Most of the US cases of Zika virus infection are in Florida, according to the CDC.
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The case of the baby born with microcephaly had been reported by state health officials in Hawaii but CDC said it would not identify any of the women by state.
Only about one in five people who get Zika show any flu-like symptoms, and it’s uncommon for people to get sick enough to be admitted to a hospital.
Tom Frieden said Puerto Rico is clearly the most affected area, with the potential for hundreds of thousands of cases of the virus. Women who are pregnant are reminded to use condoms or abstain from sex with a partner returning recently from a Zika-affected area. The infection, known as Zika fever, often causes no or only mild symptoms, similar to a mild form of dengue fever.
The woman from the Lansing area was tested several weeks ago but her Zika infection was confirmed Wednesday. When symptoms occur, they are generally mild and include fever, rash, joint pain and redness of the eyes.
From 1999 to 2014, 4,632 cases of the West Nile virus were reported to the CDC from Texas. Among that evidence: an autopsy of a fetus that suggested the virus was replicating in its brain, as well as the presence of the virus in the amniotic fluid of pregnancies where the fetuses were diagnosed with microcephaly via ultrasound. The woman chose to abort the fetus. Two others made a decision to terminate their pregnancies.
The CDC has set up a voluntary registry to collect information about Zika-infected women and their babies.
World Health Organization said it has not yet been proven Zika is causing any of them, but says the evidence is strengthening.
It’s possible Zika could be most unsafe in early pregnancy, an important period for brain development.
The CDC is also investigating another 10 cases of Zika infection in pregnant travelers. In December, the first local transmission of the Zika virus infection was reported in the Caribbean, the Trinidad Guardian reported.
On the conference call, the CDC said it has developed a diagnostic test that it plans to distribute to US public health laboratories to speed the diagnosis of Zika, which now takes about a week.
The spread of Zika virus in Latin America has been associated with microcephaly, due to the rise of newborn children with the said condition.
Despite the caution being displayed in Brazil, we harken back to other cases in recent years where diseases that have had little to no impact on the USA have caused widespread panic across the nation – specifically West Nile and Ebola. A false negative can result when a person is almost recovered or does not have enough virus proteins to be detected, which could be the case when someone is almost recovered.
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The CDC is working with health ministries in Colombia and Brazil to determine whether the virus causes Guillain-Barré syndrome, a serious type of paralysis, as well as microcephaly.
