Brazil Zika Outbreak: More Babies Born With Birth Defects

All of the cases reported in the USA involve people who have traveled to affected areas.

The agency on January 19 added care guidelines for pregnant women traveling to the same areas, including treatment advice for women confirmed to have Zika. Researchers at the Pasteur Institute in Dakar, Senegal are in Brazil to train local researchers to combat the Zika virus epidemic.

“Someone who is infected could come here to Orlando, for example, making it possible to spread the virus to (Florida)”, Crespo said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned pregnant women to postpone travel to areas where Zika virus transmission is ongoing to avoid becoming infected with the virus.

And, if there are signs of infection or reason to believe the fetus may be affected, the woman should be tested and ultrasounds should monitor the baby’s development, the CDC recommended.

The virus has quickly spread across South America and the Caribbean in recent weeks.

The Zika virus is transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which is also known to carry the dengue, yellow fever and Chikungunya viruses. “All of us need to act the same way, because if the mosquito comes to breed it’s a terror”.

For most, the symptoms are nothing too dire – fever, rash, and some joint pain.

Those symptoms rarely last longer than a week. Results from tests conducted at the CDC “represent the strongest scientific evidence to date supporting an association between Zika virus infection and microcephaly and other poor pregnancy outcomes”, Dr. Petersen said.

And, as if the onset of the Zika virus wasn’t enough, it isn’t the only mosquito-born disease now causing alarm in Brazil, and the region.

Brazilian health officials said Wednesday that the number of cases of microcephaly, a rare brain defect in babies, has risen to 3,893, since authorities began investigating the surge in cases, in October.

The Florida victims traveled to Colombia and Venezuela and the two pregnant women in IL visited Central America and the Caribbean.

“We have 560 pregnant women among these 13,500 cases and we expect an expansion similar to that of the chikungunya virus last year to finish out the year with the number of cases between 600,000 and 700,000”, Colombian Minister of Health Alejandro Gaviria said in a press conference.

A Hawaiian newborn was confirmed by the health officials last week as the first case in the US.

Hawaii health officials said she was likely infected while living in Brazil.