Friday the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention added the following destinations to the Zika virus travel alerts: Barbados, Bolivia, Ecuador, Guadeloupe, Saint Martin, Guyana, Cape Verde, and Samoa.
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The CDC recommends that pregnant women should consider postponing travel to the areas where Zika virus transmission is ongoing, but it has also published guidelines for pregnant women who do travel to those areas.
About a half-dozen cases of Zika have turned up in the US over the past two weeks – all in travelers returning from parts of Latin America and the Caribbean where the outbreak is raging.
A health worker in Lima, Peru fumigates a cemetery for mosquitoes in reaction to the Zika virus outbreak. It is not known to spread from person to person, although investigators are exploring the possibility that the virus can be passed on through sex.
This week, Brazilian disease specialists said more patients, who may have been infected with Zika virus, have been diagnosed this year with Guillain-Barré syndrome, the New York Times reported. Signs and symptoms include fever (mild when present), joint & muscle pain, rash, and headache.
The Zika virus is spread to people through the bite of an infected mosquito, the same mosquito that transmits dengue, chikungunya and yellow fever.
This is the closest confirmed case of the virus to the British Virgin Islands (BVI), which this week urged residents to help reduce mosquito breeding, and also promised to resume its fogging campaign across the territory.
If there are signs of an infection or there are other reasons to believe the fetus is affected, ultrasounds should be considered to monitor the baby’s development, the CDC advised.
In May 2015, the first local transmission of Zika virus in the Region of the Americas was reported in Brazil.
“Research results confirm four deaths related to maternal Zika virus infection – two newborns at term, who died in the first 24 hours of life and two miscarriages”, a Travel Health Pro spokesman said.
The babies were born in August through October and all had confirmed microcephaly, which causes underdeveloped heads and brains.
Women already pregnant are being advised to do what they can to reduce the risk of mosquito bites.
If travel is unavoidable they should take “scrupulous measures” to avoid mosquito bites day or night.
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Official figures show 96 pregnant women are suspected of having contracted the virus, but so far none have had babies born with microcephaly.
