New alert as 2 Britons catch Zika in Florida
Mums-to-be told ‘stay away’
Travellers to the US have been warned to avoid the state of Florida after two Britons caught the Zika virus while on holiday there.
The Foreign Office said Florida’s Miami-Dade county – where tourists flock to Miami Beach and the everglades – is a high risk area for the disease, which causes babies to be born with shrunken heads.
The area is hugely popular with British families – around 1.5million people travel to Florida every year.
The Foreign Office and Public Health england (PHE) advised pregnant women to postpone all non-essential trips to Miami until at least November.
Those who are not pregnant are advised to avoid having unprotected sex on holiday and for eight weeks after a trip there. Any tourist showing signs of fever, a possible sign of Zika, is advised to avoid having unprotected sex for up to six months.
PHE did not release further details about the two infected Britons yesterday. It said that 229 UK travellers have tested positive for the virus since 2015 in other parts of the world – mainly Latin America and the Caribbean – but none of these places are as popular with British holidaymakers as Florida. It said in a statement: ‘The risk in Miami-Dade County is considered high and pregnant women are advised to postpone non- essential travel until after pregnancy.
‘Sporadic cases of local transmission have been reported in Palm Beach County, Broward County and Pinellas County; at the current time the risk in these counties and the rest of Florida is considered moderate.’ The mos- quito-borne disease is associated with a birth defect called microcephaly, which results in children with abnormally small heads and brain damage being born to mothers who are infected.
Derek Gatherer, lecturer in biomedical sciences at Lancashire University, who specialises in viruses, said yesterday that Britain has been fortunate in avoiding sexually-transmitted cases of the virus, which have occurred in countries including Germany, France, and the USA.
‘We’ve had a lucky escape so far,’ he said. ‘Person to person transmission is something that could happen in the UK if people do not follow the advice to avoid unprotected sex but has not happened yet.’
He added: ‘The other concern with these high-risk areas is you cannot completely protect yourself from mosquitos, you can use as much repellent as you like but you’ll never be 100 per cent safe.’
The Aedes mosquito which transmits the virus is not found in the UK and the risk to the wider British public deemed to be ‘negligible’ by health watchdogs. Symptoms experienced by those who have been infected can include mild fever, skin rash, muscle or joint pain or headaches.
The current Zika epidemic started in Brazil in 2015 and was declared a public health emergency by the World Health Organisation (WHO) earlier this year. It has since spread to the Caribbean, other parts of Central and South America, Oceania and some parts of Asia.
A PHE report published on October 12 reveals that 158 British travellers who have visited the Caribbean since 2015 have contracted the virus.
Jamaica topped the list of the highest number of British tourist infections with 34, followed by Barbados on 32 and St Lucia on 20.
‘We’ve had a lucky escape so far’