“Zika is now here”, said Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The virus causes fever, rash and pain, and it also causes severe birth defects when pregnant women contract the virus through mosquito bites or from a partner.
Advertisement
Anyone bitten by mosquitoes in Florida could help public health experts trying to track the disease through the Mosquito Byte! smartphone app, a project led by North Carolina State University entomologist Michael Reiskind.
“You only have a small window”.
Florida authorities have reported the first sign of local Zika transmission in the continental United States, concluding that mosquitoes likely infected four people with the virus that can cause a rare but serious birth defect. Although doctors have diagnosed 1,658 Zika cases in the continental USA and Hawaii, until now all the cases were related to travel and, in one case, a lab accident.
Residents in the trendy Miami neighborhood thought to harbour Zika said the local spread of the virus had been inevitable, given the large numbers of tourists from other countries with outbreaks. “We’re just the front of it”. She did not reply to questions about why the state decided not to bring in a CDC team. The health risk will drop further in the fall after the region’s mosquito season peak, Reiskind said.
And now health agencies are recommending that pregnant women avoid travel to the Sunshine State.
The trust’s infection control lead, Dr Gavin Boyd said: “There is extremely low risk of contracting Zika virus in the United Kingdom as the mosquito that transmits the virus is not present in the UK”.
So far, 1.650 Zika infections have been reported in the U.S. and four Florida based patients have tested positive for the virus from local mosquitoes.
CDC is closely coordinating with Florida officials who are leading the ongoing investigations, and at the state’s request, sent a CDC medical epidemiologist to provide additional assistance. “Only with that can you identify the breeding sites and eliminate them”. Public Health England has updated its country-specific Zika advice page to include the USA state as an area of “moderate risk”. Republican lawmakers proposed much smaller sums, and talks with their Democratic counterparts stalled before Congress adjourned for the summer. “For the last seven months, doctors and scientists have been asking Congress for resources to fight the virus and save lives, but Congressional Republicans have continued to ignore the biggest worldwide health crisis since Ebola”.
– Continue investigations in concert with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to learn all about Zika as an emerging disease.
Advertisement
NASA’s scientific model published in April predicted that the Zika virus pandemic that has afflicted much of Latin America and the Caribbean was most likely to gain a foothold in the continental USA through South Florida during this summer.
