It is important to highlight that the virus has harmful effects for pregnant women, so we are carrying out an extremely focused operation to exterminate the mosquito whilst we do not have a vaccine.
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They were deployed on the streets to hand out leaflets warning of dangers of still and stagnant water as breeding grounds for the yellow fever mosquito and methods for them to be removed and prevented. In Brazil, there have been more than 400 confirmed cases of microcephaly with Zika confirmed in about 40 of the cases.
Zika has struck hard in hot and humid southeastern and central Brazil, but largely spared bigger cities like Sao Paulo or Rio de Janeiro, said Claudio Maierovitch, head of the communicable diseases surveillance department at the Ministry of Health.
Forty-one of the cases have a confirmed link to Zika virus.
Rousseff vowed that the presence of Zika in Brazil would not compromise the Olympics in August.
The institute said 29.4 percent of pregnant women with Zika live in Norte de Santander province, along the eastern border with Venezuela.
“A lot of people come from Canada and say ‘mosquitoes, whatever.’ Now they’re starting to sit up and take notice”.
“In the context of the Zika virus outbreak, Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, Suriname and Venezuela have reported an increase of GBS (Guillain-Barre Syndrome)”, the World Health Organization said in a weekly report on Zika virus now circulating in 34 countries, including 26 in the Americas.
China confirmed its first imported case of the Zika virus on Tuesday, and its southwestern border province of Yunnan is on high alert, providing 24-hour laboratory tests for the virus.
The rare Guillain-Barre syndrome, which causes the body’s immune system to attack the nervous system, can cause weakness in muscles that control breathing while causing blood infection, lung clots, cardiac arrests and sometimes paralysis. The virus can cause microcephaly, which causes babies to be born with unusually small heads.
Public Health isn’t concerned about the Zika Virus spreading to the Grey-Bruce region, but the Medical Officer of Health urges caution when visiting South America.
Colombian officials announced Saturday that since the beginning of the epidemic, more than 5,000 Zika cases have been reported in women who are pregnant.
From a lack of ways to diagnose and treat Zika to equally tricky questions related to possible complications from the virus, it might be years until researchers can give answers to why the current outbreak is happening or what its true scope will be. The link between Zika and microcephaly remains unproved.
United Kingdom health authorities are warning pregnant women to avoid travelling to affected areas.
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Thanks to Aedes aegypti, the disease quickly spread across Brazil and to more than 20 countries in the region, the Caribbean and beyond, leading the World Health Organization to declare an global emergency.
