More travel warnings and mosquito bite prevention tips are released by health officials who want to make sure the Zika virus doesn’t spread in the U.S.
Physicians with UK Healthcare say the good news is, the only documented cases of someone in the U.S. getting Zika from a mosquito are of people who were bitten while traveling overseas. The bad news, you can be a carrier of the virus and not even know it. Dr. Wendy Hansen is the chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at UK. “We’ve not had a single primary mosquito bite infected Zika woman here in the U.S. but we have had sexual transmission here in the U.S. and we have had women who have traveled and so we’ve also had women infected because of that”
Symptoms of Zika are similar to the flu, but Dr. Hansen said about 80 percent of those who are infected never get sick. And the virus has been linked to a neurological disorder to newborns that can cause abnormally small heads and fatal development issues, which is why women need to be proactive and follow these precautions. “The first is the avoidance of travel. The second is the avoidance of mosquito bites and the third is for pregnant women, to avoid sexual relations with men who have either been infected or have recently traveled to that area.”
Dr. Hansen tells us if a couple is trying to get pregnant, a woman should wait eight weeks and a man should wait six months after exposure to Zika. Those guidelines are backed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.