The continental United States is on the cusp of summer, and with it, the rising threat of the mosquito-borne Zika virus.
In February, President Obama asked Congress for $1.9 billion to prepare for the fight against the rapidly-approaching virus, which can cause severe brain abnormalities in children when pregnant women are infected. Yet while health experts and lawmakers stressed the urgency of having the necessary funding as soon as possible, spending-adverse conservative lawmakers have resisted.
So far, the GOP-controlled House has offered a mere $622 million in Zika funding — far less than what will be needed to meaningfully combat the virus. It’s unclear when Congress may reach an agreement on this issue before its long summer recess. And according to an analysis by the Center For American Progress, this delay could be putting about 2 million pregnant American women at risk. (Disclosure: ThinkProgress is an editorially independent news site housed at the Center for American Progress.)
Using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), here’s the think tank’s prediction for the number of pregnant women who might be affected by Zika this summer and fall, broken down by state:
The researchers used a meteorological model to predict the months when populations of aedes aegypti, the mosquito that carries Zika, would be high for each state within the mosquito’s range. To keep the estimates conservative, they excluded any state or month where the mosquito population would be low to moderate. That resulted in the exclusion of California, Arizona, and New Mexico from their estimates, although Zika could still be present in those states.
Then, they used CDC information from 2013 and 2014, the most up-to-date available, to predict the number of women that are likely to be pregnant in each state over the course of its mosquito season.
According to their analysis, Florida and Texas may be particularly hard hit — there will be more than 491,000 pregnant women in Texas and more than 271,000 pregnant women in Florida at risk of Zika. Five additional states — Georgia, New Jersey, New York City, North Carolina, and Virginia — will likely have over 100 thousand women at risk from Zika.
Many of those states are also home to strict abortion restrictions, presenting a particular struggle for pregnant women who may consider termination. In many states, abortion is banned after 20 weeks, though some birth defects — such as Zika — can only be detected after 20 weeks. In Florida and Texas, which will be hardest hit, abortion is technically legal, but nearly inaccessible due to restrictive laws, particularly for low-income women.
Zika’s Spread Across The U.S. May Change The Narrative Around AbortionBy now, most Americans are familiar with the Zika virus, the mosquito-spread disease that’s left thousands of babies…thinkprogress.orgWe’ve known for months that Zika, which has been ravaging our neighbors to the south, was headed for the United States as warmer weather approached. In fact, it’s already here — there are currently 472 confirmed cases of Zika in the continental US, though so far they are all travel-related. Including U.S. territories such as Puerto Rico, which is already being overwhelmed by the virus, so far 279 pregnant women have tested positive for the virus.
These new numbers, however, show just how great the risk is if the United States hits mosquito season unprepared. Preparation takes funding — which is necessary for basic research on the virus, to help develop a vaccine, and take preventative measures like providing mosquito nets and education campaigns about how to avoid getting bitten. Yet despite the clear and present danger, conservatives on Capitol Hill have dragged their feet, haggling over the finances.
Josh Earnest, White House Press Secretary, said, “The House of Representatives is three months late and more than a billion short of doing what’s necessary to protect the American people.”
House Republicans’ intransigence has infuriated even some of their own colleagues. Senator Rubio (R), whose home state of Florida may be one of the hardest hit, said that the proposed House funding bill is “just not going to cut it.”
Now that we’re on the brink of mosquito season, health organizations have been struggling to gather funds to do whatever they can to prepare on their own.
“We’re scraping together dollars to try to move as quickly as possible,” Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the CDC told the New York Times. “We’re borrowing money from other programs. We’re writing short-term contracts. We can’t make long-term commitments to families to follow their kids. We can’t do long-term studies on how to stop the mosquito. We want to put together a whole package on how to kill inside, outside, how to kill larvae, how to do what works best”
“It’s not possible under the House version,” he said of the current amount the House is offering. “This is no way to fight an epidemic.”