Experts caution traveling in light of Zika virus

The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention issued initial travel warnings to pregnant women last week, adding eight more places to the list on Friday.

Pregnant women are being warned not to travel to the Olympics in Brazil after a virus causing thousands of babies to be born with unusually small heads swept through the region.

If it will be necessary for you to travel to South America, Central America, and/or the Caribbean, caution should be taken to avoid mosquito bites, especially if you are pregnant. Symptoms, if present, include mild fever, rash (mostly maculo-papular), headaches, arthralgia, myalgia, asthenia, and non-purulent conjunctivitis, occurring about two to seven days after the mosquito vector bite.

“There is virtually no risk of acquiring Zika virus in New York State at this time as the virus can not be spread by casual contact with an infected person and mosquitoes are not active in cold winter months”, state Heath Commissioner Howard Zucker said in a statement.

The CDC says people who do develop symptoms should tell their doctors where and when they traveled.

The Aedes aegypti mosquito transmits the Zika virus, which is linked to the growing of microcephaly cases in babies born in NE Brazil.

While experts have not made a definitive connection between the Zika virus and microcephaly, one study linked the proliferation of the virus in Brazil to a rise in miscarriages in the country.

Meanwhile in El Salvador, health officials are piecing together whether the virus is also associated with a jump in cases of Guillain Barré syndrome.

It is one of 22 territories that the United States has warned pregnant women not to visit because of the Zika risk.

But because there is no treatment or vaccine – and the consequences for unborn babies so great – health authorities in Colombia and El Salvador have advised women not to become pregnant.

“This is a very new situation – it’s only a few months since we discovered the link between Zika and microcephaly – and there are still big gaps in knowledge”, she said.

The Salvadorean government decided to make the announcement because 5,397 cases of the Zika virus had been detected in El Salvador in 2015 and the first few days of this year.

Brazilian authorities recently received reports of four newborns with microcephaly, a brain condition that can prove deadly, which had possible associations to the Zika virus.

“A small number of cases have occurred through sexual transmission or by transmission from mother to foetus via the placenta”, a spokesman said.