The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency has approved more than $10 million in additional public assistance funding for the COVID-19 response in Utah. The assistance was made available under a major disaster declaration issued April 4, 2020. FEMA has provided more than $123.4 million for the Utah COVID-19 response to date.
The new funding is going to the Utah Department of Health to support the state’s COVID testing activities, including collection of samples from statewide community-based testing locations and the purchase of 10,000 saliva collection test kits distributed to the Utah Public Health Laboratory and the mobile response team.
For the COVID-19 response, FEMA has simplified the public assistance application and funding process to address the magnitude of this event and to allow local officials to receive eligible funding more quickly.
