On Friday, Singapore reported 38 new cases of locally transmitted Zika infection.
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City officials said they still have a few places where bromeliads will be dug up, because their leaves are the flawless place for water to sit and breed mosquitoes.
“This is disappointing but not surprising”, state Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam said in a statement Thursday.
Officials in the city-state, one of the world’s largest financial centres, reported the first locally transmitted infection on Saturday.
Mosquitoes travel just a small radius-not more than 150 meters-during their short lifespans, so the positive tests allow officials to create a detailed map of Zika risks.
Zika infections in pregnant women have been shown to cause microcephaly – a severe birth defect in which the head and brain are undersized – as well as other brain abnormalities.
“They gave us very convincing data”, said Dr. David Heymann, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who led the panel of experts.
Dr. David Heymann, chair of the World Health Organization emergency committee, said that in the absence of any effective treatments or vaccines for the disease – and given past failures to wipe out the mosquitoes that mostly spread Zika – it will largely be up to individuals to avoid infection through the use of insect repellent and wearing long sleeves and pants.
Zika is primarily spread by the female Aedes mosquito, which is active mostly in the daytime. Using that criteria, the study confirmed that eight countries would be at the greatest risk for Zika transmission.
This comes two days after the first case on Malaysian soil was reported in a woman who is believed to have contracted it while visiting her daughter in neighbouring Singapore. Some children born with microcephaly can live productive lives, but the infants most affected tend not to survive long. The Zika virus, spread by the Aedes mosquito, is especially unsafe for pregnant women as their babies may be born with neurological disorders, including microcephaly.
New research published in August scanned babies’ brains to determine how the virus affected them.
Up to 5,000 passengers a month travel to these countries from places where Zika is endemic.
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Not everyone who gets infected present with symptoms that is why it is important to avoid mosquito bites.
