Symptoms of Zika virus include fever, rash, joint pain and conjunctivitis (pink eye).
Advertisement
Schuchat of the CDC said Thursday that there have been 31 cases of Zika virus in the United States since previous year, but that all of them are from people who traveled overseas.
The World Health Organization will convene an emergency committee in Geneva on the global response to the Zika virus outbreak on Monday, February 1 as up to 4 million Zika cases in Americas are estimated in next 12 months.
“The species of mosquito that transmits Zika is rarely found in Boston”, said Dr. Anita Barry, Director of the Infectious Disease Bureau at the Public Health Commission. About 80 percent of people who become infected do not show symptoms, but symptoms generally last up to one week and then go away “without additional problems”, he said.
“The level of alarm is extremely high, as is the level of uncertainty”. All cases in the United States are travel-related, but the number of them is increasing rapidly, the CDC said.
The World Health Organization (WHO) vindicated Obama’s concerns on Thursday by announcing an emergency meeting to try to stop the spread of the disease.
For now, avoiding mosquitoes is the best way to avoid Zika.
Zika virus has been tentatively linked to 4,000 suspected cases of microcephaly in Brazil, a condition that results in abnormally small heads and brains in newborns.
The public should check with the Centers for Disease Control for updated travel notices.
He says that an existing vaccine platform, that was proven safe with the West Nile virus, could be repurposed for use in developing a vaccine for Zika.
The Zika virus was first identified in the African nation of Uganda.
The county Health and Human Services Agency said two cases of the virus have occurred in San Diego County – one in July 2014, a traveler who returned from the Cook Islands, and the other last July in someone who visited Christmas Island.
Bruce Aylward, Assistant Director-General, WHO, also warned that the virus could spread to other places wherever there is Aedes mosquitoes.
He says it can’t be spread person to person by casual contact and as long as you’re not pregnant, you shouldn’t be too affected by it.
Because the disease is carried by a common mosquito, it threatens to travel everywhere from northern Argentina to the southern U.S.
Advertisement
“If you have this much Zika in South America and the Caribbean, sooner or later we’re going to see a local transmission”, he said.
