A baby was born in Hawaii with microcephaly, a condition in which the baby has a small head due to the head section not developing properly in the mother's womb. The mother of the baby had lived in Brazil for a period in 2015, after she had become pregnant. She was infected with the Zika virus there.
Confirming this on Saturday, Tom Skinner, a spokesman for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, said, "There is no indication at this point that there is any Zika virus circulating in Hawaii. But I think it is important for us to understand that there are going to be imported cases of Zika to the United States, and we won't be surprised if we start to see some local transmission of the virus," according to Al Jazeera America.
In Brazil, microcephaly has been linked with Zika virus infections. In 2015, Brazil saw a surge in the number of microcephaly births that were reported from the country's hospitals to nearly 3,500 in just the last four months. This is compared to 147 such births that took place in the whole of 2014. A pattern that Brazilian doctors noticed was that most of the mothers that were giving birth to babies with the microcephaly birth defect were infected with the Zika virus at some point during or before they became pregnant. Hence, Brazilian healthcare experts suspect that there is a link between pregnant mothers being infected with the Zika virus and then such mothers giving birth to babies with the microcephaly birth defect, according to ABC News/Associated Press.
This news is very significant, as this is the first time that a case of an American previously infected with the Zika virus has given birth to a child with microcephaly on American soil, according to CNN.
