Dr. Adi Pour, the director of the Douglas County Health Department, noted that while the virus is mainly transmitted via mosquitoes, it can also be transmitted sexually, as confirmed in one case in Texas.
Advertisement
More than 30 people in the USA have been diagnosed with Zika after traveling to an affected country. Brazil has the most Zika infections with more than one million, and Colombia has more than 20,000, World Health Organization said.
“No doubt many more travelers will return to the USA with Zika infections”, Frieden said.
A recent outbreak of the virus in the Caribbean and Latin America has coincided with a wave of birth defects in Brazil; however, a definitive link hasn’t been established. It also may be possible to spread the virus from a mother to her baby during pregnancy.
“We’re still learning more about [the virus in] saliva and how it works in the body”, Frieden said. The mosquitoes are the same species that transmit dengue and chikungunya viruses which have also been associated with travel-related illness over the past few years.
“Our labs are literally working around the clock to get more test kits available”, Frieden said. Door-to-door inspections have increased in neighborhoods where 12 cases of Zika were previously reported.
NEW YORK (AP) – U.S. health officials issued guidelines Friday to prevent the sexual transmission of the Zika virus, telling men who have been to outbreak areas to use condoms during sex with pregnant women. “This is the first time we’ve demonstrated that the virus is active [in those fluids], with the potential to cause infection”, Fiocruz researcher Myrna Bonaldo said. In nearly every instance, people are infected via a mosquito bite, specifically from an Aedes species mosquito (A. aegypti or A. albopictus). And no pregnant woman should travel to any of the affected countries while she is pregnant.
Pregnant women will be first to receive them.
He adds, though: “This is not a generalized public health measure, for the love of God”.
But in the end, the CDC says “mosquito bites remain the primary way that Zika virus is transmitted”.
Scientists at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, a Brazil federal government biomedical research institution, said they used genetic testing to identify the virus in samples from two patients while they had symptoms and were known to have Zika.
However he says that the discovery calls for special precaution to be taken with pregnant women.
How will all this affect the Rio 2016 Olympics?
Advertisement
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has revised its guidelines on dealing with Zika virus. But experts are puzzled why it is almost non-existent in other Latin American countries where the Zika virus is present.
