[2021 Budget] 430 Billion KRW for Infectious Disease Response R&D

[Asia Economy Reporter Junho Hwang] The government has allocated 430 billion KRW for research and development (R&D) next year to respond to infectious diseases such as the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19). This represents a 96.4% increase compared to this year's budget, including supplementary budgets.

Among this, the Ministry of Health and Welfare has set aside 131.4 billion KRW to support clinical trials for treatments and vaccines for COVID-19 and other diseases. Of this, 62.7 billion KRW will be used for clinical trial support for treatments, a 39% increase from the 45 billion KRW supplementary budget this year. The budget for vaccine clinical trial support has also increased by 40% to 68.7 billion KRW.

For quarantine R&D, including the advancement of quarantine equipment and diagnostic devices and the development of technology for quarantine sites, 16.5 billion KRW has been allocated, approximately double this year's budget. The budget for infectious disease response R&D, including analysis of clinical data from confirmed patients, antiviral drug evaluation laboratories, public vaccine development support centers, and infrastructure for the National Institute of Infectious Diseases, will also be expanded overall. The operation of the National Medical Center, which serves as a central infectious disease hospital, will receive 36.3 billion KRW, a 13% increase from this year. Budgets for expanding isolation rooms in national hospitals and establishing regional infectious disease specialized hospitals will also increase.

The Ministry of Science and ICT, which supports preclinical stages of COVID-19 treatment and vaccine development, has allocated 96.1 billion KRW for infectious disease response. This includes 31.9 billion KRW for the development of medical technologies to respond to future infectious diseases, 10.2 billion KRW for developing core platform technologies for predicting and diagnosing new and variant viruses, and 7.1 billion KRW for developing new infectious disease response systems integrating artificial intelligence. Additionally, the establishment of the Korea Virus Research Institute within the Institute for Basic Science is being pursued, and a multi-ministerial national life research resource advancement project (Research Resource Center) will be launched.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.