Tag Archives: Zika Virus

Old San Juan shows its resilience after Puerto Rico hurricane

Jesus Santos sings operatic love songs while repairing plaster to a Hurricane Maria damaged facade at Cathedral of San Juan Bautista in San Juan, Puerto Rico on October 4, 2017. Picture taken on October 4, 2017. REUTERS/Hugh Bronstein

By Hugh Bronstein and Gabriel Stargardter

SAN JUAN (Reuters) – High atop the Cathedral of San Juan Bautista, Jesus Santos applied plaster to the building’s damaged facade, all the while belting out operatic love songs that echoed through Old San Juan’s eerily empty streets.

The city’s colonial heart is usually noisy and bustling with life but on Wednesday Santos’ booming voice was the dominant sound. Since Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico, cutting off power and communications to much of the island, tourism has come to a near halt, and Old San Juan’s restaurants, bars and clubs have been hit hard.

The old city’s historic luxury hotel, El Convento, remains full, its staff said, thanks to dozens of U.S. federal employees sent in after the storm. But it is unclear how long they will stay and who will replace them once they leave.

Yadiel Martinez, 24, a supervisor at the hotel, said local tourism was just starting to recover from a difficult 2016 when the Zika virus outbreak led to thousands of cancellations.

Now, with Maria striking just before the high season begins in October, the tourism industry is taking another hit. Like many other hotels in the city, El Convento still does not have consistent water and electricity, Martinez said, and bookings are being canceled.

Compounding a bad situation, the bankrupt island is still struggling to get past a decade-long recession and a $72 billion debt crisis. It needs all the tourist revenue it can get.

“This is going to hit us very hard,” Martinez said, noting that El Convento would likely be affected for months but was not in as dire straits as many tourist-dependent businesses.

“Lots of hotels are going to close,” he predicted.

In Nono’s, a popular bar in Old San Juan, some Puerto Ricans were doing their bit to reactivate the local economy.

‘FORCED VACATION’

Nursing a Bud Light with a Fireball-and-horchata chaser, 37-year-old Brenda Ansa said she was on “forced vacation” from work in the wake of the hurricane.

With her dentist husband attending to an emergency, she said, she decided to come see how the old town had fared over a pre-lunch drink. She was surprised at the absence of people.

“This is like a ghost town,” she said.

Still, in some ways, Old San Juan is one of the city’s bright spots.

While the area sustained damage to roofs, windows and vegetation, most of the sturdy buildings in the historic neighborhood, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, came through the storm without major damage.

The old town’s fortified walls were built by the Spanish after the city was founded in 1508 by Ponce de Leon, and the cathedral where Santos, the singing plasterer, was working has survived 496 hurricane seasons.

Santos, 47, said his fellow workers in the old city appreciate his songs in the aftermath of the storm, especially one of the Cathedral’s priests.

“When I stop, he comes out and complains,” Santos said with a grin, before launching into another full-throated ballad.

Carlos Hernandez, 62, a refuse collector, was optimistic about the long-term future of the old city, even as he swept up debris from the storm.

“Tourism has gone to zero. Those who are here are residents and it’s up to us to do the cleanup,” he said with a wide, toothless smile.

But “I am a Boricua,” he said, employing a phrase islanders use to describe themselves. “And to keep a Boricua down, you have to hit him hard – and I mean hard!”

(Reporting by Hugh Bronstein and Gabriel Stargardter; Editing by Sue Horton and Bill Trott)

Tech companies wage war on disease-carrying mosquitoes

Researcher Ethan Jackson places the Project Premonition mosquito trap in the wild in this handout photo obtained by Reuters June 30, 2017. Microsoft/Handout via REUTERS

By Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO (Reuters) – American technology companies are bringing automation and robotics to the age-old task of battling mosquitoes in a bid to halt the spread of Zika and other mosquito-borne maladies worldwide.

Firms including Microsoft Corp and California life sciences company Verily are forming partnerships with public health officials in several U.S. states to test new high-tech tools.

In Texas, Microsoft is testing a smart trap to isolate and capture Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, known Zika carriers, for study by entomologists to give them a jump on predicting outbreaks.

