Two Pregnant Women in Illinois Test Positive for Zika Virus

Dominican Health Minister Altagracia Guzman Marcelino on Wednesday asked women to postpone getting pregnant this year due to the threat posed by the Zika virus, which has been linked to birth defects.

The two women are being monitored by doctors but the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention has issued a health warning for travel to countries where the virus is circulating including Puerto Rico, Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Martinique, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Suriname and Venezuela.

The Zika virus is spread through mosquito bites from Aedes aegypti and causes only a mild illness in most people. The birth defect is called microcephaly and involves babies being born with smaller than expected heads that may not have developed properly.

“People are making educated guesses”, said Paul Roepe, co-director of the Center for Infectious Disease at Georgetown University Medical Center.

The alert followed reports in Brazil of microcephaly in babies of mothers who were infected with the virus while pregnant, but researchers have said additional studies are needed to determine the relationship, if any, between the virus and the defect.

But Liu said it has “yet to be determined” whether microcephaly is in fact connected to the Zika virus.

“Pregnant women should be advised that they may not want to travel to areas with ongoing transmission but if they do, they should take measures to avoid mosquito bites”, she said. An estimated 80 percent of people infected with the virus have no symptoms at all, making it hard for pregnant women to know whether they have been infected.

Usually rare, more than 3,500 babies with the condition have been reported in Brazil since October.

Pregnant women who traveled in areas where Zika is active but have no clinical symptoms should also be offered an ultrasound, and women whose fetus shows signs of microcephaly should also be offered amniocentesis.

Only the CDC and a few states are equipped to perform the testing, according to the CDC, which says it will confirm all tests it receives.

Researchers from the Institute of Tropical Medicine of Sao Paulo, Brazil, said the virus might have travelled to Brazil with athletes or fans during the 2014 World Cup, or possibly by way of South America’s Pacific coast after an outbreak on Easter Island.