Dear Stakeholders,
Each year, I have the honor of sharing with you APHIS’ achievements as highlighted in our annual Impact Report. This year, I am particularly proud of our work, both on the frontlines of protecting and promoting American agriculture and the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic.
As we entered the second year of the pandemic, APHIS employees played a key role in COVID-19 vaccination efforts. From January to June, our Agency deployed 465 employees across the Nation to help administer approximately 400,000 vaccines and support efforts to deliver hundreds of thousands more. Employees who didn’t deploy took on extra work to make sure APHIS’ essential duties continued and our stakeholders received the services they rely on.
At the same time that the pandemic challenged us, it also gave us a vital inroad to advancing One Health. Through the American Rescue Plan Act, Congress allocated $300 million to APHIS to strengthen our One Health capacity and develop an early warning system for SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19). This initiative establishes APHIS as a critical part of preventing future pandemics and builds upon our long history of One Health work.