Zika virus: Airlines offer refunds to pregnant women

The Zika virus is transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito.

Inland health officials say no Zika cases have been reported in Riverside and San Bernardino counties following news that a young traveler returned to Los Angeles County with the virus.

The countries named in the CDC travel advisory include Barbados, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Martinique, Mexico, Paraguay, Panama, Puerto Rico, Saint Martin, Suriname and Venezuela.

Still, she warns against traveling to any affected areas, and to consult a doctor right away if you have traveled there and are experiencing symptoms.

Airlines, cruise companies, and resorts have been scrambling to put together policies for handling credits, refunds, and trip alternatives as pregnant women begin to rethink traveling to affected areas. Infants with microcephaly have smaller than normal heads and their brains do not develop properly.

Four cases of the Zika virus have been reported in Canada, one in an Alberta woman who travelled to Southeast Asia in 2013, two more recently in B.C. and one in Quebec.

And the disease is now closer to home than ever before with cases in the state. Because we don’t have any natural immunity, that’s part of the reason this is circulating so quickly.

With the World Health Organisation and the United Nations issuing worldwide alerts of Zika Virus spreading like wild fire, major airlines companies in the United States and the European countries have started refunding the tickets to its pregnant passengers flying to the South American continent.

Culpepper advises pregnant women to avoid traveling to countries affected by the Zika virus.

Concern was found to be particularly high among women, with 69% of female respondents confirming their intention to cancel upcoming travel plans.

The agency was criticized previous year for reacting too slowly to West Africa’s Ebola epidemic, which killed more than 10,000 people, and it promised to cut its response time.

New York-traded airline stocks dropped 3.1 percent Thursday, which analysts attributed to Zika fears and an uptick in oil prices, before rebounding Friday. By May 2015, Zika virus was confirmed in Brazil where it struck Bahia, a state along the Atlantic coast, having almost circled the globe in eight years.

“I think it’s going to be a huge fallout for many areas”, said Summer Hull, who runs the family travel website Mommy Points. “As a result, you wouldn’t expect it to have as big an impact as something like SARS”.

It is unclear how many passengers will ask for their money back, given that numerous refund offers are limited to pregnant women.