It also will encourage participation on the U.S. Zika Pregnancy Registry, which state and local health departments can participate in to help provide data on and identify pregnant women who have the virus.
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Mosquito-control inspectors have been constantly working on abatement in the investigation area since they learned of the infection, and planned more truck spraying Thursday, said Gayle Love, a spokeswoman for Miami-Dade County Solid Waste Management.
The case is in Broward County, which neighbors Miami-Dade, where the first such investigation continues.
It was only a matter of time, the Utah County Health Department says, before they would see their first Zika case. Thursday, the CDC announced it is giving $60 million to help states and territories battle Zika.
City Health Commissioner Dr. Mary Bassett said: “If you are pregnant or trying to get pregnant, you should postpone travel to places where there is Zika”.
“Just because they don’t find Zika in an Aedes mosquito doesn’t mean there is no transmission”, he said. The funds, to be distributed through CDC’s Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity for Infectious Diseases Cooperative Agreement, will be used to support efforts to protect the public’s health, particularly pregnant women.
In 2014, the state had the first U.S. outbreak of chikungunya, which took place in the same part of the state – southeastern Florida. US health officials had anticipated some small local outbreaks of the virus, he said. Aedes aegypti mosquitoes spread yellow fever, dengue, chikungunya and Zika viruses, which are all closely related and biologically adapted to these mosquitoes. “It’s important to note that Zika was not found in C. quinquefasciatus, another common urban tropical mosquito discussed as a potential Zika vector”. We know that Zika can be linked to microcephaly and that’s a life changing event for a family and so we want people to be aware that the risk exists, especially with travel right now, “said Stoughton”. In the event the case is confirmed, OneBlood would cease collections in the impacted zip code and bring in blood from unaffected areas to supply that region. “Clearly not hundreds, but we could have 20, 30, 40 cases” between now and September. Nearly all were people who had traveled to Zika outbreak countries and caught the virus, though a handful were people who had not traveled to Zika zones but had sex with someone who had.
State officials and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are now looking into the case in Miami-Dade County.
The virus can spread through mosquito bites, from a pregnant woman to her baby and by sexual transmission. When a possible Zika case is reported, they go into that neighborhood to educate residents and inspect for adult mosquitos.
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But Leal says this new discovery is just the latest “eye opening” surprise in the Zika story and has the potential to complicate efforts to stop the epidemic.
