“The spread of Zika will not wait for the partisan bickering in Congress to end”. Free testing for Zika is available to any pregnant women in Florida.
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The countries of origin accounting for the most travel associated cases include Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica.
When contracted during or before pregnancy, the virus can cause life-threatening birth defects such as microcephaly, a condition where babies are born with undersized skulls and underdeveloped brains.
Florida’s agriculture department has refused to identify all four locations in Miami Beach where mosquitoes have been found with the virus, citing exemptions under statutes governing the sharing of confidential or exempt information and investigations into the spread of the virus, said spokeswoman Jennifer Meale.
Three days ago a $1.1 billion Zika funding bill failed again in the Senate due to controversial attached provisions.
Cancellations since the first local Zika infection was confirmed in Wynwood in late July have forced Felipe Correa to lay off one employee from his company running tours in Miami, Key West and the Everglades.
There have been 24 sexually transmitted cases reported in the U.S.so far.
President Barack Obama asked Congress for $1.9 billion in emergency Zika funding earlier this year, but the proposal went nowhere in Congress. Lawmakers are now stalled over a bill that would provide $1.1 billion in Zika funding, but would mostly repurpose funding from other programs to foot the bill.
During the forum about the Zika virus at the University of Miami, doctors said that they are encouraging infected women to speak publicly about the health issue so they could call the attention of people.
The United Nations health agency reiterated that mosquito bites are still the primary means of infection with the virus. The WHO said, as in Guinea-Bissau, which has seen a spurt of infections from the African Zika strain, it’s too soon to rule out the possibility of microcephaly and other neurologic complications.
The vast majority of people infected with Zika experience no symptoms or mild ones, such as a fever and a rash.
After Zika was detected in humans in 1954 in Nigeria, serologic evidence-evidence from blood serum-of human infection was reported from at least seven African countries and parts of Asia, including India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia, between 1951 and 1981.
A virus that hasn’t been particularly risky since it was first discovered in a rhesus monkey in Uganda’s Zika forest in 1947 (the first human case was reported in Nigeria seven years later), Zika has grabbed global attention because the virulent form – more than a million infections have been reported from Brazil – is linked to microcephaly, abnormally small heads and brains in foetuses.
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When money is available to municipalities, Greer said, those departments often don’t get a big slice: “It’s easy to see how a local government might say we’re going to fix the potholes or we’re going to hire police sooner than saying we’re going to hire an epidemiologist or we’re going to start trying to build up our vector control capacities”. Pregnant women are advised to avoid the Miami regions where Zika has been found. Aedes mosquitoes are usually active during daytime, but they can be also active at night.
