The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday that no one should cancel their Spring Break plans to travel south of the border, despite the presence of the Zika virus that could be linked to microcephaly.
“We’re not cancelling Spring Break,” said CDC principal deputy director Dr. Anne Schuchat during a White House press briefing Tuesday. But she did caution, “We are telling people who are pregnant that you may not want to go.”
Zika has spread to about 28 countries and territories that include popular Spring Break destinations such as Mexico and Puerto Rico. The CDC has issued travel advisories for those countries for any pregnant women or women of child-bearing age.
While the virus itself causes mild illness, health officials strongly suspect it is linked to a birth defect called microcephaly that causes babies to be born with small heads.
Officials said Tuesday that President Obama is not going to appoint a czar to coordinate the government’s response to Zika, a move the president did make for the Ebola outbreak last year.
The Ebola czar was needed since agencies such as the Department of Defense and Homeland Security became involved in addressing the outbreak, said White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest. So far, those agencies are not involved and there are fewer agencies responding to the outbreak.
Schuchat also downplayed any need for quarantining people who return from Zika affected countries.
“This is a mosquito-borne virus and we really need to focus on mosquito control,” she said.
The government knows that Zika is transmitted through mosquito bites and through sex. But new evidence found traces of Zika in saliva and urine, prompting new worries about these possible modes of transmission. The White House tried to tamp down any concerns about new modes of transmission.
The public “shouldn’t make a presumption” that the virus can be spread through saliva or urine, said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a part of the National Institutes of Health.
The administration wants more than $1.8 billion for fighting the Zika outbreak, which has infected about 50 Americans.
Nearly $1.5 billion will go to the Department of Health and Human Services, $335 million would go to the U.S. Agency for International Development and $41 million for the State Department.
