The Zika virus
is more widespread than state health officials have reported, according to the head of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention.
The nation’s highest ranking infectious disease expert delivered some sobering news on Zika to a Florida audience Tuesday, telling them that the mosquito-borne virus is more widespread than state health officials have reported and that the rapid spread of pathogens such as Zika represents “the new normal” in an age of global travel and trade, booming cities and climate change.
“Here’s the plain truth: that Zika and other diseases spread by Aedes aegypti mosquito species are really not controllable with current technologies. So we will see this become endemic,” Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday in Miami.
Frieden’s takeaway advice for public officials tasked with protecting the public from disease outbreaks: “Invest in public health,” he said. “It pays off.”
Unprecedented in its ability to spread by sexual contact as well as mosquito bites, and to cause birth defects — most notably microcephaly in children born to mothers infected while pregnant — Zika took health officials by surprise this year, Frieden said.
“Zika has surprised us,” he said. “It’s been difficult to predict. It’s had characteristics that we have not seen with other diseases before. We will see parts of the hemisphere where it will be endemic. It will come back every year.”
And though Florida has reported 1,064 Zika cases, including 190 mosquito-borne infections, Frieden said the real number is likely higher.
“A rule of thumb,” he said, “is for every case you diagnose, you’ve probably got 10 more.”
Frieden said vaccines typically take a decade to develop, but that a defense against Zika could be ready in less time.
“We’re hoping that in two to three years one will be available,” he said.
Frieden took some gentle jabs at Florida’s Department of Health, noting that in Singapore public health officials “were fully transparent about the cases. They said here’s where they are. Here’s what we’re doing about them — all the information publicly available.”
Florida’s health department doesn’t identify where Zika cases are located, whether they are travelrelated or locally acquired or in which counties pregnant women with Zika reside.