“The situation does not compromise the Olympics”, Rousseff said.
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The Zika virus is transmitted through sex and by mosquitoes in the daytime.
Army soldiers set a banner that reads in Portuguese “A mosquito is not stronger than a whole country” at the Central station, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Saturday, Feb. 13, 2016.
More than 2 lakhs soldiers have been deployed across the country to warn people about the risks of the Zika virus.
It has confirmed three deaths linked to the virus.
Talking to reporters on Saturday, President Rousseff said that the epidemic would not lead to the cancelation of the Olympic Games that are due to start in Rio de Janeiro on August 5.
But those warnings ignore the fact that most pregnancies in the region are unplanned, poor women in these countries have little access to birth control, and many lack control over their own fertility because of a high rate of sexual violence.
“We’re working with the University of Texas and in a joint action with the USA government in an effort to make sure the research finds a vaccine as soon as possible”, the president said.
“We need to get everyone involved”, she added.
However, experts have cautioned that this association is still presumptive because definitive serologic testing for Zika virus was not available in Brazil at the time of the outbreak and confusion may occur with other causes of microcephaly. Another 3,852 cases are suspected. The virus was first isolated from a monkey in Uganda’s Zika forest in 1947.
“This is the great fear of the immediate future – that densely populated states will experience an intense outbreak of the virus that can not be controlled”, Claudio Maierovitch, head of the communicable diseases surveillance department at the health ministry, told AFP. Colombia’s health authorities claim that 29.4% of pregnant women who were infected with Zika virus live in Norte de Santander, which lies in the eastern border of Venezuela. Cases of Zika virus are also observed in some European countries, including Germany, Denmark and Switzerland.
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“In the area where most sick persons live, a chemical larvicide producing malformations in mosquitoes has been applied for 18 months, and that this poison (pyroproxifen) is applied by the state on drinking water used by the affected population”, the report said.
