8 SE Michigan Pregnant Woman Tested for Zika Virus

OAKLAND COUNTY, MI – Eight pregnant women in Oakland County who had flu-like symptoms were recently tested for the Zika virus.

Oakland County Director of Human Services George Miller told The Oakland Press the women all recently traveled to areas where the Zika virus has been reported and began displaying symptoms about two to three weeks later.

Miller said half of the tests came back negative for the virus. Results are still pending on the other half.

SEE ALSO

• Zika Virus in the United States: What You Need to Know

A Grosse Pointe Farms woman told WXYZ-TV that she may have been infected with Zika when she visited Florida. The Zika virus has been reported in a handful of U.S. states, and travel bans are in place with 24 countries.

Several reports have linked Zika in mothers with Microcephaly in infants, the U.S. Centers for Disease Prevention and Control says, a potentially life-threatening birth defect where a baby’s head is smaller than expected.

It is unclear if the two are directly correlated, the CDC says, but since little is known about Zika, the Center is taking preventative measures.

The virus in and of itself isn’t particularly serious, according to the CDC. Infected people can expect fever, rash, joint pain and red eyes for a couple of days or up to a week, and hospitalization is rare, the CDC says.

Mosquito bites from the Aedes species are the primary form of transmission of the virus, the CDC says, but in rare cases a mother can transmit the disease to her child.

The disease may also spread through sexual contact with an infected person, the CDC says.

Even without a confirmed Zika virus case, Oakland County has a response plan. In his State of the County address last week, Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson said that a portion of the county’s West Nile virus budget will be used to combat the Zika virus, and that the mosquito response budget will increase by $160,000 to about $350,000.

Already accomplished in the Zika response plan:

• Posting Zika virus travel advisory information to the county’s webpage.

• Sharing what is known about the Zika virus, the mosquito that carries it, testing protocol for pregnant women who visited any of the infected countries, and EPA approved repellants with the local public health, emergency preparedness and medical communities.
• Tracking phone calls concerned about the Zika Virus that come into the Health Division each day.

So far, there’s no vaccine against Zika. Even if one is developed, testing would be at least a year and a half away, Dr. Chris Carpenter, chief of infectious diseases at Beaumont Hospital – Royal Oak Chief, told The Oakland Press.

Researchers are in the early stages of understanding Zika, he said, telling The Oakland Press: “It’s not something (the medical community) thought we would need to develop a vaccine (for).

“Countries are telling people not to get pregnant,” he said. “I’ve never seen that.”