El Salvador: Women should avoid pregnancy for next 2 years

It has since spread to 20 countries in Central and South America and the Caribbean.

The Director of the National Institutes of Health on Tuesday called for intensified efforts to study the impact of Zika infections, citing a recent study estimating the virus could reach regions where 60 percent of the US population lives. This individual recently traveled out of the country and had a mild case of Zika.

The Zika virus, like the chikungunya and West Nile viruses, originated in Africa and are now being chiefly spread by the Aedes aegypti mosquito. “But, of course, the huge increase of Zika, especially in north-eastern Brazil, and the rise of Zika cases gives a lot of reason for concern and now the big task is to try to establish the link here”, said World Health Organization spokesman Christian Lindmeier.

“Arkansas residents traveling to Central or South America or the Caribbean, where Zika is present, should take precautions against mosquitoes”.

In new interim guidelines, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention told heath care providers in the United States to work closely with mothers to track down babies possibly suffering from the rapidly spreading virus. Zika “is not spread directly from person to person”, according to official guidance issued by Public Health England.

Last week a baby born with microcephaly in Hawaii became the first newborn to test positive for the Zika virus on USA soil.

Already, the CDC had advised pregnant women to avoid trips to Bolivia, Brazil, Cape Verde, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Martinique, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Saint Martin, Suriname, Samoa, Venezuela and Puerto Rico. But there’s been mounting evidence linking Zika infection in pregnant women to a birth defect in which a newborn’s head is unusually small and the brain may not develop properly.

USA health officials are putting out advice to doctors on testing newborns for Zika virus, a tropical infection linked to a wave of birth defects in Brazil.

“Current advice is that pregnant women should consider postponing travel to any region where a known outbreak of the Zika virus is occurring”.

It came hours after officials in Virginia, America, announced they had also identified a resident who had contracted Zika while overseas.

A health worker shows larvae of the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes found…