Zika outbreak: U.S. shifts $81M in funds

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has shifted $81 million in funds from other projects to continue work on developing vaccines to fight Zika in the absence of any funding from U.S. lawmakers.

At a press briefing in Washington on Thursday (August 11), Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, praised the move, saying HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell had made a "courageous decision."

In a letter addressed to Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat and minority leader of the U.S. House of Representatives, Burwell said she was allocating $34 million US in funding to the National Institutes of Health and $47 million US to the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority to work on Zika vaccines.

Burwell said the funding was intended to keep Zika vaccine research going despite the lack of funding from U.S. lawmakers, who left for summer recess before allocating any funding to Zika research and preparedness.

Fauci said he needs $33 million US to prepare to move the first potential Zika vaccine to the second phase of human clinical trials. The first phase of that testing is expected to end in late November or December.

Fauci said the budget transfer will not fill the longer-term NIH funding needs to fight the virus and to develop a second or third potential vaccine candidate. Drugs frequently fail to realize the promise they show in early trials.

He said $196 million US was still needed.

A neighbourhood in Miami, Florida, recently became the first site to report locally transmitted cases of the Zika virus in the continental United States. That number has climbed to 22, Fauci said.