The minister said that he met with USA officials to discuss cooperating on – within one year – developing a vaccine against the virus and therapy to treat people who contract Zika.
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Writing in a linked comment, Prof Didier Musso from the emerging infectious diseases unit at the Institut Louis Malardé in French Polynesia said: “Even if all these data strongly suggest that Zika virus can cause microcephaly, the number of microcephaly cases related to Zika virus is still unknown”.
The disease, which is spread primarily by mosquitoes, has been linked to thousands of birth defects in Brazil, which has recorded nearly 5,000 cases of the virus.
“This study can not determine whether the Zika virus identified in these two cases was the cause of microcephaly in the babies”, said Ana de Filippis, the doctor who led the study at the Oswaldo Cruz Institute in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Microcephaly is a condition where a person has an abnormally small head.
Mississippians remain at low risk for becoming infected with the mosquito-borne Zika virus, but the state Department of Health on Wednesday advised pregnant women to avoid traveling to countries with ongoing virus transmission.
Brazilian states in the country’s northeast, where Zika is most severe, also face bigger economic losses from tourism, according to Otto Nogami, an economics professor at the Insper business school in Sã o Paulo.
In 2015, the number of reported cases of babies with microcephaly in Brazil increased 20-fold when compared with previous years. The individuals, neither of whom was pregnant, had a history of travel to Zika affected countries. Public health expert Lawrence Gostin said on Wednesday the WHO’s reaction to the Zika emergency was again “too little, too late”.
The ministry earlier in the day reported a total of 4,443 suspected and confirmed cases of the rare defect, up from 4,314 a week earlier. The most common symptoms of a Zika infection are fever, rashes, joint pains or conjunctivitis (red eyes).
The Zika virus is spread through mosquito bites, and research shows that it is nearly always non-fatal.
$14.2 million would go toward care of people affected by the virus, especially childbearing-age women, pregnant women, and families with children affected by the virus.
The Korean government is stepping up efforts to prevent a Zika virus outbreak in the country.
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In other developments, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday moved to protect the U.S. blood supply by saying that people who’ve traveled to places where the Zika virus is prevalent, or who have symptoms that suggest infection, should wait a month before donating blood.
