This afternoon, Clinton inveighed against Congress, especially its Republican leaders, for taking a summer recess before passing an anti-Zika funding bill. She’s already called out the Trump campaign’s rhetoric on Zika and sent aides to Puerto Rico early on.
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U.S. President Barack Obama has asked Congress to allocate 1.9 billion U.S. dollars in emergency funding to combat the spread of the virus. Final approval was delayed when the Republican-controlled Congress attached provisions that Democrats oppose because of its anti-abortion angle.
Both bills fund Planned Parenthood. There are now 21 total cases of locally transmitted Zika within a 1-sq. -mile (2.6-sq. -km) area in Miami-Dade County.
The ongoing Zika outbreak was first detected a year ago in Brazil, where it has been linked to more than 1,700 cases of the birth defect microcephaly.
On Tuesday, Clinton made a stop in Miami, ground zero for mosquito-borne Zika transmission in the Sunshine State.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is only reporting limited information about Zika cases to protect patient privacy.
A CDC spokesman told AFP by email that the agency is aware of the news from Texas but offered no further details.
Health authorities say that when contracted by pregnant women, Zika can cause the birth defect microcephaly and other severe brain abnormalities in babies.
As of Tuesday morning, Texas had 99 reported cases of Zika, including two infants with Microcephaly in Harris County. Prior to these cases, USA patients diagnosed with the virus had either traveled to infected areas or were in close contact with someone who had been there.
Florida is an important battleground state in the presidential race.
Friday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration gave its go-ahead for a test program to release genetically modified mosquitoes in the Lower Keys neighborhood of Key Haven with the goal of reducing the population of the Zika-carrying mosquitoes.
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Another 357 cases in Florida were brought in by people who were infected while traveling outside the United States. Tim Kaine, voted to block a House-passed Zika measure.
