Zika May Remain in Semen for Long Time After Infection

With much of Central and South America, as well as the Caribbean, experiencing widespread transmission of Zika over the past month, health officials have expected to see Americans traveling to those countries returning home with the virus.

Forty-million Americans travel from the U.S.to Zika-affected areas every year, officials say.

Meanwhile, in Australia, a second pregnant woman has been diagnosed with Zika virus, authorities said Friday.

Steve Smith, the public health director for Henderson County, says several years ago, a decrease in state funding hampered some of the county’s prevention efforts, when it comes to viruses and diseases passed along by mosquitoes.

Some countries have suggested that women should avoid getting pregnant for as long as two years until the virus is contained – a scenario that global public health groups have described as infeasible for many women who lack access to contraception.

None of the cases in Australia of Zika, which normally causes relatively mild flu-like symptoms and a rash, were locally acquired.

Bharat had already been working on a Zika virus vaccine, spurred by the prevalence of dengue fever and chikungungya, which are both spread by the same mosquito carriers as Zika, the company told The Wall Street Journal last week. Brazil has reported an apparent increase in cases of that defect, called microcephaly, as Zika exploded in that country, although scientists haven’t definitively proven the link. “Whether it was caused by Zika remains to be determined”, he said, but urged individuals to take precautions to avoid contracting or transmitting the virus.

Some 220,000 soldiers will hand out leaflets door-to-door across Brazil on Saturday, ahead of a massive insecticide-spraying operation as the government tries to stem an outbreak of the mosquito-borne Zika virus.

According to data presented by him, the total cases reported (suspected, probable and confirmed) is 176; total deaths (suspected, probable and confirmed), 108 (CFR: 61.4 percent), total confirmed cases: 78; deaths in confirmed cases: 49 (CFR: 62.8 percent ).

Despite the CDC’s latest advisory, physicians and researchers still do not have all the answers on how the virus may be spread. Pregnant women reporting clinical illness consistent with Zika virus disease during or within 2 weeks of travel should be tested for Zika virus infection. “We still need to understand the clinical and epidemiological patterns to make that link definitive”.

On the surface, it appears the virus is not life-threatening, with only one out of five of those infected showing any symptoms, which include minor fever and muscle pain, and it fades naturally after a week.

Earlier this week another pregnant woman became the third confirmed case in Queensland in 2016. This development could potentially lead to miscarriages.