White House convenes summit on Zika virus
The White House convened a summit at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Friday about how to fight the Zika virus, urging state, local and national officials to act now to prevent and control the disease.
"If we wait until we see widespread transmission in the United States, if we wait until the public is panicking because they're seeing babies born with birth defects, we will have waited too late," said Amy Pope, the White House deputy homeland security adviser and deputy assistant to President Barack Obama.
The nation's highest priority should be to protect pregnant women and their fetuses, Pope said. The Zika virus is now strongly linked to a variety of birth defects, including microcephaly, in which babies are born with abnormally small heads.
"We do know the impact on pregnant women can be devastating," Pope said. "That has to be our number one priority."
Zika is the only mosquito-borne virus known to cause birth defects, said CDC director Thomas Frieden, who noted that it has been more than 50 years since scientists identified any virus that can cause harm fetuses.
"This is an unprecedented situation," Frieden said.
Frieden recommended that every state name a Zika coordinator. Some members of Congress have called on Obama to name a national Zika czar, as well.
State, local and federal officials need to coordinate the fight against Zika the way that they already work together to respond to natural disasters, such as hurricanes and tornadoes, said Nicole Lurie, the assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the Department of Health and Human Services. About 300 state, local and federal officials attended the Atlanta summit, while 2,500 watched online, according to the CDC.
Individuals also have a role to play in fighting Zika, by ridding their yards of trash and other containers that collect standing water where mosquitoes breed, according to the CDC.
"Every single person here has a piece of the solution," Pope said. "Every single person here has vital role in implementing that solution."
Frieden described the main mosquito that spreads Zika, the Aedes aegypti, as the "cockroach of mosquitoes" because it tends to live in and around human homes. These domesticated insects rarely fly more than 150 yards from their base, said Lyle Petersen, director of the CDC's division of vector-borne diseases and incident manager for Zika response.
Aedes aegypti mosquitoes live across much of the USA, but are especially common in Florida, Texas and Hawaii, which have had outbreaks of related mosquito-borne viruses. The mosquitoes have dramatically expanded their range in recent years and now live even in dry areas, such as Los Angeles, Peterson said.
The White House has asked Congress for $1.9 billion to fight the Zika virus at home and abroad. Congressional Republicans have resisted providing that funding, arguing that the USA should use unspent Ebola money instead.
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Some communities already have ramped up their efforts to fight Zika. New York City alone has spent $3.5 million Zika, partly on testing returning travelers for the virus, and will likely spend another $5 million to $6 million, said Daniel Kass, the city's deputy commissioner for environmental health.
Some mosquito districts are better prepared than others.
In some places, the entire mosquito control staff is composed of one person who sprays for insects in the summer, but also shovels the snow in the winter, Frieden said.
Although the Zika epidemic has been called an international health emergency, fighting the virus will very much be a local effort, officials said. There are more than 700 mosquito control districts in the USA, according to the American Mosquito Control Association.
In Harris County, Texas, 98% of mosquito control funding comes from local sources, said Umair Shah, executive director of that Harris County Public Health and Environmental Services.
Even communities with well-developed mosquito control programs may have to shift gears to fight Zika, Peterson said. Strategies to fight the Culex mosquitoes that spread West Nile Virus, for example, don't work to stop the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes that transmit Zika.
More than 300 U.S. travelers have been infected with the virus after returning from Zika-affected areas and another 349 have been diagnosed in Puerto Rico, where the disease is spreading among local mosquitoes. Thousands of travelers could be infected with Zika, Frieden said, which increases the risk of outbreaks in the continental USA.