Mosquito forecast: Wet spring could fuel bug boom and Zika casesSwarming mosquitoes that plague summer barbecues will likely arrive in full force during warm, wet weather expected soon, but this year they could bring a danger beyond an itchy bite: Zika.
Meteorologists predict spring and summer conditions that could be ideal for a boom in the mosquito population that transmits the virus.
The U.S. has done battle with disease-carrying mosquitoes before. Last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 2,060 cases of the West Nile virus in the U.S., which resulted in 119 deaths, said Jim Fredericks, chief entomologist of the National Pest Management Association.
The Zika virus poses different danger, however. Though deaths from Zika are rare, it can cause microcephaly, a condition in which babies are born with small heads and incomplete brain development, the CDC said.
Zika, which is spreading rapidly through South America, Central America and the Caribbean, is also linked to infant eye abnormalities and Guillain-Barre Syndrome, a neurological disorder that can cause temporary paralysis.
U.S. health officials have warned that mosquito eradication efforts may not be able to keep pace. Although researchers are scrambling to produce a vaccine to prevent Zika, it is unlikely to be ready by the time mosquito season hits. There is also no treatment for microcephaly.
Scientists know the Aedes aegypti mosquito transmits the Zika virus through its bites and believe the more common Aedes albopictus mosquito could also be a carrier. That means the geographic range for the insects could extend to 30 states, the CDC noted in a map revised last week.
Mosquitoes emerge from winter hibernation when temperatures rise and days get longer. In Mid-Atlantic states, the bugs are already emerging from their egg, pupal or larvae stages, said Laura Harrington, professor and chair of Cornell University’s Department of Entomology. It will take a while longer for them to crawl out farther north. Mosquitoes are active year-round in the nation's southernmost states, she said.
It's not that the mosquitoes will be traveling north carrying the virus; the bugs are already in your yard, waiting to hatch. The Aedes aegypti species is considered a domesticated species – an Aedes aegypti mosquito might spend its entire life cycle in your own backyard, Harrington said.
Indeed, Aedes mosquitoes don’t fly very far from the place where they hatched – typically not farther than the length of a football field, Fredericks said. Some mosquito species can fly more than a mile, but not the mosquitoes that transmit Zika.
Only female mosquitos bite: In the case of the Aedes mosquitoes, females will often take multiple small meals, “sipping” blood from a single person or multiple people in a single night, Hendricks said.
It's only if they bite a Zika-infected person, then bite you a week or so later, that you could get infected with Zika. That means outbreaks are likely to be local to where an infected person lives.
A typical adult mosquito lives about two weeks, said Harrington, and can bite several people during that time.
Infected travelers returning from Zika-plagued countries to a ready population of mosquitoes could easily spread the virus in the USA, the CDC said. So far, the CDC has confirmed 346 cases of the virus here, all in people who recently traveled to countries with an outbreak.
Mosquitoes crave warm, wet weather, and meteorologists predict temperatures well above normal across much of the nation from late spring into early summer, said Jon Gottschalck, a meteorologist at the Climate Prediction Center. The rainy, warm winter in the Southeast and a prediction of ample rain from the central Rockies to Texas from May to June set good conditions for a fertile breeding ground.
"There's not a lot of infected people, so there's not much of a virus yet," said Fredericks of the pest management association. "But a lot of folks are really concerned."
http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2016/04/20/zika-mosquitoes-weather/82943496/