Dr. Lyle Peterson, director of CDC’s division of vector-borne diseases, said the agency has confirmed that Zika virus was present in samples provided by Brazilian health authorities from two pregnancies that ended in miscarriage and from two infants with diagnosed microcephaly who died shortly after birth.
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The Zika virus, which can impair normal intellectual development in newborns, has affected several thousand babies in Brazil in recent months.
The baby, born in a hospital in Oahu, suffers from microcephaly, a rare condition that means its brain and skull are abnormally small.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control quickly warned pregnant women to avoid travel to 14 countries and territories in the Caribbean and Latin America due to the spread of virus Friday. The virus presumably reached the embryo and damaged its developing brain. There is no vaccine or treatment for Zika.
Petersen said U.S. experience to date with similar mosquito-borne diseases like dengue and chikungunya suggests that facets of the North American lifestyle – living in air-conditioned homes and dwellings with screens on windows and doors – should limit how much the virus would spread here. Zika causes a mild illness with fever, rash, joint pain and conjunctivitis, with symptoms usually lasting under a week. Six people have acquired the virus in other countries since 2014. Park said the case underscores the importance of the travel recommendations the CDC issued Friday for pregnant women and women who might become pregnant.
“Until more is known, and out of an abundance of caution, CDC recommends special precautions for pregnant women and women trying to become pregnant”, said the alert issued on Friday. The list of countries with transmission has been steadily growing; on Saturday, Barbados reported its first cases. Until last year, the country had fewer than 200 cases each year. Since May, more than 1.5 million Brazilians have been infected.
Zika had never before been suspected of causing microcephaly and was considered a fairly benign virus.
The pattern of dengue fever in Hawaii is concerning, however, because according to The New York Times, an epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control “recently predicted that Zika would follow the same pattern that dengue has, with local transmission during hot weather in tropical parts of the country, including Florida, the Gulf Coast and Hawaii”.
There is no vaccine to prevent Zika, nor medicine to treat the infected; the only advice health officials have for travelers to the region is to prevent mosquito bites.
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The CDC and state health department said neither mother or child are infectious.
