Zika vaccine trials set as research head pleads for more money

WASHINGTON – Government scientists have identified the most promising Zika vaccine and have started human trials, but a congressional impasse is forcing them to borrow money intended for crucial work on cancer, diabetes, Ebola and other deadly diseases.

In a speech attended by other top Zika experts Thursday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, trod a thin line between describing progress in the Zika fight and pleading for emergency funding held up for months in Congress.

“We are right now in a race against time to get the best vaccine,” Fauci said.

Scientists at the Vaccine Research Center of Fauci’s institute, which is part of the National Institutes of Health, are enrolling 80 healthy volunteers 18 to 35 years old for the first phase of the trial, with initial results expected by January.

The first person was injected Aug. 3 with the vaccine, which uses a piece of DNA called a plasmid that is engineered to produce Zika proteins that prompt the body to launch an immune response. The vaccine cannot cause someone to become infected with Zika.

Fauci criticized Republican lawmakers who have blocked the $1.9 billion emergency funding package President Barack Obama requested from Congress in February, saying their demand that the NIH and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention transfer money appropriated for other illnesses to the Zika battle hurts efforts against other diseases.

“All of that is extremely damaging to the biomedical enterprise,” Fauci said. “We’re taking money away from cancer, diabetes – all those kinds of things.”

Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell notified Congress in a letter Thursday that she had authorized reallocating $81 million from other health programs to pay for the Zika vaccine and preventative research.

“She made a courageous decision to do something that she really did not want to do, (which is) to take money away from other areas,” Fauci said.

The continental United States has 1,962 cases of Zika, and there are another 6,618 cases in Puerto Rico and other U.S. territories.

Almost two-thirds of Americans are concerned about the virus spreading across greater swaths of the country in the coming months, according to poll results released Thursday by Suffolk University in Boston.

Fauci singled out Puerto Rico and Florida as epicenters of the virus, which is carried mainly by the Aedes aegypti mosquito but also can be transmitted sexually from an infected partner.

“Florida has a semitropical climate,” he said. “Right now in August of 2016, they have a considerable case of travel-related cases, and they have the mosquitoes. Right now, as of last count, there are 22 cases in Florida that are locally transmitted.”

The Florida Health Department on Thursday identified three more cases of mosquito-borne Zika, all in Miami-Dade County, bringing the state’s total to 25.

The state also reported 21 new travel-related infections, with 17 in Broward County, two in Hernando County and one in Miami-Dade and Seminole counties.

Overall, Florida has 486 cases of Zika, more than any other state except New York. The two states each have some 1 million Puerto Rican residents.

Puerto Rico is facing a looming Zika epidemic with 6,475 cases, only 30 of which weren’t locally acquired, according to the CDC.

Most of the Zika cases in Florida have been transmitted by mosquitoes in a relatively small area north of downtown Miami, bound by Northwest Fifth Avenue to the west, Northwest/Northeast 38th Street to the north, U.S. 1 to the east and Northwest/Northeast 20th Street to the south.

Two locally transmitted Zika cases have been identified in Broward and one in Palm Beach, but it is not clear whether mosquitoes transmitted those infections in the two counties or in Miami-Dade.

Sen. Marco Rubio, a Miami Republican, and several GOP members of the House of Representatives have broken ranks with their party by demanding that Congress approve at least a large portion of Obama’s emergency request.

The Senate approved a $1.1 billion funding bill in May and the House passed similar legislation in June, but the appropriations measure got bogged down in partisan politics when lawmakers tried to fuse the two measures into a single bill.

Democrats accused Republicans of adding last-minute provisions unrelated to Zika, among them cutting funds for Obamacare and Planned Parenthood, along with placing new restrictions on publicly funded abortions.

Rubio criticized fellow Republicans for months and more recently directed his ire at the Obama administration for refusing to reallocate previously appropriated money to the Zika fight.

“Today’s action is long overdue, and the Obama administration should do even more to find unspent funds that can be redirected toward fighting Zika in Florida,” Rubio said of Burwell’s decision to transfer $81 million.

Rubio added: “As I’ve said repeatedly, we never should have gotten to this point. Congress should have passed additional funding months ago.”