|
 At least 17 people in southeastern Rome have been diagnosed with the
virus since the end of August, and the local health authority
decided to suspend blood donations in the affected areas to prevent
accidental transmission.
The ban covers some 1.2 million residents. Anyone who has visited
the affected area of the capital since Aug. 25 should not give blood
for 28 days.
Chikungunya symptoms include high fever, joint and muscular pain,
severe headaches, nausea and a rash. They normally surface within
three to seven days after a bite from an infected mosquito and
typically dissipate within a week. The virus is not deadly, but
there is no vaccine.
The disease is typically found in tropical areas and used to be
entirely absent from Italy.
[to top of second column] |
However, a mosquito which transmits Chikungunya, the Tiger Mosquito,
first appeared in the country in the 1990s and is now commonplace,
and there was an outbreak of the virus around the city of Ravenna in
2007.
(Reporting by Crispian Balmer, editing by Larry King)
[© 2017 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2017 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. |
