A Georgia woman became the first person in the state to contract Zika through sexual transmission, the Georgia Department of Public Health announced Friday.
The woman had sexual contact with a male partner who had traveled to Brazil earlier this year, where he contracted Zika. He was one of the initial travel-related cases in the state, which saw its first case of the disease in February.
The unidentified man passed the virus on to his partner, though both of them no longer have an active case of the virus, the health department said in a statement. No further details were given about the woman or the man, other than the woman wasn’t pregnant.
Zika is primarily transmitted by two types of mosquitoes found in Georgia, but the virus can also be sexually transmitted. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has advised anyone who has traveled to areas that are experiencing an outbreak of the disease to practice safe sex for at least six weeks after travel. The virus causes microcephaly, and several other birth defects and has become a growing health concern in the Americas. It’s the first mosquito-borne virus ever known to cause birth defects.
Georgia has had at least 13 travel-related cases of the virus. Across the U.S., the number of cases is more than 500. There have been no cases of local transmission of the virus by mosquitoes in the contiguous 48 states yet, but the virus is wreaking havoc in Puerto Rico. It was responsible for the death of an elderly man there who appeared to have recovered from the virus, and it also caused a severe case of microcephaly in the fetus of a Puerto Rican woman. The woman terminated the pregnancy.
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