Florida Governor Rick Scott declares Zika virus emergency

Dallas County Health and Human Services (DCHHS) received confirmation from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that a patient was infected after having sexual contact with an ill individual who returned from Venezuela where Zika virus is present.

Four cases of the mosquito-borne disease have been detected in Miami-Dade, and another five have popped up elsewhere in the state.

The emergency order authorizes the state’s agriculture department to take action to combat the problem, such as spraying against mosquitoes.

“We have the mosquito here, we just don’t have the virus”, said Jerome Goddard, an entimologist at Mississippi State University.

The Department of Public Health cautions travelers, especially pregnant woman, planning to travel to countries or areas where Zika outbreaks are active.

Play video “What Is The Zika Virus?”. The most common symptoms are joint pain, fever and rash.

The World Health Organization declared a global emergency this week, but health officials are unclear how significant the threat is to Oklahoma. “We do know that the virus stays in the blood for a certain while, we don’t even know the exact time”, he said. All patients had recently traveled to Latin America and the Caribbean.

The virus has been reported in more than 30 countries and linked to microcephaly, in which babies have abnormally small heads and improperly developed brains. Scientists say the hotter it gets, the better the mosquito that carries Zika virus is at transmitting a variety of unsafe illnesses.

While this is the first case of the virus being locally acquired in the continental United States this year, it’s not the first case of Zika sexual transmission. Zika appears to be particularly unsafe for pregnant women.

As the outbreak quickly spreads across the Americas, health ministers from South America gathered in Uruguay to discuss how the region could coordinate its fight against the virus. The virus is also unsafe for those with compromised immune systems and has so far been reported in 20 countries in Latin America over the last nine months.