An update on the Zika virus

Unless you have been with Tim Peake in outer space, you cannot have failed to notice the latest viral outbreak to make the headlines: not influenza, Ebola or Mers-CoV this time (all of which are still around), but Zika.

Discovered in 1947 and related to dengue and Chikungunya, Zika has been linked to microcephaly and Guillain-Barré syndrome and is therefore of the utmost concern to some, if not most, travellers venturing out of the UK this summer. Since it was first reported in Brazil on
7 May 2015, 61 countries and territories around the world have reported continuing mosquito transmission.¹