There are many unknowns with this virus, but what’s certain is that it has arrived in United States territories and is also already affecting Americans who have traveled to areas with Zika virus transmission.
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In the mainland United States, dozens of pregnant women have been infected after traveling to parts of the world where Zika is present and two pregnant women were infected with Zika through sex, he said.
US health officials met in Atlanta, Georgia on Friday at a conference hosted by the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to devise a plan to tackle the virus. Although 87 percent of participants knew the virus is transmitted through mosquito bites, over a quarter didn’t know it can be transmitted via blood infusions and around a third thought they could be infected through a cough or a sneeze. Many of those programs are stand-alone operations, which makes data sharing and planning coordination with health departments more hard.
The second map, in stark black and white, shows how many counties lack even a single person whose job it is to tamp them down, a job called vector control.
“The summit provided an excellent opportunity for Hawai’i to share our experience and knowledge while learning from other states about specific issues around the science behind Zika”. But the Aedes aegypti doesn’t venture very far, with an approximate flight range of about 150 yards. If a Zika infected mosquito bites a woman that is pregnant or may become pregnant, the Zika virus can be passed to her baby during pregnancy or at the time of birth.
“This is an opportunity to get ahead of the curve”, he told the summit’s attendees.
However, New York State and city health officials said the new maps are misleading.
Although Zika has not been proven conclusively to cause microcephaly in babies, evidence of a link was based on a major spike in Brazil in cases of microcephaly, defined by unusually small head size that can result in severe developmental problems. “Can our response keep pace?” With the National Institutes of Health as the lead and support from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), we are working to accelerate vaccine development to fully protect our future generations.
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“What we’re looking forward now toward is getting ready for what is going to happen in the U.S.in the upcoming season”, said Dr. Susan Paskewitz, an entomologist and mosquito expert at University of Wisconsin-Madison.
