Oct 26, 2016

It appears that the Zika virus isn’t the main cause of microcephaly after all. Here is an interesting article from The Washington Post.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/world/the_americas/scientists-are-bewildered-by-zikas-path-across-latin-america/2016/10/25/5e3a992c-9614-11e6-9cae-2a3574e296a6_story.html

RIO DE JANEIRO — Nearly nine months after Zika was declared a global health emergency, the virus has infected at least 650,000 people in Latin America and the Caribbean, including tens of thousands of expectant mothers.

But to the great bewilderment of scientists, the epidemic has not produced the wave of fetal deformities so widely feared when the images of misshapen infants first emerged from Brazil….

In Colombia, praised for some of the most rigorous standards for detecting and monitoring Zika, the government has tallied more than 104,000 Zika cases, including nearly 20,000 pregnant women. It has the ­second-highest number of Zika infections in the world after Brazil.

But so far, Colombia has had just 46 babies born with congenital nervous system damage linked to Zika. And the number of new Zika cases in Colombia has fallen so sharply that the government in July declared the epidemic over, saying the virus will remain a threat but no longer spread rampantly.