Political Quotes

“on Monday I hosted a roundtable discussion at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore to review, with experts from my community, the strategy we need to employ with regard to the Zika virus. I pointed out at the beginning of that roundtable discussion that the World Health Organization has labeled the Zika virus as a public health urgency of international concern. The World Health Organization has estimated that as many as 4 million will be affected in the Americas. We know the current numbers of reported cases in the United States. As of last week, we had over 1,300 cases in the United States and our territories. Almost all of those that we have in the United States, in the Continental United States, are travel related. We have 17 confirmed cases in Maryland. Those cases are going to go up dramatically. We know that. As the summer months and the warm, wet weather occurs, with the mosquito population occurring, we know the number of people affected by the Zika virus is going to go up dramatically. This is the challenge. We know it is transmitted primarily through mosquito bites, through mosquitoes. For example, we know that in Puerto Rico, it is going to be very active. We also know in the United States the mosquito population could very well act as a major transmitter of the Zika virus, but the Zika virus is also transmitted through sexual intercourse.…”