The Montgomery County Public Health District reported Thursday that a pregnant woman from Porter contracted the virus while traveling outside the United States in an area known to be a Zika-infected region.
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“As it has been from the beginning, our goal is to eliminate the cycle of transmission by eliminating the mosquitoes”, Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos A. Gimenez said in the news release. Intensive trapping and testing continues.
“People around their homes will be anxious about themselves and their families and neighbors rather than looking for mosquito breeding sites”, Schaffner said.
Public health experts say the funding issue is critical because the Gulf Coast, where the Aedes mosquito that transmits Zika mostly lives, is only halfway through peak mosquito season.
Most of the Zika infections from Florida mosquitoes have been in the Miami area, not the tourist mecca of Orlando and its Walt Disney World, Universal and SeaWorld theme parks. He added that city workers had destroyed dozens of bromeliads, which can serve as breeding grounds for the species of mosquito most capable of transmitting Zika, the Aedes aegypti.
The samples were tested by the Bronson Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory and confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Florida Gulf Coast University.
The Zika virus, which has spread through the Americas and the Caribbean since first being detected in Brazil late past year, is generally a mild disease but can cause microcephaly, a rare birth defect that can lead to serious developmental problems, and has also been linked to other severe fetal brain abnormalities.
“DACS has only found three mosquito samples out of the more than 42,400 individual mosquitoes that have been tested across the state”, Florida Gov. Rick Scott said in a statement. Congress is ready to act on President Barack Obama’s long-stalled request for emergency funds to combat the Zika virus, which has been linked to serious birth defects and other major health problems. Such immunity could potentially exist if Zika virus infections in the past were not diagnosed, either because they were asymptomatic or because symptomatic infections were misdiagnosed due to their clinical similarity to other (arboviral) tropical infectious diseases.
More than 55 million people pass through Singapore’s Changi airport each year.
Until now, officials have said it is “almost certain” that local mosquitoes carry the virus, since 49 people have been infected without traveling overseas. State officials will not disclose the exact locations of the mosquito traps. Among the foreigners infected, 23 are from China, 15 are from India and 10 from Bangladesh, the Health Ministry said Thursday.
The danger of mosquito-borne Zika infection for pregnant American women became more imminent last month, with two neighborhoods in the Miami area reporting cases of locally acquired infection.
She returned three days later and on Sunday began developing a rash. Her daughter in Singapore tested positive for Zika on Tuesday.
The woman, who displayed mild symptoms of the virus, was taken to KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital on Wednesday.
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But those sprays may have killed off the Zika-infected mosquitoes, hampering tests. About 3,000 babies in Brazil and other countries of the Americas have been born with microcephaly, in which the infant’s head is undersized and the brain underdeveloped.
