The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have issued a really, really specific travel advisory, telling pregnant women to stay away from Miami’s Wynwood Art District, where 14 cases of Zika have been reported. Pregnant women who visited the neighborhood since mid-June are also being advised to get tested for the virus.
The Zika crisis has been making its way closer and closer to the United States for months; in January, the CDC told pregnant women to postpone traveling to 13 Latin American countries. By May, 157 pregnant women in the U.S. had Zika, and by June, three babies were born here with Zika-related birth defects. Florida said they have yet to find any mosquitoes actually carrying the virus, but do believe the new cases were caused by bites.
Now, the Associated Press reports, the CDC has taken the unusual step of issuing a neighborhood-specific travel advisory for somewhere within the United States. The CDC warning, which you can read in full here, also says that anyone who visited the area should wait at least eight weeks before trying to get pregnant, and that people who live in or have traveled to the neighborhood and who have a pregnant sex partner should use condoms.
The agency is also sending a Zika emergency response team to Florida, at Florida Governor Rick Scott’s request. Luckily, Congress passed a terrible, insufficiently-funded bill to fight the virus, and mosquitoes seem to be very good at respecting geographic boundaries, so we should all be fine.