The latest patient has fully recovered after caring for an older man who had become infected after traveling overseas, according to the Centers of Disease Control and Protection (CDC).
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The elderly man had 100,000 times the normal levels of virus in his blood near the time of his death, according to the CDC.
Health care workers involved with the care of the elderly patient who is believed to have spread the virus are also being tested for Zika, the CDC said.
A person in Utah who did not travel to a Zika-affected country or have sex with someone who did is nevertheless infected with the virus, health authorities in the state confirm. But that scenario is extremely unlikely, health experts cautioned, because the two types of mosquitoes that commonly spread Zika, Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus, aren’t present in the area in which the two Utah residents lived.
Erin Staples, MD, PhD, CDC’s Medical Epidemiologist, said the Utah case is surprising and shows the CDC has a lot more to learn about Zika than before.
As of July 13, 2016, 1,306 cases of Zika have been reported in the continental United States and Hawaii; none of these have been the result of local spread by mosquitoes. Fourteen involved sexual transmissions, and one came from a needle stick in a laboratory.
The number of cases of Zika in the U.S. Virgin Islands spiked dramatically in a week, with 15 new cases reported last week, according to the V.I. Health Department’s weekly surveillance report of the mosquito-borne virus.
Symptoms include mild fever, skin rash, conjunctivitis (“pink eye”), muscle and joint pain, malaise or headache.
Top officials warned the Senate that the threat of the Zika virus seems to be growing more severe by the day at a hearing this past Wednesday.
Zika has been linked to an increased risk of birth defects.
The CDC has also been tracking pregnant women infected with Zika, and says they have five reports of pregnancy losses because of miscarriage, stillbirth or abortion. It is still unclear whether the index patient’s high level of infection was the cause of death or whether the patient’s immune system was compromised by other medical problems, allowing the virus to replicate uncontrollably. There’s no evidence yet that the Zika infection in this case is an unusual mutation, but researchers are exploring that possibility through genomic analysis. “Just as we assume anybody might carry hepatitis or HIV, and we don’t wait for a positive diagnosis in order to prevent blood or body fluid exposure, I think this is a great example of why we should never take chances and always adhere to careful standard precautions”.
The CDC is assisting Utah officials in the Zika case because of how the patient contracted the virus. Person-to-person transmission is much more likely to be identified in places like the United States, where there have not yet been documented cases of local mosquito transmission.
All seven other cases in Utah have been travel-associated.
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Additionally, Staples said, investigators re determining what contact, if any, health care workers might have had with the deceased patient.
