Money that had been allocated to state and community health departments and other groups for COVID-19 response is being cancelled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The cancellation of $11.4 billion in grants awarded during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, first reported by NBC News, is the latest in a series of funding cuts that have been implemented at federal health agencies by the Trump administration since January. The funds were primarily being used by states to support COVID testing and vaccination, as well as an initiative to put more trained community health workers in communities that have been most affected by COVID-19 and an effort to address COVID-19 health disparities.
Termination notices began on March 24, according to an official with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
"The COVID-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago," an HHS spokesperson said in an email to CIDRAP News. "HHS is prioritizing funding projects that will deliver on President Trump's mandate to address our chronic disease epidemic and Make America Healthy Again."
'Sudden and unexpected' action
Among those affected by the cuts is the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH), which had $226 million in COVID-related grants terminated. In a statement, MDH Commissioner of Health Brooke Cunningham, MD, PhD, called the action "sudden and unexpected."
"It will take time to figure out all of the impacts of this action, but these cuts are a tremendous loss—made worse by the uncertainty and chaos that our federal partners have introduced into this process," Cunningham said.
It will take time to figure out all of the impacts of this action, but these cuts are a tremendous loss—made worse by the uncertainty and chaos that our federal partners have introduced into this process.
In Illinois, state health officials said they had been notified that the CDC was rescinding $125 million in promised funding for the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) and 97 local health departments to help respond to COVID and other infectious diseases, including measles and H5N1 avian flu. IDPH said the funding had been targeted for technology to track the spread of diseases, wastewater surveillance, and strengthening local health departments.
"While IDPH has been preparing for anticipated federal budget cuts, the termination of this awarded funding will have a debilitating impact on our efforts to protect the health of Illinoisans," IDPH Director Sameer Vohra, MD, said in a news release. "If allowed to stand, this funding cut will set back critical upgrades to our public health labs, technology used to track infectious diseases like H5N1 avian flu and measles, vaccination efforts, and our ongoing work to better prepare for the next public health emergency."
Impact on research grants, long COVID
The termination of COVID funding isn't limited to state and community health departments. Science reports that COVID-19–related research grants made by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) are in the process of being terminated. A National Institutes of Health (NIH) program that promised to spend $577 million on efforts to develop new drugs to treat COVID-19 is also terminated, according to reporting by Nature.
HHS also announced this week that it is closing the Office of Long COVID Research and Practice, according to Politico. The move comes despite a commitment made by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at his confirmation hearing that he would continue efforts to better understand and mitigate the impact of long COVID.
Roughly 17 million Americans reported having long-COVID symptoms in March 2024.
