With the first case arriving in Europe via confirmation that a Danish citizen has been infected, here’s what you need to know.
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The mosquito-borne disease isn’t contagious, only passing from person to person if a mosquito bites the blood of an infected person and then bites another.
Castro said the government also would distribute mosquito repellent to some 400,000 pregnant women who receive cash-transfer benefits.
The virus – which causes symptoms including rash, fever, conjunctivitis and headache – has been linked to birth defects in children born to mothers infected while they are pregnant. “Because it is not mosquito season in Virginia, this individual with Zika virus infection poses no risk to other Virginians”.
“Even some of the countries we were considering that weren’t on the travel ban list, I felt like by the time of our trip in March, it seemed like the list was rapidly growing”, Okoye said. A woman contracted the virus in 2013 after a visit to southern Thailand, believed to be the first ever documented case of a Canadian acquiring Zika overseas.
There are estimates that there may have been 1.5 million Zika cases in Brazil, where the outbreak started a year ago, a senior World Health Organization official said.
Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama called for the rapid development of tests, vaccines and treatments to fight the virus, following a briefing on the spread of the disease, the White House said. Researchers have also connected it to babies being born with Microcephaly, which causes small brains and heads.
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The current Zika virus outbreak originated in Brazil previous year and later spread across Latin America, having been registered in over 20 different countries since March 2015. None of the reported cases there included pregnant women. Zika-affected countries included Barbados, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Martinique, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Saint Martin, Suriname, Venezuela and Puerto Rico.
