CDC to Spend $2.1 Billion on Effort to Cut Hospital Infections

The Biden administration on Friday announced a plan to spend $2.1 billion to improve infection prevention and control across the U.S. health care system, the largest such investment in the country’s history.

“This funding will dramatically improve the safety and quality of the healthcare delivered in the United States during the pandemic and in the future,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC plans to distribute $1.25 billion of the funding to 64 state, local and territorial health departments over the next three years with the aim of helping prevent infections at health care facilities including hospitals and nursing homes. Another $880 million will be used over several years to “support healthcare partners, academic institutions, and other nonprofit partners” in developing measures to prevent and control infections.

There were 647,000 infections associated with care in acute care hospitals in 2015, including 72,000 deaths, according to the CDC estimates cited by Bloomberg News.