Brazilian researchers found the virus in the body of a 20-year-old woman who died last April from respiratory problems in the north-eastern state of Rio Grande do Norte, the health minister said.
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Though there have been two US cases in which Zika was likely transmitted through sex, the bigger worry is mosquitoes.
There is now no cure or vaccine for Zika.
“We’re working as quickly as we can to develop a candidate vaccine that hopefully would go on to clinical trials”, Callender told the American-Statesman on Thursday. The department is facilitating testing of people, especially pregnant women who have traveled to Zika-prone areas.
An autopsy of the foetus uncovered particles of the Zika virus, along with a significant amount of viral genomic RNA in the brain but not in other organs.
“There is still a lot that we have to learn”, Bassett said.
The Zika virus is transmitted via Aedes mosquitoes and in recent weeks it has been reported to have spread to regions in the Caribbean, Central and South America.
If someone is actively infected, the CDC has a test that diagnoses Zika fairly well.
The doctors met behind closed doors and discussed how to provide blood tests to individuals who show symptoms of the disease – fever, rashes, joint pain and reddened eyes.
Rio organizers and International Olympic Committee officials have tried to downplay the threat, saying only women who are pregnant are at high risk of complications.
Asked if health officials couldn’t instead use unspent money that Congress allocated for Ebola in West Africa, Frieden said those remaining dollars are committed to ensuring the remnants of that outbreak are stamped out.
Brazil’s Health Minister, Marcelo Castro, said his government will invest $1.9 million into the research, which will be done jointly by the University of Texas and the Evandro Chagas Institute in Belem. A woman infected with Zika passed the virus onto her fetus.
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Health authorities said on Thursday (Feb 11) they have identified a third death in Brazil linked to the Zika virus, but it is not clear if the disease was the sole cause. There have been reports of women infected with the disease during pregnancy delivering babies with microcephaly. Officials don’t expect large outbreaks in the continental US, but have warned that there could be limited local transmission, small clusters, in those areas, like there have been of related viruses carried by the same mosquito, the dengue and chikungunya viruses.
