Utah health officials say a resident infected with Zika has died, which they say marks the first death related to the mosquito-borne virus in the continental United States.
Advertisement
Dagmar Vitek, medical director for the Salt Lake County Health Department, said cases of the Zika virus in the USA have all come from individuals traveling to other countries where the virus is prevalent, according to Deseret News.
The Salt Lake County resident died in late June, health officials announced Friday.
“Go to travel clinic”, she said, “learn about Zika, and make sure that you prevent the mosquito bite”.
Citing health privacy laws, health officials said that no additional information about the patient will be released.
According to statistics updated in July 6, 1132 people living in continental United States have been infected after traveling in a country where transmission is active, but none has contracted the virus on American soil.
Many people infected with Zika don’t have any symptoms, and one out of five will have very mild symptoms, so these infections could potentially go undetected.
U.S. health officials announced Friday the first death that resulted from an infection by that Zika virus in the continental United States.
Nationwide, there have been 935 confirmed cases in the USA and 2,026 in its territories, primarily Puerto Rico. Also at risk are pregnant women or women hoping to become pregnant who are having unprotected sex with someone who has traveled to those places recently.
The Zika virus claimed its first death on USA soil in Salt Lake County.
The health department planned to hold a 2 p.m. press conference Friday to provide more details about the death.
There have been three travel-associated cases of Zika virus in Utah, according to Centers for Disease Control data.
Last month, Democrats blocked a federal spending bill that would have provided $1.1 billion to fight Zika, arguing that Republicans had inserted “poison pills” into the legislation.
Advertisement
However, health officials are bracing for outbreaks of the virus among local mosquito populations. “It may not be possible to determine how the Zika infection contributed to the death”, a news release said. Zika also has been linked to Guillain-Barré syndrome, an uncommon sickness of the nervous system in which a person’s immune system damages the nerve cells, causing muscle weakness and sometimes paralysis.