Verily, Alphabet’s life sciences division based in Mountain View, California, is speeding the process for creating sterile male mosquitoes to mate with females in the wild, offering a form of birth control for the species.

While it may take years for these advances to become widely available, public health experts say new players brings fresh thinking to vector control, which still relies heavily on traditional defenses such as larvicides and insecticides. “It’s exciting when technology companies come on board,” said Anandasankar Ray, an associate professor of entomology at the University of California, Riverside. “Their approach to a biological challenge is to engineer a solution.”

SMART TRAPS

The Zika epidemic that emerged in Brazil in 2015 and left thousands of babies suffering from birth defects has added urgency to the effort.

While cases there have slowed markedly, mosquitoes capable of carrying the virus – Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus – are spreading in the Americas, including large swaths of the southern United States.

(For a map of U.S. mosquito territory, see http://tmsnrt.rs/2tqlJHa)

The vast majority of the 5,365 Zika cases reported in the United States so far are from travelers who contracted the virus elsewhere. Still, two states – Texas and Florida – have recorded cases transmitted by local mosquitoes, making them prime testing grounds for new technology.

In Texas, 10 mosquito traps made by Microsoft are operating in Harris County, which includes the city of Houston.

Roughly the size of large birdhouses, the devices use robotics, infrared sensors, machine learning and cloud computing to help health officials keep tabs on potential disease carriers.

Texas recorded six cases of local mosquito transmission of Zika in November and December of last year. Experts believe the actual number is likely higher because most infected people do not develop symptoms.

Pregnant women are at high risk because they can pass the virus to their fetuses, resulting in a variety of birth defects. Those include microcephaly, a condition in which infants are born with undersized skulls and brains. The World Health Organization declared Zika a global health emergency in February 2016.

Most conventional mosquito traps capture all comers – moths, flies, other mosquito varieties – leaving a pile of specimens for entomologists to sort through. The Microsoft machines differentiate insects by measuring a feature unique to each species: the shadows cast by their beating wings. When a trap detects an Aedes aegypti in one of its 64 chambers, the door slams shut.

The machine “makes a decision about whether to trap it,” said Ethan Jackson, a Microsoft engineer who is developing the device.

The Houston tests, begun last summer, showed the traps could detect Aedes aegypti and other medically important mosquitoes with 85 percent accuracy, Jackson said.

The machines also record shadows made by other insects as well as environmental conditions such as temperature and humidity. The data can be used to build models to predict where and when mosquitoes are active.

Mustapha Debboun, director of Harris County’s mosquito and vector control division, said the traps save time and give researchers more insight into mosquito behavior. “For science and research, this is a dream come true,” he said.

The traps are prototypes now. But Microsoft’s Jackson said the company eventually hopes to sell them for a few hundred dollars each, roughly the price of conventional traps. The goal is to spur wide adoption, particularly in developing countries, to detect potential epidemics before they start.

“What we hope is (the traps) will allow us to bring more precision to public health,” Jackson said.

SORTING MOSQUITOES WITH ROBOTS

Other companies, meanwhile, are developing technology to shrink mosquito populations by rendering male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes sterile. When these sterile males mate with females in the wild, their eggs don’t hatch.

The strategy offers an alternative to chemical pesticides. But it requires the release of millions of laboratory-bred mosquitoes into the outdoors. Males don’t bite, which has made this an easier sell to places now hosting tests.

Oxitec, an Oxford, England-based division of Germantown, Maryland-based Intrexon Corp, is creating male mosquitoes genetically modified to be sterile. It has already deployed them in Brazil, and is seeking regulatory approval for tests in Florida and Texas.

MosquitoMate Inc, a startup formed by researchers at the University of Kentucky, is using a naturally occurring bacterium called Wolbachia to render male mosquitoes sterile.

One of the biggest challenges is sorting the sexes.

At MosquitoMate’s labs in Lexington, immature mosquitoes are forced through a sieve-like mechanism that separates the smaller males from the females. These mosquitoes are then hand sorted to weed out any stray females that slip through.

“That’s basically done using eyeballs,” said Stephen Dobson, MosquitoMate’s chief executive.

