In any case, at the Los Angeles Times, "Several more possible Zika cases in L.A. County":
Though there's only one confirmed case of Zika virus in Los Angeles County, several more people who might be infected are being tested for the illness, public health officials said Wednesday.More.
The L.A. County Department of Public Health has received numerous reports from physicians of possible Zika cases, and officials have sent a number of patient specimens to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for testing, said Dr. Jeffrey Gunzenhauser, the county's interim health officer. He said that fewer than 20 samples had been sent to the CDC.
So far, there have been no cases of Zika virus — a mosquito-borne illness that is linked to serious brain defects in newborns — that were acquired through mosquitoes in the United States.
The single confirmed L.A. County case was in a young girl who traveled to El Salvador in November. California officials said earlier this week that there have been six cases of Zika infections in the last three years, all in people who visited countries with outbreaks.
Zika is transmitted when a mosquito bites someone who has been recently infected, and then bites another person. The infection doesn't have symptoms in as many as 80% of people.
But public health officials became worried about the virus when cases of microcephaly, a condition in which a baby's head is unusually small, skyrocketed in Brazil after a Zika outbreak began there last year. The virus has been rapidly spreading, and cases have since been reported in more than 20 countries in the Americas...
And watch, at CBS News 2 Los Angeles:
0 comments:
Post a Comment