“Pregnant women should avoid this area and make every effort to prevent mosquito bites if they live or work there”, said CDC Director Tom Frieden.
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“If everybody would get rid of standing water, use bug repellent, use protective gear, then with what mosquito boards are going to be doing and continue to do around the state, we will be successful”, Scott says.
People who have visited this area since June 15th (when the first infection is believe to have occurred) or later should avoid getting pregnant for eight weeks, health officials advised. Zika can spread from an infected mother into her fetus’ developing brain and kill its cells, resulting in babies being born with unusually small heads, called microcephaly. Based on DOH’s investigations, two locations have been ruled out for possible local transmissions of the Zika virus.
But now, mosquitoes are blamed for spreading the disease in a small section of South Florida, leading to fears that the disease could spread much more rapidly than anticipated. The White House said the CDC team would be deployed to Florida “in short order”. A Utah man became infected while caring for his dying father, who contracted Zika while overseas and had unusually high levels of the virus in his blood. Pregnant women who already live in the area have been urged to undergo testing for the virus, which can cause birth defects. Dr. Peter Hotez, a tropical medicine expert at the Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, said the CDC should expand the travel advisory to include all of Miami-Dade County. The 14 locally transmitted cases bring the state’s total to 400.
It remains to be seen how many Zika infections would have to be confirmed in an area before state or federal officials issue similar warnings for parts of the US mainland.
Florida became the first state in the nation to confirm locally acquired Zika virus cases on Friday.
The new cases are clustered in the same square-mile neighborhood in Miami-Dade County identified last week.
According to the governor’s press release, of the 10 new cases, six aren’t showing symptoms, and were “identified from the door-to-door community survey that DOH is conducting”.
Sexual partners of pregnant women who have traveled to Wynwood, or other areas with Zika outbreaks, should use condoms or other barrier methods for the rest of a woman’s pregnancy, the CDC said.
Schaffner and Hotez said the government must come up with proper funding to fight Zika.
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Charles Hunt, state epidemiologist for the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, said the trapping would end sometime in October or November and findings would be published a month or two later.
