(NBC News) — The Zika virus spreads through infected mosquitoes or sexual contact, but a new case in Utah does not fit those criteria, leaving doctors baffled.
It started with an elderly man who died last month in Utah with the Zika virus. He’d traveled earlier this year to a country where Zika is actively spreading.
He somehow infected another person who’d been helping to care for him. The caregiver had not traveled out of the country and there is no sign of the mosquitoes that spread Zika in Utah.
“Could it have been through another bodily fluid such as saliva? Maybe urine? I think airborne transmission is very unlikely. No virus in this family has been transmitted in that fashion before,” Dr. William Schaffner of Vanderbilt University says.
The caregiver has fully recovered which is what happens when most healthy people become infected.
Now those in public health are testing others who cared for the elderly man and trapping mosquitoes in Utah to be absolutely certain they’re not spreading the virus.
Read more: http://nbcnews.to/29Hnjw9
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