The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has requested that two Florida counties – Miami-Dade and Broward – postpone blood donations as officials investigate the possible local transmission of Zika virus, which is linked to birth defects.
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Federal officials also urged anyone who has visited South Florida in the last month to wait before donating blood.
Florida authorities announced the first possible case on July 19.
The actual number of infections could be much higher, said Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.
The Zika virus is predominantly spread by the aedes type of mosquito.
The CDC advises pregnant women not to travel to an area where Zika transmission is ongoing, and to use insect repellent and wear long trousers and long-sleeved shirts if they are in those areas.
Angela Dunn, an epidemiologist with the Utah Department of Health, said the son hadn’t traveled to an area outside the USA where mosquitoes are known to spread the virus, and he hadn’t had sexual contact with an infected person.
Michaels did not respond to questions about the exact date when OneBlood stopped collecting in areas where the Florida Department of Health has been investigating four suspected cases of locally transmitted Zika infections.
While the commonest form – Aedes aegypti – is not in New Zealand, it is in many parts of the Pacific where the Zika virus has been known to exist for several years. Since a year ago, several countries in the Caribbean and in Central and South America have been hit hard by the epidemic, most notably Brazil. But the public health agency does recommend they avoid travel to 50 Zika-afflicted nations or territories, including Puerto Rico. She determined that timing the first 20 weeks of pregnancy with the trough of mosquito activity could greatly reduce the chances of Zika-virus transmission. These infections are thought to have occurred because the patients’ partners had traveled to countries where Zika is circulating, the CDC said.
Martinez said she created a computer program that could help local officials, health care workers or scientists pinpoint by calendar week when it’s safe for women in their region to conceive. A CDC investigator is assisting in the investigation.
“At this stage it may be a bit premature to issue a travel advisory”, infectious disease expert Nikolaos Vasilakis of the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston told BuzzFeed News.
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Mosquitoes that carry the Zika virus have been found in southwest Oklahoma.
