Just two years after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scrambled to respond to cases of Ebola in the United States, the federal organization is now admitting it initially underestimated the threat posed by the Zika virus in the United States, leaving one expert to call for a major restructuring of the organization. News of the Zika virus emerged earlier this year, when cases in Brazil, particularly among pregnant women, were reported in increasing numbers. While the impact of Zika on adults and children is still being studied, medical experts have concluded the virus causes shrinking of the skulls in unborn babies, which leads to other serious health challenges.
At the start of the year, officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, implored everyone to remain calm, stressing that mosquitoes carrying Zika could appear in the U.S. but the threat here is much lower than in Latin America. Now, as the Obama administration presses for a $1.9 billion emergency response to Zika, the CDC’s Zika preview is much more serious. “Everything we look at with this virus seems to be a bit scarier than we initially thought,” said CDC Principal Deputy Director Dr. Anne Schuchat.
For experts, that big of a shift is unacceptable.......Read more
At the start of the year, officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, implored everyone to remain calm, stressing that mosquitoes carrying Zika could appear in the U.S. but the threat here is much lower than in Latin America. Now, as the Obama administration presses for a $1.9 billion emergency response to Zika, the CDC’s Zika preview is much more serious. “Everything we look at with this virus seems to be a bit scarier than we initially thought,” said CDC Principal Deputy Director Dr. Anne Schuchat.
For experts, that big of a shift is unacceptable.......Read more
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