The recognition of Zika virus as a new disease

Zika virus first was discovered in Uganda’s forest named Zika back in 1947. The human cases first were identified in 1952 and reported in Southeast Asia, Pacific Island and Africa. Then many territories and countries reported the outbreak of the virus globally. Zika virus spreads through infected mosquitoes Aedes’ bite. It was previously viewed as the milder version of dengue and the report was coming from the travellers who were returning from Uganda. In 20078 the spread of Zika was observed widely from the virus in Yap Islands, Pacific Ocean. 70% of the population of the Island got infected with the virus.

Outbreaks of Zika virus

In 2013, ZIKV activity was discovered in the French Polynesian islands, with a higher frequency of infections. Some of ZIKV’s distinctive clinical symptoms (such as Guillain–Barré syndrome, foetal abnormalities, etc) were discovered during the outbreak or afterwards in retrospective studies. ZIKV was then introduced in Brazil in 2013 end or beginning of 2014, quickly expanded throughout the country’s northeast, and repeatedly occurred throughout America. This outbreak was declared a worldwide public health crisis due to the enormous count of infections and linkages to congenital neurological abnormalities. In America, ZIKV activity surged at the beginning of the springtime in 2016, followed by a significant drop in cases reported in 2017 that is most likely due to herd immunity. According to seroprevalence surveys, 63 percent of Salvador residents were affected during the outbreak. By 2017, 52 territories in America have reported over 220,000 confirmed cases and 580,000 cases suspected to have the disease.

The ZIKV’s clinical syndrome was reported repeatedly over the years as a mild influenza disease which can be resolved within some weeks. The common symptoms of the Zika virus are associated with fever, myalgia, arthralgia, headache, conjunctivitis, fatigue, rash, joint pain and muscle pain. In recent infection of ZIKV, there were some more symptoms observed like multi-organ failure, encephalitis, thrombocytopenia and meningitis. The virus was found to be associated with albeit occurrence and caused these symptoms making it fatal for the adults who got infected with the virus. These symptoms show their sign after approximately 7-19 days from the mosquito Aedes bite.

Since there are repeated reports of cases from different regions over the years this disease is a prevalent one which occurs as an outbreak during a tropical climate in a region and favourable humidity for the species of mosquito Aedes to survive. Over 84 nations have confirmed and experienced unusual resurfacing of Zika virus infections in recent times. From 2016 to 2018 there were high numbers of cases reported of ZIKV disease globally. According to the study of EpiWATCH global outbreak data, there were about 84,276 cases between 2016-2018. But since 2019 the transmission possibilities are observed but no such cases were reported on ZIKV illness. This can be due to the changing climate and more precautions are being taken to maintain sanitization, especially after the coronavirus pandemic when each nation is critically taking action to keep the environment clean.

Conclusion

With its rapid expansion and proclamation of a worldwide health crisis for a certain period, Zika infections have a substantial impact on the global economy. As a result, these outbreaks highlight the importance of maintaining worldwide disease diagnosis vigilance. The different study looks at the global patterns in Zika outbreaks throughout time in terms of epidemiology and geolocation. The findings of the study demonstrated that using a transparent surveillance network like EpiWATCH could offer critical information regarding occurring and re-emerging infectious outbreaks around the world. Countries with limited medical resources may benefit from using such a system in addition to standard health surveillance to discover and diagnose emerging pathogens early enough to respond with appropriate local and international intervention.