Fourteen pregnant women have contracted the virus, and six babies who were infected with Zika were born with malformations, including the microcephaly cases, the health ministry said.
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The mosquito-borne Zika virus has been linked to hundreds of cases of microcephaly in countries such as Brazil, which has declared a public health emergency over the disease. If pregnant women are required to travel to one of these areas, or live in one of them, the CDC suggests that they speak with their healthcare provider and adhere strictly to its steps to prevent mosquito bites. Seven of those cases are in pregnant women. “In addition, the Zika virus strain used in this study originated in Uganda, while the current Zika outbreak in Latin America involves a slightly different strain that originated in Asia”.
A bacterium known as Wolbachia, which is fairly common in insects, can reduce mosquitoes’ ability to spread the Zika virus, researchers said.
The Department of Health has confirmed a fourth case of the Zika virus in CT.
All four of the CT cases of Zika were the result of travel to Zika affected areas like South and Central America and the Caribbean.
In the absence of a vaccine for Zika virus, Andreadis said community involvement is necessary, including eliminating standing water from your property. Their guidelines indicate that women in any trimester should avoid travel to destinations where active local zika virus transmission is occurring.
Zika is transmitted primarily through the bite of an infected Aedes species mosquito, which also spreads chikungunya and dengue.
“The risk of Zika virus beginning to circulate in the United States on the mainland-it’s already in Puerto Rico, of course-is going to be peaking during the next few weeks”, Scott Weaver, a virologist from the University of Texas Medical Branch told National Geographic.
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However, the tests are complicated and sometimes confuse Zika with similar viruses such as West Nile or dengue. That means that, while pregnant women and women planning on having children were already pretty anxious about Zika, parents of toddlers and older children are now becoming concerned as well. However, a much subtler and environmentally friendly technique as been developed by the biotech company Oxitec: mosquitoes genetically engineered to pass along a gene that is lethal to Aedes aegypi larva.
