The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has announced that it’s investigating 14 new cases where it appears the Zika virus has been sexually transmitted – worryingly, “several” of those cases involve pregnant women, according to the reports.
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In two of the suspected cases, the infection has been confirmed in women whose only known risk factor was sexual contact with an ill male partner who had recently traveled to an area where the virus is present, the agency said.
The CDC said the 14 cases, “like previously reported cases of sexual transmission… involve possible transmission of the virus from men to their sex partners”.
Anyone, including students, traveling to areas with documented Zika virus transmission should take precautions against mosquito bites.
The hospital’s chief infectious disease specialist, Dr. Peter Berkey, fielded questions from fellow doctors about how to treat potential Zika patients.
So, how do you make sure you don’t get Zika or infect someone else – after all, 20% of cases are symptomless? Tests have not been completed for their male partners.
Of the confirmed cases, 141 were attributable to the Zika virus.
Cases of active Zika transmission have been reported in 28 countries and territories in the Americas and Caribbean. And an investigation is ongoing in eight other suspected events.
According to ODH’s website, 80 percent of people infected with Zika virus will not show symptoms. People who do have symptoms have reported fever, rash, joint pain, and red eyes.
This included using protection when having sexual intercourse when travelling.
But in pregnant women, the consequences could be dire.
Zika infection generally causes mild symptoms, but it may be linked to thousands of cases of birth defects in Brazil known as microcephaly, which is marked by undersized heads and underdeveloped brains. The CDC on Tuesday expanded its Zika travel advisory to two more places – the Marshall Islands, and Trinidad and Tobago.
Local health authorities have extended a period of recommendation to delay pregnancy for women who travel to countries affected by the Zika virus. The Aedes aegypti mosquito that spreads Zika proliferates in such neighborhoods, where omnipresent trash provides breeding grounds in discarded margarine tubs, yogurt containers and plastic bottle caps.
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But on day one of the study’s data-collection phase, the same precarious conditions that contributed to the proliferation of the mosquito-borne virus throughout the region proved to be a stumbling block for researchers, even in Paraiba state’s more-developed capital, Joao Pessoa.
