The next day, she reported feeling ill, with probable Zika symptoms, such as fever, fatigue, rash and muscular pain. Infection with the Zika virus is known to be most harmful in pregnant women. Pregnant women can pick up the kits at no charge from local health departments, federally qualified health centers, community health centers, nonprofit organizations and offices for the Women, Infants and Children assistance program. She subsequently tested positive for Zika. There has been consensus that Zika infection may cause microcephaly in infected fetuses. Ongoing surveillance is needed to determine the risk for transmission of zika virus infection from a female to her sexual partners. He tested positive for Zika.
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There is now no vaccine available to prevent the infection, health officials said.
If the virus was passed along through vaginal fluid, there is very little information on how long it might persist there or how great the risk of transmission during intercourse is.
The CDC has noted that 1,130 people have been diagnosed with Zika in the continental United States, including 320 pregnant women and 15 cases of sexual transmission.
The CDC is recommending that all people who have traveled to an area where Zika virus is prevalent use protection every time they have sex.
No woman-to-woman sexual transmission had been reported to date.
“This case represents the first reported occurrence of female-to-male sexual transmission of Zika virus”, according to the report. The rest caught the virus while traveling to Latin America, the Caribbean or other outbreak areas. The agency would not say which country the woman had visited.
In this January 18, 2016 photo, a researcher holds a container with female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes at the Biomedical Sciences Institute in the Sao Paulo’s University, in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Tests on the man also detected the virus. It was found for up to seven days after the monkeys were infected.
Some experts said the case isn’t surprising. Previously, the CDC reported that the Zika virus can be transferred in semen excreted during vaginal, oral, and anal sex. All prior transmissions had occurred from males to their sexual partners. The virus was transmitted either by the young woman’s vaginal fluids or menstrual blood.
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In one case, the virus was spread a few days before symptoms developed. He also said he’d had no other sexual partners in the crucial time period before his illness.
