More than 300 federal, state and local health officials gathered at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to talk about just that.
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The World Health Organization declared a global health emergency in February as the virus spread rapidly in the Americas, citing Zika’s link to the birth defect microcephaly and Guillain-Barre syndrome, an autoimmune disorder in adults that can cause paralysis.
15, 2016, US health officials are telling pregnant women to avoid travel to Latin America and Caribbean countries with outbreaks of a tropical illness linked to birth defects. “Urgent action is needed, especially to minimize the risk of exposure during pregnancy”.
Frieden says the response is critical to protect pregnant women and their babies. There have been 312 confirmed cases of Zika virus disease in the continental U.S.as of March 30, according to the CDC. So, cities in like Atlanta and Savannah, Zika can easily infect a large number of people. There is no risk that the virus will spread, the CDPH said.
“We have a few short weeks to stop the Zika virus from gaining a foothold”, McCabe said. “And we are very concerned that Puerto Rico could have hundreds of thousands of Zika infections and potentially thousands of pregnant women infected with Zika”, said CDC Director Dr Tom Frieden. Daniel Kass, New York City’s deputy commissioner for environmental health, estimated the city, which has high volumes of travelers and prior outbreaks of Yellow fever and a recent case of dengue, will spend $5 million to $6 million on Zika preparedness.
Dr. Ettestad said he had redirected part of a grant from the CDC for Ebola to hire a graduate student who will map where Aedes mosquitoes breed in the state, information he said the state now doesn’t have. The woman was not pregnant and had not traveled out of the country. These kits contain insect repellent, condoms (to prevent the sexual transmission of the virus) and larvicide tablets (that can kill mosquito larvae) to treat standing water. While the state does not have a consistent mosquito control program, Fitzgerald, who is coordinating the state’s Zika response, said her department is filling nine new positions specifically for state-wide mosquito surveillance to help identify and clean up potential mosquito breeding grounds.
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“If we wait until we see widespread transmission in the United States, if we wait until the public is panicking because they’re seeing babies born with birth defects, we will have waited too late”, commented Amy Pope, who is a deputy USA homeland security adviser and serves as a deputy assistant to President Barack Obama.
