There’s more bad news when it comes to Zika’s effect on infants: A case study suggests the virus can live and cause damage in newborns for at least two months after birth.
The report, published online Aug. 24 in the New England Journal of Medicine, involves a baby boy born in January to a woman in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Zika is typically transmitted via mosquito bites, but sexual transmission can also occur.
The mother developed symptoms of Zika illness — rash, fever, headache, swollen joints — in week 26 of her pregnancy. The doctors suspect she got the infection through sexual contact with the baby’s father, who had recently traveled to a Zika-endemic region.
