Declaring that the Zika virus is “spreading explosively”, the World Health Organization announced it will hold an emergency meeting of independent experts in Geneva on February 1 to decide if the outbreak should be declared an global health emergency.
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Almost half of Colombia’s Zika cases have been reported in the country’s Caribbean region, the bulletin said.
As there is no vaccine, the only present protection against Zika is to avoid the mosquito that carries the virus, a prospect that is much more hard in poorer regions of the world. The main risk is to pregnant women, as the disease has been linked in Brazil to about 4,000 cases of microcephaly, a rare birth defect that causes babies to be born with smaller, calcified brains.
The most common symptoms are fever, rash, joint pain and conjunctivitis, although symptoms are usually mild. But as many as 80 percent of people infected never develop symptoms.
The Aedes mosquito spreads diseases including Zika, dengue fever and chikungunya. “Now something like that, as people know, is going to be a 12-month-plus time frame”, he said.
The government said the child began showing symptoms on January 17, “after earlier returning to Jamaica from travel to Texas in the United States”.
Loren Robinson, deputy secretary for health promotion and disease prevention at the Pennsylvania Department of Health, said pregnant women should take caution when planning a vacation.
Venezuela has reported some 4,700 cases of potential infection. However, if a pregnant woman is infected with Zika during her pregnancy, she appears to be more likely to give birth to a baby with an abnormally small head, a condition called microcephaly.
The WHO says the virus was originally seen as a mild risk to humans, but it has since grown rapidly to a public-health threat of “alarming proportions”.
With Rio de Janeiro set to host the Olympics from August 5 to August 21, International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach said the IOC will issue guidelines this week concerning Zika.
“We will do everything to ensure the health of the athletes and all the visitors”, Bach told reporters in Athens.
“We need to look at historical successes to embark on similar programs in Zika-affected countries”, said Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine.
The CDC recently recommended that all USA pregnant women consider postponing travel to the areas where Zika virus is spreading, including 24 Latin American countries.
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Later Friday, the White House said Rousseff and President Barack Obama discussed their concerns about the spread of the Zika virus in a telephone conversation.
