Health officials say a patient in Texas has acquired the Zika virus through sexual transmission, the AP reports. Dallas County Health and Human Services said Tuesday it received confirmation from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The patient was infected after having sexual contact with an ill person who returned from a country where Zika was present. The Zika virus is usually spread through mosquito bites. Investigators have been exploring the possibility the virus also can be spread through sex. It was found in one man's semen in Tahiti, and there was report of a Colorado researcher who caught the virus overseas and apparently spread it to his wife back home in 2008.
Meanwhile, the Brazilian Health Ministry says Brazil's health minister and the US secretary of health and human services have discussed ways the two countries can work together to create a vaccine against the Zika virus and combat the Aedes aegypti mosquito that transmits it, the AP reports. An emailed statement says the two also agreed to accelerate current investigations into infections causes by arboviruses like Zika that may be linked to cases of microcephaly and Guillain-Barre syndrome. The statement says technicians of the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will meet with technicians of the Brazilian Health Ministry and of three biomedical and clinical research centers on Feb. 20 in Brazil. (More Zika virus stories.)
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