Cuba Local Zika Transmission

[niman]

 

Cuba's Health Ministry on Tuesday reported the first case of Zika contracted in the country, in a 21-year-old woman living in central Havana and who had not been overseas. 

Cuba's four previous cases of Zika all involved people who had contracted the virus while abroad.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-zika-cuba-idUSKCN0WI01Y

 

[niman]

Tue Mar 15, 2016 9:15pm EDT

Related: HEALTH, CUBA

Cuba reports first case of Zika contracted in the country

HAVANA

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An Aedes aegypti mosquito is seen at the Laboratory of Entomology and Ecology of the Dengue Branch of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in this March 6, 2016 file photo.

REUTERS/ALVIN BAEZ/FILES

 

Cuba's Health Ministry on Tuesday reported the first case of Zika contracted in the country, in a 21-year-old woman living in central Havana and who had not been overseas.

Cuba's four previous cases of Zika all involved people who had contracted the virus while abroad.

Cuba reported its first case of Zika on March 2, making it one of the last countries in the Americas to encounter the virus. All four of the previous cases occurred in people who contracted Zika in Venezuela.

The Cuban woman first reported symptoms on March 7 and was hospitalized two days later, the Health Ministry said in a statement read on state television. The woman was diagnosed on Monday and remains in the hospital, without symptoms, the statement said.

Zika, which is carried by mosquitoes that transmit the virus to humans, has been linked to thousands of birth defects in Brazil that is spreading through Latin America and the Caribbean.

The World Health Organization declared the Zika outbreak an international health emergency on Feb. 1, citing a "strongly suspected" relationship between Zika infection in pregnancy and microcephaly, a birth defect marked by abnormally small head size that can result in developmental problems.

However, much remains unknown about Zika, including whether the virus actually causes microcephaly in babies.

Brazil said it has confirmed more than 740 cases of microcephaly, and considers most of them to be related to Zika infections in the mothers. Brazil is investigating more than 4,200 additional suspected cases of microcephaly.

More than a dozen cases of sexual transmission in the United States and France, and one case of suspected transmission through a blood transfusion in Brazil, raise questions about other ways that Zika may spread.

There is no vaccine or treatment.

The Cuban government, which has fumigated neighborhoods and homes for decades to contain dengue, another mosquito-borne illness, put doctors on alert for the virus weeks ago and ramped up mosquito eradication efforts in neighborhoods in expectation of Zika's inevitable arrival.

President Raul Castro on Feb. 22 ordered 9,000 active-duty officers and reserves plus 200 police officers to join the prevention effort and asked all Cubans to clean up potential environments for the Aedes genus of mosquitoes.

 

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Sandra Maler and Leslie Adler)

[niman]

Cuba reports first case of Zika transmitted on the island

Fumigation fog fills the Vedado neighborhood after soldiers sprayed to kill mosquitos in Havana, Cuba, Tuesday, March 15, 2016. Authorities are fumigating in an attempt to prevent the spread of zika, chikungunya and dengue.
PHOTO BY AP

 

BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | Wednesday, March 16, 2016, 2:57 a.m.

 

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Updated 4 hours ago

HAVANA — Cuban officials announced Tuesday night that they have detected the first case of the Zika virus transmitted inside the country, ending Cuba's status as one of the last nations in the hemisphere without domestic cases of the disease that has been linked to birth defects.

State media said a 21-year-old Havana woman who had not traveled outside Cuba was diagnosed with the virus after suffering headaches, fatigue and other symptoms. On Monday, her blood tested positive for Zika. She remains hospitalized.

Cuba had previously reported a handful of cases of the disease in people who had traveled to countries with outbreaks of the mosquito-borne virus, particularly Venezuela, and appeared to have contracted it there.

Cuba has close ties to Venezuela, a fellow socialist country that sends hundreds of millions of dollars a year in subsidized oil in exchange for Cuban medical assistance that sees many thousands of people travel between the two countries annually.

Zika is being investigated as a possible agent in cases of microcephaly, a condition in which babies are born with unusually small heads and brain damage, and also in cases of Guillain-Barre, a rare condition that sometimes results in temporary paralysis.

Cuba has thrown more than 9,000 soldiers, police and university students into an effort to fumigate for mosquitoes, wipe out the standing water where they breed and prevent a Zika epidemic.

President Raul Castro has called on the nation to battle lax fumigation and trash collection, turning the Zika fight into a test of the communist government's once-legendary ability to marshal the entire country behind efforts ranging from civil defense to bigger sugar harvests to disease prevention.

In recent days the streets of Havana have been crisscrossed by teams of green-clad soldiers fumigating houses with mosquito-killing fog. Residents of the capital say fumigators no longer accept excuses of allergies or requests to spray some other day, as frequently happened in the past.

Still, neighborhoods like Central Havana, where the patient in Tuesday's case lives, are filled with decaying buildings, piles of uncollected trash and pools of standing water.

The Zika announcement comes at a moment of intense international attention on Cuba: President Barack Obama arrives on Sunday as the first sitting U.S. president to visit in nearly 90 years. The Obama administration on Tuesday announced that it was carving a series of broad new exceptions into the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba, removing limits on individual travel that experts predicted would lead to a boom in U.S. visitors.

http://triblive.com/usworld/world/10155151-74/cuba-zika-cases