The Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services confirmed Friday that a pregnant woman has tested positive for the Zika virus, the fourth confirmed case in the state.
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In addition to the aforementioned additions, the interim guidelines also recommend against pregnant women traveling to areas where Zika virus is circulating and suggest that businesses delay travel to these areas for workers who are or plan to become pregnant.
Margaret Howe-White, nursing director of the Harrison-Clarksburg Health Department, said the virus can stay in the body long after traces of it in the blood are gone. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there have been no local mosquito-borne Zika virus cases reported in the USA, but there are some travel-associated cases.
Sexual transmission of Zika virus from men to women and men to men also has been observed.
Symptoms of Zika can include a mild fever, muscle pain and a headache, but sufferers don’t usually need hospital treatment and fatalities are extremely rare.
The virus is known to cause birth defects; most commonly, babies can be born with unusually smaller heads, or microcephaly. Zika has been identified as the cause of the malformations, showing that the virus can be passed from infected mothers to foetuses transplacentally.
Letteney says, “Spraying is basically a band-aid, and the most important thing people can do is protect themselves from mosquito bites”.
The first case of Zika virus in the state has been detected in March. Nelson adds that it’s not even summer yet, when mosquito swarms are at their thickest: especially in the Caribbean, and Central and South America. There is no Zika vaccine at this time, but global research is underway. “And we don’t want to have to say in the future, ‘I told you so'”. But mosquitoes that carry the virus could spread further north. The Aedes aegypti mosquito is expected to be the primary carrier in the United States.
That said, he said there are “disadvantages” to use toxic chemicals all over, while noting there have been successful tests in Brazil using a genetically-modified male mosquito that breeds with normal female mosquito and results in the sterilization and death of the parent mosquito’s offspring.
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For more on Zika virus, visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But many Republicans have said they need more information from the administration before approving the measure.
