A hospital in Spain says it has registered Europe’s first case of a baby born with microcephaly associated with the Zika virus.
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Zika virus has exploded across the Americas, carried mostly by mosquitoes but also, to the surprise of doctors, by person-to-person contact. Zika virus was identified in several samples of A. aegypti, but not in other mosquito species.
Physician Felix Castillo said the baby was born with a small head circumference typical of Zika and that it was “stable and has not required any specific resuscitation”, according to The Local.
Colombia expects that there will be an uptick of cases of microcephaly in September and October, Ruiz said, when pregnant women infected during the peak of the epidemic will give birth.
Authorities announced in May that they had detected microcephaly in the foetus, but the couple chose to keep the baby.
The International Olympic Committee has said it is “fully confident” about the Brazilian government’s handling of the Zika crisis.
A woman in Slovenia who was pregnant with a baby with microcephaly was previously found to have been carrying the virus, but she made a decision to have an abortion.
Despite having recently developed a mouse model of Zika infection during pregnancy, the researchers have not yet tested whether vaccinating mothers with a portion of the Zika envelope protein could protect a fetus from infection. It is believed that the woman contracted the virus during a trip overseas, but the specific country has not been mentioned.
Meanwhile, Brazil’s Ministry of Health reports 1,709 cases of confirmed congenital Zika, with 102 deaths and stillbirths caused by the virus. The mother was infected while traveling to Latin America when she was 20 weeks into the pregnancy.
A pregnant woman receives medical treatments in the University School Hospital, in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, on February 19, 2016. Many people infected with Zika won’t have symptoms or will have only mild symptoms.
It was just last week when the first recorded female-to-male transmission of the virus was propounded.
“You really want to know not just how many people have virus in their blood right now but also how many people have been infected over time”, Diamond said.
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The Federal Office of Public Health said all were linked to travel in the parts of the world where the virus has reached epidemic proportions, 24 heures reported.
