“Residents and visitors are urged to participate in requests for blood and urine samples by the department in the areas of investigation”.
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says 1,403 travel-associated cases of Zika have been reported across the USA; 270 in Florida alone. However, public health experts encourage us not to freak out.
That’s what Florida officials are checking for now.
Two of the women are still pregnant, including a newly confirmed case out of Utah County of a woman who caught the virus in a Zika-affected part of the world.
Staples said the infected caregiver recovered quickly.
“It’s a needle in a haystack”, Hotez said. The baby’s mother was infected with the Zika virus in Latin America and passed the virus to the baby in the womb. But none had been caused by local mosquitoes, the CDC said.
“Mosquito control has already conducted reduction and prevention activities in the area of investigation”.
At the same time, officials are making sure that there’s no other possible way the two Florida patients could have been infected. Controversy over the Rio Olympics has grown as more about the disease becomes known and several athletes, including the world’s top four golfers, have pulled out. Someone had been caring for a Zika-infected relative when they began showing symptoms.
This is in addition to individual screenings that the agency has been conducting since February this year, “so it’s adding another level of safety”, said Dr. Rita Reik, chief medical officer of OneBlood.
The Aedes aegypti has been seen as the main spreader of Zika. Culex mosquitoes are far more common in temperate zones, such as in the United States.
Vasquez’s inspectors are going door-to-door, trapping mosquitoes for testing, hand-spraying and removing the standing water where they breed.
Officials say more is needed to combat the virus.
He said it’s up to communities to keep neighborhoods “mosquito-breeding free”. They said many babies exposed in utero who appear normal at birth may have developmental problems down the road, including hearing and vision problems.
Vasquez says no mosquitoes collected in the county so far have tested positive for Zika.
Different mosquito species spread different diseases.
Nevada will get $690,000 in federal funds to fight the spread of the Zika virus and manage local cases.
Ayres explained that nearly 500 those collected mosquitoes, 85 percent being Culex, were fed with a mixture of blood and virus, which allowed researchers to follow the replication of the virus in the insect. “Anytime we are talking about a vaccine, especially for pregnant women, there is so much work that needs to be done”, she said.
Increasing scientific evidence suggests a link between infection in pregnant women and infants born with birth defects such as microcephaly.
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The CDC notes that Zika has not been confirmed in the United States but has been confirmed in the American Samoa, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Zika has also been linked to Guillain-Barré syndrome, an uncommon sickness of the nervous system in which a person’s immune system damages nerve cells, causing muscle weakness and sometimes paralysis or death.
