According to a statement from the governor’s office, the person had recently traveled to Miami-Dade County, and Florida Health officials are still saying that active transmission of Zika is limited to a 1-square mile area of the Wynwood neighborhood, just north of downtown Miami. If the virus should spread beyond its now known location, it could threaten some of the state’s largest tourist attractions, like DisneyWorld and Universal Orlando, along with beachfront cities along the east coast like Palm Beach and Port St. Lucie. The health center is inside the “Zika zone”, an area of Miami where people have been infected by local mosquitoes. The virus causes microcephaly, a birth defect that causes the baby’s head to be smaller than expected compared with other babies of the same sex and age.
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With the school year about to begin, Governor Scott said the state is sending mosquito repellent to school districts in affected and neighbouring counties.
The majority of Florida’s 2.7 million public-school students return to classrooms on Wednesday, followed later in the month by hundreds of thousands of students beginning their fall semesters at state colleges and universities.
This brings the count of non-travel related cases of Zika virus to 17 as of August 8.
Investigators are looking into the new case and going door to door to take samples and look for signs of a growing outbreak, Florida Gov.
But until recently, virtually all USA cases of Zika had involved people infected by mosquitoes while traveling in countries where the disease is epidemic or by having sex with partners who were bitten there.
Pregnant woman should not travel to Zika-impacted areas.
“For perspective, that’s a one-square-mile area in a state that covers more than 65,000 square miles”, Visit Florida said.
Aside from mosquitoes, Zika can be spread through sexual contact in some cases, the CDC notes.
“Your federal and state resources may not be as great as we think they are, if there is an outbreak throughout the southern part of the United States”, Thompson said.
Other tourists said as long as Zika mosquitos aren’t found in Southwest Florida, they’ll keep visiting.
Hughes agreed that microcephaly was a “devastating disease”, but added that children with birth defects were “nothing new”.
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“If you need to go to Miami County and you’re considering starting a family, you should speak to your health care provider first; and if you’re pregnant and can avoid traveling, that would be better”, Dr. Goje says.
