Florida officials confirmed five new cases of Zika on Tuesday, including one located in the Tampa Bay area hundreds of miles from Miami, where the first locally transmitted case of the virus was identified in the United States.
Republican Gov. Rick Scott said four of the new cases were contracted in Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood, which was identified as a Zika zone at the beginning of August. The fifth case was diagnosed in Pinellas County, roughly 265 miles from Miami.
State health officials announced last week five cases of Zika were contracted in Miami Beach. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised pregnant women to avoid travel to the area, which includes popular tourist destination South Beach.
A new study published Tuesday in the journal Radiology revealed that babies exposed to Zika are susceptible to impairments beyond microcephaly, a disease that causes unusually small head size and severe developmental problems, the New York Times reported.
Brain scans and ultrasound pictures showing the damage Zika has caused in 45 Brazilian babies revealed that while most of the babies studied were born with microcephaly, many of them also suffered severe brain damage.
"It’s not just the small brain, it’s that there’s a lot more damage," Dr. Deborah Levine, an author of the study and a professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School in Boston, told the New York Times. "The abnormalities that we see in the brain suggest a very early disruption of the brain development process."
Impairments included damage to the corpus callosum, which joins the two hemispheres of the brain; the cerebellum, which coordinates muscular activity, including balance and speech; and the basal ganglia, which assist with cognition and emotion.
Dr. Levine said the study also gave way to concerns about whether babies who are born without such discernible impairments could later develop brain damage during growth. Most of the babies studied suffered damages in their cortex, which continues to develop after birth.
"We’re concerned that there might be mild cases that we haven’t seen yet, and we should keep monitoring the babies after birth to see if they have cortical abnormalities," Levine said.
The U.S. has so far identified 41 locally transmitted cases of Zika, all of which were contracted in Florida. A senior National Institutes of Health official warned Sunday the virus could spread to U.S. Gulf States, including Texas and Louisiana.