Puerto Rico has recorded 10,690 Zika cases, including those of 1,035 pregnant women, prompting the declaration of a public health emergency in the commonweath by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
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The Public Health Agency of Canada says the fetus has “severe congenital neurological anomalies”.
A World Health Organization report released on Thursday also mentions Canada as the latest country to report a case of congenital malformation associated with a Zika infection.
Zika virus infections in pregnant women are directly linked to fetal deaths and devastating birth defects such as microcephaly, when a baby is born with an abnormally small head, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Zika is primarily transmitted by the Aedes mosquito, which isn’t found in Canada.
The moves come as Florida continues to spray insecticide in parts of Miami to kill mosquitoes that can transmit the virus. The U.S. surgeon general is urging Puerto Rico on Thursday, Aug. 11, to step up its public education campaign against Zika as he warned that 25 percent of the island will be infected with the mosquito-borne virus by year’s end. As in all of the other cases in Louisiana, the patients travelled to regions in the Americas with ongoing Zika transmission and sought medical care in Louisiana after returning, where tests confirmed the viral infection.
It is estimated that 1.5 million people have been infected by Zika in Brazil, with over 3,500 cases of microcephaly reported between October 2015 and January 2016.
“The hope is there will be less and less as Canadians become more aware of the risk”. Earlier on Friday, Florida said three more people have become infected with Zika by local mosquitoes, bringing the total to 28. More than 1,900 of those cases were in the last week alone.
“We know microcephaly is one illness the developing child can have, and it can be pretty catastrophic at times”. “It’s appropriately low, but it’s not zero”.
The virus is spread by Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which also spread several other risky tropical diseases.
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Glaser said that residents of Campbell County should not be anxious unless they plan on traveling to regions that Zika has been reported as origins of the infection.
