Zika Has Made Its Way Across The Rio Grande

December 28, 2016

Public health officials from Texas have officially announced the first case of a person contracting Zika from a mosquito bite within the state of Texas. The patient's urine sample tested positive for fragments of the virus's DNA, but a sample the patient's blood came up negative for Zika. Since the virus has not been detected in the patient's blood, doctors say that this indicates that she cannot spread the virus to others via mosquito bites, so at least there is some good news. Luckily the patient is not pregnant. Public health officials from Texas say that it makes sense that the Zika virus has infected a person within this southern region of the state. This is due to the fact that the area where the patient contracted the virus, Brownsville, has also been hit recently with other cases of mosquito born illnesses, such as dengue. If you live in the southern region of the United States, what do you do, if anything, to prevent mosquito bites?