Public Health officials have been warning of the threat posed by the Zika virus, the mosquito-born virus linked to birth defects that has been sweeping across Latin America, for months. Now, Florida health officials and the CDC have confirmed the first four likely cases of Zika by local mosquito transmission in the United States.
“Zika is now here,” Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the director of the CDC, said at a news briefing, as reported by the New York Times.
There are already more than 1,600 confirmed cases of Zika in the continental United States. However, up until now the cases were the result of travel to a Zika-infected country or by sexual transmission with a partner who had been to a Zika-infected country.
For now, officials say, the area of concern is limited to several blocks in the Wynwood neighborhood of Miami, where all four of the mosquito-borne transmissions appear to have taken place. The four people seem to have been infected for several weeks, and U.S. officials say they don’t see a reason to advise people to avoid the area, noting that mosquito control measures in the area have been stepped up and there haven’t been more cases identified. Local, state, and federal officials, however, are continuing their investigation to see if there are more cases.
Following the news, the United Kingdom issued a travel warning, urging pregnant citizens to postpone their travel to Florida. The FDA has also asked blood donation centers in two Florida counties near the transmission site, Miami-Dade and Broward, to halt blood donations for the time being. Zika infection often doesn’t produce any symptoms, and the presence of local transmission makes it all the more likely that people could be infected by mosquito bites without knowing it. Dr. Peter Marks, the director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said that blood collections shouldn’t resume in the area until blood donation centers can test each incoming blood donation for Zika, as reported by NPR.
News of the local transmission have also reignited calls for congress to pass a Zika spending bill. Congress left for its seven-week summer break directly before peak mosquito season without passing a spending bill to fund a federal response to the Zika virus. On Friday, congressional Democrats called for Congress to cut its recess short and come together to pass a bill.
Zika is public health emergency that requires immediate bipartisan action. Americans can’t afford to wait until Congress' vacation is over.
— Senator Harry Reid (@SenatorReid) July 29, 2016
I call on GOP Congressional leadership to #doyourjob &interrupt recess to immediately address #Zika public health crisis
— Richard Blumenthal (@SenBlumenthal) July 29, 2016
At a press conference on Friday, White House deputy press secretary called the transmission a “wake-up call,” while stopping short of asking Congress to come back into session.
“Congress has been sitting on a $1.9 billion proposal that would more fully fund federal response to this public health emergency,” White House deputy press secretary Eric Schultz said, as reported by Politico. “Unfortunately, they left town for seven weeks without doing anything on this. We find that regrettable.”
President Obama requested $1.9 billion to fight the virus in February, but the funding bill has been continually stalled by partisan gridlock.
For months, House Republicans dragged their feet on approving new funding, saying that instead money should be reallocated from the response to Ebola, in direct contradiction to the recommendations of public health officials. Then in June, Senate and House Republicans brokered a $1.1 billion funding deal with each other, but it was stuffed with what Democrats called “poison pill” political measures — partisan provisions that actually would do little to advance the fight against Zika, and in some cases limited how much the money could help women and children, who would be the main population affected. The bill was defeated, and congressional Republicans refused to reopen talks before the recess.
A Political Failure: Congress Probably Won’t Get Anything Done To Stop ZikaBack in February, the World Health Organization declared the Zika virus to be an international public health emergency…thinkprogress.orgIn the absence of funding, CDC Director Thomas Friedan warned in May that researchers were barely scraping by. In June, after the spending bill died in the Senate, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is working on three potential vaccines against the Zika virus, told the New York Times, “If we don’t get new money, we won’t be able to do things at a pace that is necessary and appropriate to the urgency of this threat.”
An estimated 2 million pregnant women will be at risk of contracting the Zika virus in the U.S. this summer.