Most mosquito-caused Zika cases in Florida are in the Miami area, not the tourist mecca of Orlando.
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“The find is disappointing, but not surprising”, Commissioner of Agriculture Adam H. Putnam said in a statement.
Some new Zika cases have been found beyond the cluster area where the virus was initially detected.
In all, 49 non-travel related cases of the virus have been found in Florida since July while 576 travel-related cases have been confirmed. “These are probably the number one breeding area for mosquitoes”, said Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez.
All confirmed cases have been admitted to hospitals where they will stay until they have tested negative for the virus.
“This is a very, very hard mosquito to control”, said Gimenez.
Although Zika was first identified in 1947, the virus wasn’t considered a major health threat until a major outbreak in Brazil a year ago revealed that Zika can lead to severe birth defects when pregnant women are infected.
But with 115 cases, the situation is worsening fast, according to the US Centre for Disease Control that added the city state to its list of Zika-affected countries that pregnant women should avoid.
“I have directed DOH to aggressively expand testing and outreach efforts in the areas around the traps that caught the positive mosquitoes”, Scott said in a statement.
He also mentioned that scientists were still learning about this new disease, citing unobvious symptoms of Zika.
U.S. health officials have concluded that Zika infections in pregnant women can cause microcephaly, a birth defect marked by small head size that can lead to severe developmental problems in babies.
A hurricane or tropical storm hitting Florida may worsen the Zika virus outbreak, U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan warned in a letter Thursday urging congressional leaders to take immediate action on more federal funding to combat the disease, which can cause severe birth defects.
He said her mild rashes cleared up in two or three days and the last blood test was negative but the hospital chose to keep her for a little longer just to ensure there would be no transmission to other people.
To conduct the modelling study, researchers gathered data on airline ticket sales from 689 cities with one or more airports in the Zika-endemic region travelling to Africa or Asia-Pacific from December 2014 to November 2015.
More than 120 Zika cases have been reported in Texas, but all have involved people who had traveled to places where the virus has broken out.
The Zika virus has mild effects on most people, but can be fatal for unborn children.
The country’s first Zika patient is believed to been infected when she and her husband visited their daughter in Singapore on August 19 and returned on August 21. “There are concerns with microcephaly in the babies, developmental delays and fetal loss”.
This is the first time mosquitoes with the virus have been found in the continental United States.
“As new scientific and epidemiological information regarding Zika virus has become available, it’s clear that additional precautionary measures are necessary”, said Luciana Borio, M.D., the FDA’s acting chief scientist.
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“There’s the possibility that you could have a surge in mosquitoes, and if we then have introductions of Zika into those populations, we could potentially have spread to people”, Schaffner explained.
