New York Times: The Zika Virus Is Still a Threat. Here’s What Experts Know.
“…As health officials struggled to halt its spread, the [Zika] virus galloped through Latin America and the Caribbean [in 2016] and eventually reached the United States, sickening more than 200 people in Florida and Texas and prompting countless travelers to cancel vacations in the tropics. Then, seemingly overnight, the epidemic evaporated and public attention moved on. But Zika, it turns out, did not vanish. … The virus, which is mostly spread by mosquitoes but also through sex with an infected person, is still circulating in Brazil and other countries that were at the center of the epidemic, and two years ago the same strain from the Americas arrived in continental Africa for the first time. That strain, researchers recently discovered, had been causing birth defects in Asia long before the Zika epidemic of 2016. … On Tuesday, the World Health Organization issued a report on Zika that listed 61 [countries with endemic populations of the mosquito that spreads the virus], among them densely populated behemoths like China, Egypt, and Pakistan as well as much of Africa…” (Jacobs, 7/2).