Health officials: 3 New Yorkers test positive for Zika virus

In the Americas, there is no evidence that the Zika virus can cause death, PAHO says, but sporadic cases have been reported of more serious complications in people with preexisting diseases or conditions, causing death.

The virus is now spreading locally in Barbados, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Martinique, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, Saint Martin, Suriname, and Venezuela.

Scientists from Brazil’s Fiocruz Institute and Parana Catholic University published a study of a case that showed the virus had passed from an infected woman to her baby through the placenta.

Ruiz said there have been 12 cases of people with Guillain-Barre who had earlier had symptoms similar to those of Zika.

The Foreign Office advised Britons to seek advice before travelling anywhere where the virus has been reported in the previous year “particularly if you’re pregnant or planning to become pregnant”.

The CDC has issued an unprecedented warning about travel for women who are pregnant or considering becoming pregnant.

Zika originated in Africa and expanded to parts of Asia. But then came the spike in microcephaly: Since October the country has recorded 3,893 suspected cases, compared with fewer than 150 for all of 2014. Before past year there were about 160 cases of microcephaly in Brazil on average.

But concern also has been rising about a potential link to Guillain-Barre syndrome, a nerve disorder than can affect anyone. The CDC is working with the Ministry of Health in Brazil and has a team on the ground conducting investigating a possible link between the two.

The virus has “exploded” in South America within the last three years, he said. “Some people will pay attention to this and realize they are at risk for something, others are obviously going to ignore it”, he said.

“In El Salvador, the recommendation to postpone pregnancy is offensive to women and even more ridiculous in the context of strict abortion laws and high levels of sexual violence against girls and women”, Roa said.

But Marcos Espinal, head of the Pan American Health Organization’s communicable diseases department, said “travel restrictions will not stop the spread of Zika” and it is likely to reach throughout Latin America.

In El Salvador in 2013, the Supreme Court refused to allow an ill woman carrying a malformed fetus to have a potentially life-saving abortion in a case that sparked global outcry.

Unlike the birth defect microcephaly, which previously had not been associated with Zika virus, the connection between GBS and Zika already has been established. The aedis aegyptia mosquito, which transmits the disease, bites all day long, so individuals need to reapply that repellant and not let their guard down.

However, mosquito bites and mother to unborn baby aren’t the only ways this virus is transmitted.

(AP Photo/Andre Penner). A health agent from Sao Paulo’s Public health secretary shows an army soldier Aedes aegypti mosquito larvae that she found during clean up operation against the insect, which is a vector for transmitting the Zika virus, in Sao…