Berlin: Germany has recorded its first case of the Zika virus being transmitted on its territory, after a woman contracted the disease during sex, according to one of the country’s leading public health institutes.
The woman had sex with a partner who had picked up the disease while in Puerto Rico, the Robert Koch Institute reported on Friday.
Because of the patient’s geographical location and the time of the year, the institute said it could rule out that the disease was spread by mosquito, the most common transmission method.
The institute would not say where in Germany the woman lives. The woman’s partner had been in Puerto Rico in April. Similar cases have been seen across Europe.
“We assumed that, sooner or later, there would be a transmission,” said Christina Frank of the institute’s infectious epidemiology unit.
She said the odds of sexual transmission are much higher in Germany than transmission via mosquito.
The institute has recorded 49 cases in which people infected abroad brought Zika back to Germany.
Much remains unknown about Zika, which has prompted many of the worries surrounding it. One
of the main concerns is that, when pregnant woman become infected, their children can be born with microcephaly, a condition where the head and brain are significantly smaller than normal.
Although mosquitoes normally carry the disease, there is a brief window during the infection where a carrier can pass on the disease sexually, says Regine Heilbronn, head of the institute for virology at Berlin’s Charite hospital.
The Health Minister of Puerto Rica on Friday confirmed the first case of Zika-related microcephaly on the island in a fetus.
Ana Rius told a news conference in San Juan the case was confirmed, but the baby with the virus was not born. It was not clear whether the cause was miscarriage or abortion.