02-06-2016, 01:53 PM
NY Times has great story about the efforts to track the spread of Zika. It is incredible that Hawaii has dodged this bullet so far. Yeah, mosquito eradication, ASAP.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/07/health....html?_r=0
"For years, virus hunters on ProMed and other outbreak alert networks had been watching, fascinated, as Zika made long, slow and erratic progress eastward across the Pacific, island-hopping as American forces had done during World War II, albeit in reverse.
In 2007, it hit Yap Island, in Micronesia, just west of the Philippines and north of Australia. It could have come to Yap from anywhere in Asia.
In October 2013, the Zika virus raced through the many islands of French Polynesia, including Tahiti and Bora Bora. In early 2014, it bounced to the Cook Islands, just to the west, and New Caledonia, close to Australia.
It also leapt to Easter Island, home of the giant stone heads, its official arrival in the Western Hemisphere.
It is still island-hopping. American Samoa and Tonga are having outbreaks now.
...
The first case of Zika infection detected in New York City was found in December 2013 — six months before the virus is thought to have reached Brazil — in a 48-year-old traveler who lives near Central Park but has asked to remain unidentified.
When he walked into Traveler’s Medical Service on Madison Avenue, he had just returned from a long trek through Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Easter Island and Hawaii, with a stopover in French Polynesia.
...
“I took one look and said, ‘Dengue fever,’” she recalled in an interview last week. “He said, ‘I’m not so sure. I think it’s Zika.’”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/07/health....html?_r=0
"For years, virus hunters on ProMed and other outbreak alert networks had been watching, fascinated, as Zika made long, slow and erratic progress eastward across the Pacific, island-hopping as American forces had done during World War II, albeit in reverse.
In 2007, it hit Yap Island, in Micronesia, just west of the Philippines and north of Australia. It could have come to Yap from anywhere in Asia.
In October 2013, the Zika virus raced through the many islands of French Polynesia, including Tahiti and Bora Bora. In early 2014, it bounced to the Cook Islands, just to the west, and New Caledonia, close to Australia.
It also leapt to Easter Island, home of the giant stone heads, its official arrival in the Western Hemisphere.
It is still island-hopping. American Samoa and Tonga are having outbreaks now.
...
The first case of Zika infection detected in New York City was found in December 2013 — six months before the virus is thought to have reached Brazil — in a 48-year-old traveler who lives near Central Park but has asked to remain unidentified.
When he walked into Traveler’s Medical Service on Madison Avenue, he had just returned from a long trek through Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Easter Island and Hawaii, with a stopover in French Polynesia.
...
“I took one look and said, ‘Dengue fever,’” she recalled in an interview last week. “He said, ‘I’m not so sure. I think it’s Zika.’”