He also announced “Dine Out Wynwood” on September 30 to encourage people to visit restaurants and businesses there.
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Wynwood was the first place on the USA mainland where mosquitoes began transmitting Zika. That prompted state officials to create a warning box around the Wynwood community to show where the virus was spreading.
Pregnant women are still being told to be cautious in a part of Florida where the Zika virus was being spread by mosquitoes, but an advisory has been lifted.
Of 83 non-travel-related Zika cases in Florida residents, 31 were associated with Wynwood and 35 with Miami Beach, Florida Department of Health spokeswoman Mara Gabineri said in an email Monday.
“Everybody should be coming back here and enjoying themselves”, Scott said. The agency continues to advise that pregnant women consider postponing non-essential travel to all of Miami-Dade County – including the Wynwood area.
“We understand that this has been a hard time for Wynwood residents and visitors”, CDC Director Tom Frieden said in a statement. “Still, we encourage people not to let down their guard”.
“We have purchased additional lab equipment, and we have additional personnel from CDC”. This decision came after five new cases of the mosquito-borne virus allegedly caused severe birth defects in the region.
The lifting of the state travel warning was welcome news for city officials and business owners like Joseph Furst, who said they have “suffocated” during the 49 days that the travel warning was in effect.
The news doesn’t mean that Zika has been eradicated throughout South Florida.
The Miami neighborhood where a local outbreak of Zika was first detected has been declared free of ongoing Zika transmission.
Over the weekend, the CDC expanded its suspected zone of transmission to a larger swath of Miami Beach than previously identified, totaling 4.5 square miles.
Officials used both aerial and other forms of insecticide spraying to try and kill the Aedes aegypti mosquito that is responsible for almost all of the virus transmission.
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“When we announced Wynwood as the first place in our nation to have local transmission of the Zika virus, Wynwood was immediately sent into the national spotlight”, Scott said in a statement today. “And now they’re telling you that you can’t go outside”, he said.
