Won't use Ebola funding to combat Zika virus: Obama administration

The Obama administration rejected a Republican suggestion to use the money provided by Congress to fight the Ebola virus to combat the Zika virus and mosquitoes that spread it.

President Barack Obama is asking Congress for more than $1.8 billion in emergency funding to respond to the Zika virus. There has been no transmission of the virus by mosquitoes within the US, but at least 50 travelers have returned home with the infection. At least 16 cases have been confirmed in Florida.

Republican Senator Roy Blunt, who heads an appropriations subcommittee on health, yesterday said the administration has money left over that was allocated to fight Ebola and other infectious diseases.

"So there's no immediate shortage of money for the administration to do what they think needs to be done," Blunt told reporters yesterday.

But Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell said she and other administration officials "believe we need to finish the job in terms of Ebola" and focus separately on Zika.

"We want to do both of them and we are going to do both," Burwell said after she and other top officials briefed congressional leaders yesterday on efforts to combat Zika.

Burwell, who was set to testify before Congress this week on the administration's funding request, called the briefing "a great opportunity to talk about the (Zika) disease and ... the facts about what we do know and don't know about the disease."

While experts don't expect large outbreaks in the continental US, the emergency funding would help officials prepare for any local transmission as spring and summer approach. The administration is seeking the Zika money separately from the regular budget for the next fiscal year that Obama submitted to Congress yesterday.

"The urgency is learning what we can to do to fight it," Burwell said, adding that the disease had already shown up in Puerto Rico. "We need to put those things in place now."

Most of the money would go to improving laboratory testing capacity, education and establishing rapid response teams.