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

Based on current assessments, the picture is mixed to concerning—many experts and watchdog groups say the US is less prepared now than it was a few years ago, despite having some technical infrastructure in place.

Signs of weakened preparedness

Federal funding cuts. The most significant factor is a wave of budget reductions. Trust for America's Health found that the President's proposed FY 2026 budget for the CDC amounts to a 53 percent reduction in funding as compared to FY 2024. Within that, CDC's Public Health Emergency Preparedness program – the primary source of federal funding for state and local emergency preparedness – faces a 52 percent cut, and the proposed FY 2027 budget would go even further, as it would eliminate the Hospital Preparedness Program entirely and cut the Public Health Emergency Preparedness Cooperative Agreement by approximately 52 percent.

Loss of existing capacity. This isn't just about future budgets—money already committed has been pulled back. The March 2025 termination of more than $12 billion in COVID-19-era grants had funded infectious disease monitoring, lab capacity, and emergency preparedness. Separately, there was the cancellation of nearly $500 million in contracts funding mRNA vaccine research and development in August 2025, which experts describe as a threat to developing countermeasures for the next health emergency.

Weakened institutional structure. The dedicated White House pandemic office has been hollowed out: in 2025, Gerald Parker resigned as head of the office, leaving the office with no employees. On the global front, the U.S. formally completed its withdrawal from the World Health Organization in January 2026, reducing access to global data sources that support outbreak tracking and response, and the administration dismantled USAID, the federal humanitarian agency that played a role in global outbreak prevention and response.

Uneven state-level readiness. TFAH's 2026 "Ready or Not" report—which evaluates the nation's readiness for public health emergencies through 10 indicators of state preparedness, including healthcare workforce mobility, state public health funding, laboratory surge planning, access to paid sick leave, and community water system safety—found this comes at a bad time, since in 2025, the country faced the most severe flu season in nearly a decade, rising measles outbreaks, continued H5N1 avian influenza activity, and a growing number of extreme weather events—all while the federal systems built over decades to help states prepare for and respond to emergencies came under significant strain. Overall, the report concludes that national preparedness depends not only on state-level capacity, but also on strong and stable federal systems, sustained intergovernmental coordination, and long-term investment in public health infrastructure—precisely the areas now under strain. A related analysis of that report warns 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.

Some counterpoints and ongoing efforts

Not everything points downward. Some CDC budget lines targeting specific threats have actually seen proposed increases—for instance, CDC's FY 2026 budget request of $963,291,000 for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases is $44,000,000 above the FY 2025 enacted level. This increase is necessary to keep the nation prepared for the next public health threat and will enhance cross-CDC investments in the proposed Biothreat Radar Detection System. Scientific and technical work also continues on countermeasures, including efforts where nanoparticle-based vaccine candidates for both pandemic and seasonal strains of influenza are being evaluated in early-phase trials.

Additionally, public health experts convening in 2026 emphasized that technical readiness alone won't be enough. At a major virology meeting, specialists stressed that the COVID-19 pandemic made clear that public health guidance is only effective if people trust it, and mistrust, misinformation and confusion around evolving recommendations slowed response efforts—rebuilding trust must happen before the next crisis, not during it.

Bottom line

Based on the most recent authoritative assessments, the consensus among public health researchers and preparedness organizations is that the US preparedness infrastructure has been significantly weakened over the past year through funding cuts, staff departures, canceled research contracts, and withdrawal from international health coordination—even as isolated pockets of investment continue. Independent monitors like TFAH explicitly frame this as a vulnerable moment, occurring simultaneously with active disease threats like avian flu and measles outbreaks, suggesting the country is less equipped to respond quickly and effectively to a new large-scale health crisis than it was in the recent past.