Florida governor criticizes Washington for lagging in Zika fight

US health regulators said on Friday that they had cleared the way for a trial of genetically modified mosquitoes in Florida that can reduce mosquito populations, potentially offering a new tool to fight the local spread of Zika and other viruses. “The CDC, our Centers for Disease Control & Prevention have given a travel alert saying that pregnant women should not travel there”, Dr. Anthony Fauci from the National Institutes of Health told host John Catsimatidis on “The Cats Roundtable” on AM 970 in NY in an interview Sunday.

The emergency funds that have been made available without legislation-hundreds of millions of dollars being funneled through the Department of Health and Human Services and in turn distributed by the CDC-are going to states and territories based on their risk of Zika virus transmission and neediness of their populations. A total of 23 infections have been confirmed in pregnant women. Because Zika can spread through sexual activity, pregnant women should have their partners use a condom correctly every time or abstain from sex. (A blood test searches for antibodies fighting off a Zika infection, while a urine test can detect an active Zika infection, according to NBC.) Typically, results are returned in three to five days. “The mosquitoes that are biting you at dusk are not the mosquitoes that are carrying Zika”.

Leon County and the Florida Department of Health would not specify the case’s location, or give the person’s sex, age and the foreign location they visited. In January, Dr. Peter Hotez, Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, noted the Texas Gulf Coast could be “hardest hit’ in a Zika outbreak”.

WITH two babies already born to Zika-infected mothers and no apparent complications related to the virus, health authorities are hoping for similarly healthy births come September-October when at least 21 more “Zika babies” are due. It’s a virus scientists and doctors have limited answers to, but they say the severity of Zika to an unborn child is undeniably true. Fourteen cases have been diagnosed, and the numbers of infected people are escalating in other neighborhoods across the country.

Bug repellent without deet will not keep the mosquitoes away. It’s not just women who have to be careful.

Wear light-colored, long sleeves and trousers.

“It could be that the mosquitoes there are resistant to the insecticide being used”, he said. In addition to following the above recommendations, avoid pools of stagnant water (where mosquitoes like to congregate) and try to use air conditioning and screens when indoors. “The CDC have given a travel alert saying that pregnant women should not travel there”, Fauci said on “The Cats Roundtable” radio show on AM 970. Pregnant women are most vulnerable to the disease because of Zika-linked birth defects, most notably, microcephaly, a condition where babies are born with small heads and deformed brains. All cases, to date, were connected to individuals traveling overseas to Zika-infested regions.