There have been nine confirmed travel-related instances of the Zika virus in those counties.
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According to Google, the Texas cities of Garland, Dallas and Grapevine topped the list for Zika searches in the past 48 hours. USA health officials say a person in Texas became infected with Zika through sex, in the first case of the illness being transmitted within the United States.
Before this case, there have been only two documented cases linking Zika to sex.
With no vaccine or medication available to prevent or treat Zika infections, South Florida hospital physicians are questioning patients in their emergency rooms about recent travel while adhering to guidelines for care from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Ariana Gomez (@arianachantelg) tweeted, “Zika is ruining my Spring break plans to go to Puerto Rico and I AM NOT HAVING IT”. All previous cases in the US were travelers returning to the USA from countries where the virus was present.
Caribbean public health officials launched a new public awareness and health campaign last week geared toward protecting the region’s $29 billion industry.
For now, the key in infected areas is to try to control mosquitoes and for people to wear adequate clothing, use insect repellent and sleep under bednets, Hartl said.
The World Health Organization declared Monday that the Zika outbreak is a “public health emergency of worldwide concern”.
The virus has been reported in more than 30 countries and is linked with a surge in cases of microcephaly, an untreatable condition in which babies are born with abnormally small head and undeveloped brain. It is found in the southern United States, though no mosquito-borne transmission has been reported in the continental United States to date.
Developing a vaccine could however take years, experts say.
Details about the infected woman have not been released, but she is not pregnant, according to The Dallas Morning News.
Meanwhile, the CDC said it will issue guidance in the coming days on prevention of sexual transmission of the Zika virus, focusing on the male sexual partners of women who are or may be pregnant.
Zika symptoms, such as fever, rash, joint pain and red eyes, are similar to other mosquito-borne diseases, such as dengue and chikungunya, but they are not considered life-threatening for most healthy adults, said Aileen Marty, a physician and professor of infectious diseases in FIU’s Wertheim College of Medicine. Nine people have come to mainland France with Zika this year, but Touraine said there is no risk of epidemic on the mainland.
But there is growing alarm over an apparent link between the current outbreak and both a rise in birth defects and a potentially crippling neurological disorder called Guillain-Barre syndrome. And there have been only 108 high-profile academic papers on Zika since 2001, against more than 4,000 on Ebola, as found in the Web of Science.
Urban areas in the United States are less congested than they are in other countries of the Americas, making it more hard for mosquitoes to spread disease hopping from one person to the next, she said.
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The World Health Organization says a reported case of sexually transmitted Zika virus is raising concerns.
