The Zika virus is part of the same family as the viruses that cause yellow fever, West Nile, Chikungunya and dengue.
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President Barack Obama this week said he would ask Congress to approve $1.8 billion in emergency funding to combat Zika.
FRISCO, Texas (AP) – U.S. women’s national team goalkeeper Hope Solo asserted that if the Olympics were held today, she would not go out of concern about the Zika virus.
An autopsy of the fetus showed microcephaly or small head size, as well as severe brain injury and high levels of the Zika virus in fetal brain tissues, exceeding levels of the virus typically found in blood samples, researchers in Slovenia from the University Medical Center in Ljubljana reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The Office of Global Opportunities said on its website that they will continue running programs in Zika-affected locations and will re-evaluate if the CDC issues a Warning Level 3, which is a warning to avoid non-essential travel.
Researchers in Brazil are scrambling to determine whether the arrival of the Zika virus in that country has caused a major rise in microcephaly, with more than 4,000 suspected cases of the condition reported to date.
“The arguments for sharing data and the consequences of not doing so (have been)… thrown into stark relief by the Ebola and Zika outbreaks”, said the agreement by an unprecedented number of signatories in the Americas, Japan, Europe and elsewhere. There is no treatment or vaccine. For this reason, many people might not realize they have been infected.
Mark Woolhouse, a University of Edinburgh professor of infectious diseases, said the commitment “if acted upon…will save lives”.
Lingering questions remain, including why more than 80 per cent of suspected microcephaly cases are confined to Brazil’s northeast region.
“We’re committed to protecting the health of Pennsylvanians and we will be sharing with you what our plans are”, Murphy said. The two Zika cases in OH – one in Cleveland and one in Stark County – were due to OH residents returning from travels to Haiti, where they contracted the virus.
The ban is widely disregarded in many countries, but activists say there is still a stigma attached to birth control in some Latin American countries because of the edict.
This point is important, as even in countries where abortion services are freely available, they are generally prohibited after a certain point in the pregnancy. Mosquitoes have already passed the virus to people in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.
CDC Director Tom Frieden testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Feb. 10, 2016, before the House Foreign Affairs, Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations subcommittee and Western Hemisphere subcommittee hearing on: ‘The Global Zika Epidemic’.
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Health authorities in Queensland state issued a statement late on Wednesday, saying until more was known about the Zika virus, women who are pregnant or those actively seeking to become pregnant should reconsider travelling to any area where Zika virus transmission is present.
