ELC enhancing detection - Expansion 

• CFDA#

  • 93.323 - Epidemiological and Laboratory Capacity for Infectious Diseases (ELC).

  • Subrecipients shall comply with the requirements applicable to the federal program. This includes OMB Circular A-133 and/or Uniform Grant Guidance.

• Who is this grant for?

  • Local Public Health Agencies. 

  • Personnel to perform critical containment activities, such as disease surveillance, case investigation, contact tracing, and testing, based on jurisdictional needs.

  • The project also supports local responses to COVID-19 outbreaks, infection prevention efforts at health care and other settings, and promotes health equity aspects of the response.

• What is the funding year?

  • 5/10/2021 - 7/31/2023*

    • *Funds can be backdated 1/14/21.

• ELC Invoice. (updated 11/8/21)

• Invoice Training Document. (updated 11/8/21)

• A recorded training of instructions on how to use the simplified ELC and IMM Invoice Template can be found here, along with the slides and script. (added 12/2/21)

• What are allowable costs? 

  • Indirect costs will be approved based on current approved negotiated indirect cost rate agreement. 

  • Because  overtime costs are a very likely and reasonable expense during the response to COVID-19, CDC will allow recipients to include projected overtime in their budgets. Recipients should be careful to estimate costs based on current real-time needs and will still be required to follow federal rules and regulations in accounting for the employee's time and effort. 

• What are unallowable costs? 

  • Research.

  • Clinical care except as provided above in connection with Domain 4 activities.

  • Publicity and propaganda (lobbying) other than for normal and recognized executive-legislative relationships, no funds may be used for:

    • publicity or propaganda purposes, for the preparation, distribution, or use of any material designed to support or defeat the enactment of legislation before any legislative body. 

  • All unallowable costs cited in CDC-RFA-CK19-1904 remain in effect, unless specifically amended in this guidance, in accordance with 45 CFR Part 75 – Uniform Administrative Requirements, Cost Principles, And Audit Requirements for HHS Awards.

• Can I purchase food and refreshments for staff?

  • No, that is unallowable. 

• I am an industrial hygienist and part of my background is understanding ventilation systems. Objective # 2 of the new ELC funding deals with assisting our LTCF with ventilation and infection control.  Can I take the "Basics in Industrial Ventilation" course from ACGIH as a part of my continuing education and expense it to the ELC grant?

  • This training would go above and beyond the scope of the objective/activity outlined in the SOW, but it is related to infection prevention and would provide useful knowledge for indoor settings on how ventilation can help with disease transmission. This is an up-and-coming focus area in COVID prevention measures, especially in congregate settings like nursing homes, schools, jails, etc. I would say that if this person is working on COVID response and they plan to use the knowledge gained in this training to respond to COVID concerns in facilities in their jurisdiction, then I would say it is allowable.

• Here is our question about whether the multi-module portion of the nursing home section in the CDC’s Project Firstline training for infection prevention and control is required. Please let us know if outbreak response staff will need to complete the full 25 hours of training included in that module in order to meet the deliverable requirement for Objective 2 Primary Activity 1 of the ELC statement of work.

  • No, they do not need to complete the 25 hours of training. Our guidance for this deliverable is here -- https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Dd5pQRHsDvhKYHnlXemwyoNxc0o03qRd/view

  • The most cost/time efficient option is the CDC Project Firstline option linked in the guidance; since the guidance was created, CDC has added more modules, but the total training time is about 2 hours (modules are less than 5 min each). Here's the direct link to the CDC modules -- https://www.cdc.gov/infectioncontrol/projectfirstline/resources.html

• "90% of all interviews completed within one working day of the date the case was assigned to a county in the Colorado Electronic Disease Reporting System (CEDRS) or Dr. Justina when seven-day incidence levels are between 0-100 cases per 100,000 population." In this statement is "completed" meant to imply the interview was completed in its entirety or is this implying that the interview was attempted in all cases? My second question is related to when this requirement for interview completion goes into effect for round 2 funding. If we have not expended round 1 funding, is this requirement active only when we begin spending round 2 funding?

  • That standard relates to performance measures we need to report on for CDC. so the goal is indeed completing the interview within 1 working day of the case being assigned to a LPHA. We understand that 90% is a lofty goal, but we want to try to attain that as much as we can in order to meet the CDC performance measures.

  • They're expected to comply with round 2 as of the start date. It doesn't matter if they spent down round 1.

• Do deliverables 1 & 2 (EPI and Budget plan) need to be submitted to CDPHE before we can start invoicing expenses?

  • Yes, CDPHE required deliverables are needed before remitting payment.

• Do I need separate accounts for each award?

  • Yes, each award should be accounted for and reported separately.  Please refer to §200.302   Financial management. In addition, awards provided under separate agreements and scopes of work must be tracked separately. For example:

  • One CDPHE award with multiple Federal sources requires separate tracking for each Federal funding source. 

  • Multiple CDPHE awards from the same Federal funding source require separate tracking for each award number.

CDPHE Guidance 

• ELC COVID-19 Quarantine & Isolation Support Costs guidance document. (updated 10/26/21)

• Vaccine & Immunization activities on ELC. (added 6/7/21) 

• ELC Expense Allowability Roadmap Round 2. (updated 2/21/23)

•  A new version of the COVID LPHA Grant Timeline can be found here. (added 9/14/21)

• COVID-19 Staffing Resources - can be found here. (added 9/16/21)

Federal Guidance 

• Media Disclosure - Memo. (added 6/30/21)

• ELC ENHANCING DETECTION THROUGH CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE AND RELIEF (CRR) SUPPLEMENTAL FUNDS. (added 5/11/2021)