According to an announcement from the New Jersey Department of Health, laboratories located in West Trenton began testing blood samples late last week for Zika and other mosquito-transmitted viruses.
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Belize has another confirmed case of Zika in country, and this time, it’s a pregnant woman who is infected.
MI is considered “low risk” for mosquito transmission of Zika, dengue, and chikungunya virus, as the mosquitoes that spread the diseases are not present in the state.
Meg Mirivel, the spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Health, declined to identify the gender of the fifth patient.
Memorial Day weekend is a good time to remove any standing water from your back yard, because mosquito breeding season has arrived with the warmer weather.
Dr. Tom Frieden warned that potentially hundreds of thousands of infections could occur in USA territories including Puerto Rico, which has already been hit hard by the virus shown to cause severe birth defects, but said the CDC doesn’t expect transmission to be as severe in the continental U.S. For women infected later in pregnancy, the risks were well below 1 per cent no matter how much Zika was spreading in the community, the authors found.
“In fact, most mosquito-control districts and federal and state agencies already have authority … to apply mosquitocides as needed to respond to Zika virus concerns and do not require any additional authorization”, a White House policy states. Around the globe, immune cells are being collected from people infected with Zika who have successfully resisted the virus. But health officials say Zika can cause other birth defects, too.
A company with a swarm of genetically modified mosquitoes wants the Food and Drug Administration to grant emergency approval for the controversial insects’ use in the fight against the Zika virus. In the US, southern states are more vulnerable to the virus due to their warm and humid climate.
The Zika virus is primarily transmitted by a specific type of mosquito, the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which is present in about 30 states. “If the risk of infection and adverse outcomes is similar in the other geographic areas where Zika virus has since spread, many more cases of microcephaly and other adverse outcomes are likely to occur”, the study warned.
So what can women who are pregnant or planning to become pregnant do to protect themselves and their fetuses from mosquito bites?
All three experts – Barker, Adalja and Harrington – agreed that Zika requires a strong public health response, but it needs to be focused on the southern states most at risk. All cases of dengue and chikungunya were in travelers returning from areas with ongoing transmission.
Most people experience no symptoms or only mild symptoms, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Given its climate and busy global airports, Florida is at higher risk than other states to see local cases of Zika. “You know where they are”.
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“One of the most important strategies is to never fall behind when trying to control the Aedes mosquitoes”, says Jay Varma, New York City’s deputy commissioner for disease control.
