The number of pregnant women in the United States infected with Zika virus is suddenly tripling, due to a change in how the government is counting cases.
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Over 150 pregnant women in the United States appear to have been infected with Zika virus.
“We’ve learned a lot in the past four months, and now we know of reports with asymptomatic Zika infections linked to microcephaly, brain defects and miscarriage”, said Margaret Honein, chief of the CDC’s birth defects branch.
Previously, officials had reported how many pregnant women had both Zika symptoms and positive blood tests. A wave of babies with the devastating condition already have been born in countries such as Columbia and Brazil, where the current Zika outbreak began a year ago.
Brazil and other Latin American countries have seen a serious uptick in birth defects amid their Zika outbreaks, and scientists fear that Aedes mosquitoes will start to spread the virus on the USA mainland, once temperatures rise and insect populations flourish.
It is the first time the CDC has disclosed the number of Zika-infected babies in the United States and its territories. So CDC had only reported some of the cases of pregnant women with Zika.
Instead, the Senate approved a bipartisan plan that would provide $1.1 billion in emergency spending that isn’t paid for through cuts elsewhere in the federal budget.
The chambers say they will reconcile their two versions, though the White House is still pushing for $1.9 billion in spending that isn’t offset. A handful off infections have been sexually transmitted, but none have yet been acquired from mosquitoes in this country.
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It comes after the US Swimming team moved a pre-Olympic training camp from Puerto Rico to Atlanta over fears about the Zika virus.
