CDC Investigating 14 Cases Of Zika In United States

Some in that group of six women are pregnant, said Dr. McQuiston.

Fourteen U.S. cases of possible sexual transmission of the Zika virus are now under investigation by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the agency announced on Tuesday.

“We were surprised, given the numbers actively being investigated”, Anne Schuchat, the CDC’s deputy director, said in an interview. “We are seeing more than we expected to see”.

Zika virus is mainly spread by mosquito bites. ODH’s Zika page suggests covering up with long-sleeved shirts and trousers, staying in places with window and door screens to keep mosquitoes outside, using a mosquito bed net and wearing Environmental Protection Agency-registered insect repellents.

The CDC is advising men who have recently been to a Zika outbreak area to use a condom when they have sex with a pregnant women, or to abstain from sex during the pregnancy. The CDC says two cases are confirmed, four tested positive in preliminary tests and eight other cases are still being reviewed. Doctors do not know, for example, how many pregnant women with Zika will give birth to a child with congenital birth defects, or even how many people have been infected with Zika throughout the Americas.

We must “make sure that people who come here either for the Games as a visitor, as a participant or athletes, will get the maximum protection they need”, she said after meeting with President Dilma Rousseff and several ministers in the capital Brasilia.

On Feb. 5, the CDC issued an advisory on the potential sexual transmission of Zika after laboratory confirmation of the first such case in the continental United States.

US and Brazilian health workers seeking to determine if the Zika virus is causing a surge in birth defects ran into the chaotic reality of northeastern Brazil on their study’s first day Tuesday. “The science is not clear on how long the risk should be avoided”.

The primary method of infection of the virus remains mosquito bites.

Skeptics have said microcephaly cases may have been greatly underreported in Brazil in the past because local health officials weren’t required to notify the Health Ministry about cases of the condition until November. “But we don’t yet have mosquito-borne transmission [in the U.S.], so the sexual transmission cases are coming to our attention”.

On 1 February, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared Zika a global health emergency and the 4% slow-down worsened to 10%. None of these included pregnant women and all were travel related.