… the mosquitos are persistent and we won’t know for at least another couple of weeks if these aggressive control measures have worked,” Frieden said Friday.
Here’s a special message for those women who are considering getting pregnant soon.
Close to half of all U.S. pregnancies are unplanned, so it’s important for all women of childbearing age – and their sex partners — to be aware of the risk. The Aedes mosquitoes that spread Zika can sneak around, unnoticed. “It bites stealthily. It sneaks up on people quietly and bites them on their ankles,” noted CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden. Aedes live year-round in much of the southern coastal states and in the summer in 25 states, as well as in many vacation areas in Latin America and the Pacific.
And Zika can be spread by all kinds of sex, so people are at risk from travelers to those regions, as well. “We are not going to stop travel. There are 40 million air trips and about 200 million travelers to Zika-affected areas every year,” Frieden said. And four out of five people infected don’t even know it.