India Acknowledges Three Cases of Zika Virus
In addition, 18,000 mosquitoes have been tested, including 500 from the Bapunagar area in Ahmedabad, where two of the Zika cases were reported, Doctor Swaminathan said; those, too, were negative,
and officials had not detected any upsurge in microcephaly cases.
By NIDA NAJARJUNE 3, 2017
NEW DELHI — Officials in Ahmedabad, India, saw the first of the cases in November: A 34-year-old woman who had just given birth to a healthy child came down with a fever, and tests later confirmed
that she was infected with the mosquito-borne Zika virus.
Doctor Swaminathan said that across the country, some 40,000 samples have been tested for Zika since July of last year,
and aside from the three reported cases in Ahmedabad, none had come up positive.
"That would have given an opportunity for press attention, and
that could have been used for a positive response to control measures." The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation started a major drive against mosquitoes in four areas of the city at the request of the Gujarat state government, according to Bhavin Joshi, a city health official.
"So then there was a decision that there was probably no need for a public announcement at
that time." The Zika virus attracted global attention in late 2015 when a surge in the number of babies born with microcephaly — abnormally small heads and brain damage — was seen in northeastern Brazil several months after an epidemic of the mosquito-borne disease in the region.
Indian Council said that The rationale at that time was, if you announce Zika, there might be a bit of panic,
Dr. G. Arunkumar, the head of the Manipal Center of Virus Research at Manipal University, the site of one of the 30 government laboratories
that can test for Zika, said he learned of all three of them only after the W.H.O.
