Just a few years ago, you only had to worry about catching the Zika virus if you traveled overseas. Then it started to creep closer, mosquitoes that carry it have shown up here in the U.S. So far, no bugs in Kentucky have been found with the Zika virus but Vickie Yates Glisson, the Secretary for the Cabinet for Health and Family Services says, we need to get ahead of the disease and be prepared.
Symptoms of Zika are fever, rash, joint pain and red or burning eyes. It can cause birth defects if a woman is infected during pregnancy and there isn’t a cure or vaccine to prevent infection.
You can catch the Zika through mosquito bites or by having sexual intercourse with someone who is infected with it. The virus is to blame for a birth defect that causes a baby’s head to be smaller than normal because the brain doesn’t develop properly and children end up with smaller heads than normal. 37 cases of Zika have been reported in Kentuckians. None of them got the disease from mosquitoes here in the Bluegrass state.