A Utah resident who died after getting Zika may have spread the virus to someone else, raising questions over how it was transmitted.
Health officials in Salt Lake City said Monday that they are exploring how the person, whom they described as a close family contact, got Zika. The person who got Zika, who has not been identified, didn’t recently travel to a country where the virus is spreading or get the virus through sexual transmission.
It is not clear if the person got the virus through a mosquito bite, the primary method through which the virus spreads. If the person did get the virus from a mosquito, it would be the first case of mosquito-borne transmission in the U.S.
However, the two mosquitoes that primarily spread the virus, Aedes aegypti and the Asian tiger mosquito, don’t live in Utah.
The patient has fully recovered from the infection, said Angela Donne, deputy epidemiologist in Utah. She added that health officials are capturing and testing mosquitoes around the patient for the virus.
The dead patient got the virus from an area where it is currently spreading. Roughly 1,300 cases have been documented in the U.S., but almost all were from people who traveled to an area where the virus is spreading. Fourteen cases were due to sexual transmission.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday that it is investigating the case.
