A top health researcher said he is worried a lack of funding may dramatically impede the search for a Zika vaccine, as the House and Senate prepare to lock horns over how much funding to provide the Obama administration to deal with the virus.
The White House asked Congress in February for $1.9 billion to fight Zika. Of that, $277 million would go to research and commercialize new diagnostic tests for Zika and to study a vaccine. Plans are moving forward for a small clinical trial for a vaccine in September.
If federal researchers don’t get the full amount the White House asked for, then it will “slow down dramatically or inhibit the larger study we are planning in 2017,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a part of the National Institutes of Health.
The Senate earlier this week approved $1.1 billion in new funding to fight Zika, while the House approved $622 million that is offset from other programs.
Fauci said that he doesn’t know for sure how much he would get from the $1.1 billion package passed in the Senate.
“We are getting a hint of it but nothing definitive,” he told the Washington Examiner.
Fauci estimated he might get 75 percent of the original $277 million requested in the $1.9 billion.
There is no vaccine or treatment for Zika, which is spread primarily via mosquito bites. It normally causes mild symptoms but is linked to the birth defect microcephaly that causes babies to be born with smaller heads. Currently mosquitoes in the continental U.S. aren’t spreading the virus, but the White House has said that could change as summer approaches.
There are about five candidates for a Zika vaccine, and one is expected to be ready for a phase I human trial of about 80 people or more in September, Fauci said. The remaining candidates will be ready for testing a few months later.
Fauci said he has enough money to start the trial, which will determine if the vaccine is safe, because he borrowed money from other accounts for diseases such as influenza and malaria.
He hopes to start a larger phase II study in early 2017 to determine whether the vaccine actually works. That is where the new funding is needed.
“Even though we are going to start the study in 2017 we need to prepare for it now,” he said. “We need the money to prepare for it [or] we will fall far behind on the schedule.”
Once the study starts, it could take two to three years, depending on the results. Normally a phase II trial enrolls hundreds of patients.
Fauci said that if the data from that trial looks good, then the Food and Drug Administration could approve it.
Meanwhile, there is no sign of a conference between the two chambers to reach a funding deal.
“The House and Senate are working the will of the respective chambers and the differences will be reconciled,” said AshLee Strong, spokeswoman for House Speaker Paul Ryan.
President Obama said Friday that Congress should not go on its week-long recess after the Memorial Day holiday without sending the full $1.9 billion that he requested to his desk.
He said the $1.9 billion was based on “public health assessments of all the work that needs to be done.”
However, White House spokesman Josh Earnest dodged several questions on whether the president would veto any funding bill that comes out of Congress.
Another question surrounding funding is how the White House will replenish Ebola funds already taken to fight Zika. Last month, the administration allocated $500 million from Ebola.
The administration said at the time it still needs the full $1.9 billion to replenish the Ebola fund. It hasn’t said how much it would take from either the House or Senate funding.
“Congress hasn’t passed any funding yet, and the House bill takes another $352 million more from Ebola funding,” a White House aide told the Washington Examiner.
