zika Zika is now on the doorstep of Africa and the US mainland

[Reefa]

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Zika could start spreading on the US mainland in the next month or so. This warning comes in the same week the Brazilian strain of the virus was found in Africa.

 

About 500 people in the US have contracted Zika, but all the infections seen so far were picked up abroad. Things could change as temperatures rise and mosquitoes become more active, increasing the chance that virus from these imported cases will get passed to mainland mosquitos, said Anthony Fauci at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Indeed, 803 cases in the US territory of Puerto Rico were acquired locally.

 

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 157 pregnant women on the US mainland, and 122 in its territories, have tested positive for the virus. Only a handful have reported adverse birth outcomes so far, but most are still pregnant.

 

The virus also continues to march across the Atlantic, with the strain circulating in the Americas turning up on the Cape Verde islands off the western-most coast of Africa. More than 7500 suspected cases have been reported, plus at least three instances of microcephaly in babies. “The findings are of concern because they’re further proof the outbreak is spreading beyond South America and is on the doorstep of Africa,” says Matshidiso Moeti at the World Health Organization.

 

The virus was first identified in Uganda in the 1940s and is thought to have circulated on the continent without causing birth defects such as microcephaly. By the 1960s the strain had spread to South-East Asia, and in 2012 came the announcement that two distinct types of Zika existed – African and Asian. The Asian strain is the one circulating in the Americas.

 

No one yet knows if people exposed to the African strain may also have some immunity to the Asian virus.

 

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