Assessing US Congressional Exposure to the Issue of Emerging Infectious Disease Risk Prior to 2020

Despite decades of US government attention to biological threats, COVID-19 revealed substantial deficits in US preparedness. In our evaluation, we sought to catalog and quantify information delivered to members of Congress that would enable them to determine their level of concern about emerging infectious disease (EID) risk and direct a course of action. We examined hearings on EID from 1995 through 2019 as a proxy for congressional awareness of EID risk, searching the Congressional Record using keywords. During this timeframe, Congress conducted 167 hearings relevant to EID, encompassing 860 witness appearances. The most active House and Senate committees were those with jurisdiction over homeland security, health, oversight, and funding. There was a markedly lower level of activity among committees with jurisdiction over foreign relations, financial services, small business, agriculture, and every other relevant area of jurisdiction. Our results suggest that absence of lawmaker knowledge of EID risks was not the cause of the United States' lack of preparedness.