WHO chief ‘confident’ Olympics will be safe despite Zika

According to the CDC’s website, 82 reports of travel-associated Zika virus have been documented within the continental U.S.so far, but no cases of locally acquired Zika virus reports have been documented. “How much of that is Zika virus is really one of the important goals of this study”, said Erin Staples, a Colorado-based epidemiologist who heads the CDC contingent in Paraiba state.

The issue is among a long list of questions that remain about Zika, a once-obscure virus that has spread explosively throughout the Americas in recent months and is suspected of being linked to serious birth defects and a rare autoimmune disease.

The CDC noted that there is no evidence that women can transmit Zika virus to their sex partners.

Common wisdom has been that these viruses don’t usually spread sexually, but since sex partners generally live together, it has been impossible to tell whether, say, a married couple both get infected by mosquito bites or through sex.

Thus, 14 such reports, including pregnant women, will be looked into. The mechanisms by which the virus causes birth defects and Guillain-Barré syndrome are also unclear, though more evidence is gathered every day.

Despite Tuesday’s rocky start, the CDC’s Harrist said the generosity and openness of the two young mothers her team managed to contact gave her hope. “For the time being we are telling women to avoid sex or to be careful during sex with a partner who is coming back from an area where Zika is”. “Next to abstinence, condoms are the best prevention method against any sexually-transmitted infections”.

The guidance has been issued in response to confirmation of the first case of Zika in a non-traveller in the continental United States.

The agency again stressed the need to use condoms and other precautions.

The health sector will continue strengthen the supervision at ports of entry for passengers from the countries and territories where the Zika virus is spreading, announced the General Department of Preventive Medicine (GDPM) under the Ministry of Health on February 23. It’s even more unclear if saliva is able to transmit the virus, though there have been reports of Zika virus in saliva samples. Mosquitoes that spread Zika are aggressive daytime biters, the CDC said, though they have also been known to bite after dusk.

The handful of illnesses here have been in people who traveled to one of the two dozen countries where the Zika virus is in circulation, then fell ill once they returned. All will undergo blood tests looking for infection with Zika and another mosquito-borne virus, dengue. The CDC added Trinidad and Tobago and Marshall Islands to its travel advisory on Tuesday.