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Zika virus link to small-head condition ‘circumstantial’

Spokeswoman Meg Mirivel would not say whether Tuesday if the infected person is a man or woman or give the person’s age.

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“Many experts, including the CDC, have warned those in the south, particularly Florida, that there is great risk for awful consequences from Zika virus”, wrote Walter J. Tabachnick, former director of the Florida Medical Entomology Laboratory, in an opinion piece published in the Miami Herald.

This is why travel warnings against travel to countries where Zika is present have been issued for women who are pregnant or planning to get pregnant Piracicaba, a city in Southern Brazil was the focus of a pilot project in April 2014 where thousands of genetically modified male Aedes mosquitoes were released.

Zika will likely spread to all countries in the Americas except for Canada and Chile, according to the WHO.

Now, that the CDC has confirmed cases of the Zika virus in the US, does that mean Americans need to worry about the recent outbreak? News storiesdisplayed here appear in our category for Health and are licensed via a specific agreement between LongIsland.comand The Associated Press, the world’s oldest and largest news organization. They say 16,490 people now apparently have had the disease that’s been linked to birth defects in Brazil.

Brazil’s government says it will deploy 220,000 soldiers in its fight against mosquitoes spreading the virus. It is suspected of causing microcephaly in babies born to an infected woman. Earlier this month, the El Salvador Health Department disclosed they had found 492 Zika cases. None involve pregnant women. However, the disease has been linked to microcephaly, a severe and potentially deadly birth defect which impacts brain development.

She says insect repellent is not risky for expectant mothers.

Reports in all the major dailies said Marcelo Castro suggested that prior governments had been too lax in efforts to eradicate the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which also spreads dengue and chikungunya.

The US and other countries advise pregnant women to reconsider travelling to Brazil, which hosts the Olympics later this year, and other Zika-hit countries.

Health Minister Alejandro Gaviria visited the city of Ibague, a hotbed of Zika, to start a Tour of Colombia campaign to educate local officials on how to fight the mosquitoes.

Although the link to birth defects has not been independently confirmed, some countries in the region that have reported cases of the virus have advised their citizens to postpone pregnancies. It would be a first for the nation that shares a border with Brazil.

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A researcher looks at Aedes aegypti mosquitoes kept in a container at a lab of the Institute of Biomedical Sciences of the Sao Paulo University