The World Health Organisation has set out a rough timescale for developing a vaccine to combat the Zika virus infecting thousands in south America.
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The WHO said USA government scientists and an Indian biotechnology firm were the front-runners in the vaccine effort but said it would take at least 18 months to start large-scale clinical trials of potential preventative shots.
The virus can be spread by bites from mosquitoes that are common in Florida.
As far as infections go, Zika virus is only symptomatic in about 20% of those infected, and symptoms are relatively mild (rash, joint and muscle pains, headache and conjunctivitis).
Microcephaly is a birth defect in which babies are born with abnormally small heads and neurological abnormalities.
Brazil also said on Thursday that three people who died previous year had the Zika virus, although the authorities could not confirm that Zika alone was responsible for their deaths.
The Ohio Department of Health (ODH) is reporting the state’s third and fourth cases of Zika virus were diagnosed in returning travelers – a 56-year-old Butler County woman returning from Guyana, and a 60-year-old Licking County man returning from Haiti.
Two U.S. women suffered miscarriages after being infected with the Zika virus, according to officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
He said that keeping homes free of mosquitoes was the most effective way to contain the virus until a vaccine is developed.
For more on Zika virus and microcephaly, visit the March of Dimes. Earlier this month, a sexually-transmitted case was reported in Texas.
Doctors don’t know what percentage of women with Zika infections will have a baby with birth defects because the link between the two is newly discovered. It is not only business travel being affected by the mosquito-borne virus but also personal trips such as those many Brazilians want to take for Carnival.
New medical research has provided the strongest evidence yet of a direct link between the feared mosquito-spread Zika virus and infant microcephaly. When genetically modified male mosquitoes mate with females of the same species, their offspring die at the larva stage.
Speaking at a American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Washington on Friday, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) chief Anthony Fauci said more work needs to be done to understand how long Zika may persist in a man’s semen.
Putnam County has its first confirmed case of Zika virus in a local resident and another is being tested, county health department officials said.
Amid the uncertainty surrounding the cause of the mysterious rise in birth effects, it remains unknown how these false diagnoses of microcephaly may have affected, and will continue to affect, pregnant women who are told their child may have birth defects.
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Of people infected with the Zika virus, 80 percent do not have any symptoms.
