide accord on responses to future pandemics.

The program will rely on the State Department, the CDC, HHS, and the Agency for International Development, or USAID – to help countries refine their infectious disease response.

The White House on Tuesday will release a website with the names of the countries that are participating in the program.

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Biden officials are seeking to get 100 countries signed onto the program by the end of the year. The 50 countries involved is up from 19.

The U.S. has devoting billions of dollars to the effort. Biden, a Democrat, is asking for $1.2 billion for global health safety efforts in his yearly budget proposal to Congress.

Meanwhile, four years after the coronavirus pandemic, the prospects of a pandemic treaty signed by all 194 of the World Health Organization’s members are flailing.

The cooperation among the 50 countries ‘to ensure they are better able to prevent, detect, and respond to global health security threats.’

Over the next five years, the United States will work with these 50 partners ‘to build, further strengthen, and sustain a level of demonstrated capacity in at least five [global health security] areas.’

The Biden Administration oversaw much of the Covid vaccine rollout, which saved millions of American lives. But Covid-19 will not be the last of the administration’s public health hurdles.

Bird flu is on the rise nationwide, infecting poultry and cows after the virus was able to jump from the former to the latter.

The second person ever to be infected with avian flu was reported earlier this month after catching it from a cow.

The CDC maintains the threat to general health is low, but administration officials said they are ‘closely monitoring the situation’.

Former health officials said they were not comforted by the assurances made by the government – highlighting how the Trump Administration played down fears about Covid in the early days of the pandemic.

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