Department of Health finds 3 cases of Zika virus

Barbados, Bolivia, Ecuador, Guadeloupe, Saint Martin, Guyana, Cape Verde and Samoa are now included in the level two travel alert issued by the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

A week earlier, on January 15, 2015, the agency urged pregnant women to delay travel to areas reporting Zika virus transmission.

The price of mosquito repellent has risen in Brazil, where Health Minister Marcelo Castro said Friday that a “war” against the Aedes aegypti type, which carries dengue, chicungunya and Zika, was failing.

Zika is a mosquito-borne virus that was first isolated from a monkey in the Zika forest in Uganda in 1947.

The symptoms for Zika include mild fever and rash.

About 80% of people infected with Zika virus are asymptomatic.

Brazilian authorities recently received reports of four newborns with microcephaly, a brain condition that can prove deadly, which had possible associations to the Zika virus.

“Microcephaly is when the head is much smaller than it’s supposed to be, which means the brain itself is much smaller”, a local doctor explained. “We presume that after an immunocompetent individual is infected with zika virus they will develop lifelong immunity shortly after infection as with other flavirus infectionsm but we don’t have direct evidence at this point”. Of the 42 people with Guillain-Barre syndrome, 26 had a history of symptoms that suggested a Zika virus infection.

Officials from the Department of Health confirmed this morning the first case of the Zika virus – a tropical disease that may lead to babies being born with abnormally small heads – on St. Croix.

“Further studies are needed to confirm the association of microcephaly with Zika virus infection during pregnancy and to understand any other adverse pregnancy outcomes associated with Zika virus infection”, they wrote. And for most people the virus poses little long-term risk.

The CDC recommends that pregnant women should consider postponing travel to the areas where Zika virus transmission is ongoing, but it has also published guidelines for pregnant women who do travel to those areas.

The Centers say that, although rare, a mother who becomes infected with the virus near her delivery date can pass the virus on to the newborn around the time of birth.

The ACOG, which is the largest organization that represents obstetricians and gynecologists in the USA, is also warning women who are pregnant or planning on getting pregnant, to avoid traveling to countries were the virus has been detected.

-Try to book a hotel or lodging with air conditioning, or screens on windows and door.