On 10 February, the European Commission published the 2022 Work Plan of the Health Emergency preparedness and Response Authority (HERA). This programming presents all activities of the newly created Commission body foreseen for 2022 and should be considered as a 'living document', remaining agile to timely address urgent needs, including emerging supply chain bottlenecks.
In 2022, a total contribution of EUR 1.3 billion from the EU budget is allocated to HERA for preparedness activities. This year’s budget will foresee contributions from EU4Health (EUR 275 million), Horizon Europe (EUR 395 million) and UCPM/rescEU (EUR 630 million). Importantly, these allocations relate to action calls and procurements already foreseen in these programmes' budgets.
The Work Plan is structured around diverse actions and deliverables, including calls to action, procurements, setting up partnerships, development of reports, creation and delivery of training. These activities will be realised in close cooperation with other EU and national health agencies, industry, research community, civil society and international partners.
HERA activities fall under 6 tasks, with the greatest fraction of the funds dedicated to ensuring the provision of medical countermeasures (EUR 666.5 million), promoting advanced R&D of medical countermeasures and related technologies (EUR 306.08 million) and addressing market challenges and failures and boosting the Union’s open strategic autonomy (EUR 165.3 million).
The 2022 Work Plan opens a window of opportunity to have the most urgent health threats prioritised by HERA. While SARS-CoV2 remains the most obvious priority, the HERA board will also consider influenza, AMR, vector-borne diseases as potential candidates. Once the three highest-impact threats are identified, a list of critical medical countermeasures will be created, including vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics, protective and decontamination equipment. This means that within the next few months, a large flow of funds and political attention will be directed towards one of these emerging health threats.