The Tribune

By RICARDO WELLS

Tribune Staff Reporter

rwells@tribunemedia.net

DESPITE an “historic” travel warning this week by the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, advising pregnant women to avoid a north Miami community, health officials in New Providence continued to promote their “case sensitive” fogging strategy as “effective”.

Health Minister Dr Perry Gomez told The Tribune he was aware of the travel ban but warned that the announcement should not cause any “mass panic” among Bahamians travelling to the north Miami metro area.

The North Andros MP implored those travelling to the area to follow “normal” protocol in mosquito related epidemics - wearing long clothing that covers most of the body while applying mosquito repellent to uncovered sections of the body.

On Monday the Centre for Disease Control (CDC) issued its first travel ban for an American city after Miami health officials confirmed 14 cases of the Zika virus in the Wynwood District, a number that increased to 15 as of Tuesday.

More than 1,650 Zika cases have been reported in United States, with nearly all stemming from travel to “Zika-stricken” countries or sex with someone who was infected abroad.

Health officials are worried that Zika might have a foothold in South Florida as confusion mounts over whether certain strains of the Aedes aegypti mosquito are now resistant to fogging activities.

CDC officials said they could not remember another time in the 70-year history of the agency when it told members of the public not to travel somewhere in the US.

According to Miami reports, the travel warning covers an area of about one square mile in Wynwood to the east of Interstate 95 and south of I-195. Health officials establishing what they called, a large enough area to provide a buffer around the suspected hot zone.

When asked if local officials had made any changes to the plethora of strategies unveiled last week as a result of Monday’s travel advisory, Dr Gomez said no. He said officials stand behind their strategies to guard against the spread of the Zika virus.

Last week, officials indicated that residents played the biggest role in guarding against the virus. They advised that fogging exercises were being carried out on a regular schedule and on a case-by-case basis in areas where potential Zika cases are reported.

The Wynwood cases were primarily discovered through door-to-door testing exercises.

Asked if this strategy would be employed here in the Bahamas, Dr Gomez implied that the act would be counter intuitive and a waste of resources.

While no cases of the virus has been reported in the Bahamas to date, several countries in the Caribbean region have reported cases.

The CDC has advised pregnant women to avoid travel to most of Central and South America, along with much of the Caribbean, out of concern for the mosquito-borne illness.

A scientific paper authored by a group of Japanese researchers predicted a 45 per cent risk of Zika in the Bahamas from importation and a 40 per cent risk from local transmission.

The report, which was published in May, used models based on chikungunya and dengue viral transmission numbers to predict the risk assessment numbers.

The method of research used scales compiled in medical efforts to combat those viruses. Those scales were then transplanted to encompass new travel trends and border health safety mechanisms to determine how probable it was that Zika could breach a country’s borders – a 45 per cent risk from importation.

Additionally, once that was determined, researchers took their probability a step further; using health models of that society to determine how quickly the Zika virus could spread once detected - a 40 per cent risk from local transmission.

In 78 countries documented with imported cases of the Zika virus, arrival time ranged from one to 44 weeks since the first case reported in Brazil in 2015.

The authors called for a finer scale analysis to be done to more accurately predict the spread within regions, noting that models should incorporate ecological information about mosquitoes.

International health officials have long warned women who are pregnant or intend to get pregnant that they should guard against Zika.

The World Health Organisation has advised that persons wait at least six months to try for a pregnancy if the male partner had symptoms of Zika, and warning eight weeks if either partner has been in an area where Zika virus infection is possible.

If a woman is pregnant and her male partner could possibly have been infected, they should use a condom or abstain from sex for the whole pregnancy.

There is no scientific evidence that supports the notion that Zika remains in the bloodstream permanently.