The CDC waited until now to report the greater number of affected women because of the rapid changes in what’s known about the disease’s impact on pregnancy, said Margaret Honein, chief of the CDC’s birth defects branch and co-lead of the Pregnancy and Birth Defects Team with the CDC Zika Virus Response Team.
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According to the CDC, none of the Zika cases originated in the United States; the virus was acquired while traveling overseas or through sexual contact.
This new data shows that the vast majority of Zika cases in pregnant women are asymptomatic-279 women in the US states and territories were reported to have laboratory evidence of Zika virus.
Before Friday’s announcement, the number of pregnant women who tested positive for Zika but did not have any of its symptoms was not publicly reported. None of the women contracted Zika in the USA -all cases were travel related.
It has registered and is monitoring 157 pregnant women in US states and the District of Columbia, and 122 pregnant women in USA territories-mostly Puerto Rico-who were infected with Zika through May 12.
The CDC is changing its reporting method to include not only those who tested positive and had symptoms but now to also include those who test positive regardless if they have symptoms or not.
Experts agree that the mosquito-borne Zika virus is behind a surge in cases of the birth defect microcephaly – babies born with abnormally small heads and brains – after their mothers were infected with the virus.
It was the first time the agency had disclosed the number of Zika-infected pregnant women in the US and its territories.
Until now, the CDC defined and reported cases of Zika as people who had symptoms and a positive test for the virus.
As of May 12, 279 pregnant women in the United States had lab evidence of Zika infection. “We don’t know how often when they get infected, their babies are infected”.
The virus is spread mainly through the bite of a tropical mosquito called Aedes aegypti. “At our southwest clinic, we see 300 pregnant women a day, a lot of them do travel at some point to Latin America”. As of this week, there were 544 reported cases of Zika in the United States.
Obama, who met with Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the CDC, and other top health officials on Friday, expressed frustration that Congress has been slow to act on his request for about $1.9 billion to prepare for the virus. CDC is not yet sharing any specific patient details about individual cases, or whether the women contracted the virus sexually or during travel.
The news comes a day after the US House of Representative’s passing an emergency Zika funding bill.
The House and Senate have advanced bills to fight the virus.
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“This is not something where we can build a wall to prevent it, mosquitoes don’t go through customs”, Obama told reporters Friday.
