The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) stated that it supports the new travel guidelines issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in response to the mosquito-born Zika virus.
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Last week’s alert included Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Martinique, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, Suriname and Venezuela.
“Until more is known, and out of an abundance of caution, pregnant women should consider postponing travel to any area where Zika virus transmission is ongoing”, the CDC report states. Less than nine months later, the number of reported cases of microcephaly, where a newborn infant’s head is abnormally small, typically as a result of abnormal brain development or brain damage, spiked.
If it will be necessary for you to travel to South America, Central America, and/or the Caribbean, caution should be taken to avoid mosquito bites, especially if you are pregnant.
“Most people who are infected don’t know they are infected”, Ko said, adding the illness is acute with symptoms usually quite mild, lasting just three to five days.
The CDC says the Aedes mosquitoes that spread the Zika, chikungunya and dengue viruses are aggressive daytime bites and prefer to bite people rather than animals.
No one can yet say why Zika hasn’t been associated with birth defects before, but the virus didn’t start spreading widely until 2007.
Thousands of babies in Brazil were born past year with microcephaly, a brain disorder that experts associate with Zika exposure.
El Salvador’s Deputy Health Minister Eduardo Espinoza on Thursday urged women to avoid pregnancy until 2018. The outbreak was documented on Yap island in Micronesia, whereby an estimated 73 percent of residents were infected with Zika virus.
Since last May, the virus carried by mosquitoes has centralized in South America and Central America. Health officials there are also investigating about 4,000 cases where the virus might have caused microcephaly in newborns. And recently, there have been confirmed cases of Zika in several US states.
Doctor Albert Ko, an infectious disease doctor at the Yale School of Public Health, traveled to Brazil in December to help with the outbreak investigation.
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Three people in NY who travelled to areas where the virus was spreading rapidly tested positive for the virus, city officials said on Friday.
