Robert Silk
With the confirmation last week of Florida's first locally transmitted cases of Zika, public health officials have reason to be concerned. The outbreak has tourism officials concerned, too, although they're not particularly keen on talking about it.
But last week also brought some potentially good news on this front. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, surely jolted by the Zika outbreak in Miami's Wynwood neighborhood north of downtown, gave final approval to a controversial proposal for the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District to release genetically modified mosquitoes on an island near Key West in an effort to reduce outbreaks of transmittable viruses, including Zika.
As of early this week, 16 locally transmitted Zika cases had been confirmed in Wynwood, a square-mile area that draws tourists for its galleries and street art. Time will tell whether the outbreak will truly be contained to that small area. But in an interview with Travel Weekly, University of Florida entomologist Jonathan Day said he suspected it will be more widespread.
Day's logic was difficult to dispute. He pointed out that people who are infected with Zika carry high counts of the virus in their blood. As a result, a mosquito that bites someone with Zika has a relatively good chance of passing it on to its next victim.
As of this writing, the Miami and Fort Lauderdale areas have had 166 confirmed cases of travel-related Zika, and there have likely been many more cases that went undetected.
Simply put, there have been plenty of opportunities for local mosquitoes to transmit the Zika virus. And even if the Wynwood outbreak is an isolated one, further outbreaks are quite possible. In total, 369 travel-related Zika infections have been confirmed in Florida, including five new ones on Aug. 5 in the Orlando area.
Florida, which last year brought in a record 105 million visitors, has a robust tourism industry that for the most part has proven immune to spates of bad news. Winter sunshine, 825 miles of beaches and the world's most famous theme parks continue to be a most enticing draw.
But if Zika outbreaks become widespread, the state's largest industry could take a hit. Unlike a coastal algae bloom, which fades with time, or even something as horrific as the mass shooting at Orlando's Pulse nightclub in June, a virus is the type of ongoing threat that many genuinely worry could affect them, especially when the victims are unborn babies.
As University of Florida Tourism Crisis Management Institute director Lori Pennington-Gray said last week, "The very nature of the destination itself is inherently linked to outdoor activities. So I think people may choose to go other places because they are going to have to consider protecting themselves."
The threat posed by locally transmitted Zika was certainly evident to the FDA last week when it gave final approval of a trial release of genetically modified mosquitoes on the island of Key Haven, located about a mile east of Key West, nearly five months after the agency gave the plan its preliminary approval.
But the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District, which brought in a British firm to develop the trial in the aftermath of a brief Key West dengue fever outbreak in 2010, doesn't plan on moving forward with the project until at least December.
The district plans to wait on the results of two nonbinding referendums that are to be held on Election Day in November. One of the referendums will be countywide; the other will be for residents of Key Haven only. Both will ask if voters approve of the trial mosquito project. Afterward, the district board will decide whether to go ahead with the release of approximately 3 million genetically modified Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, the breed that carries the Zika, dengue fever and chikungunya viruses. The mosquitoes would produce sterile offspring, thereby reducing the Aedes aegypti population.
The project has drawn strong opposition, and not just from residents of the Florida Keys. An online petition against the plan has 169,000 signatures, more than double the population of the island chain. Opponents mainly worry about the unintended environmental consequences of genetic modification.
"Will the more virulent Asian tiger mosquito that also carries dengue fill the void left by reductions in A. aegypti?" the petition asks. "Will the dengue virus mutate and become even more dangerous? There are more questions than answers, and we need more testing to be done."
But while a release of the genetically modified mosquitoes will be the first of its kind in the U.S., it would not be unprecedented. Oxitec, the company that produces the modified mosquitoes, deployed them in a 300-acre of the Cayman Islands last month after a 2012 trial on the island reduced the target mosquito population by 80%.
Last year, a release of the mosquitoes in a neighborhood of 5,000 people in Piracicaba, Brazil, led to a 82% reduction of the target mosquito population over the course of 7 months. Since then, the municipality has expanded the program to reach an area inhabited by 60,000 more people.
The Florida Keys Mosquito Control district, of course, is responsible only for its own constituency. So having promised to present the referendums, it has little choice but to do so.
Still, the agency's foresight six years ago while addressing the dengue outbreak has placed it in a unique position. If the experiences in the Cayman Islands and Brazil are telling, then by moving forward with the release of genetically modified mosquitoes, the district will not only be taking an important step toward protecting residents and visitors to the Key West area, but it will also be helping all of Florida add one more weapon with which it can fight Zika.
That would be good news for health and tourism officials alike. And it's something the five commissioners on the Keys mosquito board shouldn't forget.