美国国家公共电台 NPR Zika Cases Surge In Puerto Rico As Mosquitoes Flourish

Zika Cases Surge In Puerto Rico As Mosquitoes Flourish

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

Puerto Rico is reporting more than a thousand new confirmed cases of Zika each week, and things are expected to get worse before they get better. NPR's Jason Beaubien is in Puerto Rico, and he's finding the challenges to fighting this mosquito-borne virus are huge.

JASON BEAUBIEN, BYLINE¹: Hiram Torres is standing² next to a chain-link fence, peering into a dump site west of the capital, San Juan. Torres, the co-founder of Puerto Rico Limpio, a group that's trying to clean up landfills, is pointing out how the rainwater runs off a mound³ of garbage and then collects in stagnant⁴ pools.

HIRAM TORRES: And that water has nowhere to go, so it just...

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Nowhere to go...

TORRES: It just sits there.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: ...It just sits there, exactly.

BEAUBIEN: Torres says this landfill and its pools of water are perfect breeding grounds for mosquitoes that can carry Zika.

TORRES: I don't know if you're feeling it, but I - I'm starting to feel mosquitoes, you know, start biting us, and we've just been standing here for a couple of minutes.

BEAUBIEN: The key to getting rid of the aedes aegypti mosquito, which carries Zika, is to get rid of the pools of water where it breeds. But right now, in the rainy season in Puerto Rico, that's pretty hard to do.

TYLER SHARP: We are right now, probably, in the month or six weeks of peak transmission.

BEAUBIEN: Tyler Sharp is the lead epidemiologist for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Zika operation in Puerto Rico.

SHARP: The more rains you get, the more mosquitoes you get. The more mosquitoes, the higher the rate of transmission. And also the mosquitoes like warmer temperatures and are able to replicate⁵ the virus more efficiently⁶ at at least slightly higher temperatures.

BEAUBIEN: He calls August in Puerto Rico the Goldilocks zone for virus replication. The island has already had nearly 8,000 confirmed cases of Zika. The CDC predicts that by the end of the year, 20 to 25 percent of the entire population could be infected with the virus. Many of those people will only have mild or no symptoms. But such a widespread outbreak means that thousands of pregnant women could be exposed and their unborn babies might be at risk of having severe Zika-related birth defects.

And the tools to fight Zika are limited. Sharp notes that in the previous outbreaks of dengue and chikungunya here, public health officials were never able to stop those outbreaks while they were in progress. Zika is even more complicated because it's transmitted by both mosquitoes and sexually.

SHARP: So we have things that we think can be effective. We know that individuals can take approaches to avoid their risk of infection. But in terms of breaking the epidemic⁷ or stopping transmission, there is nothing that we know about that has been, you know, scientifically evidenced to show that this will work, that this is the solution.

BEAUBIEN: Even the insecticides that are being used to spray homes or fog some high-risk neighborhoods, those chemicals have been losing their punch. Mosquitoes have been developing resistance to them.

SHARP: What we've seen in Puerto Rico, as we see in many regions, is that there's a wide variety of resistance not to all insecticides but to many of them.

BEAUBIEN: The CDC had recommended aerial spraying against the mosquitoes, but that was blocked by the governor over environmental concerns. Sharp says the efforts against Zika in Puerto Rico rely primarily on people - people protecting themselves from mosquito bites and people getting rid of mosquito breeding grounds. The only good news is that if previous outbreaks of dengue and chikungunya are any guide, the high levels of Zika transmission here should start coming down in September or October. Jason Beaubien, NPR News, San Juan.

1 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

2 standing   

n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的

参考例句：

• After the earthquake only a few houses were left standing.地震过后只有几幢房屋还立着。
• They're standing out against any change in the law.他们坚决反对对法律做任何修改。

3 mound   

n.土墩，堤，小山；v.筑堤，用土堆防卫

参考例句：

• The explorers climbed a mound to survey the land around them.勘探者爬上土丘去勘测周围的土地。
• The mound can be used as our screen.这个土丘可做我们的掩蔽物。

4 stagnant   

adj.不流动的，停滞的，不景气的

参考例句：

• Due to low investment,industrial output has remained stagnant.由于投资少，工业生产一直停滞不前。
• Their national economy is stagnant.他们的国家经济停滞不前。

5 replicate   

v.折叠，复制，模写；n.同样的样品；adj.转折的

参考例句：

• The DNA of chromatin must replicate before cell division.染色质DNA在细胞分裂之前必须复制。
• It is also easy to replicate,as the next subsection explains.就像下一个小节详细说明的那样，它还可以被轻易的复制。

6 efficiently   

adv.高效率地，有能力地

参考例句：

• The worker oils the machine to operate it more efficiently.工人给机器上油以使机器运转更有效。
• Local authorities have to learn to allocate resources efficiently.地方政府必须学会有效地分配资源。

7 epidemic   

n.流行病；盛行；adj.流行性的，流传极广的

参考例句：

• That kind of epidemic disease has long been stamped out.那种传染病早已绝迹。
• The authorities tried to localise the epidemic.当局试图把流行病限制在局部范围。