Turner: Funds to fight Zika ‘not enough’
He says amount OK’d in Congress will be ‘woefully inadequate’
Worried about the cost to combat a local Zika outbreak this summer, Mayor Sylvester Turner on Monday decried efforts in Congress to sharply reduce President Barack Obama’s funding request to prevent the spread of the mosquitoborne disease.
Obama is calling for $1.9 billion in emergency Zika funds, but both the Senate and House passed bills last week allotting much smaller amounts. The Senate bill would commit $1.1 billion for Zika, the House $620 million.
“I can simply tell you that that’s not enough,” Turner said at a news conference at St. Joseph Medical Center. “That $620 million passed by the House is woefully inadequate to address this particular virus.”
Zika is not considered fatal, but it has been linked to a broad array of birth defects and neurological disorders. Officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said last week that the virus has infected at least 157 pregnant women living in the continental United States and another 122 in Puerto Rico and other U.S. territories. The infection puts such women at risk of delivering babies with microcephaly, a condition where babies are born with abnormally small heads.
Houston is considered particularly vulnerable to the virus. It is home to the two types of mosquitoes that transmit the virus and the site of travel back and forth with Latin American countries reporting the most cases. It also includes many pockets of poverty, linked to the disease’s spread because conditions like dilapidated housing, standing water and poor street drainage help the virus thrive.
To facilitate cleanup of debris that acts as breeding grounds for mosquitoes, Houston health officials said they need another $7 million and Harris County Mosquito Control officials said they need another $5 million. Nighttime spraying, mosquito control’s usual weapon against West Nile-carrying mosquitoes, is not effective against the species that transmits the Zika virus because they bite during the day and don’t come out at night.
Health officials at the news conference called for area residents to use mosquito repellent, wear long sleeves and pants and remove any standing water in or near their homes. The mosquitoes that transmit the virus, the Aedes aegypti and the Aedes albopictus, both have black-andwhite stripes.
Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the national school of tropical medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital, said scientists still face a steep learning curve about Zika, but “none of what we’ve learned is good.” He said the babies of infected mothers who are not born with microcephaly may have more subtle neuro-deficits.
The news conference was organized by U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, who wants a national Zika task force and more concentrated efforts from Texas and local health officials. She emphasized that Zika is now in the U.S. in “a very vigorous, powerful and potent way.”
Also on Monday, the Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center, the primary supplier of blood components to more than 170 hospital and health care facilities in 26 counties along the Texas Gulf Coast, began testing donated blood for the Zika virus. The screening is part of a clinical trial.