State health officials announced Thursday that two infants have been born in California with the severe birth defect associated with the Zika virus, microcephaly. According to the Sacramento Bee, both cases occurred sometime this year, but officials are declining to disclose where in the state the babies were born, or any further information about the infected mothers.
In both cases, the pregnant women had traveled to foreign countries where the virus is currently more prevalent. And in one of the two cases, the new mother has returned with her affected infant to her unnamed home country.
So far there have been no cases of the virus being transmitted within the state of California, or anywhere else in the US except Florida, where it's believed four cases were transmitted locally. So far out of 1,657 cases of Zika infections in the country, 114 of those have been reported in California across 22 counties, and all of them were travel-related infections.
As the LA Times reports, Los Angeles County and San Diego County have both recorded the most cases thus far, with 24 and 23 respectively. The first San Francisco case came back in March.
Dr. Karen Smith, director of California's Department of Public Health, tells the Bee that the state has been following 21 different cases of the virus in pregnant women here, including the two women who gave birth to babies with microcephaly.
Smith tried to allay concerns about local transmissions, which are likely to be sexual transmissions, saying, "We have recognized since the beginning of the Zika event that we could see limited local transmission within California but we do believe that would be a very limited local transmission."
The SF Chronicle recently said that while "the Bay Area will see its own locally acquired cases of Zika at some point," the chances of there being any kind of outbreak are very low.
While there is still no vaccine, there are three in trials, and just today NBC News reported that the experimental vaccines being tested in monkeys and mice all "show promise."
And, the vaccine is mostly a concern for women who are pregnant or planning to become pregnant, since the effects of the virus are nil to mild on most everyone else.
Previously: Officials: San Francisco Resident Tested Positive For Zika