The virus can also be sexually transmitted.
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“They’re not going to test you unless there are risk factors or [a woman is] pregnant”, she said, adding that a vaccine for the virus is “in the works”.
In Puerto Rico and other USA territories, 189 pregnant women are among those infected with Zika; the CDC did not report on birth defects there.
Officials aren’t expecting big outbreaks of the mosquito-borne virus like in Latin America and the Caribbean.
“The new map is more accurate than the initial one”, Thomas Scott, an entomologist at the University of California, Davis, who wasn’t involved with the study, told NPR’s Shots. So far Brazil has reported more than 1500 cases of microcephaly associated with Zika infection.
Recent studies have detailed increasing evidence about the potentially devastating consequences for Zika-infected pregnant women. Women should invest in bug sprays found to ward off the type of mosquitoes known for spreading Zika, avoid traveling to countries that are experiencing outbreaks, wear long clothing to cover skin if you’re in an area where mosquitoes thrive, and avoid unprotected sex – especially with partners who have recently traveled.
The study’s authors call the report “preliminary” and most of the women followed by researchers were still pregnant at the time the report was completed.
A study of Zika infections in Colombia has found no obvious birth defects among women infected during the third trimester of pregnancy, raising hopes that Zika may not cause serious harm to the fetus when mothers are infected later in pregnancy.
Tuesday’s revelation brings Palm Beach County’s total number of travel-related Zika virus cases to 10.
On Wednesday, the scientists and their worldwide colleagues have reported in The New England Journal of Medicine that Zika infection contracted in the third trimester apparently doesn’t cause extreme birth defects, like microcephaly.
Not even a single woman among them delivered a baby with microcephaly or other brain abnormalities.
“With the start of the mosquito season, we have been doing additional specialized trapping that focuses on those two species that have the potential to carry Zika”, Rogers said. The Obama administration has asked for $1.9 billion to fight Zika. “I have all my fingers crossed and I’m waiting for more information as it develops”.
Since the monitoring did not begin until August 2015 and the data is from babies born before April 2, numerous women had not yet given birth, the article explained.
Without smart public health solutions and financial resources to combat Zika, we are likely to see an increase in transmission among Americans during the summer months.
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States most at risk for the spread of Zika have also been working to limit its impact and have been calling on Congress to fund a Zika plan.
