The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has launched a new center that would forecast outbreaks of infectious diseases.
The agency announced Tuesday that the Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics (CFA) would be like the National Weather Service but for infectious diseases.
The CDC said planning for the center began last August with the goal "to improve outbreak response using infectious disease modeling and analytics and to provide support to leaders at the federal, state, and local levels."
It plans to focus on enhancing the capability to make real-time decision-making to improve outbreak response using data, models, and analytics and to have a way to gain better access to data from state governments and hospitals.
Its initial funding of $200 million came from the 2021 coronavirus relief package.
It'll be housed at the CDC.
