WASHINGTON — The Obama administration’s top health officials pitched senators Tuesday on the urgency of their $1.8 billion request to combat the Zika virus and warned against diverting funding to fight Ebola.

Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell pointed to Puerto Rico in particular, where officials fear the virus could spread rapidly.

“We need to put those things in place now,” she told reporters, referring to mosquito control and other programs.

Requests for additional funding face a high hurdle in the Republican-led Congress. Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri, the top Republican health appropriator, questioned Tuesday whether the government needed the money urgently, given that some emergency Ebola-related funding Congress provided in 2014 remains unspent.

Burwell said the Ebola money is being used for a variety of programs to ensure that disease doesn’t make a comeback, including funding committed over a five-year period to countries in Africa in partnership with other countries around the world.

“We believe we need to finish the job in terms of Ebola,” she said. “We want to do both of them, we’re going to do both, but this is why we believe the money is important, and it’s urgent.”

After Burwell and senior health officials met with bipartisan Senate leaders, Blunt said he would consider the funding request.

Thomas Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, will make their pitches for Zika funding before House Foreign Affairs subcommittees on Wednesday and Blunt’s Appropriations subcommittee on Thursday.

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