Obama urges swift action on Zika virus

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has urged pregnant women not to travel to countries that have reported cases of the Zika virus, an untreatable, mosquito-borne disease.

Portugal said five people tested positive after recent trips to Brazil.

“This may be the reason for the virus replicating faster”, said Constancia Ayres, the research co-ordinator of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, a public health research institution.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it is working with other federal agencies, blood collection establishments and industry organizations to quickly implement “donor deferral measures for travellers who have visited affected regions in order to protect the blood supply in the United States”.

“The greatest risk of Zika complications might be to newborn babies”, Amler said.

Since November, Brazil has seen 4,180 cases of microcephaly in babies born to women who were infected with Zika during their pregnancies.

Concerns are also growing that the disease may become a worldwide issue with the 2016 summer Olympic Games coming up in Rio de Janeiro Brazil.

Now, travelers are advised to postpone visits to the US Virgin Islands and the Dominican Republic, along with Puerto Rico, Barbados, Bolivia, Brazil, Cape Verde, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Martinique, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Saint Martin, Samoa, Suriname and Venezuela.

In a statement Tuesday, the Aarhus University Hospital said the patient ran a fever, had a headache and muscle aches and was discovered as having the virus on Tuesday.

The virus is spread by the Aedes mosquito. There are no specific treatments or vaccines for Zika.

In these countries, mosquitoes are spreading the virus to people.

Zika virus, which spreads among humans via mosquitoes, causes illness characterized like many other viral infections by fever, rash and joint pain.

But while Texas and Florida need to be on alert, Aliota says Wisconsinites need not be anxious about transmission of Zika virus here.

“There is certainly something different about these viruses that have allowed or facilitated this geographic expansion”, Aliota added in a paper published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.

NPR reports that Oxitech, a biotechnical insect control company, has developed a line of modified Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, the species that carries the Zika virus as well as dengue fever and chikungunya.

On Feb. 13, the government will deploy 220,000 troops in a one-day mobilization to hand out leaflets and help identify potential trouble spots. Zika originated in Africa and also exists in Asia and the Pacific, but has not been associated with microcephaly there.

Another prevention effort is OX513A, a genetically modified male Aedes aegypti, dubbed by critics as the “mutant mosquito” or “Robo-Frankenstein mosquito”.