A Virginia-based internal medicine specialist, Dr. Lisa Ashe, said she continues to watch her patients and many others blithely head off to vacation areas where there are outbreaks of the Zika virus.

People are not taking the necessary precautions — either through mosquito protection or through increased sexual protection — given the rapid spread of the virus.

The FDA has asked all blood establishments in Miami-Dade and Broward Counties to cease collecting blood immediately.

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Ashe, who is also medical director of the Be Well Medical Group, said she understands that for many people, this is a virus we “can’t comprehend.” But it’s not just coming to the U.S. — it is here now. Blood donations have been halted in two Florida counties — Miami-Dade and Broward — as health officials look into a number of non-travel-related cases of Zika. The Food and Drug Administration and the Florida Department of Health are conducting an epidemiological investigation into what may be the first cases of local Zika virus transmission by mosquitoes in the continental United States.

On top of this, the CDC on Friday morning said Puerto Rico is now dealing with a Zika epidemic.

“The virus is silently and rapidly spreading in Puerto Rico,” Lyle R. Peterson, M.D., M.P.H, the CDC’s Zika response director in the division of Vector-Borne Diseases, said in a statement. “This could lead to hundreds of infants being born with microcephaly or other birth defects in the coming year. We must do all we can to protect pregnant women from Zika and to prepare to care for infants born with microcephaly.”

As of July 7, Zika has been diagnosed in 5,582 people, including 672 pregnant women, in Puerto Rico, according to new information out today in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Positive tests for people with suspected Zika virus infection have increased from 14 percent in February to 64 percent in June. Positive tests through blood supply screening also increased, reaching 1.8 percent during the latest week of reporting that started July 3.

Clearly, the health complications that Zika cause are not something anyone should take lightly, Dr. Ashe told LifeZette.

“Lyme disease, for the most part, is treatable. It can cause some complications, but they’re treatable. Even malaria — that’s treatable if you have the medication. Right now, we don’t have a treatment for Zika and we don’t know how to prevent the birth defects — and that is very scary.”

[lz_bulleted_list title=”Zika Cases Reported in U.S.” source=”http://www.cdc.gov”]U.S. States and D.C.: 1,658|U.S. Territories: 4,750[/lz_bulleted_list]

Ashe added, “I have a patient scheduled to get married in Mexico and she accidentally got pregnant. I had to tell her, ‘You have to cancel your wedding in Mexico. You can’t go to Mexico eight weeks pregnant. Your baby is at risk.'”

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The patient was surprised and did not understand how grave the risk was.

Health officials fear we’re all at risk as Zika cases in the U.S. are on the rise, and as tens of thousands get set to head to the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Brazil, the epicenter of the original outbreak. The Olympics begin next week.

The FDA has asked all blood establishments in Miami-Dade and Broward Counties to cease collecting blood immediately. The establishments must implement testing of each individual unit of blood collected with an available investigational donor screening test for Zika virus RNA — or until they implement use of an approved or investigational pathogen inactivation technology.

Also this week, federal health officials released updated guidelines for doctors for screening women who are pregnant. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now advises that all pregnant women be asked about their risk of infection, given more than half of all pregnancies in the U.S. are unplanned and men and women may not be thinking about Zika when having unprotected sex.

There may be another solution. The first wave of genetically modified mosquitoes was released Wednesday in the Cayman Islands, The Associated Press reported. The release is part of a new effort to control the spread of Zika and other viruses.

[lz_bulleted_list title=”Pregnant Women with Zika Infection” source=”http://www.cdc.gov”]U.S. states and D.C.: 433|U.S. Territories: 422[/lz_bulleted_list]

Genetically altered male mosquitoes don’t bite — but when they mate with females, they produce offspring that die before reaching adulthood. The insects were released in the West Bay area of Grand Cayman Island, according to a joint statement from the Cayman Islands Mosquito Research and Control Unit and British biotech firm Oxitec.

The mosquitoes will be released over nine months in an area known to be a hotspot for the Aedes aegypti species, which are not native to the Cayman Islands and are the main vector for Zika as well as other viruses, including chikungunya and dengue, The AP reported.

Mosquitoes were deployed in Brazil following initial trials there.

Oxitec, the company behind the science, and officials in the Florida Keys have proposed testing there as well — but a release awaits U.S. regulatory approval.

“We need a vaccine,” said Dr. Ashe. “This is very dangerous with the birth defects, especially. If we start seeing the sexual transmission and mosquitoes here with it, this is something that can spread very quickly — especially in the summer when we have a lot of mosquitoes. The most important thing is, we need a vaccine. We need to prevent it. There’s no treatment for it.”