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Florida Confirms 11 New Zika Cases Wednesday

Leon County Judge John Cooper on June 30, 2022, in a screen grab from The Florida Channel.
WMFE
/
The Florida Channel
Leon County Judge John Cooper on June 30, 2022, in a screen grab from The Florida Channel.

Florida confirmed 11 new cases of the Zika virus Wednesday – the most new infections logged in the state during a single day.

All Florida cases were caught while traveling outside the continental U.S. or by having sex with a traveler. Central Florida logged five new cases: three in Orange County, one in Osceola County and one in Lake County.

South Florida still leads the state with the most infections, with more than 100 cases logged in Broward and Miami-Dade counties. Zika is primarily spread by mosquitoes, although several cases of sexual transmission have been reported as well.

Florida now has had 263 cases – including 28 people still showing symptoms. Florida has the mosquitoes that can spread the virus from person to person, but that hasn’t happened in the continental U.S. Florida has had 43 pregnant women in Florida have caught Zika – and one baby has been born with microcephaly, or a severely under-developed brain, as a result.

Health officials confirmed Wednesday that Florida will get a piece of the $25 million in Zika funding announced last week by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But a $1.9 billion dollar request from the Obama administration remains stalled in Congress.

--Abe Aboraya is a reporter with WMFE in Orlando. WMFE is a partner with Health News Florida, which receives support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Health News Florida reporter Abe Aboraya works for WMFE in Orlando. He started writing for newspapers in high school. After graduating from the University of Central Florida in 2007, he spent a year traveling and working as a freelance reporter for the Seattle Times and the Seattle Weekly, and working for local news websites in the San Francisco Bay area. Most recently Abe worked as a reporter for the Orlando Business Journal. He comes from a family of health care workers.