The Health Department says mosquitoes that cause Zika aren’t out when you would expect them to be. According to the Alabama Department of Public Health, all three cases are travel-related; no one has contracted the virus locally. The good news is, for most people, Zika virus will do little harm: the symptoms, which include fever, rash, and joint pain, are usually mild and will clear up in a few days to about a week.
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Although the Zika virus disease is mainly transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, a number of other transmission modes are still under investigation, such as sexual transmission.
According to Bill Meredith, DNREC’s Environmental Program Administrator for the Mosquito Control Section, Delaware’s Asian tiger mosquitoes may be capable of transmitting Zika.
An emergency committee with the World Health Organization and the Pan-American Health Organization has been working to coordinate a response to the virus, while new cases, mostly from people who have visited infected countries, continue to show up from Kansas to Cuba. The Florida Department of Health told us there are 60 Zika cases in Florida, four of them involving pregnant women.
“Our analysis strongly supports the hypothesis that Zika virus infection during the first trimester of pregnancy is associated with an increased risk of microcephaly”, said Simon Cauchemez, an infectious disease mathematical modeling expert at France’s Institute Pasteur who co-led the study. Microcephaly is a neurological abnormality that results in infants being born with abnormally small heads, often leading to intellectual disability, speech impairment and behavioural issues.
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She added that the DOH wants to wants to establish a uniform case definition of suspected Zika cases. “Right now, if you are a woman of child-bearing age, especially if you are pregnant, you shouldn’t go to any of the places where this virus is endemic…meaning, primarily South and Central America”. They are still trying to figure out exactly how Zika and microcephaly – the birth defect that can cause developmental delays, seizures, and problems with vision and hearing – might be linked. “We feel that we’re prepared”, she reported. “Even though the risk is small, the potential outcome is really great”, says Emily Higuchi. The Obama administration has called for around $1.8 million budget to fight against Zika virus, as the president declared that “this sort of falls in the category of things that shouldn’t break down along party lines”.
