WASHINGTON, July 16 (Reuters) – The White House is closely monitoring the food-borne cyclospora outbreak and is committed to providing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with all necessary resources, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Thursday.
Speaking to reporters during a regular press briefing, Leavitt said the federal government was tracing the outbreak back to its original source.
“We’re committed to providing the CDC and (Food and Drug Administration) the resources that they need,” Leavitt said.
“There are typically thousands of cases of this outbreak every year, but there has been an unusually higher number, and that’s why we’re working with the FDA and other partners at the federal, state and local level to increase detection methods, provide the guidance, and then also, most importantly, trace the outbreak back to its original source, which we are currently in the process of doing.”
(Reporting by Nandita Bose and Gram Slattery; editing by Michelle Nichols and Caitlin Webber)
