A woman in her 20s said she had unprotected sex with a male partner the day she returned to New York City from an area with ongoing Zika transmission, the CDC report said.
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All previously documented cases of sexually transmitted Zika virus infections were from men to their sex partners.
The report was published July 15 in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Until recently, efforts to contain the Zika virus have relied mostly on a single strategy: Don’t get bitten by mosquitoes.
US health officials have concluded that Zika infections in pregnant women can cause microcephaly, a rare birth defect marked by small head size that can lead to severe developmental problems in babies.
Here’s the full story: a 20-something woman traveled outside the country to an area of Zika transmission, and began experiencing some symptoms (a headache and abdominal cramping) while waiting for her flight back to NYC. The following day the woman developed Zika symptoms such as tingling in toes and fingers, numbness, muscle plain and fatigue, rash and fever.
Previous studies and reports have suggested that the Zika virus can remain in vaginal fluids while not showing presence in urine or blood tests.
There is now no vaccine available to prevent the infection, health officials said.
One week after they’d had sex, the man started having symptoms – specifically fever, rash, joint pain, and pink eye.
Health officials say all or most of those travelers likely were infected through mosquito bites in the countries they were visiting. In February of this year, the CDC announced that up to nine pregnant women in the U.S. had been infected.
The first case of the Zika virus to be spread from a woman to a man during sex has been reported in New York City, a finding that again upends medical understanding about the disease. This condition might increase the amount of virus in sexual excretions, though cases of male transmission without hematospermia have been reported too.
According to the latest CDC statistics, there are only 14 known cases of sexually transmitted Zika in the United States. The rest caught the virus while traveling to Latin America, the Caribbean or other outbreak areas. He also said he’d had no other sexual partners in the crucial time period before his illness.
Researchers do not yet know exactly how the virus spread in the NY case. In fact, the virus thrives better in semen than it does in blood. It was found for up to seven days after the monkeys were infected.
Some experts said the case isn’t surprising.
The CDC has issued guidelines focusing on stopping men from transmitting the virus through sexual contact.
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The New York City case study provides the strongest evidence yet that Zika can be transmitted from women to their partners.
