“Everyone should be coming back here and enjoying themselves”, Gov Scott told a Monday morning press conference in Wynwood, which was dubbed the United States “ground zero” of Zika. “We will not hesitate to take action to protect our families and visitors, especially pregnant women and their growing babies”.
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Scott and CDC officials attributed the drop-off in infections in Wynwood to aggressive aerial spraying with naled, an insecticide that targets adult mosquitoes, and street-level spraying with another pesticide that kills mosquito larvae.
Even though the travel warning has been lifted, the CDC continued to urge pregnant women and their partners who live in or travel to the area to take steps to avoid mosquito bites. The updated CDC warning now includes the Wynwood neighborhood as part of the more general, less stringent guidelines covering all of Miami-Dade County, though it continues to advise that men and women who traveled to Wynwood any time between June 15 and September 18 should wait at least eight weeks before trying to become pregnant.
“Florida may have been the first location to have locally transmitted Zika, but we will not be the last”, he said. It’s an event to encourage people to travel to Wynwood to help area businesses and restaurants.
Business owners in the trendy Wynwood Arts District just north of downtown Miami sighed with relief Monday when Florida Gov.
The CDC first announced its Wynwood travel advisory in early August, based on evidence that mosquitoes had been actively transmitting Zika from person to person.
The Zika virus can lead to serious birth defects, including a smaller brain, eye defects, hearing loss and impaired growth.
That advisory was the first time in the CDC’s 70-year history that they advised against travel somewhere in the continental US.
But Scott also said Monday, his fight with the federal government over the virus is far from over.
Meanwhile, next Friday, Scott is hosting “Dine Out Wynwood”.
Gov. Rick Scott said Monday it’s been 45 days since the last Zika infection in Wynwood.
There are more than 90 locally acquired Zika cases, according to state records, the vast majority in Miami-Dade. A spending bill has been delayed in Congress.
Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, said the idea of creating a surgically precise “cordon sanitaire” dividing neighborhoods with Zika transmission and those without “does not follow the science”.
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In his announcement, Scott also asked the CDC for another epidemiologist to support its efforts against the virus and for a call with community leaders and clinicians in Miami Beach to answer questions and cover the latest guidance.