Enter Verily. The company is automating mosquito sorting with robots to make it faster and more affordable. Company officials declined to be interviewed. But on its website, Verily says it’s combining sensors, algorithms and “novel engineering” to speed the process.

Verily and MosquitoMate have teamed up to test their technology in Fresno, California, where Aedes aegypti arrived in 2013.

Officials worry that residents who contract Zika elsewhere could spread it in Fresno if they’re bitten by local mosquitoes that could pass the virus to others.

“That is very much of a concern because it is the primary vector for diseases such as dengue, chikungunya and obviously Zika,” said Steve Mulligan, manager of the Consolidated Mosquito Abatement District in Fresno County.

The study, which still needs state and federal approval, is slated for later this summer.

(Editing by Marla Dickerson)

Puerto Rico declares Zika outbreak over, CDC maintains travel warning

Aedes aegypti mosquitoes are seen at the Laboratory of Entomology and Ecology of the Dengue Branch of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in San Juan, Puerto Rico, March 6, 2016. REUTERS/Alvin Baez/File Photo

By Julie Steenhuysen

(Reuters) – Puerto Rico on Monday declared that the 2016 Zika epidemic is over, saying transmission of the virus that can cause birth defects when pregnant women are exposed has fallen significantly.

About 10 cases of the mosquito-borne disease have been reported in each four-week period since April 2017, down from more than 8,000 cases reported in a four-week period at the peak of the epidemic in August 2016, the Puerto Rico Health Department said in a statement.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, however, has not changed its travel advice, noting that pregnant women should not travel to Puerto Rico.

The CDC said its travel notice for Puerto Rico remains in place and that it expects the virus will continue to “circulate indefinitely” in most regions where it has been introduced.

The Department of Health and Human Services declaration of a public health emergency in Puerto Rico relating to pregnant women and children born to women with the virus remains in effect, the CDC said in an emailed statement on Tuesday.

On its website, the CDC cites public health reports saying that “mosquitoes in Puerto Rico are infected with Zika virus and are spreading it to people.”

CDC acting Director Dr. Anne Schuchat said in a statement that she is “pleased that the peak of the Zika outbreak in Puerto Rico has come to a close.” However, she said, “We cannot let our guard down.”

Schuchat said CDC will continue to focus on protecting pregnant women and work closely with the Puerto Rican health department to support Zika surveillance and prevention efforts on the island, which is a U.S. territory.

A major outbreak of Zika began in Brazil in 2015 and spread rapidly to dozens of countries. There is no treatment for Zika, but private companies and governments are working on a vaccine.

In addition to Puerto Rico, the CDC has warned of a risk of Zika infection for travelers going to Mexico, Cuba, most of the Caribbean and South America, as well as parts of Africa and Southeast Asia. http://bit.ly/2m50Lf7

Locally transmitted Zika cases have also been reported in Texas and Florida.

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Jonathan Oatis)

WHO says India reports cases of Zika virus

FILE PHOTO: Aedes aegypti mosquitoes are seen inside Oxitec laboratory in Campinas, Brazil, on February 2, 2016. REUTERS/Paulo Whitaker/File Photo

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – India has reported cases of the Zika virus, the World Health Organization said, adding that efforts should be made to strengthen surveillance.

The WHO said that on May 15 India’s health ministry reported three confirmed cases from the western state of Gujarat. Cases were detected during testing in February and November last year, while one was detected in January this year, according to the statement, which was released on Friday but did not gain public attention until Saturday.

A federal health ministry official said states were following standard protocols and there was “nothing to worry” about. The ministry had in March cited one confirmed case of Zika – from January of this year in Gujarat – while answering a question in India’s parliament.

“These findings suggest low level transmission of Zika virus and new cases may occur in the future,” the WHO said in the statement on its website.

“Zika virus is known to be circulating in South-East Asia Region and these findings do not change the global risk assessment.”

In its most recent outbreak, Zika, which is mainly a mosquito-borne disease, was identified in Brazil in 2015 and has been spreading globally.

When the virus infects a pregnant woman, it can cause a variety of birth defects including microcephaly, where the baby’s head is abnormally small.

