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Zika Strain From American Outbreak Spreads To Africa, Where Some May Already Be Immune

Zika Strain From American Outbreak Spreads To Africa, Where Some May Already Be Immune

The Zika virus in Cape Verde island off the west coast of Africa is the same one infecting people in the Americas, according to the World Health Organization.

That’s worrying health officials because “it is further proof that the outbreak is spreading beyond South America and is on the doorstep of Africa,” WHO said, according to a FoxNews report.

Zika’s emergence near continental Africa raises a new nightmare scenario because many of its countries have poor health infrastructure as seen during the Ebola epidemic that devastated Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, AP reported in CTV.

There have been more than 7,000 suspected cases of Zika in Cape Verde, with 180 pregnant women thought to be infected. Three babies have been born with brain damage from microcephaly, according to BBC.

Until the virus was sequenced by scientists in Senegal, it was uncertain if the outbreak in Cape Verde was caused by the African or Asian strain of zika virus. The Asian type has hit Brazil and other Latin American countries.

Tests show that Cape Verde is affected by the Asian type — the same one blamed for birth abnormalities in Brazil.

There have been about 1,300 confirmed cases of microcephaly – babies born with small brains – in Brazil, with thousands more under investigation, according to BBC.

The Zika virus has been circulating at a low level in African countries for more than 50 years, so some of the population may already be immune, according to a U.K. researcher.

“It is likely that the South American, Caribbean and Polynesian populations had no prior immunity to the virus, so a high proportion of people who are bitten by infected mosquitos caught the disease,” said Dr Anna Checkley at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases, University College London Hospitals.

A former Portuguese colony like Brazil, Cape Verde reported its first Zika case in October. The mosquito-borne virus emerged in Brazil in 2015 before spreading to nearly 60 countries, AP reported.

Most infected people suffer no symptoms but authorities in Brazil have seen a dramatic increase in severe brain-related birth defects in babies born to women infected with Zika during pregnancy. Health officials concluded this year that Zika causes the birth defects.

One of the babies believed to have contracted Zika in Cape Verde was born at a hospital in Boston, officials said, according to AP.

Zika can be spread sexually, and WHO said pregnant women should abstain from sex or practice safe sex with anyone who has recently returned from areas with outbreaks. Health officials in Africa should start warning pregnant women to take precautions against mosquito bites.

Doctors think that Zika can cause a rare paralyzing condition called Guillain-Barre syndrome.