US Adds Two Countries to Zika Virus Travel Warning List – CDC

The money includes teams of technical experts to be sent to affected areas.

On Wednesday, the World Health Organization (WHO) made a call for $56 million in funding to prevent the disease from spreading further.

The World Bank estimated that the short-term economic impact of the Zika virus outbreak on the region will be about $3.5 billion in total, representing only 0.06 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) of the region’s economies, but countries highly dependent on tourism could suffer losses in excess of 1 percent of GDP.

The study, which analyzed around 14 million daily travel agency transactions made via global ticket distributors, provides early evidence of Zika’s potentially broad impact on travel demand to certain Latin American countries.

The CDC recommends that pregnant woman postpone travel to those places because of a suspected link between the Zika virus and a rare birth defect.

In 2014, Kim criticized the world’s “disastrously inadequate response” to West Africa’s Ebola virus outbreak, saying that it caused many needless deaths.

Aruba, one of the very few Caribbean countries that had escaped the Zika virus, has joined the list of destinations USA health officials warn pregnant women to avoid. These less optimistic analysts feel much more research is needed about public perceptions of Zika virus, the virus’s effects and potential for mutation, and suggest economic impacts of the virus will need to be reassessed as a result.

“Our analysis underscores the importance of urgent action to halt the spread of the Zika virus and to protect the health and well-being of people in the affected countries”, said World Bank President Jim Yong Kim.

Bookings to regions hit by the mosquito-borne virus fell some 3.4 percent from a year ago between January 15, when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a travel advisory, and February 10, the report found.

Reflecting on his recent trip to Panama, where he visited the indigenous Kuna community of Usdub, he said, “I’ve seen firsthand how communities across the region are working together to successfully protect the population from the Zika virus”.