If Congress doesn’t pass emergency Zika funding soon, medical researchers would be forced to halt tests of a promising vaccine, a top public health official warned Thursday.
The National Institutes of Health has borrowed enough funds from other places to start a phase one trial for a Zika vaccine but it will have to cancel plans for a phase two trial early next year without more money from Congress, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
“Unless we get an appropriation for the fiscal year that starts in a few weeks, I’m going to have to do the unthinkable,” Fauci said at a Thursday forum hosted by Research America. “I’m going to have to stop the vaccine trial endeavor.”
Congress is gridlocked over a $1.1 billion bill that would provide NIH with funds to develop a Zika vaccine and give the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention extra money to partner with state and local governments for mosquito prevention.
Public health officials say they’re going ahead with efforts as they’re able. But they have been forced to shift money from other areas to fight Zika, which has infected more than 2,700 people in the U.S. and is spreading through mosquito bites in Florida. While the virus causes only a mild infection in most people, it can cause a serious birth defect in which babies are born with underdeveloped brains and abnormally small heads.
Fauci said he was able to start the phase one trial with the help of some extra funds shifted by Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell. But to start preparing sites for a phase two trial, Burwell dipped into existing research dollars allocated for cancer, diabetes and mental health, Fauci said.
Taking money from other research efforts is “just really unconscionable, but it’s happening,” Fauci said.
It’s not clear whether Congress will be able to reach agreement on attaching Zika funding to a bill to keep the government open past September, when the fiscal year ends.
