This week, Florida Gov. Rick Scott declared a state of emergency in four of his state’s counties in response to reports of nine cases of Zika, all believed to be travelers who contracted the disease outside of the country. “Every European country in which Aedes mosquitoes are present can be at risk for the spread of Zika virus disease”.
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The counties are Miami-Dade in south Florida, Hillsborough in the Tampa Bay region, Lee County in southwest Florida and Santa Rosa County in the Florida Panhandle. Earlier this week, the World Health Organization declared the virus to be a public health emergency, which is likely to prompt global action from donors, lawmakers and researchers.
“Anyone developing symptoms within two weeks of returning to Nebraska from a Zika-affected area should notify his or her physician”, said Shavonna Lausterer, Director of the Sarpy/Cass Department of Health and Wellness.
Generally so mild that it only causes symptoms in about one out of five cases, Zika began to raise alarm bells after doctors here started to notice a possible link between the virus – spread by the Aedes aegypti mosquito – and the birth defect microcephaly. But it will still make disease-mapping easier and quicker, by identifying Zika samples that can then be sent to be sequenced at a full-fledged lab. “Our goal is to understand what’s happening in remote areas of Brazil and actually interfere with the process”, Ferreira said. “Last week I was in Brazil and it was the Zika virus, next week I’m heading to Ukraine and there’s a lot of political unrest there”.
Sarasota health experts urged calm, stressing that there has not been a local transmission of the virus.
At least seven cases have been reported in the Houston area in people who have traveled to affected areas.
“We’re appropriately briefed by the C.O.C. (Canadian Olympic Committee) about the threats of Zika virus”, explained Mian.
How did the CDC confirm that the Zika virus was transmitted sexually? The best bet, officials say, is to protect against mosquitoes.
But Ranson says the idea is to head off dengue, chikungunya and Zika outbreaks before they occur.
“Until the law is implemented, we’re legally prohibited from sending samples overseas”, said Paulo Gadelha, president of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, Brazil’s premier state-run research institute for tropical diseases.
If you’re a woman traveling to a country where the Zika virus as spread, but have no desire to have children, should you worry?
Oxitec officials insist the company – which has also done projects in Panama and the Caiman Islands – has the capacity to scale up the program to tackle large cities such as Recife, a sprawling seaside metropolis of 1.5 million that’s the epicenter of Brazil’s Zika outbreak. “Given this potential risk, although still considered rare, current advice in the United Kingdom is that individuals with a confirmed Zika infection should use condoms for six months”, he said. She’s anxious about the risk of introducing genetically modified mosquitoes into the environment, she says, especially when there is no imminent risk of disease.
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“It’s probably uncommon, but we can’t say for sure [that Zika is being trasmitted through sex]”, said Dr Peter Hotez, of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas.
