Viral surveillance program.

Existing law establishes the State Department of Public Health to implement various programs throughout the state relating to public health, including licensing and regulating health facilities and control of infectious diseases. Existing law requires the department to examine the causes of communicable disease in humans and domestic animals occurring, or likely to occur, in the state, and to establish a list of reportable diseases and the mechanism and timeline requirements for that reporting. Existing law requires local health departments to have available the services of a public health laboratory for the examination of specimens from suspected cases of infectious and environmental diseases. Existing law requires the laboratory to provide the analyses required to assist in community disease surveillance. This bill, no later than January 1, 2024, would require the department to complete an evaluation of the effectiveness of the state's viral surveillance capacity, including a comprehensive list of all public health laboratories and private clinical laboratories that conduct viral surveillance and genomic sequencing, as specified, and recommendations on how to optimize the state's viral surveillance capabilities. The bill, no later than January 1, 2025, would require the department to establish the "Viral Surveillance Hub" (VSH) that would be responsible for timely communication with any laboratory that conducts viral surveillance and identifies a potential novel virus or variant. The bill, beginning January 1, 2025, would require a laboratory conducting viral surveillance to report within appropriate timeframes established by the department to VSH the identification of a potential novel virus or variant strongly suspected to be a pathogen as well as to submit within appropriate timeframes established by the department samples of each potential novel virus or variant strongly suspected to be a pathogen to VSH, as specified. The bill would require VSH to conduct next-generation sequencing of any samples, as specified, submitted by a viral surveillance facility and would allow VSH to contract with an outside entity to conduct this sequencing. The bill would require the department to have the results from viral sequences published on an internet website designed to hold sequence data, such as GISAID, with a hyperlink to the results on the department's internet website. The bill would require VSH to notify local health departments and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention upon a confirmed detection of a new virus or variant in the population.