The territory saw no new reported cases of the Zika virus this week, a positive sign in the Department of Health’s ongoing battle against the mosquito-borne disease.
This week’s numbers remained the same week-over-week in all categories, with confirmed pregnant women cases at 238 territory-wide, and regular confirmed cases at 682 in St. Thomas, 247 in St. Croix, and 88 in St. John. See June 6 results here, and June 14 results here.
In May, D.O.H. made known that a child in the territory was born with the Zika-related birth defect microcephaly — the first and so far only recorded case in the U.S. Virgin Islands — which was confirmed by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (C.D.C.) testing, according to D.O.H. Health officials did not reveal on which island the baby was born.
However, five percent of pregnant women with a confirmed Zika infection in the United States territories, went on to have a baby with a related birth defect, according to the most comprehensive report to date from federal officials.
The report, published on June 8 by the C.D.C. (via The New York Times), also provided for the first time preliminary estimates of this risk by trimester. Previously, there were not enough births following exposure to the Zika virus to make such estimates.
This new report reviewed nearly 2,550 cases of women with possible Zika virus infection who completed pregnancies — meaning they gave birth, miscarried or experienced stillbirth — from Jan. 1, 2016 to April 25, 2017.
Roughly 1,500 of those women had Zika infection actually confirmed by laboratory testing.
Eight percent of offspring of pregnant women in U.S. territories with a positive nucleic acid test for Zika infection in the first trimester had birth defects linked to the virus. By contrast, 5 percent of these infants did when infection occurred in the second trimester, and 4 percent in the third trimester.
Tags: us virgin islands, zika virus
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