As Zika Season Looms, Senate Panel Approves $100 Million In Mosquito Control Funding

WLRN Public Media

Published April 26, 2017 at 3:56 PM EDT

A group of aedes aegypti mosquitoes in a mosquito cage at a laboratory in Cucuta, Colombia.

Here we go again.

A Senate panel approved a bill that authorizes an additional $100 million in grant funding to fight the mosquito-carrying Zika virus. The bill could now be voted on by the full Senate before summer begins, but only if Congress doesn’t repeat last year’s delay that saw the money tied up by political wrangling for months.

The money approved Tuesday would fund local mosquito-control efforts, centers that test for the virus and research into improving mosquito-control programs.

Read more at our news partner, the Miami Herald.