Return of summer to Houston brings heat, humidity and also fresh fears about the mosquito-borne illnesses like Zika. From the late spring to early fall, Houston provide an ideal climate for the mosquitoes. The notorious aedes aegypti species of mosquitoes can carry the nasty diseases like Zika, chikungunya and also dengue fever.
Experts said that it is almost impossible to know how bad can Zika be in Houston this year, or whether the city will experience the similar outbreak. There are just too many factors for the outbreak and most notably, whether the local mosquitoes pick up the infection.
Texas had 312 Zika confirmed cases in the year 2016, as per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The agency estimates that six of those cases were locally transmitted, which means that the infected person has neither left the country nor he had sex with someone who had the infection.
Those local infection cases come from the Rio Grande Valley, which had a small outbreak in the last year. In the April, Texas has put out a Zika warning for the six counties which border Mexico: Cameron, Hidalgo, Starr, Webb, Willacy and also Zapata.
At least for the present, the Houston-area mosquitoes do not appear to be infected. All the 35 city’s confirmed Zika cases were in the people who had traveled to Central America, South America or the Caribbean areas. Dr. Umair Shah, the executive director of the Harris County Public Health, said that he tests about a million of mosquitoes per a year. None of the tested have been positive for Zika, although the county can test only a fraction of the insects which live in Houston.
“This is a needle in a haystack. There’s no way we can test every mosquito in Harris County. That would be trillions of mosquitoes,” Shah said.
Just in the case, he said that, Houstonians should take proper precautions. The precautions include wearing long clothes, making sure that the windows and doors are sealed, draining puddles of the standing water and also using a DEET bug repellent.
The residents should also educate themselves upon the signs of Zika, that causes flu-like symptoms, he said. Anyone with the Zika infection have to wear condoms during sex. And he or she should take the extra precautions against getting bitten for at least a period of three weeks, so the mosquitoes would not catch the virus and also spread it to the other people.
If the Zika outbreak does occur in Houston, the city can be uniquely equipped to deal with the virus. The Harris County Public Health has been gassing the mosquitoes since 1960’s, when the voters have approved a mosquito control division. But preventing the outbreak would still require a personal responsibility, said Shah. The species aedes aegypti mosquito is very active during the daytime, making it less vulnerable to the evening sprays.
Nikos Vasilakis, a professor who studies the mosquito-born illnesses at the University of Texas Medical Branch, said that Houston was a “shining star” with regards to the mosquito-control efforts. But when asked why Houston has not had a Zika outbreak, he said that it was mostly luck.
“The risk is high. Why we don’t see it is a million-dollar question,” Vasilakis said.
Media coverage of the Zika virus often focuses on the microcephaly, the ailment which produces small heads and also brains in babies. The ailment shows up in only 1 to 10 percent of the infants, said Vasilakis.
“The effects of Zika are going to be shown many years later, in epilepsy and cognitive abnormalities. That is the real cost of a Zika infection,” he said.
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Mrudula Duddempudi.
