While cases of the Zika virus continue to increase, health care professionals want you to know that the aedes aegypti mosquito that transmits the disease doesn’t live here in northern MI.
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In a report released Thursday, researchers from Brazil and Britain studied babies born this year in the heart of the epidemic in northeastern Brazil.
Local officials working to keep mosquito populations in check in the fight against the Zika virus say the massive bee kill that occurred in SC earlier this month could not happen in the D.C. region.
Klein says pregnant women who have traveled may want to be checked for Zika.
The authors said they hope the study demonstrates how crucial Zika prevention efforts are.
The virus has been found to cause severe birth defects in developing fetuses, including microcephaly, characterized by a small head, as well as other brain and eye defects. Due to a link between infection during pregnancy and microcephaly in the infant, pregnant women are strongly advised to delay travel to Zika-affected areas.
“Today, I am authorizing an additional $10 million in state funding to continue combating the Zika virus, he said”. Prendergast said there are decades of large sample data suggesting its safe, in addition to other official rulings.
Zika is spread primarily through the bite of an infected Aedes species mosquito.
Scientists don’t know yet how long the virus remains in the body, capable of being spread, according to the CDC.
The Zika virus outbreak first began in Brazil in 2015 and has ravaged parts of Latin America before reaching USA shores.
Health officials have expressed concern that disclosing information on Zika, which is linked to serious birth defects, would damage Thailand’s lucrative tourism industry. Since then, Wynwood and a swath of South Beach have been labeled zones of active transmission, triggering an unprecedented travel advisory warning pregnant women to avoid going to those neighborhoods.
It is estimated that about 80 percent of Zika infections are asymptomatic or have symptoms so mild that the disease is not detected.
There now are 70 known cases of locally transmitted Zika in the Miami-Dade County area, contracted either in Wynwood or in a second Zika zone at Miami Beach that also is under a travel advisory, according to state health officials.
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“We are in the exponential phase of the epidemiological curve of the outbreak, which means every week we will have more positive results coming back”.
