Nearly 200 Cases of Travel-Related Zika in NYC

By Kelly Young

Edited by Lorenzo Di Francesco, MD, FACP, FHM

New York City, which has a significant population that regularly travels to other countries in the Americas, has reported 182 cases of confirmed Zika virus infection related to travel exposure so far this year.

Twenty of these patients were pregnant when they were diagnosed. In MMWR, officials also report two cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome in the city.

In other Zika news:

• The first experimental vaccine for Zika is set to begin trials in humans, STAT reports.

• The CDC has recommended that clinicians who are ordering Zika tests store an aliquot of the patient's serum for later Zika IgM enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) testing in case the real-time reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (rRT-PCR) assay is negative. (Negative rRT-PCR results don't exclude the possibility of infection.) Otherwise, patients may have to return for more testing.