14 cases of Zika in the same Miami neighborhood
MIAMI – On Monday, Florida officials said the number of people with Zika from local mosquitoes had risen to 14 from four. All those cases have been linked to a single neighborhood Wynwood, section of the city is the location.
All pregnant women in the neighborhood as well as any women planning on visiting the area have warned against coming there.
According to numerous media reports Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Monday that since the first four cases of local transmission were announced on Friday, it has become clear that “aggressive mosquito control measures don’t seem to be working as well as we would like.”
The 10 additional cases connected to the neighborhood were identified over the weekend, and the people may have become infected as far back as mid-June, he said.
“We advise pregnant women to avoid travel to this area, and pregnant women who live and work in this area and their partners to make every effort to avoid mosquito bites and practice safe sex,” Dr. Frieden said in a news briefing. He said that pregnant women who traveled to the neighborhood on or after June 15 should talk with their doctors about getting tested for Zika infection.
Meanwhile, The New York Times is reporting that at the request of the state of Florida, the C.D.C. has dispatched an emergency response team, with eight experts in fields ranging from birth defects to mosquito control. Dr. Frieden said that mosquitoes in the neighborhood would be tested to see if they are resistant to insecticides, a process that could take up to several weeks.
No mosquitoes found so far in the neighborhood have tested positive for the virus, but this species of mosquito doesn’t live very long. Because most American cases have occurred in people who had traveled to Latin America, where the Zika epidemic originated, or were infected via sexual transmission, health officials say that it is likely that the Florida mosquitoes carrying the virus acquired it by biting a traveler.
Some Miami’s most posh cafés are no longer serving lunch or dinner outdoors. They fear that the possibility that their patrons might be danger is not worth the chance. Beach area restaurants are following suit as everyone is taking a better safe than sorry attitude.
The continues to spray most of the Dade County area for mosquitoes in hopes of killing off any further threat of the Zika virus from spreading.
