Three New Locally Transmitted Zika Virus Cases Reported in Florida Three additional people have been reported to have contracted the Zika virus in ongoing outbreak centred in northern Miami, bringing the total number of those infected to 25, the Florida Health Department said today. This outbreak is the first in which Zika virus infections have been linked to infected mosquitoes in the continental U.S. The news of the additional cases came hours after Florida Gov. Rick Scott announced that mosquito control activities have reduced the size of the area where Zika transmission is ongoing in Florida. Four square blocks in the Wynwood neighborhood in Miami have been cleared and therefore the size of the area where Zika transmission is believed to be ongoing has been reduced, officials from the ...

Zika infection during pregnancy may cause limb joint deformities in the baby, experts now fear. Brazilian researchers from Recife, the city at the centre of the Zika epidemic, describe seven suspect cases in the British Medical Journal (BMJ). The virus, which has been spreading across much of the Americas and has deterred some people from visiting the Olympic host country, is already known to cause a serious baby brain defect. Experts now agree that Zika is capable of causing lasting brain damage to babies in the womb. The virus can cross the placenta from the mother to her unborn child. And there is growing evidence that it can trigger a rare, weakening condition of the nerves, called Guillian-Barre syndrome, in adults. Dr Vanessa van der Linden and her team in Brazil say they are now see...

CHICAGO (FOX 32 News) – Three pregnant women are now among 46 confirmed cases of Zika virus across the state, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health. “We have 8 women in the Zika Virus Pregnancy Registry because at the time of testing they were positive for a flavivirus – CDC was not able to confirm in 5 of those cases whether it was Zika virus or Dengue fever,” according to Divya Mohan Little, Public Information Officer at the Illinois Department of Health. Zika primarily spreads through bites from tropical mosquitoes. In most people, the virus causes only mild illness, but infection during pregnancy can lead to severe brain-related birth defects for the fetus. Earlier this week, the Illinois Department of Public Health issued a travel alert for South Flor...

WHO reports As of 27 July 2016, 67 countries and territories have reported evidence of mosquito-borne Zika virus transmission since 2007 (64 of these countries and territories have reported evidence of mosquito-borne Zika virus transmission since 2015. One country and one territory have reported mosquito-borne Zika virus transmission for the first time in the week to 27 July 2016, Antigua and Barbuda; and Turks and Caicos (United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland).

The New York Times reports from San Juan, Puerto Rico — The Zika epidemic that has spread from Brazil to the rest of Latin America is now raging in Puerto Rico — and the island’s response is in chaos. “What worries me is not 100 kids with microcephaly,” said Dr. De la Vega, chief of ultrasound diagnosis at the university. “What worries me is a lot of kids affected in some way we cannot determine yet.”  “We may be facing a generation with learning and behavioural disabilities,” he said. The war against the Aedes aegypti mosquito carrying the virus is sputtering out in failure. Infections are skyrocketing: Many residents fail to protect themselves against bites because they believe the threat is exaggerated. Federal and local health officials are feuding, and the governor’s special adviser o...

The Daily Telegraph has reported that the UK government is advising the approximately 50,000 British holidaymakers currently in Florida should avoid unprotected sex for the rest of the summer holidays because of the risk from Zika virus. An outbreak of four mosquito-transmitted cases yesterday prompted Public Health England (PHE) to advise pregnant women to consider postponing non-essential travel to the southern US state. But for the large numbers of British tourists already there, the presence of the virus means that they should refrain from sex without a condom for eight weeks, even if neither partner has symptoms of the disease and there is no prospect of a pregnancy. PHE advises that males returning from a Zika-affected area who show symptoms of the virus, which can include a rash, it...

Defending Olympic tennis champions Bob and Mike Bryan have pulled out of the Rio Olympics less than a week before the opening ceremony citing health concerns over the Zika virus. The IB Times reported the following athletes have also pulled out of the Rio Olympics. Rory McIlroy (Golf), Vijay Singh (Golf), Thomas Berdych (Tennis), Adam Scott (Golf), Louis Oosthuizen (Golf), Shane Lowry (Golf),  Charl Schwartzel (Golf), Dominic Thiem (Tennis), Feliciano Lopez (Tennis), Bernard Tomic (Tennis), Tejay van Garderen (Cycling), Nick Kyrgios (Tennis), Jason Day (Golf),  Dustin Johnson (Golf), Jordan Spieth (Golf), Milos Raonic (Tennis), Simona Halep (Tennis).

The four cases of Zika infection in Miami, likely the result of bites from local mosquitoes, may be just the beginning of the spread of the virus in the continental US, a health official said Friday. The Florida Department of Health reported Friday that the four people — a woman and three men — infected earlier this month in Miami are the first known “homegrown” cases of Zika virus in the US. “We anticipate that there may be additional cases of ‘homegrown’ Zika in the coming weeks,” Dr. Lyle Petersen of The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement. Although no mosquitoes have tested positive for the Zika virus yet, Florida health officials believe that active transmission of the Zika virus is occurring in a one-square-mile area just...

Mysterious Zika Cases Raise US Mosquito Fears Florida officials are investigating four cases of Zika that do not appear to be related to travel, raising fears mosquitoes in the US are spreading the virus. Up to now, the 1,400 infections reported in the US have been linked to people going to countries with Zika outbreaks in South America and the Caribbean. Two new cases have been announced in neighbouring Miami-Dade and Broward counties, which raise the possibility of local Zika transmission in the US. They are in addition to two others in the same areas that may also be non-travel related.

As many as 1.65 million women in Latin America could be infected with Zika while pregnant, meaning tens of thousands of pregnancies could be at risk, researchers said Monday. It’s the first real estimate of just how many actual pregnancies are at real risk, based on birth rates in each country and other factors. Brazil’s likely to be the worst affected, the team at the University of Notre Dame and Britain’s University of Southampton found published in Nature Microbiology: Model-based projections of Zika virus infections in childbearing women in the Americas Zika is known to cause a range of birth defects, from brain damage that leads to an unusually small head, called microcephaly, to more subtle nerve, organ and limb defects.

The BBC reports that scientists studying the Zika outbreak in Brazil are becoming increasingly concerned the virus may cause eye damage in babies. Stanford University researchers found abnormal bleeding and lesions in the eyes of three infant boys whose mothers had caught Zika while pregnant. They want any babies known to be affected by Zika to have eye checks. The journal of Ophthalmology findings follow another recent study that saw similar eye problems in Zika babies. The disease is already known to cause a serious baby brain defect called microcephaly.

The Daily Telegraph reports that two Vietnamese women have contracted the Zika virus which has been linked to thousands of suspected cases of microcephaly, a rare birth defect, in Brazil, and are the first Zika infections in Vietnam, the Health Ministry said on Tuesday. A 64-year-old woman in the beach city of Nha Trang and another woman, 33, in Ho Chi Minh City fell sick in late March, and three rounds of tests have confirmed they are Zika-positive, the ministry said in a statement. The two patients are in stable condition while no further infections among their relatives and neighbours have been found, the ministry said. Zika is carried by mosquitoes, which transmit the virus to humans. Zika has not been proven to cause microcephaly in babies, but there is growing evidence that suggests ...