The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Sunday it’s also the first infant born in the country with microcephaly associated with Zika virus.
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Oxitec, which was spun out from the University of Oxford, was bought by United States company Intrexon for $160m (£106m) in August past year.
Jamaica’s health minister is advising women to delay plans to become pregnant for the next six to 12 months due to the mosquito-borne Zika virus. Some Brazilian doctors and health workers have been quoted in the media advising women in affected areas not to get pregnant, though it doesn’t seem to be an official recommendation. He also called on citizens to play their part in taking the necessary steps to rid their communities of the Aedes aegypti mosquito which transmits the Zika virus.
Brazilian officials in the run-up to Carnival are working to prevent the spread of Zika and other mosquito-borne viruses to minimise the chance of infection.
Dalley said Monday in a statement that pregnant women should take extra precautions to avoid being bitten by mosquitoes.
Zika is not generally life-threatening, but its infection of women during their first three months of pregnancy has been linked to cases of microcephalic newborns. “All four mothers reported having experienced a fever and rash illness consistent with Zika virus disease (Zika) during their pregnancies”.
Although new test results provide new evidence of a link between Zika and microcephaly, it isn’t known if Zika alone is responsible or if other risk factors might be involved, Petersen said, adding more studies are planned to examine the link. Efforts are particularly intense in the north-east, where most infections and Zika-related birth defects have been concentrated. “The World Health Organization recommends controlling the mosquito”.
More than 3,500 microcephaly cases were reported in Brazil between October 2015 and January 2016, in babies born to women who were infected with the Zika virus while pregnant.
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Zika is named for the Zika forest in Uganda, where it was discovered in 1947, but it has since traveled, causing outbreaks in other African countries, Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, and South America. Symptoms of Zika include: headache, body ache, fever and red eye in some cases. Symptoms usually clear up within a few days.
