First Zika cases reported in UK

NEW YORK, United States-Three people in New York have tested positive for the Zika virus, which has been blamed for a surge in babies born with abnormally small heads in Latin America, city officials said Friday.

Health officials sounded the alarm in October, after noticing a spike in cases of microcephaly in tandem with the Zika outbreak.

But the specific threat to pregnant women and their foetuses, and the seeming impossibility of avoiding mosquitoes in tropical countries, has given this crisis extra bite.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) extended its travel warning to another eight countries or territories that pose a risk of infection with Zika, a mosquito-borne virus spreading through the Caribbean and Latin America.

The Brazilian government has announced plans to fund a biomedical research centre to help develop a vaccine against Zika virus.

Hospitalizations and fatalities are rare, with symptoms such as rash and fever lasting from a few days to one week.

To avoid getting infected, use insect repellent, wear clothing that cover the body, arms and legs, and sleep under mosquito nets or in rooms with wire mesh. An estimated 80 percent of those infected show no symptoms at all.

“Zika was really bad here from February to July and then all but disappeared in August”.

The Zika Virus his a recent arrival in Brazil, but the mosquito that spreads the disease, Aedes Aegypti, is well known and an old problem for health authorities here.

In a statement yesterday, the MOH said the National Environment Agency (NEA) has stepped up its ongoing surveillance programme for the Zika virus.

The advice has been endorsed in Ireland by the Health Protection Surveillance Centre, a division of the Health Service Executive, while the Department of Foreign Affairs has issued travel advice to reflect the recommendations. The virus was first isolated from a monkey in Uganda’s Zika forest in 1947.

Before 2015, the Zika virus had been detected in areas in Africa, South-east Asia and the Pacific Islands. A further 10 states in central and South America have reported sporadic transmission of the virus. In comparison, 147 cases of microcephaly were recorded in 2014.

The CDC has issued a “travel alert (Level 2- Practice Enhanced Precautions)” for the following 22 countries: Barbados, Bolivia, Brazil, Cape Verde, Columbia, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Martinique, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, Saint Martin, Samoa, Suriname, and Venezuela.

There are also concerns about this year’s Carnival season in Brazil, when more than 1 million of tourists are expected to visit the country in early February, which is the peak mosquito-breeding season, according to TeleSUR.