“The reason no one paid much attention to Zika virus besides us is that it causes very mild disease in adults”. “Mosquito control is a team effort between the mosquito teams and the community”. Mosquitoes only need standing water to spawn. Different mosquitos spread different viruses and bite at different times of the day. Experiments with Oxitec’s GE mosquitoes call for large numbers of modified males to be released in the wild to mate with female mosquitoes and produce offspring that are unable to develop.
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In bordering Mexico locally transmitted cases have also been confirmed.
People usually don’t get sick enough to go to the hospital, and they very rarely die of Zika.
Last year, the Aedes population in San Diego County grew because of the unusually warm weather, said Chris Conlan, supervising vector ecologist for the county. The West Nile mosquito feeds off birds and likes to stay outside. They’re now found in at least 12 counties in California, according to the state health department. Aedes mosquitoes are the species that carry various diseases, including Zika. “We know a lot about the biology of these mosquitoes, and we know that they do not breed in those types of habitats”, she says.
Others said there is just not the same level of immediacy and understanding of this virus as there was of Ebola, where thousands of Africans were dying within weeks of contracting it, and Zika moves more slowly and federal officials also have yet to formally announce a single domestic case. “We have a narrow window of opportunity to scale up Zika prevention measures, and that window is closing”.
Brazil now has 1,400 cases of microcephaly; the link between Zika and the birth defect was first discovered in that country last fall. To date, 157 pregnant women in the US have reported symptoms. “All the cases in IN have been travel-related”. Florida was second with 109, and California’s 44 cases put it in third. And Florida, a state where the disease could thrive, is shorthanded when it comes to fighting it.
Among 836 Zika cases in US territories, 832 were contracted locally. Most people who are infected show few or no symptoms. It was able to ward off Aedes mosquitoes for 7 hours. In Texas, health officials said 50 are on order and they’ll likely request more.
The company’s experiments “have resulted in reduction of the wild population by more than 90 percent”, said Oxitec spokesman Matthew Warren.
Regardless of how hearty your constitution is, you are going to want to gear up for 2016’s mosquito season. So, it is not just from dusk until dawn we have to worry about. Bti effectively targets mosquito larvae.
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A still-undiscovered Zika vaccine and improved sanitation would be more effective solutions, said Jaydee Hanson, senior policy analyst for the Center for Food Safety.
