The House Science, Space and Technology Committee chairman called on the Obama administration Wednesday to raise the alert level for travel to countries with high Zika virus infection rates, despite the potential impact on attendance at the Olympic Games in Brazil.
Rep. Lamar Smith, Texas Republican, said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued a level 2 travel alert for 49 countries and territories, which advises travelers to “practice enhanced precautions,” instead of a level 3 alert, which recommends against nonessential travel.
“Why has the administration not raised the travel alert level for countries with the highest number of Zika infections, such as Brazil and Colombia?” Mr. Smith asked in a statement. “Is the administration so worried about attendance at the Olympics in Brazil this summer that they’re willing to endanger American lives by not providing better warnings?”
He made the comments after a hearing on the Zika virus with congressional Republicans and the White House locked in a battle over how to stop the spread of the mosquito-borne disease.
President Obama has asked for a $1.9 billion emergency appropriation, while House Republicans have countered with a $622 million proposal and the Senate has agreed to allocate $1.1 billion.
In a Tuesday op-ed, Sen. James Lankford, Oklahoma Republican, accused Mr. Obama of raiding $500 million from a State Department fund for spending on climate change instead of the Zika virus.
SEE ALSO: Efforts to curb Zika underway in region
“In March, President Obama gave the United Nations $500 million out of an account under bilateral economic assistance to fund the U.N.’s Green Climate Fund,” Mr. Lankford said in The Daily Signal op-ed. “Congress refused to allocate funding for the U.N. Climate Change Fund last year, so the president used this account designated for international infectious diseases to pay for his priority.”
Mr. Smith issued his call for a heightened travel warning after a House committee hearing titled “Zika Virus: The DNA of an Epidemic,” which featured specialists on infectious diseases.
“At the least, pregnant women should be told to avoid nonessential travel to Brazil and Colombia,” Mr. Smith said. “Anything less is putting political correctness ahead of the well-being of American women.”
Three witnesses agreed that the Obama administration should raise the travel alert in the case of pregnant women, if not all travelers. The mosquito-born virus has been linked to birth defects in newborns, specifically microcephaly, a rare brain defect.
A study released Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine found a “strong association between the risk of microcephaly in a newborn and the risk of Zika virus infection during the mother’s first trimester of pregnancy.”
The estimated risk of microcephaly with pregnant women who contract the virus in the first trimester ranges from 1 percent to 14 percent, far higher than the U.S. risk with noninfected women of 0.02 percent to 0.12 percent.
SEE ALSO: Zika virus: CDC monitoring nearly 300 pregnant women
“This gave us an appreciation that the risk is substantial,” Michael Johansson, a CDC biologist and the study’s lead author, told The Associated Press.
The research was conducted by CDC scientists on about 400 babies with microcephaly from July through February in the Brazilian state of Bahia.
“The association in the second and third trimesters was negligible,” said the study,
The Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, scheduled for Aug. 5-21, are expected to draw more than 600,000 visitors and athletes to Brazil.
The World Health Organization has identified 270,000 suspected cases of the Zika virus across 60 countries, while the CDC has found 544 cases in the continental United States. Almost all those cases were acquired through travel to high-risk areas, and more than 300 of those involved pregnant women, according to the CDC.
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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