The two new Zika patients are living in the same house with the sixth patient found positive for the virus, GMA News quoted Health Secretary Paulyn Jean Rosell-Ubial as saying. Certainly protection of pregnant women from environmental hazards such as mosquitoes is an imperative. “And at the very least, Zika testing of the babies”. There is an urgent need for additional resources to shore up mosquito control efforts, educate the public, increase public laboratory capacity, provide help to families with infants exposed to Zika, and follow up with pregnant women who may have been exposed to Zika at home or overseas.
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Signs and symptoms of a Zika infection include fever lasting for two to seven days, rash, joint pain, or conjunctivitis.
She said that mosquito control district personnel trap as many at 365,000 mosquitoes per trap night and check to make sure they are not carrying several viruses that can be risky to humans who are bitten.
While in cases of adults, Zika infections have been linked to a rare neurological syndrome known as Guillain-Barre, and other neurological disorders as well. The March of Dimes and other private foundations can also be helpful resources.
While Congress debates the future of federal funding for Zika preparedness and response, the Zika virus continues to spread.
Zika has spread quickly since April, with millions of cases forecast this year in South America alone and patients reported in dozens of countries including th US, Philippines and Malaysia.
What we need next, says Bale, are long-term studies of the full spectrum of infants born to Zika-infected mothers – those babies with severe symptoms and those with milder symptoms.
However, she could not confirm a BBC report on Wednesday which suggested a person was diagnosed with Zika in the past week.
However, the CDC also cautions that a negative test does not exclude Zika. Those researchers found Zika in a small percentage of sample groups of mosquitoes collected from areas where transmission was suspected to have taken place, enough to make headlines in the US since that could mean an expansion of the threat. For this to happen, Congress must act now. Programs to help parents with Zika-infected children are barely in the planning stages. And taking “leftover” Ebola funds is unwisely gambling that Ebola is not coming back.
For more information about mosquito-borne illnesses, go to the county’s Fight the Bite website.
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Clarissa K. Wittenberg has served as a senior communications officer at several NIH Institutes: the Office of Global Health, Office of the Director, and Office of Health and Human Services.
