“The coronavirus pandemic will cost the NIH about $10 billion in taxpayer-funded research, the agency’s director told a Senate panel Thursday.”
“That estimate comprises nearly a quarter of the National Institutes of Health’s more than $41 billion budget, more than 80% of which goes to research grants at universities and other research institutions. NIH Director Francis S. Collins said that number includes both lost productivity from shuttered laboratories as well as keeping scientists and their staff employed.”
“”This is a heartache, seeing the rest of the scientific enterprise pretty much put on hold,’ Collins said during a Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee hearing on Covid-19 testing. ‘The estimates are something like $10 billion of NIH funded-research that is going to disappear because of the way in which this virus has affected everybody requiring this kind of distancing and sending people home.’”
“NIH announced flexibilities in grants and deadlines to mitigate the impact of these costs, but that’s unlikely to cover all costs…”
More Money Needed
“The NIH funds about 300,000 researchers at more than 2,500 universities and other organizations, and many those labs have closed. Sens. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) asked Senate leadership for $26 billion in the next round of stimulus funding to address the challenges that U.S. scientific research workforce faces during this crisis…” Read the full article here.
Source: Virus Will Cost NIH $10 Billion in Lost Research Director Warns – By Jeannie Baumann, May 7, 2020. Bloomberg Law.
