WASHINGTON—The Obama administration will ask Congress for $1.8 billion in emergency funding to combat the Zika virus—a disease that the president says is a cause for concern but not panic.
The White House announced the request to cover research and planning in the United States and abroad minutes after CBS aired an interview with President Barack Obama during which he said “there shouldn’t be panic on this—this is not something where people are going to die from.”
Still, the president made clear “it is something we have to take seriously.”
“The good news is this is not like Ebola, people don’t die of Zika,” Obama said during an interview on Monday on CBS This Morning.
“A lot of people get it and don’t even know that they have it,” he noted. “There appears to be some significant risk for pregnant women or women who are thinking about getting pregnant.
“We don’t know exactly what the relations there are, but there is enough correlation that we have to take this very seriously,” Obama said. “And so we are going to be putting up a legislative proposal to Congress to resource both the research on vaccines and diagnostics, but also helping in terms of public-health systems.” In a fact sheet released shortly after the interview, the White House said it has been “aggressively working” for several months “to combat Zika.” The virus, typically transmitted through mosquitoes, but also known to be sexually transmitted, has been linked to birth defects and other ailments.
If approved by lawmakers, the funding would be used “to enhance our ongoing efforts to prepare for and respond to the Zika virus, both domestically and internationally,” according to the White House, including “rapidly expanding mosquito control programs; accelerating vaccine research and diagnostic development; [and] enabling the testing and procurement of vaccines and diagnostics,” according to the White House.
The White House is also planning to step up work on fighting the virus’ impact on unborn babies. It says it needs some of the $1.8 billion to accelerate efforts on “educating health-care providers, pregnant women and their partners; improving epidemiology and expanding laboratory and diagnostic testing capacity; improving health services and supports for low-income pregnant women; and enhancing the ability of Zika-affected countries to better combat mosquitoes and control transmission.”
The lion’s share of the request, $1.5 billion, would be channeled to the Department of Health and Human Services. Its share would include $828 million for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for work on “mosquito control programs,” enhanced work at laboratories, creation of rapid-response teams and other efforts.
Another $250 million would go to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to enhance health-care services for at-risk or infected pregnant women in Puerto Rico, as well as children there who have microcephaly, a condition that results in abnormally small heads when pregnant women are infected.
Various other agencies, including the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration would receive the rest of the money for such things as increased “research, rapid advanced development and commercialization of new vaccines and diagnostic tests” and to help other countries deal with the virus and halt its spread, the fact sheet states.
The administration did not disclose exactly when the emergency funding request would be sent to Capitol Hill, saying only that it would be submitted “shortly.”
The CDC says, so far, it has no evidence of “locally transmitted Zika cases…in the continental United States.” However, the center notes in its own fact sheet that “cases have been reported in returning travelers.” To date, the center has reported 50 confirmed cases of American travelers who have the virus.
The mosquitoes that, spread the Zika virus are among the hardest species to fight because they live and breed in spots where water collects inside houses and yards, insect experts noted on Monday at the opening of the American Mosquito Control Association’s annual conference.
Experts noted that while the Zika virus that has spread rapidly in Latin America may be new to the US, the two mosquito species known to carry it are not.
Aedes aegypti, the mosquito blamed for the Zika outbreak linked to birth defects in Brazil, can be found in the southern US from Florida to California. Another carrier is the Asian tiger mosquito, Aedes albopictus, which has a more northerly range that includes cities such as Chicago and New York.
US mosquito fighters have already dealt with these species to prevent outbreaks of dengue fever and chikungunya virus, said Joe Conlon, the association’s technical director.
“It’s business as usual, because we know how to control these mosquitoes,” Conlon said. “But in order to get rid of these things, you have to be very fastidious.”
Some cities and counties are already taking steps to get ready before their mosquito breeding seasons begin in earnest this spring.
New Orleans’s mosquito control department has lined up laboratories at Louisiana State University and Tulane University that are able to screen mosquitoes caught in surveillance traps for the Zika virus, department Director Claudia Riegel said.
Harry Savage, chief entomologist with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said his best guess is that Zika infections transmitted within the US will stay relatively small—much like dengue fever, which averaged 25 cases per year from 2010 to 2015—though he said he can’t be sure. Because of screened windows and air conditioning, Savage said, mosquitoes are far less likely to be found breeding inside US homes than they are in Latin and Central American countries.
(TNS and AP)
Image credits: AP/Felipe Dana