Health officials say there is no risk of transmission in Hawaii, where there has never been a case of a person acquiring Zika in the state. For example the CDC explained that 12 people in the U.S. were seen to have the Zika virus in 2015 and 2016, but they were only travellers who got it from other countries. She was likely infected from a mosquito bite early in her pregnancy and the virus then damaged the developing brain of the fetus. Tests have linked Zika virus to babies born with microcephaly, a birth defect that causes babies to be born with small skulls, brain damage and sometimes death.
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Those who are trying to become pregnant “should consult with their health care provider before traveling to these areas and strictly follow” steps to prevent mosquito bites, including wearing long sleeves and trousers and applying insect repellant.
In the greater Houston area, doctors have been informed to be on the lookout for Zika symptoms and take careful travel histories of people who have traveled to Zika-affected areas, according to Shah.
“The Zika virus isn’t a cause to go insane”.
The CDC issued a travel alert for people traveling to regions where the transmission is ongoing and urged pregnant women to postpone any trips planned to those areas.
Dengue fever, which can violently affect adults, is transmitted by some of the same mosquitoes as Zika, though it is not thought to affect fetuses in the same way. Brazil usually records only about five to six cases of microcephaly for every 100,000 live births.
Brazil is waiving its typical visa process for foreign visitors this summer in a bid to increase foreign tourism for the Olympics and beyond.
CDC officials said the biggest risk was in the first trimester of pregnancy, and continued into the second trimester.
According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, “microcephaly is a medical condition in which the circumference of the head is smaller than normal because the brain has not developed properly or has stopped growing”.
Officials in the country said last week that they were investigating more than 3,500 cases of microcephaly in newborns, reported between October and January. Researchers have been investigating the possible association between Zika virus infection and microcephaly in infants.
“We believe this is a fairly serious problem”, Dr. Lyle Petersen, director of the CDC’s Division of Vector Borne Infectious Diseases, said during an evening press conference Friday. “Right now there are epidemics in other countries in South and Central America”. Ferreira says Jose Wesley enjoys being in the water, she places him in the bucket several times a day to calm him. Genetic sequence analysis showed that the virus in the four cases was the same as the Zika virus strain now circulating in Brazil.
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The main mosquito species responsible for spreading Zika, Aedes aegypti, flourishes in the far Southern US, and a second species that may transmit the virus, Aedes albopictus, ranges as far north as NY.
