Associated Press
An entomologist at the University of Florida says it’s not surprising that no mosquitoes have tested positive for Zika even though four residents in South Florida have been found to be the first cases of mosquito-borne Zika virus in the U.S. mainland.
Roxanne Connelly said Friday that finding positive mosquitoes is like chasing a moving target.
Connelly talked about the difficulties in finding positive mosquitoes after Gov. Rick Scott confirmed that the three men and one woman in the Miami area likely contracted the virus through mosquito bites.
Connelly says it can take a couple of weeks before an infected person starts exhibiting symptoms and by then the mosquitoes that transmitted the virus are dead.
She says it’s also difficult to determine where someone was infected, whether it was at home, at work or somewhere else.
She says during a recent outbreak in the African nation Senegal, scientists tested 11,000 mosquitoes but only found 31 bugs that tested positive for Zika.
Material from the Associated Press was used in this report. Reprinted with permission.
