Realizing the fight against the devastating Zika virus will hinge on effective mosquito control, federal, state and municipal health officials met at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Friday to share strategies and plead for federal dollars to stop the spread of the disease. Lazear said economic and lifestyle factors in the USA make an outbreak similar to the one in Latin America unlikely.
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“This is an opportunity to get ahead of the curve”, he told the summit’s attendees.
A technician from a British biotec company inspects the pupae of genetically modified Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, a vector for transmitting the Zika virus. In pregnant mothers, the virus has been linked to microcephaly, a birth defect that causes brain damage and an abnormally small head in newborn babies.
Officials don’t expect Zika to be a big problem, though, in the USA for a number of reasons, including the widespread use of air conditioning and screens. Zika is transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes, particularly Aedes aegypti and to a lesser extent Aedes albopictus. The risk posed by the depraved Islamic State tops this year’s agenda but concerns about North Korea are also commanding focus. They now know that sexual transmission from infected men to their partners is more common than previously thought.
The website said that 29 people contracted Zika while traveling outside the U.S. All of the cases are travel-associated meaning they were not acquired in the U.S. The state has worked for years with mosquito-control commissions in each county to monitor and eradicate mosquito populations, to control the spread of West Nile virus and other diseases.
Asked to quantify the risk to the United States, Frieden declined to predict how many Zika cases might be seen in the continental United States in the coming months.
The Florida Department of Health says that person contracted the virus while traveling in Suriname.
Across the border in Reynosa, Mexican health officials are also spraying for mosquitoes.
Zika is quickly spreading across the Americas. That’s different from the truck- and aerial-spraying seen in conventional mosquito eradication efforts.
However, New York State and city health officials said the new maps are misleading. Congressional leaders have not formally voted on the request.
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This protein is also a key target of the immune system’s response to the virus, making it potentially useful in vaccine development. However there is no record in the U.S of such a transmission occurring. “The message there is it’s not like a mosquito becomes infected and goes miles away”.
