UPDATE, 4:30 P.M. TUESDAY - Reversing course, the state Department of Health said Tuesday afternoon that it would make public any confirmed birth defects linked to exposure to the Zika virus. The department also told the Democrat and Chronicle that none of the eight New York women who contracted Zika while pregnant have given birth to a child with microcephaly, the most common birth defect connected to the virus.

The announcement comes after the Democrat and Chronicle noted that state health officials were unwilling to discuss birth outcomes related to Zika. That blog, which was published online Monday and in print Tuesday, appears unchanged below.

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Citing privacy concerns, state health officials will not say if the Zika virus has led to any birth defects in New York.

To date, 69 New Yorkers have been diagnosed with Zika, the infectious virus that has swept through the Western Hemisphere over the last year. All but one of those state residents acquired the virus while traveling in parts of the world where the mosquito-borne virus is active — primarily, the Caribbean, Mexico, Central America and South America. This figure included eight women who were pregnant at the time they became infection.

The sole New York who didn't pick up the virus overseas is a state resident who acquired Zika through sexual contact with an infected man, one of a handful of people worldwide known to have become infected in this way.

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ROCHESTER DEMOCRAT AND CHRONICLE

Zika an unlikely threat in upstate New York

 

State health officials have verified that unusual occurrence but have declined to discuss the possibility of another: whether any of the eight pregnant women with Zika bore a child with birth defects.

One of the sad realities of Zika is that infection of pregnant women can promote birth defects. Most notably, women in Brazil have given birth to thousands of babies with microcephaly, or an abnormally small head. The condition, which absent the Zika virus is relatively rare, can be accompanied by vision or speech impairments and developmental problems. Microcephaly is by far the most common birth defect associated with the virus, though experts said recently that evidence is emerging of other connected birth defects.

A small number of microcephaly cases have been reported in Colombia, Panama, Cape Verde, French Polynesia and Martinique, and health experts are waiting to see whether this spring and summer will bring an eruption of microcephaly as was seen in Brazil last year.

 

To date, two women who contracted Zika in Brazil while they were pregnant are known to have given birth to children with microcephaly — a woman from Slovenia in central Europe who gave researchers permission to write up her case in February, and an unnamed woman living in Hawaii whose situation was made public by state health officials there in January.

New York health officials, though, are taking a different approach. Asked several times last week by the Democrat and Chronicle if any of the New York Zika cases had led to microcephaly or other birth defects, the health agency declined to answer. To do so, they said, could risk revealing the identity of the pregnant women.

"In instances where the number of cases is small, patient confidentiality prohibits DOH from disclosing this information," the health department said in a written statement on Friday. "This involves a very small sample size of only eight pregnant women."

They're not unique in this position. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) demands that doctors and health-industry insiders be careful not to identify patients or release medical information without permission, which has made health officials very reluctant to release data. Even in cases where names and other personally identifying information are withheld, they often cite HIPAA in instances where the number of cases is in single digits.

If we want to know what sort of impact Zika has had in New York state — or what impact it will have going forward, when the number of local cases could increase considerably  — we may have to look elsewhere for details.