Mara Gambineri, a spokeswoman for the health department, said the Zika prevention kits were due to arrive Wednesday and will contain items recommended by the CDC, including bed nets, condoms and tablets that kill mosquito larvae in standing water.
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Thailand does not have active transmission of the virus, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but it has reported sporadic cases of Zika since 2012, according to the Thai Ministry of Public Health. The first non-travel related case was just announced in Miami this week.
Steve Presley, Ph.D., serves as Director of the Biological Threat Research Laboratory at Texas Tech’s Institute of Environmental and Human Health. But none had been caused by local mosquitoes, the CDC said.
Dr Sam Allen, an expert in infectious diseases from Crosshouse Hospital in Kilmarnock, Scotland, claims that all of those visiting Rio de Janeiro this summer are at risk of contracting the virus.
“We can’t wait around”, said CDC spokesman Tom Skinner. Presley believes the low mosquito numbers are due to nearly drought-like conditions on the South Plains. The virus is typically transmitted through the bite of Aedes mosquitoes.
All but one reported case of the virus in the United States so far have been in travelers, but the virus can be sexually transmitted.
The Louisiana Department of Health has received confirmation of one additional case of Zika virus. In February, the World Health Organization declared the virus, which has spread throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, an global emergency. The man who died in late June caught the virus while traveling overseas to an area where mosquitoes are known to spread Zika and had an unusually high level of the virus in his blood, officials said. Governor Rick Scott, a Republican, about the potentially locally-transmitted case during the day. “But we would have to have lots of travelers and lots of mosquitoes and the Florida environment is much more conducive for that”.
In Brazil, there has been mounting evidence linking Zika infection in pregnant women to a rare birth defect called microcephaly, in which a newborn’s head is smaller than normal and the brain may not have developed properly. Until now, the more than 1,300 Zika cases reported in the continental United States appeared to be contracted overseas, or by sexual contact.
Staples said the infected caregiver recovered quickly.
The same precautions apply at home, and people should also make sure their house is mosquito-proof by ensuring their windows and doors have intact screens. The transmission to the caregiver was discovered after a doctor noticed Zika-like symptoms.
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“We’ve got about a dozen of these traps that really target the aedes mosquitoes, aedes eqypti and aedes albopictus”, added Reisinger.
