Danish hospital says case of Zika virus discovered

“Zika is following the same path. It’s using a very similar mosquito vector introduced into Brazil, a large population area, and now has spread through Nicaragua, Colombia, going through the Mediterranean”.

Officials in El Salvador, Colombia and Brazil have suggested women stop getting pregnant until the crisis has passed.

The Zika virus outbreak is ongoing in 21 countries, including Mexico and Puerto Rico.

Since Zika, a flu-like disease that originated in Africa, arrived in Latin America a year ago, there has been a jump in babies born with microcephaly, or abnormally small heads, a birth defect that can cause brain damage and death.

“Zika virus is acquired through the bite of an infected mosquito”, Virginia Health Commissioner Dr. Marissa Levine said in a statement.

Still, travelers who have gotten infected with the Zika virus in other countries have already arrived in the US and more are expected, raising the possibility that the virus could spread a bit beyond those cases, especially since mosquitoes capable of carrying and transmitting the pathogen are present, Bell says.

Lindmeier said it was not yet clear whether the virus affecting Brazil and other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean was a mutated version of the virus that has caused prior outbreaks.

Dr. Kerkering said the virus is spread through mosquitoes, not from person to person. The CDC says the mosquito-borne illness could be linked to a birth defect of the brain.

– In the Caribbean: Barbados, Guadeloupe, Haiti, Martinique, St. Martin and Puerto Rico. So far, all cases of Zika virus in the USA have occurred in people who recently traveled to an affected country, meaning that we have no evidence yet to conclude that it’s being spread locally.

A massive eradication effort eliminated Aedes aegypti from Brazil during the 1950s, but the mosquito slowly returned over the following decades from neighboring nations, public health experts have said.

On Tuesday, the CDC expanded its travel alert for pregnant women to add the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Dominican Republic to the list of areas with Zika outbreaks.

Colombian officials are raising the number of suspected cases of the Zika virus in their country.

Health Secretary Ana Rius says there are 18 confirmed new cases in addition to one known earlier. “It seems low. But we know not that much about this disease at this moment”.