HARTFORD – After public health officials in Florida announced that four cases of Zika are likely to have been acquired in the continental United States, U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), called on Congressional Republicans on Friday to stop playing politics with the Zika emergency and immediately pass the bipartisan $1.1 billion compromise bill that the Senate overwhelmingly approved earlier this summer: 

“The Zika virus and its devastating health effects have officially come to the U.S. mainland,” said Murphy. “For the last seven months, doctors and scientists have been asking Congress for resources to fight the virus and save lives, but Congressional Republicans have continued to ignore the biggest international health crisis since Ebola. Congress bears much of the blame for Zika’s devastation because we turned down every chance we had to stop it from coming here. As I’ve been saying for months, Congress needs to immediately pass a clean, bipartisan bill to fight Zika.”

Last month, Republican leaders abandoned the bipartisan compromise passed by the Senate, and instead forced a vote on a conference report that needlessly and recklessly cut funding for Planned Parenthood and the Affordable Care Act. 

As a member of the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee, Murphy has supported numerous initiatives to combat the outbreak of Zika in Connecticut and across the United States, and has continuously called for $1.9 billion of emergency funding to address the outbreak. A bill cosponsored by Murphy – called the Adding Zika Virus to the FDA Priority Review Voucher Program Act – was recently signed into law. It adds Zika as an eligible disease to receive a priority review voucher from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), incentivizing the development of Zika vaccines. 

The Connecticut Department of Public Health has confirmed that forty-five Connecticut residents have tested positive for travel-related cases of Zika, including 3 pregnant women.