Neither the baby nor the mother are infectious, and there was never a risk of transmission in Hawaii, officials said.
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Two reasons. First, there’s been growing evidence linking Zika infection in pregnant women to a rare condition called microcephaly, in which the head is smaller than normal and the brain has not developed properly.
On Friday, Jan. 15, 2016, USA health officials are telling pregnant women to avoid travel to Latin America and Caribbean countries with outbreaks of a tropical illness linked to birth defects. They suspected she was infected during her early pregnancy, with the virus reaching the embryo and damaging its developing brain.
Hawaii State Epidemiologist Dr. Sarah Park told The Huffington Post the mother had alerted doctors to her bout of Zika, which she recovered from before relocating to Hawaii.
“This case further emphasizes the importance of the CDC travel recommendations released today”, Park added. Petersen said there is now some evidence that Zika is doing this.
The travel alert applies to Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Martinique, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Suriname, Venezuela and Puerto Rico. The list is continuing to grow larger, with Barbados reporting its first cases on Saturday.
The CDC suggested pregnant women who must travel talk to health care providers beforehand and follow steps to prevent mosquito bites. Six Hawaii residents are known to have had the virus since 2014, but all picked it up through travel elsewhere. But Hawaii suffers outbreaks of dengue and the same mosquitoes that carry dengue are found there, so the state is vulnerable.
“I don’t think anybody has any idea how Zika is crossing the placenta into these fetuses, or why Zika is doing it and other closely related viruses like Dengue don’t”, said Scott Weaver, director of the Institute for Human Infections and Immunity at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.
“The vaccine is the great solution”, said the minister Marcelo Castro.
The uptick in microcephaly started appearing a few months after the virus was identified, which is why Brazilian health officials believe there may be a bad link between Zika and the birth defect. The disease causes only a mild illness in most people.
Common symptoms can last up to a week and include fever, rash, joint pain and conjunctivitis. In October, doctors in Pernambuco state, Brazil, noticed a surge in cases of microcephaly. Pregnant women who live in Brazil in areas of the country where there has been a high incidence of the Zika virus have begun advising women to “delay having a child”. More than 200 cases have been reported between September 2015 and December 2015. There has also been one report of a possible infection through blood transfusion and one through sexual contact.
At the moment the only way to fight Zika is to clear standing water where mosquitoes breed.
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What Are the Symptoms of the Zika Virus? Doctors have not yet proven the causal link between a viral infection in the mother and the birth condition of the baby, but the association between the two has become strong enough to warrant this action, Petersen said.
