Senate approves $1.1B for Zika war

Deal reached as summer mosquito menace looms

As the summer mosquito season fast approaches, the Senate voted Tuesday to advance a bipartisan compromise that would provide $1.1 billion to help public health officials battle the Zika virus as it begins to threaten the continental USA.

Senators voted 68-29 to advance an amendment by Sens. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., and Patty Murray, D-Wash., to provide the emergency funding, which would be used for mosquito control, public education and the development of a vaccine. The amendment is set to be attached to two unrelated spending bills that must be given final approval.

“This is a bipartisan first step toward protecting families from this virus,” Murray said on the Senate floor Tuesday.

Federal health officials warn that people in the USA will become infected with locally transmitted Zika as temperatures rise and mosquito activity increases. The mosquitoes that carry the disease are already in the country.

There have been more than 500 cases of Zika in the continental USA, but all of them have been connected to travel to Latin America or the Caribbean — the areas hardest hit by the disease.

The Senate compromise would provide $800 million less than the $1.9 billion President Obama has sought since February, but it is more than the House proposes. Republican House leaders introduced legislation Monday that would provide $622 million in Zika funding, which they would pay for in part by using money allocated to fight Ebola. The bill could come to a vote this week.

The Obama administration, which is already using nearly $600 million in Ebola funds to fight Zika, threatened Tuesday to veto the House bill.

Although the Ebola epidemic in 2013-2015 in West Africa has been controlled, new outbreaks could occur.

There have been more than 500 cases of Zika in the continental USA.