US health officials issued updated recommendations for preventing and testing for Zika infection on Monday, warning that the virus can be transmitted through unprotected sex with an infected female partner.
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Health care providers should test all pregnant women who may have been exposed to Zika sexually.
On Friday, New York City reported the first case in New York of a baby born with microcephaly due to exposure to the virus. Exposure also encompasses all sexual activities that might expose an individual to genital secretions. Sex includes vaginal, anal, and oral sex. Most people don’t even get sick, but there is a huge risk to unborn babies.
Spain has reported Europe’s first case of a baby born with microcephaly, a birth defect related to the mosquito-borne Zika virus, the Hospital Vall d’Hebron in Barcelona reported on Monday.
USA health officials are strongly urging doctors to ask all pregnant women about a possible Zika infection at every checkup. The state also has monitored 47 pregnant women, with 15 having met an early definition for Zika cases.
Just because your pet might be safe from one virus now, doesn’t mean they are out of the woods when it comes to other nasty diseases that can come from mosquitoes.
Study co-author Alex Perkins of the University of Notre Dame in the United States said that in a worst-case scenario “somewhere on the order of tens of thousands” across Latin America and the Caribbean could develop microcephaly or a related condition. The sickness is usually mild with symptoms that last from several days to a week. It has also been implicated in miscarriages and diseases like Guillain-Barre, a neurological disorder that causes temporary paralysis.
About 134 people have been tested for the virus in DE and two pregnant women have received “indeterminate” results which means that it is unclear whether or not they tested positive.
The CDC’s very concerned about the risk in the USA because half of all US pregnancies are unplanned.
A woman in Slovenia who was pregnant with a baby with microcephaly was previously found to have been carrying the virus, but she chose to have an abortion.
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But health officials have registered a drop in the number of infections to 600 new cases a week from a peak of more than 6,000 cases a week in February.
