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

Based on current assessments, the picture is decidedly mixed, with most recent evidence pointing toward significant erosion in US pandemic preparedness relative to just a few years ago, even as some underlying capabilities remain intact.

Signs of weakening preparedness

Federal funding and workforce cuts: Trust for America's Health's 2025 report 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, and within the total proposed cut, CDC's Public Health Emergency Preparedness program – the primary source of federal funding for state and local emergency preparedness – faces a 52 percent funding reduction. Overall, over 100 public health programs and funding lines would be eliminated under the President's proposed FY 2026 budget, including 61 programs at CDC.

On the ground, this has already caused real-world consequences. In April 2025, the Milwaukee Public Health Department was unexpectedly unable to reach experts on lead poisoning due to firings at the CDC when responding to concerns about lead contamination in Milwaukee public schools. More tellingly for outbreak response, public health cuts inhibited responses to the summer 2026 outbreak of the food-borne parasite cyclospora, as cuts to funding for lab equipment and staff with parasitic-infection expertise contributed to the largest reporting delay in outbreak cases at the CDC in 15 years.

Loss of White House coordination: The dedicated pandemic office created after COVID has essentially been dismantled — in 2025, Gerald Parker resigned as head of the office, leaving the office with no employees.

Withdrawal from WHO: The United States officially withdrew from the World Health Organization on Jan. 22, 2026, a move that could reshape global disease surveillance cooperation and complicate U.S. readiness for future pandemics. This has concrete surveillance consequences: the Infectious Diseases Society of America said the move will jeopardize virus surveillance, as the U.S. will no longer participate in the Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System. Experts have already noted practical effects — one flu researcher warned "a reduction in the ability of national influenza centers to share samples will be a huge blow to influenza surveillance," and a CDC-adjacent expert said if CDC becomes increasingly out of the loop, it'll make the U.S. less prepared for a possible flu pandemic.

State-level variation: The 2026 "Ready or Not" report found stark disparities — 20 states in the high-performance tier, 17 states and the District of Columbia in the middle-performance tier, and 13 states in the low-performance tier — while warning that national preparedness depends not only on state capacity, but also on strong and stable federal health and preparedness systems, sustained intergovernmental coordination, and long-term investment in public health infrastructure.

GAO findings: A government watchdog recently flagged coordination gaps, recommending that the Director of CDC should collect and analyze information on jurisdictions' ability to meet public health preparedness capabilities and identify any related gaps — a recommendation still open as of mid-2026.

Context: a year already testing the system

This comes during a period of real stress-testing. 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 federal systems built over decades to help states prepare came under significant strain. The system was tested again when the U.S. had to mount a complex response to an Ebola outbreak, encompassing the Pentagon, the CDC, USAID, DHS, state officials, hospitals, foreign governments and aid groups overseas, prompting deployment of military assets, treatment centers, and airport screening.

Remaining strengths

It's not all negative — core medical countermeasure infrastructure persists. The FY2026 ASPR operating plan still funds BARDA, Project BioShield, the Strategic National Stockpile, and a dedicated "Disease X" medical countermeasure program, suggesting the biodefense/R&D side of preparedness remains funded even as public health surveillance and workforce capacity erode.

Bottom line

The weight of 2025–2026 evidence suggests the US is less prepared for a new pandemic than it was a few years ago — not because of a single collapse, but due to a confluence of deep CDC/public health budget cuts, workforce attrition, the dismantling of the White House's dedicated pandemic office, and withdrawal from WHO's global surveillance networks, all occurring while the country has faced an unusually heavy burden of overlapping health emergencies (flu, measles, H5N1, extreme weather) that are already straining the reduced system.