Active Zika outbreaks have been reported in at least 50 countries or territories, majority in the Americas, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
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The new funding will support activities to protect the public, especially pregnant women, through surveillance and investigation, strengthening lab capacity, and improving mosquito control and monitoring.
Zika has been linked to an outbreak of the rare birth defect, microcephaly, which causes babies to be born with unusually small heads.
The infant’s mother was infected with Zika “while in an area with ongoing Zika transmission”, and the baby “is positive for Zika”, said the New York City Department of Health.
The recommendations come as Florida officials investigate what may be the first case of Zika in the continental United States caused by the bite of a local mosquito.
Now they say they found the virus in live mosquitoes. To date, all Zika virus cases in the US are associated with travel to an affected area.
“Just because they don’t find Zika in an Aedes mosquito doesn’t mean there is no transmission”, he said. There now is no vaccine and the main defense is to avoid mosquito bites. Fifteen of those individuals were infected by sexual transmission and there is one case of a laboratory-acquired infection.
In early 2015 the first Zika infections were described in Brazil, harbingers of an explosive hemispheric epidemic. All of those were related to travel or sex with an infected person who had traveled.
The big danger from Zika is to pregnant women.
The Culex quinquefasciatus is known in Brazil as the domestic mosquito and in Recife, where the majority of Zika cases in the country have been registered, the population of this mosquito is estimated to be 20 times larger than that of the Aedes aegypti.
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Still, even suspected cases trigger costly responses, as inspectors sweep areas to eliminate their breeding sites, set traps and kill any mosquitoes they see. Zika virus was confirmed in 21 percent of the blood samples using a PCR-based test. No pregnant females were studied. Other uncertainties surround the incubation period of the virus and how Zika interacts with other viruses that are transmitted by mosquitoes, such as dengue.
