13 things HHS wants doctors and patients to know about Zika

As local Zika transmissions continue to pop up in the U.S., HHS is ramping up efforts to combat the virus through awareness of its symptoms, its effects and how to stop its spread. Various agencies under the HHS umbrella held a Twitter Q&A surrounding these topics Aug. 30 using the hashtag #AtoZika.

The agencies and officials involved, including Surgeon Gen. Vivek Murthy, HHS Sec. Sylvia Burwell, CDC Director Tom Frieden and Deputy Director Anne Schuchat, touched on the obvious methods of prevention: wear long shirts and pants, use insect repellant and remove standing water.

But they also shared less well-known information. Here are 13 things from the #AtoZika town hall that HHS wants the general public to know—plus what they want providers to know and pass on to their patients.

1. Physicians should be speaking with all of reproductive-age female patients about the risks of Zika, especially women who are interested in becoming pregnant, even if they don’t live in a place where local transmission of the virus is currently confirmed. Local transmission spots could grow.
2. Trial information about Zika vaccine safety should be available by November or December, but information about vaccine efficacy won’t be available until at least 2018.
3. Zika tests are becoming more widely available but are not necessarily 100 percent accurate. Existing tests can detect Zika right away. The Zika incubation period is thought to be between two days and two weeks. It generally clears within seven days and 80 percent of people don’t ever show symptoms.
4. It is “highly likely” that patients cannot re-contract Zika again after they’ve already been infected once. It works like other falviviruses in that way.
5. It is unknown whether Zika can be transmitted through breast milk, but at this time the CDC is still recommending women breastfeed.
6. The risk of Zika is mostly to pregnancy, though the risk of Guillain Barre Syndrome increases with age and could affect elderly patients.
7. Between 1 and 13 percent of Zika infections contracted during the third trimester can result in microcephaly, though even babies with prenatal Zika infections could end up with other kinds of brain damage.
8. It is unknown whether Zika infection after the early second trimester can result in brain damage, though it likely would not cause the same microcephaly seen in infections occurring earlier in the pregnancy.
9. Pregnant women in areas where there is no confirmed local Zika transmission but where the aedes aegypti mosquito is present (which is most of the country) should still take steps to protect themselves from mosquito bite-transmitted infection. And all women should protect themselves from sexually transmitted Zika infection.
10. Women should wait up to eight weeks after recovering from a Zika infection before trying to become pregnant. After a woman recovers from Zika, there is no risk to future pregnancies.
11. Brain defects caused by Zika infection can be detected in fetuses at about 15 or 20 weeks gestation.
12. The CDC and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have said they want $1.9 billion from Congress to fight Zika, which President Obama requested in February but which Congress so far has not approved. Zika research money could run out by Oct. 1 without more congressionally approved funding. In the meantime, some other NIH projects are taking a research funding backseat to Zika.
13. Private organizations can contact the CDC Foundation to partner with the CDC for Zika research and prevention, which could be essential to the fight.