There are no vaccines or treatments available for Zika. | File photo
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently added new countries to its travel guidelines concerning the Zika virus, warning people who travel to these regions that the virus is at large.
The countries include Barbados, Bolivia, Cape Verde, Ecuador, Guadeloupe, Guyana, Saint Martin and Samoa. These are in addition to the previously added countries: Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala,Haiti,Honduras, Martinique, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, Surname and Venezuela.
Health officials have found it difficult to determine the exact regions where Zika is most likely to be transmitted, as these areas and likelihoods will change as the virus spreads.
The CDC will continue to update its travel alerts as more information is revealed. Travelers should be aware of the risks they are taking when they travel to certain regions, which may also have higher chances of chikungunya and dengue viruses. It is most likely that people who contract these diseases will be infected while they are traveling, only showing symptoms after they return home.
Mosquitoes that transmit these three viruses are more aggressive, biting people during daytime hours. These mosquitoes also tend to live outdoors nearby people or indoors inside people’s residences.
There are no vaccines or treatments available for Zika.
United Airlines will allow customers concerned about the Zika virus to cancel or postpone their trips if they’re ticketed to fly to areas affected by the mosquito-borne virus. American Airlines also said it would allow certain customers to do the same.
United's policy includes travel to all areas mentioned in a Centers for Disease Control alert. So far, American's covers flights to four destinations in Central America.
“We are offering customers who are traveling to the affected regions the opportunity to rebook at a later date or receive a full refund,” United spokesman Charles Hobart said in a statement to Today in the Sky on Tuesday.
United is basing its exception policy off the guidelines issued by the CDC. Hobart says customers ticketed to regions listed by the CDC should contact the carrier if they have concerns.
“For travelers who feel they’re at risk, we’ll provide them with options,” Hobart added in a follow-up call on Wednesday.
American had not yet posted its Zika policy on its website, though spokesman Ross Feinstein says the carrier decided to implement the policy Monday. To date, American's policy is specific than United's.
Feinstein says American will allow customers to receive a refund if they provide a doctor's note stating they are unable to travel to one of four cities due pregnancy. The cities included in American's waiver are San Pedro Sula and Tegucigalpa in Honduras as well as Panama City, Panama, and Guatemala City. Feinstein says American continues to review its policy.
The Zika virus has been in the news since the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) issued a travel warning alert earlier this month warning about the risk of traveling to countries in theAmericas affected by the virus. Zika has been linked to an epidemic of birth defects in Brazil and is thought to be spreading to other regions of North and South America.
The CDC's warning focused mostly on pregnant women or those seeking to become pregnant.
The World Health Organization (WHO) issued its own alert on Monday, saying it expects the Zika to eventually spread to the United States and most of the Americas.
As for United, it said its travel waivers would include countries covered in the CDC's travel advisories.
Currently, the CDC's advisories mention the following countries and territories in the Americas: Barbados, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Martinique, Mexico, Paraguay, Panama,Puerto Rico, Saint Martin, Suriname and Venezuela.
American, Delta and United are the three large U.S. carriers with a significant international presence. Each flies to numerous destinations in Central and South America.
For now, Delta has no such waiver in place.
“We continue to monitor the situation closely. No flight cancelations have resulted as of this time and there is currently no waiver,” Delta spokesman Morgan Durrant says to Today in the Sky.
Durant added that Delta remains "in close contact" with both the CDC and WHO on all health risks that could affect air travelers.
Outside the United States, the the largest carrier in Latin America also announced that it will waive fees or offer fees to pregnant women seeking to travel to nations affected by Zika, The Associated Press reports. LATAM, which includes both LAN and TAM airlines, says its policy will cover travel to Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, French Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Martinique, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, Suriname and Venezuela.
(CNN)Pregnant women should not travel to Barbados, Bolivia, Ecuador, Guadeloupe, Saint Martin, Guyana, Cape Verde and Samoa because of Zika virus, the CDC said Friday.
This comes on the heels of last week's travel alert from the CDC recommending pregnant women postpone travel toBarbados, Bolivia, Ecuador, Guadeloupe, Saint Martin, Guyana, Cape Verde and Samoa Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Martinique, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Suriname, Venezuela and Puerto Rico. The recommendations alsocall for women who have traveled to these places during their pregnancy be screened and monitored for the virus if their visit took place while the virus was present in the country they visited.
What is the Zika virus?01:55
The decision is based on their ongoing monitoring of the Zika virus around the world and CDC say they will update as necessary in the interest of public health.
Zika virus is a mosquito borne disease. An individual becomes infected by the bite of an infected mosquito. Symptoms of the virus include fever, rash, joint pain and red eyes and can last from a few days to about a week. But 80% of individuals infected have no symptoms.
So why is there so much concern?
The virus has been linked to an increase in cases of a rare neurological condition called microcephaly in babies. Microcephaly results in babies being born with abnormally small heads, and often serious, and sometimes deadly, developmental delays.
