Is the US prepared to deal with another pandemic or widespread health crisis?

Based on current assessments, most public health experts and preparedness organizations suggest the U.S. is less prepared than it should be, and in several key respects, its readiness has actually eroded since the COVID-19 pandemic rather than improved.

Signs of Declining Preparedness

Federal funding and workforce cuts. The most detailed recent assessment, Trust for America's Health's Ready or Not 2026 report, paints a troubling picture: the United States entered 2026 managing its most severe influenza season in nearly a decade, the highest measles case count since 1991, and sustained avian influenza surveillance — all while the federal public health infrastructure underpinning hospital and clinical emergency response was being significantly dismantled. The report concludes that this convergence of active threats and federal instability represents a defining stress test for the nation's preparedness architecture — and that many states are not well positioned to absorb the shock.

TFAH's president was blunt about the implications: "The nation faced the most severe flu season in nearly a decade, the highest annual measles case count since 1991, and devastating weather-related emergencies, even as federal public health funding, staffing, and operational support were destabilized... These challenges make clear that emergency preparedness cannot rely on a patchwork of limited and unpredictable resources. Effective readiness requires strong federal leadership, stable investment, and coordinated action across states and communities.

Institutional gaps. Some key preparedness structures have been left hollowed out. The White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy, created after COVID specifically to prepare for future pandemics, saw its director resign in 2025, leaving the office with no employees.

Global health infrastructure has also been scaled back — in 2025, the administration dismantled USAID, the federal humanitarian agency that played a role in global outbreak prevention and response, a move public health experts see as weakening early-warning capacity abroad.

Funding shortfalls. Even where formal planning exists, money is lacking. HHS's own multiyear preparedness budget document projects that if funding continues at the proposed FY 2026 levels over the projected five-year period, an estimated $33.5 billion funding gap from the total projected need is expected.

Uneven state-level readiness. TFAH's 2026 scorecard places states and the District of Columbia into three performance tiers: 20 states in the high-performance tier, 17 states and the District of Columbia in the middle-performance tier, with the remainder lagging — meaning preparedness varies enormously depending on where you live, from lab surge capacity to paid sick leave access, which varies widely across U.S. regions—from 98 percent of workers in Pacific states to 67 percent in East South Central states—and gaps are most concentrated among low-wage, part-time, and service-sector workers.

Outdated legal framework. The core law governing U.S. emergency preparedness, the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act, hasn't been updated recently: the report also calls for reauthorization of the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act, whose most recent comprehensive reauthorization was completed in 2019.

Areas of Progress

It's not entirely bleak. Some scientific and biomedical preparedness work continues:

Bottom Line

The consensus among nonpartisan health-policy organizations, federal watchdogs, and CDC officials over the past several years is that the U.S. has not adequately institutionalized the lessons of COVID-19. A prior CDC leader captured this pattern years ago in words that current reports suggest still ring true: "the critical learning about how to do better next time is the need to greatly invest in public health, and not just respond to emergencies... This is a big job, and it can't be like Ebola or H1N1 where there's emergency funding and then everything goes away. This needs to be sustained or we will be exactly where we were last year."

Given ongoing 2025–2026 federal workforce reductions, funding instability, and the dismantling of key coordinating offices — set against a backdrop of active threats like severe flu seasons, resurgent measles, and avian influenza — the honest answer is that the U.S. is not currently in a strong position to handle a major new pandemic, and by several measures is worse prepared than in the years immediately following COVID-19.