Health officials in Texas on Tuesday reported the first case of the Zika virus being transmitted within the United States amid the current outbreak in Latin America – a person who was infected through sex.
Dallas County health officials said the unidentified person had not traveled but had sex with a person who had returned from Venezuela and fallen ill with Zika, which has been linked to birth defects in the Americas. The virus is primarily spread through mosquito bites, but investigators had been exploring the possibility it could be sexually transmitted. There was a report of a Colorado researcher who picked up the virus in Africa and apparently spread it to his wife back home in 2008, and it was found in one man’s semen in Tahiti.
“It’s very rare, but this is not new,” Zachary Thompson, director of the Dallas County Health and Human Services, told WFAA-TV in Dallas. “We always looked at the point that this could be transmitted sexually.”
The CDC says it will issue guidance in the coming days on prevention of sexual transmission of Zika virus, focusing on the male sexual partners of women who are or may be pregnant. The CDC has already recommended pregnant women postpone trips to more than two dozen countries with Zika outbreaks, mostly in Latin America and the Caribbean, including Venezuela. It also said other visitors should use insect repellent and take other precautions to prevent mosquito bites.
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