As of Friday afternoon, Democratic congressional leadership and the White House had made some progress on what may be the last COVID-19 relief bill, but had not yet reached agreement on key points of legislation extending health and economic COVID-19 relief measures. Reported progress includes concrete proposals and an agreement on a final deadline for a deal, set for the end of this week. If no deal is reached by this date, Congress will recess for August and not return to work until Sept. 8. Sticking points on a deal remain the amount of weekly unemployment benefits, an extension of the federal eviction moratorium until mid-December 2020, and relief funding for state and local governments, including school districts.

The current draft of the COVID bill includes $15.5 billion in funding for the NIH, including $10 billion in relief for research halted due to the pandemic and $290 million for NHLBI’s COVID-19 related research across heart, lung, blood and sleep medicine.