This warning is given due to suggestions that if a pregnant woman is infected, her child could be born with a devastating birth defect called microcephaly: a shrunken head and brain.
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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed it was the first U.S. Zika case in someone who had not traveled overseas in the current outbreak, said CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden on Twitter.
Indonesia will step up preventive measures against the Zika virus after the World Health Organization (WHO) declares a global emergency over its spread.
Although Tuesday’s report of a sexual transmission in Dallas adds to evidence that bodily fluids might also transmit the disease, scientists and public health authorities said far more research is needed to determine how much sexual contact might be needed for contagion.
The CDC said it will provide more guidance as more information on sexual transmission is learned, but in the meantime, “Sexual partners can protect each other by using condoms to prevent spreading sexually transmitted infections”. As the mosquito’s global distribution expands with warmer temperatures, it has been spotted as far north as the Netherlands, though it is still not endemic to Europe. There is no specific medication available to treat Zika virus and there is not a vaccine.
Meanwhile, Health Minister Nila F. Moeloek said the government had warned Indonesian nationals against traveling to areas prone to the virus. Inc. said they were evaluating their technologies or existing vaccines for their potential to combat Zika.
Zika virus is transmitted to humans by infected mosquitoes.
“There are many things we don’t know about Zika”, Mr Hartl said.
The Aedes aegypti mosquito, which carries Zika and the dengue and chikungunya viruses, is also widely prevalent in India, which reports thousands of cases of dengue annually.
This is the second time the disease has been sexually transmitted in the United States.
The U.N.is mobilizing Latin American communities to stop the spread of the Zika virus that could reach the African and Asian continent which are the two with the world’s highest birth rates.
Relatively few viruses are transmitted through sex, with well-known exceptions such as HIV, hepatitis C and HPV, the human papillomavirus, which causes cervical cancer, Hotez said. As of Tuesday, that case appears to be the only locally transmitted, as opposed to travel-related, case of Zika in the continental United States. Researchers aren’t sure how long Zika can remain in semen, or when people with the virus are most likely to infect another person.
Confirmed cases of the virus have been reported in at least five states all in people who had recently traveled to affected areas.
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More than 20 countries have reported cases of Zika virus, many of them in Latin America.
