Bird flu spreads to Southern California, infecting chickens, wild birds and other animals
This article is more than 4 years old
This article is more than 4 years old
Ebola, Zika, and other outbreaks of mysterious infections transmitted by mosquitoes are now spreading from the Caribbean or Central America to Southern California and parts of Oregon.
Zika, spread by a mosquito that bites infected people and animals, has spread to at least 26 countries after being first detected in the United States and the Caribbean in 2015.
In 2017, an outbreak of the Zika virus, transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes, was reported in El Salvador and then in the Pacific island of Yap, a French territory, and in a small area of California last month. On 17 July, a Zika virus infection was reported in the Cook County, Illinois area, on the eastern tip of the US, where a mosquito carrying the virus had been circulating for about two years.
The virus has also spread to Australia, New Zealand, the UK and the continental US.
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There has been no reported transmission among humans in the US, and health officials there have not ruled out the risk and are taking precautions to prevent spread.
However, the risk of mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue, yellow fever, West Nile, and chikungunya virus, spread by mosquitoes, and the risk of a new virus spreading that is not yet been identified, have also been raised.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported the Zika virus in its Weekly Morbidity Report on 2 August, but it does not yet have data for whether any Zika infections have resulted in illness. It has said that pregnant women are only at risk if they have a known risk factor for the Zika virus.
While the first confirmed case of transmission of Zika was in the United States in the Yap state of northern society, most of the cases have been reported in the Caribbean.
But the threat is more than Zika.
Zika is linked to microcephaly, a birth defect that can cause serious brain and skull deformities in the unborn child, which usually results in death or lifelong disability.
There have also been reports of Guillain-Barre syndrome, an illness that causes temporary paralysis, in the US and elsewhere, associated with Zika.
The CDC also reports that the