Pregnant women told to avoid countries with Zika outbreaks

The Hawaii State Department of Health emphasized that neither the mother nor baby were infectious and that there have been no recorded cases of Zika virus acquired in Hawaii, although six people have been identified there who were infected outside the United States.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday night advised pregnant women to postpone travel to Mexico, Puerto Rico and parts of Central America and South America due to the presence of the Zika virus. For those that do, Zika illness usually involves fever, rash, joint pain, and red eyes — which usually last no more than a week.

Health authorities said the child’s mother had lived in Brazil until May 2015. But there’s been mounting evidence linking the virus to a surge of a rare birth defect in Brazil.

There have been no confirmed cases of Zika virus transmission within Hawaii, Park said. Fetuses and infants of women who contracted the virus during pregnancy should be tested for possible neurologic abnormalities and congenital infection. CDC also enumerates some steps which pregnant women should follow such as for example wearing long sleeves, using insecticides and even staying indoors as much as possible. “But we don’t expect very large outbreaks”, Dr. Lyle Petersen, director of the CDC’s division of vector-borne diseases, told STAT this week. Zika virus is related to the dengue, yellow fever and West Nile viruses, which normally do not cause such damage; Zika is not closely related to rubella or cytomegalovirus, which are known to cause microcephaly.

Zika is transmitted through bites from infected Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus mosquitoes, which thrive in warmer temperatures.

A doctor attending to the woman in Hawaii, who was infected with the Zika virus, was aware that there might be a possibility that the woman was infected with the Zika virus, and he notified state health officials.

Officials in the country said last week that they were investigating more than 3,500 cases of microcephaly in newborns, reported between October and January.

Scientists do not know how the Zika virus damages fetal brains.

Dr. Robert Glatter, Emergency Physician at Lenox Hill Hospital says the CDC has a warning in affect for all travel to Latin America and the Caribbean not to travel “And I advise women not to travel until we have more information” he said. Genetic sequence analysis showed that the virus in the four cases was the same as the Zika virus strain now circulating in Brazil. One mystery in the current outbreak is why a link to birth defects has not been observed sooner, given how long the disease has been around.

The concern, of course, is whether these cases imported to the United States could result in locally transmitted cases. It is native to tropical Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific Islands.

Mr Castro also announced extra funds to speed up finding a vaccine for Zika. Zika virus primarily is spread by Aedes mosquitoes and typically produces mild illness. The Zika Virus has spread in these regions like wildfire and it is wreaking havoc on the local population.