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A pregnant woman has been found to be infected with the mosquito-borne disease, while 13 other suspected cases are being investigated.
Authorities in the state of Kerala in southern India have issued a statewide alert after a Zika virus case was confirmed, officials said.
Another 13 suspected cases were under investigation, state Health Minister Veena George said on Friday.
A 24-year-old pregnant woman was found to be infected with the mosquito-borne disease and was undergoing treatment at a hospital in the city of Thiruvananthapuram.
Samples of the 13 suspected cases have been sent for further investigation to a laboratory in Pune, the Kerala minister added.
Pregnant women are particularly vulnerable and can pass the infection on to their newborns, which can lead to life disorders such as Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rare autoimmune disease.
It can also cause birth defects such as microcephaly, which causes babies to be born with smaller heads due to abnormalities in brain development.
Zika is transmitted primarily through the bite of the Aedes mosquito, but can also be transmitted sexually, according to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The virus was first discovered in monkeys in Uganda’s Zika Forest in 1947 and has caused several epidemics around the world in recent decades.
No vaccine or antiviral drug is available for prevention or treatment. The World Health Organization declared it a Public Health Emergency of International Concern in 2016.
Symptoms include fever, rash, conjunctivitis, and muscle and joint pain, but deaths are rare.
Authorities said the infected woman in Kerala was showing symptoms such as fever, headache and rash before being admitted to hospital, where she gave birth safely on Wednesday.
Health teams have been assigned to the area to monitor any new cases.
India also experienced Zika outbreaks in 2017 and 2018, with hundreds of cases reported in the western states of Gujarat and Rajasthan, as well as in the central state of Madhya Pradesh, but the latest infection is the first in Kerala.
The state is currently grappling with an increase in COVID-19 cases, with more than 13,000 infections reported as of Friday, more than a third of India’s 43,393 daily cases recorded that day.
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