Pregnant woman infected with Zika virus in Spain

Considering the underscoring seriousness of outbreak, World Health Organization has predicted that around four million people may be infected with Zika virus in the Americas (South and North America). Some were shared with the United States, including tissue samples from two newborns who died and two fetuses recently examined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

How can Zika be contained?

There is no cure or vaccine. Stopping this pandemic will require disrupting its “chains of transmission”.

The Centers for Disease Control is also advising pregnant women to protect themselves if their male sexual partner have traveled to those countries. Soldiers have been going door to door in hard-hit areas to look for standing water where mosquitoes could breed.

The most common symptoms of the virus are fever, rash, joint pain, and conjunctivitis (red eyes).

“The overall recommendation is that if you don’t have to travel to a Zika-affected country, then don’t”, Davis said. Other nations and territories include Barbados, Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Curacao, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Martinique, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, Saint Martin, Suriname, Venezuela and the US Virgin Islands, according to the PAHO. But it would be a mistake to see Brazil as a helpless victim, needing to be saved by outside intervention. It already occurs on the majority of flights from the region as a precaution against malaria.

Therefore, alongside such broad-brush efforts, a more nuanced and intensive four-pronged response is needed. In fact, experts are now saying that there may have been surges in microcephaly when the virus reached Asia from Africa in the last century, however, there were no effective techniques to diagnose it. With global travel and tourism being a key part of St. Lucia’s national development strategy, health becomes a major issue for St. Lucia. Test vaccines must be developed, using attenuated or dead versions. The symptoms are similar to those of dengue or chikungunya, which are transmitted by the same type of mosquito.

Florida authorities may be especially nervous about Zika because it is primarily borne by mosquitoes, which Florida has a notorious surplus of. “We are educating and training staff and will continue to do so”.

This week, the popular Carnival festival will start across Brazil, bringing in many tourists to the country. Thailand reported a case of local transmission of the virus last Tuesday as the first case outside the Americas in the current outbreak. He sought to assure people that Florida, a hub for cruises and flights to Central and South America where the outbreak is, was safe. Expanded testing will also give scientists a better understanding of the Zika virus, for which little data now exists. The point-of-care diagnostic we described above would dramatically enhance the ability to implement this approach. Cases have now been found in Australia, the U.S. and Canada.

There is no evidence that Zika causes death and even its connection to Guillain-Barré and microcephaly, as mentioned above, are just correlational – no experimental studies have revealed a direct relationship between the Zika virus and these two conditions, according to The Economic Times. If so, is everyone vulnerable or only people with certain characteristics? But Zika has been found in amniotic fluid of foetuses, indicating it can cross the placenta barrier and get to foetuses in the womb. Amidst the chaos of the Ebola epidemic, a clear-sighted approach to disrupting the “chain of transmission” tamed runaway growth.