Florida has detected its first cases of locally transmitted Zika, which could pose a threat to the state’s sensitive – and important – tourist industry.
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CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said the agency has several teams ready for when states request help with Zika, including Florida. “We anticipate that there may be additional cases of “homegrown” Zika in the coming weeks”.
Because we are in mosquito season, CDC continues to encourage everyone, especially pregnant women and women planning to become pregnant, to protect themselves from mosquito bites. “This is a silent epidemic that is rapidly spreading through Puerto Rico”, Frieden said.
Pointing to concerns about transmission of the Zika virus, the federal Food and Drug Administration on Thursday requested that blood banks in Miami-Dade and Broward counties temporarily halt collecting blood until safeguards are put in place. An infected mosquito can then spread the virus to other people. Florida officials said they are still looking into the cases and have not come to a conclusion.
So far, the Florida Department of Health believes that active transmissions of the Zika virus are occurring in one small area in Miami-Dade County, just north of downtown.
“If I were a pregnant woman right now, I would go on the assumption that there’s mosquito transmission all over the Miami area”, warned Dr. Peter Hotez, a tropical medicine expert at the Baylor College of Medicine.
There are already more than 1,600 confirmed cases of Zika in the continental United States.
“Florida is taking an aggressive approach”, Scott said. “We have worked hard to stay ahead of the spread of Zika and prepare for the worst”.
“Absolutely not”, says Thomas Scott, an epidemiologist at the University of California, Davis, who has been studying where Zika is most likely to appear in the U.S.
The virus first started in Brazil and was mainly carried through mosquitoes.
Now there is no vaccine for Zika, however, research is underway.
More than 106 million people visited Florida last year, which was the fifth consecutive record year for visitations, according to Visit Florida, an organization that promotes tourism in the Sunshine State.
Women who are pregnant are most at-risk to the virus, as Zika is known to cause birth defects, including microcephaly, a condition that causes babies to be born with abnormally small heads. The southern state, however, has also seen 400 confirmed cases of the risky virus. But other methods of Zika transmission, such as travel to a stricken country or sex with an infected person, have been ruled out. “We’re committed to sharing as much as we can as soon as we can”.
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The CDC has urged pregnant women in the United States not to visit the 60-plus countries and territories where Zika is prevalent.
