The Florida Department of Health announced Tuesday evening that it is investigating the first possible non-travel related case of Zika virus in Miami-Dade County.
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The man who died in late June caught the virus while travelling overseas to an area where mosquitoes are known to spread Zika and had an unusually high level of the virus in his blood, officials said.
The virus has been known to spread only via mosquitoes or directly from person to person through sexual contact.
The current Zika outbreak was first detected in Brazil a year ago and has spread through the Americas by mosquito, but has yet to reach the continental United States in that manner. The vast majority of cases have occurred because people were infected when they traveled to a country where the virus was spreading.
The Health Department has a number of free services available to pregnant women, including Zika testing; home inspections for mosquito larvae or breeding areas; larvacide treatments; and Zika-prevention kits, which include mosquito netting, insect repellent and permethrin spray repellent for clothing. Though the virus can live in urine, blood and saliva – in addition to semen and vaginal fluid – there were previously no cases of it being spread in those ways.
Zika virus particles (colored purple in this scan) infecting cells.
Condoms or abstinence are also recommended to reduce the risk of infection by people traveling to or living in places where Zika is circulating.
Zika prevention kits and mosquito repellant are being handed out to those in the area, particularly pregnant women. There are now no reports of Zika virus being locally transmitted by mosquitoes in Lewisville.
The Denton County Public Health Department did not provide any identifying information about patient other than that the person resides in Lewisville and that the case was contracted during a recent visit to Nicaragua.
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CDC officials reported that epidemiologists are interviewing and conducting blood tests of the dead man’s family members and healthcare workers who may have had contact with the man, who died in June. The male relative had developed a mild Zika illness and quickly recovered. Zika is typically transmitted through the bite of a tropical mosquito that is not usually present in cold, mountainous Utah and also has been transmitted sexually. “The degree of infection with the virus that a person has could reflect how infectious they are”, he added.
