There’s Probably Way More Zika in the United States Than Has Been Counted

Try as they might, public-health officials can’t really track the Zika virus in real time. There is inevitably a lag between how a disease spreads and when the public finds out about it.

Even in Miami, where new updates are being issued every weekday, there’s only so much officials know about how quickly and widely Zika is traveling through the population.

Then there are the unknowns that are harder to pin down: How many cases of Zika are going uncounted? It turns out, that number may be enormous.

Researchers at Northeastern University say federal-health officials are likely vastly undercounting Zika in the United States. In a paper that’s still under review for journal publication, they describe computer modeling that suggests there were nearly 30,000 cases of travel-related Zika in the country in mid-June, about 25 times more cases than the 1,200 or so reported by the CDC at the time.

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Physics