Two Miami-area neighborhoods are reporting mosquito-borne cases, with a total of 36 infections as of Friday. That’s still less than 2 percent of the more than 2,000 cases throughout the continental U.S. The rest of them were contracted outside the country or by sexual contact with an infected person.
“The sheer volume of travel to Zika-laden areas from the U.S. is such that travel-associated cases will dominate local acquisition,” said Amesh Adalja, a senior associate at the University of Pittsburgh Center for Health Security. “Only specific parts of the continental U.S. are at risk for local mosquito-borne transmission of Zika as well.”
Scientists long feared an outbreak in states along the Gulf of Mexico, where the Aedes aegypti mosquito was expected to transmit Zika.
But with summer nearing an end, just two neighborhoods — the artsy Wynwood district of Miami and a 20-block stretch of Miami Beach, both in southeast Florida — are reporting mosquitoes carrying the disease.
What dominates instead are travel-related cases, from people who became infected outside the continental U.S. and brought the virus into the country. Indeed, New York, where no mosquito bite transmission has been reported, has a nation-leading 579 cases.
As Zika fears grew this spring, officials focused on mosquitoes that might pick up the disease in infected travelers and spread the virus. President Obama asked for $1.9 billion to combat the disease, including testing of Zika vaccines
As Zika fears grew this spring, officials focused on mosquitoes that might pick up the disease in infected travelers and spread the virus. President Obama asked for $1.9 billion to combat the disease, including testing of Zika vaccines and bolstering mosquito eradication.
Color-coded maps of the potential reach of the Aedes aegypti and a secondary carrier, the Aedes albopictus, or Asian tiger mosquito, warned about the risk of Zika transmission deep into the Northeast, South and Southwest.
“While we absolutely hope we don’t see widespread local transmission in the continental U.S., we need the states to be ready for that,” Dr. Anne Schuchat of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said at a White House briefing in April, standing in front of that mosquito map.
Michael S. Kaufman, an associate professor of entomology at Michigan State University, said that map was probably too broad.
A more nuanced map released by NASA, which cross-referenced the presence of mosquitoes with the amount of returning travelers from Zika-affected areas, also seemed to overstate the risk in New York, which isn’t home to the aegypti mosquitoes that are primary carriers of the virus.
Indeed, the CDC has said the continental U.S. is unlikely to see the type of rampant transmission that has hammered Brazil and other parts of Latin America because of widespread use of window screens and air conditioning, and the relative U.S. population density.
“However, it is likely that we will see additional pockets of local transmission in restricted geographic areas,” CDC spokesman Benjamin Haynes said. “We are working hard to learn more about Zika, and while we cannot rule out the possibility of a larger outbreak in an urban area, everything we have seen so far suggests that this would be unlikely.”
Source :http://www.washingtontimes.com/
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