Health officials predicted the virus would reach US mosquitoes this summer and have mobilized to keep Zika from spreading beyond isolated clusters of cases.
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The CDC is working with Florida health officials to investigate what could be the first Zika infection from a mosquito in the continental United States. Zika, which can cause a rare birth defect and other neurological conditions, has spread rapidly through the Americas. “The risk of contracting Guillian-Barre Syndrome (through the Zika virus), although treatable, can cause permanent damage as it is an uncommon sickness of the nervous system in which a person’s own immune system damages the nerve cells, causing muscle weakness, and sometimes, paralysis”. The patient in this new case has since recovered completely from the infection.
“A lot of the areas that we’re treating, a lot of the marsh areas, they breed a lot of mosquitoes”, said Ed Foley with Lee County Mosquito Control.
The virus is primarily spread through the bite of an infected mosquito.
Compatriot Milos Raonic, who lost to Andy Murray in Wimbledon final earlier this month, had pulled out from the Games because of health fears over the Zika virus. When mosquito control gets these requests, officials go out to drain any small pools of standing water in yards and spray bigger ones with larvicide. All previously reported cases of sexually transmitted Zika virus infection have been spread from men to their sexual partners.
The Florida Health Department said that Zika kits intended for pregnant women will be distributed and mosquito control has been conducted in the Miami area near where the infected patient lives.
He or she had cared for the older man both at home and in the hospital. He was the first person in the United States to die after becoming infected. Nearly all were people who had traveled to Zika outbreak countries and caught the virus there. “There have not been any reports of pets or other types of animals becoming sick with Zika virus”. To do its work, the CDC is cannibalizing funds from other vital programs, including Ebola research- and there continues to be flare ups of Ebola in Africa that must be halted if we are to prevent another severe epidemic.
The caregiver was not believed to have traveled to any areas that are affected by Zika, nor had sex with any infected person.
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Only one group seems remarkably unconcerned about Zika and the threat it poses to public health: the men and women of the United States Congress who left Washington last week for a seven-week recess without approving a dime more in spending to combat Zika. The doctor tested him even though he hadn’t traveled from a Zika outbreak area and no cases of female-to-male transmission had been reported. The mosquito is a vector for the proliferation of the Zika virus now spreading throughout Latin America.