(Reporting by Aditya Kalra; Editing by Tom Lasseter and Andrew Bolton)

Scientists to test whether Zika can kill brain cancer cells

FILE PHOTO - Genetically modified male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes are pictured at Oxitec factory in Piracicaba, Brazil, October 26, 2016. REUTERS/Paulo Whitaker

By Kate Kelland

LONDON (Reuters) – Scientists in Britain plan to harness the Zika virus to try to kill brain tumor cells in experiments that they say could lead to new ways to fight an aggressive type of cancer.

The research will focus on glioblastoma, the most common form of brain cancer, which has a five-year survival rate of barely 5 percent.

Zika causes severe disability in babies by attacking developing stem cells in the brain – but in adults, whose brains are fully formed, it often causes no more than mild flu-like symptoms.

In glioblastoma, the cancer cells are similar to those in the developing brain, suggesting that the virus could be used to target them while sparing normal adult brain tissue.

Experts say existing treatments have to be given at low doses to avoid damaging healthy tissue.

Researchers led by Harry Bulstrode at Cambridge University will use tumor cells in the lab and in mice to assess Zika’s potential.

The mosquito-borne virus has spread to more than 60 countries and territories in a global outbreak that was first identified in Brazil in 2015.

“Zika virus infection in babies and children is a major global health concern, and the focus has been to discover more about the virus to find new possible treatments,” Bulstrode said in a statement.

“We’re taking a different approach, and want to use these new insights to see if the virus can be unleashed against one of the hardest-to-treat cancers …

“We hope to show that the Zika virus can slow down brain tumor growth in tests in the lab,” Bulstrode added. “If we can learn lessons from Zika’s ability to cross the blood-brain barrier and target brain stem cells selectively, we could be holding the key to future treatments.”

(Editing by Louise Ireland and Kevin Liffey)

U.S. Zika vaccine begins second phase of testing

FILE PHOTO: A pair of Aedes albopictus mosquitoes are seen during a mating ritual while the female feeds on a blood meal in a 2003 image from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). REUTERS/Centers for Disease Control/James Gathany/Handout via Reuters

By Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Researchers have begun the second phase of testing of a Zika vaccine developed by U.S. government scientists in a trial that could yield preliminary results as early as the end of 2017.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), said on Friday the $100 million trial has already been funded and will proceed, irrespective of the $7 billion in cuts to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) budget proposed by the Trump Administration over the next 18 months.

In a conference call with reporters, Fauci would not comment on the proposed cuts because it is not clear yet what the actual budget will be. Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers oppose cuts to the NIH, which funds 21 institutes, including NIAID.

NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins is scheduled to speak with President Donald Trump later on Friday. “I will certainly be talking to Francis Collins when he returns from the White House,” Fauci said.

Zika typically causes mild symptoms, but when the virus infects a pregnant women, she can pass it to her fetus, causing a variety of birth defects including microcephaly, in which the baby’s head is abnormally small.

Fauci said the current Zika vaccine candidate had cleared preliminary safety hurdles, and would now enter testing for efficacy, which would occur in two phases.

The first phase will continue testing for safety and evaluate the vaccine’s ability to stimulate the immune system to develop antibodies to fight Zika. It will also test different doses to see which works best.

The second phase, set to begin in June, will attempt to determine if the vaccine can actually prevent Zika infection.

Several companies are developing Zika vaccines, including Sanofi SA, GlaxoSmithKline Plc and Takeda Pharmaceuticals.

In the NIAID study, researchers aim to enroll at least 2,490 healthy volunteers in areas with confirmed or potential active transmission of Zika by mosquitoes. These include parts of the continental United States, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Peru, Costa Rica, Panama and Mexico. They will receive either the vaccine, or a placebo, and be followed for two years.

If enough people are exposed to the virus, Fauci said they could get an effectiveness signal as early as the end of this year. The trial is expected to be completed by 2019.

Fauci said the government is already in discussions with pharmaceutical companies that would share the costs of the final stage of testing and handle manufacturing.

Zika is primarily transmitted by mosquitoes, but it can also be transmitted sexually. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 5,182 people in the continental United States have been infected by Zika either locally or through travel to places where the virus is spreading. Another 38,303 cases have been reported in U.S. territories, including Puerto Rico.

