It’s a surprisingly low risk that experts say might not match the threat of the epidemic now spreading explosively in the Americas.
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There’s growing evidence linking Zika to a rare birth defect and to a nerve condition that causes temporary paralysis.
FILE – In this Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2016 file photo, Gleyse Kelly da Silva, 27, holds her daughter Maria Giovanna, who was born with microcephaly, outside their house in Recife, Pernambuco state, Brazil.
Because the virus is spread sexually and through mosquitoes, it has been hard to contain: The vast majority of people infected with Zika do not know it, or have symptoms that are otherwise mild, like fever, rash and joint pain.
All told, some 40 countries have reported transmission within their borders since past year, according to the World Health Organization, which declared a global health emergency on 1 February.
State officials recommended that women who are pregnant or thinking of becoming pregnant to postpone travel to Zika-affected areas.
After a surge in microcephaly was detected in Brazil, worldwide scientists combed through records from the 2013-14 Tahiti outbreak to see if the same thing had happened there.
Paris: A woman infected by the Zika virus during the first three months of pregnancy faces a one-in-100 chance her child will suffer severe brain damage, according to a study released today. Of those cases, five of the pregnancies were terminated.
The researchers were then able to estimate the risk of microcephaly as 95 in 10,000, or around 1 percent, of pregnant women infected with Zika in the first trimester.
The most recent study supporting the link was published online Tuesday in the British medical journal The Lancet.
“Our analysis strongly supports the hypothesis that Zika virus infection during the first trimester of pregnancy is associated with an increased risk of microcephaly”, said Simon Cauchemez, an infectious disease mathematical modelling expert at France’s Institute Pasteur who co-led the study.
“If you take 1 percent of the many pregnant women infected, clearly this is a big concern for public health”, Cauchemez said.
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“There has been regular and ongoing communication, sometimes several times a week, with hospital sites, clinics, primary care practices, making sure we are up-to-date with current CDC information on this disease”, Arkoosh said.
