A HEALTH expert has warned he expects one in four people in the United States territory of Puerto Rico to be infected with the Zika virus before the year’s end. Those cases stem from people who were infected elsewhere and brought the virus into Florida.
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The Zika virus was first reported in a monkey living in the Zika Forest in Uganda in 1947, and spread to humans in Africa and Asia within a few years.
Canada’s public health agency has confirmed the country’s first case of Zika-related defects in a fetus.
Although, until this point, the primary focus was on transmission mainly coming from mosquitoes carrying the virus, there is a new threat.
Garcia recently authorized the use of Bti, an organic larvicide, to fight the spread of Zika after rejecting aerial spraying with the insecticide naled as proposed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
As is the case with MI, there have been no cases of Zika virus transmitted through mosquitoes in Ohio. Areas with warm tropical environments are where the mosquitoes will continue to thrive.
In Washington, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell on Thursday said she has authorized shifting some $81 million in her agency to keep research moving forward on a Zika vaccine. That has now increased to 28 cases, according to Florida health officials. Officials say Hawaii has no locally acquired Zika cases.
Although the virus is relatively mild in most cases, pregnant women who are infected with Zika risk giving birth to babies with a congenital defect called microcephaly, which causes an abnormally small head.
The Obama administration in February requested $US1.9 billion to fight Zika, but the bill hasn’t advanced in the Republican-controlled lower house of Congress because it has been tied to funding for Planned Parenthood, which provides abortions.
To contain the spread of the disease by sexual means, all men and women who are traveling to places where Zika is spreading rampantly are being told to abstain from sex for at least eight weeks, or to use condoms for at least six months. “I want to reemphasize the importance that citizens have in actively participating alongside the authorities in prevention efforts against the virus”. More than 70 percent of those surveyed said they were concerned about the virus, but less than 10 percent of those with concerns changed their travel plans, according to researchers at the university’s Tourism Crisis Management Initiative (TCMI).
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Secretary Burwell declared the public health emergency under section 319 of the Public Health Service Act.
