Puerto Rico could be slammed with “hundreds of thousands” of Zika infections, according to federal officials who say funding is urgently needed.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has sent nearly 100 employees to the U.S. territory where the virus is spreading. CDC Director Tom Frieden said the Zika virus, primarily spread through mosquito bites, is primed to explode and spread dramatically on the island.
“The rains are coming and with the rains come mosquito season,” Frieden said on a call with reporters Thursday. Frieden traveled to Puerto Rico earlier this week.
Mosquitoes spread in standing water, with the rainy season creating all sorts of breeding places for the virus carriers. The mosquito season normally starts in June or July but could start earlier, Frieden said.
The mosquito that spreads Zika, Aedes aeygpti, can breed in very little standing water, making it difficult to combat.
The CDC and other health agencies strongly suspect a link between Zika and the birth defect microcephaly and the neurological disorder Guillain-Barre Syndrome.
Frieden said the CDC is researching which insecticides would be the most effective to combat the mosquitoes in Puerto Rico. He said fighting the mosquitoes will take a comprehensive approach.
“We recognize there is no single mosquito control method that is foolproof,” he said.
There are 159 cases of Zika in the Puerto Rico as of March 9, the CDC said.
“We do anticipate the number of travelers to continue to increase steadily and the number of cases in Puerto Rico at some point beginning to increase dramatically,” Frieden said.
The U.S. has nearly 200. A very important distinction is that all of Puerto Rico’s cases are from the virus spreading within the country.
For the U.S. cases, almost all have been linked to someone who recently traveled to a country where the virus is spreading and returned to the U.S. There is a small amount of sexually transmitted cases, but there is no evidence yet that the virus is spreading in the U.S. via mosquito bites.
Frieden did say that there was an infant in the U.S. who was born with microcephaly.
Frieden said that more funding for Zika is “urgently needed.”
“We are scraping together every dime we can to respond to this,” he said on the call. “It makes it very difficult to do things like plan for large-scale mosquito control activities in Puerto Rico.”
President Obama requested $1.8 billion in new emergency funding for Zika. However, Republicans have been hesitant to approve the funding, wanting to first see how much money leftover from emergency funds doled out to combat the Ebola outbreak.
Frieden emphasized that pregnant women and women of childbearing age should refrain from traveling to a state where Zika is currently spreading via mosquitoes.
“Puerto Rico remains a great place to visit as long as you are not pregnant,” he said.
