Metro Health: Six people in Bexar Co. tested for Zika virus

Legacy Community Health warned pregnant patients to avoid travel to countries on Centers for Disease Control’s Zika Virus warning list.

Dr. Ray Pontzer, an infectious disease specialist in Allegheny County, says Africa and Asia have been spared.

Rouseff announced Friday a nationwide attack on the Aedes Aegypti mosquito that transmits the Zika virus to humans.

Health Canada is not disclosing where those four people travelled to, but earlier this week CKNW reported the B.C. cases involved people who had travelled to El Salvador and Colombia. For that reason, the CDC is recommending that women who are pregnant or may become pregnant not to travel to the 24 countries where the disease is widespread. At least twelve cases in the United States have now been confirmed by the CDC. According to the CDC, Zika virus infections rarely end in hospitalization, and the symptoms generally go away after a few days or weeks. About 24 countries in the Americas have reported the Zika virus was within their borders, USA Today reported.

Health Minister Isaac Folorunso Adewole is urging health professionals at all ports of entry to examine anyone coming from Latin America for signs of the Zika virus.

“The virus is hard to detect and there is no quick point-of-care test which can be used”, he said.

The number of microcephaly cases in Brazil has soared from 163 a year on average to more than 3,718 suspected cases since the outbreak, and 68 babies have died, according to the health ministry. Smit says even if the virus spreads here, there are ways to reduce contact with mosquitoes when they’re most active: by using repellant and staying indoors with the air conditioning on. “However, a large majority of people who contract the virus are asymptomatic, and in the case where a person feels symptoms, they are usually mild”. It is a deeply concerning pandemic that has now spread to nearly 23 countries, which makes it all the more possible for the virus to reach Pakistan as well.