Two more Zika cases reported in Iowa

The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its travel advisory on Friday, stating that women now at any stage of pregnancy or planning to get pregnant over the coming weeks should “consider not going to the Olympics”. Ten additional reports of Zika infection involving pregnant US women are now under investigation, the CDC added. Thirty-five are in Puerto Rico, four are in American Samoa, and one is in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Other European countries such as Denmark, Germany, and Britain have also reported cases of the infection in tourists returning from affected regions. That includes advice that Zika-infected men who have pregnant partners use condoms or abstain from sex.

PARIS (AP) – A high-ranking French health official says a first case of sexually transmitted Zika virus has been diagnosed in France on a non-pregnant woman.

Out of respect for privacy, the department is unable to provide any information on the details of individual cases. Most of the women reported having a rash and most had two symptoms. Both women are in their 20s and neither has been hospitalized. Two women had miscarriages.

Six of the women reported Zika symptoms during their first trimester, and their outcomes reflect expert opinion that early infection can be more devastating to the developing fetus than infection later in pregnancy.

Two women chose to terminate their pregnancies.

One baby was born with severe microcephaly.

Clinical exams were used to identify 34,464 cases in Colombia, the health ministry said.

“We did not expect to see these brain abnormalities in this small case series of USA pregnant travelers, so it is unexpected and greater than we would have expected”, Jamieson said. It is not known whether women can transmit the virus to sexual partners. The other woman is still pregnant. The virus, mainly spread through mosquito bites, causes mild illness or no symptoms in most people. There is now no cure or vaccine against the Zika Virus.

There is evidence suggesting Zika is linked to birth defects, so women who are pregnant or may become pregnant should take precautions and avoid traveling to areas where Zika is present. A false negative can result when a person does not have enough virus proteins to be detected, which could be the case when someone is almost recovered. The CDC said it will distribute the test to qualified laboratories in the United States during the next two weeks.

The infected individuals were between the ages of 19 and 55 and “several” of the women were pregnant.