Orange County has confirmed its first case of the Zika virus, officials said Thursday.
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Women who gave birth to babies with birth defects in Brazil past year were often in their first trimester during the Zika outbreak, according to a report released yesterday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
As students make their way back from Spring Break, Temple health officials want students to know Zika Virus has been spreading quickly, but is a minimal threat to most.
Department of Health Secretary Janette Garin said that the American patient had not traveled to a country other than the Philippines, meaning she had contracted the virus locally.
Much remains unknown about Zika, including whether the virus actually causes microcephaly in babies, a condition defined by unusually small heads that can result in developmental problems.
El Salvador has reported more than 9,000 cases of Zika virus infection so far, and 138 cases of possibly associated Guillain-Barre syndrome.
“Women have to be particularly careful if they’re traveling to these areas, or if their [sexual] partners have traveled to these areas”, Raupp cautions.
As for a link to fetal malformations, she said the virus has been detected in amniotic fluid and evidence shows it can cross the placental barrier and infect the fetus. Outbreaks of Zika have been recorded in Africa, the Americas, Southern Asia and the Western Pacific.
There have been fewer than a handful of reported cases of sexual transmission.
Next week, the WHO is set to convene a meeting of the world’s top experts on vector control to determine if a range of radical new methods could also be safely and efficiently used against the Aedes aegypti mosquitos carrying Zika.
“Women who are pregnant in affected countries or travel to these countries are understandably deeply anxious”, Chan said.
Last week, Cerus Corp. and Puerto Rico’s largest blood center signed an agreement to implement pathogen reduction technology, a system known as INTERCEPT, to help protect Puerto Rico’s blood supply during the Zika virus outbreak, according to a Mar 3 statement.
The mosquito-borne illness is linked to birth defects and has been deemed an global health emergency by the World Health Organization.
Over a dozen such cases are now under investigation in the United States.
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Health officials have confirmed 11 cases of Zika in California since the beginning of the year, with four of those in the Bay Area: two in Contra Costa County and one each in San Francisco and Napa counties.
