157 pregnant women in US have Zika virus
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SOME 157 pregnant women in the United States and another 122 in US territories, primarily Puerto Rico, have tested positive for infection with the Zika virus, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said yesterday.
The CDC, in a conference call, said that so far fewer than a dozen of the infected pregnant women it has tracked in the United States and Puerto Rico have had miscarriages or babies born with birth defects.
Yesterday’s announcement was the first time the agency had disclosed the number of Zika-infected pregnant women in the United States and its territories.
Meanwhile, the Zika virus strain linked to surging cases of neurological disorders and birth defects in Latin America has been found in Africa for the first time, the World Health Organization said yesterday.
The UN health agency said the strain circulating in Cape Verde had been shown to be the same as the one behind an explosion of cases in the Americas.
“This is the first time that strain of Zika which has been showed to cause neurological disorders and microcephaly ... has been detected in Africa,” Matshidiso Moeti, WHO’s Africa regional chief, told reporters in Geneva.
The so-called Asian strain of the virus has infected some 1.5 million people in hardest-hit country Brazil alone, and was detected in Cape Verde through the sequencing of Zika cases in the island nation.
“It is the same genetic material as the virus in Brazil,” WHO spokeswoman Marsha Vanderford said.
Moeti said the findings are of concern because it is further proof the outbreak is spreading beyond South America and is on Africa’s doorstep.
“This information will help African countries to re-evaluate their level of risk and adapt and increase their levels of preparedness,” she added.
Experts agree that Zika is behind a surge in cases of the birth defect microcephaly — babies born with abnormally small heads and brains — after their mothers were infected with the virus.
The virus, which also causes the rare but serious neurological disorder Guillain-Barre Syndrome, is mainly spread by two species of Aedes mosquito but has also been shown to transmit through sexual contact.
WHO believes the Asian Zika strain was imported to Cape Verde by a traveler coming from Brazil, before it began spreading locally last October.
As of May 8, 7,557 suspected Zika cases had been registered in Cape Verde, as well as three microcephaly cases, WHO said.
No cases of Guillain-Barre Syndrome have been registered in the country so far.
The African strain of the virus, which takes its name from Uganda’s tropical Zika forest where it was first discovered in 1947, has been widespread on the continent since then.
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