By Lee Kyung-min
Korea cannot rule out the possibility of the Zika virus coming to the country through aircraft carrying mosquitoes from affected regions, though any spread is unlikely for now due to cold weather, health authorities said Tuesday.
The authorities held an emergency meeting to prepare preventive measures against the virus, after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared it a global emergency, Monday.
According to the Korea Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention (KCDC), the country has not found any of the two kinds of mosquito ― aedes albopictus and aedes aegypti ― that carry the Zika virus.
“Even if they travel here on aircraft, infection from a bite is highly unlikely due to the cold weather, during which their activity is close to zero,” a KCDC official said during a media briefing in Seoul.
Currently, three flights a week are in operation between Korea and Brazil, the hardest-hit nation, bringing up to 600 people from Brazil to Korea a week.
The KCDC said it would maintain its lowest alert level and would raise it only if a case was confirmed.
So far, there have been five suspected cases. Three tested negative, while two are awaiting results.
It is said that the virus causes microcephaly ― a birth defect where newborns have abnormally small heads ― although the causality between the pregnant mother being bitten and the defect has not been officially confirmed.
The KCDC advised pregnant women not to travel to affected regions. “If they have to visit such countries and develop suspicious symptoms such as fever, they should tell their doctors about their travels and have their fetus monitored regularly,” the official said.
For possible transmission through bodily fluid ― which is also not officially confirmed ― the KCDC said those who recently visited the virus-affected Central and South America regions should refrain from donating blood for up to one month.
The KCDC said it would come up with more detailed response manual and release it to the public, especially to travelers at airports.
The WHO has designated the Zika virus and its suspected complications in newborns a public health emergency of international concern.
“The experts agreed that a causal relationship between Zika infection during pregnancy and microcephaly is strongly suspected, though not yet scientifically proven,” WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said after a meeting of the International Health Regulations Emergency Committee in Geneva, Switzerland.
The declaration is the fourth following the first one in 2009 during the H1N1 influenza epidemic that is believed to have infected up to 200 million worldwide; the second in May 2014 when a paralyzing form of polio re-emerged in Pakistan and Syria; and the third in August 2014 with Ebola in West Africa.
The WHO has estimated that the virus will infect up to 4 million people by the end of the year.