Thursday 17 July 2014

US gets first local case of mosquito-borne chikungunya

A shopkeeper hands a customer a pamphlet about the chikungunya virus, next to mosquito repellent for sale at a drugstore in Lamentin, Martinique, on July 10, 2014 A Florida man who has not recently traveled outside the country is the first person in the United States to get the mosquito-borne chikungunya virus locally, officials said Thursday. Until now, the United States has only recorded cases of people coming back into the country with the virus after getting bitten while traveling, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. "The arrival of chikungunya virus, first in the tropical Americas and now in the United States, underscores the risks posed by this and other exotic pathogens," said Roger Nasci, chief of CDC’s Arboviral Diseases Branch. The virus, pronounced chik-un-GUHN-ya, was first recognized in the Western Hemisphere seven months ago, and with cases mounting in the Caribbean, experts have warned it was only a matter of time before it made its way into the United States.




via Health News Headlines - Yahoo News Read More Here..

No comments:

Post a Comment