Pregnant Women Should ‘Consider Not Going’ to 2016 Olympics in Rio — CDC

Pregnant women should avoid this summer’s Olympic and Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday.

As the number of Zika cases go up around the United States, Maryland has also seen a spike. The other 40 are mostly locally acquired infections in U.S. Territories.

Ava-joye Burnett has more on these latest cases. Some symptoms include fever, a flat red rash and joint pain.

Two of the women are reported to have suffered miscarriages. None of the women was hospitalized.

It appears that pregnant women in their first trimester are the most vulnerable.

“It’s important to note that 10-20% of all pregnancies end in a spontaneous miscarriage, so the fact that (Zika is) present doesn’t necessarily mean that it caused them”. Frieden said it is “almost certainly related” to Zika.

Of the remaining four women, two lost their pregnancy, and two chose to terminate theirs. No information was available for one of those cases.

The CDC said the Zika outbreak in Brazil is “dynamic” and that it will continue to monitor the situation and will adjust these recommendations as needed. On Friday the USA government said Zika infections have been confirmed in nine pregnant women in the United States.

– Two pregnancies are continuing with no reported complications.

Three of the pregnant women have delivered their babies. The CDC is rapidly producing tests to determine whether a person is infected with the Zika virus, and is expected to have 1 million of them in the weeks ahead.

In both cases, the person was infected while traveling outside the country to an area of ongoing transmission, officials said. Symptoms are usually mild and last several days to a week. For this reason, many people might not realize they have been infected. Eight were positive and a state laboratory confirmed a ninth.

The CDC said all are US residents, but it declined to answer a question on their citizenship.

The first case of Zika virus infection in Montana in has turned up in a Missoula County woman who recently who returned from a Zika-affected area. It is not yet known how long the virus remains in semen. The most severe risk is to pregnant women. “As of this week, the total reported is 4,800 cases of microcephaly”.

The new report was published online in the CDC’s MMWR journal Friday.

Unless the woman transmits the virus, there is no threat to the public.

The CDC also warned against the sexual transmission of Zika if a male partner is traveling to Brazil.