The transmissions bring the total number of travel-related Zika cases in the state to six.
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Health officials in Texas say a resident who recently traveled outside the United States has been diagnosed with the Zika virus.
Heymann said of WHO’s recommendation for pregnant women not to travel to Zika areas: “The onus is on countries to identify and report where they have outbreaks and where they don’t”.
In the coming weeks, the CDC will begin reporting Zika-linked pregnancy outcomes in the us territories. The agency says it will update the website each week.
Only about 1 in 5 people with Zika infections show symptoms.
“The Department of Health continues to be proactive in providing education on ways of prevention, free testing, free inspections (to include larvicide treatments), and free Zika prevention kits for pregnant women and individuals exhibiting symptoms”, said Health Commissioner Michelle Davis. Two women miscarried in their first trimester, two women had abortions, two pregnancies were continuing without any known complications, and, of three live births, only one had microcephaly-presumably the baby born in Hawaii. There have been no reports of Zika-induced microcephaly contracted in the United States, although Zika is now circulating in Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and American Samoa.
Still, when contextualized, this good news does not alleviate concerns about Zika’s potential impact on pregnancy outcomes even when infection occurs late in pregnancy. Symptoms include fever, rash, joint pain and headache, and they typically disappear after about a week.
“This is the first human case so far this season and there will be more”, said Dr. Tom Safranek, state epidemiologist.
Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, said the new registry was created in anticipation that the virus will soon be transmitted by mosquitoes in the continental U.S.
In a related development, a Spanish team today reported the details of a congenital Zika infection in the fetus of a woman who had been infected with the virus in Venezuela.
“The abnormalities that we’re seeing are consistent with what we’ve described as congenital Zika virus infection”, Dr. Jamieson said.
“Most of those pregnancies are still ongoing”, said Jamieson.
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Despite warnings from health officials, Congress has yet to approve President Obama’s $1.9 billion budget for Zika funding. The House passed legislation that would provide $622 million, which would be drawn from money already set aside for Ebola programs.
