Zika Virus Funding

Floor Speech

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Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, we are in a race against time. The number of confirmed locally acquired Zika infections in Florida now total 56. In Puerto Rico, it is estimated that 50 pregnant women are infected with Zika each day. There are now 67 countries and territories around the world reporting Zika cases. The Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has announced that the agency has exhausted its current funds to combat the Zika virus, but thus far the Republicans have refused to work with the Democrats to actually provide the new funding in the race to find a vaccine. This is simply unacceptable.

Last month, I visited Cabo Verde off the coast of Africa. I saw firsthand the devastating impacts of the Zika virus. Through a Catholic Relief Services program, I met with mothers and their infants suffering from microcephaly, the birth defect which causes smaller brains and other developmental defects in newborns. I was able to meet with two loving mothers: Dunia, the mother of Dara; and Suely, who is the mother of Senilson. Both babies were born on June 5, 2016. The first case of microcephaly associated with the Zika virus on Cabo Verde was detected in March, just 6 months after the disease was declared an epidemic in the country. Now there are more than 7,500 reported cases of Zika on Cabo Verde, and the number continues to grow.

Zika is a terrifying virus. It is the only known mosquito-borne virus that can cause birth defects and also be sexually transmitted. In addition to microcephaly, Zika also has been connected to neurological effects in individuals of any age, including a link to the onset of Guillain-Barre syndrome, which can cause paralysis for months. One bite from an infected mosquito could damage the course of a life forever.

We need only look back a few chapters in our own history books to understand how important it is for humanity to find a vaccine for a virus like Zika.

In 1953, there were 35,000 annual cases of polio in the United States. Mothers and fathers all across America were frightened that their children would be next to contract the debilitating disease. Two U.S. researchers, Dr. Albert Sabin and Dr. Jonas Salk, were locked in a historic race to develop a safe and effective polio vaccine. Fortunately, they were both successful. Today, those vaccines have virtually eliminated polio around the world.

Now, in 2016, millions of parents and dozens of countries around the world are once again praying that the medical community can be catalyzed to develop a solution for today's global disease threat--the Zika virus.

We are fortunate that in today's new race for a cure, there are at least three leading Zika vaccine candidates. Last month, I toured the laboratories at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, which is collaborating with Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. Their vaccine candidate has been found to offer universal protection against the Zika virus in laboratory tests. The results were so promising that the vaccine will be tested in a small group of individuals--human beings--this fall.

There are two other vaccine candidates also showing positive results. One is made by the National Institutes of Health and the other by Inovio Pharmaceuticals. Both are far enough along that they are already utilizing human subjects, but if the current trials involving just the small groups are successful, we will need to provide much more funding to cover the costs of expanding this research to thousands of participants. That next step in the Zika clinical trials, if both of these candidates that I just mentioned are successful, could cost upward of $100 million to $200 million, beginning as soon as this January, if these clinical trials are successful with small numbers of human beings. That is a small amount of money when one considers that the cost of caring for one infant born with Zika-caused microcephaly will cost potentially up to $10 million through the life of that baby.

Six months ago, knowing the impeding and impending threat of Zika once we entered the warm, mosquito-loving, hot summer months, fueled further by climate change, President Obama requested $1.9 billion in emergency funds from Congress to combat Zika, but instead of approving emergency funding at the start of the summer, Republicans, unfortunately, did not finish the business that we should have finished before they recessed Congress for 7 weeks. Families cancelled their summer vacations out of fear, while Republicans made Congress go on a vacation. Meanwhile, cases of Zika on our own soil, in Puerto Rico, and around the world ticked higher and higher.

Whether it is Zika, Ebola, SARS, or the next global pandemic, we simply cannot treat every global health threat like a game of Whac-A- Mole. We need a sustainable and comprehensive emergency medical system that is put in place so we can respond to all emerging infectious disease threats.

First, we need a Federal fund that is readily available for use when a global disease represents itself. Second, we need a single person at the White House responsible for organizing domestic efforts as well as liaising with our international partners in the face of an infectious disease pandemic. We did this on Ebola. We should do it for every global health threat.

The truth is, though, that if on Ebola we had already had a pandemic response team in place, we probably could have cut the amount of death and harm that was done by that disease by a dramatic amount, but the most important thing we need right now is we need the congressional Republicans to stop playing politics and work with Democrats to pass a real and serious response to the Zika crisis, including emergency funding. The fastest way to do this is for the House to bring a bipartisan, Senate-passed $1.1 billion compromise bill to address the Zika epidemic and bring it up for a vote. We have already passed that through the Senate. House Republicans should just take it up, vote on it, and we will get it done. It is only a matter of time before the fear of local transmission in Florida becomes the reality for nearly every State in this Nation. That is why immediate funding is a critical component of the U.S. and global fight against the Zika virus. We have the intellectual capacity to develop faster diagnostic tests, efficient vaccines, and advanced therapeutics with Zika, but what we need now is the financial certainty to support this kind of work in an accelerated way. The next pandemic that awaits the global community is just one frequent flier account away. This crisis demands that Congress pass a Zika funding package as soon as possible. The continuation of vaccine development depends on it, our ability to stop the spread of the virus depends on it, and the lives of millions of people around the world depend on it.

We won the race against polio in the 1950s. With accelerated funding, we have the opportunity today with these three vaccine candidates and others on the way to find a safe and effective solution to combat Zika by 2018. It is time to recognize the threat to humankind and the impact such a harmful disease will have on an entire generation of children by ensuring our 21st century scientists--our Sabins and Salks--have the funding they need to banish this virus to the history books.

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