NEW YORK (AP) — The number of pregnant women in the United States infected with Zika virus is suddenly tripling, due to a change in how the government is counting cases.
Previously, officials had reported how many pregnant women had both Zika symptoms and positive blood tests. In a change announced Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will count all women who tested positive — regardless of symptoms.
There are now 157 pregnant women infected with Zika in the 50 states, up from 48 last week.
Zika can cause a birth defect called microcephaly and other serious brain abnormalities. Recently published reports indicate that some pregnant women with laboratory evidence of a recent Zika infection but without symptoms have delivered infants with these defects.
The agency had counted only those who had suffered symptoms in part over concerns that one type of blood test is too prone to giving a false positive test result if a woman was infected with a different but similar virus.
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
But the NY Post says
Pregnant Women In US Infected With Zika Spikes
New Counting Method Shows Uptick
Who ya gonna believe?
Trump tweets that it’s being brought in by refugees and border crossers, is all Obama’s and Hilary’s fault, and calls for a quarantine on all emigrés in 3, 2,1…
As of last week, Puerto Rico has 925 confirmed cases of Zika virus, but no worries…Donnie Dumbshit doesn’t think Puerto Rico is part of the US anyway. Obviously, neither does the AP since their count is a wee bit off by about 925 give or take.
Congress now wants to take money from what was originally appropriated to deal with Ebola, that was also set up to develop a vaccine and is still being developed, and shift it to Zika. We can’t have more than one virus affecting citizens at one time apparently. Besides, everyone knows Ebola is no big thing now that the GOP has decided to thoroughly ignore it since it doesn’t offer them the same political opportunism as is did earlier. Now that their hair is no longer on fire over Ebola and they can’t blame Obama for it because he was able to handle the immediate crisis so efficiently…its old news now.