U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and John Cornyn (R-TX) recently sent a public letter to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Acting Director Anne Schuchat, regarding the agency’s coordination efforts with Texas public health agencies to prepare for the heightened risk of Zika virus transmission during the summer.
The senators’ concerns stem from the state’s Gulf region, which contains higher-than-average mosquito populations due to its humid climate and tendency to flood.
The letter cited a $1.1 billion appropriations provision for Zika response initiatives, including $394 million specifically allocated for the CDC to combat and mitigate the spread of the virus. Since the bill was passed in September 2016, a total of $144 million of those funds remained unspent.
With that in mind, the letter contained a number of questions for Schuchat, including how the CDC planned to utilize its unspent funds to prevent a Zika outbreak, what the timeframe for distributing the unspent funds, and how much funding the CDC planned to use on prevention and response efforts in the state of Texas.
The senators also sought information regarding how the CDC was coordinating with state and local partners to ensure Texas communities were best equipped to prevent, respond to, and eliminate the threat of the virus.
Zika virus is typically transmitted by the Aedes aegpyti species mosquito and sexual contact. Symptoms in most cases involve joint pain, fever, rash, and headaches. More severely, the virus has been linked to microcephaly of the fetus in pregnant women and Guillain-Barré syndrome.