And in Florida, the virus seems to have gone into hiding. Health officials haven't investigated a new Zika case for more than 45 days in Miami-Dade County.
Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lifted the last travel warning for southern Florida. The agency is no longer recommending that pregnant women avoid the region.
"That's really exciting news," says Dr. Christine Curry, an OB-GYN at the University of Miami and Jackson Memorial Hospital. "Everybody has sort of exhaled."
But the threat to pregnant women, whether residents or travelers, isn't over not in the least Curry says, neither in Florida nor abroad.
So what should pregnant women and their families, or women who are trying to get pregnant, do? Let's start with Florida. Then we'll swing back to the international question at the end.
Living or traveling in South Florida
"We can't go back to the days before Zika, where you just walked around without thinking about bug spray or the clothes you're wearing," Curry says. "People still need to practice good mosquito-bite prevention when they're living in South Florida or traveling there."
The CDC outlines the precautions needed in Miami-Dade County and other areas of the U.S. where Zika has circulated, such as Brownsville, Texas.
These precautions are most important for pregnant women, those trying to get pregnant and their mates. For example:
- Expectant couples should continue to use condoms "every time they have sex (including vaginal, anal, and oral sex)," the CDC writes, because the Zika virus can stay in the semen of an infected man for months.
- Pregnant women should continue to get tested for Zika up to eight weeks after the travel ban has been lifted for a region which would be until about August of 2017 for South Florida.
First, even when it looks like Zika has "disappeared," Curry says, it could still CONTINUE READING
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