According to
a release by the government of Florida mosquitoes in Miami Beach have tested
positive to the dreaded Zika virus. The announcement came after three of the more
than 2,000 samples tested positive to the virus. Read the report as from the
New York Times below.
WASHINGTON —
Florida announced on Thursday that, for the first time, mosquitoes in Miami
Beach had tested positive for the Zika virus, a disappointing confirmation that
the virus is still active in the area.
The Aedes
aegypti mosquito that spreads Zika is famously difficult to fight, and experts
often say that testing the bugs to find the virus is like looking for a needle
in a haystack. The three samples that tested positive all came from a
1.5-square-mile area in Miami Beach where locally acquired cases of Zika had
been confirmed.
The
significance of the results depends on where the mosquitoes were collected,
said Scott C. Weaver, the director of the Institute for Human Infections and
Immunity at the University
of Texas Medical Branch. If they are from in
or around the houses of people with active infections, the chances of the bugs’
being infected are higher. If the virus was found in mosquitoes in a more
distant location, that could point to a bigger infection area than thought.
A
spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services
said state law prevented the disclosure of the traps’ location. The department
said in a statement that since May, it had tested more than 2,470 mosquito
samples, consisting of more than 40,000 mosquitoes. The three samples that the
department announced on Thursday were the first to test positive.
Zika causes
mild symptoms — rashes and joint
pain — for most people, but it can cause
severe brain damage in the fetuses of pregnant women who are infected. The Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention is tracking more than 1,500 pregnant women who have been
infected with Zika. So far, at least 16 babies have been born with birth
defects.
Florida is
the only place in the continental United States where Zika is actively
circulating, but the virus is spreading.
The first
cluster of cases was in a Miami neighborhood called Wynwood. The outbreak in
that area seems to have subsided, but health officials discovered a new
cluster in Miami Beach on Aug. 18, and the C.D.C. warned pregnant
women not to travel there.
Zika is not
expected to spread explosively in the United States as it has in Latin America
and the Caribbean, because Americans live in less crowded conditions and
usually have window screens and air conditioning, which block infected
mosquitoes from spreading the virus. In all, Florida has more than 45 homegrown
cases, nearly all in Miami-Dade County. The first
were announced in July.
“The good
news is the weekly number of new cases isn’t changing much,” Dr. Weaver said.
“If we were seeing at first five cases a week, then 10, then 20 and then 100,
we’d be very concerned.”
Even so, the
mosquito has proved a stubborn foe, particularly in Miami Beach. Aerial
spraying, which has been effective in Wynwood, has not happened in Miami Beach,
in part because its high buildings make spraying complicated, but also because
some residents oppose it.
But experts
say aerial spraying there is possible, and on Thursday, Gov. Rick Scott said
the C.D.C. had recommended that Miami Beach be sprayed using helicopters. He
said the state had made funds available “to immediately conduct aerial spraying
in Miami Beach.”
But it was
not clear when that might happen. When asked about aerial spraying in a
telephone interview, Michael Grieco, a Miami Beach city commissioner, said: “No
determination has been made. It’s not really practical with all the geography.”
I would like
to hear from you also as your opinion can help many of my readers out there.
Kindly share your thoughts about this post. And if this post will help someone
around you feel free to share to your social circle
No comments:
Post a Comment