CDC Plays a Key Role in Fighting Zika Virus, Sees Major Challenges Ahead
“If you are a woman who is pregnant living in the U.S., there’s one really important thing you need to know: You shouldn’t go to a place that has Zika spreading.”
That’s the strongly worded advice from Dr. Tom Frieden, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. It’s a marked contrast to the suggestion made by Dr. Margaret Chan, director of the World Health Organization, earlier this week: A pregnant woman could safely travel to affected countries, Chan said, if she wore long sleeves to ward off bugs and used mosquito repellent.
Frieden’s statement is a sign of just how seriously the CDC is taking the Zika outbreak, which has been linked to a surge in birth defects in Brazil. CDC is one of the lead global agencies in the battle against this virus, and officials there say the outbreak is far from over, with major challenges ahead.
Indeed, Zika now dominates the agenda at the CDC’s Emergency Operations Center. Giant video monitors in the front of the room track reports of Zika cases around the globe. A huge picture of the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which spreads Zika, sits next to a grainy photo of the virus taken through a microscope.