Puerto Rico's Health Secretary Ana Rius said Thursday that the unidentified patient had not traveled recently and lives in the island's eastern region.
Officials say symptoms of Zika are similar to those of two other mosquito-borne illnesses, dengue fever and chikungunya, and can include a slight fever, headache and joint pain in the hands and feet.
More worrying than the symptoms in adults, scientists in Brazil have linked Zika infections to a recent surge in cases of babies being born with abnormally small heads, a condition called microcephaly, which often results in mental retardation.
More than 2,700 babies in Brazil were born with microcephaly in 2015, up from fewer than 150 in 2014.
Brazil's health officials say they're convinced the jump is connected to a sudden outbreak of the Zika virus, though international experts caution it's far too early to be sure and note the condition can have many other causes.
Since the first local case of Zika virus was detected in Brazil last May, health officials estimate between 440,000 and 1.3 million people there have caught it.
The mosquito-borne illness was first identified in the Americas less than two years ago and has spread rapidly across South and Central America.
"We are looking at the beginning of an epidemic in a country that has in between 200,000 and 300,000 births per year, which shows how worried we are.
It's a virus we don't know that much about," said Rodrigo Stabeli, vice president of the Rio de Janeiro-based Fiocruz research institute. "We are preparing for the unknown."
Brazilians are so concerned that some obstetricians, such as Helga Monaco at Sao Paulo's Samaritano Hospital, recommend women avoid becoming pregnant during the rainy season when mosquitoes are most prevalent.
"All the women I see at the hospital or in my office who are pregnant or wanting to get pregnant are very alarmed, almost panicky," she said.
The Zika virus was first detected in humans about 40 years ago in Uganda. It is spread by the same Aedes mosquito as dengue and chikunguya. Until a few months ago, investigators had no reported evidence it might be related to microcephaly.
Suspicion arose after officials recorded 17 cases of central nervous system malformations among fetuses and newborns after a Zika outbreak began last year in French Polynesia, according to the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control.
And in November, Brazilian researchers reported the Zika virus genome had been found in amniotic fluid samples from two women whose fetuses were been diagnosed with microcephaly by ultrasound exams.
Brazil announced on Nov. 28 that researchers had found the Zika virus present in brain tissue of a newborn with microcephaly who died. CONTINUE READING
SOURCE cbsnews.com
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