Dr. Saul, like most health experts, including the head of the CDC says the risk of a Zika outbreak in the U.S.is small due to the climate, where controlling the mosquito population is easier and the availability of air-conditioning. Health officials said the number of US residents diagnosed in the past year has risen to 31.
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As the virus spreads from Brazil, other countries in the Americas are likely to see cases of babies with Zika-linked birth defects, the head of WHO’s Americas regional office told Reuters on Thursday.
Zika is transmitted primarily by Aedes mosquitos, which also transmit chikungunya and dengue viruses and which are present in every country of the Americas except Canada and continental Chile. There have also been a handful of cases in the mainland United States, but all of those have been in people who recently returned from Zika-affected areas.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is asking pregnant women to avoid travel to countries where Zika virus is a concern.
The Committee will meet on Monday 1 February in Geneva to ascertain whether the outbreak constitutes a Public Health Emergency of International Concern.
Symptoms of Zika virus are usually mild, but the illness has been linked to a serious birth defect known as microcephaly in babies born to infected pregnant women.
Zika, which is spread by mosquitoes, was first detected in Uganda in 1947, but has never caused an outbreak on this scale.
Brazil alone has reported more than 4,000 cases of microcephaly.
More than two dozen in eleven states and Washington DC have tested positive for the Zika virus.
The estimate followed thousands of other suspected cases in Latin America which have raised a world health scare over the mosquito-borne virus.
There is no vaccine or treatment to prevent Zika.
Symptoms for the virus are similar to the flu – people can get a fever, red eyes, joint pain or a rash.
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All of the cases involved people returning to the United States from countries where the Zika virus is spreading, she said. The month where the Olympics will be played, August, is a month where you don’t have proliferation of the mosquito.
