‘Zika is now here’
1st US skeeter cases
MIAMI — Mosquitoes have apparently begun spreading the Zika virus on the US mainland for the first time, health officials said Friday in a long-feared turn in the epidemic that is sweeping Latin America and the Caribbean.
Four recently infected people in the Miami area — one woman and three men — are believed to have contracted the virus locally through mosquito bites, Gov. Rick Scott said at a news conference.
No mosquitoes in Florida have been found to be carrying Zika. But other methods of Zika transmission, such as travel to a stricken country or sex with an infected person, were ruled out.
“Zika is now here,” said Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Still, US health officials said they do not expect widespread outbreaks in this country of the sort seen in Brazil, in part because of better sanitation and mosquito control and wider use of window screens and air conditioners.
Infection during pregnancy can cause babies to be born with disastrously small heads and other severe brain-related defects.
More than 1,650 people in the mainland US have been infected with Zika in recent months. The four in Florida are believed to be first to contract the virus within the 50 states from mosquitoes.
“This is not just a Florida issue. It’s a national issue. We just happen to be at the forefront,” Scott said.
Florida agricultural officials immediately announced more aggressive mosquito-control efforts, and politicians rushed to assure tourists it’s still safe to visit the state.
Some medical experts said pregnant women should not travel to the Miami area. But the CDC is not issuing such advice.
US health officials said the country might see small clusters of infections. But “we don’t expect widespread transmission,” Frieden said.
The four Florida infections are thought to have occurred several weeks ago in a small area just north of downtown Miami, in the Wynwood arts district, Scott said.
The area is rapidly gentrifying and has a number of construction sites where water can collect and serve as a breeding ground for the tropical mosquito that carries Zika.
People in Florida’s Miami-Dade and Broward counties are being tested to learn whether there are more cases, the governor said.
“If I were a pregnant woman right now, I would go on the assumption that there’s mosquito transmission all over the Miami area,” warned Dr. Peter Hotez, a tropical medicine expert at the Baylor College of Medicine.