A health worker fumigates a neighborhood as part of the preventive measures against the Zika virus and other mosquito-borne diseases in Veracruz on the outskirts of Panama City February 25, 2016. Then, Oxitec will deploy enough mosquitoes to try and protect an area of 1,800 residents on the Grand Cayman island from Zika.
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Zika virus is spread to people primarily through the bite of an infected Aedes species mosquito.
In the western Panhandle, only one case of the virus has been found, that was in Santa Rosa County, and the unidentified patient has since made a full recovery.
The KCDC advised pregnant women not to travel to Zika-infected countries, while recommending fertile women delay pregnancy for at least two months after returning from those countries.
Symptoms of the virus are normally mild, and they commonly include fever, rash, joint pain, and conjunctivitis.
To date, 426 cases of travel-related Zika have been reported in the continental United States.
In the absence of a vaccine for Zika virus, Andreadis said community involvement is necessary, including eliminating standing water from your property.
It is unknown how likely a pregnant woman is to contract the virus, or how likely it is to pass to her fetus, and they don’t know when the fetus will develop birth defects if infected. “Otherwise, you can go, enjoy your time, but avoid getting mosquito bites”. Florida Health Department’s interim surgeon general Dr. Celeste Philip has declared an emergency on the spread of the virus in the state. Previous trials using Wolbachia to reduce dengue fever seemed promising, spurring scientists in Brazil to try it out on in Zika hotspots, where thousands of children have been born with microcephaly, a birth defect resulting in an abnormally small head and brain.
Sadigh said the overwhelming majority of the samples the CDC gets come up negative.
There is no complete information on how many women who’ve discovered they have had Zika have elected to terminate their pregnancies.
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This 2006 photo provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows a female Aedes aegypti mosquito in the process of acquiring a blood meal from a human host.