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen; editing by Diane Craft)

Zika risk went beyond Florida’s Miami-Dade County: U.S. officials

A map showing the active Zika zone is on display at the Borinquen Health Care Center in Miami, Florida, U.S. on August 9, 2016. REUTERS/Chris Keane/File Photo

By Julie Steenhuysen

(Reuters) – Local transmission of the Zika virus in Florida may have occurred as early as June 15 of last year and likely infected people who lived not only in Miami-Dade County, but in two nearby counties, U.S. health officials said on Monday.

The warning means that some men who donated semen to sperm banks in the area may not have been aware that they were at risk of infection, and may have donated sperm infected with the Zika virus, officials from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration told reporters in a telephone briefing.

The information is concerning because Zika has been shown to cause birth defects in women who become infected while pregnant. Previously, the CDC had warned of the risk of Zika in Miami-Dade County, beginning on July 29.

But the new warning dials that risk back to June 15, and adds in both Broward and Palm Beach Counties, home to the major tourist destinations of Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach.

Zika’s arrival in Florida last summer followed the rapid spread of the mosquito-borne virus through Latin America and the Caribbean.

The World Health Organization last year declared Zika a global health emergency because of its link in Brazil with thousands cases of the birth defect microcephaly, which is marked by small head size and underdeveloped brains that can result in severe developmental problems.

U.S. officials said because of frequent travel between the three Florida counties, some women may have been infected and not been aware of it, either through contracting the infection directly from a mosquito bite while visiting Miami-Dade or through sex with an infected partner who had.

And because Zika has been shown to last up to three months in semen, it may mean some men living in the affected counties may have donated sperm without reporting they were at risk.

CDC Zika expert Dr. Denise Jamieson said the risk applies “particularly (to) women who became pregnant or are planning to become pregnant through the use of donor semen.” She urged these women to “consult their healthcare provider to discuss the donation source and whether Zika virus testing is indicated.”

The new warning came to light through investigations of several cases of Zika reported by the Florida Health Department late last year that suggested residents of Palm Beach or Broward counties may have become infected while traveling back and forth from Miami-Dade. According to the CDC, a total of 215 people are believed to have contracted Zika in Florida last year through the bite of a local mosquito. But since only one in five people infected with Zika become ill, experts believe the actual number was higher.

Officials said they weren’t aware of any women who contracted Zika from infected semen donated to one of the 12 sperm banks in the three-county area. There is no approved test for Zika in sperm.

Jamieson said the CDC does not have any new evidence of local Zika transmission, but said it may occur again in the coming year, adding that the CDC was “on the lookout for additional cases of Zika.”

A recent CDC study estimates that Zika infections cause a twenty-fold spike in the risk of certain birth defects, including microcephaly.

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago; Editing by Sandra Maler and Mary Milliken)

Zika striking women at higher rates than men: U.S. study

woman near Zika poster

By Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Adult women in Puerto Rico were significantly more likely to develop Zika than men, researchers said on Thursday, raising new questions about the potential role of sexual transmission of the virus from males to females.

The study, published in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s weekly report on death and disease, evaluated more than 29,000 laboratory-confirmed cases of Zika since the outbreak began in Puerto Rico in November 2015.

The data show that of all Zika cases with laboratory evidence of infection, 62 percent were female. The results pattern similar observations from Brazil and El Salvador, the authors said.

One obvious explanation might be that pregnant women are more likely than men to seek treatment for Zika because of the potential risk of birth defects.

To account for that, the researchers excluded all pregnant women who tested positive for the virus. Of the remaining 28,219 non-pregnant women and men testing positive for Zika, 61 percent of these cases occurred in women over the age of 20.

The Zika findings differ from prior outbreaks in Puerto Rico of arboviruses transmitted by the same mosquitoes as Zika. For example, in the 2010 dengue outbreak and the 2014 chikungunya outbreak, infections were equally distributed among men and women.

“It is possible that male-to-female sexual transmission is a contributing factor to this skewing of the burden of disease toward women,” the CDC said in a statement summarizing the findings.

