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Zika Spreads to Military While Vaccine Efforts Hit a Snag

CBN

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The Pentagon has confirmed more than 40 U.S. service members have been infected with the Zika virus. One of them is a pregnant woman. All of the cases were contracted outside the United States.

Zika is transmitted from mosquito bites or through sexual contact with an infected person.

Most people recover without incident. Many people don't even experience symptoms. Those who do, complain of flu-like issues.

However, Zika strikes unborn children particularly hard. Women who contract Zika during pregnancy can deliver babies with severe birth defects, including microcephaly, a condition that causes a baby to be born with an unusually small head and brain damage.

Therefore, pregnant women are being advised to avoid areas where Zika outbreaks are common, and people who have visited those areas should wait at least eight weeks before conceiving a child.

Those areas include Central and South America, and for the first time, an area within the continental United States.

A one-mile area north of downtown Miami, Florida, is the site of the first homegrown Zika outbreak. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has confirmed 15 cases of Zika were contracted from local mosquitoes in that area. All other Zika cases in the continental United States were travel-related and originated elsewhere.

Florida health officials are now beginning aerial spraying of the affected area. Ground spraying has been ongoing.

Meanwhile, Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory, continues to struggle with its outbreak. New York Times reporter Donald McNeil Jr. told NPR that despite reports of 50 pregnant women contracting the virus every day there, residents feel the threat is overblown.

In Washington, conflict over Zika funding is threatening the development of a vaccine.

The National Institutes of Health announced that it has begun phase I trials for the vaccine. However, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell warned that if Congress doesn't approve additional funding, the second phase of clinical trials will be delayed.

Burwell says the money currently being used to fight Zika will run out before Congress re-convenes in September.

On Tuesday, Democrat Vice Presidential candidate Tim Kaine called on Congress to return to Washington for an emergency session to pass a supplemental funding bill.

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