‘Next Pandemic’ Bipartisan Bill Set for Senate Committee Vote

A sweeping pandemic preparedness bill will go before the Senate health committee March 15, a Republican aide told Bloomberg Government.

Sens. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Richard Burr (R-N.C.) released a draft version of their PREVENT Pandemics Act in late January with the aim of taking the lessons learned from the Covid-19 pandemic to beef up the nation’s public health infrastructure and health security systems. The idea is to improve the U.S. response to the next outbreak.

Many of the proposals in the bill center around reforming the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in part by requiring the Senate to ...