South Beach has been identified as a second site of Zika transmission by mosquitoes on the US mainland, and containing it there will be hard because high-rise buildings and strong winds make it impractical to spray the neighborhood from the air, officials said Friday.
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Ellen Kennedy, the spokeswoman for Port Everglades, said the cruise ships docking there “have taken a pro-active approach from the beginning” and tell their passengers about Zika prevention through emails, their boarding documents and company web sites.
In a call with reporters Friday, CDC director Tom Frieden said Miami Beach presents a hard situation for health officials trying to halt the Zika outbreak.
And William Talbert III, president of the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau, voiced confidence that officials would be able to control the outbreak, that tourists would continue to come given the relatively modest risks to everyone but pregnant women and that the area’s economy would not suffer a serious blow.
Five people, including three tourists, have been infected with the virus in a 1.5-square-mile area of Miami-Dade County.
Miami, bordering on Miami Beach and both part of Miami-Dade County, was since July the only place in the continental United States where Zika transmission by local mosquitoes had been detected.
In a press conference later on Friday, however, Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine expressed frustration with Scott and the state’s health department for keeping him and other elected officials in the dark about the island-city’s five locally transmitted Zika cases. “This is truly the cockroach of mosquitoes”.
Florida officials have been working to contain the virus’s spread by curbing the state’s mosquito population, but the CDC says techniques like aerial spraying won’t work in the high-rises of Miami beach.
Susan Hassig, a clinical associate professor of epidemiology at the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, said travelers need to be more aware that they could spread Zika and take precautions.
The Public Health Agency of Canada says experts agree that Zika virus infection causes microcephaly in a developing fetus during pregnancy and Guillain-Barré Syndrome, a neurological disorder.
President Barack Obama’s administration has sought almost $2 billion in emergency appropriations to help fight the spread of Zika, but Congress has been deadlocked for months and left for its summer recess without approving any funding. Still, officials said, the money being used to combat Zika “will be virtually exhausted by the end of the fiscal year” on September 30.
Florida’s hotel industry fears the Zika virus will spread through Miami Beach, a world tourist destination for its sun, sand and leisure pastimes that bring the area some $24 billion annually. Sixty-eight cases involve pregnant women.
This means the state now has two areas considered active zones for Zika transmission.
Frieden said it is hard to determine if cases are locally acquired and whether cases are related. “That’s scary for us because we eventually want to have more kids”.
Florida is the first state to experience an outbreak of the Zika virus through mosquito bites. While the Aedes aegypti travels no more than about 500 feet in its lifettime, people have the capacity to quickly carry the virus to the far ends of the globe.
Airport personnel also have been trained how to protect themselves from the virus and how to assist travelers who have symptoms of communicable diseases, including Zika, airport officials said.
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“The mosquitoes are persistent and we won’t know for a couple of weeks whether these aggressive measures have worked”, Frieden said.
