Unlike the mosquitoes that spread malaria, affected mosquitoes (the Aedes mosquito) are most active during the day.
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Collins said the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease is conducting studies to more fully understand the effects of Zika in humans, and to develop better diagnostic tests to quickly determine if someone has been infected.
At least 42 cases of the mosquito-borne virus have been detected in the sparsely populated province of Guna Yala along the Caribbean coast, one of them a 22-year-old pregnant woman.
Almost 4,000 suspected cases of microcephaly have been reported in Brazil since October, compared with fewer than 150 cases in the country in all of 2014.
Pregnant women are prone to zika virus diseas.
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.
A statement by the Australian Olympic Committee said “any team members who are pregnant at the time of the Games need to consider the risks very carefully before deciding whether to proceed with travel to Brazil”. “It is unthinkable. Or rather, it is something out of a science fiction story, the absolute core of a dystopian future”.
It said the virus does not occur naturally in Britain, which was first isolated from a monkey in the Zika forest in Uganda in 1947. The most recent case, has been reported from Los Angeles County, in a woman who recently travelled to El Salvador.
According to CDC, the Zika virus is now being locally transmitted in Barbados, Bolivia, Brazil, Cape Verde, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Martinique, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, Saint Martin, Suriname, Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Venezuela. Since its discovery, the virus has caused small but sporadic outbreaks in parts of Africa and South-East Asia.
The CDC is also asking doctors to screen infants whose mothers visited infected areas while pregnant. “Patients with suspect Zika, chikungunya, or dengue should avoid being bitten by mosquitoes during the first week of illness to prevent spreading their infection further”. Among these cases, 224 have been confirmed related to the virus, while the others are still under investigation.
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Dr Jose Felix Oletta, a former health minister and member of the non-governmental Organisation to Defend National Epidemiology, said the virus was “now a public menace” even though there were no official statistics on it. Dengue and Zika are both transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito.
