But amid a large Zika outbreak in Brazil, researchers began reporting an increase in a rare birth defect named microcephaly – babies born with abnormally small heads. “It would require an Aedes mosquito biting a Zika infected person and then biting others”.
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As per The Guardian, there is now no available treatment or vaccine for the Zika virus.
According to the Geneva-based World Health Organization, the Zika virus is already present in 21 of 55 countries in the Americas. Officials said they did not detect anyone in proximity to the man with symptoms compatible with Zika.
“Only one in four people infected with Zika virus develops symptoms, but it can sometimes cause serious complications in those who are infected”, he said.
Dr. Kerkering said the virus is spread through mosquitoes, not from person to person.
– And Cape Verde, off the coast of western Africa, and Samoa in the South Pacific. However, there has been one confirmed case of the virus in Los Angeles County – in an adolescent girl who traveled to El Salvador in late November.
Israel Cedeno, a Health Ministry expert, said that authorities are going house-to-house explaining how to prevent transmission but that it’s running up against cultural barriers and the lack of family planning among the Guna tribe.
According to the ABC News report, the 18 cases were from eight different states and from people who had recently traveled to Central or South America. The baby’s mother was residing in Brazil a year ago although did not have the virus when she arrived in Hawaii and the baby no longer had it at the time of birth. The Virginia Health Department says if pregnant women do decide to travel overseas during pregnancy, they should check health travel advisories before leaving the United States.
A spokeswoman from United Kingdom travel organisation Abta said women reconsidering their plans would be able to get a medical certificate from their family doctor in order to claim on insurance. Some U.S. travelers have been infected overseas with Zika but there are no cases of local infection in the U.S.so far.
Brazil said it would roll out more than 200,000 servicemembers to help clean up mosquitoes in the worst-affected areas.
The WHO cautioned that no definitive link between Zika and fetal brain damage has been proven, though director general Margaret Chan called the possibility “extremely worrisome”.
And the number of countries is likely to continue to rise.
Some governments are telling women to avoid pregnancy until the outbreak is over.
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Eduardo Espinoza, El Salvador’s vice minister of health, told the newspaper that the official advice was a “secondary” approach, stemming from “the fact that these mosquitoes exist and transmit this disease”.
