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Mosquitos in Florida Are Now Spreading Zika

If you're pregnant in Florida, don't get bitten.

Image via CDC/Wikimedia Commons

The Florida Department of Health announced on Friday that the Zika virus has infected four people in and around Miami via Floridian mosquitoes, marking the first known mosquito-to-person infections on the US mainland. That means in addition to infected people entering or re-entering the US—say, after a tropical vacation—Zika's entire mosquito-borne infection cycle has now officially been documented in the US.

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Officials haven't tracked down any Floridian mosquitoes carrying Zika, but they've ruled out all other methods of transmission in these four patients. They hastened to add that Florida is hardly overrun with the birth-defect-causing disease, and this is just a "small case cluster."

If Zika is transmitted to a fetus in utero, it can cause microcephaly, or an unusually small head and brain. Other symptoms are relatively minor, including a fever, a rash, and pinkeye, along with headaches and muscle soreness in some cases. Approximately four out of five patients don't get noticeably sick, and if they do, the symptoms generally subside after about a week.

Dr. Lyle Petersen of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) explained the cycle of infection to the Associated Press, saying it "starts with a person infected with Zika—presumably a traveler who recently returned home with the virus still lurking in his or her bloodstream," at which point a mosquito in the US bites that person, gets Zika from their blood, and then "spreads the virus by biting someone else."

These would not, however, be the first cases of person-to-person Zika transmission within the US. That happened back in February, when Zika was discovered in a patient in Texas who hadn't traveled abroad recently, but whose partner had just gotten back from Venezuela. Officials concluded that the virus in that case had been transmitted sexually.

The CDC lists 51 countries and territories where Zika is active, mostly in Central and South America, along with the Caribbean. The CDC has offered tips for travelers headed to countries where Zika is prevalent, including a guide to avoiding infection during the Olympics in Brazil. But according to the interview Petersen gave to the AP, "there are no plans to advise limiting travel to Florida. The infections occurred in a small area where officials are aggressively targeting mosquitoes."

Still, if you're planning to be pregnant in Florida, there's no time like the present to invest in some effective mosquito repellant.

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