The Florida Department of Health is awaiting test results on five samples collected in Palm Beach County after a Lake Worth woman contracted Zika locally.
The department is currently investigating two cases of locally acquired Zika in the county. Health experts have not said where, exactly, the patients contracted Zika. One patient told NewsChannel 5 she believes she was bitten by a mosquito in Lake Worth.
Governor Rick Scott and Surgeon General Dr. Celeste Philip met business and local leaders in Miami Beach Friday.
Dr. Philip explained the health department’s investigation process. She said it can take weeks for tests to come back. Officials will interview patients and others living in the area to build a timeline of where the patient visited and where they may have contracted Zika.
She said one case of Zika does not mean mosquitos are actively transmitting the virus.
“Simply providing where someone lives is not as useful as saying transmission is happening in this location based on our questions and lab results,” Philip said. “Or we can say after our investigation, we haven’t found any ongoing transmission, which is what we find in the majority of cases.”
People living in the southeast side of Lake Worth are taking precautions to protect themselves.
Greguy Celestin uses tiki torches to keep mosquitoes away when he spends time on his porch. The father also said he regularly empties coolers and other containers outside his home which could collect water perfect for breeding mosquitoes.
“Don’t leave any water, no waste water around,” he said. “Take everything away. If you got dirty water, don’t let it sit standing.”
At the roundtable discussion, Governor Scott urged everyone to empty standing water around their homes. He said in every case of locally transmitted Zika, health crews have found standing water near where the patient acquired Zika.
“We’re in rainy season, we’re in hurricane season, it’s going to rain, we’re going to get a lot of rain. So we have to everyday, every body, every person, in your house, your business, your school, every public building, everybody has to be a part of this. If we are, we’re going to beat it,” Scott said.
He added that a tropical system expected to hit part of Florida this weekend could bring a lot of rain and lead to standing water.
Scott again hammed members of US Congress for ignoring his requests to help in the fight against Zika.
He will travel to Washington DC on September 6 when Congress returns from vacation. He’ll push for Congress and the CDC to dedicate money and resources to Zika.
“Congress went on recess, we haven’t gotten all our requests from the CDC, so I’d say the federal government hasn’t been a good partner,” Scott said.
