Florida Health officials have confirmed that a 3rd case of the Zika virus has been discovered in Lee County.
In an update Thursday from the Florida Department of Health, a total of 18 cases are reported statewide. Miami-Dade County has the most cases, with 7. Other counties where the virus has been discovered are: Hillsborough (3), Broward (2), Osceola (1), Santa Rosa (1), and St. Johns (1).
None of the cases were contracted in the state, and none involve pregnant women.
A Declaration of Public Health Emergency has been issued for the counties of residents with travelCassociated cases.
The Centers for Disease Control is hosting a conference call and webinar with Florida hospital workers Thursday afternoon to discuss the spread of the Zika virus.
State and federal health officials will discuss symptoms, treatments and other precautions with doctors and others who work with pregnant women. The mosquito-borne virus is rapidly spreading through Latin America and may be linked to babies being born with unusually small heads.
For more information on the Zika virus, click here.
Zika was first identified in 1947 when a rhesus monkey living in the Zika forest in Uganda developed an unknown febrile illness. One year later the virus was found in the Aedes Africanus mosquito and then in Aedes Aegypti, both captured in the Zika forest.
The first outbreak outside of Africa occurred in 2007 when cases were confirmed in Yap Island in the southwestern Pacific Ocean.
In 2009, it was discovered that Zika virus can be sexually transmitted between humans. Professor Brian Foy, a university biologist from Colorado State University, visited Senegal to study mosquitoes and was bitten on a number of occasions during his research. A few days after returning to the United States, he fell ill with Zika, and his wife subsequently showed symptoms, along with extreme sensitivity to light.
Foy and research assistant Kevin Kobylinsky released a study in the May 2011 journal of Emerging Infectious Diseases that detailed those events and provided evidence that Foy’s might have been the first case of the sexual transmission of an insect-borne disease.
The findings were validated by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, which considers Foy the first person known to have passed on an insect-borne virus to another human by sexual contact.