First Reported Case Of Zika Spreading Through Sex Heightens Concerns

The WHO says the virus is strongly suspected to cause microcephaly – a disease that causes babies to be born with abnormally small heads. Dallas County Health and Human Services said it received confirmation of the case from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. With concern growing that an outbreak sweeping Latin America could spread much farther, health authorities in Texas said they had confirmation of the virus being transmitted by sexual contact and not just tropical mosquitoes.

“I know it’s sexy, talking about sexual transmission, but it’s still the mosquito that’s the important vector”, says Tesh, who co-authored the case report from Colorado.

“A number of travelers infected with Zika have entered Europe, but the disease has not been transmitted further, as the mosquito is still inactive”.

Los Angeles County Department of Public Health officials outlined a plan of attack against the Zika virus, a disease which has become a global concern.

LaPook told “CBS Evening News” anchor Scott Pelley there’s no evidence the virus has infected the mosquito population in Florida, but he explained how that could happen.

About four out of five people get the Zika virus and have no symptoms. “We know it [the Zika virus] is in the bloodstream very briefly, most people have cleared the bloodstream of the virus after about a week”. That’s where all of the cases were detected, and the executive order allows the state’s agriculture department to use more mosquito spray in those areas. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies joined the World Health Organization in declaring an “emergency”, and appealed for 2.4 million Swiss francs ($2.36 million) to support its response in the Americas.

The health ministry in the central Cordoba province said Wednesday that the patient is a 68-year-old man who was infected overseas.

Recently the federal government of Nigeria warned Nigerians especially pregnant women to avoid going to Latin America because of the recent outbreak of the Zika virus.

According to the CDC, Zika fever illness is generally mild with a rash, fever and joint pain.

Florida is the third most populous state in the country.

As noted above, Nine cases of Zika fever have been reported in individuals with travel history to a country or area experiencing Zika virus activity.

Caribbean officials have pressed local business and hotels to walk around their properties and eliminate any standing water, where mosquitoes can breed.

However, Monaghan earlier this year presented a paper to the American Meteorological Society’s annual convention that predicts that eventually Aedes aegypti “will move northward in the USA due to future warming, which would expose people to the mosquito on a regular seasonal basis in states like Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, Virginia and D.C”.