Citing health privacy laws, health officials said that no additional information about the patient will be released.
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In fact, in the regions of the continental United States where mosquitoes with capability to cause Zika are found, health officials haven’t found any Zika infections transmitted by local mosquitoes.
“This person had an underlying medical condition and tested positive for Zika, so we know it contributed to [the death], but we don’t know that it was the sole cause [of death]”, said Dr. Dagmar Vitek, medical director for the Salt Lake County Department of Health.
USA health officials said earlier this week that the virus is spreading fast on the island, infecting as many as 50 pregnant women per day. “It may not be possible to determine how the Zika infection contributed to the death”, a news release said.
As of Friday, the California Department of Public Health reported 77 people with Zika statewide, including 18 pregnant women. There are no other known Zika-related deaths in the U.S.
The funding can also be used to support Zika preparedness and response capacity in areas where mosquitoes are known to transmit the virus; to improve mosquito control programs; to build virus surveillance and education efforts; and enhance laboratory capacity to test for the Zika virus. Health officials in the state have confirmed there are six cases of it in Salt Lake County.
The New York Post reported that 14 of the cases in the United States in which people contracted the Zika virus resulted from having unprotected sex with a person who had travelled to a country experiencing an outbreak of the virus.
The CDC has also been tracking pregnant women infected with Zika, and says they have five reports of pregnancy losses because of miscarriage, stillbirth or abortion.
Having unprotected sexual intercourse with somebody who is infected with the Zika virus is another way a person can contract the disease.
The illness is primarily spread by the same mosquito that spreads dengue and yellow fever, and the types of mosquitoes carrying the Zika virus, Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus, are common in Florida, where mosquito season is year-round. Most pregnancies are ongoing.
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The man, who was septuagenarian, died from complications of severe thrombocytopenia, the immune reaction to the virus which caused reduced levels of platelets which help blood clot.
