Deadlock over US funds to fight Zika virus

Amid political recrimination by both parties, the Republican plan to provide 1.1 billion dollars in funding to combat Zika, which had already passed the House of Representatives, failed to get the 60 votes needed in the Senate to clear a procedural hurdle. The vote was 52 in favour and 48 against on a mostly party line vote. 

It was unclear when Congress would revisit the issue. Democrats urged bipartisan talks, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, said lawmakers would address the matter again sometime after the July 4 national holiday. 

Both sides warned the other that there could be a political price to pay in an election year for stalling on Zika funding, with the summer mosquito season under way and with it the threat of the virus spreading.

“Here we are, in an utterly absurd position, playing political games as this public health crisis mounts here in our country,” McConnell said. There have not yet been any cases reported of local transmission of Zika virus in the continental United States, but there have been 820 cases that were acquired from travel to areas with active Zika outbreaks, or through sexual transmission. There have been more than 1,800 cases of Zika infection reported in Puerto Rico, a US territory in the Caribbean.

Democrats have been urging Republicans for months to agree to Zika funding. The Republican plan would have funded mosquito control efforts by the US Center for Disease Control, as well as vaccine research by the National Institutes of Health, and money for community health centres in areas experiencing the highest rates of Zika transmission. 

But Democrats complained that Republicans locked them out of drafting the 1.1-billion dollar funding plan, which would have made 750 million dollar in budget cuts elsewhere.