The CDC did not disclose where these women live.
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In known cases of likely sexual transmission, the men had Zika symptoms.
Janine dos Santos, a 23-year-old unemployed former towel factory worker, shares the space with her mother, two siblings and two children, including Shayde Henrique – born in November with the truncated head and brain damage caused by microcephaly. It also has been associated with Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare disorder in which the body’s immune system attacks part of the nervous system.
How is Zika related to microcephaly?
The primary method of infection of the virus remains mosquito bites.
In Paraiba alone, 56 cases of microcephaly have been confirmed since October and 423 suspected cases are under investigation, the Health Ministry says.
There is no cure or treatment for Zika infection. In fact, approximately 80 percent of people who become infected never experience symptoms.
But on day one of the study’s data-collection phase, the same precarious conditions that contributed to the proliferation of the mosquito-borne virus throughout the region proved to be a stumbling block for researchers, even in Paraiba state’s more-developed capital, Joao Pessoa.
The women had not recently traveled to places where the virus is widely circulating, but they’d had sex with male partners who had recently returned from such travel and had Zika symptoms.
How widespread is the outbreak?
Some of those suspected of having been infected sexually have been pregnant women, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says. Brazil has been the country most affected.
The popular “understanding is that Zika virus (behind the microcephaly spike)”.
“I want to reassure you – we are in February now, and the Olympic Games are in August – that the government is working very closely with the International Olympic Movement, with the local organizing committee and supported by World Health Organization and PAHO and other partners to make sure we have a very good work plan to tackle the vector, the mosquito”, World Health Organization chief Margaret Chan said. The virus was first identified in Uganda in 1947 in rhesus monkeys and was first identified in people in 1952 in Uganda and Tanzania, according to the WHO.
Public health departments are investigating 14 instances of possible sexual transmission of Zika virus, including several cases involving pregnant women, in the US, according to a Tuesday statement from the CDC.
There’s still a whole lot of uncertainty over how sexual transmission would work, and the CDC is now researching important questions, such as how long Zika can stay present in semen, when men are the most infectious, and which sex acts can pass the virus on.
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The 14 cases all involve men who visited areas with Zika outbreaks, and who many have infected their female sex partners, who had not traveled.
