Fauci: Funding from Congress crucial to fight Zika virus

Dr. Anthony Fauci from the National Institutes of Health on Sunday predicted locally transmitted cases of the Zika virus in the U.S. this summer and urged Congress to authorize more funding to fight it.

{mosads}“We’re very likely — though you can’t say definitively — we’ll see what we call locally transmitted cases as we get into the robust mosquito season into this summer,” Fauci said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” 

There are already 350 people in the U.S. who’ve contracted the virus through travel, he said, becoming infected in South America and the Caribbean.

“The critical issue is that, in the past, we have successfully prevented it from becoming sustained and disseminated, and that’s what we have to be prepared to do when we do get those locally transmitted cases in the United States,” he said.

He said additional funding from Congress would not only be necessary, but crucial to effectively fight the spread of the virus.

“That’s the reason why we asked for it, because right now, we’re using money from other accounts to do that,” he said. “We are going to have to get the money to be able to do the full job that we planned to do.”

President Obama recently authorized the transfer of $510 million in Ebola funds to fight the Zika virus.

“From a public health and a research standpoint, we do really need that resource in order to be able to get the job done,” he said.