A mosquito species that’s apparently reached the mainland US from South America carrying the Zika virus has become the number one health scare of 2016
Air and Ground Forces deployed versus Mosquitoes
William Talbert III is sunning himself by his backyard pool in Miami’s fashionable Coconut Grove neighborhood on a typical summer Sunday afternoon with highs in the 90s and humidity to match.
It’s two days after the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported five new Zika cases in Miami Beach and advised pregnant women to avoid a one-and-a-half-square-mile section of the area where the infected people lived or traveled. Earlier this month the CDC similarly warned visitors to avoid a one-square-mile section of Wynwood in downtown Miami.
Talbert president and CEO of the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau may have been enjoying his Sunday off but he clearly understands the potential for damage to the region’s $24 billion a year tourism industry and is not the least bit complacent about the health threat. “There are two things I’ve always had and always will have in my backyard: sunscreen and bug spray. That’s Miami and that’s Florida ” Talbert says.
Miami’s subtropical climate is hospitable to a wide variety of mosquitoes but a species that has apparently reached the mainland US from South America carrying the Zika virus has become the number one health scare of 2016.
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