US awards funding for vaccine anti-counterfeit project

The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has provided a block of funding to a series of projects designed to help the country recover from the pandemic, including one aimed at developing novel technologies for detecting counterfeit vaccines.

The funding is part of a $150m allocation for the NIST under the Biden administration's American Rescue Plan, a $1.9trn stimulus package passed by Congress in March.

The money has been allocated to the National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals (NIIMBL), a public-private partnership set up in 2017 to try to make the US less reliant on foreign suppliers.

There have already been multiple reports of falsified COVID-19 vaccines being intercepted by law enforcement in multiple countries around the world.