On Tuesday, Florida Gov. Rick Scott announced that four new cases of Zika have been found in the Miami area and a new case of locally acquired Zika was detected in Tampa, bringing the number of nontravel-related cases of the virus to 43 in the United States. The danger is that a tiger mosquito – local to these temperate areas of the country – bites an infected person and then spreads Zika by biting other people.
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Scott held a conference call with Palm Beach County officials to assure them that steps are underway to gauge whether residents are at risk. There are now 42 local cases of Zika in Florida, with 494 travel-related infections.
Also today, in a letter published in the New England Journal of Medicine a Brazilian doctor described a case of microcephaly, developmental delay, and Zika viremia in a child whose mother was infected with Zika around her 26 week of pregnancy. It means that Zika could continue to infect people after the mosquitoes go away.
“For every nine or so one-off cases, where there was a single case of transmission that was locally mosquito-borne, there was one cluster”, he said.
The mosquito control team focused Wednesday on storm drains in Miami Beach, near the area where several people are believed to have contracted the Zika virus.
Spokeswoman Meg Milival said the two new cases this week are both associated with travel to Central America.
Zika-affected babies also developed calcifications in the outer layer of the brain (the cortex), which plays a crucial role in learning and brain development.
Q: How does Zika spread?
In its continuing efforts to battle the virus, D.O.H. has planned two events that it’s calling Zika Action Day, which will see the department, in partnership with Wallgreens and other sponsors, offering a myriad of services in one place to help prevent the rapid increase of outbreaks and to provide pertinent information.
Things are much worse in the US territory of Puerto Rico, where federal health officials have declared a public health emergency because Zika is spreading so rapidly among residents there.
Officials say the woman was hospitalized last week with classic Zika symptoms that included fever, rash, eye redness and joint pain, but a final diagnosis did not come until Tuesday.
He said state health officials have been doing aggressive mosquito abatement and have begun sampling individuals in the area to look for more cases. It’s unclear how long the virus can be transmitted through sex. Seventy of the patients are pregnant women.
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A spokesman for the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control said the issue is an important one to study. The Democratic nominee said she envisioned “consistent, year-to-year budgets” that would enable an array of federal agencies to better respond to “major public health crises and pandemics”. That threat is serious enough that pregnant women have been cautioned not to travel to Miami Beach.
