Ministry monitoring also showed a fall of 11 per cent in outbreak localities from 1,329 localities the week before to 1,185 localities in the sixth week.
Advertisement
Tait cautions, “If travel to a location with active Zika virus transmission can not be avoided, strict precautions to avoid mosquito bites at all hours of the day and night should be followed”.
The arrival of the virus in Brazil, however, coincided with a sharp increase in a condition known as microcephaly – an unusually small head size and brain damage – in newborns.
Much remains unknown about Zika, including whether the virus actually causes microcephaly.
Two U.S.-Brazilian studies on whether the Zika virus spreading through the Americas is causing birth defects and other neurological disorders will yield initial results by May, a senior U.S. public health official said on Friday. Another option is to treat standing water with larvicide.
Concern over the Asian Tiger Mosquito The Asian tiger mosquito, Aedes albopictus, is a vector for the Zika virus, and it is one mosquito that will get priority testing, says Hunter.
There are different varieties of the Zika virus, which will make it harder to develop a vaccine to protect humans from the disease, Scheel said.
“We know that it can transmit other viruses and it’s a mosquito – as the name suggests – that is not supposed to be here”.
According to the report, the Minister of Health, Dr. Fernando Llorca, confirms this is a woman in Guanacaste with a “very suspicious” case of carrying the Zika virus.
Diamond wonders whether the phenomenon might work in reverse – whether people who have contracted Zika and then go on to be infected with dengue might be at higher risk of having severe dengue infections. Containers that can hold even small amounts of water – buckets, flower pots, tires – should be emptied, cleaned or covered to prevent mosquitoes from breeding in them.
Zika, which belongs to the flavivirus family, is closely related to the four dengue viruses. The illness is usually mild with symptoms lasting for several days to a week. Some individuals can also experience muscle pain and headaches. “Diseases like Zika virus are likely to continue”.
“WHO encourages affected countries and their partners to boost the use of current mosquito control interventions as the most immediate line of defence”, the organisation said in a statement, “and to judiciously test the new approaches that could be applied in future”.
Dengue – which, like Zika, is primarily transmitted by mosquitoes – is common in Brazil and other countries where Zika outbreaks have been occurring in the past couple of years.
Use an insect repellent containing DEET, picaridin, IR3535, oil of lemon eucalyptus, or para-menthane-diol (PMD).
Advertisement
When weather permits, wear long-sleeved shirts and long trousers. They are a particularly vulnerable group to this type of disease because they are in transit a lot of the time and there are a number of major trade routes passing through areas impacted by the Zika virus. Stay in places which use window and doors screens just to keep mosquitos outside. And it’s not considered ethical to infect people, especially pregnant women, in an experiment to see what happens – not when there seems to be a real chance that a volunteer could be seriously harmed.
