That’s in addition to more than 120 women affected by Zika in US territories, mainly Puerto Rico.
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The city’s count comes as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday that it is monitoring 279 pregnant women with likely Zika virus infections in U.S. states and territories. The CDC confirmed that when a pregnant woman catches the virus, there is a straight correlation to miscarriage and critical prenatal brain abnormalities. Now, the CDC announced Friday, it will report not only the number of pregnant women who test positive and show symptoms of the virus, but also pregnant women who display no symptoms but have shown laboratory evidence of possible exposure.
Most infected people suffer no symptoms but authorities in Brazil have seen a dramatic increase in severe brain-related birth defects in babies born to women infected with Zika during pregnancy.
“With no vaccines and no reliable and widely available diagnostic tests, to protect women of childbearing age, all we can offer is advice”.
World Health Organization warned that as a first step, these countries should heighten risk communication to pregnant women to raise awareness of complications and promote protection steps to avoid mosquito bites as well as sexual transmission. Health authorities continue their efforts to eliminate the mosquito-borne Zika virus, now of which there is no no cure or vaccine.
The CDC told reporters on a conference call that, so far, fewer than a dozen of the infected pregnant women it has tracked in the USA and Puerto Rico have had miscarriages or babies born with birth defects.
The African strain of the Zika virus, which takes its name from Uganda’s tropical Zika forest where it was first discovered in 1947, has been widespread on the continent since then. Doctors also are encouraged to ask pregnant women if their sex partner has been infected or traveled to an outbreak area.
“If we have people who are infected here, who have the Zika virus here, it’s only a matter of time before we have local spread”, said CBS News medical contributor Dr. Holly Phillips. The agency did not detail the outcomes of the pregnancies.
The House and Senate have advanced bills to fight the virus, but the House version involves much less money, according to the AP.
Obama repeated his call for the full requested amount.
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On Thursday, the Senate approved P1.1 billion in funding for this goal, but the House only allocated only P622 million.
