Gloria Golú, 41, holds her belly at University Hospital of Valle, Cali, June 30, 2016.
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The Zika outbreak is affecting large parts of Latin America and the Caribbean, with Brazil the hardest hit so far.
The connection between Zika and microcephaly first came to light last fall in Brazil, which has now confirmed more than 1,600 cases of microcephaly that it considers to be related to Zika infections in the mothers.
Spain has had 190 known cases of Zika infection to date, according to its health ministry. “Colombia is the first country on the American continent to declare an end to the epidemic”, Ruiz said.
In this April 26, 2016, file photo, an Aedes aegypti mosquito is seen through a microscope at Colombia’s National Institute of Health in Bogota.
Doctors are still analyzing the cases of 160 babies born with birth defects to mothers who were infected with Zika during pregnancy, to diagnose their condition and determine whether the virus was the cause. A hospital source said she was infected in Latin America, where the virus is prevalent. It expands CDC’s definition of sexual exposure to Zika to include sex without a barrier method (including male or female condoms, among other methods) with any person- male or female- who has traveled to or lives in an area with Zika.
That would be roughly double the average annual number of babies born each year in Colombia with microcephaly, which can be caused by a number of other factors.
Before the Zika outbreak, there were normally around 140 cases of microcephaly per year.
And doctors need to ask all pregnant women about any chance they could have been infected with Zika, either through sex, travel or via mosquito bite, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in updated Zika guidelines.
Colombian officials also blame Zika for at least 350 cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome. With the epidemic declared over, Zika is now considered endemic, meaning some level of the virus is still circulating in the country.
The main change in the updated CDC guidance for caring for pregnant women who may have been exposed to Zika virus is an expanded time frame for testing for virus particles in blood-the reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test. It said the longer testing period will give a more definitive diagnosis for more pregnant women infected with Zika virus.
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In its research, Tatem’s team projected the spread of Zika by assessing its likely impact at very local levels – a scale of five kilometers squared – and combined this local data to model regional infection rates.
