Four times the number of babies born with skull deformities linked to Zika virus were reported in Colombia this year following the outbreak of the mosquito-borne infection, a US government report said on Friday.
Women infected early in pregnancy were most at risk of giving birth to babies with unusually small heads, a condition known as microcephaly, a report by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
The Zika outbreak, which began in the middle of last year, has mainly swept across Latin America and the Caribbean. The viral disease can be spread by the bite of an infected Aedes mosquito or sexual contact.
The toll of microcephaly in Colombia was smaller than in Brazil, which saw a nine-fold increase in the disorder, perhaps because much of the population in Colombia lives at higher elevations where mosquitoes are scarce, according to the report.
“This preliminary report on Zika virus disease and microcephaly in Colombia demonstrates that an increase in microcephaly is not specific to Brazil,” the centers said. “This finding confirms that countries with Zika virus outbreaks are likely to experience large increases in microcephaly and other Zika-related birth defects.”
Colombia recorded 476 cases of microcephaly from Jan. 31 to the middle of last month, four times higher than the same period last year, the report said.
Of those cases, 432 infants were born alive and 44 were lost to either miscarriage, abortion or stillbirth.
“The peak in cases of microcephaly in Colombia came about six months after the period in which the highest number of new Zika infections was reported, which suggests that the highest risk period for Zika-associated microcephaly is likely to be in the first half of pregnancy, particularly the first trimester and early in the second,” the centers said.
Colombia reported 105,000 cases of Zika virus, including nearly 20,000 cases in pregnant women, from Aug. 9, last year, through to Nov. 26.
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