(Reuters) — The Los Angeles (L.A.) County Department of Public Health held a news conference on Wednesday (February 3) during which officials named objectives that the country should adopt as precautionary measures against the Zika virus.
“We can see that with aggressive efforts to try to control the virus and control the factor in other locations, it is continuing to spread,” Jeffrey Gunzenhauser Los Angeles (L.A.) County Interim Health Officer, said. “Our focus needs to be on number one protecting individual by advising them when they go to locations where the virus present how to avoid getting infected and then to take aggressive measures here in our own county to eliminate the breeding sites so that we can prevent it from becoming established,” Gunzenhauser said, adding that both these objectives are “achievable”.
L.A. County had reported one case of a woman who got infected with the Zika virus back in November of 2015.
Health officials assured journalists that there is no risk stemming from that infection since the Zika virus survives in one’s blood for a period o five to seven days.
“When someone becomes infected with Zika they generally have the virus in their blood for a period of between five and seven days. So the only time period that there would be a risk that she could be bit by a mosquito and infect that mosquito, would be for those five to seven days. That period has long since passed his her infection occurred in November. So there is no risk whatsoever to others in Los Angeles county from this infection,” Benjamin Schwartz, Deputy Chief of the Acute Communicable Disease Control Program at the L.A. County Department of Public Health.
The Zika virus was a trending topic on several social media platforms on Wednesday, with users expressing concern over travel plans.
The mosquito-borne virus, which has been linked to a rise in severe birth defects in Brazil, is rapidly spreading in the Americas, and WHO has declared an international health emergency over Zika.