Mosquitoes have infected two women with the Zika virus in Vietnam, health authorities said on Tuesday, in the country’s first cases of a disease linked in Brazil to thousands of suspected cases of microcephaly, a rare birth defect.
A 64-year-old woman in the beach city of Nha Trang and a pregnant 33-year-old in Ho Chi Minh City fell sick in late March, health officials said.
The sufferers are in stable condition and no further infections have been found among their relatives and neighbors, Reuters reported. “After epidemic investigations, we consider the source of infection could be mosquito,” Deputy Health Minister Nguyen Thanh Long said of the patient in Ho Chi Minh City.
Health officials have quarantined the living areas of the patient’s families and taken samples from others living nearby for further tests as the World Health Organization is working closely with Vietnam.
