“As a normal part of Team GB’s overall planning our medical team has been liaising with specialists in this area to ensure that prospective team members are given the most up-to-date travel medicine advice, which includes information on bite prevention strategies”.
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Marcos Espinal, head of communicable diseases at the Pan American Health Organisation, the WHO’s Americas arm, forecast 3 to 4 million Zika cases in the Americas.
The institute says the Aedes aegypti mosquitos found in South Africa are slightly different than those spreading the Zika virus in the Americas.
“In the area of vaccines, I do know that there has been some work done by some groups looking at the feasibility of a Zika virus vaccine”. “To have a risk of microscopically for babies for the head being developed [it can cause] neurological problems”.
U.S. health officials said the United States has two potential candidates for a Zika vaccine and may begin human clinical trials by the end of this year, but there will not be a widely available vaccine for several years.
President Barack Obama met with US health and national security leaders Tuesday to discuss the spread of Zika and other mosquito-borne viruses in the Americas as well as steps being taken to protect the American public, according to a news release.
Though Connecticut and the rest of the country could see a spike in cases as residents return from traveling, “we will see very little local transmission, except perhaps along the Gulf Coast, the southeast coastlines, Texas, etc.”, Ross said. The illness is usually mild, and symptoms only last a several days to a week. It specifically recommends that pregnant women consider postponing travel to the affected regions because there have been reports of a serious birth defect called microcephaly in babies of mothers who were infected with Zika while pregnant.
The ministry stressed that there is no current risk of Zika spreading in France.
The tropical virus is blamed for causing brain damage in babies as it sweeps through Latin America, and Rousseff, whose government is deploying 220,000 soldiers to help eradicate the mosquitoes that transmit it, likened the outbreak to a battle.
The virus is transmitted when a specific type of mosquito bites a person with an active infection and then spreads the virus by biting others.
“That is how Dengue spreads”, Olivarez said.
In Brazil, authorities have deployed a small army of sanitation workers to fumigate against mosquitoes and clean up the stagnant water where they breed.
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Dengue fever and the Aedes mosquito are common in the Rio Grande Valley area, Olivarez said. A meeting among health officials on Monday will determine whether to upgrade the level of the threat posed by the outbreak. “There is no magic way to deal with Zika”.
