Chan said she also wants “to prioritize areas where research is most needed”. “Because New York is such a large travel destination with a cosmopolitan population, it is likely that there will be many travel-associated cases of people with Zika virus infection living in and seeking care in New York”, the website said. All are travel-related, the CDC’s Lyle Petersen said, and “this number is increasing rapidly”.
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The species of mosquito that transmits the virus is also not seen in the northeast, though it is prevalent in the southern United States.
As the number of suspected cases of microcephaly – thought to be linked to the virus – surged in Brazil, WHO head Margaret Chan said an emergency committee would meet on Monday to determine whether the Zika outbreak amounts to a global health emergency and how the world should respond.
“We must declare war on the mosquito and until we have a vaccine against the Zika virus, that war must focus our efforts on eliminating its breeding grounds”, Rousseff said on her Twitter page.
Earlier this month, the CDC said pregnant women should consider postponing trips to more than a dozen countries where Zika virus is known.
Brazilian health officials estimate they had 150 cases of microcephaly in all of 2014. He did not provide a figure.
Zika was discovered in 1947 in Uganda’s Zika forest.
Zika has flown under most people’s radar until now because it usually causes such mild symptoms that 80 percent of infected people don’t even notice it. Symptoms include a rash, a fever, sometimes conjunctivitis and headache.
Aedes aegypti are restricted to tropical and subtropical regions but that’s a broad area – as far north as Georgia and SC in the United States.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has expanded its warning for pregnant women thinking of visiting 22 countries, most in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The arrival of Zika in Brazil a year ago initially caused little alarm as the virus’ symptoms are generally much milder than those of dengue.
Aylward said that some of the women who gave birth to children with microcephaly had been tested and some of them had other infections and some did not.
“We are not going to wait for the science to tell us there is a link (with birth defects)”.
The government is looking at the issue of blood donations from travellers, although officials think the virus is gone from an infected person’s blood in a week or less.
World Health Organization officials that better diagnostic tests are in the works as well as possible antiviral therapies and vaccines but that any of these could take months to develop.
It’s humans that spread the bug – mosquitos can barely fly a quarter of a mile. Some public health experts say the world’s health agency has not been moving fast enough on Zika. But, just as with malaria, people are the source for spreading the virus. “We need to take actions now”, she said.
What can I do to avoid getting the disease?
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The Zika virus has spread through twenty different countries since past year, may have the potential to go global should it spread via mosquito and water supplies if matters are as expected, however, it has been confirmed that many countries are now aware of the risks involved and will be taking measures to ensure that what has been an epidemic in South America will not extend to pandemic proportions as suggested by media and health organizations.
