The approval of $1.1 billion to fight the Zika virus will ensure that trials for a vaccine will continue, but other projects will take some time.
President Obama signed a short-term spending bill on Thursday that included the Zika funding. The decision ended a months-long standoff between Democrats and Republicans over the funding.
Now that funding has been approved, the administration can initiate new activities such as new vaccine or diagnostic contracts and new rounds of state funding for local Zika response, according to a representative with the Department of Health and Human Services.
But starting new activities doesn’t mean they will immediately get funded.
“The process for seeking bids for a new contract, requesting states to submit plans for how they would spend newly available grant money, etc., all take time regardless of the source of funding,” the spokesman said.
However, the National Institutes of Health’s efforts to create a vaccine will stay on track.
As the standoff simmered over the summer, Obama administration officials said that they were on the cusp of running out of funding for fighting the virus, which is spread primarily via mosquitoes. More than 100 mosquito-transmitted cases have been found in the U.S., mostly in Florida.
Medical researchers would have been forced to halt a phase two trial for a vaccine if the funding wasn’t passed by the start of the federal fiscal year on Oct. 1, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Fauci has said that he borrowed funds from other places to start the phase one trial for the Zika vaccine. However, the second phase, expected to start next year, would have been delayed.
Even though the trial doesn’t start until next year, Fauci has said that planning needs to start now to find and set up sites. He said HHS dipped into research money for cancer, diabetes and mental health to fund the vaccine work.
Now the funding means the second trial will move forward as planned.
NIH wasn’t the only agency facing a spending crunch.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would have had to re-allocate staff if it wasn’t able to find money by the end of the month.
In April, Obama re-allocated about $585 million to fight the virus due to congressional inaction over his initial funding request of $1.9 billion. The CDC received more than $200 million from that $585 million, a majority of which was taken from funding to fight the Ebola outbreak.
The CDC will run out of that money by the end of the month, Director Tom Frieden has said.
But the agency has received criticism from some Republican lawmakers questioning why all of it wasn’t spent earlier.
“Like many of my colleagues, I find it frustrating that this administration isn’t better prepared for emergency illnesses,” wrote Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, in a letter to the CDC in July.
Grassley asked why at the time only $112 million had been distributed out of the $585 million.
The CDC responded that using money within federal rules takes time, and that much of the money would move in July and August.
