The pomp and circumstance of the Olympic Games have brought the nations of the world to Brazil. Among the many concerns that have hung over the games, including logistics, politics and security, the ongoing Zika outbreak in the host nation has continued to make headlines. With the competition underway in Rio de Janeiro, the media's attention has turned more toward medal counts and discolored swimming pools than mosquito-borne illnesses, and perhaps that is how it always should have been.
Both the World Health Organization and researchers at Yale University have said the risk of the Zika virus spreading because of the Olympics is low. One reason is that it is winter in the Southern Hemisphere, a historically slow period for the transmission of mosquito-borne diseases in Brazil. Perhaps more important, incidences of the disease are down substantially in the country, which has been the epicenter of the outbreak. Brazil is not the only country in the region to see a decline in Zika cases in recent months, either. In fact, Colombia declared its own Zika outbreak over in July. But new occurrences of the disease are still increasing in the Northern Hemisphere, where summer is mosquito season.
Florida's proximity to the Caribbean and its tropical climate meant that the state was probably going to be among the first in the United States to see cases of Zika transmission. It therefore came as little surprise when the first cases of Zika suspected to have been locally transmitted were reported in late July. The current count of locally transmitted suspected cases in Florida stands at 25; the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention listed six cases as laboratory confirmed as of Aug. 10. The majority of them are from a single Miami neighborhood. Travel advisories for the area have been issued for pregnant women, and control measures, including airborne spraying of insecticides, are underway. An additional measure, the release of genetically modified mosquitoes, was recently passed at the federal level. Local approval is still needed, however, and the region that was given the federal go-ahead is not currently experiencing a Zika outbreak. Meanwhile, the question of who will pay for both mosquito mitigation and additional preventive measures as well as further research into the virus in the United States remains the main complicating factor.
