No need to panic over Zika virus, says Department of Health

The Health Department has confirmed the first case of the Zika virus in South Africa.

A press release noted that she recently traveled to “countries where Zika virus transmission is ongoing”.

The risk to Ontarians remains very low, as the mosquitoes known to transmit the virus are not established in Canada and are not well-suited to our climate.

U.S. Ambassador to Brazil Liliana Ayalde attends a meeting on measures taken to combat the mosquito that carries the Zika virus, at the Pan American Health Organization headquarters in Brasilia, Brazil, Thursday, Feb. 18, 2016…

Orange County is the latest county to report a travel-associated case of Zika, the state health department announced on Friday.

Zika virus disease in children, as for adults, is usually mild with 80 percent of those people not having any symptoms, according to the CDC. Only one in five people infected with the virus are symptomatic.

The CDC is also investigating the possible link between Zika and Guillain-Barre Syndrome, a disease that can cause paralysis. “So, right not the CDC is recommending that if any woman is pregnant, for them not to travel down to the Caribbean, Central America, South America”.

The World Health Organization said Friday it could still take months to determine for certain that the Zika virus causes the serious birth defect microcephaly, but said evidence was growing.

“We have no doubt that the epidemic of microcephaly that we are seeing in Brazil is caused by the Zika virus outbreak”, Castro told reporters on the sidelines of Thursday’s meeting. The virus has swept through much of the Americas and could be linked to birth defects and rare but severe complications.

Brazilian experts say this suggests the virus can infect the foetus.

The WHO is taking the approach of, as Aylward puts it, considering “the virus guilty until proven innocent” because of the devastating potential consequences resulting from Zika.

Brazil has said it has confirmed more than 500 cases of microcephaly, and considers a lot of them to be related to Zika infections in the mothers. “Women who are trying to become pregnant should talk to their doctors about the risk of Zika virus infection before traveling”. The mosquitoes that spread Zika – which also spread dengue and yellow fever – are entrenched across the region and in a wide belt around the globe, mostly in tropical areas.