Florida Governor Rick Scott announced that 5 people have been locally infected with the Zika virus in the Miami Beach area.
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The discovery prompted the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to announce that it was expanding its travel warning for pregnant women to include an area in Miami Beach known for nightclubs, pedestrian thoroughfares and beaches.
Expect Numbers to Go Higher In a news release, Tom Frieden, MD, MPH, director of the CDC said, “We’re in the midst of mosquito season and expect more Zika infections in the days and months to come”.
“We don’t think our advice to wear long sleeves and long trousers is likely to be widely followed in some of these areas”, Frieden said.
Representatives with the Miami-Dade International Airport, the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport and Palm Beach International Airport all said they were working with the Florida Department of Health and installed Zika advisories months ago.
Of the five new cases in Miami Beach, one person is a resident of NY, one person is a resident of Texas and one person is a resident of Taiwan.
Five people tested positive for Zika in Miami Beach; three tourists and two residents.
The size of the zone in Miami Beach where active Zika transmission is occurring is just under 1.5 square miles (3.9 square kilometers).
Health officials say 36 people have been infected by the Zika virus in Wynwood and Miami Beach since July. The disease can be transmitted either through mosquitoes or through sexual activity, and is most commonly associated with birth defects such as microcephaly, which results in an abnormally small head and underdeveloped brain at birth.
Throughout Miami-Dade County, a vast area with two million residents and 20,000 pregnant women, “there is the possibility that there could be transmission that hasn’t yet been identified”, Frieden said during a conference call.
Health officials say symptoms of Zika virus can include fever, headache, conjunctivitis and skin rash, along with joint and muscle pain.
In addition to mosquitoes, the Zika virus can be transmitted through sex.
Ventura County Public Health confirmed that a resident who is not believed to be pregnant recently rested positive for the virus after traveling to Latin America.
“It wasn’t mosquitoes that made it from a Zika area to this area, it was people who had the Zika virus in their body”.
In an email Thursday morning to the mayor and city commissioners, Jimmy Morales said his office had been in “constant communication” with Florida’s Department of Health, and he had been informed of two local Zika cases.
Of all the individuals with Zika, 68 are pregnant women.
The woman’s symptoms were mild and she was never hospitalized.
In the vast majority of other Zika cases in the US, people were infected while traveling in hot zones in the Caribbean and Latin America or through sex with an infected partner.
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“I have repeatedly called on the federal government for these kits”, Scott said, “and as of today we have not received additional resources for them”.
