Cayman shakes free of Zika travel concerns
(CNS): There have been no locally transmitted cases of Zika virus in the Cayman Islands this year and just one imported case in early February, officials have said. The jurisdiction has now been removed from an advisory list warning travellers of the previous threat. Cayman was placed on the US-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) list last year when Grand Cayman, along with many other Caribbean destinations, reported local transmission of the virus during a regional outbreak.But the Cayman Islands Public Health Department has been lobbying to be removed from the list for the last several months and confirmation that it has been removed came on Friday, 28 July.
“This is very good news because it means that visitors can come and not worry about contracting the virus,” said Acting Medical Officer of Health Dr Samuel Williams-Rodriguez. “Previously, we regularly had people ringing up from overseas who wanted to visit, but after seeing us on the CDC list they were worried that they might contract the virus. This was particularly true of people who were pregnant or wanted to become pregnant.”
Zika has been linked, though not conclusively, to microcephaly, a condition in which a baby is born with a deformed head, and other neurological disorders.
Category: Health, Medical Health
Oh please! Catch a wake up! It is not possible to have one day and for it to be gone the next. This is all for the dollar! Pregnant ladies don’t risk your unborn child by believing this nonsense!
can we have a “bills!” free zone for caymanians…its like we drowning in bills and need a beak?
I admire the sentiment, but with so many people visiting Florida and Latam it cannot be long before it is back and transmitting locally again..unless the mozzie population has been decimated…
Just like ebola, swine flu, h1n1….the media hypes it up to put fear in the masses….
These “so called” illnesses surface with incredible media coverage and after a while they suddenly disappear…
Smh…
It is to inform the public of the virus. There are some of us who prefer not to be in the dark.
Zika, several active strains of Dengue, Chikungunya, Mayaro, Yellow Fever, Encephalitis, are not imaginary regional threats so long as we have an invasive population of tropical transmission vectors established in the Cayman Islands. We know that urban transmission of some diseases can progress very quickly by domesticated mosquito species and annihilate communities in a matter of days. WHO, CDC and other agencies take these population threats very seriously. You don’t need to believe it if you don’t want to, but there are tombstones throughout the world that prove that preparation and human-intervention safeguard life. We need to applaud the success of these efforts, rather than pretend the threat was never real.