WHO: Zika virus ‘spreading explosively,’ ‘level of alarm extremely high’
By Ariana Eunjung Cha and Lena H. Sun
WashingtonPost.com
January 28, 2016
The World Health Organization announced Thursday that it will convene an emergency meeting to try to find ways to stop the transmission of the Zika virus — which officials said is “spreading explosively” across the Americas.
“The level of alarm is extremely high, as is the level of uncertainty. Questions abound. We need to get some answers quickly, ” Margaret Chan, the director-general of the WHO, said in Geneva in a briefing to member countries.
Chan said that the situation today is dramatically different from last year because of the multiplying number of cases and the severity of the symptoms and that “the level of alarm is extremely high.”
Health officials said 23 countries are affected by mosquitoes that are spreading the virus locally. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the United States has 31 confirmed cases in 11 states and the District of Columbia. All are travel-related, the CDC’s Lyle Petersen said, and “this number is increasing rapidly.” The country also has 20 additional cases because of local transmission in U.S. territories — 19 in Puerto Rico and one in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
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