The House Committee on the Coronavirus released its final 557-page report with key recommendations for how to handle the next pandemic. Overall, lawmakers said individual states need to better prepare and the U.S. needs to be less reliant on foreign supplies.
Here are the details of the recommendations:
The U.S. must reduce its reliance on other countries for pharmaceuticals and medical supplies.
- Many of the medications Americans take are manufactured overseas, while the active ingredients and chemical compounds used to make them are overwhelmingly made in China.
- The committee said in addition to reducing dependence on foreign nations, drug manufacturers must be more upfront with the Food and Drug Administration when they have supply issues.
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States must maintain their own stockpile of emergency medical supplies.
- The strategic national stockpile was designed as a “short-term, stopgap buffer” –– it was never meant to handle a national emergency.
- States are not currently required to maintain their own stockpile, but the committee said they should because they’d have guaranteed access and faster deployment.
A robust and transparent vaccine injury compensation program is necessary for promoting trust in vaccines.
- The committee said the federal government must foster trust in vaccines. To do that they should create an adjudication and compensation program for injuries vaccines may cause.
The report also touched on the shortcomings of the pandemic response. It said long-term school closures and six-foot social distancing weren’t supported by science, and lockdowns led to more than 160,000 businesses closing, 60% of which were permanent.
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