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15 Feb ’12
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yeah, now the cdc is telling people who get infected not to get pregnant
15 Feb ’12
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Holy crap, is Children Of Men going to be considered a documentary?
Top Zika investigators now believe that the birth defect microcephaly and the paralyzing Guillain-Barre syndrome may be just the most obvious maladies caused by the mosquito-borne virus.
Fueling that suspicion are recent discoveries of serious brain and spinal cord infections - including encephalitis, meningitis and myelitis - in people exposed to Zika.
Evidence that Zika's damage may be more varied and widespread than initially believed adds pressure on affected countries to control mosquitoes and prepare to provide intensive - and, in some cases, lifelong - care to more patients. The newly suspected disorders can cause paralysis and permanent disability - a clinical outlook that adds urgency to vaccine development efforts.
Scientists are of two minds about why these new maladies have come into view. The first is that, as the virus is spreading through such large populations, it is revealing aspects of Zika that went unnoticed in earlier outbreaks in remote and sparsely populated areas. The second is that the newly detected disorders are more evidence that the virus has evolved.
"What we're seeing are the consequences of this virus turning from the African strain to a pandemic strain," said Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine.
15 Feb ’12
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not looking good
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Top health officials expressed heightened concern on Monday about the threat posed to the United States by the Zika virus, saying the mosquito that spreads it is now present in about 30 states and hundreds of thousands of infections could appear in Puerto Rico.
At a White House briefing, they stepped up pressure on the Republican-led Congress to pass approximately $1.9 billion in emergency funding for Zika preparedness that the Obama administration requested in February.
“Everything we look at with this virus seems to be a bit scarier than we initially thought,” said Dr. Anne Schuchat, a deputy director at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“And so while we absolutely hope we don’t see widespread local transmission in the continental U.S., we need the states to be ready for that,” Schuchat added.
15 Feb ’12
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Looks like it's time to stock up on off
NEW YORK (AP) -- Confirming the worst fears of many pregnant women in the United States and Latin America, U.S. health officials said Wednesday there is no longer any doubt the Zika virus causes babies to be born with abnormally small heads and other severe brain defects.
Since last year, doctors in Brazil have been linking Zika infections in pregnant women to a rise in newborns with microcephaly, or an unusually small skull. Most outside experts were cautious about drawing such a connection. But now the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says enough evidence is in.
"There is no longer any doubt that Zika causes microcephaly," CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden said. The CDC said it also is clear Zika causes other serious defects, including damaging calcium buildups in the developing brain.
Among the evidence that clinched the case: Signs of the Zika virus, which is spread primarily through mosquito bites and can also be transmitted through sex, have been found in the brain tissue, spinal fluid and amniotic fluid of microcephaly babies.
The CDC and other health agencies have been operating for months on the assumption that Zika causes brain defects, and they have been warning pregnant women to use mosquito repellent, cover up, avoid travel to Zika-stricken regions and either abstain from sex or rely on condoms. Those guidelines will not change.
But the new finding should help officials make a more convincing case to the public for taking precautions. Some experts hope it will change public thinking about Zika the way the 1964 surgeon general's report convinced many Americans that smoking causes lung cancer.
"We've been very careful over the last few months to say, 'It's linked to, it's associated with.' We've been careful to say it's not the cause of," said the CDC's Dr. Sonja A. Rasmussen. "I think our messages will now be more direct."
15 Feb ’12
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good to see the Senate is on the ball
WASHINGTON (MEDIA GENERAL) – Several weeks after the White House began asking for emergency funding from Congress to stop the spread of the Zika virus, a funding bill has failed to appear before the full Senate.
Zika, a virus which has been known to cause a range of symptoms from fever to birth defects in pregnant women, remains a top health concern for U.S. officials.
“Everything we look at with this virus, seems to be a bit scarier than we originally thought,” said Dr. Anne Schuchat, the principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during a news conference in mid-April. The Obama administration is asking Congress for $1.9 billion in emergency funding to prevent the spread of the disease.
Congress still debates
The battle over how to fund the Zika crisis remains tied up in the U.S. Senate where Repubilcan leaders insist they want more transparency on how the $1.9 billion would be spent.
“It’s an important issue. We’re in a discussion with them about how much do they really need?” said Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) during a weekly news conference last week. The chorus of Democrats calling for an immediate vote has grown louder in recent weeks. During a press conference on Monday in Buffalo, New York, the state’s senior Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) urged Congress to act sooner rather than later.
15 Feb ’12
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first reported death in the US
The first American has died from complications related to the Zika virus, health officials with the Centers for Disease Control reported late Friday.
A Puerto Rican man in his 70s died in February from “complications related to severe thrombocytopenia”, the CDC reported in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
The man, from the San Juan area, fell ill with the Zika virus and experienced symptoms including fever, rash and joint pain. After recovering from the Zika symptoms, the man then developed immune thrombocytopenic purpura, or ITP, an autoimmune disorder that has been linked to the virus. The bleeding disorder that killed him was as a side-effect of the ITP.
“Although Zika virus–associated deaths are rare, the first identified death inPuerto Rico highlights the possibility of severe cases, as well as the need for continued outreach to raise health care providers’ awareness of complications that might lead to severe disease or death,” reports the CDC in its findings.
15 Feb ’12
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Harvard is warning the olympics can cause a full blown global disaster
The 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro could spark a “full-blown public health disaster”, doctors have warned.
Since the Zika virus was first identified in Brazil in May 2015, the disease's spread through Latin America has been declared a health emergency by the World Health Organisation and the number of suspected cases in Rio is the highest of any state in the country.
The continued presence of the virus ahead of the summer Olympics has caused athletes and health specialists to question the risks involved in allowing the Games to go ahead with hundreds of thousands of spectators travelling to the city.
15 Feb ’12
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Wonder what the numbers will be at the end of the summer
May 20 (Reuters) - Some 157 pregnant women in the United States and another 122 in U.S. territories have tested positive for infection with the Zika virus, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday.
It was the first time the agency had disclosed the number of Zika-infected pregnant women in the U.S. and its territories.
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