For N.J. Sen. Menendez, Zika funding stalemate is personal

With the Zika virus spreading in Florida and money to fight it dwindling, Bob Menendez ships his daughter protective clothing and information about repellants.

Menendez, of course, is a powerful U.S. senator from New Jersey. His daughter is six months pregnant and lives in Miami, a mile or so from where the virus has been transmitted by local mosquitoes.

He pleads with his colleagues, shares his personal fears on the Senate floor (and in comments to the media back home), and offers possible compromises – but so far has been powerless to break the partisan gridlock that is holding up funding for prevention and threatening to delay research on vaccines.

Menendez  remembers when Alicia told him she was pregnant. Zika was already in the news, suspected of causing birth defects in Brazil. "This was her first child and my first grandchild," he said in a phone interview Wednesday. It crystallized the issue for him "very vividly and very scarily," he said.

The first cases transmitted by mosquitoes in the continental United States – not brought back by travelers – were reported in Miami seven weeks ago. "She told me she cried five times that day," Menendez said.

With the mosquito season in Florida nowhere near done, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said two weeks ago that it was nearly out of money to fight the virus. A lack of money may hamper vaccine development, as well.

President Obama requested $1.9 billion in emergency funding in February. Republicans eventually passed $1.1 billion, but a conference committee appointed to work out differences in House and Senate versions got stuck over the summer. The main hurdle now is Republican demands that the legislation exclude Planned Parenthood from funding for contraception, which can prevent sexual transmission of the virus. That provision is unacceptable to crats.

Reports of a possible compromise were tamped down Tuesday by Senate leaders of both parties even as increasingly desperate Floridians, including Marco Rubio and Bill Nelson – the state's respective Republican and Democratic senators — pleaded for action. Business owners are expected to join with the CDC in another public pitch on Thursday.

Among the few options: including Zika funding in a temporary measure that must be passed soon to keep the government open.

Zika typically causes no symptoms but infection during pregnancy has been linked to births of babies with abnormally small heads, a condition known as microcephaly, and brain damage. One of the first such cases was reported more than three months ago in northern New Jersey, involving a woman who apparently was bitten by an infected mosquito in Honduras.

Zika has been confirmed in 671 pregnant women in the continental states and 1,080 in U.S. territories, according to a CDC tally on Sept. 1. There are four pregnant women with Zika in Philadelphia, the city Department of Public Health said last week. They, like all cases of Zika infection in New Jersey and Pennsylvania and the vast majority nationwide, were acquired in areas where the disease is rampant, which includes much of South and Central America.

Pregnant women can be tested for the virus, although a positive result then raises the question of what to do about it. A negative test merely continues the waiting game.

Alicia Menendez, who hosts a show on the cable television network Fusion, has tested negative  but that has helped only to a certain extent, her father said.

To prevent mosquito bites, "she's covered shoulder to ankle" and is "largely housebound," he said. Meanwhile, the senator has been trying "to have members understand that this could be your daughter, your wife."