Officials at the CDC are warning that the spread of the virus and its related health issues are greater than people think.
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Congress hasn’t moved on the president’s request for $1.9 billion to fight Zika. And so while we absolutely hope we don’t see widespread local transmission in the continental USA, we need the states to be ready for that, she added.
The Zika virus likely won’t spread as prolifically in the U.S.as it has in Latin America and the Caribbean, due to the high amount of Americans living and working behind air-conditioned doors.
However, Fauci believes this money is a “temporary stopgap” and it’s “not enough for us to get the job done”.
The White House and representatives from the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) held a press briefing Monday to address the Zika virus, saying the disease is more serious than they originally thought. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that the country needs more funding for research, which would result in vaccines and treatments.
Brazilian researchers said that two people infected with the Zika virus later developed a condition called acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM), where the immune system attacks the brain and spinal cord. More than 300 cases of confirmed Zika cases have been reported in the US, the British news channel said quoting figures by the CDC.
“Most of what we’re learning is not reassuring”. Out of the total cases, 32 were pregnant women, while seven of them acquired the virus through sexual activity.
As they’ve done before, they appealed to Congress for an emergency $1.9 billion to keep the virus at bay.
The assessment, delivered to reporters at the White House on Monday, comes the week after the White House informed Congress it was moving more than $510 million previously earmarked for Ebola prevention toward Zika prevention efforts. The virus has also been linked to miscarriages, eye problems, stillbirths and other complications throughout the entire length of the pregnancy, specifically attacking developing brain cells.
“Everything we know about this virus seems to be scarier than we initially thought”.
However, in the U.S. territories of Puerto Rico, American Samoa and the U.S. Virgin Islands, there have been 354 cases of the virus, a lot of them locally transmitted in their tropical climates. It has also spread widely through the Americas.
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“We have learned that the Aedes aegypti mosquito is present in a broader range of states in the continental U.S.”, she said.
