Three Pregnant Women Test Positive for Zika in Florida

The state of Florida announced Wednesday that three pregnant women who had traveled outside the United States tested positive for Zika virus.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott has asked the CDC to send 250 additional Zika antibody tests to the state following Wednesday’s news.

Health officials investigating possible sexual transmission of 14 new cases of disease usually spread by mosquitoes.

The Dallas case marked the first report of local transmission in the United States.

The virus is most commonly transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito biting an infected person, and then spreading it to others.

The CDC recommends pregnant woman avoid traveling to counties where Zika transmission has been confirmed or taking precautions against mosquito bites of such travel is necessary.

Zika is suspected to be one of the reasons behind serious birth defects including microcephaly, which is caused by damaged brain that has stopped developing inside the mother’s womb. Several of the cases involve pregnant women. Many infected with the virus will not experience any symptoms. Providers should consult CDC’s guidelines for evaluation and testing of pregnant women.

The agency did not identify the states where these cases are being investigated.

“As doctors become more aware of the sexual transmission risk, they will begin to test more”, she says, “and they will likely begin to find more”.

Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) has been reported in patients with probable Zika virus infection in French Polynesia and Brazil.

However, concrete information about Zika remains scarce, and it’s only suspected that the disease actually causes microcephaly. All of them are travel-related and only three cases are still exhibiting symptoms, officials said.

But on day one of the study’s data-collection phase, the same precarious conditions that contributed to the proliferation of the mosquito-borne virus throughout the region proved to be a stumbling block for researchers, even in Paraiba state’s more-developed capital, Joao Pessoa. The symptoms, however, are generally mild – the most common being fever, rash, joint pain and red, itchy eyes.

“We were surprised that there was this number”, Dr. Anne Schuchat, the deputy director at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in an interview with the New York Times.