FDA: No Miami-area blood donations during Zika investigation

The FDA also said anyone who has traveled to Miami-Dade or Broward county in the past four weeks should be temporarily barred from donating blood.

“Additionally, FDA recommends that adjacent and nearby counties implement the precautions above to help maintain the safety of the blood supply as soon as possible”, said the federal agency.

The Florida Department of Health does not have a recommendation for pregnant women living in Miami, or those contemplating travel to south Florida, a popular travel destination. The majority of mosquitos in the state are not Zika carriers. Once pregnant, women in Latin America face some of the strongest restrictions in the world on abortion, Martinez said. Being bitten by a species of mosquito known as the Aedes aegypti or having sex with an infected partner are the only known ways an individual can contract the disease. There are more than 6,400 cases of the virus in the United States and its territories. Murthy did not advise a travel ban to Florida for pregnant women.

The actual number of infections could be much higher, said Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

“It is looking at the impact of people who might have had infections when they were overseas, so this is in case those people weren’t tested during pregnancy – this will pick up any of those cases”.

“Remember for every imported case being reported, there are dozens of others not being reported”, Hotez said.

As of July 28, there are 381 people with the Zika virus in Florida.

Recent research has indicated the culex mosquito could also be a vector for Zika.

Florida health officials have said the infections may not be linked to travel outside the USA, but they haven’t confirmed how the virus spread. There have been 4,729 cases of locally acquired Zika in the US territories, a lot of them in Puerto Rico, Murthy said. “That’s the safest thing we can do for our patients”.

Zika virus belongs to the genus flavivirus and is related to numerous mosquito-borne illnesses such as West Nile virus, yellow fever and dengue fever.

The study can’t prove that maternal Zika infection caused the miscarriage, only that there was an association.

Most cases of the infection are mild, but the disease can cause catastrophic brain damage in fetuses, according to the CDC. Because the disease is linked to miscarriages and birth defects such as microcephaly and brain malformation, however, women in numerous affected nations have been urged to avoid pregnancy until the virus can be treated. However, the Dutch team pointed out that traces of Zika virus in blood and fetal tissue were found for at least 21 days, suggesting that the “window” for testing a pregnant woman for the virus may need to be expanded.

The Food and Drug Administration has warned South Florida blood banks against accepting any donations as officials investigate local mosquitos carrying Zika. “The investigation should be very straightforward”, he said.