On Friday night, Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi said a Columbian businessman visiting Johannesburg had been diagnosed with the Zika virus infection by a private Johannesburg pathology laboratory, and a confirmatory test was being carried out by the NICD.
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Health officials are investigating whether there is a link between Zika infections in pregnant women and a rare birth defect called microcephaly, in which babies are born with abnormally small heads.
In a travel notice the Ministry of Foreign Affairs raised the travel alert for Tonga from gray, the lowest alert level, to yellow, given that the country has declared the mosquito-borne Zika virus an epidemic. Columbia was now experiencing a large outbreak of the Zika virus.
There is no vaccine or treatment for Zika.
According to Reuters, the researchers will be heading to Joao Pessoa in Paraiba, Brazil in this major government study, which hopes to determine whether the Zika virus is indeed connected to the birth defect microcephaly.
“Ensuring that Ontarians are fully informed about emerging and infectious diseases such as Zika virus is a priority”.
The plausible correlation between the Zika virus and an outbreak of microcephaly in Brazil is the subject of new research being conducted in both Brazil and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The incubation period (the time from exposure to symptoms) of Zika virus disease is not clear, but is likely to be a few days.
Travellers should take the basic precautions described above to protect themselves from mosquito bites. Mosquitoes known to transmit the virus to humans are not present in Canada. The World Health Organization estimates close to four-million people across the Americas will be infected with the virus in the next year.
So far, all transmissions have been limited to mosquito bites.
Although Zika was first discovered in Africa, there has been only 20, or less, recorded case of the disease in the continent since 2007.
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It is recommended that pregnant women and those considering becoming pregnant discuss their travel plans with their health care provider to assess their risk and consider postponing travel to areas where the Zika virus is circulating and countries in tropical and subtropical regions where the virus has the potential to circulate. It had also stated earlier that Canada was one of the countries that could not get the virus.
