The Food and Drug Administration has warned South Florida blood banks against accepting any donations as officials investigate local mosquitos carrying Zika.
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Florida health officials are investigating two more mysterious cases of Zika infection that do not appear to be related to travel, bringing the total to four.
“Additionally, FDA recommends that adjacent and nearby counties implement the precautions above to help maintain the safety of the blood supply as soon as possible”, said the federal agency.
Blood banks in the two counties said they would begin screening donations for Zika virus using an FDA approved test beginning Friday, but it was unclear whether or when collections in South Florida had ceased Thursday.
Public health departments don’t have the money or staff to test everyone for Zika, so many cases are never detected, Hotez said.
This week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued updated recommendations on how to prevent the spread of the virus which has been linked to birth defects. Although a decline in cases of Zika infection has been reported in some countries, or in some parts of countries (consistent with expected seasonal trends for other mosquito-borne diseases), Zika virus continues to spread geographically to areas where competent vectors are present.
They also stressed extreme caution for travelers to the Games who have pregnant partners at home and recommended that men and women with pregnant partners refrain from unprotected sexual contact for the duration of the pregnancy upon returning.
Most incidents of Zika in the US have been linked with trips to the Caribbean or Latin America, though Florida’s state surgeon general announced they were looking into “local transmission” by mosquitos. The District’s laboratory surveillance program routinely monitors WNV activity by collecting mosquitoes and testing them for the virus.
As of July 28, there are 381 people with the Zika virus in Florida.
For a mosquito to transmit the virus, it has to pick it up from an infected person. The authors also looked at a temporal association between Zika infection and an increase in cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome.
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The primary concern in Oklahoma is West Nile virus, a mosquito-borne disease spread by the Culex mosquito, causing illnesses, hospitalizations and even death of some persons, especially those over the age of 50 years.
