The Zika virus has been transmitted sexually: US health authorities

The Zika virus has been transmitted sexually, top United States health authorities have confirmed, fueling fears of the rapid spread of the disease blamed for a surge in the number of brain-damaged babies.

With concern growing that an outbreak sweeping Latin America could spread much farther, health authorities in Texas said they had confirmation of the virus being transmitted by sexual contact and not just tropical mosquitoes.

That is a troubling prospect for the United States, Canada and Europe, where Zika had so far only appeared in travelers returning from affected areas.

“The patient was infected with the virus after having sexual contact with an ill individual who returned from a country where Zika virus is present” this year, a Dallas County statement read.

The county subsequently tweeted that the virus was contracted from someone who had traveled to Venezuela, and that a second case of Zika imported from Venezuela has also been documented.

Dr Tom Frieden, director of the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention later Tuesday confirmed in an email the case of sexually transmitted infection reported earlier in Texas.

Someone who visited Venezuela and was infected there developed Zika symptoms as did their sexual partner who never left the United States, he said on Twitter.

Hotter it gets, it is better for the virus to spread
The mosquito behind the Zika virus seems to operate like a heat-driven missile of disease. The hotter it gets, the better the mosquito that carries Zika virus is at transmitting its buffet of dangerous illnesses, scientists say.

Although it is too early to say for this outbreak, past outbreaks of similar diseases involved more than just biology.

In the past, weather has played a key role, as have economics, human travel, air conditioning and mosquito control. Even El Nino sneaks into the game. As the temperature rises, nearly everything about the biology of the Aedes aegypti mosquito, the one that carries Zika, dengue fever and other diseases, speeds up when it comes to spreading disease, said entomologist Bill Reisen of the University of California Davis.

“With higher temperatures you have more mosquitoes feeding more frequently and having a greater chance of acquiring infection. And then the virus replicates faster as it’s hotter, therefore the mosquitoes can transmit earlier,” Reisen said. The thermodynamics of mosquitoes are “driven by temperature.”