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 The report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is
the first to include official numbers from the territory of Puerto
Rico, which on Monday declared that its Zika epidemic had ended,
based on data showing the number of new cases has fallen.
The CDC on Thursday reiterated its recommendation that pregnant
women not travel to Puerto Rico, noting that Zika remains a risk for
pregnant women there and anywhere else the mosquito-borne virus is
active.
"Zika virus poses a serious threat to pregnant women," said CDC
Acting Director Dr Anne Schuchat.
"Women in the U.S. territories and elsewhere who have continued
exposure to mosquitoes carrying Zika are at risk of infection. We
must remain vigilant and committed to preventing new Zika
infections."
The report reviewed 2,549 cases of women with possible Zika
infection who completed their pregnancies, of which 1,508 had
confirmed infections. Besides Puerto Rico, the cases came from
American Samoa, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of
Marshall Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands from Jan. 1, 2016,
through April 25, 2017.
Of these confirmed cases, more than 120 pregnancies, or about 5
percent, resulted in Zika-associated birth defects, the CDC said in
its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
Among the women infected during their first trimester of pregnancy,
8 percent had babies with Zika-associated birth defects. That
compared with 15 percent in a prior study of birth defects among
women from U.S. states and the District of Colombia, most of whom
became infected during travel to Zika-affected countries.
The CDC said because the newer report is much larger, the findings
are not statistically different.
About 5 percent of women infected during their second trimester and
about 4 percent infected in their third trimester had babies with
Zika-related birth defects, showing the virus remains dangerous
throughout a woman's pregnancy.
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The report represents the largest number of completed pregnancies
with lab-confirmed Zika virus infections to date.
The CDC had stopped reporting Zika pregnancy outcomes for U.S.
territories last fall because not all were using the same case
definitions. Puerto Rico has its own Zika pregnancy registry. In its
June 2 report, Puerto Rico's health department listed 38 cases of
birth defects among more than 3,700 Zika-affected pregnancies.
Peggy Honein, who leads the CDC's Zika pregnancy and birth defects
task force, said the CDC in late June will resume regular reporting
of the number of completed pregnancies and birth defects from U.S.
territories.
Honein said in a conference call with reporters that each
jurisdiction may keep its own website using its own case
definitions, but as of June 22, all U.S. territories will be using
the same standard as the CDC case definition for U.S. states and the
District of Columbia in the CDC registry.
Schuchat said on the call the CDC is paying for the pregnancy
registry using emergency funds allocated for Zika last year. She
declined to speculate about future funding. The Trump administration
has proposed a 17 percent cut in CDC's budget for fiscal 2018, its
smallest in 20 years.
As mosquito season ramps up in the continental United States,
scientists predict local transmission is likely to occur only in the
two areas where it was active last year - Miami and Brownsville,
Texas. That is because Aedes aegypti mosquitoes are present in those
two locations year-round, Kristian Andersen of the Scripps Research
Institute in La Jolla, California, reported in the journal Nature.
(Editing by Bernard Orr and Matthew Lewis)
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