However, the contribution of sexual transmission to overall Zika rates is just beginning to be explored, the CDC said. It could be that women are more likely than men to seek care if they are sick, or that women are more likely to develop Zika symptoms if they become infected.

The CDC is conducting blood tests of individuals living near people with confirmed Zika to try to answer some of these questions.

Zika infections in pregnant women have been shown to cause microcephaly – a severe birth defect in which the head and brain are undersized – as well as other brain abnormalities. The connection between Zika and microcephaly first came to light last year in Brazil, which has since confirmed more than 2,000 cases of microcephaly.

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen; Editing by Andrew Hay)

U.S. health officials outline Zika spending priorities

County vector sprays neighborhood for mosquitos with Zika

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. health officials outlined on Tuesday how they planned to divide up $1.1 billion in funds approved by Congress to fight the Zika virus, including repaying $44.25 million they were forced to borrow from a fund allocated for other emergencies.

The funds were borrowed from the Public Health Emergency Preparedness cooperative, which helps state and local public health departments develop response plans to emergencies, while Congress battled over whether to supply the funds.

President Barack Obama in February requested $1.9 billion in emergency Zika funding. Congress approved $1.1 billion in September after months of political bickering.

On a conference call with reporters, health officials said$394 million would go to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, $152 million to the National Institutes of Health and $387 million for the Public Health and Social Services Emergency Fund, which supports the nation’s ability to respond to public health emergencies.

A further $40 million is aimed at expanding primary healthcare services in Puerto Rico and other U.S. territories, and $20 million for projects of national and regional significance in those areas.

Puerto Rico has been particularly hard hit by Zika, a mosquito-borne virus that has been linked with a rare birth defect known as microcephaly. The virus has spread to almost 60 countries and territories since the current outbreak was identified last year in Brazil.

As of Oct. 12, more than 29,000 cases of Zika infection had been reported in the United States and territories. Of those, more than 2,600 cases are in pregnant women. Nearly 26,000 of those cases are in Puerto Rico and other U.S. territories.

The government will be allocating funds, based on a competitive process, to support Zika virus surveillance and other programs. The funds will also be used to expand mosquito control, continue vaccine development and begin studies on the effect of Zika on babies born to infected mothers.

(Reporting by Toni Clarke in Washington; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Florida declares new area of Zika transmission in Miami

avoid Zika ad on an airplane

By Julie Steenhuysen

(Reuters) – Florida officials on Thursday announced a new area of Zika transmission in the Miami region and have called on the federal government for funding to help fight the outbreak.

Florida Governor Rick Scott said state health officials have confirmed that local transmission of the mosquito-borne Zika virus is occurring in a new small area in Miami-Dade County, where the state believes two women and three men have been infected by the virus.

The governor said the state’s health department believes Zika transmission is only occurring in Miami-Beach and in the new area, which covers about 1 square mile (2.6 square km).

Zika, which is spread primarily by mosquitoes but also sexually, is a concern for pregnant women and their partners because the virus has been liked with a series of birth defects including microcephaly, marked by small head size and underdeveloped brains that can lead to severe developmental problems in babies.

Last month, U.S. health officials urged pregnant women to consider putting off all nonessential travel to Miami due to the Zika virus even as the state lifted a travel warning for the Wynwood, the Miami neighborhood which was the first site of local Zika transmission in the continental United States.

Florida has reported a total of 164 cases of Zika caused by local mosquito transmission, including 19 people who were infected in the state but live elsewhere. There are also five cases in which it was not clear whether transmission occurred in Florida or elsewhere.

In a statement released on Thursday, Scott said the announcement of the new area of transmission underscores the “urgent need” for federal funding to fight the virus, adding that the state still has not received any of the funding that was approved by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama two weeks ago.

Scott said he has asked the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to work directly with the Miami-Dade Mosquito Control District to identify best practices for defeating Zika in the new area.

Florida officials had already reported four of the five cases of Zika that occurred in the new area of transmission in Miami-Dade County. “With the confirmation of today’s case, this area now meets the CDC’s criteria for a new zone,” officials said in a statement.

The Zika virus was first detected in Brazil last year and has since spread across the Americas. It has been linked to more than 1,800 cases of microcephaly in Brazil.

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)