Number of home-grown Zika cases in Miami rises to 15
Florida health officials say there are now 15 people in the Miami area with Zika virus that they contracted locally.
The mosquito-borne virus causes microcephaly and other birth defects, and pregnant women are being told to stay away from a one-square-mile area north of downtown Miami where "active transmission" of the virus is ongoing. On Friday, the first four cases of Zika contracted from mosquitoes in the United States were confirmed in Florida. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says there are also 336 people with Zika in Florida who traveled to the state from elsewhere.
Epidemiologists expect to see more cases emerge in the coming days. "We're not seeing the number of mosquitoes come down as rapidly as we would have liked," Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the CDC, told The Associated Press. There are "blind spots where we don't know where the mosquito populations are and what they susceptibility is to different insecticides," he added.
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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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