This is what prompted the Salvadoran vice minister of health to tell women there not to get pregnant for two years. "We're recommending that women who may get pregnant plan their pregnancies and try to avoid getting pregnant this year and the next," Eduardo Espinoza told CNNEspanol Thursday.
Colombia and Jamaica issued similar recommendations for women to delay pregnancy earlier this week.
Brazil was the first nation to give this advice in November after they saw a sharp increase in the rare birth defect coinciding with an outbreak of the virus there. The Ministry of Health has recorded more than 3,700 cases of microcephaly in 2015 and so far this year. In comparison, 147 cases of microcephaly were recorded in 2014.
The CDC conducted tests on human tissue from babies in Brazil confirming a the link between Zika virus and microcephaly.
Health officials there and in El Salvador, also suspect a surge of the rare disorder Guillian Barre Syndrome, or GBS, is connected to Zika virus. GBS is a rare disorder in which an individual's immune system attacks nerve cells, resulting in muscle weakness and sometimes paralysis. The CDC is working with the Ministry of Health in Brazil and has a team on the ground conducting investigating a possible link between the two.
Dangers of Zika virus01:39
"It's a strong message to tell people to stop getting pregnant for a couple of years," said Stephen Higgs, PhD, president of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. He likens it to the message to promote safe sex for the prevention of HIV. "Some people will pay attention to this and realize they are at risk for something, others are obviously going to ignore it," he said.
Higgs believes a unified message could help, noting that El Salvador recommends a two-year halt on pregnancy while Jamaica, for example is recommending 6 to 12 months. This could come in the form of an overarching announcement from the World Health Organization or the Pan American Health Organization that applies to all Zika-infected countries, rather than individual countries making recommendations. The message will probably change too as more is learned about the virus.
What now?
"Zika in the Americas is in new territory and (as) we've seen with the microcephaly, it's showing different patterns of infection that hasn't been seen before. We don't fully understand what's going on," Higgs said.
He also expects the CDC to continue to expand the list of nations as the virus continues to spread.
In the U.S. there are confirmed cases of the virus among individuals who have traveled to infected countries, including in Illinois, Florida and Texas, among others. However, there are no known cases of locally transmitted illness. "These imported cases might result in local human-to-mosquito-to-human spread of the virus in limited areas of the continental Unites States that have the appropriate mosquito vectors," according to a new report on the spread of the virus issued by the CDC Friday.
There is at least one known case of a baby born with microcephaly believed to be linked to Zika in Hawaii.
There is no prevention or treatment, which is why the best course of action is for travelers to danger areas is toprevent mosquito bites by using mosquito repellant and covering exposed skin. The aedis aegyptia mosquito, which transmits the disease, bites all day long, so individuals need to reapply that repellant and not let their guard down. Aedes albopictus mosquitoes, which are found throughout the U.S. and are known for transmittingdengue fever and chikungunya, may also transmit the virus, the CDC said Friday.
However, mosquito bites and mother to unborn baby aren't the only ways this virus is transmitted. The new CDC report notes documented cases of infection from sexual transmission, blood transfusion and laboratory exposure.
The good news is, while it's not certain, scientists believe once an individual has been infected with the virus, they are immune and won't become infected again, according to Higgs.
Contributed by Hannah Drieier and Jorge Rueda, AP.
Graphic shows reduction in available seats of major airline flights to Venezuela in 2014 compared to 2013; 2c x 3 1/2 inches; 96.3 mm x 88 mm;
Come to Venezuela and you might get a longer trip than you bargained for.
The U.S. Embassy in Caracas issued an advisory Tuesday urging Americans to be careful when traveling to Venezuela because of the steep drop in airline service to the South American country.
The number of seats on flights between Venezuela and the U.S. has fallen by more than half since the beginning of the year, according to the Venezuela Airlines Association. The three largest U.S. carriers - Delta, American and United Airlines - all slashed their service to Venezuela this summer.
The cause: A dispute over some $4 billion in cash trapped in the socialist country.
Decade-old currency controls mean that airlines need government approval to convert local earnings into dollars. And the socialist government, running low on dollars itself, has been preventing carriers from repatriating revenue, with some airlines waiting over a year.
Each successive reduction in service has left passengers scrambling to rebook seats, often for significantly more than they first paid. The scarcity of flights has sent airfares soaring; a one-way ticket to New York now costs more than $1,000.
On Tuesday, the Embassy urged U.S. travelers to leave themselves enough time to make alternative arrangements should their return flights vanish.
While most carriers have reduced service, some, including Air Canada and Italy's Alitalia, have left Venezuela altogether.
Diminishing access to the global air traffic network has many middle class Venezuelans grumbling that they are trapped in their own country.
Even Venezuela's top soccer club is suffering. It said last week it could not find a flight to an international tournament in Peru and would have to spend several days traveling to Colombia and catching a flight from there.
President Nicolas Maduro has downplayed the airline exodus, dismissing it as a crisis cooked up by the "bourgeois press." At one point, he said carriers were only temporarily adjusting schedules to meet demand for flights to Brazil for the World Cup.
He has warned that airlines abandoning the country wouldn't be allowed to return.
