The USDA has announced dedication of $300 million from the American Rescue Plan Act to create a framework to detect emerging zoonotic diseases in livestock and other animal species.  It is intended to devise an early warning system in order that public health agencies can initiate prompt preventive action.  The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service will be the lead agency developing the program to investigate and respond to emerging diseases.

The justification for the program of surveillance follows the late-2019 emergence of SARS-COV-2.  Virtually all new diseases of humans diagnosed over the past twenty years have been passed from animals including sin nombre Hantavirus, Nipahvirus, Hendravirus, SARS and MERS. All of these infections required a post-emergence approach to diagnosis and descriptive epidemiology.  Creating a proactive capability to detect new diseases that are sure to emerge may avoid loss of life, expense and economic disruption experienced with COVID-19.