Airplanes dispersed insecticide over Miami early Thursday morning, and according to officials they’re already seeing a lot of dead mosquitos.
Gov. Rick Scott and Dr. Tom Frieden—who heads the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)—made the announcement at a press conference in Doral on Thursday afternoon.
“As you know, they did aerial spraying this morning and they killed a lot of mosquitoes,” said Scott.
Earlier this week, Frieden told reporters he was concerned that boots-on-the-ground mosquito control had not been as effective as expected—possibly because of insecticide resistance.
“Now they’re using different chemicals. The one they used for aerial spraying, Dibrom, or Naled, appears to have been very effective because they had very high kill rates in the mosquito traps there,” said Frieden.
Frieden cautioned that the mosquitoes that carry Zika also live indoors, where aerial spraying can’t reach them.
Gov. Scott also announced that the state was shaving 10 blocks off the northwest corner of the area where there is suspected mosquito-born Zika transmission in Wynwood and Midtown. He said the state investigation yielded no evidence of transmission in that corner.
“So from the state health department standpoint, we’re very comfortable that we’re not seeing any active cases there,” said Scott, who also urged people to patronize businesses in the area.
On Wednesday, Miami-Dade County received a record number of calls asking for a visit from mosquito control—nearly 1,300 complaints—said Chalmers Vasquez, who runs mosquito control for Miami-Dade County.
