The Zika-related interim guidelines were issued by the CDC and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration amid rising concerns over the virus, which is primarily spread through the bite of infected mosquitoes, but also may also be transmitted via blood or other bodily fluids.
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The infection was confirmed after a testing at the agency’s National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, said the agency in a statement.
He urged people to wear long sleeves and trousers to protect against mosquito bites and male partners of pregnant women to use condoms – or abstain for sex entirely – “because the virus may survive in human sperm after a man is infected”.
Earlier this year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed that the Zika virus can cause microcephaly and other birth defects.
Though the only four Zika cases in Oklahoma were contracted during travel to impacted countries, the county got traps created to carry the mosquitos that are known carriers of the virus. “This more realistic, 3D model confirms what we suspected based on what we saw in a two-dimensional cell culture: that Zika causes microcephaly – abnormally small brains and heads – mainly by attacking the neural progenitor cells that build the brain and turning them into virus factories”.
Largely contained to Latin America and the Caribbean, Zika’s range is likely to expand as summer arrives in the northern hemisphere – and with it virus-transmitting mosquitoes.
About one in five people who are infected become ill, with the most common symptoms being fever, rash, joint pain and conjunctivitis, or pink eye. Health officials expect eventual migration, and some Zika cases could be contracted here.
Lawmakers should grant President Obama’s $1.9 billion emergency funding request to control Zika-carrying mosquitoes, develop a vaccine and assist countries dealing with much higher rates of infection.
After his experience, McGinnis doesn’t want to minimize the threat the virus poses to pregnant women and their babies. Evidence that put the matter beyond doubt includes finding genetic markers of Zika in the brain tissue and spinal fluid of babies with microcephaly as well as in the amniotic fluid that surrounds babies in the womb. The Aedes aegypti has spread most of the cases; these types of mosquitoes have been found in Florida and Hawaii.
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There is now no medication or vaccine that can prevent Zika, although there is hope of a first vaccine appearing in September. Schumer has also called for a Zika Czar to better help fight the virus before it spreads further and more cases are brought to the United States. In addition, the agency said it could cause Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare neurological disorder that can result in paralysis.
