Officials said the evidence is overwhelming that exposure to virus in utero causes the birth defect.
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Researchers said there was no “smoking gun” or single definitive piece of evidence that confirmed the virus as causing microcephaly, calcifications within the brain and severe vision and hearing problems.
“There is still a lot that we don’t know, but there is no longer any doubt that Zika causes microcephaly”, Frieden added.
The confirmation was published Wednesday in a report in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The agency has taken a cautious stance on Zika since at least January, when the CDC warned pregnant women not to visit countries or territories with Zika outbreaks.
It is expected that the Zika virus is to arrive at the Southern states of the USA, as this summer is expected to be hotter and more humid than in previous years, which will provide the ideal habitat for the mosquito to reproduce.
Scientists around the world have suspected for months the mosquito-borne virus causes birth defects.
“We don’t know if the risk is somewhere in the range of 1 percent or in the range of 30 percent”, she said.
Rasmussen cautioned that there are still many unanswered questions.
Researchers still don’t have some of the evidence they hope for.
In this study, however, 23% of the mothers of babies with microcephaly were infected with Zika in the second trimester.
A consistent pattern has developed where pregnant women infected with Zika have given birth to children with microcephaly and other brain-related defects.
Public health experts disagree about the effect that the CDC announcement will have on the public.
Such “parachute research”, where foreign research teams descend on an area, collect data, and leave, is often motivated by the competition to publish their findings in a prestigious journal, with little regard for actual public health benefits that would be expedited by open sharing of data and specimens. “We think there could be hundreds of thousands of cases of Zika virus in Puerto Rico and perhaps hundreds of affected babies”.
“Not all babies born to mothers who are infected with Zika virus during pregnancy will have problems”, Rasmussen said. However, they maintained that more research was needed before they could conclusively say it is causal. It is born on warm and humid climates such as those found in most of Latin America. That means wearing long trousers and long sleeves when outside, using mosquito repellant and removing any standing water from around homes and throughout communities.
Plus, there have been no travel-associated cases of the Zika virus reported in Idaho. Almost all these infections were acquired while traveling outside the country.
The 10-month study, conducted in a remote, urban area of Guatemala, documents this cheap, easy system to reduce virus-carrying Aedesgenus mosquitoes by capturing and destroying its eggs.
Florida, Texas and Hawaii are the states most at risk for local transmission of Zika, CDC officials have said. They’re saying it’s “scarier” than originally thought, and they do not have enough money to fight the spread of the virus in the U.S.Last week, $500 million in left over funds from the fight against Ebola was transferred to combat Zika.
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A recent poll of Americans found that one in four were unaware of any association between Zika and birth defects, and one in five believed, wrongly, that there was a vaccine to prevent it.
