“… ‘Our experts at the CDC, the folks on the front lines have been doing their best in making due by moving funds from other areas, but now the money we need to fight Zika is rapidly running out, ‘ Obama said at a press conference at the Pentagon”.
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The number of people that have contracted the disease locally in Miami has grown to 16.
Zika funding remains stalled six months after the Republican-led Congress was asked to approve $1.9 billion in emergency funds. Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that handles health agency budgets, crafted a $1.1 billion compromise bill that couldn’t pass.
But Congress recessed without appropriating emergency funding to deal with the fast-moving virus that is arguably on the doorstep to becoming a public health crisis. We tell them to finish their homework before meeting up with friends or playing on their smartphones.
The first Zika-related death in Puerto Rico was reported in late April and involved a 70-year-old man from the San Juan metro area. “How is that not political”, said Bongino. Local transmission occurs when an infected mosquito in the area bites another person in the area and transmits the virus.
Every new lab-confirmed case of Zika virus that is identified in OH is investigated and followed up by the local health department to prevent mosquito-borne local transmission of Zika. The virus is particularly risky for pregnant women because it can trigger microcephaly, which is a birth defect that causes a baby’s head to be smaller than expected and its brain to be underdeveloped. “Our Centers for Disease Control & Prevention have given a travel alert saying that pregnant women should not travel there”.
State officials say there have been 537 confirmed cases of Zika in NY so far, though all appear to be connected to travel to affected areas. As in all of the other cases in Louisiana, the patients travelled to regions in the Americas with ongoing Zika transmission and sought medical care in Louisiana after returning, where tests confirmed the viral infection. Any illusion that this mysterious menace would not take hold in local mosquito populations and threaten multitudes more Floridians is gone. Zika can cause severe defects for unborn babies, including microcephaly.
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On Wednesday, the federal government approved a $6 million grant to help Texans fight off the virus. Doctors recommend ultrasounds every three to four weeks, and frequent ultrasounds should be continued even if early results don’t show abnormalities, since some issues, such as microcephaly, may not appear until later in pregnancy.
