Biden Invests $7.4 Bln to Hire More Health Workers Amid Pandemic

The White House announced on Thursday that it is investing $7.4 billion to hire more health workers to deal with the pandemic and future. The package will come from the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief approved by Congress in March.

The package could give a much-needed boost to the country's dilapidated public health infrastructure. Last year, US public health departments showed just how poorly equipped they are to do basic functions.

The Biden administration said $4.4 billion would go to strengthening state public health departments, allowing it to hire disease professionals to do contact tracing, case management, support investigations into the outbreak, and school nurses.

Another $3 billion will be used to create a new grant program to train and modernize the nation's public health workforce. Applicants for these grants will be required to prioritize recruiting staff from the communities they will serve.

In the outbreak of the pandemic, local public health agencies had lost almost a quarter of their overall workforce since 2008, a reduction of almost 60,000 workers, according to national associations of health officials.