Biden to request $415 billion from Congress to ramp up the country’s Covid-19 response

WASHINGTON — President-elect Biden will call on Congress to approve $415 billion in emergency spending to scale up vaccinations, testing, contact tracing, genomic sequencing, and other efforts to fight Covid-19 — a major part of a broader, $1.9 trillion stimulus proposal.

The massive plan, which he will lay out in an address Thursday evening, would allocate $20 billion for a national vaccination program; $30 billion for purchasing supplies and protective gear; and $50 billion for a scaled-up diagnostic testing program. It would represent the federal government’s biggest investment yet in public health efforts to address the pandemic; the December stimulus package, for example, put just $9 billion toward vaccine distribution, $20 billion toward vaccine procurement, $3 billion toward the Strategic National Stockpile and $22 billion toward testing and tracing efforts.

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