The first US case was confirmed in Texas this month in a traveler who returned from El Salvador.
Advertisement
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued an alert last Friday advising pregnant women to avoid travelling to Brazil and other Latin American and Caribbean countries where outbreaks of Zika have been registered.
There are concerns the Zika virus could spread in the US since the Aedes mosquito, which is largely to blame for the disease’s outbreak in Latin America, can also be found in southern states.
Symptoms including fever, rash, joint pain, or conjunctivitis can last from several days to weeks and there is no vaccine to prevent or treat an infection. The rare condition, marked by an abnormally small head, is associated with incomplete brain development.
The following are five things to know about the Zika virus.
According to the BBC, in 2014, only 150 Brazilian babies were born with the cranial birth defect known as microcephaly; since October alone, however, authorities have reported 3,893 new suspected cases. On Tuesday, Illinois said two pregnant women tested positive for the virus after traveling to countries where Zika is found. Physicians are monitoring their health and pregnancies. These countries include: Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Martinique, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Suriname, Venezuela and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.
This past week, Garcia-Navarro reported on one of the mothers who herself had Zika virus and whose baby was born with microcephaly.
CDC Director General Steve Kuo said this was the first zika virus case detected in Taiwan since the agency began to monitor and test for the virus.
“Zika virus infection does not pose a risk of birth defects for future pregnancies”. The effects of Zika are usually mild.
The CDC urged doctors to ask pregnant women about their travel history.
The New Jersey health department said Wednesday it was notified by the CDC on December 23 about an individual who had the illness when she visited Bergen County at the end of November.
Advertisement
The virus was originally discovered in the 1940’s in a monkey located in the Zika Forest in Uganda, but it wasn’t until 2007 that multiple human cases presented themselves.
