The test, which can be freeze-dried and stored for up to a year, could provide physicians hundreds of miles away from the nearest hospital with a way to quickly detect Zika virus in people, the researchers said.
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Major League Baseball is relocating two upcoming games from Puerto Rico, responding to players’ fears that they might get Zika in the USA territory and bring it home.
For now, the health department is asking people to be vigilant when it comes to mosquitoes.
Danbury resident Sara Mujica has been confirmed as one of the latest cases of Zika in CT, according to officials.
Brazil is at the center of the Zika outbreak, putting Olympic host Rio de Janeiro in the spotlight with 10,500 athletes and up to 500,000 foreign tourists expected for South America’s first games. Seven of those cases are in pregnant women.
To prevent contamination of the blood supply, Canadian Blood Services has imposed a three-week deferral for anyone travelling to a country where Zika is transmitted locally. These symptoms are similar to flu, Dr. Trujillo-Carvalho said; therefore bloodwork is required for a proper diagnosis. The diagnostic technology required to achieve the specificity needed to distinguish between Zika and related viruses that are also common in affected regions is relatively expensive and requires specialized skills. “In addition, the Zika virus strain used in this study originated in Uganda, while the current Zika outbreak in Latin America involves a slightly different strain that originated in Asia”.
If the virus spreads to the United States, cases of microcephaly could increase, Honein said.
Zika is a virus that is primarily spread by mosquito bites, particularly risky for pregnant women as it is thought to be linked to a rare birth defect- microcephaly that causes newborn babies to have unusually small heads and damaged brains. He has worked on HIV vaccines and done considerable work on dengue fever, a mosquito-borne viral infection that is somewhat similar to Zika.
Mosquitoes that carry the Zika virus are not likely to reach OR, but the virus can still be spread through sexual intercourse.
This comes after a fourth person in CT has tested positive for the virus. She started showing symptoms of the virus just days after learning she was pregnant.
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“It’s tragic what’s happening”. “For this reason, many people might not realize they have been infected. It’s one of those things that’s really kind of crept up suddenly”. “The whole socioeconomic ecological context there is very challenging”.
