Health officials say this is Oregon’s first laboratory-confirmed case of the mosquito-borne illness that’s linked to birth defects in 2016.
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The second most-affected country, Colombia, last week announced three deaths of Zika-infected patients who had also contracted Guillain-Barre syndrome – a neurological disease that can cause paralysis in humans. Pregnant U.S. government employees or their pregnant spouses who are covered under State’s medical program have been offered medical evacuation from areas under CDC travel alerts for Zika or have the option of shortening their tours of duty.
Health experts are also seeking to confirm a link between the rapid spread of Zika in Brazil and a spike in the number of babies born in Brazil with microcephaly, a neurodevelopmental disorder that causes new infants to have abnormally small heads because the brain fails to grow normally.
Frieden said the agency has shipped 62,000 of those Zika tests for pregnant women to health departments and is working on more but “there may be a period of weeks or a couple of months where there aren’t enough tests for the women who want to have them done”. But most people experience no symptoms or very mild one, and the antibody test used to tell afterward if they were infected isn’t very accurate.
Brazil has signed an agreement with a University of Texas research hospital to develop a vaccine against the Zika virus, the country’s health minister said Thursday, adding the goal is for the vaccine to be ready for clinical testing within 12 months. It said that until more is known, “all men and women living in or returning from an area where Zika is present – especially pregnant women and their partners – should be counseled on the potential risks of sexual transmission and ensure safe sexual practices”.
“We are seeing cases coming back”, she said.
On February 2, the CDC confirmed the first case of sexually transmitted Zika in the latest outbreak.
“We’ve had conversations about Zika at visits, and if there are any travel plans, we advise against it”, Irwin said.
“We’ve definitely gone back to the drawing board on that”, she said, referring to the island, which is on the Centres of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warning list.
Additionally, once a person has been infected, he or she is likely to be protected from future infections, according to the CDC.
“All I can do is speak for myself”. “In the meantime, I think it just makes sense to be cautious”.
If your answer to all of these questions is “no”, there is arguably no reason for you to get tested.
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Coach Jill Ellis (left) said there have been “constant conversations behind the scenes” about the Zika virus.
