On March 6, the DOH reported that an American woman who visited the Philippines for four weeks in January tested positive for the virus upon returning to the United States, raising fears that the disease linked to a severe brain defect in infants may have been quietly infecting Filipinos.
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Montgomery County officials confirmed the first case of Zika virus in the county Tuesday but downplayed the health risks to the general public. “We don’t want our local Asian tiger mosquitoes to pick up the Zika virus and start passing it on to people locally who have never been out of the country”.
Brazil said it has confirmed more than 740 cases of microcephaly, and considers a lot of them to be related to Zika infections in the mothers.
Authors Simon Cauchemez and Arnaud Fontanet said the information from French Polynesia helps quantify the risk of microcephaly during Zika outbreaks, such as the current one in South America, and “may help better inform the broader public health response”.
The health department wants to establish a uniform case definition for suspected Zika cases, and guidelines to improve monitoring of infections and complications.
Pregnant women infected by the Zika virus wait to be attended to in Cucuta, Colombia.
The virus is mainly spread through mosquito bites and causes mild or no symptoms in most people. That county accounts for almost half of all the state’s confirmed cases so far with 28 total confirmed.
Zika is an infectious disease caused by the Zika virus.
By comparing these models to the number and timing of actual cases of microcephaly, they found that the scenario where the first trimester of pregnancy was associated with an increased risk was most consistent with the observed data. About 80 percent of people infected do not have any symptoms, and people are not usually sick enough to go to the hospital.
The virus is transmitted primarily through the bites of Aedes species mosquitoes – the same species that transmits dengue and chikungunya viruses. Dr. Kathleen Antony, a maternal fetal medicine physician at UW Health, says the good news is that past Zika infections don’t seem to impact future pregnancies, but there’s a catch for women and men.
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Vytenis Andriukaitis, Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, added: “A number of European Union citizens have returned from the affected areas with the Zika virus”.
