Florida has found the Zika virus in three groups of mosquitoes trapped in Miami Beach – the first time this has happened in the continental US – and authorities are blaming a particular flower for making mosquito control much more hard.
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Meanwhile, in south Florida, where almost 50 cases of Zika have been reported in non-travelers, officials said they trapped the first mosquitoes that tested positive for the virus, further confirming reports of local US transmission.
“This is disappointing but not surprising”, said Adam Putnam, the Florida commissioner of agriculture.
The health department said it had tested more than 40,000 mosquitoes since May, and that the three samples were the first to test positive.
The virus, which is known to cause devastating birth defects, spreads from humans to mosquitoes and back to human through bites, but the insects, which have a lifespan of only a few weeks, do not spread the disease among their own population.
The small section in Miami Beach where the mosquitoes were found is an area within the current zone already being treated for local transmission cases.
On Thursday, Malaysia’s Health Ministry says a woman who traveled to Singapore became that country’s first Zika case.
Insisting that Thailand does not have a Zika outbreak and that the affected areas were well controlled, Piyasakol called on people to help eradicate the breeding grounds of Zika-carrying Aedes aegypti mosquitoes and larvae at home, workplace or public venues.
Since then, about 95 more samples have been taken from Miami-Dade County and those groups tested negative for the virus.
Robert Robbins, director of environmental resources management in Palm Beach County, said finding positive mosquito samples is not unusual.
Miami-Dade County’s mosquito control team will continue to conduct inspections around the areas the Zika-positive mosquitoes were found, according to the release. News stories displayed here appear in our category for General and are licensed via a specific agreement between LongIsland.com and The Associated Press, the world’s oldest and largest news organization.
Experts have warned for months now that Zika-infected mosquitos in Florida was a matter of when and not if.
“This is the first time we have found a Zika virus positive mosquito pool in the continental United States”, confirmed Erin Sykes, a CDC spokeswoman. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said it is running out of funds to fight the virus.
“Dump out standing water wherever it is around your property”, Brian Todd, public information officer for the Metro Public Health Department, said.
The high commission said they were in “close touch” with the ministry and other relevant government agencies in Singapore and monitoring the situation closely.
“Over time, we expect Zika cases to emerge from more areas”, Singapore’s Minister for Health Gan Kim Yong said.
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The mosquito-borne illness is especially unsafe for pregnant women and has been linked to serious birth defects.
