Colombia reports 37000 Zika cases, over 6300 in pregnant women

The rapid spread of the Zika virus across the Americas has many concerned about the health of their unborn children, particularly residents of San Mateo and Alameda counties where the Aedes family of mosquito have previously been found. Though Skyline College in not located in either county, the geographic proximity is a consideration for the young student population, the majority of whom are considered prime childbearing age. Most people exposed to Zika virus won’t develop any symptoms at all.

“From a global perspective, the burden of dengue is huge”, said Dr. Mark Loeb, an infectious disease specialist at McMaster University in Hamilton.

The project here began in April 2014, a year after an epidemic of dengue fever that caused more than 1.5 million cases in Brazil.

Officials said the Zika virus illness is usually mild with symptoms lasting for several days to a week and hospitalizations are rare. Precautions should be taken, like avoiding to the countries which are affected by the Zika virus.

A vaccine to protect against dengue has recently been developed, but in clinical trials it’s been shown to be only about 60 per cent effective – the seasonal influenza vaccine has about the same efficacy – and has not yet been approved by regulators.

However, Hunter said Canadians have no cause for panic. “We’re expecting to get the go ahead very soon and then this could make a real difference”.

The St. Catharines, Ont., university, the only academic institution in Canada with a Level 3 containment lab that includes an insectary, received a shipment of Zika virus this week from the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg – the only other Canadian facility with a similar high-security capacity where such research can be safely conducted.

At present there is no evidence of indigenous Zika transmission in Europe, and the few reported cases are imported.

According to a press release, the Cyprus Institute monitored various mosquito species in Cyprus between 2013-2014 and during this period there was no tiger mosquito or any other invasive mosquito species on the island. “We have found that the Aedes aegypti have insecticide resistance genes which likely explains why their ultra-low volume and barrier spray applications have not worked as well as expected”. “Latin America is now at greater risk of urban epidemics than at any time in the past 50 years”, the World Health Organization says on its website.

There is no treatment for yellow fever, but it can be prevented with vaccination, which many endemic countries require travellers to obtain prior to their visit.

“Do you need to carry bed nets?” The team is also identifying the viruses the mosquitoes carry. It wasn’t until September 2015 that an outbreak of the virus in Brazil coincided with outbreaks of microcephaly, a debilitating birth defect which causes babies to be born with abnormally small heads and incomplete brain development.

If a person has the enormous bad fortune of experiencing three or four dengue infections, the risk starts to decline again.