Officials say no disease-carrying mosquitoes have been found so far this year in the Miami area.
But the head of Miami-Dade County’s mosquito control operations says he’s prepared to recommend aerial pesticide spraying to stamp out any reemergence of the Zika virus.
Chalmers Vasquez also said Monday that aggressive code enforcement was essential to eliminating mosquito breeding sites.
In four neighborhoods where local mosquitoes spread the virus, trucks continue to spray pesticides targeting mosquito larvae. Vasquez said the county shifted these preventative treatments from planes to trucks last summer because of public opposition to any aerial pesticide spraying.
However, he credited dramatic drops in the numbers of Zika-carrying mosquitoes to aerial applications of naled, a pesticide used since the 1950s in the U.S. to kill adult mosquitoes.
