At least 33 U.S. troops, including a pregnant woman, have tested positive for the Zika virus, U.S. military spokesmen said Wednesday. Ten of those troops are men who answer to the Southern Command, the Pentagon subsidiary with oversight of troops in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The 10 “are all asymptomatic now,” Ruiz said, meaning they are not sick. All were tested between February and July. In addition, a female relative of a U.S. service member working for Southcom got the infection in one of those five countries, he said. She is not pregnant and is asymptomatic, Ruiz said.
Southcom has liaison troops in four of the five nations. They generally work out of U.S. embassies as part of cooperation agreements such as military exercises or providing humanitarian relief. In the instance of Martinique, Ruiz said, a Coast Guard cutter docked there as part of its anti-trafficking work with Southcom’s Joint Interagency Task Force, and someone got sick.
One of the other 23 troops is a pregnant female service member, said Air Force Maj. Benjamin Sakrisson, a Pentagon spokesman. He declined to divulge where the troops are based or got sick. “At the moment it’s protected health information,” he said.
The Military Times first reported the figure of 33 on Monday, and on Wednesday reported that 41 service members have contracted the virus.
Sakrisson added that the figure of 33 confirmed infected military members disclosed by the Pentagon on Wednesday was the tally as of last week and was counted in the global figure reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A week earlier, the military had 27 confirmed cases, meaning that the figures could have risen by Wednesday’s disclosure.
Because Southcom personnel account for only 10 of the cases, the gap leaves at least two possibilities: Some may have contracted the virus while on leave or vacation in the Caribbean or South America, or other Florida-based troops who don’t answer to Southcom could be among those infected.
This trendy Miami area is ground zero for the first Zika transmission in the continental U.S.
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Sixteen people have been infected with the Zika virus in Florida, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued a warning to pregnant women to avoid traveling to the Wynwood neighborhood.
