Now there is no vaccine to prevent or treat the virus.
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“On advice of the ACHD (Allegheny County Health Department), the researcher is complying with a request to wear long sleeves and trousers and wear insect repellent for three weeks from the date of contact.We want to remind residents that, despite this rare incident, there is still no current risk of contracting Zika from mosquitoes in Allegheny County”. The mosquito-borne virus has been linked to a surge in Brazil of the birth defect microcephaly. The point of the revised recommendations is to draw a clear distinction between advice for people living in Zika-afflicted areas and those traveling through them. “The correction makes this more clear”, says a press release from the WHO.
The commonwealth is entering mosquito season, which is causing some to worry about the spread of the Zika virus.
A new article published in the Journal of Medical Entomology features maps of counties in the United States where these mosquitoes have been recorded, based on records from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ArboNET database, VectorMap, the published literature, a survey of mosquito control agencies, university researchers, and state and local health departments.
Although the new World Health Organization recommendation doesn’t specify how long couples should delay pregnancy, the recommendation “means delaying until we have more answers, more evidence, more science”, World Health Organization spokeswoman Nyka Alexander told the Times. The United States has 691 cases of the virus, but they’re all travel-associated. But hopefully it wouldn’t be too long.
Visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website for more information about the Zika virus. The CDC is also tracking 195 women who are pregnant with Zika within the continental U.S.as well as 146 infected expecting moms in USA territories.
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“So from person to person it would be transmitted sexually and that is a relatively easy virus to transmit”, Joshi said.
