In response to the threat of the Zika virus in the U.S., the House of Representatives signed a bill allotting a $622-million funding for the cause. The approved budget is short of almost a billion dollars from the White House's request of $1.9 billion and the Senate's declared amount of $1.1 billion.
According to Reuters, the Republican-dominated house defended their decision by referring to the $589 million the Obama administration shifted from the unused Ebola virus fund to respond to the Zika virus problem. The amount can suffice until the end of the fiscal year.
Adding it to the $622 million House bill doesn't make the total far from the Senate's expected fund for Zika virus programs, according to Rep. Tom Coole who is in charge of health funds on the House Appropriations Committee as per The Hill. He says that the Senate's $1.1 billion fund is until September 2017 while the House's approved fund is only until September of this year.
"It will be very, very substantial. Actually, by the end of this, if you add it all up, we'll either be at or above the Senate's total...It'll be very comparable," Coole said to The Hill.
The Democratic Obama administration still threatened to veto the bill, accusing the Republicans of inadequately funding health concerns, as per Reuters. The threat of the Zika virus urgently needs funds to kill mosquitoes spreading the disease and to devise a vaccine preventing further infection of Americans.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said in a briefing reported by The Hill, "The only thing that the Republicans in the House have come forward with is funding at like a third of the level that our public health experts recommend."
Parent Herald reported a study confirming that Zika virus leads to birth defects when a mother gets infected with the virus while pregnant. The infants usually end up with microcephaly. Since April, Parent Herald also reported the threat of a Zika virus outbreak in the U.S. after it spread its effects in Latin America.
