All three women showed symptoms of the virus and tested positive for Zika.
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Because the couples were not living in locations where Zika is known to be spread by mosquitos, it’s presumed the virus was spread through unprotected sex.
About 20 percent of people infected with Zika virus will become ill, according to the Iowa Department of Public Health.
– Today the CDC released information about nine pregnant travelers, now in the US, with confirmed cases of Zika virus.
Three babies have been born, one with a brain defect.
CDC officials had been tracking nine pregnant women who tested positive for Zika and experienced symptoms such as fever, rash, joint pain or conjunctivitis.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it’s investigating 10 more reports of pregnant travelers with Zika. But the potential in Puerto Rico for those statistics to worsen is staggering: the CDC reports that there remains the chance for hundreds of thousands of Zika cases – and, therefore, countless affected pregnancies – in Puerto Rico alone. The Zika virus was detected in the amniotic fluid.
The first confirmed case of sexual transmission of Zika came in early February.
Those destinations are among the 30 places now on the CDC’s travel alert. All of them are US citizens who reportedly contracted the disease while in one of the central or south American countries or territories now experiencing Zika outbreaks, then traveled to the United States.
“We want to be cautious because it’s a small group of women, but from what I saw, it is suggestive that the effects look to be more severe in the early part of pregnancy”, said Beigi, an obstetrician at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
The findings suggest that sexual transmission of the virus might be more common than previously reported, the CDC said. Though the two babies who were not infected with the virus showed no signs of complication, there’s no guarantee that there aren’t nascent, now undetectable complications. It’s been surprising that this many instances appear to have happened in the United States, CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden noted during a call with reporters.
Research is also underway into a possible link between Zika and a paralyzing condition in adults called Guillain-Barre. The CDC’s recommendations remain largely the same: if you’re a pregnant woman, don’t travel to Zika-infected areas; if you’re a male in a relationship that either does or may soon involve a pregnancy, refrain from sex or religiously use condoms. Microcephaly has been linked to the Zika virus, particularly in Brazil, where almost 6,000 cases have been reported.
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So far, more than 80 Zika infections have been diagnosed in the United States, and all have involved people who traveled to outbreak regions.
