UN to decide if Zika virus is a global health emergency

In particular, they warned pregnant women to consider postponing trips to 22 Zika-affected countries and territories in the Caribbean, as well as Central and South America.

Minnesota health authorities say they expected to see some cases, because the regions where Zika is present are popular winter-time destinations for Minnesota residents. She’s now due in just weeks and after talking to her doctor, isn’t as concerned about microcephaly after healthy ultrasounds. “So as long as the infection has resolved you should be able to get pregnant thereafter”, she said.

“It’s absolutely not worth the risk to us to put the baby in harm’s way”, Buck said.

The first USA case was tied to a baby born in an Oahu, Hawaii, hospital on January 15 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Because Zika hasn’t posed a threat until very recently, there aren’t many treatments or vaccines in development, though companies are jumping on board to find possible ways to fight back against a possible epidemic.

The virus is spread by a certain type of mosquito, and it only takes one bite. It has also not been spread through breastfeeding.

The CDC is urging pregnant women to avoid traveling to Zika-affected areas.

Continental Portugal has not had any cases of locally-contracted viruses from Aedes aegypti, but there was an indigenous dengue outbreak on its Atlantic island of Madeira in 2012, the first dengue epidemic in Europe since the 1920s.

President Barack Obama is the latest person who’s started to worry about the Zika virus. Officials in El Salvador, Colombia and Brazil have suggested women stop getting pregnant until the crisis has passed.

Zika has also been blamed for a recent spike in microcephaly – a birth defect characterized by unusually small heads and underdeveloped brains in newborns.

The U.S. cases – in at least 8 states – have all been travelers who returned from a country where the transmission of the Zika virus from mosquitoes to humans is ongoing.