Zika virus spreads to Europe as Danish tourist infected

However, there has been one confirmed case of the virus in Los Angeles County – in an adolescent girl who traveled to El Salvador in late November.

In a blog post, National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins cited a Lancet study published January 14 in which researchers predicted the Zika virus could be spread in areas along the East and West Coasts of the United States and much of the Midwest during warmer months, where about 200 million people live.

The NHI is in charge of all epidemiology tests in Portugal.

(AP Photo/Felipe Dana). Brazilian Army soldiers take notes as they inspects homes during an operation to combat the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes that transmits the Zika virus in Recife, Pernambuco state, Brazil, Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2016.

The mosquito-borne Zika virus, for which there is no vaccine or cure, usually brings only mild symptoms.

Almost 80 percent of people infected with the disease will show no symptoms.

Edwards adds the Aedes mosquito, which transmits the virus, is only found in tropical and subtropical climates. Health officials said all three patients contracted the illness during a recent trip outside the country.

The Zika virus has been linked with microcephaly, a rare birth defect in newborn babies where the brain fails to properly develop resulting to a small, deformed head. In the US, pregnant women have been warned to avoid travel south of the Mexican border or in the Caribbean.

There is an unprecedented outbreak of the virus in Brazil and t he World Health Organisation said that the virus is likely to spread across almost all of the Americas apart from Canada and Chile.

Symptoms include mild fever and a rash, typically accompanied by conjunctivitis, muscle or joint pain, and general fatigue that starts a few days after the bite of an infected mosquito.

The tally of cases of microcephaly in Brazil surged from 163 per year on average to 3,893 after the Zika outbreak began last year. The meeting also tackled the effects of the Zika virus in the US economy and development.

Earnest says he anticipates that any response in the USA that requires more federal funding would go toward building up the nation’s broader health infrastructure. Nevertheless, Bell acknowledged that experts can ” ‘never say never, ‘ ” and Fauci agrees anything is possible.

One reason Zika is troubling is because it has been linked with birth defects.

“No, future pregnancies would not be affected” says Prof Moore, ‘the risk to the baby is at the time of first infection, when the virus is circulating in the blood, which may only last for a week’. That doesn’t happen with Zika virus, which has no known bird or animal reservoir.

According to Reuters, the mosquito-borne virus has harmed thousands of babies born in Brazil, leading health care workers to recommend that women refrain from getting pregnant. This is a virus that has specifically adapted to infecting the bloodstream directly by a mosquito bite.