“These efforts can’t be stopped or shortchanged”, said Sylvia Mathews Burwell, secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 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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Also, travelers returning from countries with Zika transmission should take protective measures to avoid mosquito bites in the state to avoid transmitting the Zika virus to local mosquitoes.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) updated a report last week illustrating on US maps that the two mosquitoes with the potential to transmit the Zika virus, as well as other viruses such as dengue and chikungunya, could inhabit areas this summer that include parts of all but ten states in the United States.
Florida officials recommended that women who are pregnant or thinking of becoming pregnant to postpone travel to Zika-affected areas.
Researchers fear Zika causes microcephaly, a serious birth defect in which a baby’s head is too small, as well as other threats to the children of pregnant women infected with it.
The White House has asked Congress for $1.9 billion for the Zika fight.
“We submitted to Congress a request for emergency supplemental funding in February to fortify our efforts to combat and stay ahead of the disease, but Congress has yet to act”, Donovan said during a press conference.
At a media telebriefing today, Shaun Donovan, director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), said the shift in funding doesn’t change the amount of Obama’s emergency request, which would eventually replace the shifted Ebola funds.
An additional $79 million from other prevention programs is also being redirected toward Zika, White House officials said.
Donovan said lawmakers were acting recklessly by refusing to grant the administration’s request to support activities including mosquito control and vaccine research.
Deputy Secretary of State Heather Higginbottom on Tuesday declared that “an global outbreak of the Zika virus is sustained, severe, and is spreading internationally, and that it is in the national interest to respond to the related public health emergency of worldwide concern”.
“We’re doing surveillance constantly”, said Sean Amodt of the Southwest Mosquito Abatement and Control District. The WHO confirmed that one of the people who died from Ebola in Liberia had traveled to Guinea a week prior.
But health officials said that doesn’t mean it’ll remain an imported virus.
We have always said that we were open to using a portion of the existing Ebola balances for Zika, but that this alone would not provide a sufficient enough response to the significant threat posed by Zika. “We can not wait on this supplemental; we can not wait until the fall”.
The WHO anticipates the Zika virus will likely spread to all but two countries in South, Central and North America.
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House Committee on Appropriations Chairman Harold Rogers says the administration hasn’t spent about $2.7 billion of the $5.3 billion set aside to deal with the Ebola outbreak, and that Congress could backfill the use of those funds during the fiscal 2017 appropriations process.
