The warning comes after USA health officials said mosquitoes have apparently started spreading Zika on the US mainland. But the Miami Herald identified it as Wynwood, which it described as “an urban neighborhood tightly packed with aging homes bordering a busy commercial district”.
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Blood donation in Miami-Dade and Broward counties was temporarily suspended last week as the region’s leading blood provider, OneBlood, began implementing its response to possible mosquito-borne Zika virus transmission.
The 14 victims recorded in Florida-two female and 12 male-were probably infected by local mosquitoes. In case of Zika infection, pregnant women will experience symptoms that include fever and rash, headaches, muscle and joint pain, red eyes, and pain behind the eyes.
The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a Zika-related travel warning for pregnant women to an area just north of Downtown Miami after 10 more people were suspected of getting the virus locally.
Tests have been conducted on six different species of Canadian mosquitoes, and the research shows they are unable to transmit the virus, he added.
Ten pregnant women have tested positive, a concern for authorities because Zika has been linked to severe birth defects.
More than 1,650 cases of Zika have been reported in USA states.
CDC officials said they could not remember another time in the agency’s 70-year history when it had told members of the public not to travel to a certain place in the United States. Couples who have traveled to the affected area should wait at least eight weeks before trying to get pregnant. “At present, only a zone of about one square mile in Miami-Dade County is considered at risk of active transmission”.
“Pregnant women should not travel to this area”, the CDC advisory said.
Projecting the spread of Zika has been much more hard than doing so for Ebola or the flu, says Vespignani, who has mapped both. “If you’re pregnant, or think you might be pregnant, avoid travel to Miami, and possibly elsewhere in South Florida”, said Peter Hotez, at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas.
Frieden says the CDC limited its advisory to the small area where cases were found because the mosquito that spreads Zika – Aedes aegypti – can’t fly very far.
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However CDC director Tom Frieden has argued that there is no need to advise avoiding a larger area. It recommended, however that said that those with respiratory conditions stay inside during spraying.
