The Florida Department of Health announced Thursday that another Zika case potentially not related to travel was being investigated in Broward County.
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The CDC recommends women who are pregnant or are considering becoming pregnant postpone travel to Zika-affected areas.
She has since recovered but the potential effects on the fetus are not yet known, said Utah County Health Department spokeswoman Aislynn Tolman-Hill.
With the looming possibility the Zika virus will spread through the United States – with South Florida at the forefront – prevention is key. The baby and mother are now in care and being monitored by physicians. The baby has other brain problems as well.
Zika virus was found in Culex quinquefasciatus in the northeastern city of Recife but this species is 20 times more common there than Aedes aegypti, which up till now was being identified as the main vector.
“Today, I am the bearer of sad news: We have confirmed New York City’s first baby born with microcephaly associated with the Zika virus”, Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Dr. Herminia Palacio said in a statement released on Friday.
Although the primary means of transmission of Zika is through the bite of an infected mosquito, the virus can also be spread by sexual contact and can be passed from mother to baby.
The deceased patient reportedly traveled outside the country where Zika cases are high and apparently caught the virus there. No cases have been confirmed as stemming from mosquito bites inside the continental United States.
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.
“The way you prevent a locally transmitted case from becoming sustained and disseminated is good mosquito control”, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the infectious disease director at the National Institutes of Health, said last week.
The money will go toward studying the disease, improving mosquito control and participation in a registry to monitor pregnant Zika-infected women and their babies.
CDC officials have said repeatedly they expect to see cases of local transmission of the Zika virus this summer in southern states with warm, humid climates such as Florida, Louisiana and Texas.
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To determine whether a case was caused by local transmission, health workers need to survey households and neighbors within a 150-yard (137 meters) radius of an infected person’s residence, Fischer said at a CDC workshop on Thursday.
