This new funding will be available to jurisdictions August 1 and is in addition to $25 million awarded on July 1 as part of CDC’s preparedness and response funding to states, cities, and territories in areas at risk for outbreaks of Zika.
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Miami-Dade County has the most confirmed infections in Florida – 89 – but so far all have involved someone who traveled outside the USA mainland to areas with Zika outbreaks, such as Latin America and the Caribbean.
“Our immediate plan is to begin testing a portion of our collections for the Zika virus to allow hospitals to have access to Zika-screened blood products from unaffected areas”, said Dr. Rita Reik, OneBlood’s Chief Medical Officer.
Mosquito-control inspectors have been constantly working on abatement in the investigation area since they learned of the infection, and planned more truck spraying Thursday, said Gayle Love, a spokeswoman for Miami-Dade County Solid Waste Management.
Zika cases have been reported in both Clark and Washoe counties.
“Our best option is to try to find these mosquitoes quickly so that way we can eliminate them prior to their establishment”, said Ary Faraji, manager of the Salt Lake City Mosquito Abatement District. One of the possible reasons why is that Culex mosquitoes in Recife may have a genetic variation that makes them different from those in Rio or elsewhere, the institute said. “These CDC funds will strengthen state and territorial capacity to respond to Zika virus, an increasingly concerning public health threat for pregnant women and babies”. However, Zika infection during pregnancy may cause microcephaly and other severe brain defects in the developing fetus.
There have been eight cases of Zika reported in Utah, including a Salt Lake County man who became the person in the continental United States after contracting the virus. The illness is usually mild with symptoms lasting for several days to a week after being bitten by an infected mosquito.
Some $60 million is being distributed to US states and territories in an attempt to protect people from the Zika virus and from birth defects when pregnant women are infected, the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) announced in a press release on Thursday.
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But the state hasn’t been able to fill most of the $15 million in emergency Zika funding requests, and Congress left on a seven-week vacation without giving the Obama administration any of the $1.9 billion it sought to battle Zika. Though the evidence seems to point to an American mosquito as the source of the virus, the CDC and Florida health officials have not confirmed the case and are still investigating the situation. “The CDC needs the money yesterday”.
