Zika Virus Spreads Across Latin America and the Caribbean

She said it underscored the warning issued Friday by the CDC for pregnant women to avoid traveling to regions or countries where Zika has been found. Most are in Latin America, including Brazil, and the Caribbean.

At the moment the only way to fight Zika is to clear standing water where mosquitoes breed.

But in pregnant women, the virus can spread to the fetus and cause brain shrinkage – a rare condition called microcephaly that severely limits a child’s intellectual and physical development – or death.

The Brazilian government said on Saturday it was directing funds to a biomedical research centre to help develop a vaccine against the virus. The virus is endemic there.

The Hawaii newborn “further emphasizes the importance of the CDC travel recommendations released today”, Dr. Park said. Women trying to become pregnant who are thinking about becoming pregnant should consult with their healthcare provider before traveling to these areas. In December, Puerto Rico reported its first confirmed case in someone who had not recently traveled, meaning they caught it from a mosquito on the island.

“We believe this is a fairly serious problem”, Dr. Lyle R. Petersen, the CDC’s chief of vector-borne diseases said in a Friday evening teleconference. The latest test results from Brazil have shown “increasingly strong evidence” of a link between the virus and fetal brain damage, CDC said.

The same species of mosquitoes that spread the chikungunya and dengue viruses, the Aedes species, also spreads the Zika virus. According to NPR, the number of cases of microcephaly has gone up from an average of around 200 per year to greater than 3,000 cases in 2015.

Most have been concentrated in Brazil’s poor northeast, though cases in Rio de Janeiro and other big cities have also been on the rise, prompting people to stock up on mosquito repellent. No one has been infected in the United States. Officials say only one in five see mild symptoms such as fever, joint pain and headaches.

For that reason, the United States has followed the actions of Canada, which last week issued a health advisory urging travelers to guard against mosquito bites when visiting the countries where Zika is present.

Dengue fever, which can violently affect adults, is transmitted by some of the same mosquitoes as Zika, though it is not thought to affect fetuses in the same way.

At the same time, Brazil noticed a startling increase in the numbers of microcephaly cases.

But Hawaii’s Big Island is now battling the state’s largest outbreak of dengue fever, another mosquito-borne illness, in 50 years.