On Monday afternoon, the Hochul administration announced the state received a nearly $10 million federal grant to develop new vaccines and treatments for Lyme disease, a condition caused by tick bites that affects roughly half a million Americans annually. The money, part of a National Institutes of Health grant program, is for the state’s prestigious public health research lab, one of a handful around the country tasked with tracking many of the worst diseases.
Hours later, the Trump administration announced a staggering freeze of $3 trillion in grants and loans to states, money that funds innumerable public services, including cutting-edge medical and life science research. It was the latest and largest signal that the fate of huge sums of public health funding could be at risk of drying up under the new administration.
While a federal judge blocked the U.S. Office of Management and Budget order and the agency later rescinded it, the grant is an example of hundreds of millions of dollars in NIH funding coming to research institutes in the state that could be in jeopardy with the new federal administration.
The Wadsworth Center in Albany conducts research and disease surveillance on a vast quantity of maladies, backed by millions of federal dollars each year. It is used to track common colds and rarer, more deadly diseases. It played a central role in the state’s Covid response and is currently receiving samples that could be avian flu. The lab’s overall operating budget is roughly $52 million in total operating funds, of which at least $13.6 million comes from federal sources, according to state budget documents.
The lab relies on federal funding and the feds, historically, have relied on the lab. Last week, the state announced the center had been selected to be a national influenza reference centers, one of just three labs in the country designated to receive and track flu variants. New York is expected to get close to $3 million over the next five to fund the genetic sequencing for samples from twelve states. The lab was also the first to catch a new strain of a rare sexually transmitted disease last year, made possible by a $15 million federal grant to develop new methods of DNA testing.
A total of $1.8 million has been dispersed for the first year or the five-year contract – to study what triggers the body’s immune response to Lyme disease – but the implications of federal policy after year one remain unclear, said Health Department spokeswoman Cadence Acquaviva.
The grants are part of the $93 billion the state receives from Washington. Gov. Kathy Hochul on Tuesday expressed concerns over the breadth of programs that could be covered by the proposal.
“The federal government committed this money to New York – they must keep their end of the bargain,” she told reporters.
On Tuesday, Attorney General Letitia James and 22 other state attorneys general sued the administration over the funding order before he reversed course Wednesday.
