Florida Gov. Scott to lift South Beach Zika zone Friday

Florida Gov. Rick Scott will lift the Zika warning over South Beach on Friday, ending the county’s last local transmission zone for the mosquito-borne disease that has rattled the region’s tourism industry and upended the lives of pregnant women and their partners.

Scott is scheduled to hold a press conference at 10 a.m. Friday in the Betsy Hotel in South Beach to declare an end to the Zika “transmission zone” that currently stretches from Eighth Street to 28th Street, overlapping Miami Beach’s Art Deco District and Lincoln Road — two of the county’s top tourist attractions.

South Beach is the last of four Zika zones remaining since health officials identified the nation’s first active transmission area for the virus in Wynwood in late July. Florida has since lifted all of the zones except for the 1.5-square-mile zone in South Beach, which was identified on Aug. 19.

Health officials lift a Zika zone after 45 days pass without someone in the area being confirmed as having contracted the virus from a mosquito within the boundaries. The rule comes from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has maintained a broad warning for pregnant women, and women who may become pregnant, to consider postponing non-essential travel to all parts of Miami-Dade County.

As of Thursday, eight new travel-related cases had been detected statewide. Four of the cases are in Orange County, while the other four are in Miami-Dade, Broward, Hillsborough and Osceola counties. All told, Florida had 1,244 Zika cases reported as of Thursday, according to the Florida Department of Health, with 249 of those cases locally acquired.

The expected lifting comes as South Florida’s busy winter tourism season ramps up, which traditionally begins with Christmas and Hanukkah and typically peaks in the spring. But the good news also tracks with the end of the region’s mosquito season in December, as the rainy summer weather gives way to a drier, cooler South Florida.

Public health experts predict that Zika is likely to resurface in 2017, in part due to the high rate of travel in Miami-Dade to and from places where the virus has been widespread, such as Brazil, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.

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