Officials discovered the case while reviewing death certificates, and lab tests confirmed their suspicions, said Gary Edwards, executive director of the Salt Lake County Health Department.
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The Salt Lake County officials said Utah doesn’t have the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes that carry Zika virus so they are not anxious it would or could spread there.
A resident of the western USA state of Utah who was infected with the Zika virus has died, making it the first Zika-related death in the continental United States, officials said Friday.
The unidentified Salt Lake County resident contracted the virus while traveling overseas to an area with a Zika outbreak, health officials 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.
The presence of Zika in the United States has thus far been limited to travelers returning from other nations and their sexual partners. Health officials caution that women who are pregnant or are trying to become pregnant should not engage in unprotected sex with a man who has recently travelled to a country where mosquitoes carrying the Zika virus are prevalent. “In fact, so far this season, we have not detected those two species anywhere in Utah”.
According to the Salt Lake County health department, the Utah resident had an underlying health condition. Although the virus has been found to cause devastating birth defects, in adults the virus usually causes mild symptoms such as fever, rash and pink eye that resolve in less than a week. Health officials said that no additional information about the patient will be released.
“In addition to Zika, travellers need to be mindful of other diseases found around the world, including mosquito-borne illnesses like Dengue fever, malaria, and chikungunya”.
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. The virus is also unsafe for pregnant women since it can be transmitted to the baby.
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The resident was not identified. There have not been any reports of anyone who has contracted the Zika virus a mosquito in the United States, though mosquitoes that have been known to carry it reportedly live in some states, like Texas and Georgia.
