The deceased man, who was infected with Zika while traveling, was infected with an unusually high amount of virus, the state health department said, approximately 100,000 times higher than an average infection. The father died in June after contracting Zika from travel overseas.
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Now, CDC health officials are investigating if bodily fluids in some patients with extremely high levels of virus could also transmit the virus in a mway that has not been previously documented.
The father caught the mosquito-borne virus overseas and had an extremely high level of the virus in his blood when he died on June 25.
The Utah case took unusual turn when the man’s son – who was caring for his ill father – contracted the virus in an unknown manner.
Although local, state and federal officials can not say definitively how the son became sick, the Utah case suggests that the way the virus was transmitted “doesn’t appear to be one of the modes we’ve seen before”, said Alexander Kallen, a CDC medical officer.
Thailand has found no cases of microcephaly linked to Zika and it is monitoring about two dozen pregnant woman and about six who have given birth with no complications, the health ministry said. Mosquitoes in south Florida have spread the virus to more than 60 people and sexual transmission has also been reported.
The investigation into the case will remain open as the lack of additional cases related to the peculiar transmission has stymied experts and rendered a decisive conclusion as to the mode of transmission unreachable for the moment. No one else has shown any sign of having been infected so far. Nor have officials found any evidence of either mosquito species that transmit the virus, Dunn said.
The only hint: The son did hug and kiss his dying father – just as two dozen other family members did. Zika has been detected in blood, urine, semen, saliva and breast milk.
The mysterious case baffled public health officials, who said the son did not have any of the known risk factors for Zika, such as travel to an affected area or sexual contact with an infected person.
Health Minister Gan Kim Yong, in a statement in Parliament, said that over 500 blood samples a month were tested for Zika from January this year.
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“We don’t know if there may have been some unrecognized contact with mucous membranes, or whether it was just bad luck that he came in contact with infected fluid”, Kallen said.
