Effects of Zika virus is very evident in Puerto Rico as authorities warn
Great effects of Zika virus on mothers who were pregnant on the time they were bitten by the mosquito carrier is clearly shown in Puerto Rico, among the states under the territory of the U.S.
Health experts from the United States of America release on the other day the heartbreaking numbers. As many as 270 babies in Puerto Rico may be born with microcephaly caused by Zika infections in their mothers during pregnancy — and that is just in this first round of infection.
According to the figure, the estimate, the first to project the potential impact of Zika on Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory located in the Caribbean that has been hit hard by the outbreak.
As of Aug. 12, Puerto Rico had 10,690 laboratory-confirmed cases of Zika, including 1,035 pregnant women.
Using the most recent available data, researchers from the Puerto Rican Health Department and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention forecast that between 5,900 and 10,300 pregnant women in Puerto Rico will become infected with Zika during the initial outbreak, which began in Puerto Rico in December 2015.
Rising infection rates of the virus in Puerto Rico prompted the U.S. government to declare a state of public health emergency last week.
“Based on the limited available information on the risk of microcephaly, we estimate between 100 to 270 cases of microcephaly might occur” between mid-2016 and mid-2017, said Dr. Margaret Honein, chief of the birth defects branch at the CDC said.
“It’s going to be very important to follow-up on these infants,” Honein told Reuters. “I think it’s critically important that we do everything we can to prevent Zika virus during pregnancy, and to minimize this very severe and devastating outcome.”
The projected number of Zika-infected infants for Puerto Rico alone comes at a time that Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warns most other Gulf States are vulnerable to the virus — and that there most likely will be new cases in Texas and Louisiana.
Microcephaly – the condition, in which infants are born with abnormally small heads for their age, is estimated to cost $10 million over the lifetime of one child.
Researches are now being done by many institutions in the U.S. in order to create a vaccine against Zika virus.