The CDC has sent out an emergency response team to investigate.
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That patient also became the first Zika-infected person to die in the continental US.
The Arkansas Department of Health is monitoring mosquitoes aggressively to make sure they are not transmitting the virus.
“This third case shows on ongoing risk when traveling overseas”, Dr. Matt Richardson, the county’s Director of Public Health, said in a statement.
(AP Photo/Rick Bowmer). Gary Edwards, executive director, Salt Lake County Health Department, speaks during a news conference Monday, July 18, 2016, in Salt Lake City. Many states across the country are in the process of filing action plans with CDC as local transmission of the disease is a possibility.
An elderly Utah resident who contracted Zika virus while traveling overseas may have mysteriously passed the virus on to a family caretaker, according to health officials who are investigating the “unique” and “surprising” case.
In microcephaly, a baby’s head is much smaller than expected and the child’s brain does not develop properly during pregnancy or stops growing after birth, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
CDC expert Dr Erin Staples said: “The new case in Utah is a surprise, showing that we still have more to learn about Zika”.
The Bureau for Public Health is not releasing additional information pertaining to this case to protect the privacy of the patient.
Health officials said Zika contributed to the man’s death, but that he also had an underlying medical condition and was elderly. The relative had cared for the elderly man both at home and in the hospital.
The family contact helped provide care for the now-deceased patient while sick, officials said. Officials are trapping mosquitoes in Utah to test them, though the species that spread the disease don’t usually live in the state’s high altitude and cold winters.
But while such non-sexual person-to-person contact could turn out to be a new means by which Zika spreads, health authorities are eager to point out that the risk of contracting the infection this way is incredibly low, with this being the only (potential) documented case so far. Nor do researchers know whether the Zika virus is robust enough to stay alive in, say, tiny particles of saliva that might linger in the air after an infected person has breathed, coughed or sneezed.
Health authorities in the United States are baffled by a patient in Utah who appears to have contracted Zika virus through what could be a new channel of infection. Most of the infected people had visited countries where Zika is endemic.
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There are now about 1,300 Zika cases in the USA, all of which were acquired by traveling overseas. The officials brought to light 13 new cases of the infection in Florida alone, bringing the total number there to 282 according to Senator Marco Rubio, highlighting just how quickly the disease is able to spread.
