As of May 12, the two US registries were monitoring 157 pregnant women in the United States and 122 pregnant women in USA territories who have laboratory evidence of possible Zika infection, CDC officials said.
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The Centers for Disease Control reports that of those 279 pregnant women, fewer than a dozen have had negative outcomes so far.
As of this week, the United States had 544 reported cases of Zika, almost all of them involving people who had traveled to countries already plagued by the virus. While the virus typically only prompts mild symptoms in most adults, it can cause fetal brain defects if a pregnant woman becomes infected.
Four out of five people who get Zika show no symptoms.
The latest report comes at a time when USA health officials have been clamouring for adequate funding to support mosquito protection and eradication, development of anti-Zika vaccines and better diagnostics, and long-term studies needed to follow children born to infected mothers and to better understand the sexual transmission risk.
There are more than 7,000 suspected cases in Cape Verde, and about 180 of those infections are among pregnant women.
The CDC will not say whether any of the Oregonians are pregnant. Babies with microcephaly are born with small heads and suffer cognitive and developmental disabilities. The agency did not detail the outcomes of the pregnancies.
To limit any potential spread of Zika virus via mosquitos, health officials on the federal, state and local level are deploying a three-pronged strategy: improving mosquito control; expanding their ability to test for Zika; and urging the public to protect themselves against mosquitoes.
“It’s critical for pregnant women to have information on whether or not they’ve been infected”, Honein said.
“This is not something where we can build a wall to prevent”. Both regions are home to the Aedes aegypti mosquito, the primary vector for the virus.
“I mean I’ve been at the CDC for 20 years, and I’ve never been involved with something that evolved so quickly”, says Dr. Jamieson. “Mosquitoes don’t go through customs”, Obama said after a briefing by top health officials. She said it’s not possible to gauge the risk of Zika-related birth defects from the CDC’s numbers, which will be updated by about noon each Thursday, though they won’t be real-time totals. “It needs to get me a bill that has sufficient funds to do the job”.
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The data has prompted a new call by United States President Barack Obama for more funding to fight the Zika outbreak.
