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The Zika outbreak in India is spreading, officials said Sunday that the mosquito-borne virus had been detected in the state of Gujarat, in the west of the country, after close notification. of 150 cases this year in neighboring Rajasthan.
Health officials in Gujarat said that a woman had obtained a positive Zika test result and had been treated at a public hospital in the capital Ahmedabad, the first confirmed case this year outside of Rajasthan.
"Only one case has been discovered so far.We take every precaution," said Sunday to AFP Jayanti Ravi, health commissioner of Gujarat.
The state health department has mobilized hundreds of doctors and medical staff to carry out emergency screening for Zika, including more than 250 pregnant women suffering from fever.
Gujarat, which borders Rajasthan in the south, has fumigated public areas to kill mosquitoes carrying the disease.
Health authorities in Rajasthan have detected 147 cases of zika since September, officials said. Nearly 440,000 people were under surveillance in Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan, last month.
The mosquito Aedes aegypti, carrying the Zika virus and other viruses such as dengue, is widespread in India.
The country of 1.25 billion people reported its first cases of zika in January 2017 in Gujarat, but the latest case is the first in the state.
Since Zika's massive eruption in 2015, more than 1.5 million people in more than 70 countries have been infected, most of them in South America.
In rare cases, if pregnant women contract the virus, their babies may develop brain abnormalities.
Zika was also detected in the state of Tamil Nadu, in southern India, in July 2017. The World Health Organization said that no vaccine would probably be available before 2020.
Gujarat has been fumigating public areas in order to kill mosquitoes that carry diseases
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