Meanwhile, San Diego County has become a veritable California hotbed for the virus, second only to Los Angeles, according to the California Public Health Department’s latest weekly tally of travel-associated Zika cases, compiled from the beginning of 2015.
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Officials say she traveled from the Caribbean to CT on April 25 and became ill on April 29.
She visited a hospital in the western port city of Incheon on May 4 to treat a chronic thyroid gland problem after having rash and joint pain and was diagnosed with the mosquito-borne virus. The patient and her physician have been informed of the test result. And its inventors say it could be ready for use in the field in a matter of months. All of the patients contracted the virus while visiting other countries.
He said local mosquitoes are tested weekly for the Zika virus.
Almost 500 people have been infected with the virus in the United States but all of them were infected overseas or infected by someone who had traveled overseas, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“We have scheduled meetings over the upcoming weeks to address the Zika virus here in Abilene”, Lueke said.
“There’s no way to predict if or when that’s going to happen”, Dr. Martha Buchanan of the Knox County Health Department said.
“With hundreds of positive cases nationwide, I encourage residents to be vigilant”, the commissioner said.
“The test’s low cost and minimal equipment also means that it can be used for monitoring the spread of illnesses across large populations of people, enabling us to monitor the pathogen as an outbreak is occurring”.
The species of mosquito that is known to pass the virus to humans is believed to live only in the southern-most states in this country.
It also is active in eight countries in Oceania and the South Pacific and one country in Africa, the CDC said.
Major League Baseball is relocating two upcoming games from Puerto Rico, responding to players’ fears that they might get Zika in the USA territory and bring it home.
Zika virus disease is caused by a virus transmitted primarily by Aedes mosquitoes.
The connection between Zika and microcephaly came to light last fall in Brazil, which has now confirmed more than 1,100 cases of microcephaly that it considers to be related to Zika infections in the mothers.
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To date, 426 cases of travel-related Zika have been reported in the continental United States. “And use an EPA-registered insect repellent, which has been proven safe and effective, even for pregnant and breast feeding women”.
