Zika virus affected baby born in Hawaii with microcephaly

A baby born with brain damage at a hospital in Hawaii was infected by the Zika virus, the first case of the mosquito-borne virus in a birth on United States soil, U.S. health officials have confirmed.

Though the Zika virus is not a life-threatening illness, it has been linked to causing brain damage and an increased rate in the cases of microcephaly, babies born with small heads and brains, according to NBC News.

The mother became ill with the Zika virus while living in Brazil in May 2015 and the baby was likely infected in the womb, Hawaiian state health officials and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said.

The Zika virus causes a painful fever in about 20 percent of those infected, which lasts up to a week.

Ecuadorian Health Minister Margarita Guevara said a 23-year-old woman caught the virus in the northwest and a 15-year-old boy became infected in the southwest of the country.

Tests indicated that in at least four cases, the fetus developed the malformation during pregnancy because of the virus, the CDC said.

Zika virus is transmitted by Aedes species mosquitoes, which also spread dengue and chikungunya viruses and are common in Texas, Florida and elsewhere in the United States.

There is now no vaccine to prevent Zika or medicine to treat it.

But when Brazilian health officials started to realize they were seeing a surge in microcephaly cases, investigations began to point to Zika infection in pregnancy as a possible cause.

Some of the symptoms of the Zika virus are similar to cold symptoms, like pain in the joints, a rash and what is generally a mild illness with fever.

Traces of Zika virus have been found in the amniotic fluid from two women in Brazil who were seen to be carrying fetuses with microcephaly during ultrasounds.

He said that the goal was to develop a vaccine “in record time”.

The Hawaii health department said it sent a medical advisory about the infection to doctors across the state but emphasised that neither the mother nor baby were infectious. More than 200 cases have been reported between September 2015 and December 2015.

The virus was found in fetal and newborn tissues of babies with microcephaly in Brazil. Since May, more than 1.5 million Brazilians have been infected.

It urged pregnant women in their first trimester to be especially vigilant about trying to avoid mosquito bites. Recent research, including a 2014 NIH study, suggests that in a warming world the range of the Aedes mosquito will shift into new areas, specifically North America.

“That is, we now have cases of the virus being transmitted by mosquito bites that happened in Ecuadoran territory”, she told a press conference.