But Sylvia Burwell, secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, says she expects to see local Zika virus transmission in the continental U.S.in coming months. Government officials there said they were not sufficiently prepared to fight the disease as the weather in the continental United States and American territories is warming and mosquitoes that serve as the disease’s primary vector are becoming more prevalent.
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Puerto Rico, a US territory, has been the epicenter of the outbreak affecting the United States thus far, with 349 cases, all acquired from mosquitoes.
The funding will be used on several fronts to fight the virus, which is transmitted to people through mosquito bites: to control mosquitoes, for the development of diagnostics and vaccines, tracking and mapping the effects of the infection and other prevention efforts. And if the virus begins to spread in the United States, it could be hard to stop people from overreacting, simply because it’s hard to avoid getting bitten by mosquitoes during their peak season.
Meanwhile, the Republican-controlled Congress wouldn’t budge on approving the emergency funding request.
“The situation continues to grow more critical”, Shaun Donovan, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said in a press conference Wednesday.
Top officials with the Obama administration said Wednesday that they’ll redirect $589 million toward the Zika virus response. “Today, we reiterate our call on the Congress to take immediate action to provide the full requested amount”.
The types of mosquitoes capable of carrying the Zika virus have been found in the Garden State, but an outbreak of the illness is not anticipated for New Jersey during the upcoming warmer months.
It also advises women to “use latex condoms, the right way, every time or choose not to have any type of sex if the male partner has been in an area with Zika during the pregnancy”.
Tran also said Vietnam is raising its virus alert system to level 2, which indicates there have been confirmed cases but has not yet issued travel restrictions.
“Zika itself for humans is not as bad as some of the other things people can get”, he said.
Additional money from Congress would also go toward development of faster diagnostic tests for Zika. A Washington Post article titled, “As Mosquito Season Arrives, is the U.S. Ready for Zika?” said more targeted spraying around homes is a better defense against these mosquitoes.
Officials have been open to using a portion of funds previously allocated for Ebola, but maintain that it will not be “a sufficient response to significant threat posed by Zika”, Donovan said.
“I’m taking money from other areas that we fund in order to fund the very important Zika research, particularly the Zika vaccine research”.
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Nonetheless, that’s exactly what’s happening, presumably because the White House couldn’t get Republicans to budge. We face two real global health challenges, Ebola and Zika. He said the country was launching a Zika prevention campaign including educating pregnant women, raising awareness, and expanding measures to protect against mosquitoes.
